I spent the afternoon in Mrs. Hennessey's apartments ironing the uniforms I'd soon be packing to take back to France. It was cooler there, and getting the collars and cuffs stiff enough was always hard work. I had had to do one set over again.
Mrs. Hennessey was having tea with one of her friends. I was grateful for the use of her iron, and having to concentrate on what I was doing kept my mind from dwelling on Marjorie Evanson and Captain Fordham.
Simon had gone to his club, refusing to leave London without me.
"If I do, you'll just get up to mischief of some sort," he'd told me.
"You aren't showing up in the Marlborough Hotel, to sit across the room and scowl at poor Captain Truscott, are you?" I'd demanded before shutting the door behind me. "The poor man's hands shake badly enough as it is."
"Captain Truscott appears to be a decent enough sort. No, I'll wait here on the street to make certain he brings you home at a reasonable hour. Mrs. Hennessey may even ask me in for tea."
I slammed the door in his face, and heard him laughing all the way back to the motorcar.
Ironing cuffs and aprons isn't a soothing activity. By the time I was dressed and waiting for Captain Truscott to call, I was not in the mood for dinner and was beginning to wonder why on earth I'd been so eager to see him again.
He arrived on the dot, and Mrs. Hennessey, bless her, climbed the stairs to our flat and told me he was waiting.
He smiled as I came down, saying, "It was good to see you again. I'm looking forward to dinner."
Frederick Truscott turned out to be a very nice dinner partner. It made up for the Marlborough's very indifferent menu. We had a number of friends in common, and that kept conversation rolling comfortably all the way to the hotel. "I've borrowed Terrence Hornsby's motor," he told me. "And so, like Cinderella, I must have you at home before the stroke of twelve. He's driving to Wales tonight to visit his family."
"I haven't seen him in ages! How is he?"
"Bullet clipped his ear. Still looks rather raw there, but he's glad it wasn't his head. He says he needed it, although some of his friends are in serious debate over that."
Which sounded just like Terrence. I laughed.
While we were on the subject of absent friends, I said quite casually, "I only discovered today that Jack Melton's brother is a serving officer. A captain in the Wiltshire Fusiliers. I don't think Jack mentioned him when we were at Melton Hall."
"Someone told me they were estranged, though not why. I've never met him."
"He's married, I think?"
"I couldn't say."
We swapped other names, and then, against my better judgment I asked, "Did you know Captain Fordham?"
His face lost its humor. "Sadly I did. A loss there. He was a good officer."
"Was he by any chance acquainted with Marjorie Evanson?"
"Strange you should mention that. The police asked his family about a connection when they came to inquire into his death. Apparently he did know her."
"How well?"
"I've no idea, really. Marjorie was good company. I was fond of her myself." Changing the subject, he asked, "When do you go back to France?"
"In another five days."
"Bad luck. I leave the day after tomorrow. Said my good-byes at home and came up to London to put that parting behind me. Easier that way. Where is your family?"
"Somerset. I haven't spent as much time with them as I'd promised."
"Was that your elder brother in the motorcar with you?"
"Good heavens, no. That's Simon Brandon. He was my father's sergeant-major at the end of his career."
A light dawned behind his eyes. "You're not Colonel Richard Crawford's daughter, are you?" When I nodded, guessing what was coming, Captain Truscott said, "My God. He was a fine officer. We've a man in the Fusiliers who served under him. He knows more about planning battles than half the general staff."
I could agree with that. There had been complaints that the generals were fighting the wars of the past. My father and Simon often refought the battle of the Somme over cigars, and it always put them in a rotten mood.
We discussed my father for a bit, and then suddenly, we'd finished our pudding, drunk our tea in the comfortable lounge, and it was time to go.
I said, as we walked through Reception and out of the hotel, "Can you think of any good reason for Captain Fordham to kill himself?"
"I don't know that we need a reason," Freddy Truscott answered somberly. "What keeps you going is your men. You don't let them down. Fordham lost most of his men in a charge ordered against a section of line that reconnaissance had indicated was poorly defended and certain to fold. But the Germans had put in a concealed machine-gun nest during the night, and they held their fire until Fordham and his men were within easy range. They were wiped out-he was one of only a handful of wounded who somehow made it back to their own lines. The rest were dead before they knew what they were up against. He blamed himself for trusting HQ. He felt he'd betrayed the dead, and refused all treatment when they got him back to the nearest aid station. One of the nursing sisters put a needle into his arm and that was that. He was more sensible when he came out of surgery."
I recalled the incident-although I hadn't known it was Captain Fordham who'd fought the nursing staff. Diana had been there, had witnessed the struggle to treat the wounded man, and she had told us about it. Even she hadn't learned why the officer had gone mad, only that in spite of his severe injuries he'd fought like a tiger.
But this went far to explain Fordham's suicide. Still, if he'd been intent on taking his own life, why wait until he was nearly mended?
Trying for a lighter note on which to end the evening, I asked Freddy if I could write to him in France.
He said, "I was trying to get up the courage to ask just that."
And then it was time to say good-bye. As we stood outside the door of Mrs. Hennessey's house, I wished him safe in France and he held my hand longer than was needful. "Thank you, Bess, for a happy evening. I've enjoyed it more than I can say."
With that he was gone, walking to the borrowed motorcar with swift strides, not looking back even as he drove away. I watched him go, watched his taillights vanish around the far corner of our street, and with a sigh, said a silent prayer that he would come home whole. Then I turned and went inside. Where had Simon got to?
I hadn't learned a great deal about Raymond Melton, and only a little about Lieutenant Fordham.
But as I climbed the stairs to my flat, calling good night to Mrs. Hennessey who had come out to ask me if I'd enjoyed my evening, I wondered why Jack Melton and his brother were estranged. Because he knew what sort of person Raymond Melton was?
