A Question of Honor (15 page)

I went to the canteen and sat there over a cup of tea, wondering if I could find a room in a hotel, when Simon Brandon walked through the door. His bruises healed, he looked fit and preoccupied.

I don’t know which of us was more surprised. He came across the room to greet me and sat down at my table.

“Good God,” he said. “You do appear in the most amazing places!”

“I could say the same about you. What brings you to Portsmouth?”

“It’s not for your ears,” he said with a grin, and then he turned to look out the canteen window. A light rain had begun to fall, and the wind was pushing ships at anchor, making their running lights bob with the outgoing tide. When he looked at me again, he said more seriously, “I’ve been teaching infantry tactics to tank crews. A brave lot, those men. Shut into a metal coffin, only one way out. It doesn’t bear thinking of. But since the Somme they’ve made tremendous strides in tactics.”

I’d attended some of the men from inside those tanks, their flesh burned black as soot from the fire inside, their hands and faces and feet peeling red beneath the black.

“Are you on your way to Somerset or London?”

“Neither. I’ve spoken to my parents. I only have a few hours left.”

“Then it’s good I found you. Where are you billeted?”

“I’m not. I’ll find a hotel and sleep a few hours.”

“There’s room in my quarters. I’ll take you there.”

I finished my tea and went with Simon. On the way I asked if he had read my letter, the one posted in Dover after visiting Melinda.

“Yes, it came while I was away. I retrieved it when I passed through Somerset some days later. I think it’s very possible that the Caswells took in Anglo-Indian children. That photograph appears to confirm it, and the box you bought, along with the little chair, indicates Lieutenant Wade’s sister was there, and it isn’t very likely that he’d be sent to a different family.”

Simon had taken rooms in a house near the center of town, and I sank down in the chair by the window in his sitting room.

“I think I could sleep for a month,” I said, leaning back.

“Go ahead. But before you’re beyond hearing what I have to say, let me tell you what has happened. The police in Winchester have been rather busy. They are looking for and interviewing everyone who called on the Gesslers in the past three months. The list isn’t long—the shop has been closed for some time. But it appears that we’re on it. It seems a neighbor across the street remembers a man and a woman who called rather late and stayed for about an hour. The neighbor had a toothache and couldn’t sleep.”

“We’re suspects?” I asked, wide awake now.

“Apparently. The newspapers are carrying a request for this pair to contact them to help with their inquiries. At a guess I’d say we appear to be the last people to see the Gesslers alive.”

“It’s too bad the neighbor with the toothache wasn’t at his or her window when the fire was started,” I said.

“Quite.”

“Should we contact the police?”

“And tell them what?” Simon asked.

I sighed. “I can’t see that it would help them if we do. It will only cloud the issue.”

“That was my conclusion.” He walked away to fetch a blanket and then turned. “Burning two people to death is unconscionable. The killer must have a very strong reason for doing that.”

“We’ve rather lost sight of Lieutenant Wade.”

“Someone in Petersfield knows the truth. We need to find that person. If Wade isn’t behind the fire, he may well know who is.”

He was tired as well. I said, “Simon, go to bed. We’ve done all we can for now.”

“When does your ship sail?”

“At ten tomorrow morning.”

He nodded. “I’ll see you’re awake in time.”

A
s my ship moved out into the roads and turned toward the sea, I thought about our conversation over breakfast.

Simon and I had agreed on one thing.

Whatever we chose to do in the future, we must make very certain that we didn’t put anyone else in danger.

We had discussed taking what little we knew to Scotland Yard, rather than the local police in Winchester or Petersfield. But when we had listed what we knew, jotting it all down on a sheet of paper in black ink that stood out baldly against the white background, it was glaringly little.

As he was driving me to the port, Simon glanced at me, then said, “I’m going on to Somerset this afternoon. I don’t have to be there at any particular time. It might be interesting to go by way of Midhurst and have a look at the estate agent who has put the property up for sale.”

“Just be careful.”

I
n France I spent long, exhausting days at the hospital to which I’d been assigned. They had tried to collect all their influenza cases in hastily constructed quarters where they could be cared for separately from the wounded. There was no surgical ward here. There was no need for it. Instead, long rows of cots held patients in every stage of infection. I was issued strong soap to keep my hands clean and face masks, then Matron accompanied me through the wards, giving me an overview. We hadn’t learned much about the illness, but a little more about how to care for the patients.

