An Unmarked Grave (24 page)

Leaving Morton where he was, they raced along the railing, still searching for the intruder, shouting to the watch to ask if anyone could be seen.

I took Morton’s arm. “Quickly. Get back to the wards. What were you thinking, coming on deck like this?” Trelawney had warned me Morton might try to escape.

“I told you I’d keep an eye out for him. He was searching the ship, and I watched him. I didn’t see you there in the shadows, and then he had you pinned and was tossing you over the side.” He leaned against the companion doorway wearily, hurting. “I don’t want to be sent to hospital. I want to go home.”

It was blackmail.

Hugh Morton had saved my life.

“I’ll see to it. Go find Trelawney and tell him what happened. He’ll be readying the motorcar. Don’t leave him.”

“But the Major’s somewhere still. He’ll find you again and I won’t be there.”

“Not now. There are too many men on deck. Go, before they come back to question you.”

Reluctantly he did as he was told.

I went back to Captain Grayson’s cabin, and a moment later, the Second Officer knocked, asking around the door, “You saw someone trying to come aboard? Is it true?”

“He was wearing an officer’s uniform. He fired at me.”

“Gentle God,” he said, and disappeared again.

A false rumor, but there was nothing else to be done. Otherwise I’d have had to explain why I’d shot a British Major with a pistol I was not supposed to possess. I’d be detained while the Major disappeared.

I poured water from the Captain’s carafe onto my handkerchief and held it to my aching head, where it had come in contact with the railing. I didn’t think I was concussed, but it had been a hard blow all the same and I could feel the swelling under my hair.

I could hear racing feet and shouting for a while longer, and then the same officer returned to tell me that they’d found no one, and whoever it was had presumably either drowned or swum back to the port. The authorities there had been alerted to watch for him.

I was asked if I could identify the intruder, but I shook my head. “It all happened so quickly—by the time I’d realized what he was doing, he’d disappeared over the side again.”

It was tempting to catch the Major in this net of lies. But his uniform was dry, they would never believe he’d come out from shore.

“You’re a brave woman, Sister Crawford. Who was the patient who came to your aid?”

“I didn’t stay to ask, I came directly back to my cabin.”

He nodded. “Very wise.”

As the door shut behind him, I found myself wondering what on earth my father would say, when he learned I’d thwarted a would-be boarder who didn’t exist, rescued an unreported deserter who did, and shot a purported British officer in the head.

Soon afterward the anchor came up again, we tied up to the dock, and Trelawney was at my door, reporting that the motorcar had been offloaded.

“What have you done with Private Morton?”

“He’s in the motorcar. The sister in charge was glad to be rid of him. It seems he’d wandered the ship all night, alarming the other patients and mumbling unintelligible drivel.”

After I’d thanked Captain Grayson and accepted his apology for the fright I’d had, I prepared to leave
Merlin
.

I’d asked earlier if he would signal Portsmouth as soon as possible to ask if my father could be summoned. He told me now that my father was in London and couldn’t be reached.

I was on my own, then.

Trelawney escorted me off the ship and to the waiting motorcar, and with my papers in hand, we left the harbor behind. Just outside gates, in the street where once my father and I had considered what to do about the charges against me, Trelawney and I conferred.

“I saw him leave
Merlin
just ahead of us,” Trelawney told me. “I marked where he was heading. Did you give him that bloody crease? Every time he wears his cap, that’s going to hurt.” There was no pity in his tone.

“We’ve got to find him,” I said, knowing how impossible that would be. “We can’t let him disappear into the countryside.”

“There’s the train,” Trelawney said doubtfully. “Crowded and slow. In his shoes I’d look for a motorcar.”

And where better to find one unattended than the ship officers’ billet.

Leaves were short, and a motorcar could make the difference between reaching London or one’s family in time to spend a few hours with them or wasting it in Portsmouth.

Trelawney, at my direction, quickly found the nearest billets.

As we got there, several motorcars were heading out of the nearby mews, and Trelawney counted rapidly, “Naval uniform. Naval uniform. Naval again.
Army
. That one.
And I saw his bloody eyes.
”

There was no way to conceal Hugh Morton’s bulk, but I had made myself as small as I could, taking off my cap so that I couldn’t be seen as easily. And so I trusted Trelawney’s assessment, and as our motorcar turned at the end of the mews to follow, I said, “I wish I’d had the chance to telephone someone.”

“Too late now, Sister,” Trelawney answered. “All right, you can sit up again. He can’t see you, he’s too far ahead.”

