THE NEXT TWO and a half weeks were busy. I was coming to realize that this war was producing nothing but dead and wounded men. No glorious victories, no great advances into German-held territory.

There was talk that the Americans would be coming to France, but even so, it would be months before they could take the field and make a difference. By that time, it appeared that England and France would be bled dry.

I was too tired to do the arithmetic, but it seemed to me that for every yard of ground won or lost, the toll was enormous. If I, a nurse in the field, could see this happening, why did the men in staff positions, the men who made both the daily and the long-term decisions about fighting the enemy, not look at the casualty lists and find another way to win?

I was reminded of my great-grandmother at Waterloo. There the English squares held despite charge after charge by Napoleon’s best troops. And at the end of the day, in spite of the slaughter, the squares still held, and Napoleon was forced to retreat. Not a very decisive victory, attrition at its worst. And without the backing of Blücher’s men, arriving in the nick of time, the tide might have turned the other way. But at least the battle lasted only that one day. And by the next evening, my great-grandmother knew whether or not her husband still lived.

I was coming off duty when I encountered Dr. Hall just coming on. We smiled wearily at each other, and he asked, “Do you sleep?”

“Not very well,” I answered truthfully.

He nodded. “Nor I. Well. We do our best.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve had word we’re to be relieved in the next fortnight.”

This was news I hadn’t heard. It revived me a little and I said, “Another convoy home?”

“Very likely. Would you like to be listed as the transport nurse?”

“I would indeed.”

He nodded a second time. “I’d heard that you had approached Matron about leave some time ago. Was it important? Or perhaps I should ask, is it still important?”

I told him the truth. “An officer I know has been convicted of murder. I’d have liked to have been at his trial. Since then, I’ve not received any news of the date he’s to die. Either that or no one wishes to tell me when it will be. I keep hoping for some fresh evidence to prove that he’s not guilty. I’d like to see him a last time and hear what he has to say.”

Dr. Hall regarded me with interest. “He’s more than a friend?”

“No, sir. Just—a friend. But I feel rather responsible for his situation. I was a witness in the case, though not called on to give evidence in court. I was in the right place at the wrong time. And what I saw proved to be important. An attempt on my part to help the police uncover the identity of one man in the case led them to another man, but it seems to me that there were problems with evidence. And circumstance conspired to put the worst possible interpretation on that evidence. Given my friend’s wounds in two instances, I can’t see how he could have committed the crimes he was charged with. But the police surgeon must have seen the matter differently. And so my friend will hang.”

“Interesting,” Dr. Hall said. “What sort of wounds?”

I told him about the particle in Lieutenant Hart’s eye, and then about the damaged shoulder.

Dr. Hall looked at his watch. “I don’t have time to pursue this now. But if you’ll meet me when I come off duty, I’d like to hear more.”

I thanked him, thinking he was trying to be polite and would have lost interest by morning.

But I was wrong. I was sitting in the canteen finishing my tea when Dr. Hall came looking for me.

He took the chair across from me, and said, “I’m so tired I could sleep on my feet. But talk to me, and if I can stay awake, I’ll give you my opinion. It won’t make any difference to the Crown, or to the case in hand. Still, I might be able to set your mind at ease on the medical issues.”

I tried to marshal my thoughts, and then told him as concisely as I knew how the way the murders had occurred and what Michael’s physical condition was at this time, after his shoulder had healed. At least to the best of my knowledge, which was superficial at the very least.

Dr. Hall stirred his coffee—he had picked up the French habit of drinking coffee, as so many others had done during this war—and considered the medical implications.

“He could have done these things, in spite of his injuries—that is to say, if he didn’t care about the physical damage and was prepared to take the risk.”

I wondered if his barrister had ordered a physician to examine Michael’s eye. He hadn’t complained—but then he wouldn’t have, would he? If he’d disobeyed the doctor’s instructions?

He must have read my face.

“My dear, you must understand that people who kill are not marked by the brand of Cain. They appear no different from you or me. It’s hard to believe sometimes that someone we know well—or think we know well—could do horrible things. But they can.”

He was right, of course he was.

I smiled, trying to make it appear bright and accepting.

“Thank you. I needed impartiality.”

He cocked his head to one side. “The position as transport nurse is still yours. Sometimes it’s better to learn the truth firsthand.”