What had been the fascination there for Marjorie? Attention when she needed comforting, her fears for Meriwether smoothed away? Sometimes very cold men could be utterly charming when it served their purpose. I preferred someone like Michael Hart, who made no bones about flirting, enjoying it and expecting no harm to come of it.
Like the woman at the garden party, I remembered as I drifted into sleep. Henry's wife, who had been amused by Michael's flattery, gave it back in full measure, and made both of them laugh.
Someone was knocking at the flat door. I heard it in my dreams before I realized that the sound was real. Surfacing from sleep, I tried to think what time it was, and if I'd overslept. I fumbled for my slippers and my dressing gown and made my way through the dark flat. But the windows told me it wasn't the middle of the night, as I'd first thought, or late morning. Dawn had broken and the first rays of the sun were touching the rooftops opposite.
I opened the door to Mrs. Hennessey, her gray hair in a long plait that fell down over the collar of her dressing gown.
"What is it? What's the matter?" I asked, thinking she must be ill.
"My dear, it's Sergeant-Major Brandon. He says it's most urgent that he speak to you. I do hope it isn't your parents-"
My mind was racing ahead of me as I brushed past her and went headlong down the stairs, nearly flinging myself into Simon's arms as I tripped on the last three steps.
"What is it?" I said again, tensed for the blow to come.
"I told Mrs. Hennessey not to frighten you," he said, angry. "It's a police matter, but important enough to make sure you were safely here."
Mrs. Hennessey had seen me come in. She could have told Simon-and then I realized that he had been frowning with worry until he saw me on the stairs.
"Do you know a Mrs. Calder?" he continued, and I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
"Calder? Yes-she's a friend of Marjorie's. Marjorie Evanson."
"She was attacked last night and nearly killed."
"She-" I began and had to stop to catch my breath. "Nearly killed?"
Mrs. Hennessey had made her way down the stairs and said to Simon, "If you wish to use my sitting room-"
He thanked her and we went into her flat, where a lamp was burning in the small room where she sat in the evening. She asked if we'd like a cup of tea, but Simon shook his head. With that she left us alone, but knowing Mrs. Hennessey, she wouldn't be far, even though she knew that Simon was a family friend. Her staunch Victorian upbringing wouldn't allow her to eavesdrop, but she would be able to hear if I screamed or had to fight for my virtue, since I was not properly dressed to receive a gentleman.
Simon must have read my mind because he smiled grimly and said, "You had better sit over there. God forbid that we should not observe the proprieties."
I sat down on one side of the hearth and he took the chair on the other.
"Mrs. Calder?" I reminded him.
"She had gone to dine with friends. Mr. and Mrs. Murray put her into a cab at the end, and she went directly to her house. That's been established. But she didn't go in. The maid waiting up for her was drowsing in her chair, but she would have heard any disturbance on the doorstep."
"Then it was someone Mrs. Calder knew," I said. "She wouldn't have gone anywhere with a stranger, not after what happened to Marjorie Evanson." I tried to think. "Have the police found the cabbie?"
"They have, and he doesn't recall anyone walking along the street or standing in the shadows of a tree. But he's an old man, he might not have noticed. At any rate, she got down at Hamilton Place, paid the cabbie, and the last he saw of her, she was walking toward her door. An hour later, a constable walking through Hamilton Place heard something in the square, and alert man that he is, went to investigate. He discovered Mrs. Calder lying in a stand of shrubbery, stabbed and bleeding heavily. She's in hospital now and undergoing surgery. No one has been able to question her. But she wasn't robbed or interfered with in any way. Because of the unsolved attack on Mrs. Evanson, someone, probably the Metropolitan police, thought to bring in Inspector Herbert."
"Oh, dear." I put my hands up to my face, pressing them against the flesh, trying to absorb everything Simon was telling me. And then I realized that it was Simon telling me. Letting my hands fall I said, "How is it that you know all this?"
"Inspector Herbert put in a call to Somerset-he must have thought you were going directly home, but he was taking no chances. You father called me at my club. I came directly here." He paused. "Bess. How much did this Mrs. Calder know about Marjorie Evanson's love affair? Did she know the name of the man?"
"She told me she didn't-" But Serena Melton believed Mrs. Calder knew more than she wished to tell even the police. That she found her cousin Marjorie's behavior distasteful and was trying to distance herself from it. "Serena Melton believes she does. And if that's true, someone else could as well." Michael Hart had not suggested we talk to Helen Calder. The thought rose like a black shadow in my mind. Had he believed that if Helen knew the name of the man Marjorie had been seeing, it was possible that she also knew Marjorie intended to meet him that evening?
I pushed the thought away. There could be a little jealousy there, because Helen really was a cousin, and Michael was not. But the thought lingered.
Simon was saying, "The police can't be certain that her attack is related to Mrs. Evanson's death, but they're treating it as likely."
"She must know who it was. She isn't the kind of woman who would take risks. Is she-will she survive?" With critical stabbing wounds, infection was often the deciding factor in living or dying.
Simon shook his head. "It's touch and go, I should think. My first responsibility was to look in on you. To see if you'd also been lured out into the night. Mrs. Hennessey couldn't stop a determined killer."
He was right. If someone knew just what to say-that my mother had suddenly taken ill or something had happened to Simon or my father-I'd go with them. Especially if I thought Mrs. Hennessey had allowed them in this emergency to come directly to my door. It would never occur to me that she was already dead. What, then, had someone said to Mrs. Calder that made her turn away from her door and follow him-or her?