Tired men, in the filthy living conditions of the trenches and jammed together using the same latrines and drinking the same stale water, were not fit enough to fight off the infection. Or perhaps infection was inevitable. Whatever the case, I worked to save as many as I could, and when that wasn’t possible, I tried to make their deaths easier if I could.

One of the Sisters working with me watched the burial detail set out one cool, cloudy morning and said, “If a horse was that ill, or a dog, it would be put down as mercifully as possible.”

I had to agree with her, except for the peculiarities of the infection. Sometimes those who had the least hope of surviving managed to pull through. As I had done. While those who appeared to be on the mend could relapse and die in a matter of hours.

A new convoy of patients arrived, were sorted, and carried to their cots. Three were dead before they reached us. One of them was an officer whose leg I had set at a forward aid station six months ago.

And almost on the heels of that convoy came another one. Another Sister was sorting this time, and some of the convalescent patients were moved to a makeshift ward to make room. I had just settled half a dozen men and was starting to work with another ten when I was called to help with a critical case.

He was in a bad way, and I did what I could to help him breathe more easily. It wasn’t until I was gently lowering him to the cot once more that I noticed the fading scar along his jaw, that faint white line.

It was Lieutenant Wade. I glanced quickly at the tag that identified him, and saw in a hasty scrawl
CORPORAL CASWELL.

There was not time to report his presence here, even if I wished to do so. And from his flushed face and difficulty breathing, it was unlikely that he would live.

But when I came back on duty in the early hours of the next morning, he was one of the men the Sister on night duty thought was showing a little improvement. I took around the cups of soup, all that some of the men could keep down in their paroxysms of coughing, and when I came to Lieutenant Wade, his eyes met mine.

Before I could stop him, he’d reached up and pulled at my mask, and it came down to my chin.

If he hadn’t been sure before this, it was obvious he knew who I was now. I could read the expression in his eyes. Surprise. Certainty. Despair. For he could see that I had recognized him as well.

I set down the cup of soup and pulled my mask back into place. Then I held the cup to his lips and let him drink.

Busy elsewhere for the better part of the morning and then in the afternoon occupied with a new line of ambulances, I came back to the ward in time to help with the evening rounds, and Sister Whitby said, “I think we’ll lose Caswell, bed sixteen. He showed so much improvement overnight that we were hopeful. Now—it’s almost as if he’s given up.”

And that was my fault, although I hadn’t said a word to him about the past.

Surely just my presence was enough.

I felt a surge of guilt, but there was nothing I could do about it. Matron assigned us where we were most needed, and most of us hardly had time to sleep.

I walked down the line of cots to bed sixteen. An orderly was just changing Lieutenant Wade’s sheets, the sour smell of sweat lingering in the air. Helping to finish the task, I said to the orderly, “I’ll sit with Corporal Caswell for a few minutes.”

“Yes, Sister. It might be a good idea.” The orderly’s way of telling me that the end was near.

I drew up a chair close to the bed. Changing the sheets had tired the patient, and he lay there with eyes shut, his breathing labored. But I was fairly certain he could hear me.

“Corporal Caswell? You were much improved this morning. We had high hopes for you. And now this change. Won’t you fight to live? You have survived much worse, I daresay. You must make the effort.”

His eyes opened. I’d forgot how blue they were, and the fever racking him made them flash.

“Easier to die this way than hang.” His voice was a thread.

“I’m a nursing Sister. I took an oath to save men.”

“Not this time. Sorry.” He closed his eyes again, stoically waiting for death.

“If I make you a promise,” I said rashly, “if I swear to you that I will not hand you over to the Military Foot Police or anyone else, if you can walk out of here and return to your sector, it will be worth living, I think.”

His eyes opened, and he stared at me. “You’re Crawford’s daughter.”

And in his view, that was enough to condemn him. He knew, better than most, what I must feel about the regiment even now, when it was no longer my father’s responsibility.

“I’m Sister Crawford. I told you.”

“Why would you let me walk away?”

I wasn’t really sure of the answer to that myself. “It seems rather unfair to betray you now. But if you die, I promise you that I shall. To set the record straight.”

