Weapons of Peace

by Johnston, Peter D. ;

  “Not at all, Mr. Moore. His body was buried nearby. Look, there, on the other side of the moat.” She pointed out the window in the direction of a small graveyard.

  “We’ll have to pay our respects later, Mr. Suggs and I, after the completion of our tour—which I’m very much looking forward to.”

  —

  The phone rang six times. Emma had almost given up hope, preparing to run down to the Gloriette herself. Then, finally, someone answered. She recognized the voice as Pauline’s.

  Perfect.

  “Pauline! It’s Emma. I’m at the gatehouse. Two inspectors have arrived looking for Mr. Nash. I’ve delayed them. They’re headed to the new castle with one of the guards. After that, they’ve asked to see the Gloriette, probably in about thirty to forty-five minutes. Can you please go downstairs to see Nurse Seymour, the new redhead who is covering me, and make sure Mr. Nash is placed in his new room immediately.”

  “Oh goodness, Emma! Hold on. I’ll be right back to confirm,” said Pauline.

  Emma heard the receiver land on a hard surface as Pauline ran off to deliver the message. The Baillie family’s quarters upstairs still had the only functioning phones in the Gloriette, since the hospital had expanded into the banquet hall only six months earlier.

  Emma waited on the line, strumming her fingers on the window ledge as she watched John Harris escort the inspectors along the driveway. It was usually a three-minute jaunt, but the guard had turned it into a much slower affair. Judging by his gesturing, it was a walk full of rugby talk with Moore, as well as storytelling about the castle’s past. Before they left the gatehouse, Emma told the three men that she’d meet them shortly at the new castle.

  She looked at her watch again: 8:43.

  Pauline had been away for more than three minutes. Emma looked back at the records room. It was a mess. Her time the night before had been well spent; she had created a new logbook for August 1944 and copied the succinct notes from the old logbook, changing her handwriting at different points to avoid suspicion while altering several entries related to Brian J. Hargrove. He needed a new story, one that ended in his death, not a fast-paced recovery against all odds.

  She had also extended Gordon Bradley’s life in the logbook, switching his status from “deceased” to “critical condition.” Like Bradley, the old logbook ended up buried in the ground—at the bottom of a nearby flower bed.

  “Come on, Pauline! Where are you?” It had been five minutes since Pauline had gone looking for Nurse Seymour. Emma looked outside to see where Harris was. Still meandering.

  Good.

  She heard noises at the other end of the phone as Pauline yanked up the receiver. “Emma, they’re not here,” she said, out of breath. “Only two patients are left in the banquet hall, and they’re both asleep. The rest of the patients, including Nash, must be—”

  “No!” Emma exclaimed into the phone, and dropped it.

  Without me on duty, Seymour switched our schedule! She’s bringing the Gloriette’s patients outside now, instead of later today, and dropping Nash right into the inspectors’ laps.

  She ran outside as a stream of patients from the Gloriette began pouring out of the new castle’s front doors. They had crossed over the internal bridge that connected the old and new castles. And there, pushing Nash in his wheelchair, was Seymour. When they reached the circular driveway, Seymour slowed. Nash, legs covered with a blanket, motioned with his hand in the direction of the trees to Emma’s right where a scattering of patients sat, near the southern end of the maze. The pair began moving across the dirt road onto the lawn. Their trajectory would take them right past Harris and the two inspectors.

  Emma moved toward Nash and Seymour. As she entered the inspectors’ line of sight, she adjusted her pace, knowing that she risked drawing attention to herself if she moved too quickly or shouted. Moore and Suggs had to know what Nash looked like, and if she didn’t intercept Nash’s wheelchair the inspectors would find themselves face-to-face with a man she had just confirmed was dead.

  Despite her cool appearance, Nash could tell that something was wrong as Emma approached. When she was close enough, she said firmly, “Thank you, Nurse Seymour, I’ll take him. Please attend to the other patients.” The younger nurse looked taken aback but stepped aside. Emma moved behind Nash, wheeling his wheelchair around so that it was aimed at the middle of the grounds, away from the new castle and the inspectors.

