As I was about to pull over at the Marlborough Hotel, I saw a face in a cab window that caught my attention. Serena Melton. She appeared to be very upset.
I swerved back into heavy traffic, ignoring a horn blown in disgust, and fell in behind her cab, wondering where she might be going, although it was more likely that she was coming from somewhere instead.
But I was right. She was going. I trailed her back to the house where her brother and his wife had lived. She asked the cabbie to wait and went up the steps to knock at the door.
There was no answer. She waited for a moment and tried again. And again no one came to answer the summons.
She was coming back down the steps, when I turned in behind the cab and called to her.
"Serena? Imagine running into you in London. Could I take you somewhere?"
She looked at me, and after a moment paid off the cabbie and came to join me in my motorcar.
"What brings you to London?" she asked. "I thought you were in France again. "
"How are you?" I asked her instead of answering. Then, "Is anything wrong?"
"I've just had a most unpleasant conversation with someone who knew my brother's wife. It was very upsetting."
"In that house? The one you were just coming out of?"
"No, no. That's my brother's house. I was hoping to have some tea and a lie down, before taking the train home."
"Are you any closer to finding out who killed your brother's wife?" It was baldly put but there was no other way to ask.
"How did you-oh. The weekend at Melton Hall." She sighed, pulling off her gloves and then after a moment putting them on again. "It's been the most hopeless task. But the police are still sitting on their hands, doing nothing. I spoke to the inspector in charge this morning. He tried to assure me that everything possible was being done. But it isn't. I know it isn't."
"It's likely-" I began, but she interrupted me, turning toward me with anger in her eyes.
"His latest theory has to do with someone from Oxford. I don't know that Marjorie even knew anyone there. He's grasping at straws."
I couldn't explain what I'd been told about the reason the police were searching for that person. It wasn't my place to pass on such information if the police had not. And so I said, "Do you have any idea what your sister-in-law did that day?"
"The police have told me that she went out in the early afternoon and never came back. She knew Merry would be arriving that day, and I'd assumed she would go at once to see him. I was intending to visit him the following day, when he was a little more rested from his journey. But of course the police were at our door before I could go. And it was left to me to tell him what had happened. I couldn't understand how she'd come to die in London. I thought there must be some mistake. They'd had some difficulty in identifying her-her purse was taken-and if her housekeeper hadn't spoken to the constable on their street, the police wouldn't have known who she was as soon as they did."
It was, for the most part, what Michael had learned from Marjorie's housekeeper.
We were nearing Kensington Palace. I said, "You remarked earlier that you'd just had an unpleasant conversation-" I left it there.
"I wish you hadn't reminded me. This woman had the audacity to say that people were talking about Marjorie long before she was killed, and that she was asking for trouble, walking down by the river at night on her own. She made her sound like a common tart, looking for custom. It was there, in the tone of voice she used."
"What sort of talk was there?"
"That she was avoiding her friends, insinuating that she must be in some sort of trouble. Well, someone in London knows where she was that evening. Why won't he or she tell us the truth?" Her voice was rising again, and she fidgeted with her gloves as if they had offended her, not the woman. "I blame Helen Calder. She ought to have noticed something. Marjorie would have listened to Helen if she'd spoken up. In the beginning, before it had got too far. But she shut her eyes, didn't she? The sort of woman who wasn't willing to put herself out for anyone, safe in her own rectitude."
It was a harsh indictment, not really warranted, but I'd seen Helen Calder's willing detachment even when she suspected that Marjorie was growing too fond of the man she'd been seeing. I didn't believe that she could have changed the situation, but I could understand Serena Melton's feeling that she might have made a difference.
"There must be a reason why she-" I began.
But she interrupted me for a second time. "We're speaking of behavior that led to murder. I would have said something, if I'd had any inkling that Marjorie was being talked about. I'd have confronted her and told her what I thought of such selfish conduct."
"Are you saying that her-that an affair had something to do with her death?"
She cast a withering glance in my direction. "When you flout the rules of society, you leave yourself open to the consequences of your actions. If she'd been at home, if she'd been with respectable friends, she would still be alive and Merry would still be alive."