“The record,” he said, a world of bitterness in those two words.

I rose. “I’ll leave you to think about it. You wanted to live badly enough that you took a terrible risk in 1908. I should think you’d be willing to do the same again.”

And I walked away.

I went off duty half an hour later, but I didn’t go back to look in on Lieutenant Wade. I had seen patients will themselves to die—most particularly the amputees. And I had seen others who willed themselves to live in spite of the medical prognosis. If I’d had to wager on the chances of Lieutenant Wade surviving until morning, I would have refused. The odds were impossible.

When I walked into the ward the next morning, I saw that bed sixteen was empty.

And I knew I’d lost. Lieutenant Wade—Corporal Caswell—had wanted to die, and so it had come to pass.

Chapter Twelve

A
s soon as I could spare a few minutes from my duties, I went to find Matron. She was in her tiny office, working on a sheet of paper lined with numbers. I saw the frown as she looked up, annoyed at having her concentration interrupted.

“I’m sorry, Matron. But there’s a patient I need to speak to you about.”

“Sister Crawford.” She sighed. “I don’t need to tell you we are being overwhelmed. I simply don’t know where to put them all.”

I could sympathize. We could have put two men to a cot, it was getting to be so bad.

“How are you holding up?”

“We’re all very tired,” I said. In the short time I’d worked under her, I’d learned she valued honesty. “But that’s to be expected.”

“I’ve asked for more Sisters. I doubt there are any to spare. One of our own has come down with the influenza. It must be the same everywhere else.”

“Sister Browning?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“She wasn’t sleeping well last night. I heard her moving around. And then she began to cough. The orderlies came for her at six.”

“I promised to look in on her at ten. Now then, what is it I can do for you?”

“It’s about Corporal Caswell. There’s something you must know.” I took a deep breath. “He served some years ago in my father’s regiment.”

“Did he indeed? I expect he remembered you?”

“I’m afraid he did.” I couldn’t tell her that once he recognized me he’d willed himself to die. “You see, there was some trouble at the time, and I knew about it.” Before I could go on, she smiled and interrupted me.

“I’m glad you brought this to my attention, Sister Crawford. I’ll see that you aren’t assigned to his ward. It will be more comfortable for both of you.”

“But—I thought—his bed was empty this morning when I came on duty.”

“Yes, he was much improved, and we moved him to the convalescent ward. I’m not convinced that he was quite ready for the change, but we needed his bed.”

I stood there, rapidly reassessing what I had been about to say. I’d almost betrayed my promise—and Corporal Caswell too.

Matron was eager to return to her numbers. “Is there anything else, Sister Crawford?”

“I—no, Matron. Thank you.”

I beat a hasty retreat.

Why had I been so certain that Lieutenant Wade had died? Perhaps because it would have been the honorable thing to do, in one sense. I could have reported his real name and his crimes, and the past would have finally been closed. The fact that he had escaped justice in India would have been expunged. The mills of the gods, and all that, but he had in the end been caught.

And I had nearly exposed him, breaking my promise to him.

With the feeling I’d been tricked, I went back to my ward and set to work again.

It was nearly nine o’clock in the evening when I went off duty. I could think of nothing but sleeping, because I’d be back on duty at six. But I took a moment to go to the convalescent ward and look for Lieutenant Wade.

He appeared to be asleep when I came down the row of cots and found him. His breathing was a little easier, but I could hear the rattle in his lungs still. In fact, when the light of my candle touched his face, he began to cough, waking up as he choked on the phlegm in his throat.

I held his shoulders and pounded on his back, helping him clear out the blockage, and he lay back exhausted when it was done.

“Now you can sleep again,” I said, picking up my candle. He nodded, eyes closed. I waited for a few minutes to be sure he was asleep, and then I left. I didn’t think he had known which Sister had come to his aid. He was far from out of the woods. But he had made up his mind to trust me, and he wanted to live.

As I made my quiet way up the rows, I thought his guilt had never troubled him before, there was no reason to believe he was repentant now. I could only trust to fate that somehow he would be found out, without my help.

When next I came to look in on him, I found him sitting up in his cot, drinking a cup of hot soup. He looked thin—most of the men in our care were terribly thin, thanks to the infection and the loss of appetite, the struggle to swallow and keep anything down.

