An Impartial Witness (32 page)

“I will have to, won’t I? But it seems such a waste.”

“How many soldiers have you watched die because they lost the will to live?”

“Too many.”

“That’s what Michael Hart has done, whatever gallant name he attaches to his decision.”

“Thank you, Simon. For everything.”

“One final thing. Let the Colonel take you to the train in London. I think he wants to do that.”

I nodded, understanding.

And then for the next several days, I played the daughter of the house on leave, and gave neither of my parents a moment’s anxiety. But my thoughts were in that prison with Michael. And I couldn’t pull them back.

My train left the day before Michael’s hanging.

My father drove me to London and Waterloo Station, to see me off for Portsmouth this time.

I stood there thinking that it had all begun here, that I had stood here and watched Marjorie Evanson in tears talking to a man who was nearly as callous and coldhearted as his brother. I had been an impartial witness then. I had tried to keep that personal distance, but events had drawn me further and further into the vortex of a murder investigation. I had got too close to people and perhaps hadn’t been as objective as I could or should have been.

But Simon was right. I had tried. And there had been no messages for me from Inspector Herbert, either in London or in Somerset. I wanted so badly to ask him if there was any hope. But I knew he wouldn’t tell me.

I chatted brightly with my father and then watched as the train pulled into the station, steam roiling in the cool night air, knowing that in a matter of minutes, I would be on my way to war again.

We had said our good-byes in Somerset, but I held the Colonel close for a moment and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be all right,” I said.

“You’d better be,” he told me lightly. “Or the Kaiser himself will answer for it.”

I laughed, as he’d intended me to do. I had just turned to face the train when there was a flurry of movement to one side of us, and the crowd of people seeing off or waiting for loved ones parted a little. A woman came hurrying through the gap, and I didn’t recognize her at first, her face was streaked with tears, a handkerchief in one hand.

And before I could catch my breath or even move, Serena Melton was upon me.

She lifted her fists and beat against my coat, blows that forced me back a step, and I felt the presence of my father just behind me, his hands reaching for my shoulders to move me behind him, out of danger.

“You selfish monster!” Serena was crying, her fists flying, and heads turned to stare at us. “You came to my house and betrayed us. Callously, without thought for anyone but Michael Hart. You used us and everyone you met, to save him. I know all about you, I know what sort of woman you are. My husband has never hurt anyone in his life, do you understand me?”

My father had come between us, and her blows fell on his outstretched arms.

“It’s Serena Melton,” I managed to say.

But she wasn’t finished. Her voice was strident, thick with emotion, and she’d lost all sense of anything but punishing her tormentor. I wondered what lies Jack Melton had told her, and where he was.

“You
used
us, you cold, uncaring bitch. Sister of mercy indeed. You’re a disgrace to that uniform you’re wearing, and I hope the Germans do for you what I can’t, shoot you down like the animal you are!”

And then she was gone in a whirl of skirts, shoving her way through the staring throng. A policeman had come up, drawn by the screaming.

“Anything wrong, sir?” he asked, not seeing Serena as the wall of watchers closed around her.

My father said, quite clearly, “A demented woman I’ve never seen before just attacked my daughter without any provocation. As witnesses will attest. Will you see us to the train, Constable? It’s been a very trying moment, my daughter is very upset.”

It was true, the Colonel had never met Serena. But the words were comforting, even though they were partly lies.

I didn’t know how my father looked. I knew my own face was flushed with shame and horror, and one of Serena’s fists had caught
me on one cheek. It ached, and I was close to tears. Angry tears, helpless tears. But I held my head high, and walked with my father and the constable toward my compartment on the train. I saw the constable have a word with the conductor. I was settled in my seat by the window, my belongings stowed safely, loved and cosseted and given the moral support that made my courage possible.

Then my father said rapidly, “Sticks and stones, Bess. She’s distraught. But it tells you something, doesn’t it? It tells you that someone heard you, and that someone is doing whatever can be done.”

“I feel such pity for her.”

“She must have known, Bess. She must have been afraid from the start that it was her husband.”

And so she’d become a detective to find a lie, not the truth.

“Murder is never kind. To the victim, to the survivors. Not even to the murderer him-or herself. Let it go, be safe, and concentrate on why you’re in France.”

He was right. I kissed him, smiled—albeit most likely a tremulous one—and settled back into my seat.

And then we were pulling out of the station. There was no sign of Serena, but I lowered my window and leaned out to watch my father’s tall, broad-shouldered figure out of sight.

No one had come into my compartment, crowded as the train was. My father’s parting gift to me. Forward I could hear male voices singing one of the interminable verses of “The Mademoiselle from Armentières,” that bawdy drinking song that the troops seemed to love even when sober.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, seeing only emptiness and darkness ahead.

A
T DAWN
the next morning, I could hear the guns in the distance as the ambulance that had been waiting for me and a half dozen other nurses rumbled and bounced toward our destination, a field hospital behind the line of trenches.