He was a small man, graying early, lines forming around his eyes that would not go away even when he slept for a week. But his hands were gentle in the operating theater, and they worked miracles with torn flesh and sinew and bone.

I sighed. “You’re very kind.”

“No,” he said, finishing his coffee and getting to his feet. “I’m just very tired.”

 

We brought the wounded to England and I discovered I’d been given ten days’ leave.

I went home and surprised my parents. As I stood in the doorway, they stared at me as if I were a ghost, then they rushed to greet me, talking at the same time, laughing with excitement, sweeping me into the family circle with such warmth it was as if I’d never been away.

I said nothing about Michael Hart. Not then, nor at dinner. But after my parents had gone to bed, I pulled on a sweater against the night’s chill and walked the mile to the cottage where Simon Brandon lived.

He hadn’t come to dinner. He hadn’t come to welcome me home. My parents hadn’t mentioned that he was away. So where was he?

I could hear a night bird calling as I went up the lane and came to the path to the cottage door.

The house was in darkness except for a single lamp in the front room.

I stood for a moment on the step, then lifted my hand to the knocker. It was shaped like an elephant’s head. Simon had had it made in Agra at a little shop where a man sat cross-legged and spent his days carving useful objects. A rectangular length of brass had been fitted to the back of the head, and the plate was also brass. It had a musical ring as I let it fall.

I didn’t think he was going to come to the door. But after what seemed like a very long time, the door opened, and Simon stood there in shirt and dark trousers.

“I was waiting,” he said, and stepped aside to allow me to enter.

I had always liked the cottage. It was strictly a man’s home, of course, filled with a lifetime’s treasures and memories, but as tidy as a sergeant-major’s quarters in camp.

I moved into the parlor as Simon closed the door behind me and I took the chair that had always been mine, by the window overlooking the garden.

“The news isn’t good,” he said, coming in to join me, but not sitting down. “He’s stubborn, your Michael Hart. He asked that his sentence be expedited. Mrs. Calder isn’t doing well. Preparing herself for the trial has taxed her strength. And of course there was no trial. As such.”

“He’s not my Michael Hart.”

Simon nodded, then said, “The execution is set for a fortnight tomorrow.”

I couldn’t stop myself from reacting. I had thought, before Christmas. Months away.

More than enough time, surely. But there was almost none.

“You didn’t write,” I accused him.

“No. He refuses to see you. He asked me to wait to tell you until it was—over.”

“He did it for her, you know. To prevent what she’d done being opened up for the public to gawk at and whisper about.”

“I think he did it for himself as well. That arm will probably be useless for the rest of his life. He can’t live with that. So why not die for a good reason?”

“It’s stupid! There was a chance—you said so as well—that the trial could have ended in an acquittal.”

“At what price to Mrs. Evanson’s reputation?”

“Well, he hasn’t considered one thing. And I intend to bring it to his attention. Can you or the Colonel arrange for me to see him?”

“I told you. He refuses to see you.”

“He may refuse. But you might tell him that I am bringing a photograph of Marjorie to take with him to the gallows.”

Simon’s face had been in shadow, but suddenly I saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. “My dear girl. I bow to your brilliance. But where will you find a photograph of Mrs. Evanson in ten days’ time?”

“I’ve had it since I went to Hampshire and learned that Meriwether Evanson had killed himself. Serena refused to put it in his coffin. Matron couldn’t bear to throw it away, and so I took it. I had thought—if I’d considered the matter at all—that I might somehow put it by Lieutenant Evanson’s grave.”

“You had told me the photograph went with Evanson from France to the clinic. But not that it was now in your possession.”

“It was—personal. Whatever she did, whatever reason she might have had for doing it, he loved her more than living.”

Simon went to the sideboard in the dining room. I could hear him collecting two glasses and a decanter. It was whiskey he brought back with him, and a small carafe of water as well.

He poured a small measure of the whiskey in a glass, added water to it, and passed the glass to me, then poured himself a larger measure without the water. Holding his glass out to me, he said, “Welcome home, Bess.”

I drank the whiskey. They say Queen Victoria drank a small tot each night before retiring. If she approved of it for herself, it would do me no harm. But I wasn’t sure I really cared for the taste of it, a smokiness that caught at the back of my throat and belied the smoothness of the first swallow.