I said as he finished it, “Would you like another? I’ll bring you one.”

“Feeding the fatted calf?” he asked, wary.

“Not precisely,” I said briskly. “It’s more a question of needing the beds. The more food you eat, the sooner you’ll be well. And the sooner someone else can lie here.”

He passed his free hand over his face. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so weak. Not even when I got this.”

He meant the scar.

“How did you come by that?”

“I made it to Kabul before they found me out. Mostly moving at night, eating whatever I could find. They caught me and sentenced me to death. An infidel in their midst. I made a break for it, they shot me, and I survived. They decided that if God had wanted me dead, the bullet would have flown true. And so they threw me in prison instead. To tell you the truth, I think they forgot I was there. I escaped one night and got away. By that time I spoke the language with some fluency, and I was taken in by a family who thought I’d been set on by bandits and robbed. And so it went. I must have had an enormous store of luck, because I used up most of it. I was a shepherd, a beggar, a wandering holy man, a camel driver, whatever came to hand. I told myself it was an adventure, something I could tell my grandchildren about in my old age. I could write a book about my escape and be forgiven. Ridiculous, of course.”

“You did what few Englishmen ever have.”

“Yes, well, they didn’t have my enthusiasm for the task,” he answered wryly.

“Why did you enlist, when war came?”

“It was what I do best. Fight. Only this time I saw war from the point of view of the men in the ranks. There’s another book, if you like.”

I went to fetch more soup, and Lieutenant Wade drank half of that before setting it aside for later. I left him to rest. And then as the next convoy arrived, I had no time to think about him. For two days we worked with the ill and the dying, and more often than not it was the dying. As I looked at the rows of cots, I thought in despair that half the Army must be here or in similar hospitals. Who was left in the trenches? Would this bloody, all-consuming war end not in Armistice but in empty lines facing each other across No Man’s Land? We had seen raw recruits who had never been to the Front die before they could fire a shot. The Germans must be suffering as badly as we were.

I had had two brief messages from home saying that my parents and Simon and the staff were well. But there had been no news from London of Mrs. Hennessey or my flatmates.

I discovered quite by chance that there were several men from the same sector as “Corporal Caswell,” and I told them he was a patient, but recovering.

They were pleased to hear that bit of news. Ill as they were, all three of them had a good word for their Corporal.

“He’d have made Sergeant in a flash,” one went on. “God knows we are short a few. But he didn’t want to leave his unit. He said he’d see us through or know the reason why.”

“I thought he was a sapper,” I asked another.

“Aye, he was, and a good one. Never left a man behind. But he was transferred out into the line. He and his men. A tunnel went south on them, and he got the last two out, against all odds. He told the Captain he’d had enough of digging in the dark.”

“Does he have a temper?” I asked.

Private Burton grinned. “If you aren’t quick enough with an order. But he’s not killed one of us yet.” He broke off in a paroxysm of coughing, and I held him until it was over. After that he was too ill to talk.

Mary, one of my flatmates, had also survived the earlier round of illness, and she arrived one evening just before dusk, bringing in another thirty patients.

I saw her as she was handing her charges over to the Sister who was sorting the cases, and I called her name.

She turned, acknowledged me with an excited wave, and went back to her lists. As soon as those were done, she ran across the muddy ground to where I was waiting.

“Bess! How good it is to see you. Mrs. Hennessey sends her best love. She’s missed you. And so have we.”

“You’re all well? Unbelievable.”

“I have to go back with the convoy. But I’d love a cup of tea. Do you have five minutes?”

“Yes, of course.” We went to the tiny canteen where the staff could find tea and something to eat at any hour of the day or night, and for a mercy, two chairs were available. Mary went over to them while I found the freshest pot of tea and poured two cups.

“No sugar, I’m afraid.”

Mary smiled. “When last I was in London, Mrs. Hennessey had a jar of honey. Simon Brandon brought it to her, compliments of your mother. It was such a luxury.”

I was telling her about Diana when the alarm went up. A patient had gone missing.

It was not unusual for someone in the throes of delirium to wander away from his bed, certain he was back in the trenches or somewhere at home. Such patients seldom got far, usually collapsing before a Sister could reach them. Someone stuck her head around the door, glanced about the room—there was nowhere even a mouse could hide—and said, “Not here, then.” To us she added, “You’d better come. Bring a torch.”