All pretense that Marjorie had been killed in the course of a robbery had been dropped. I don't think Serena was aware of it, the volatile mixture of distress and anger, grief and frustration blinding her to everything else.
We drove in silence for a time, and then she said, "I might as well go home. I don't feel like facing any more blank faces and lies. The people who could really help me are Marjorie's closest friends, but they're fiercely loyal. Or else Victoria has told them not to talk to me. I wouldn't put it past her." She flicked a glance in my direction. "Marjorie's sister. I can't abide her, and neither could Marjorie."
The pent-up feeling of helplessness driving her must be exhausting, I thought, for there were new lines around her mouth, and circles beneath her eyes.
I said, "Would your brother want you to go through this anguish, trying to get at the truth?"
"I don't know whether he would or not. But if the shoe were on the other foot, he'd have moved heaven and earth to find out who had killed me. I can do no less. Just because I'm a woman, I'm not going to walk away from this."
I couldn't have said whether Lieutenant Evanson would have felt that way. But then he hadn't lost his sister while I was caring for him. I couldn't have guessed how angry he would have been, or if he'd have left matters to the police.
"Would you mind dropping me at the station? I'm sorry to ask you to turn around. But it would be a kindness."
I did as she asked, and when she had left the motorcar, she turned back to me and said, "If you hear anything about Marjorie, anything at all, you would let me know, wouldn't you?"
Now there was a conundrum. I hadn't told her what I knew. And I couldn't in good conscience promise to keep her informed. And I wasn't sure I trusted her to act wisely if she did learn the truth.
"Serena-" I began.
But she said bitterly, "You're just like the rest, aren't you?"
"No," I said sharply. "I will go to the police if I hear anything that's helpful in finding her murderer. That's what everyone should do."
"Liar," she answered, turning her back.
And she was gone, marching toward the station as if she were marching to war.
In a way she probably thought she was.
I took Michael, still protesting, back to Little Sefton.
"I've made a promise to your doctors," I told him over his protests when I finally ran him to earth at the Marlborough. "After I keep it, you're free to do as you like."
He was not in a good mood. As we threaded our way through London's traffic-mostly bicycles, military convoys or vehicles, omnibuses, and the occasional lorry trying to make deliveries to the next shop-I let him sulk.
He did it beautifully. But I was immune to his blandishments.
When we were in the clear and running through the countryside beyond London, I said, "I came looking for you earlier. Where were you?"
At first I was sure he wasn't going to tell me. Finally, he said, "I went to Scotland Yard."
Surprised, I asked, "And did they have news for you?"
"They would tell me nothing." There was suppressed anger in his confession. "Apparently I'm a suspect in Marjorie's death."
"But-you said you were in France."
Yet Jack Melton had told me he was not.
He turned to look at the passing scene, as if he hadn't heard me. Then, grudgingly, he went on. "I haven't said anything about it. I was given forty-eight hours' leave. A foreign object in my eye. I was sent to a specialist in London. My men were in rotation, I could be spared. He removed the particle, gave me drops and a patch, and I went straight back to the line. I didn't actually lie. Everyone thought I was in France. I let them go on thinking it. But the Yard stumbled on the truth."
"I don't understand."
"I hadn't heard from Marjorie for three months. Just-silence. I wrote to Victoria, but she wouldn't answer. That worried me more. I tried to get word to Meriwether, to ask him if everything was all right. But it didn't get through. When my eye was inflamed, they thought I might lose it, and I was given the choice of seeing someone in Paris or in London. Luckily, I knew a chap in school whose father was an eye surgeon in Harley Street, and the doctors at the Front approved."
"And did you see Marjorie?"
"No. I sent her a telegram the day before, telling her where I would be, begging her to come and sit with me for a bit. Either she didn't get the message or she had something else on her mind. She never came."
He was staring at a field where cows grazed, and so I couldn't read his face.
"And you didn't go to the house? Why not?"
"I was told not to leave the surgery. Not to move for twenty-four hours. I waited all that day and the next for her, and she didn't come."
"You went back to France, not knowing she'd been killed?"
He didn't answer.
"Michael-?"