Simon smiled and took my glass from me before I’d finished it, setting it on the table. “It’s late. I’ll see you home.”

“I can find my own way.”

“I’m sure you can. But I shouldn’t care to face the Colonel tomorrow if I allowed you to walk that mile alone.” He drained his own glass and set it down.

“Who killed her, Simon, if Michael didn’t?”

“I don’t know. Who had the most to lose?”

I stepped through the door he was holding for me and out into the night. “Raymond Melton? He had a career in the Army, a wife. He could have lost both if the affair had come to light. As it surely must have done.”

“But he was on that transport ship.”

We walked down the path side by side and turned into the lane.

“Victoria? She was jealous of her sister from childhood.”

“Why then? Why wait until that moment?”

“Because with the child of her affair, she would have had to come home to Little Sefton and back into Victoria’s life?”

“Possible, of course. On the other hand, Victoria might well have relished her sister’s fall from grace.”

“There’s that. Serena, then, for what Marjorie was about to do to Meriwether.”

“That’s far more likely. Except that Serena told her brother the truth about Marjorie, after she was dead.”

“I think that was her own pain speaking. She hated Marjorie and wanted her brother to hate his wife too.” I sighed. “A tangle, isn’t it?”

“Which brings us full circle, back to Michael.”

We walked on in silence, shoulder to shoulder. As Simon lifted the latch on the door to my parents’ house, he said, “I’ll go to London tomorrow.”

“And I’m going to Little Sefton. I want to speak to Michael’s aunt and uncle. After that, I must go to London and look in on Helen Calder. She must be feeling rather awful after her testimony sent Michael to trial.”

Simon said good night, and waited outside as I shut and locked the house door. I stood in the darkness at the bottom of the stairs and watched him out of sight. Then I turned toward the stairs, intending to go straight to my room.

My heart leapt into my throat. There was someone on the stairs, standing there in silence, watching me.

All at once I recognized the shape of my father.

He must have known somehow that I had gone to see Simon.

He said only, “Is everything all right?”

“Yes. Simon is going to London tomorrow. I’m going to Little Sefton myself. And then to London. There isn’t much time…”

“For what it’s worth, my dear, I don’t believe he killed Marjorie Evanson.”

My father knew men. He’d fought with them, led them, listened to them, disciplined them. Little escaped his notice, and he was a good judge of character.

I went up the stairs to him and hugged him.

“Thank you for telling me that,” I said.

“You smell of whiskey. Brush your teeth before your mother comes to kiss you good night.”

I promised, and we went up the remaining stairs to bed.

Between my own fatigue and the whiskey, I slept soundly.

I wondered if that was what Simon had intended.

 

The next morning I said good-bye to my parents and set out for Little Sefton.

It was well into September now. I’d first taken this road in early June, with high hopes that I could in some fashion bring to light a name that would lead the police to Marjorie’s killer. Now I drove with a sense of desperation goading me.

A fortnight today. That’s all the time I had. And even if I found new evidence, the courts would have to be persuaded to hear it and act upon it.

The urgent order of business, however, was mending my fences with Alicia.

The first person I saw was the rector, who greeted me warmly and asked if I’d been in France again.

I told him I had, and then said, “Still, I heard about the trial. It must have been terribly trying for Michael’s aunt and uncle.”

He shook his head. “I’ve offered them what comfort I could. And I’ve written to Michael, to ask if I could serve him in the days to come.”

“How has he answered?”

“Sadly, with silence.” He looked up at the weathervane on the church tower as if it could point him in the right direction. “I’ve never counseled a man facing the gallows. I’ve prayed to find the right words, when the time comes.”

“I’m sure you will do,” I replied. “Do you think I could speak to Mr. and Mrs. Hart? I know Michael pleaded guilty, but I also believe I know why he did. If I’m right, then it may be that he’s innocent of murder.”

The rector stared at me. “You mustn’t raise false hope,” he warned. “It would be very unkind. They have been in seclusion, I don’t believe it would be wise.”

“Which is worse for them, thinking Michael is a murderer or watching him die knowing he’s innocent? I’ve wrestled with that question for hours. I think I’d find comfort in knowing the truth. In knowing that my own flesh and blood is dying for what he believes in, not because he has done something appalling.”