  “Nurse Doyle!” Moore called. Emma pretended not to hear. “Nurse Doyle! Wait, please!” he yelled, moving in her direction. Suggs also broke away from Harris and started toward her. They were still far enough away that Nash would be hard to recognize, especially from the side or behind. What Emma couldn’t know was whether the inspectors had noticed him before she took the chair from Seymour.

  “What are you doing?” Nash asked, as they traveled across the lawn.

  “Trying to save you,” Emma said, her heart pounding.

  Suggs and Moore were jogging now, still twenty yards away, but gaining.

  Nash and Emma disappeared.

  —

  “Why the hell didn’t she stop?” Moore demanded, looking sideways at Suggs as they rounded the first corner. Eight-foot walls of perfectly trimmed yew trees lined either side of them as they made their way across the grassy pathway.

  “One guess—the invalid was Nash,” said Suggs.

  Moore yelled again, adding a touch of authority. “Nurse Doyle, in His Majesty’s name, please stop! We just want a brief word with you!” The men rounded a corner and faced a choice. “I’ll go left, you go right. Yell if you see them,” Moore directed. The men parted, each one promptly facing another choice, left or right. The wind swept across the hedges, acting almost as a seal, so that no other sound entered or exited.

  “Suggs, what is this—a maze?” Moore shouted through the hedge.

  Suggs heard his colleague’s words, but they were surprisingly faint. “Christ, that’s exactly what it is,” he shouted back.

  “Keep going! They won’t have gone far with that wheelchair.”

  —

  Moore’s voice rang out from somewhere behind her, and she took a corner too fast. The chair tipped left, into the hedge, but she caught it before it fell over. Nash came partway out of his seat. She supported the chair with her arm and pulled him upright again. Neither of them said a word. They had to keep moving. The inspectors were too close.

  By the time the chair started rolling again, fewer than ten yards separated Emma and Nash from their pursuers, who were at most two correct guesses away from being on top of them. The dry ground became a smooth runway for the chair’s wheels. If it had rained at all recently, Emma knew this game of chase would already be over.

  She pushed harder, her legs churning, the chair gaining momentum. Nash gripped the arms and focused on breathing through the pain. The yews blended together the faster Emma moved, turning branches and leaves into walls of green. At times, it looked as if they were going straight into the hedge ahead, but it was merely an illusion caused by speed and sharp turns. Nash was used to being in control, but he was helpless now. There was no time to ask or answer questions.

  Emma stumbled, falling to one knee as the chair rolled ahead. Moore yelled again from behind her, to her left. He was starting to figure things out. Suggs yelled out something, too. He was even closer, but to her right. Emma got back up, brushed dirt from the knee of her stocking, and kept going. Half a minute later, Moore and Suggs were still shouting, but the sound of their voices was more distant. They had finally made some wrong turns.

  —

  Moore leaned up against one of the corners of the hedge, reading his watch: 8:58.

  He heard someone coming, pulled the revolver from inside his lab coat, and readied it. If Doyle and Nash were orchestrating a scheme against him and Suggs, he had to be prepared for anything. He felt compl
etely off balance in this labyrinth, with no idea where he was in relation to the overall grounds. The hedges were all high and impenetrable, so anyone who got lost in the maze was forced to try different routes. There was no other way out.

  The feet were light, and they were closing in on him. His gun was trained on the spot where he expected a head to appear any second.

  “Suggs!” he hissed. “Where are you going, for God’s sake?”

  “I came to get you. I know where they are! Follow me.” Both men pocketed their guns and broke into a run.

  They arrived at a corner, and Suggs stopped. He motioned to Moore, pointing to his ear. Moore listened carefully. In spite of the wind, they could faintly hear Emma speaking to someone in a hushed tone. Moore edged past Suggs into a small circular clearing with an ornate Italian water fountain at its center. Standing at the fountain with her back to Moore was Emma, oblivious of his presence. She was leaning over to speak to the man in the wheelchair. Moore sneered.