He turned to me, his face twisted with grief and anger. "Do you know how many times I've wondered if she was on her way to Dr. McKinley's surgery when she was killed? How many times I've wondered if she might have lived if she'd been with me instead of out on the street somewhere and vulnerable?"
And Marjorie's housekeeper had said she went out earlier in the day and never returned. From the train station, could she have been on her way to see Michael? Was the timing right?
Catching sight of the next turning, I asked as I slowed for it, "You couldn't leave the surgery?"
"Dr. McKinley told me not to jar the eye in any way. He left me in a darkened room and his wife brought me my dinner and my breakfast the next morning."
"So you weren't supervised?"
"I was there whenever they looked in on me," he said, which wasn't necessarily the same thing.
I let a little time pass.
"Was it your child she was carrying?"
"No," he said quietly. "It was not."
And this time I believed him.
We arrived in Little Sefton late in the afternoon. I took Michael directly to the house of his aunt and uncle.
As I helped him get out of the motorcar, stiff from the drive down, he said, "Thank you, Bess Crawford. For taking me to London."
"I'm sorry it wasn't more helpful."
"It made me feel less useless. As if I'd at least tried to find the truth." He nodded to me, picked up his valise in his good hand, and walked up to the door. There he turned, and with that smile that seemed to light up the world, he said, "Give my regards to Sergeant-Major Brandon."
I laughed in spite of myself.
I went on up the street to Alicia's house and knocked at the door. She was surprised to see me but greeted me with friendly warmth. "I didn't expect to find you on my doorstep. But do come in. I'll put on the kettle and make sandwiches."
I thanked her and joined her in the kitchen as she worked. It was her cook's day off, and she was rummaging in the pantry for cold chicken and a pudding as she said, "This is my dinner, but I dine alone far too often. It will be nice to have someone to share my meal."
We ate it in the kitchen, and talked about everything but the war.
"I'm tired of knitting and growing vegetables to save room in the holds of ships for war materiel," she said as we ate our pudding. "I'm restless, I want to do something useful, really useful. But Gareth won't hear of turning the house into a hospital or my going to London and finding work. I type, you know."
"Do you? You'll be in demand."
"I think what he really wants is to know that nothing has changed at home. Not the village, not the house, not me. That it's all there to come back to."
"A good many soldiers feel that way. It's what sees them through."
"He sent me photographs in the last letter but one. Would you like to see them? His father gave him a camera for his birthday and he's been using it to capture memories, he said."
"I'd love to see them." I had a long drive ahead of me, but she had been good enough to invite me to dine, and I owed her a few minutes of my time.
She went off to find the letter, and I finished my pudding, looking out at the kitchen garden and the outbuildings and the quiet peace of late afternoon.
Alicia came back with the envelope, and took out a sheaf of photographs. "He found someone who could develop these for him. They cover a year or more. I was so pleased to have them, because now I know what his world is like."
But the photographs were not his world as it truly was. It was a tidy look at war that made me want to cry. Had Gareth chosen to spare his wife, or was he afraid that the censors would object to the truth and confiscate these photographs?
There were tents pitched in neat rows, well behind the lines, like an encampment for troops on parade. Artillery that was silent, the gunners standing grinning in front of a jumble of empty casings. A group of French children, smiling for the camera, their faces unmarked by fear and despair. I turned it over to see the name of the village where this was taken, and it was well south of the lines too. There were several photographs of his fellow officers posing absurdly, as if they hadn't a care in the world. But I could see the tension around their eyes, belying their antics. There was even one photograph of Meriwether Evanson's aircraft, with Meriwether standing proudly with a hand on the prop, his face only partly shadowed by his cap. Alicia pointed him out to me.
"I should have sent that to Marjorie, but I couldn't part with any of these for a while…" She let the words trail off as she handed me a few more photographs from another envelope.
Here were another group of officers standing together at a crossroads, a line of soldiers and caissons and well-laden lorries passing behind them.
I recognized the uniforms-the Wiltshire Fusiliers. And third from the left was a face I knew.
Staring at it, I said, "Do you have a glass? I'd like to see this one a little more clearly."
"I think there's one in Gareth's desk."
She went away and I tried to contain my excitement while I waited.