"I'm wide awake," I said. "It's no use going back to bed. Do you think, if we went to the hospital, Matron might tell me about the surgery and what the prognosis is for Helen Calder?"
"It's worth trying."
I left him there in the sitting room and went up to dress. I decided to wear my uniform, though I sighed when I put on the nicely starched cuffs and apron that I'd ironed only hours ago.
Simon drove me to St. Martin's Hospital, where we made our way to the surgical wards. But Mrs. Calder was still in surgery, I was told, and not expected to be brought into the ward until she was stable.
I asked where she had been stabbed, but the sister I spoke with shook her head. "I haven't seen her file. Only that I'm to expect a female patient with repairs of severe knife wounds."
Frustrated, I went to where Simon was sitting in the room in which families awaited news, and said, "She isn't out of surgery yet. It could be some time."
"It was worth a try," he said. "I'll take you home and we'll come again in a few hours."
I was agreeable to that, but we met Inspector Herbert as we walked down the passage. He'd been in the small staff canteen helping himself to a cup of tea. He looked tired.
Surprised to see us there, he said to me, "You're in uniform."
"Indeed."
"I hope you weren't thinking of interviewing Mrs. Calder before the police spoke to her." He smiled, but it was also a warning.
"I was worried. I met her for the first time only a few days ago."
"Did you indeed?" He gave me his undivided attention. "And what did she have to say to you?"
"She couldn't give me the name of the man Mrs. Evanson had been seeing, but she'd been concerned for some time about what she believed to be a developing affair. And she was under the impression that Mrs. Evanson had broken it off several months before her death. Well before she could have known she was pregnant. But I didn't say that to Mrs. Calder."
I went on to tell him what little I knew.
Inspector Herbert nodded. "This time her purse wasn't taken, and so we had her identity at once. Then when the police went to inform her family, her mother said, 'Dear God, first Marjorie and now Helen.' That was when we made a connection between the two women, and I put in a call to Somerset." He looked down at the hat he was turning in his hands. "I must say, I never expected a second murder." He looked up again, and after a brief hesitation, he added, "The constable who found her said that she was barely conscious when he bent over her, but she spoke someone's name. Her voice lifted at the end, as if she were posing a question. 'Michael?' she said."
"Michael-" I repeated before I could stop myself. "Er-what is her husband's name?"
"Alan."
"Oh."
"Oh, indeed."
I said, "If you're thinking that Michael Hart did this, you're mistaken. He couldn't, given his injuries. Ask his doctor." I tried to remember. "A Dr. Higgins." He'd given Michael permission to accompany me to London; he must know the case well enough to make such a judgment.
"I'll be speaking to his physician," he assured me. "But for all we know, he could be malingering."
I thought about the pain I'd read in Michael's eyes, the struggle with the sedatives. The whispers that he was addicted to them. But I didn't bring these matters up. My testimony would be considered biased.
"It will be hours before Mrs. Calder is awake," I told him. "If she's still in surgery now. We might as well all go back to bed."
But he shook his head. "That isn't what the Yard pays me to do. I'll be there the instant she opens her eyes."
Just then Matron came down the passage, calling to Inspector Herbert. "Mrs. Calder is being taken to a private room. She isn't awake and won't be for some time," she said, echoing what I'd just been telling him myself. "But you may go in and see her, if you wish."
He turned to accompany her. I gave Simon a swift glance and followed in Inspector Herbert's wake.
Matron was saying, "The damage is considerable, but we'll know more tomorrow. Whoever her attacker was, he stabbed her twice. She was wearing a corset, and luckily the staves deflected his knife. There is a laceration along her ribs, the bone scraped, cartilage torn, but the blade didn't reach her lung. Then he stabbed her in the stomach, and nearly succeeded in killing her."
We went into the small private ward, and looked down at the patient's wan face. I didn't think she'd be speaking to anybody for some time. She had lost quite a bit of blood, and the surgery had been stressful as well.
I studied her face. She was no longer the vigorous woman I'd seen only a day or so ago. Even with the bandages, she seemed to have shrunk into herself, thinner and somehow vulnerable. I felt a surge of pity. If she had been thrown into the river, as Marjorie Evanson had been, she wouldn't have survived at all.
Matron was saying, "You'll observe that she was also struck on the head from behind. We saw that injury as we were pulling her hair back." She gently turned Mrs. Calder's head and parted her heavy hair to show us the wound. "I would say that she was knocked unconscious and then cold-bloodedly stabbed while she was unable to defend herself."
"Then there's a chance she didn't see her attacker." Inspector Herbert bent down for a closer look.
"True." Matron eased the patient's head back onto the pillow and arranged her hair.
Inspector Herbert then turned to me. "Any thoughts?"
"You were at her house? The servants' entrance is just below her door-down the stairs behind the railing and into a kitchen passage, I should think." It was a common enough arrangement. "If someone waited there, the cabbie wouldn't have seen him. But he'd have had to be quiet."
"As the cabbie left, it might have covered the sound of his footsteps coming up," Inspector Herbert agreed. "I'll speak to one of my men; we'll see if another cab dropped off a passenger earlier. The question is, how did he know she was out? Or when she would return?"
"He may have been there earlier, and seen her leaving. And waited."
He nodded. "Whoever it was took a great risk. One cry and someone might have come to a window. Unless he persuaded her to walk into the square, then struck her from behind. That may be why she said the name Michael the way she did. As he came up the tradesmen's stairs, she must have been surprised and called out to him."
Matron gestured to us, and we walked out of the ward together, closing the door behind us. Inspector Herbert asked that an extra chair be brought to him, and he sat down before the closed door. He pointedly bade me good night.
I left, having pushed my luck as far as I thought it ought to go.