I watched the sun rise, and it was a fair day, and I could think of nothing but Michael walking out the door into the prison yard and looking up at that bright sky for the last time. I had pictured it before—but only as a dread possibility. This morning it was real. I turned away from the other nurses and fought back my tears.

If only Marjorie hadn’t succumbed to the seductive advances that Jack Melton had made. If only she had listened to his brother there in the station, and not seemed so desolate that Raymond Melton had reported to his brother that there was no hope of keeping her from telling someone—Michael or her husband—what she had done.

If only I hadn’t been in the station that rainy evening. I wouldn’t have known any of these people, I would have watched this sunrise untouched by the pain of a man who would rather die than live.

But that was wrong. It wasn’t Marjorie’s fault. It wasn’t mine. The blame must fall where it belonged. And I truly believed that it would. I had met a number of good people in the course of these last months, and some terribly cruel ones. Because I believed in doing
my duty and telling the police what I had seen in that railway station, I had got involved. And that was nothing to be ashamed of.

We hit a deep rut just as the sun reached above the horizon, and I knew that if nothing had stopped his execution, Michael Hart was dead. Quickly, his neck broken, his body already limp and without that force that came with life.

I said a swift prayer for his soul. As the sun moved higher, touching all the blackened and ruined countryside with a golden light, as if trying to hide what war had done to it, I said another for Mr. and Mrs. Hart.

And then we were at our destination, and I had to put Michael and all the rest behind me. There were wounded already waiting for us, men in dire straits, and my duty was to them.

But my last thought as I was handed down from the ambulance by the middle-aged driver comforted me. I would have done nothing differently, even knowing what lay ahead.

We had worked for three days almost without stopping. I hardly had the time to eat or drink or find a bed to fall into. I was already tired, but it was forgotten when I took my turn as theater sister and then as the night nurse for the recovering wounded.

And I counted it a blessing, because there was no space in which to think or mourn or remember.

Finally the lines of wounded dwindled to twenty, and then to ten, and then to five, and then to an empty doorway.

I took off my cap to let the fresh breeze of another dawn cool my face for one brief moment, before putting it on again to walk down the rows of wounded and surgical cases, making certain, before going off duty, I had told the sisters coming on what to watch for. Bleeding here, shock there, nausea across the way, and in the far corner, septicemia. The dread of blood poisoning.

I signed out, walked some fifty yards to the quarters that had
been pointed out as mine, and found my things piled in a corner, the bed as fresh as it was when it had been made up days ago.

Sorting out my belongings, I found a towel and toothbrush and a bar of precious soap and went to find where I could wash my face and hands before I slept.

An orderly showed me, and I was just starting in that direction, wondering if my feet could carry me that far and then back again, when a man came running toward me, calling my name. He wore the insignia of the signals corps.

I turned and waited, thinking it was a summons back to the theater, and I knew I was in no condition to go.

“I’m Sister Crawford,” I told him, as he caught me up. “What is it?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, much creased and more than a little grubby from the touch of many hands.

“This came through in a diplomatic pouch, marked very urgent, Sister. Someone sent it up by a rider, but I didn’t receive it until yesterday. And they told me you couldn’t be disturbed.”

He held it out to me, almost reluctantly. We had learned that urgent messages often brought bad news.

I tore it open, dreading to see what was written there.

Just a few words, and they swam before my eyes until I could focus on them.

And below it was my father’s name and rank and former regiment.

He signed himself that way only on momentous occasions, to mark the importance of them.

I looked up, and saw that the signals corporal was watching my face as I read. I had even forgotten he was there.

Crumpling the letter in my hand, I flung my arms around him and whirled him in a wide circle, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Here, Miss—!” he expostulated, face beet red, caught completely off balance.

“It’s good news, good news,” I said, letting him go and trying to remember the dignity of a nursing sister. “I’m sorry, but I had to share it with someone.”

He touched his cap, smiling. “Yes, Miss. Glad to be of service. Anytime.” And then he was trotting off toward wherever he belonged, and I reread the letter again.

They had gotten it to me in record time, my father, my mother, and Simon, pulling God knew how many strings to make certain it reached me as soon as possible, before I had mourned a man who still lived.

Shoving the letter into my pocket, I picked up the scattered soap and towel and toothbrush, and went on to wash my face.

I couldn’t help but notice when I reached a mirror that it was smiling broadly, my face, and the fatigue that had been grinding me into the ground only ten minutes ago had vanished.

Sparing a moment of pity for Serena and the dark road I knew she was following now, I remembered the living and the dead as I scrubbed my face.

Meriwether Evanson, Marjorie Evanson, even Victoria Garrison.

My father was right. Murder was never kind. To the victims, depriving them of a natural span of life and happiness. And also to the survivors, who must live with reminders of what might have been.

Jacket design by James L. Iacobelli

Jacket photograph © by Adrian Muttitt/Trevillion Images