A Bitter Truth

by Charles Todd

  Roger turned to me and said, “I told you!” Then he said to his mother, “Where? Where did they find him? Not here, not in the Forest. You wrote that the police had searched the Forest from one end to the other.”

  “In The Pitch,” I said before I could stop myself. “I think that’s where.”

  “Good God.”

  Mrs. Ellis turned to me. “I don’t think you’ve been there. It’s a low saucer of land that has become quite boggy over the years, particularly in winter, with the rains. I remember Roger’s grandfather showing it to me and telling me that when the King was too old to ride, he and his men would stand in that dip of ground and wait for the deer to be driven past them.”

  “Perhaps half a mile from the church. From St. Mary’s,” Roger said. “Only it’s rough going there. Still, I don’t see how—do they know how he died?”

  “They never admitted he was dead. I told you,” his mother answered.

  Lydia had walked into the hall. She must have seen or heard the motorcar arrive and had come down to meet me.

  She stopped. “Who is dead?”

  “We think it’s Davis Merrit, my dear,” Mrs. Ellis told her. “We think they’ve found him at last.”

  Her face lost its color. “Oh, I’m so sorry. He had handled his blindness so well. It was amazing to me how he got about. I never believed he killed George.” She turned to Roger. “Is this why they’ve reopened the inquiry?”

  Roger Ellis had been watching his wife closely. “You must ask the police that.” He turned away, his mouth tight, and went up the stairs.

  Lydia closed her eyes for a moment, then said to me with a forced smile. “I’m so glad you could come. Mama Ellis was closeted with the Inspector, and Roger volunteered to go to Hartfield in her place.”

  Because he needed to be sure he could count on my silence about Rouen. But I said, “That was kind of him.”

  “Yes, I told you he’d changed. Well. Let me take you up to your room. It’s the same one.”

  She caught up my valise and was holding the door as I thanked Mrs. Ellis for letting me stay.

  She said, a sadness in her eyes, “We’re all in this together, aren’t we? I can’t help but wonder where it will end.”

  With the arrest of her son? Or was she fearful for herself?

  I followed Lydia up the stairs. On the landing, we encountered Gran. She looked at me with surprise and displeasure. I could guess that no one had told her I was coming back to Vixen Hill.

  “Mrs. Ellis,” I said, smiling politely, and walked on.

  “I can’t think why Gran is so cold to me,” I said, when we were in my room and the door had shut behind us. “What have I done to upset her?”

  “I expect she feels you’ve let down your sex and your class by taking up nursing. She’s very old-fashioned, is Gran.”

  “Many of the nursing sisters in Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service are women of the middle and upper classes. We’re said to look down on the Australian nurses, who sometimes aren’t. Although I haven’t seen any of that. We’re far too grateful for help to quibble. Australian, American, English, we all save lives.”

  “Yes, well, Gran gave Inspector Rother an earful this morning.” Lydia grinned, remembering. “He was asking her how well she knew Davis, and she told him he could take his suspicious mind elsewhere, that she had not known Davis either in the biblical sense or the literal sense of the word.”

  I had to laugh, picturing their faces as the Inspector and the indomitable Gran squared off.

  “What was his reply?”

  “He turned as red as a sugar beet and stalked off.” Her smile faded. “But he came to see me after that and wanted to know what my relationship with Davis had been. I told him I counted myself a friend, which is exactly what I’d said before.”

  Daisy summoned us to our luncheon soon after that, and we were all, I was surprised to see, gathered at the table. But we ate our meal in silence, and afterward I was taken up to the room above the hall to meet Bluebell, Davis Merrit’s cat.

  Bluebell was wary of me—I think she still missed her former life, and I was another stranger in her eyes, bent on taking her away from where she belonged. But Lydia had thought to bring the cat’s favorite cushion, and soon Bluebell curled up on that and ignored us.

  Lydia said, “I can’t believe Davis is dead. I wish the police would tell us—did he take his own life because of his eyes, or did he really murder George? Will they clear his name? If they’ve been wrong about him?”