I accompanied Matron back to the hall where Simon was waiting, my mind busy with the problem of why a dying woman had spoken Michael's name. I went over what she'd said to me when I called on her. I hadn't brought up Michael's name-and neither had she.
Simon took me to the Marlborough Hotel and commandeered a breakfast for the two of us. I sat there toying with my food, thinking about Mrs. Calder.
"It makes no sense," I finally said aloud.
"It isn't supposed to. You aren't Inspector Herbert."
I smiled. "I don't think he's exactly happy with this turn of events either."
"Eat your breakfast."
I did as I was told. I wanted something from Simon and the easiest way to persuade him was to cooperate. At least the breakfast was better than the dinner the night before and I was hungry.
"How was your evening?" Simon asked, echoing my own thought.
"Captain Truscott is a very nice man. You needn't use that tone of voice."
"What tone of voice?"
"The one that sounds disapproving and nosy."
Simon laughed. "Actually, I think you're probably right about Truscott."
"He told me something about Captain Fordham that made a lot of sense."
He groaned. "I thought you'd been warned off that topic."
"I was. I can't help it if Freddy knew the man."
"I see. You'd better tell me."
I did. Simon nodded as I was finishing the account.
"He's right," Simon told me. "There's delayed shock, you know. As long as Captain Fordham was recovering from his wounds, he could put France out of his mind. But as soon as he knew he was nearly ready to return to the Front, the truth had to be faced."
"Then why didn't he use his service revolver?"
"I expect he didn't wish to. I expect he didn't feel he had a right to use it."
That was a very interesting observation.
I sighed. "Poor man."
"He wouldn't be the first. And he won't be the last. Don't you remember Color Sergeant Blaine? It was much the same story."
I did remember. It was in Lahore, and Color Sergeant Blaine was in hospital recovering from wounds. He slashed his wrists one night, without a word to anyone. And my father said Sergeant Blaine blamed himself for losing his men in an ambush on the Frontier. He felt, experienced man that he was, that he should have foreseen it. No one could have, my father told my mother. But Sergeant Blaine had never lost a troop before.
"You're very wise, Simon. But what became of the handgun that Captain Fordham used? Solve that mystery too."
"It's buried deep in the mud under the bridge where he was standing. It fell from his height and through the height of the bridge. Enough force to bury it in the soft soil at the bottom of the lake."
But the police had searched, and still hadn't found it.
I finished my tea, and sat back in my chair. "Will you drive me to Little Sefton? I'd like to speak to Lieutenant Hart before Inspector Herbert sees him."
"Do you think that's wise?" Simon asked.
"I don't know what's wise anymore. But Inspector Herbert has a second victim now. He's probably already under a good deal of pressure to take someone into custody. Michael Hart would solve all his problems. As soon as the inspector speaks to Helen Calder, he'll order Michael's arrest. See if he doesn't!"
"That could be later this afternoon or evening. Are you convinced that Michael's shoulder wound is as serious as he claimed?"
"You know as well as I do that severely wounded men can go on to do heroic things before they collapse. He's a soldier, he could stab her if he had to-wanted to. What would be impossible for him to do is carry or drag her into the square afterward." I bit my lip, then added, because I knew Inspector Herbert was already considering it, "It could explain why she was found in the square and not taken to the river, as Marjorie was."
"Yes, I'd considered that myself." He signaled to the waiter. "I'll take you to Little Sefton, only because I feel safer with you under my eye. And then you'll go back to Somerset and stay there."
"I promise."
But I crossed my fingers behind my back, just in case.
Simon took me to Little Sefton, then did as I asked, driving away after leaving me on Alicia's doorstep. He was to return in precisely two hours. He wasn't happy with that arrangement, but I promised to stay with Alicia.
I had the excuse of returning the borrowed photograph, but I needn't have worried about my welcome.
She was delighted to see me. From the twinkle in her eye, I knew what she was thinking, that I couldn't stay away long because my heart was given to Michael Hart.
She said nothing about that as she led me into her sitting room, and asked if the photograph had helped.
"Indeed it has," I told her. "The only problem is, that officer is in France just now."
Looking at the photograph I'd given her, she said, "He looks like a nice sort. And if he's someone Gareth photographed, he must be all right."
I changed the subject, asking if the village had been reasonably quiet since my last visit.
"That's right, you haven't heard, have you?"
I knew what must be coming. "What's happened?"
"Michael Hart was walking in his aunt's garden. Pacing it, more likely. Mrs. King was passing by, and she said he had the face of a bear, so she didn't stop to speak. And not a quarter of an hour later, he went raging in to see Constable Tilmer, claiming someone shot at him. But Constable Tilmer couldn't find anyone who'd heard one shot, much less two. And with all the windows open because of the warm evening, you'd have thought someone must have heard it."
"What happened then?"
"Constable Tilmer searched the gardens and the back lanes, and told the Harts that all was well, the excitement was over. But Michael wouldn't hear of it. He demanded that the constable ring up Scotland Yard and report the incident directly. And then we all went home to bed and that was the end of it."
"Who could possibly want to shoot Lieutenant Hart?"
"That's what everyone is asking. Jason Markham claims it was a jealous husband." She laughed at that. "If so, he had very poor aim."
The village was taking the incident very lightly, finding amusement in it.
"But why should Michael make up such a story?"
"Too many drugs, everyone says. Hearing things." She shrugged.
"Is that true?"
"I don't know how the rumors got started. But they did. I imagine it was when Michael first came here to rest after they had worked on his shoulder. He wasn't himself at all-barely able to speak, and even when he did he didn't always make sense. Slept much of the day and paced his room at night-I could see for myself once or twice that his lights were on until the small hours. And his shadow passing between the lamp and the window, back and forth, back and forth. Even when he finally came outside where people could see him, he was pale and often sweating and his eyes looked right through you."