But he remained steadfast in his belief that I would do more harm than good.

I left the subject there, and asked instead, “How has Victoria Garrison taken this news?”

The rector said, “Walk with me to the rectory, won’t you?” I nodded, and as we crossed the churchyard, he went on. “Victoria Garrison troubles me. She was eager to give her evidence. And when proceedings were halted almost before they had properly begun, she was beside herself with anger. I was there that first day myself, I felt it was my duty, you know. If young Hart looked out at the crowded courtroom, I thought it might be steadying to find a familiar face. Victoria was waiting with the other witnesses, and when the trial ended abruptly, a bailiff must have gone to tell them that they were free to leave. And so we ran into each other on the stairs, and I was shocked. I had expected distress, disbelief, even. But her face was flushed with fury. I asked if she was all right, but she turned on me and said, ‘I’ve been cheated!’ in such a savage tone that I stepped back, and she hastened out the door and into the street. I’ve been at a loss ever since to understand.”

I thought I did understand. Victoria had wanted her pound of flesh, to hear in open court a discussion of the sins of her sister. I couldn’t imagine that Michael’s fate moved her—she had been eager to see him taken into custody.

I had wondered before if a woman could have stabbed both victims. It was possible. But was it likely?

Given Victoria’s hatred of Marjorie, it could have happened. But how did Victoria know about the love affair before her sister’s death? Or about the child? Surely Marjorie hadn’t confided in her. And so Victoria couldn’t have killed her.

There was the problem. If Marjorie had been living her life quietly in London, Victoria had no reason to be aware of her situation.

The rector, suspecting my inner struggles, invited me to have lunch with him. “My excellent cook always makes more than enough sandwiches for one person,” he ended. “It will be no imposition.”

And so I did. There was a plate full of sandwiches, with a dish of summer apples stewed in honey. “We’ve been keeping bees,” the rector told me. “Have you tried honey in your tea?” There were also small potatoes baked in milk and grated cheese.

We talked about the village, and I confessed that I’d come to mend fences with Alicia.

He smiled. “She was saying on Sunday last that she wished it had never happened. I think if you go to her door, she will be glad to see you.”

I wasn’t as certain. But I promised I would try.

After our meal, against his advice, I went to knock at the door of the Hart house.

A maid opened it and told me that Mr. and Mrs. Hart were receiving no visitors.

“Will you tell them that Elizabeth Crawford has called and would like to speak with them?”

She went away and after several minutes came back to say that the Harts would see me.

Surprised and grateful, I thanked her and was taken to the small sitting room with its comfortable furnishings and a lovely Turkey carpet.

I could see at once that Mrs. Hart’s eyes were puffy and red from crying. Mr. Hart appeared to have aged in only a matter of weeks.

He said, as I was shown into the room and the maid had closed the door behind me, “Miss Crawford,” and indicated a chair to one side of his own.

I answered at once. “I can’t express what I feel. I wasn’t allowed leave to come home for the trial. I doubt if I could have made a difference if I had. But I wanted to try.”

Mrs. Hart said, “Michael expressly forbade us to attend the trial. He told us that it would be distressing and hurtful, and he didn’t want us to see that. He didn’t want to sit there in the dock and watch our faces. Now I think he knew, even then, what he was intending to do, and that’s why he asked us to stay away. And it was the most horrible shock when the rector came to tell us what had happened. I refused to believe it then, and I still do. But most of Little Sefton feels that we stayed away out of shame for what he’s done. And to make it all even worse, he won’t let us come to see him one last time. I’m unable to sleep, I can’t—we had him from a little boy, and there’s no meanness in Michael. I want him to know that we love him still and would do anything—anything!—to keep him with us.”

“My dear, you mustn’t—” her husband began.

“Don’t tell me not to cry! He was like my own child. How shall I go on, knowing what they’ve done to him?” She turned to me. “You stood up for him, there in the street, when they came for him. I never said a word in his defense—I was so shocked, my tongue seemed as paralyzed as the rest of me. But you kept your wits about you and defended him. I will always be grateful for that, Miss Crawford. You will always be dear to me because you did what I couldn’t.”