Alicia came back with a small magnifying glass that she said was a part of Gareth's stamp collection, and I took it from her, holding it above the photograph.
I'd been right. The third officer from the left was the man I'd seen with Marjorie Evanson at the railway station.
I turned the photograph over. The caption just read: Friends meeting by chance.
"Do you know who these friends are?" I asked her.
"Just the two on Gareth's right. I don't know that one."
"Could I possibly borrow this, if I promise to return it safely?" I asked. "Just for a few days."
She was reluctant to part with it, but in the end allowed me to take it with me.
I thanked her for my meal and set out for Somerset.
The light was with me most of the way, the long light of an English summer evening, a warm breeze blowing through the motorcar, the world looking as if it had never been at war. And then I caught up with a field ambulance carrying wounded to a nearby house that had been turned into a clinic, taking the rutted drive in first gear.
My first thought on leaving Alicia's house had been to find Michael and ask him if he recognized the man standing at the crossroads with Gareth. But I wasn't sure that was wise.
And so I went to the one person I knew would find the answer for me without asking questions.
Simon.
It was beginning to rain hard as I drove up the drive and put my motorcar in the shed where it lived while I was in France.
I pulled the shed doors closed and made a dash for the side door of the house.
My mother, startled by the apparition meeting her in the passage, said, "Oh. I didn't hear you coming."
"I'm not surprised. It's pouring down out there. Mother, did Simon come to dine tonight? Is he still here?"
"I expect he is. Where's your handsome young artillery officer?"
"Back where he came from."
"You decided not to keep him?"
I laughed. "His heart belongs to someone else," I said lightly and went up to change out of my wet clothes.
At the sound of voices, Simon came out of my father's study. He greeted me with raised eyebrows. "Have you abandoned young Hart to the tender mercies of The Four Doves again?"
"Alas, I was afraid he might be taken up for murder," I responded.
Simon laughed, but it was wry amusement.
In fact, I was telling the simple truth.
"But that reminds me," I went on, taking the photograph from my pocket. "I'd like very much to know the identity of the man third from the left. It's important."
Simon still had contacts with men he'd known while serving, both in my father's regiment and in others that had crossed his path. It was very likely someone would recognize that face.
He looked at the photograph, read what was written on the reverse, noted the uniform, then regarded me with interest. "Where on earth did you find this?"
"It was quite by accident," I told him. "A matter of pure luck."
"Let me see what I can do." He pocketed the photograph and turned to speak to my mother as she came into the room.
I'd always thought she was the only person on earth Simon Brandon would obey without question-next, of course, to the Colonel Sahib. He would have walked through fire for her sake. There were those who whispered that he was in love with the Colonel's lady, but his devotion had very different roots.
My father eyed me with interest as I came into his study. "What, no lost sheep? No crusades to lead? You've abandoned all hope of saving some poor soul?"
I laughed. "Sorry. I'm between causes at the moment."
"That's rare," he said, his suspicions aroused, but he said nothing more, changing the subject with the ease of long practice.
We were just going up to bed when our village constable bicycled to the house and asked to speak to me.
I went to the sitting room, where he'd been shown, and my father accompanied me.
Constable Boynton greeted me and said, "There's been word from Inspector Herbert at Scotland Yard, Miss Crawford. Someone took a shot at Lieutenant Michael Hart in Little Sefton an hour and a half ago."
"Michael?" I exclaimed, bracing myself for bad news. "Is he all right?"
"He's unharmed. In fact, he reported the incident himself. He was walking in the garden. No one heard the shot, no one saw the shooting. Inspector Herbert wishes to know if you could put a name to his assailant."
My first thought was Serena Melton. I wouldn't have put it past her to shoot-and miss-with the weapon that wasn't in the gun cabinet where it belonged. But I'd seen her onto the train. No, I'd dropped her at the station, I corrected myself. I had no idea which train she'd taken.
On the other hand I could see that Michael Hart could easily have invented the entire incident to take himself off the Yard's suspect list. And mine.
"Please tell Inspector Herbert I can't help him in this matter. I wasn't there, and I don't know who could have tried to shoot the lieutenant. I'm sorry. But if I learn anything more, I'll be in touch."