  “To clear his name, they must arrest someone else.”

  “Oh.”

  An hour later Margaret arrived, her face drawn with worry. “I haven’t heard from Henry in three weeks,” she said as she greeted her mother and grandmother. “And there were two soldiers from his sector who came through London last night in the train of wounded. One of the women bringing the men coffee and fresh bandages told me. They couldn’t ask either man for news of Henry. They were too heavily sedated. I should have stayed at home, where I can be reached. Has anyone contacted you, Mama?”

  “Henry is all right, my dear,” Mrs. Ellis answered her. “I’m sure of it. Now come in and have some tea. I’m so glad you’re here with us.”

  For the next three days Inspector Rother was in and out of the house, taking one or the other of us aside and either going over and over old ground or asking new questions based on whatever he had learned. Sparing no one, not even the distraught Margaret.

  I had my share of the Inspector’s attention. I was asked if I knew where everyone in the house was that morning when Mrs. Ellis and I set out to search for George Hughes.

  I thought I had seen everyone. But after another round of questioning, probing, trying to trick me, I began to doubt my own memory.

  Gran took to her room, angry and refusing to have anything more to do with the police. Daisy took to leaving trays of food outside her door. Sometimes they remained untouched.

  And I had another worry on my mind. Simon hadn’t returned, although he’d told me he would be a day, two at the most. I wondered where he was and what was keeping him. I’d have liked to know too what if anything he’d been able to discover about William Pryor.

  Tensions were running high in the house. Roger Ellis lost his temper twice to my knowledge, sending Lydia to her room over the hall in tears the first time, and upsetting his mother the second time. Word from the Front, what we were able to hear of it, was not good, and Roger chafed at being here when he was sorely needed in France. To his credit, he did make some telephone calls from Hartfield to see what he could discover about Henry, but there was no news at all.

  “Which is reassuring,” Mrs. Ellis told her daughter. “Take it as a good thing, my dear.”

  But Margaret shook her head and went to her room “for a lie down” she said, but it was to cry. At dinner that night her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her voice husky.

  The morning of the fourth day, Inspector Rother arrived at Vixen Hill and after an hour’s discussion with Roger’s mother, took her away to Wych Gate. Roger was livid when he came home and heard what had transpired in his absence. He set out for Wych Gate straightaway, and when I asked if I could go with him, he was curt.

  “No.”

  Neither of them had returned in time for lunch, and there was still no news when our tea was brought in at four o’clock. It was already dark as pitch outside when there was a knock at the hall door. We could hear it from the sitting room, as if whoever it was had used his fist.

  Lydia went with Molly to answer it, and then came back to where we all waited in anxious silence.

  “The hotel clerk from The King’s Head,” she said to me. “There’s a telephone message from your mother. You’re to call her back at once.”

  “I’ll go and see—”

  “He came on his bicycle, Bess, and the wind is fearsome,” Lydia said. “Take Mama’s motorcar. It will be quicker as well as warmer.”

  Margaret sat up straigh
t. “But what if there’s news of Henry? And I can’t get to Hartfield?”

  “I can take a bicycle,” I began, but Lydia wouldn’t hear of it.

  “If there’s a message from Henry, Bess can come back for you,” she told her sister-in-law.

  And so I set out for Hartfield, the silent clerk in the motorcar beside me, his bicycle strapped to the boot. He could tell me no more about the telephone call, but I asked all the same if my mother sounded upset.

  “I wasn’t the one who answered,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  When we got to Hartfield, there was a flurry of activity in the normally quiet streets, and I said, “What’s happened?”

  The clerk, peering out the windscreen, said, “I don’t know. There was no one in the street when I left. Silent as the tomb, it was.”

  It would have taken him well over half an hour to bicycle to Vixen Hill.

  Slowing, I said, “Is that Inspector Rother with the torch? There, just across from the inn. Look, he’s going to Bluebell Cottage!”

