by Charles Todd
This time she turned and hurried toward the door leading down to the kitchen. She must have met Mrs. Byers coming up, because I could hear voices before Clara firmly closed the door behind her.
I had intended to take Captain Collier to an empty room, but I remembered suddenly that Mr. Heatherton-Scott had taken over the study for the time being. I didn’t know if he’d left for Canterbury or not. I hesitated.
“The sitting room.” He shoved me forward “Go on. It’s that way. I know that much.”
I had no choice but to lead him to the sitting room. As I opened the door, Mrs. Ashton looked up. “Bess, dear? I was just about to ring for Mrs. Byers, to bring up a pot—”
She broke off as Lieutenant Collier stepped into view.
But Mrs. Ashton was nothing if not brave. After a moment, she looked him up and down and said, “I thought we were done with you.”
“He’s been in Canterbury all along. Since the mill burned,” I said, wanting her to understand some of what had happened.
He pushed me into the room and shut the door, standing with his back to it. “You never liked me. Nor I you,” he said to her.
“Where is my son?” she asked.
“He’s with Simon Brandon,” I told her. “They didn’t come with us.”
“I see. Well, my husband is facing the hangman. You failed to burn us alive. What else are you planning?”
To my surprise, he said almost querulously, “I didn’t intend it to end this way. But I’ve been cornered.”
“Have you indeed?” She held out her hand. “Bess, come and sit beside me.”
He no longer needed me as a shield. I wrenched my arm free and crossed the room without hurrying, to do as she asked. “He’s armed,” I said. “And no one else is.”
“Shut up,” he said to me. And drew the revolver. “I need to think.”
We sat there, watching him, watching the uncertainty in his eyes as he held us at gunpoint, unclear about what he intended to do now. I think he’d expected her to beg or fall apart, giving him the motivation to shoot her, but in the face of her calm, he couldn’t find a reason.
“You may as well sit down too,” she said with a sigh.
But he kept his back to the door. “Who else is in the house, besides the woman Clara, and the staff?” he asked.
“There’s a man in a wheelchair. He’s staying with us at the moment,” she said. “You won’t find him a threat.”
“Who is he?”
“A houseguest. He has problems with his legs. Sister Crawford here is teaching him how to exercise them. He can’t come down the stairs on his own.”
He digested that. To me he said, “I thought you were here to help clear Ashton. You were busy enough about it in France.”
“I’d been asked to help there. But I keep returning to the Hall because of Mr. Heatherton-Scott’s state of health.”
“If you need money to get free of all this—and I expect you’d like to—I can help you there,” Helen Ashton said. “I have the money here in the house to pay my husband’s attorneys.”
He said nothing.
“I don’t particularly want to die,” she added. “And I expect you don’t either. But how else is this to end? If you kill me, you lose a valuable hostage. If you don’t kill me, you must go before my son returns and discovers you here. You can’t have it both ways, you know. I’ve been told you’re ambitious. You’ve said yourself you want to go to France. But think what you could do with a large sum of money in America? You could be anyone. Important. Well liked. I can help get you there.”
“Shut up,” he said for the second time, this time to Mrs. Ashton.
She shrugged. “As you wish.” She reached for the book she’d been reading when we came into the room, and opened it to the page where she’d put it aside.
He stood there, ill at ease, and I thought to myself that this was as dangerous as his anger.
“If you hadn’t come around asking me about Captain Collier,” he said to me after a moment, “none of this would have happened. You do realize that.”
“But I didn’t know who you were. It didn’t occur to me.” And that was my mistake.
“It didn’t occur to you that I’d sunk so low? Well, I had. Do you know what it’s like to sit there day in and day out, speaking to boys and men, and even mothers who want me to talk their lad out of joining the Army? Conscription didn’t get all of the eligible ones. They still come in and ask me to tell them the truth about France. What it’s like over there. And I’ve never set foot across the Channel. Do you have any idea how galling that is? To be reduced in rank and left to molder in a cramped office on a back street, for the duration? I can fight, I know I could. But once the mill went up, I was never given the chance.”
“But we didn’t know,” Mrs. Ashton said calmly. “There was no one to tell us, was there? We thought you were in London—or Scotland. We were never told.”
In the distance I thought I caught the sound of a motorcar coming up the drive. I wasn’t sure whether it was my imagination or not. What would happen if Mark and Simon walked through the outer door, and then came in here? What would this man do with his four shots? Mrs. Ashton and Mark, Simon and me. Or would he save one for himself?
What if it was Henry and Mr. Heatherton-Scott, instead?
Either his hearing wasn’t as keen as mine, or it was indeed my imagination. I listened fiercely, but heard nothing more.
“You must hurry if you’re to leave. Take me with you, I’ll gladly go,” I said.
But he shook his head. “I want to be compensated for all I’ve been through,” he said after a moment. “I want someone else to suffer.”
“My husband is in a prison cell, fighting for his life. Is that not enough for you?” Mrs. Ashton demanded.