"Such wounds can be terribly painful. And the shoulder is awkward-difficult to sit down, difficult to lie down, difficult to stand. So you don't rest. Even when you're so sleepy you can hardly stay awake."
"I hadn't thought of it that way," Alicia admitted. "It sounds pretty grim, doesn't it?"
"It is grim," I said. "And something to help with the pain is necessary."
"He told the rector when he first came here that the next surgery would be drastic. And he didn't want to survive it."
I could understand. Michael was used to being noticed. He was handsome and charming and amusing. People enjoyed his company. But a man with only one arm was usually pitied, not admired. And amputation at the shoulder would be ugly.
Alicia suggested a walk, and I agreed, thinking that if Michael saw me with her, he might come out and speak to us, saving me from having to find a proper excuse for calling on him.
"It helps the day go by faster," she admitted as we leisurely strolled by the Hart house. "Walking, knitting, taking care of the gardens-anything is better than worrying about Gareth."
And I was right, not five minutes later, as Alicia and I were retracing our steps, Michael Hart came out his door and moved purposefully in our direction. We were just by the churchyard when he caught us up.
Alicia hastily recalled that she must have a word with the rector about flowers for the coming Sunday services, and left me alone.
"You came back," Michael said as soon as he was near enough.
I could see that he had taken his pain medication last night, for his eyes looked dull, and his hands shook a little.
"Alicia was just telling me about your narrow escape."
"Hardly that," he said, an edge to his voice. "Since I imagined the entire incident. I'm surprised Scotland Yard didn't call to inform you of my delusions."
It was too close to the truth for comfort.
"Yes, they do seek my advice regularly. They dare not make a move without me."
He had the grace to apologize. "I'm sorry. I wrenched my shoulder ducking the first shot. Afterward I had a long couple of nights."
Men who had been at the Front often ducked when a motorcar backfired or there was some other loud noise. It was a reflex action, learned to save their lives and not as easily unlearned in a peaceful setting like one's uncle's garden.
"And you never saw anyone. Or heard anything except for the shots?"
"You sound just like Constable Tilmer," he told me sourly. "If I'd seen who it was, I could have named him to the police. Or lacking that, described him."
"What makes you so certain it was a man?" I asked.
That gave him pause.
"I just assumed it was," he said after a moment.
"And why would someone shoot at you?"
"I don't know. Unless someone believes I learned something in London that made me a threat."
"Such as?"
He surprised me with his answer. "If someone learned that I went to Scotland Yard. He-she-could believe I went there to pass on information."
"Then why kill you now? If the Yard already knows what you've learned."
"I haven't worked that out yet."
"Are you sure you heard shots? I mean, as opposed to something that sounded very much like shots."
"I've spent two years in France. Do you think I'd confuse a farmer scaring crows with a shotgun for a pistol shot?"
"No."
I walked a little way toward the church, then turned again and walked back to where he was standing. "How did two shots miss you? Both of them?"
"Think what you like," he snapped and strode away.
I shook my head at his attitude, then hurried after him.
"Michael. Be sensible! Listen to me."
He stopped and turned a stony face toward me, already rejecting what I had to say.
"If whoever it was missed you both times, then it tells me the person aiming at you wasn't used to firearms and was either out of range or couldn't hold the weapon steady."
"I wouldn't put it past Victoria," he answered bitterly.
But I thought it was more likely to be Serena. She'd talked to Inspector Herbert. And so had Michael. For all I knew, she had seen him leaving the Yard.
If it was Serena, this could be the second time she'd fired at a human being. And the first time she had hit her mark, which would have frightened her if she hadn't intended murder.
"I remember the first time I fired a revolver. I missed the target and nearly hit a troop of monkeys in a tree. It was six weeks before they ventured that near again."
He was smiling at the story about the monkeys, but his mind wasn't on what I was saying.
"Did the police at least search for the spent bullets?"
"A cursory search. I went back later to look on my own. But it's a garden, for God's sake, and finding anything would be a miracle."
"Let's have a look together."
He was about to refuse me, but I stood there waiting, and finally he said disagreeably, "All right, then."
I wanted very much to tell him that handsome is as handsome does. But that would be sinking to the same childish level.
Still, I was tempted.
And what would Alicia think when she came back to find I'd gone off with Michael Hart? That her stratagem had worked?
We walked in silence to the house where he was staying with his aunt and uncle. The grassy path branched about three-quarters of the way to the door, and stepping-stones led to a gate in a well-trimmed hedge. Through that I found myself in a very pretty formal garden. Small boxwoods lined the paths in a geometric pattern, dividing the beds. Along the far side of the garden, matching the hedge at the front gate, was a bank of lilacs, which must have been beautiful in the spring, their fragrance wafting to the chairs set out on a narrow stone terrace, rising above two shallow steps.
"What's behind the lilacs?"
"The carriage drive to the stables. Beyond that a small orchard."
"So someone could have come as far as the lilacs without being seen."
"Yes. That was what the police suggested as well."
"And where were you standing?"
"I was in the center, by the little sundial, my back to the lilacs. The house had felt stuffy, and I'd come out here. But I couldn't sit still, so I walked as far as the sundial, stood there for several minutes, and was just turning back to the terrace when I heard the shots."
He was right. Finding the spent bullet amongst the beds of roses, peonies, larkspur, and other flowers in full bloom, much less the loamy earth they were set in, would be a miracle.
But I looked anyway. If only to satisfy my own ambivalence about whether or not there were any shots at all. I asked him to stand where he had been at the time, and then I cast about, looking under leaves, in the earth, even in the blossoms themselves. After ten minutes, he said impatiently, "I can't stand here much longer. You aren't going to find anything anyway. Let's sit on the terrace before I fall down." He did look rather gray in the face.