"Thank you, Miss. And my apologies to Mrs. Crawford for disturbing you so late," Constable Boynton said, and took his leave.
As the door closed behind him, my father said, "You're making a habit of being consulted by an inspector at Scotland Yard these days?"
"Not really consulted," I said, trying to make light of what had just happened. "I was there, in Little Sefton, only a few hours ago." But how had Inspector Herbert known that?
The constable in Little Sefton must have remembered my motorcar and reported that I'd just brought Lieutenant Hart home from London. The fact that Inspector Herbert knew such details indicated all too clearly his interest in Michael.
Which told me that the murderer from Oxford hadn't proved to be the Yard's man. In spite of what the Yard had told Serena Melton.
"Indeed," my father was saying thoughtfully. "I don't believe you were telling the whole truth when you refused to help Constable Boynton."
The Colonel Sahib knew me too well. "I didn't refuse. I just didn't want to make false accusations," I answered him. "Not when I had no real proof to support them."
"Very commendable. And is there any remote possibility that we shall be in danger in our own garden?"
"If in fact someone actually shot at Lieutenant Hart, it would have been a very personal matter. And not one that I'm likely to be involved with."
"I'm delighted to hear it. Perhaps I should have a word with this Inspector Herbert. I don't care to see you dragged into inquiries."
"I wasn't dragged into anything. I happened to be a witness to two people having a conversation in a railway station. I knew one of them but not the other. And the one I knew was later murdered. But hours later, long after I was sound asleep in my flat. The trouble is, the other person, the one I didn't recognize, could probably give the police a great deal more information-that is, if he could be found. He's been conspicuous by his absence."
There. It was out in the open. The whole story. Mostly.
"And Michael Hart is involved? How?"
"He'd known the dead woman for many years."
"But he's not a suspect."
I hesitated a heartbeat too long in answering that.
My father gave me a straight look but said no more. He held the sitting room door open for me. Simon had gone, and my mother was waiting to speak to my father after I went up the stairs. I knew very well she'd have the story of Constable Boynton's intrusion before they followed me up to bed.
I couldn't sleep. I dressed, then went quietly down the stairs and out the door, looking up at the wet night, the trees softly dripping rain, the sounds of night creatures loud in the stillness.
Simon, wearing rain gear, came up behind me as I started to walk along the stepping-stones that led around the house. I wasn't going farther than the little gazebo my father had put up in the garden there for my mother, but of course he had no way of guessing that.
He said, "If you're thinking of going to Little Sefton tonight, I'll drive you."
I shook my head. "There's no point in it. I'd come no closer to the truth than the police have done. Did my father tell you what Constable Boynton wanted to speak to me about?"
"Of course," he said, grinning. "Your mother had it out of him as soon as you were out of the room. He walked down to see me afterward."
"What did she have to say about the shooting?"
"As I recall, her exact words were, 'I wouldn't worry, if I were you, Richard. I think young Mr. Hart is looking for sympathy.'"
Trust my mother to see into the heart of the matter.
I said, "If he came to speak to you, what are you doing here? It's late."
"I had a feeling you might decide to go to Hampshire."
"This time you were wrong."
I could see a flash of something in his eyes before he turned away. "It occurred to me that Lieutenant Hart's death-if he'd been killed tonight-would bear a striking resemblance to Lieutenant Fordham's."
I hadn't linked the two. Yet. But Simon was right, in time I would have.
I woke up the next morning with a headache. Rare for me, because I seldom had them. But I hadn't been able to sleep until close on four o'clock because my mind was trying to sort out the tangle of events.
A nurse is trained to observe. It's her duty to see what is happening to the patient in her charge-she's the eyes of the doctor on the case. Any changes must be noted, and she's expected to know what they represent: a sign of healing, of a worsening of the patient's condition, the onset of new symptoms, or a simple matter of indigestion. We're expected to know when to summon Matron or the doctor, and when to cope on our own.
Use that training, I told myself. Don't jump to conclusions.
There had to be some evidence somewhere.