I took her hand. “Let me tell you what I think. It may not ease your suffering, but it could explain what happened in that courtroom. Michael was informed while he was in prison that although his shoulder has healed, he won’t regain the use of that arm. I don’t know if that’s true or not. There are trained people who are doing wonders with such wounds. I do know that he isn’t the only solder to feel his life is over because he’s lost the use of a limb or an eye. It isn’t an easy truth to live with. I’d like to believe that he decided then to protect Marjorie’s name and reputation by stopping the trial before it had begun. He’s always loved Marjorie. It would be like him to see this as a noble gesture, a very good reason for dying and ending his own wretchedness.”

Mr. Hart stared at me. “I—If I hadn’t been so blinded by my own grief, I would have seen that for myself. It’s possible. Very possible.” He smiled for the first time, although there were tears in his eyes. “That foolish boy. But dear God, what are we to do?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “But perhaps if we talk about the people who knew Marjorie best, we might find something that could help.”

“Victoria.” Mrs. Hart’s voice was cold and angry. “She tried to ruin Marjorie’s life, and now she’s ruined Michael’s. Did you know, Miss Crawford, that she went to Meriwether Evanson shortly before the marriage, to tell him that Marjorie was very likely illegitimate? He showed her the door, and said that if she ever said as much to any other living soul, he and Marjorie would take her to court for defamation of character. I think she was a little afraid of him after that. He came to Michael afterward to ask what sort of person Victoria was. And Michael told him how she’d alienated Mr. Garrison and Marjorie, to the point that Marjorie went to live in London. Meriwether swore Michael to secrecy, and he never broke his word until a week before he was taken into custody. He wanted us to know what Meriwether had said—that Victoria was evil. To beware of her.”

“Then why did he let her drive him to London?”

“Because he was desperate to go there,” Mr. Hart replied, “and I’m really not comfortable driving such distances now.” He put his hand to his heart as if in explanation. “I asked him to wait a few days, that I’d find someone to take him. But he was impatient, he said there was something he had thought about, that he must ask Helen Calder, although he wasn’t about to tell Victoria his real reason for speaking to her. Michael had been rereading Marjorie’s letters to him, but he didn’t have all of them. He believed Mrs. Calder might remember what he was searching for.”

I leaned forward. “What was it he was hoping to ask her? I expect to see Mrs. Calder tomorrow. Perhaps I can ask her instead.”

“I wish I knew,” he replied. “I didn’t understand the urgency, you see, or I’d have risked the journey myself. I’ve regretted that bitterly. I would have been with him instead.” Michael’s alibi, which Victoria couldn’t—or wouldn’t—give him.

“Could Victoria have been suspicious enough to follow him?” I asked. “If she was jealous of Marjorie, she could have been jealous of Helen Calder as well. She might have jumped to the conclusion that he had used her to see Mrs. Calder.” But even as I said the words, I thought about Mrs. Calder’s long, thin face. And she was a few years older. What was there to be jealous of?

But jealousy didn’t always heed reason.

Small wonder Victoria was eager to testify at the trial. She would have enjoyed twisting the truth if it put Michael Hart in the worst possible light.

“Just how much did Victoria know about Marjorie’s life in London?” I asked after a moment. “Did she go up to London often, after her father’s death?”

“If you want to know what I think,” Mrs. Hart said, “she went to spy on her sister.”

“My dear,” her husband cautioned, “we couldn’t be sure where she was going when she left here.”

“Well, you saw her often enough at the station in Great Sefton. Where else could she have been going at that hour but to London? It isn’t as if trains pass through Great Sefton as often as they do in Waterloo Station or Charing Cross! There are only two a day, the morning train to London and the evening train to Portsmouth.”

“She was fond of the theater and the symphony,” her husband reminded her. “And Mrs. Toller mentioned that Victoria volunteered there, arranging programs for the wounded. I’ve told you before.”

“Yes, that’s all well and good. It doesn’t convince me she wasn’t spying on Marjorie.”

I said, “Perhaps there was a man, someone she cared about.”

But they would have none of that. Not Victoria, they said. They weren’t even certain she’d cared for Michael, except for the fact that he belonged to Marjorie.

“She wanted him because she couldn’t have him,” Mrs. Hart declared. “And what she can’t have, she despises.”