We gulped the last of our tea and hurried to join the search. Mary was saying as we came around to where the convoy was waiting, “It’s one of ours. He’s been out of his head most of the way here, shouting about the first wave of an attack. Poor man, we had to strap him down.”

Someone handed us a torch, and we went to the far end of the convoy. Mary searched the rear of the ambulance while I looked in the driver’s door.

Nothing. Before moving on, we each took a side of the ambulance and bent down to sweep the ground beneath the chassis. No one there.

We went to the next vehicle, and this time I searched the back while she opened the driver’s door.

I could hear someone shouting from the wards, but then word was passed:
false alarm
. They hadn’t found the missing man after all. We went on searching.

We had finished the interior of the fourth ambulance. I bent down to look beneath it just as my torch beam passed over a rumpled length of canvas. By now I was nearly convinced that our lost patient was out there in the dark somewhere. But the ambulances had to be cleared before they could leave. I swept the light over the canvas again. It seemed impossible that it could conceal a man.

“No one here,” I called to Mary as I flicked off my torch. “Let’s move on.”

She reached out to open the back of the fifth ambulance, and the door shrieked, metal on metal. Here, where the guns were only a distant rumble, it jarred the nerves.

I heard the sudden movement almost at my feet, and stepping back, I flicked on the torch again. The beam caught a man’s face, and for an instant we stared at each other, Lieutenant Wade and I. And then he was flinging away the canvas, rolling quickly to the far side.

I hadn’t known who the patient was until that moment. And it wasn’t delirium that had brought the Lieutenant here. He had been counting on escaping when the convoy left, climbing into the back of one of the empty ambulances and leaving it when he felt he was safe to do so. But his empty bed had been discovered too soon.

After all, this was the clever man who had crossed Afghanistan into Persia, and lived to tell about it.

I felt a surge of anger.

“Mary—your side.” My tone of voice was enough, and she turned to shout for an orderly.

Lieutenant Wade made it out from under the vehicle, got to his feet, and began to run. But he wasn’t strong enough. Mary’s torch pinned him as he stumbled, but he regained his balance for another few yards before going down again. With a cry of despair, he struggled to rise, but his body wouldn’t obey his will. By the time the first of the orderlies had reached him, he was pounding the hard-packed earth with his fist.

Another orderly was there on the heels of the first one, but in the end we had to send for a stretcher to carry Lieutenant Wade back to his bed. I followed it, and even in the dark I could feel his eyes on me. Accusing. Angry. I think it rankled more that I had been the one to stop him than being unable to escape.

As we settled him in the cot, I said, “You could have had a relapse, you know. A serious one. You can rejoin your men when you are well enough. You won’t be much use to them now.”

Mary, pouring him a cup of fresh water and holding it for him to sip, added, “You’re still contagious. Did you think about that? Do you want to make your comrades ill too?”

He was racked by a coughing fit, then fell back on his pillows, exhausted, eyes closed, shutting us out.

When I came back an hour later, a cup of hot soup in my hands, he said curtly, “I’m sorry. For the trouble I caused.”

“Drink this or your fever will come back. You’re still too weak to survive it.”

And I left him holding the cup.

I managed to send a letter to Simon, but I could say very little. I told him I’d seen Mary and that one of my patients was an old friend from our India days. He replied quickly:
For God’s sake, watch yourself!

I didn’t need a reminder that Lieutenant Wade had already killed five people.

I
was told by Sister Eliot that Corporal Caswell had been as meek as a lamb since the night he’d tried to rejoin his men. “Very silly of him, but very brave as well.”

He had convinced everyone of his intentions. Except me.

I said nothing, just smiled, and kept an unobtrusive eye on the convalescent ward.

One night when the ward Sister was busy with one of the other patients, whose wounded leg was showing signs of infection—a worrisome state of affairs because the man had just recovered from the influenza and was very weak—I walked down the rows of cots and saw that Lieutenant Wade was awake, lying quietly with his eyes open.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, stopping at the foot of the bed.

“Well enough to be hanged,” he said bitterly. “Rather useless for anything short of that.”

I came round and pulled up a chair.