  “Don’t move!”

  Emma spun around.

  “Mr. Nash, I assume?” the hired killer said in the direction of the wheelchair.

  The chair began to turn, revealing the patient’s profile, then his entire face.

  “Nash?” asked the patient with surprise, looking at Moore and Suggs. “No, my name is Benson—Sergeant James Benson.”

  Moore and Suggs stared, mouths open, Moore’s cheeks becoming red, Suggs’s eyes squinting at the wheelchair. The man seated with a blanket draped over his legs had black hair, but that was the only resemblance he bore to the photo they had of Nash. The patient in front of them was at least fifteen years Nash’s junior, had a big red nose, no eyebrows, and a gruesome burn on his cheek and his lower left arm.

  “Gentlemen, this is inappropriate,” Emma said. “I’m sorry you lost your mate. I know you must be grieving and finding his death difficult to accept, but, really, we consider this space to be quite sacred here at Leeds Castle.”

  Moore wasn’t buying it. “Why did you run from us and come here?” he demanded.

  “When I saw Mr. Benson coming outside, I remembered that I’d committed to bringing him to the center of the maze today for the first time, before his discharge. I was confident that if I dashed here you wouldn’t mind my disappearing for a few minutes while Mr. Harris entertained you. Clearly, I was wrong.”

  Moore swore under his breath. “Mr. Suggs, please inspect the hedges on the far side of this clearing.”

  Emma’s eyes followed Suggs as he darted past her and into the hedges directly behind her. A minute later, he came out. “Nothing,” he said. Moore’s shoulders slumped.

  Emma wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to shift from defense to offense. “Mr. Moore and Mr. Suggs, I suggest that we retrace our steps. Given what has occurred here, it’s not within my authority to continue this inspection. Our head nurse will want to speak with both of you as soon as she is out of surgery.”

  Moore and Suggs looked like naughty schoolboys caught in the act. “Ridiculous” was all Moore could utter to Suggs as they grudgingly followed Emma, eventually emerging from the maze at the same point they had entered it.

  —

  After expressing her disgust with Moore and Suggs for violating the hospital’s protocols, a fired-up Nurse Fraser requested identification from both men. She copied down their full names from the badges they presented. She then escorted the pair out of the gatehouse and onto the road on the other side of the moat. Emma stood with Harris, both of them grinning, looking across the water at Fraser as she continued to lecture the two inspectors as they walked away from her and toward their car.

  Emma’s eyes turned toward the grounds and found Nash, still sitting under one of the trees just yards from the maze’s southern exit. As she moved toward him, he waved. He hadn’t budged since she lowered him from his wheelchair and replaced him with Benson, before racing back to the center of the maze. Benson would be getting his reward later that day, in the form of American cigarettes—one of Nash’s final two packs of sanity.

  “Are they gone?” Nash asked.

  “They are, and I do hope we never have to see those baddies again.” She stopped, hands on her hips. “By the way, Mr. Nash, is there any chance some of the good guys might come looking for you, since you’re supposed to be so important to the future of world peace?” She cocked her head sideways.

  “I was hoping the same thing,” Nash said with a laugh. “In the meantime, I’m more worried about who sent these men after me.”

  Chapter 8

  Monday, September 4, 1944

  3:00 p.m.

  Emma smiled at Nash in his bathrobe across the room, as she scanned his new home. Everything looked immaculate for what she assumed would be the regal bathroom’s first overnight guest in eight centuries.

  She saw immediately that an emergency button had been installed as suggested. Its wire ran along the floor into the hallway, where it would merge with the Gloriette’s existing call system, meaning she’d be notified by a ringing bell in the banquet hall if Nash ever needed help.