I tried to pin Mr. and Mrs. Hart down to precise dates when they’d seen Victoria in Great Sefton, but too much time had passed.

When I left the Harts, I wondered if Michael had weighed the grief his decision had inflicted on them. Protecting the dead was admirable, but the living counted too.

From there, I went to call on Alicia.

Her face was cool when she answered the door.

I said quickly, before she could shut it again, “Please. I’m so sorry that I made you angry on my last visit. It was wrong of me to exclude you when I spoke to the rector’s cook. I thought I was being wise, and I was only being selfish.” I stopped, seeing no softening in her expression. “I’ve only just come back from France. I couldn’t get leave for Michael’s trial. And he’s to be hanged next week.” I wanted her to know that I hadn’t been in England since the day of our quarrel.

“I was shocked by your behavior when he was taken into custody. To argue with the constable and that man from Scotland Yard on a public street was unseemly. It embarrassed me. After all, I’d introduced you to everyone here.”

I didn’t think that had bothered her as much as my interviewing the rector’s cook on my own. But I said, “It was the only chance I had to speak up. I had to stand up for what I believed to be true at the time.”

“And he confessed, didn’t he? To murdering one woman and attempting to murder another. I couldn’t believe it, but I expect he did it to save his aunt and uncle the ordeal of a trial. At least in that he showed some courage.”

I didn’t argue. What good would it have done?

After a moment she said, “What brings you back to Little Sefton?”

“I came to offer my support to Mr. and Mrs. Hart. They are guilty of nothing, except perhaps for loving Michael and still believing in him.”

“He wasn’t their child. As Victoria has been busy pointing out.”

“I don’t think they consider whose child he was, only that they are losing him before very long.” I hesitated, and then said, “Speaking of Victoria, I hear she was often in London. Did you ever go with her to a play?”

Grudgingly she answered me. “I did once, yes. I didn’t enjoy it very much. I didn’t know anyone there, and I felt guilty enjoying myself while Gareth was in France.”

“I understand that.”

“No, you can’t. You aren’t married. The man you love isn’t likely to be killed in the next push, or at risk of dying in an aid station before you even hear that he’s been wounded.”

I realized then that she hadn’t heard from him for a while. And looking more closely, I could see that she had passed sleepless nights as well.

“I’m sometimes the last caring face they see,” I told her gently. “I often write letters for the dying. I know that their last thoughts are for those they love.”

She burst into tears then, unable to hold them back, burying her face in her hands. “You don’t know. No one can know.”

I took her arm and led her into the house, then sat with her as she cried. After a while I went to the kitchen and found the kettle, put it on, and made a pot of tea. She was quieter when I came back to the sitting room, and drank her tea obediently, sniffling at first, and finally dully sitting there, worn and worried.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a muffled voice. “I’ve been out of sorts, worrying. There’s been no news for weeks and weeks.”

“If there is bad news, you will know. It won’t take weeks and weeks.”

Taking a deep breath, she set her teacup aside. “Thank you, Bess,” she said simply. “And I’m so sorry about Michael. I feel responsible, I introduced you to him. I didn’t dream—”

“No, that’s all right.” I rose to take my leave. “Will you be all right now?”

“Yes, sometimes it just overwhelms me, the worry about Gareth.”

Following me to the door, she added, “I am sorry about Michael. I know you were beginning to care for him. But you’ll forget in time. There will be someone else.”

I didn’t contradict her. I thanked her for the tea and asked her to write to me if she felt like it.

I had reached the walk, heading for my motorcar, when she stopped me.

“Bess?”

I turned.

“I think Victoria was seeing someone in London in the winter. But it must not have come to anything. It was over by the spring.”

“Did you know who it was?”

She shook her head. “I only heard the gossip. Someone told me he was an officer. And Mrs. Leighton swore that he was married. She saw them coming out of a mean little restaurant near Hampstead Heath. Those were her words, ‘a mean little restaurant,’ and she interpreted this as proof he was married, because he hadn’t taken Victoria somewhere nice in London.”

I thanked her, glad we were parting as friends, and walked back to the church, where I’d left my motorcar. I’d just turned the crank and stepped back when someone came up behind me.

I turned, expecting it to be Alicia again, but it was Victoria Garrison.

“I thought that was your vehicle, hidden in the shrubbery where no one would notice it.”