We kept a discreet distance, which was fairly easy as the sun rose and we wove in and out of convoys heading down to the port. The green hilly landscape of Hampshire rose beyond the town, and the road to London was just ahead.

But our quarry didn’t take it.

Instead he turned west, toward Dorset.

Here it was more difficult to stay within sight of the other vehicle. The roads now followed the curve of the land rather than a Roman rule, and there were villages stretched out along it like tiny jewels on a necklace. The problem was, we couldn’t always be sure our quarry hadn’t stopped at one of them or turned off. It wasn’t until we were on the far side of each that we could pick out the glint of the sun on his boot in the distance or actually glimpse his motorcar rounding a bend far ahead.

My head was thundering and we were all three tired and thirsty and on edge for fear of losing the Major.

And then, as we were coming down a long sloping hill, we saw in the distance that he’d turned into a lane lined with hawthorn trees, leafy now, their white blooms long since faded.

At the far end of the lane we could just pick out the chimneys of a house.

It made no sense. Was this where the Major was intending to go? Or had he spotted us and tried to throw us off?

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

T
RELAWNEY PULLED TO
the side of the road, the motor idling.

“I could use a company of Sepoys,” he murmured under his breath. Then aloud to me, “What now, Sister?”

“I must find a telephone,” I said. “My father needs to know where we are. There isn’t much he can do, if he’s in London. But someone must be told that man is in England now.”

“I can’t leave you here—”

“But you can,” I said quickly, taking the decision out of his hands. “Go to the next village—ask for a telephone. I’ll tell you how to reach three people. Leave a message with anyone who answers. Describe how to find us.”

I began to dig in my valise for pen and paper, fumbling in my haste.

“I don’t like leaving you, Miss,” he said, his failure to use Sister a measure of his anxiety. “He almost got to you on
Merlin
. What was I to tell the Colonel then?”

“I asked you to guard the motorcar.”

“It wouldn’t suffice, Sister, if you were at the bottom of Portsmouth Harbor and the motorcar safe as houses. The Colonel—never mind what he’d want to do. But you know him as well as I do, and how he’d take such news. ”

I said as I wrote down three names and three telephone numbers, “I’ve reloaded my pistol—”

“It wouldn’t stop a fly, Miss, begging your pardon. Nor someone as determined to see you dead as this bast—as this one is.”

“I’ll be all right. I’ll take Private Morton with me, if he can manage to walk that far.”

He swore he could, and while I didn’t believe him, his was a comforting bulk to have beside me.

I handed over the sheet of paper. We got out, Hugh Morton and I, while Trelawney, with a last reluctant glance over his shoulder, drove away, leaving us by the side of the road.

Private Morton foraged for a moment in the hedgerow to the far side and came away with a stick he could use. The two of us started toward the distant farmhouse in a roundabout way, trying to keep out of sight. The hawthorns and the lay of the land contrived to help us. I didn’t think that even from the upper floor of the farmhouse we could be seen unless someone was looking for us.

“What if it’s a trick, and he leaves before the Sergeant comes back?”

I shook my head. It was a risk we had to take. I wanted to find out who lived in the farmhouse.

Gripping the stick with a tight fist, Private Morton managed to keep up across the pasture, but began to fall behind as the ground beyond the stile changed to a field with humped rows of marrows. He called to me, keeping his voice low.

“I’ll wait for you,” I said, “closer by the house.”

On the far side of the field I came to small yard and a derelict shed, one that had been used for shearing sheep from the smell of it. I stepped into its shadow just as the sun went behind a cloud and looked back for Hugh Morton, but he had turned toward the trees along the drive, where it was easier to walk. I watched him, fearful that he would be in trouble if the man suddenly reappeared.

Just then, from the direction of the farmhouse, across the back garden from where I was standing, I heard two distinct shots.

I started to run, Private Morton forgotten. It was faster to go around the house than try to find my way through it. I had barely reached the first of the trees that lined the drive when I heard a door slam and then the motorcar was racing toward me at reckless speed. The driver’s face, bent forward over the wheel, was a twisted mask of hatred.

I didn’t hesitate. I spun around so that I was half protected by the nearest tree, letting him pass. But I don’t think he’d have noticed a line of cavalry if it had stood in his way.

I didn’t look to see where he was heading. I went straight toward the farmhouse door.

It was a lovely old house, three stories and built of local stone. There was a bow window to one side of the door, which stood ajar, and somewhere through the open panes I could hear a woman crying. I stopped on the threshold and called out.