All at once his expression altered. “I want someone else to suffer,” he repeated. “If I can’t reach Ashton, I can still do him harm. I can shoot you and his son, and there will be an end to it.” He had made up his mind. And I didn’t see how we could change it.
Mrs. Ashton reached out and took my hand. The book she’d pretended to read again slipped to the floor with a thud.
At that very same moment, there was a knock at the sitting room door.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LIEUTENANT COLLIER LOOKED from one to the other of us, his eyes wide. Decision was upon him, and it took a second to register. Then he backed away from the door, still keeping us in his sights.
All I could think of was Mark or Simon walking into this room and being shot.
I stood up and cried out, “Mark, no!”
The door opened, and the Lieutenant switched his revolver to point directly at whoever was coming in.
It swung wide, and there was Mr. Heatherton-Scott, in his wheelchair, maneuvering into the room, a frown on his face, and then stopping short half across the threshold as he saw the revolver in a stranger’s hand.
“What the devil?” he said. “Who is this man?”
I had flung myself across the room, already halfway there, almost within reach of that weapon, when the lawyer gave me away, his surprised gaze swiveling in my direction, and Lieutenant Collier turned and fired wildly.
I could feel the bullet’s breath as it took the cap from my head, but I was committed and I plowed into him with all my strength. I’d had to wrestle men in the throes of high fever back to their beds, but there was always another Sister near enough at hand to come to my aid and add her weight to mine.
There was no one here to help.
Or so I thought.
But the lawyer made up for his error by giving the wheels of his chair an almighty push, flying across the room, colliding with the Lieutenant and bringing him down. In the melee, I fought to reach the revolver, and he fired again. There was the sound of broken glass.
Only tw
o more shots. But they would be enough to stop me and to kill the helpless man in the chair. Or Mrs. Ashton.
There were others in the room suddenly, I didn’t know where they had come from, my eyes not leaving the revolver waving about even as I clutched the Lieutenant’s forearm, struggling with him.
Someone swept past my head, this one in the khaki of a Sergeant-Major, and Simon told me, “Move.”
I dropped like a stone, crouching among pushing and shoving legs as Simon closed with Lieutenant Collier. He was fighting with frustrated fury, cursing and swearing as he resisted Simon.
The lawyer’s chair was thrust back with some force, and Mark was there, adding his weight to Simon’s, and then Simon, one hand still clamped over the Lieutenant’s wrist, freed the other and hit Collier hard on the chin.
He went down like a sack, flailing still as he lost consciousness.
I crawled out of the way as Simon stepped back, the revolver in his hand.
He handed it to Mark, the senior officer here, and then helped me to my feet.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, hands on my shoulders, holding me steady.
Catching my breath, I reached up for my cap, and remembered. Then I saw it, trampled underfoot.
Mark had gone to his mother, and I heard her say in a strained voice, “Oh, dear, Mark. I fear this chair is ruined too.”
I turned in Simon’s grip and saw that one of the shots had gone through the back of the chair.
She was standing by the broken window, rather pale, but unhurt. Mark wordlessly pulled her into his arms, and to her surprise as well as ours, she began to laugh and cry at the same time.
Simon let me go, reached down for my cap, and handed it to me.
For the first time I looked around.
Lieutenant Collier was sprawled in a heap on the carpet, completely unconscious. The wheelchair, unceremoniously pushed to one side, was facing the other way. The door stood wide, and I could hear voices in the passage.
I said, all at once remembering, “There’s Alex Craig . . .”
“He can wait,” Mr. Heatherton-Scott said, his expression grim. “Will someone tell me what the he— what is going on here?”
I gave him the briefest possible explanation, and left the rest to Mark and Mrs. Ashton.
Simon, borrowing the still-running motorcar, drove me back to the River Cran, and I found the Vicar in the shed, leaning against the hull of the half-finished boat, and Alex Craig sitting up against the far wall.
He looked almost giddy with relief when he saw me coming toward him. “Thank God. But I thought you were on your way to Dover.” He turned to Simon, just behind me. “Where’s that bas— Collier?”
“In custody,” Simon told him briefly. “It’s finished. Thank you, Vicar, for staying with him.”
“The motorcar ran out of petrol. Instead of Dover, we went to the Hall. It ended there,” I explained.
“Is anyone else hurt?” the Vicar asked anxiously.
“A chair,” I said, and he shook his head, as if my light remark was uncalled for.
I added, “He fired twice more inside the house, and hit the chair and a window.” I knelt to have a look at my patient, but he was stable. Over my shoulder, I said to Simon, “If you and the Vicar can help him, we’ll take him back to the Hall.”
“I don’t want to go there,” Alex Craig said adamantly. “Not there.”
“You don’t have much choice,” I told him. “You won’t care too much for the journey even that far, but it will be easier than going all the way to Canterbury. Besides, they’ll eventually send an ambulance for you, along with the police to take charge of Lieutenant Collier. And there’s the Sergeant-Major’s arm to see to as well.”
He resisted, but it was too painful to do anything else but allow himself to be put into the waiting motorcar. The Vicar sat beside him, cushioning his bad arm from the jolting.