“Hardly the shrubbery. If I’m not mistaken, those are a stand of lilac. What is it you want, Miss Garrison? To gloat?”

“Well, you won’t be marrying Michael Hart. I’ve seen to that.”

I stood there stock-still, feeling my jaw drop. I snapped it shut and tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t tell her how angry I was.

“Do you mean you were so willing to drive Michael to London because you thought he might be falling in love with me?”

“He wanted to go. I accommodated him. I didn’t stab poor Helen, and he did.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Something flickered in her eyes. “How do you know what I feel?” she demanded in a different tone of voice. “How dare you even suggest you know me?”

“You just suggested that you knew me well enough to believe I was in love with Michael Hart and he with me. Well, let me disabuse you of that notion. What drew the two of us together was your sister’s murder. Nothing more, nothing less. I liked Michael, I still like him. But if he were freed tomorrow, I wouldn’t marry him. I’m not in love with him and never will be.”

“Alicia said—” She stopped.

Ah, the power of gossip! And the damage it can do.

“Alicia has been matchmaking. She’s a happily married woman, and she wants everyone to be just as happy, because it’s all she can cling to with Gareth at the Front. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.”

I got behind the wheel, and she came to stand by my door, pinning me there. “I don’t believe you.”

“Perhaps that’s because you were in love yourself not long ago. And like Alicia, expect that everyone else is looking for someone to care about.”

For an instant I thought she was going to step closer and slap me. I could see her hands clenching at her side. A mixture of emotions passed across her face, anger and something else that was barely controlled. I’d wondered if she could kill. And now I knew she could. I drew back a little, but she leaned toward me. After looking around to be sure no one was near, she said through clenched teeth, “Have you ever seen someone die on a gallows? That handsome face will be black and swollen, hardly recognizable, and I hope that’s what you see in your dreams for the rest of your life!”

I caught my breath.

Meriwether Evanson had called Victoria evil. And now I knew he was right.

What she had done to her mother and father, to her sister, what she had hoped to do to Michael, and what she had just said to me, spoke of a deep-seated streak of cruelty.

Driving away before she could change her mind and do something rash, I was glad to see the last of Little Sefton.

I was halfway to London before I was calm enough to go over again what I’d said to Victoria Garrison. I’d been angry, and yes, a little frightened by her, so the words were lost at first. In the end, they came back to me. What I’d said hadn’t angered her—it was the fact that I knew something she wanted to hide.

If Victoria had had a romantic fling in the winter, it hadn’t survived. I couldn’t help but wonder if he, whoever he was, had thrown her over for someone else. Married or not.

I turned the bonnet of my motorcar toward London, and when I got there, I went directly to the flat. It seemed a haven, just now. It was late afternoon, and Mrs. Hennessey was out.

I climbed the stairs with a heavy heart, and reached for the latch of our door, but it opened under my hand. Someone was here.

I walked into the flat, and Mary glanced up from the letter she was writing. After one look at me she frowned.

“Have you lost your last friend, or your last penny?” she demanded, and capped her pen before setting it aside and moving into what we euphemistically called our kitchen, to make a pot of tea.

“I’m in low spirits,” I admitted. “I’ve just been very rude to someone who was rude to me first. And I’m trying to save a good friend from hanging, and I am in the early stages of panic, because he goes to the gallows next week.”

She looked up from measuring the tea and said, “Who’s going to the gallows next week? Anyone I know?”

“Michael Hart. He was convicted of the murder of Serena Melton’s brother’s wife. Marjorie Evanson. And of attacking a distant cousin of Marjorie’s, with the intent to kill.”

“You do have an unusual range of friends, Bess,” she retorted. “I hope you’re saying he’s innocent?”

“God knows. The evidence against him was strong, but the feeling was, he could very well be acquitted. He had a very good barrister—Mr. Forbes for the defense—who was certainly sanguine about his chances. And then to everyone’s amazement and shock, he changed his plea to guilty in the first minutes of the trial.”

“Ah. I remember now. He’s extraordinarily handsome. I saw his photograph in some broadsheet or other.”

“No doubt. They thought it was going to be a notorious, scandalous trial, and instead he disappointed everyone.”

Mary brought the tea to the table, and set out the cups. “Drink this, and then tell me everything from the beginning.”