“I’ve come to help,” I said. “Please don’t be frightened.”

There was no answer. I went inside.

The wide hall was empty.

There were stairs just to my right, and beyond the newel post was an open door to my left.

I moved to it and stepped into the room, stopping almost at once as I tried to take in the scene before me.

An older woman, a maid judging by the way she was dressed, her arm bleeding badly, dripping down her hand to the floor, was struggling to help the young woman who lay in the middle of the floor on a patterned carpet.

There seemed to be a great deal of blood, more than could be explained by the arm wound. I said, bending over the younger woman, “Let me see.” But I had to push the maid to one side even to tell if the other victim was still alive.

For a wonder she was breathing, although it was labored, and the cloth that the maid had pressed against her side was already making its own pool across the carpet.

My kit was in the motorcar with Trelawney, but I said, “Scissors, quickly, and more clean cloths.”

The maid, still quite dazed, scrambled to her feet with an effort, and disappeared. Meanwhile, I was trying to find where the shot had actually gone in—and if it had come out.

The woman moaned as I moved her, and I said gently, “You’re with friends. I’m going to stop the bleeding and make you more comfortable.”

I wasn’t certain she could hear me, but I kept making soothing noises as I worked and finally determined that she had been shot in the side. It appeared to me that the bullet had dug furrow along the ribs. I didn’t think it had reached the lung—there was no froth of blood on her lips.

The scissors came, and I cut away the once-pretty white and green fabric of her summer gown for a better look. The problem was, I couldn’t find where the bullet had stopped. Although it was very possibly lodged in her shoulder somewhere, without instruments I couldn’t be sure, and internal bleeding was still a danger if it had penetrated the rib cage under her arm.

She was so much slimmer than the wounded soldiers I’d dealt with, not much muscle or flesh there to shield the ribs, and as I tried gently to probe the site, then stanch the bleeding, she cried out. I had nothing to give her.

It took time, more time than I cared to think about, to stop the bleeding and bind up the wound as best I could with the simple bandages the maid brought me.

And as I worked I spoke to the maid hovering over my shoulder.

“What is your name?”

“Maggie,” she said, her voice shaking from shock compounded by her own pain. “Will she live?”

“Yes, I think she has a good chance. What happened here? Why were the two of you shot? Did you know the man who did this?”

“He came through the door, shouting her name. Over and over, in such a voice that I ran out from the kitchen and came to see what was happening. And then she came down the stairs, staring as if she’d seen a ghost. And it was. Dear God, it was.”

“Her husband?” I asked, ripping lengths of cloth to bind the woman’s arm to her side.

“No, oh, no. He’s in France. This was the man she was once engaged to, and then broke it off. And he’d come for revenge.”

“Her name?”

“Julia Palmer.”

“His? Do you know his name?”

“Ralph Mitchell.”

“Go on.” I sat back on my heels, looking down at my handiwork, satisfied that for the moment Julia Palmer was out of danger. “She was on the stairs, you said?”

Getting to my feet, I took the scissors to Maggie’s bloody sleeve, and I began to clean and bind up her wound as well. It went deep, and it must have been painful for her to endure my touch, but she went stoically on.

“He told her he’d come to ask her again to marry him. Then she said, cool as you please, ‘Come into the parlor, Ralph. We’ll talk about it, shall we?’ And she walked ahead of him into this room and turned to face him. I’d come with her, not knowing what to expect. Before she could say anything more, he told her that he was a Major now, and as she was a widow, he had come to ask a last time if she’d marry him. She told him he was mistaken, she was still a wife, and he said, ‘I’m an officer now, I outrank Palmer. What’s more, he’s dead. You should have heard by this time. There was a letter from Colonel Prescott. I saw it myself.’ ”

“Was Colonel Prescott his commanding officer?”

“Miss, I don’t have any idea.”

“Go on.”

Fighting back tears, she said, “Miss Julia told him, ‘But I haven’t.’ He was very angry, he told her she was lying. On purpose, to put him off. Then—then, Miss, he told her he’d killed the Lieutenant himself. Miss Julia cried out at that, and he went on shouting, ‘Do you love me? Tell me you still love me.’ But she couldn’t, could she?”

I led Maggie to a chair, and she sat down suddenly, her face very pale. “He just stood there, waiting for an answer. I didn’t know where to look. It was as if I could hear the ticking of the clock on the table behind me. But maybe it wasn’t that, only my heart in my throat.”

“How did Mrs. Palmer answer?”

“She told him then that she had never loved anyone but her husband.”