In the passenger’s seat, I said to Simon, “How did you find us?”
“Craig told us you were on your way to Dover. We left the Vicar with him and set out. Clara was at the end of the lane—Mark stopped, and she ran over to us, telling us about the man you’d brought there, that she couldn’t believe Mark had sent him to the house. She thought we were down by the sheds, and she was on her way there.”
“How brave of her,” I said, and meant it.
“We brought her back, she went around to the tradesman’s entrance, and we waited until she was out of range. We were just coming to the door when we heard the shots.”
Simon looked at me, grinning. “I fear the Major is not as fleet of foot as I am.”
“He’s recovering from his own wounds,” I said, in Mark’s defense. But I could picture Simon, first through the door and not waiting for order of battle as he charged toward the sitting room.
“Just as well you were fleet of foot,” I went on. “I couldn’t have held on much longer.”
“There was a hole in your cap.” He wasn’t grinning now.
“I’d hoped you hadn’t noticed.”
He said nothing.
“You realize you could be up on charges for striking an officer.”
“The Colonel will understand.”
And so he would, I thought dryly.
Inspector Brothers was not best pleased. After I’d bandaged the wound in his arm, Simon had run into Canterbury to fetch him. We were a rather somber group, waiting for their return. Mark had locked the still-groggy Lieutenant into a broom closet, and from time to time in the silence we could hear him pounding furiously on the door.
It was stout enough to hold him. I’d seen it for myself.
We tried to tell the Inspector the whole story, although he interrupted constantly, as if he didn’t believe us. Finally, Alex Craig, who was sitting in the study with us, having refused to go up to a bedroom, said testily, “For God’s sake, Brothers, what else do you need? The Sergeant-Major here has no reason to protect the Ashtons, and neither do I. Heatherton-Scott is an officer of the court, and has no reason to lie. And Mr. Parry is a clergyman who was brought into the picture quite by accident. You may refuse to believe Sister Crawford, or Major Ashton, or his mother, but the four of us can’t be discounted as easily. If nothing else, Collier is guilty of attempted murder for shooting me and two more counts for firing his revolver in a crowded room. You can sort out the rest later.”
All the same, Brothers dragged his feet.
We could hear the outer door open, and Henry came walking in, a smile on his face like the cat that had just eaten the songbird in the cage.
“I’ve been to the clinic where Corporal Britton was a patient until his death. They allowed me to go through his things.” I could well imagine how persuasive Henry must have been. Simon had been refused permission.
One arm had been behind his back, and Henry brought it out now, holding a cushion in his hand.
“Dear God,” I said, getting up and crossing the room to take it from him. “Look, Simon, it’s the pillow that nearly smothered Sister Morris. If only they’d allowed you to search.” I handed it to Inspector Brothers. “It’s proof that the corporal had attempted to kill a Sister in France. Now we’re a little closer to connecting him to the murder of Sergeant Rollins as well. The Army will need to know this straightaway.”
Henry wasn’t finished. “There are letters in his kit too. They provide that proof. I expect he might have had a little blackmail in mind. Or believed he needed to protect himself if he was caught. I’ve read two of them.”
He passed them to Inspector Brothers, who was looking a bit overwhelmed at this stage.
Simon spoke then.
“I’ve reported to the Army. While I was in Canterbury. They’ll be sending someone from the Military Foot Police to the Hall as soon as possible. Collier is still a serving officer.”
Inspector Brothers cleared his throat. “I’ll need statements,” he said doggedly.
Mr. Heatherton-Scott leaned forward and took up a sheaf of papers from Philip Ashton’s desk top. “These statements were taken while we were waiting for you, Inspector. I believe you’ll find them all in order. I made certain of that, with Mr. Parry here as my witness.”
Inspector Brothers took them, staring down at them as if they might bite him. And well they might, for his obstruction of justice. He might find himself demoted to sergeant. And I think for the first time, he realized that.
In the end, the Army took Lieutenant Collier into custody, and we spent several hours closeted with a Major and two sergeants who had been dispatched to oversee this matter. Major Atkins went over the statements very carefully, compared Simon’s notes and other evidence, and when he was satisfied, he told us that the charges against Lieutenant Collier were serious indeed. And they intended to look into the attack on Sister Morris and the death of Sergeant Rollins.
When they left it was after nine o’clock in the evening. We had a late supper in the dining room, all of us nearly too weary to eat. Alex Craig had wanted to go home, but he was running a slight fever, and I insisted that he choose between a hospital and here. To my surprise, he preferred to remain at the Hall.
The next morning, Simon and I ran him in to see a doctor for his shoulder, and he was clapped in hospital, willing or not.
Driving back to Abbey Hall, Simon looked across at me. “You’ve cleared Philip Ashton’s good name.”
“I hope so.”
“Have you forgot you’re due back in France tomorrow? Your transport leaves Dover tonight.”
I had. I sat bolt upright in my seat. “There’s no time to find a replacement for that cap with the bullet hole in it. How will I ever explain that to Matron?”
