Charles Todd - An Unmarked Grave

Ross Morton shifted. “That’s Hugh,” he said. “Nine months younger than Will and a hothead into the bargain. The image of his mother’s own Da. The one who went down the mines and lived to tell about it. A fighter he was. Mary’s father. I never quite got my mind around that boy. I couldn’t see how he could be so much like his grandda, and so unlike me.”

You could almost imagine him questioning the boy’s paternity, something he must have done a thousand times over the years. And yet somehow I had a feeling he’d never doubted his wife.

“A changeling,” he said, finally, as if in echo of my own thoughts. “They used to talk about that. The old ones. I never put much stock in it, until Hugh. And then I knew it could be true enough. I just don’t know how he got to be in the Morton cradle.”

“But you said-Hugh’s alive still? Along with David and the twins and Llewellyn?”

Morton took a deep breath. “They tell me he’s missing. There was the telegram saying at first that he was dead. And then a letter from his commanding officer to say he was among the missing after a push that was repelled. I don’t understand why they couldn’t find him. Do you?” He swung around to stare at Captain Barclay, as if he were to blame for the confusion. “Hugh wouldn’t be easy to kill. And he wouldn’t care to be penned up behind a fence in a prison camp. It would drive him mad. He was always a roamer, Hugh was, and I can’t see the Army changing that. Why haven’t they found my son?”

I could hear again the little boy telling us that his father had lost his head and had been buried without it.

The Captain was saying, “It’s not so easy. There’s shelling before an assault, and then there’s the attack across No Man’s Land. Men die, they’re shot, they’re blown apart, they’re wounded and fall into a shell hole where the body may not be found for days. No certainty, you see. The sergeant calls the roll and no one answers. And no one saw him fall. If he hasn’t already been taken behind the lines to be treated for wounds, they can only wait and see if he turns up. He could even be a prisoner. If he is, word comes back after a time, and his status is changed. I’m sorry. But that’s how it is.”

“A damned poor way to run a war, if you don’t know where your own men are,” Morton said contemptuously. “While families sit and wait for news, and none comes. At least not any good news.”

He turned back to me. “Do you think Sabrina might want to come and bring up the boy here? For Will’s sake?”

“I don’t know,” I said, wishing fervently that I hadn’t raised false hopes with my invented reason for coming here. “Perhaps if you write to her again?”

“I wrote once. I’m not likely to write again.” I could hear the stiff-necked pride in his voice. He’d offered his home and all he had to Will’s widow. There was nothing more to say.

He couldn’t understand as I could that Sabrina had been brought up in a very different world. She would break here, on this farm, cooking and cleaning and washing for the men of the house. With no hope of escape, no chance for a life of her own. And yet I could see that a boy could run wild here when not at his lessons or doing the everyday tasks assigned to him, and grow up as his uncles did. Compared to that narrow little hotel in Fowey where no one came on holiday now because of the war, with the danger of drowning not far from the door, it offered much.

I said, “I think perhaps your son’s death is still a shock to her. To Sabrina.”

“She has a son to care for,” he said stubbornly. “My grandson. He may be too young to know or care now, but one day he’ll want to see where his father came from, and it’s likely there’ll be none of us left to tell him. If this war goes on for much longer and they’re all dead, I won’t see any reason to stay.”

He nodded toward his cows. “I have them to milk and feed. I don’t have time to give over to wishful thinking. I’ll bid you good day, Sister. Captain.”

And he walked past us, calling to his cows. They formed a line as tidy as any drawn with a rule, and followed him into the barn.

Captain Barclay nodded to me and I turned the motorcar to drive away.

As I did so, I happened to see, in an upper window of the farmhouse, the thin, drawn face of the son who’d lost his leg.

I’d seen too many like him to have high hopes for his survival. If there was no gun in the house, there was always the shallow stream or any of a number of ways to end the pain.

I was torn between wishing Hugh Morton was not a murderer and would come home to his father, and thinking that if Hugh took after his mother, as Will did, then he too had those pale, pale eyes.

Captain Barclay said as we once more drove over the narrow little bridge, “Hugh’s alive. His father doesn’t want to hope. And there’ve been no letters. But he believes Hugh is too much like his grandfather to have been killed so easily by the Germans.”

And I had, reluctantly, to agree with him.

THAT EVENING, AFTER the motorcar had been returned to its proper place and I’d thanked Dr. Gaines for the use of it, I went up to my room and began a letter home to my mother.

It was very simple, my letter.

I told her that Simon was steadily improving and that meanwhile I’d enjoyed a picnic with Captain Barclay.

I never mentioned going to Wales. I wrote that it was sad to hear that Will’s brother was missing and that there was still no news of him all these weeks since it was reported.

It would suffice to inform my father of what I had discovered.

After I’d set my letter in the basket for the morning post, I went back to my room and sat by the window, looking out into the night. There were three people dead. All I could be certain of was that the same man had killed all three. He’d nearly succeeded in killing me as well.

What’s more, I’d rashly promised Mrs. Wilson that I’d try to take away the stigma of her husband’s suicide. I still felt strongly about that. It was cruel that a woman and her daughter had to live with a lie. But I’d made little enough progress.

Still, I’d learned how Major Carson must have been surprised and killed. And Private Wilson as well.

When I’d felt that arm around my throat, it was frightening, and I’d fought desperately to live. I expect that, even caught by surprise, Major Carson and Private Wilson must have fought too. Both were tall men, but slender in build. And their attacker? Remembering the size of the elder Ross Morton, the width of his shoulders, and the power in his body even in middle age, I realized that if Hugh was anything like his father, I’d been unbelievably lucky to have survived. But then whoever it was had needed to kill me as silently as possible, and that bucket, rolling and clanging across the muddy ground, had put paid to that.

I shivered. If my booted foot hadn’t found it and given it a hard kick, I could very well be dead now, not sitting in Somerset watching the moon rise.

Would Hugh come to England looking to finish what he’d begun?

I couldn’t really answer that. But I realized with a sudden sinking feeling in my stomach that my arrival at the Morton farm might have changed the future. Assuming that Hugh was still alive and learned that I’d been there, asking questions.

Was Sabrina safe? I’d used her name.

On the whole, I thought she would be.

But he might well be goaded into searching for me because he suspected why I had been there.

If, of course, the killer was German, what happened in Wales would have no bearing on my life or anyone else’s.

I’d have to go back to France. Simon couldn’t accompany me, and Captain Barclay wasn’t fit to be released for duty either.