  He disappeared inside the door, closing it after him. The small circle of onlookers was being kept back by a constable, and I recognized Constable Bates. There was someone else just coming up the road, hurrying to speak to Constable Bates, and as he was allowed to proceed, I recognized the rector, Mr. Smyth.

  I drove slowly, cautiously, edging past the gawking crowd, and then I heard Constable Bates shout, “You there. Where do you think you’re going?”

  I was saved from answering by the inn’s clerk, who leaned out his window and called, “I need to reach The King’s Head. Is that all right?”

  “I thought it was one of the Ellises, pushing their way through. Yes, go on.”

  I crept slowly past, but just as I drew even with him, there was a shout from the cottage, and Constable Bates turned toward it, not toward me.

  “Can you drive? Take this motorcar, turn around, and go to Vixen Hill. Find Captain Ellis and bring him back,” I told the clerk quietly. “I’ll get down here.”

  I slipped out into the shadowy darkness beyond range of the torches and was out of sight by the time Constable Bates had crossed to the cottage door to speak to Inspector Rother. Behind me, I could just hear Mrs. Ellis’s motorcar reverse as far as Dr. Tilton’s house, the headlamps dimmed. I walked into The King’s Head and sought out the woman behind Reception’s desk.

  She smiled as I approached. “Yes?” And then as she recognized me, she added, “Ah, Sister Crawford. What’s happening out there? I hear people shouting.”

  “I don’t know, I think the police must be after someone,” I answered quickly. “The telephone?”

  “I’m afraid it’s in use at the moment. It was your mother who telephoned. Mrs. Crawford. She said it was urgent. I hope it isn’t bad news.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Well out of sight of the police outside, I stood there in Reception, trying to contain my impatience and my worry. My mother wouldn’t have telephoned me unless it was a dire emergency.

  Was it Simon, who hadn’t come back as he’d promised in “a day—a day and a half at most”?

  Or my father. Had something happened to the Colonel Sahib?

  I was trying to think what to say to Inspector Rother if I had to leave for London straightaway, or even Somerset.

  I decided then that if it was necessary, I would take the Ellis motorcar and drive to London without telling anyone. The same hotel clerk could carry a note to the family in the morning, when it would be too late to stop me. I’d find someone in London who could ferry the motorcar back to Sussex. One of my flatmates, if anyone was there. Someone. I was willing to pay handsomely, it wouldn’t be impossible.

  Finally the artillery officer who had been using the telephone stepped away from it, and as I hurried forward, I heard him say to the woman behind the desk, “I shall need to put through another call to London shortly. Will you keep the line clear?”

  My heart plummeted. As far as I knew there was no other telephone in Hartfield.

  She saw me hesitate. “This young woman has missed a call from her family. She looks very worried. Would you mind if she used the instrument meanwhile? I’m sure it won’t take very long.”

  He turned, on the point of saying no, I could read it in his face. And then he saw that I was a nursing sister, and his expression changed.

  “Yes, go ahead, Sister.”

  I thanked him and after some difficulty with the lines, I put through the call to Somerset.

  The phone rang and rang, my anxiety growing with each ring.

  And then my mother’s voice came down the line.

  “Bess, dear?”

  “I’m here, Mother. Is the Colonel all right? Simon?”

  “Yes, my dear, they’ve been delayed. I have a feeling they’re in Scotland. Or else training Scottish troops. Your father murmured something about haggis as he left.”

  I was so relieved I couldn’t stop my lower lip from trembling, and it was a moment before I said, “That’s wonderful.”

  “Not the haggis, Bess, he abominates it.”

  I swallowed a bubble of hysterical laughter.

  She went on, “Are you all right? Simon was quite worried about having to abandon you. Richard wasn’t very happy about it either.”

  “Yes, I’m very well, Mother. It’s been rather trying, but I hope the police will be satisfied soon.” Was this the reason she’d called? Because she was worried about me?