I am stubborn. Just ask the Colonel Sahib.
"Go ahead and sit. I'll look a little longer."
And five minutes later, my fingers, scything gently through the soil around a rosebush in the next bed over, came up with something hard. I picked it up, brushed it off, and looked at it.
It was a readily identifiable.45 bullet.
Triumphant, I carried it to Michael and dropped it into the palm of his hand.
"Persistence," I said simply.
He grinned at me. "And your fingers are filthy."
I regarded them wryly. "So they are."
"Now perhaps someone will believe me!"
But there still remained a shadow of a doubt. Michael Hart possessed his service revolver, and he could just as easily have fired that shot into the rosebushes himself, in the hope that the police would believe his story.
I sighed. "I must go back to Somerset. I'm here on sufferance anyway. My family is convinced that you're a blackguard and I'm in danger of being shot in your company."
The grin deepened. "It's a lie. Your mother adored me. Stay, and I'll take you to dinner somewhere."
I shook my head. "Thank you, but I must go." I rose to leave, and then said, "Michael. What if we never discover who killed Marjorie? If the police can't do it, it's not likely that anyone else will succeed where they failed. And they keep jumping about, first this and then that likelihood. They won't keep searching forever."
"I'll keep looking if it takes me the rest of my life," he told me grimly. "I won't desert her as everyone else has."
I said good-bye and left. Alicia was watching for me, and smiled. "I saw you walking with Michael Hart to his aunt's garden. Beautiful, isn't it?"
I agreed and then told her I must return to Somerset.
She said, "You two didn't quarrel, did you?"
Several times, I answered silently, then told her, "He's not at his best today."
"Don't let that discourage you. I think he rather likes you."
I smiled and said, with heavy irony, "Thank you, Alicia. You send me away happier than when I arrived."
"Did he tell you," she went on, "that Victoria, Marjorie Evanson's sister, had a very public quarrel with him, just this morning. I don't know what precipitated it. He was walking toward the church when she stopped him and suddenly there were loud voices and everyone turned to see what was happening."
"What were they saying?"
"Marjorie was buried here in the churchyard. Did you know that? Not with her husband but with her family. When her body was released, Meriwether's sister refused to let her be laid to rest in their family plot. I don't know if Meriwether was told what her decision was. I think he'd have been very angry. But she told Victoria in no uncertain terms that Marjorie was no longer considered a part of their family."
I hadn't known that or I would have visited her grave when I was here for the garden party. But I should have guessed that Serena would carry her anger that far. She hadn't come to the service.
Alicia was saying, "At any rate, Victoria accused Michael Hart of spending too much time there. I know he's been there a few times, not what I would call an inordinate number, but she seemed to feel that having caused her sister so much grief in her life, it was keeping the scandal alive for him to be seen there so often."
"She believes that Michael Hart was the other man?"
"I think she's always been very jealous of the attachment between Marjorie and Michael. And so she thinks it was an unhealthy one."
"What does the rest of the village have to say?"
"They're of two minds, at a guess. Those who liked Marjorie believed the best of her. If she fell from grace, they say, it was out of loneliness. Those who are closer to Victoria and her father seem to think that Marjorie betrayed her family as well as her husband."
"Never mind what the truth might be?"
"Never mind," she agreed, nodding. With a sigh, she said, "I know how easy it is to fall from grace. I miss Gareth so terribly sometimes that I cry myself to sleep. I'm always afraid to answer the door, for fear Mr. Mason is on my doorstep this time, to deliver bad news. Sometimes after his leave is over and he's been gone for months, I can't quite remember the sound of my husband's voice, or see his face as sharply as I did before. And one day someone comes along who is kind, thoughtful, his touch is real, and he's there, and one is so hungry for companionship, for someone who admires one's hair or makes one laugh, or just brushes one's hand as he helps one into a motorcar, that one is susceptible. Suddenly one is alive again, and you tell yourself that you might well be a widow already and not even know it-"
She broke off, flushing with embarrassment. A little silence fell. Then she said, "I've never succumbed. I've been faithful in thought and deed. But I'd be lying if I said that I could throw the first stone at Marjorie." Wryly she added, "That's why I so enjoy your feelings for Michael. It lets me feel something vicariously."
Misreading my expression of annoyance, she said, "I've made you self-conscious, haven't I? I'm sorry. Let's change the subject."
"All right, then. Why would Victoria make such a public display of her feelings? Why not speak to Michael quietly, privately, and ask him to be more discreet?"
"I rather think she wants the world to see him as an adulterer. She wants him to be an object of contempt."
"Or she's jealous." I leaned back in my chair and regarded the ceiling. "Do you think Victoria might decide to shoot at him?"
"At Michael? But why should she?"
"I don't know," I told her truthfully. "Perhaps to frighten him. To make him leave Little Sefton and return to that clinic. To make him a laughingstock. Or to return to the idea of jealousy, to rid herself of him so that she wouldn't be reminded day in and day out that he still cares for Marjorie, but cares nothing for her?"
"I hadn't thought of it in that light," Alicia said, considering my words. "But she's always had an uncertain temper. Spoiled children often do. She might very well decide to shoot at him-knowing that she would miss him, I mean-just to be vindictive."
"Would you walk with me to the churchyard, and show me Marjorie's grave?"
"Yes, of course. Let me get my shawl." She was back in only a moment. I took one last look at the photograph I'd returned and then together we walked down the street to the churchyard.
There were any number of new graves, the earth still brown, and others where the grass was just a tender green. I tried not to think that for every man who died of wounds here in England, hundreds of others were buried in makeshift cemeteries in France.