I could imagine what must have followed. But as it happened, I was wrong.

“And then?”

“He said he couldn’t live without her, and that’s when he took out his revolver, and I thought he was about to kill himself right in front of us. But it wasn’t that, was it? He pointed that revolver straight at her, and he told her that if he couldn’t have her, no one else would. She answered that if he truly loved her, he would want her happiness above his own.”

Maggie broke down as she relived the shooting in her mind. I knelt beside her, trying to comfort her.

“I don’t know what possessed me. When he fired, I pushed her to one side, and the bullet struck my arm instead. He stepped forward, shoved me away so hard I fell against the wall, and then he shot her. Standing over her, he cried out, ‘Damn you, Crawford,’ as if someone else had pulled the trigger. Then without even waiting to see if I was alive or not to tell the tale, he was gone, out the door, driving away like a whirlwind.”

I’d finished binding up Maggie’s arm. Suddenly aware that Hugh Morton had been on my heels but had never appeared, I hurried to the door to look for him. He was nowhere to be seen. I called his name, and there was no answer. There wasn’t time to worry.

I came back to the parlor and asked, “Is there a doctor close by? Do you have a motorcar—some way we can get Mrs. Palmer to him? She needs more care than I can give her. What’s more, so do you.”

“There’s the dogcart,” Maggie said, standing up. “Out back. And the old horse is in the pasture. I don’t know if I can find the strength to harness him up. There’s no one else here today. The cook’s daughter got word her husband had been killed, and so the cook and the boy who does the handiwork went over to sit with her.”

It was up to me, then.

“Stay here with your mistress,” I said. “I’ll fetch the cart.”

I found my way through to the kitchen and then out into the yard. The small dogcart was in a good state of repair, and the horse in the field came at once to my call. It took no more than ten minutes to hitch him to the cart and then drive round to the house door.

It took much longer to bring Mrs. Palmer as far as the cart. Slender as she was, she had fainted again and couldn’t help us. I sent Maggie to bring as many pillows and blankets as she could find, piled them into the cart, and then began the arduous task of settling my patient among them. It was impossible to bring Mrs. Palmer around sufficiently to help us help her. And all the while I thought about Hugh Morton, who would have been such a support through all this.

Finally, her face nearly as pale as the linens she lay on, Mrs. Palmer was ensconced among the pillows and I had shut the house door behind us before taking up the reins to drive to the nearest village. Trelawney hadn’t returned either, but it could well have taken much longer to find a telephone than I’d hoped. If that was the case, then I would surely meet him somewhere between here and the doctor’s surgery.

I drove as carefully as I could along the drive and out into the dusty road beyond, trying not to jostle Mrs. Palmer and start the wound to bleeding again. The sky was threatening, and although the distance to the nearest village was only three miles, it seemed much farther. All that mattered was whether or not it had a doctor.

“Shelpot,” Maggie said and pointed. “The village. The surgery’s down there. Just past the church. Dr. Glover.”

It was a long, rambling house with a thatched roof and a pretty garden.

His nurse answered my knock, saw the cart with two bloodstained women in it, and with a shocked “Oh my dear Lord,” she went to fetch the doctor.

He was a man of perhaps sixty years of age, straight as an arrow and strong enough to lift Mrs. Palmer himself and carry her into his surgery. I ushered Maggie in after him.

The nurse was sent for tea while the doctor examined my two patients. Looking at my uniform at one point, he asked, “On leave, are you? Well, it’s a good thing you were, or Mrs. Palmer might not have made it. She’s lost a good deal of blood, and her breathing is not as comfortable as I’d like to see it. There’s the bullet, of course, but at the moment the bleeding worries me most. I’ll have to keep her here. Maggie as well, I should think. I’m not happy with either of these women returning to the house.” He finished rebinding Maggie’s wound with proper bandaging and reached for the teacup his nurse had set on his desk. “Gunshot wounds are rare hereabouts. Who did this? Any idea?”

“Ralph Mitchell. So I was told.”

“Good God. I thought he was in France.”

“So, apparently, did Mrs. Palmer.”

“His father owned a farm some miles from here. Young Mitchell took it into his head that he was going to marry Julia Baldwin. Made a right nuisance of himself instead, and then when he failed to qualify as an officer, he blamed everyone but himself and swore he’d win the VC before the war ended.”

“Baldwin,” I repeated. “What was her father’s name?”

“Tobias. An Army man himself, although he’d been invalided out. Recalled to do something or other in London. Died there in a Zeppelin raid.”