  But then she said, “I had a telephone call earlier this evening. An hour or so ago. Someone trying to reach you. Apparently he was in Dover, in some difficulties with the authorities there, and needed to speak to you urgently. He wouldn’t give me his name, and I rather thought there must be others listening in to his side of the conversation. But he said you would remember the kingfisher. Do you have any idea what on earth he was talking about?”

  I drew a blank for all of ten seconds. And then I did laugh. “Did he sound Australian to you?”

  “I’m not sure, Bess. His voice was very strained, and he coughed every other breath. In fact, he seemed to have some trouble breathing.”

  “How on earth did he find you in Somerset?”

  “I’ve no idea. He begged me to reach you, and he said he’d be waiting in Dover for you, and if you could come there straightaway, he would be very grateful. He said it was most urgent, or he’d be clapped in irons and everything would be lost.”

  I couldn’t imagine why Sergeant Larimore should be telephoning me from Dover, or even how he got there.

  “Was he—do you think he’d been drinking?” I asked, for the Australians had a reputation for putting away large quantities of beer. And he might have taken a dare and tried to come to England.

  “I couldn’t tell, not with the coughing. He wouldn’t leave a number. He said you must come as quickly as you could.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave here,” I began, and then I had one of those feelings we all get at one time or another, that I ought to go. After all, Dover was closer than London or Somerset. If I was prepared to risk Inspector Rother’s ire by leaving to go to either place, why not risk it and go to Dover? If the Sergeant was a deserter—and somehow I couldn’t picture him abandoning his men—he’d be in a great deal of trouble. I wasn’t sure what I could do, but I would try to help.

  “I’ve changed my mind. Mother, if he should telephone you again, tell him I’m on my way.”

  “Yes, I’d feel very much better if you did go. But it’s late to be starting out for Dover, my dear, and you must be very careful. Promise?”

  “I promise.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see the officer hovering, wanting his telephone back. “I must go, someone else needs to use the telephone. I’ll give you a shout as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll send Simon to you as soon as he returns.”

  “Thank you. Good night. And don’t worry.”

  “And you’ll tell me all about this kingfisher, won’t you?”

  She put up the rec
eiver on that note, and I turned to thank the officer trying to hide his impatience.

  As I turned away, I said to the woman at Reception, “What happened across the street?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I looked out the door just now and saw one of the constables speaking to Inspector Rother. I didn’t know he was in Hartfield this evening—he often dines with us when he’s here, and I hadn’t seen him. Someone who came in just after you said something about a fire. But I haven’t seen the fire brigade.”

  I thanked her and was about to wait outside for Roger Ellis to come, when the officer using the telephone came striding out and said to the woman behind the desk, “I’m off, then. Thank you for your help.”

  Off?

  I stepped forward and asked, “Major? May I ask where you’re going—and if you have a motorcar?”

  “Yes, I do. I’m reporting to Dover tonight. They’ve canceled my leave.”

  “Please? Would you mind if I go with you? I—I’ve had a summons from Dover as well, and I’m not sure how to get there.” Holding out my hand, I said, “My name is Elizabeth Crawford. I’m Colonel Crawford’s daughter.”

  “By all means, I’ll be happy to escort you to Dover.”

  Turning to the woman behind the desk, I said, “Please, if Captain Ellis comes, will you tell him I will be back as quickly as possible?”

  We went out to his motorcar and drove out of Hartfield, crossing the railroad tracks outside the town before turning toward Kent, and Dover, on the English Channel. He reached in the back and brought out a rug, which I pulled around my shoulders.

  The night had turned cold, the stars overhead bright in the blackness of the sky, and I could feel my feet beginning to go numb from the frigid air. The heater was barely sufficient for one of them, and I kept alternating them close by the vent. Once or twice we stopped on the verge of the road and stamped some circulation back into our limbs. Major Hutton asked me at one point where I lived, and when I told him London, he said, “Then you’ve been to see the bear?”