The Garrisons were buried in a cluster of graves on the right side of the church. Besides Marjorie's mother and father, there was a brother who had died at the age of six, and her grandparents, two uncles and their wives and a number of older-generation Garrison relatives. Marjorie's grave was on the far side of her brother's, as if Victoria had elected to keep for herself the space that was next to her father. After all, Marjorie, the first to die, was in no position to argue.
There were colorful fresh flowers on the raw earth. I recognized some of them as varieties I'd seen in the garden belonging to Michael Hart's aunt and uncle. I could in a way understand Victoria's complaint, for these tokens were there for all to see and speculate about. They also pointed up the fact that Victoria hadn't planted any flowers by the headstone herself. There were pansies and forget-me-nots and other low-growing blossoms rampant on the other graves. Michael was making it plain that Marjorie didn't deserve to be ostracized by her family as well as her neighbors.
We were standing there together when the rector came around the corner of the church and spoke to us. He remembered me from the fete, and told me he was happy to see me again.
"Alicia has been rambling about in that empty house long enough," he went on. "It's nice that friends can come and stay. We hope we'll see more of you."
I smiled and thanked him.
Looking down at the grave, he said, "Did you know Mrs. Evanson?"
I told him the truth, that I had nursed her husband and brought him home to England to recover from his burns, and I left it at that.
"He was a very fine man," the rector told me. "The sort you're happy to see marrying one of the young women in your parish. A tragedy that he should die of his wounds after coming so far."
"Yes." I gestured toward the grave at my feet. "Tell me about his wife."
"A thoroughly nice young woman. I shouldn't wish to speak ill of the dead, but she was not really happy here. She didn't see eye to eye with her sister or her father. I never understood what lay behind that. I was glad when she made a life for herself in London."
"Did Victoria visit her there?"
"She went to London a few times," he said, frowning, "but I don't know that she visited Marjorie. I remember asking for news, once, when Victoria had been up to see a play. She told me she'd been too busy to call on her sister." He smiled sadly. "A shame, really, they had only each other."
He left us then, and Alicia said, "You know, you really ought to speak to Mrs. Eubanks. She's the rector's cook now, but she was the Garrisons' cook until she had words with Victoria's father and walked out. That was ages ago, before the war. I'd all but forgotten."
I glanced at the watch pinned to my apron. A cook would be starting preparations for dinner very shortly, but it wouldn't take long to ask my questions. "I'm so glad you remembered. And there's just time." I started for the rectory.
"I'll go with you!" Alicia said eagerly.
"No, that's probably not a good idea. If she's kept any secrets all these years, she might well not wish to make them public now. And you live in the village."
"But that's not fair-it was I who told you about her-"
"Alicia, think about it for a moment-"
She was angry. "I've helped you thus far. It's really unkind of you to shut me out now. And I was the one who introduced you to Michael."
"Alicia-"
"No. You've just used me, that's all. I should have guessed. Victoria said you would, you know. The day of the fair. I told her she was trying to make trouble, but I see now she was right." She turned and walked away, hurt and disappointed.
I felt my own anger rising. I liked Alicia, I wouldn't have upset her for the world. But thanks to Victoria's meddling, she had taken what I'd said in the worst possible light.
I called to her, told her I was sorry, but the damage had been done. She kept walking, and disappeared through her door without looking back. I started after her, and after a few steps, stopped. It was useless. Even if I could persuade her that I'd been wrong about Mrs. Eubanks, Alicia would think I was apologizing because I still needed her help, not because I meant it. Otherwise she would have come back when I called to her. I couldn't help but wonder what else Victoria could have said, then recalled Alicia's parting words about Michael Hart. She had enjoyed matchmaking, but Victoria had poisoned that as well.
With a heavy heart I crossed the churchyard to the rectory gardens, and made my way to the kitchen yard and up the path to the outer door. It led into a passage littered with boots and coats and umbrellas that had seen better days, and thence into the kitchen.
I opened the door, and the woman up to her elbows in flour and dough looked up, ready to say something, then stopped short.
"Oh-you aren't Rector. If you're looking for him, he should be in the vestry just now. At the church."
"Are you Mrs. Eubanks?" I asked. But of course she must be. Short and compact, she was graying, although her face was unlined. I put her age at perhaps fifty-five.
"I am. And who might you be, Miss?"
"My name is Elizabeth Crawford. I'm a nursing sister, and one of my patients was Lieutenant Meriwether Evanson," I began. "I was with the convoy that brought him to England for treatment of his burns."
I explained that I was visiting with Mrs. Dalton, and she nodded. "I think I saw you with her at the garden fete."
"Yes, I was here then as well."
"The poor man. We heard that he barely survived a fortnight after his wife's death. I met him a time or two, you know. He came here to speak to Rector in regard to marrying Miss Marjorie."
"I've been learning a little about her as well. Alicia Dalton said that you could tell me more about her than anyone else in Little Sefton. Would you mind?"
We talked for a while about the Evansons, and it was clear that Mrs. Eubanks would have been glad to go to London with them as their cook, but she had already, as she said, "gotten used to Rector's little ways, and he to mine."
"I understand there was no love lost between Marjorie and her sister."
Mrs. Eubanks's lips thinned into a hard line. After a moment she said, "I know Rector preaches that it's wrong to hate anyone, but I come as close to that as never mind when it comes to Miss Victoria. She's a piece of work." She had been making dough as I came in, and now she turned it out onto a floured board, and began to knead it vigorously. I hoped it wouldn't be tough as nails as a result.
"Was she always so rude?"