  To Emma’s left, a pristine, white-sheeted bed stood near the wall. The walls, like those in the queen’s bedroom, were decorated with green damask hangings bearing the gold royal initials “HC”; she’d learned that these sensational silk wall coverings were named for the city of Damascus, where they first served as portable wallpaper, lending any room both insulation and class. Beyond the bed was an ornate folding screen placed in front of the toilet and the vanity for privacy—on loan from Lady Baillie, Emma suspected.

  To her right was a circular bathtub next to the window, draped from above with a flowing beige canopy to ensure that no queen would easily be seen washing herself.

  Emma’s nursing eyes instinctively moved to the ebony floor, so thoroughly polished that flames danced on its surface as the nearby fireplace removed the dampness from the air, replacing it with the fruity scent of burning cherry-tree limbs.

  Nash hesitated, then beckoned her forward into the middle of the room to a round marble table that held a small vase of flowers. He sat in his wheelchair on the far side, his back to the fire.

  Emma looked down at the floor, feeling self-conscious as she walked toward him. Her morning with the inspectors had soiled her stockings and her dress, forcing her into civilian clothes while her uniform dried. She wore a light-blue cotton dress with a yellow cardigan, her hair pulled back, no nursing cap, no heavy shoes, just the soft leather loafers she’d inherited from her mother.

  Her unexpected attire, the first time he’d seen her out of uniform, caught Nash by surprise. He doubted that any queen who’d ever set foot in Leeds Castle had lit up the room quite like this young woman he’d invited for afternoon tea.

  “I suppose this will do,” Emma said, trying to be funny as she took her chair opposite him. “Thank you for inviting me to visit.”

  “You’re the one who needs to be thanked,” Nash said. “For this room—and for your actions this morning.”

  “You’re welcome, Mr. Nash, though I believe we both got lucky with those nasty inspectors.”

  He reached across the table to push the vase of flowers to one side. Before withdrawing his hand, he raised it sharply toward her face to slap her. Emma didn’t have time to think. She reacted, intercepting his hand with both of hers before he could even touch her, then effortlessly twisting his wrist and pinning his entire arm down against the table. She stared at him.

  “To be sure, I believe we were lucky,” he said, as though nothing unusual had just occurred. “But luck favors those who prepare well and know how to execute.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Emma asked tersely, still holding his arm.

  “In forty-eight hours, you systematically planned everything in keeping with our first lesson. Then, when things didn’t go as expected, in fourteen minutes you changed the game on m
y pursuers and saved my life, without resorting to violence—apart from Fraser’s wrath.”

  “And your point is?”

  “You’re a fast learner.”

  She released his arm. “I have to be.” She kept her face blank to cover her increasing discomfort.

  “But you’re even faster with your hands. Your reaction was flawless, both in the maze and just now, when I went for your cheek. That tells me something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  Nash reclined in his chair, rubbing his arm vigorously to get the circulation back.

  “Nurse Doyle, when people execute with military precision, I assume they’ve received military training. Would that assumption be correct in your case?”

  The room went silent save for the crackling of the flames. Emma looked up at the ancient wood-beamed ceiling, considering how best to explain herself. She met his gaze. She knew that she needed their mutual trust to remain intact.

  “I wasn’t trying to hide anything, Mr. Nash. The topic never came up, and besides, it isn’t something I like to talk about. But, yes, it is part of my past.” She paused, adding, “Just as it is part of yours.”

  It was Nash’s turn to look surprised. “Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

  “My cousin Alina is meticulous,” Emma responded. “So I know that military training, including hand-to-hand combat, is an experience we both share.”

  “I didn’t suspect that about you before today,” he said. “And I only came to know it for certain a few moments ago.”

  “There is a lot you don’t know about me, Mr. Nash.”

  He nodded. “Please fill me in on this particular revelation.” He leaned forward.

  Emma knew that she couldn’t evade him. Until now, she had simply walked away to attend to another patient to avoid Nash’s pointed questions about her interests or her background. This new arrangement wouldn’t allow for that. But she could still choose her words carefully.