“You know a part of it—”

“Doesn’t matter. Start at the start. I won’t be able to see any solution if I don’t know it all.”

I didn’t like telling Mary all about the Garrisons and the Harts and the Meltons. She knew Serena, after all. But Mary is the soul of discretion, and what I said to her would be treated like the confidence it was.

The afternoon had faded into early dusk by the time I’d finished, and the teapot was empty, the biscuits she’d found in the cupboard, hard and stale as they were, had been finished as well. There’s something about eating a sweet that raises the spirits.

I sat back, tired by the tale and tired from the emotions of the day and the long drive. “Well. There you have it.”

She picked up the cups and the teapot to do the washing up, and it was while she was working that she said, “I hesitate to tell you this, Bess, but you’re right. The evidence is very strong against your Lieutenant Hart.”

“He isn’t mine,” I said testily, “although everyone is busy insisting that he is.”

“All the same.”

“Yes, I know. But there’s just enough doubt…” My voice trailed away. Then I said, “But why do I have this sense of failure? I’m a fairly good judge of character, Mary. How could I be so wrong about the man?”

“I expect the reason is that you don’t believe strongly in his motive. That he killed Marjorie Evanson because she was seeing someone else. But he knew her husband, and it seems to me that a decent man wouldn’t kill a married woman because she’d been dithering with someone else instead of him. He was more likely to lecture her on her behavior and make certain that the man was out of her life altogether. Simon would have done that, wouldn’t he? If you stood in Marjorie’s shoes? Well, you aren’t married of course, but you know what I mean.”

It was typically convoluted—Mary was good at convoluting—but she was also very sensible and practical. It was what made her an excellent nurse.

“I do see.” I was already feeling better. “And even if he went to Helen Calder’s house, I can’t understand why he would have a reason to kill her. But that’s the problem, she can remember that he was coming, but not why, or if he was the one who stabbed her.”

“Who knew he was going to her house?”

“His aunt and uncle. Unless of course Victoria was suspicious and followed him.”

“Who would Victoria tell?” Mary asked. “If she saw him at the Calder house and was angry enough to do a mischief?”

“I—I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “Why would she tell anyone?”

“You said there was speculation that she’d been seeing someone in London. A man. What if he was the same man who killed Marjorie?”

“That makes no sense.”

“It would do, if she has made a practice of spoiling Marjorie’s chances.”

“But he wasn’t the one who got Marjorie pregnant.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“But I can. I told you, I spoke to Raymond Melton while I was in France. He was the man I saw with her at the railway station that evening. She was dead only a few hours later. And he was on his way to Portsmouth. He couldn’t possibly have killed her. We’re back where we began.”

“Didn’t you say he denied leaving that train?”

“Yes.”

“What if he’s telling the truth? What if he wasn’t her lover?”

“I saw the way Marjorie was clinging to him. In distress—despair.” I gave it some thought. “You’re saying that he was there at the station with her, and she’d told him the truth about her circumstances—but he wasn’t her lover.”

I’d dismissed that idea earlier.

I went on slowly, “But if she did indeed confide in him, and he wasn’t the man responsible for getting her pregnant, then he must have known who that man was. That’s why he was there.” I remembered the small flicker of satisfaction in Raymond Melton’s eyes when I confronted him in the ward. He had told me the literal truth—but not the whole truth. “And she contacted him because the other man refused to speak to her after the affair was over.”

“That happens,” Mary said. “All too often, in fact. Remember Nan Wilson, who was in love with that Frenchman who was here with the diplomatic corps? He was some sort of military attaché. And when he went back to France, and she found herself in trouble, he sent her letters back unopened, marked address unknown.”

I did remember.

It would explain so much. I’d wondered why Marjorie Evanson had let herself be seduced by Raymond Melton. After all, her own father had been the same sort of cold and uncaring man. I understood why he’d offered no comfort, kissed her cheek so perfunctorily. I remembered how he’d walked away without looking back—even if the love affair was over—to make certain she was all right. He had done his duty, he had listened to her pleas for help, told her he could do nothing about her situation, and calmly boarded his train.

It was such a calculated and callous act that I was stunned.

Who would Raymond Melton do such a service for?

The answer was simple.

His brother Jack.