Marjorie had spent five hours that were unaccounted for. She could very well have walked to the nearest hotel and used a telephone to reach someone. But that person hadn't come forward. She could have taken a cab to the house of a friend. But according to Helen Calder, she had been cut off from her friends-she had told Helen herself very little, for that matter, and then only in the early stages of the affair. She could have confided in a complete stranger in a tea shop, someone who would listen but not judge. That person hadn't come forward either. She couldn't have traveled very far between the time I saw her and when she was killed. Perhaps an hour in any direction, if she were meeting the person she'd telephoned. But no restaurant or other public place had contacted the police to say she had been seen.
Very likely she never left London.
And Michael was in Dr. McKinley's surgery. Marjorie knew that.
Had she walked the streets for a time, working up her courage to talk to an old friend? And then made her way to the surgery after hours, when the doctor was least likely to look in on his patient? She wouldn't have wished to arrive with her face blotched by tears.
I could see the police point of view there.
I wondered who had told them that Michael was in love with Marjorie? Otherwise, they would have interviewed him and moved on, since he had no apparent motive. Was it Victoria?
Of course police suspicions would have been aroused by the fact that he had said nothing about seeing her that night. Unless he swore she had never come there. Michael could hardly have stabbed her in the surgery. And if he disobeyed orders and left, he risked the doctor finding him gone.
Where could one go to commit a quiet little murder?
If someone had intended to throw Marjorie's body in the river, surely it was easier to do the deed nearby, rather than having to transport a body any distance. It was dark there, with London wary of Zeppelin raids. A well-lit river was a navigator's delight. That might explain why Marjorie was still alive when she was put into the water-it would be impossible to make sure she was dead.
Michael had said that he was haunted by the possibility that Marjorie had been killed on her way to meet him.
If that were true, had Marjorie told someone where she intended to go, and that person had prevented her from reaching the surgery?
Walk with me for a little while. We can talk by the water, it's quiet there. Then you can go on to the doctor's surgery…
That was a far more realistic possibility than encountering a stranger.
Back, then, to someone she knew.
Had she told the man at the railway station where she was going? I hadn't seen him descend from the moving train, although Inspector Herbert had asked me specifically about that point. But there was the next station.
First Lieutenant Fordham. Then Michael Hart. The only person I could think of who would have a reason to shoot both men was Serena Melton. She was obsessed, searching for the baby's father. And I wondered if Jack suspected that, if it had been the reason he'd been afraid of blackmail.
I'd fallen asleep on that thought.
Ignoring the headache as best I could, I dressed and went down to breakfast. My parents had already eaten theirs and gone. The sun was out again, the rain only a memory.
I could imagine my father driving to London to have a word with Inspector Herbert. But he had a good head start, I'd never be able to catch him up.
I drank a cup of tea, ate some dry toast, and went out to the shed where I'd left my motorcar. It was low on petrol, and I was about to take it to the smithy-cum-garage to see to that.
Simon was coming around the corner of the house. He had a tennis racket in his hand, and I realized that he and my mother must have been playing. "Who won?" I asked.
"I did. By the skin of my teeth. Where are you going?"
I told him.
"I'll see to the petrol. Then I'm off to Sandhurst."
"Business or pleasure?" I hoped it was my photograph that was taking him there.
"I've to see someone there on War Office business," he said. "After that I intend to bring up the photograph."
I thanked him, and then asked if he knew where my father had gone.
"Something came up. He's on his way to Portsmouth to meet someone. That's how I was dragooned into a game of tennis, in his place."
I wasn't sure whether to believe him or not. Portsmouth-and London afterward?
And then I did, when Simon said, "You'll stay close to home while we're away? I don't like the idea of shots flying about in gardens. Besides, your mother wouldn't mention it, but I think she'd like a little time with you."
I'd have liked to go to Little Sefton and ask Michael Hart about the shots fired at him. But I could hardly knock at the Harts' door and boldly ask about an event that had occurred hours after I left. I persuaded myself that if Simon was successful in identifying the man, I could return the photograph to Alicia as promised. And she was sure to tell me what had happened, and it would seem very natural to speak to Michael then.
Besides, Simon was right about my mother.
"I promise," I told him, and with a nod he was gone.