Mrs. Eubanks turned her head to listen, decided that no one could overhear us, and said, "Rudeness isn't the half of it. My sister Nancy, God rest her soul, worked with Dr. Hale, and when Miss Marjorie's dear mother went into labor prematurely, he took Nancy with him to help. She was very good with women in labor and newborns. She had that way about her."
"Did she? That's a gift."
"To be sure it is. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Garrison had only been married the seven months when Miss Marjorie was born, and she had that breathing trouble that so often carries off those little ones born before their time. But my sister and Dr. Hale kept her alive, and though she was sickly for months, she survived and began to thrive. It was a miracle, and Mr. Garrison paid my sister handsomely for her services, so grateful he sang her praises to everyone who would listen."
I couldn't quite see where this was going, but I looked encouraging and hoped she would continue. But she set aside the dough and put the kettle on, as if the subject were finished.
"I could do with some tea," she said, getting out cups and the milk pitcher, and a bowl of precious honey to sweeten it. Then she went to a cupboard and brought out a plate of biscuits.
That done, she and I sat down at the table, and she picked up the thread of her story. "All was well, then. The next child, a little boy, was born in winter with a weak chest as well, and he didn't live very long. After that came Victoria, and she was a lusty, healthy little one, kicking and crying with such strength, you wouldn't believe it possible. There was only four years difference in their ages, and Miss Marjorie adored her sister. But when Victoria was about twelve, their mother died."
The kettle was on the boil, and Mrs. Eubanks stopped to make the tea. When she had poured our cups, she sat down again.
"Miss Marjorie and her mother were always close, I expect because she nearly died. And Miss Victoria was closer to her father, they were always out and about together. She followed him everywhere, as soon as she could walk. Slowly, with malice, that girl set out to turn her father against her sister. Little things at first, the spilled milk, the broken vase, any small mishap, and it was blamed on Miss Marjorie. Even when the old dog died. Victoria swore Miss Marjorie had poisoned it. When she was old enough to understand such things, she told her father she didn't believe that Miss Marjorie was his true daughter, that her mother must have been pregnant when she married. And she would point out little things-the fact that Miss Marjorie looked more like her mother, and not at all like her father-I don't know what all. The housekeeper was a friend of mine, and she'd tell me tales that made me want to cry. But in the end, Victoria Garrison got her way, and Mr. Garrison came to hate his own daughter, hated the sight of her, and nothing her mother could say changed his mind. Miss Victoria had her father's love, but now she wanted all of her mother's, and when she saw she wasn't going to get it, she made the poor woman's life a misery. And her father stood by, letting her do it. It was as if he didn't have the courage to come right out and attack his wife himself. But he enjoyed seeing her unhappy."
In spite of the tea, I felt cold. "How vicious!" I said. "Are you sure-"
"Oh, I'm sure. Once I found Miss Marjorie sitting in a corner of the rectory porch, crying her eyes out and wet to the skin. Her sister had flung a pan of hot water at Miss Marjorie, then told her father that Miss Marjorie had spilled it on purpose to get Miss Victoria into trouble. I took her home and dried her off in my kitchen and fed her her dinner there too, before sending her up the back stairs of her own house to her bed. The next morning her father wouldn't let her eat her breakfast until she'd apologized for lying."
"But did you tell the rector-anyone-what was going on?"
"I thought about it, but I could do more for the child than Rector could, because I was there. And if I'd told, I'd have been sacked. Mr. Garrison had been a wonderful man, stern but fair, but he'd changed, he was cruel and cold. Then after his wife died, he turned bitter. You might say a child couldn't do such things, but she did."
"Then what happened?"
"When the will was read, Mrs. Garrison's, I mean, she'd left money to Miss Marjorie, and as soon as she was of age she walked out the door of that house, went to London, and never set foot in it again. Even when her father died and she came for his service, she stayed here in the rectory."
"You've given me food for thought," I told Mrs. Eubanks. "And I'll keep what you've told me in strictest confidence."
"Oh, you can tell whoever you like. I don't mind. Mr. Garrison is dead himself now. And there's nothing Miss Victoria can do to me. Rector wouldn't let me go for a dozen Miss Victorias. He'd not know where to find anything and would starve to death if he had to cook for himself or do the wash." She was secure in her own worth. But I wondered if she'd have spoken quite so freely in Alicia Dalton's presence. It was one thing to assert that the rector would keep her on, but the parish priest served at the discretion of his vestry.
"Tell me about your sister."
"Nancy died young. Her and Dr. Hale were killed one icy morning coming back from a difficult lying in. Mare slipped first, then overturned the carriage, and horse, carriage, and my sister went into the river. Dr. Hale was thrown out and his back was broken. He lived a few hours, long enough to tell everyone what had happened. Otherwise I'd not have been surprised to find Miss Victoria had had something to do with the accident-young as she was."
The venom in her voice was palpable. I think she had talked to me not because I'd known Marjorie's husband but because this had been bottled up inside for so long it was like a boil in need of lancing, the pressure was so great and so painful.
"How old was she at that time?" I couldn't help it, I had to know. The story had left me shocked as it was.
"Fourteen."
We finished our tea. I saw Mrs. Eubanks eyeing the chicken, ready to garnish and put into the oven, and I knew that now she'd told her story, she was ready to get back to work on the rector's dinner.
I thanked her and rose to leave. She said, "I don't lie, Miss Crawford. I never did. What I told you is the truth. Not that it matters now with Miss Marjorie gone, and all. But it's been on my mind of late, hearing of how she died."
I left her to her cooking and walked around the rectory toward the road. I had hardly got to the end of the rectory's drive when I saw policemen just coming out of the Harts' house, and between two constables walked Michael Hart, his face black as a thunder-cloud. In front of them strode Inspector Herbert, mouth grim, eyes looking neither right nor left.