Charles Todd - An Unmarked Grave

Then I’d have to go alone. There must be some way to do it safely.

I’d need a reason to travel. I couldn’t hope to search properly if I was sent to one station and one station only. What’s more, I could be found all too easily.

With a sigh, I came to a conclusion and went quietly down the stairs to retrieve my letter.

Upstairs again, I opened it and added a second sheet, outlining the conclusions I’d drawn while sitting at my window.

I didn’t think the Colonel Sahib would be happy with this addendum, but I had a feeling he’d see the reasoning behind it and agree, however reluctantly.

I tiptoed down to the foyer again to leave the resealed envelope in the basket, and I was just on the point of going back up the stairs when a movement in the dimly lit passage to my left caught my eye.

For the past half hour I’d been dealing with murder and murderers. I froze, waiting to see who was there, but no one came forward, not Matron, not the night duty orderly, not one of the sisters on evening watch.

As my eyes adjusted to the dimness, I could see a shadow at the end of the passage, where someone had halted and was waiting for me to go on about my own business.

I debated shouting for help. But I’d feel silly if it was only one of the officers who found it hard to sleep and who sometimes walked off whatever nightmares kept him awake. But that was generally in the small hours, two or three in the morning.

I moved forward as silently as I could, keeping to the wall as much as possible. I’d exchanged my boots for slippers, as I often did off duty, embroidered silk ones from Benares in India. Halfway to the arch where I’d seen the shadow, I listened and could actually hear someone breathing.

Flattening myself closer to the wall, I went on, cutting the distance in half again and finally, holding my own breath, I was there.

Movement again on the far side of the arch, someone turning and softly heading back the way he’d come. Even listening as hard as I was, I almost didn’t catch it.

Softly-someone in bare feet. I was sure of it.

I was through the arch in a burst of speed, and just in time I saw whoever it was disappearing through a door into the room where ambulatory officers gathered to play cards or chess or read.

I was fast on his heels, opening the door he’d left ajar so as not to make a sound closing it.

The room was dark, but because the night was warm the windows at the far end stood open, giving onto one of the gardens. I saw the silhouette just ahead of me spin to face me as I said, “Who’s there?” At the same time I drew matches out of my pocket and struck one. It flared and I found myself staring at Simon Brandon’s pain-lined face.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing?” I demanded, anger replacing the fear that had driven me to follow the shadow this far.

“Bess,” he said in some relief. “I thought it might be Matron at the stairs.”

“And so it should have been,” I said. “You should be in your bed, recovering-”

“I can’t,” he said. “If I lie on that cot for another day, I shan’t be able to walk at all.”

“And whose fault is that?” I demanded.

“Yes, I know. Duty, and all that. The last two nights, I’d slip out and walk for a while. They won’t allow me to try during the day, but it doesn’t damage my shoulder, after all. It just brings back the strength in my limbs.”

I knew he was right, but yet I couldn’t get over my anger. It was a measure of my earlier fright.

He smiled. “Dodging you used up more energy than I realized. Will you give me a shoulder back to the ward?”

I took a deep breath. “Sit down, Simon. Please. We’ll walk back in a few minutes. Rest.”

He sank down in one of the chairs, and although he tried not to let me see what a relief it was, I could read him as well as he could read me.

After a while, he said, “Why were you following me?”

“I thought-I don’t know what I thought. That someone was sleepwalking or had come in through the windows-” I stopped, not wanting to go down that road.

“Does France still worry you?”

“A little,” I admitted. “But it will pass.”

“True enough.” He leaned his head back against the chair, then said, “Did I babble when I was unconscious? Did anyone comment on anything?”

“You were in the Northwest Frontier. Not in France. And so you were speaking Urdu most of the time. I don’t think anyone else here understands one word in ten of the language.”

“Thank you. I knew something I shouldn’t like to have gossiped about here or anywhere else.”

“The staff doesn’t know how you came to be in this clinic. They don’t even know your rank. It’s just assumed that you’re an officer like the rest of the patients. Dr. Gaines has listed you as a special case because of your shoulder. He sometimes takes on very difficult cases, that isn’t a matter for comment. And he needed to keep you under his eye.”

“Is Barclay here? Has he said anything to anyone?”

“You can trust him to be discreet. I expect one of the reasons you’re kept isolated at the far end of the surgical ward is to prevent other patients from talking to you and asking more questions than you’d care to answer.”

“I’m grateful,” he said. These were questions he would never have asked my father. But he felt he could ask me, and I was glad I could put his mind at ease.

“You frightened us, Sergeant-Major,” I said lightly. He understood.

“I’m sorry. It wasn’t my intention. There are some matters more important than one’s life.”

I wanted to tell him that there was nothing I could think of more important than his. And I was still refusing to accept that he had been given orders that could well have meant his death. I had been born and brought up in an Army household, I understood duty and sacrifice as well as any man in the Army or any woman married to a soldier. Waste I could not endure. This wasn’t something I could talk about even with my mother. Melinda Crawford, a distant cousin, would understand. She had seen a very different war in the Great Indian Mutiny. She had lost a beloved husband to war. I felt like putting through a telephone call to her and telling her the whole story. But I couldn’t. The telephones were not safe for confessions of that sort.

I said, “Are you ready to return to your cot?”

“Yes, I think I am.” He got unsteadily to his feet, and I gave him my arm. After the first several steps he’d regained his strength, and it was an uneventful return to the ward.

To our relief, the sister on night duty was about to collect the medicine tray, and we waited in a doorway until she had gone. Simon walked the last distance to his cot himself without my assistance, and I’d just seen him safely under the sheet when Sister Roberts returned to the ward.

Peering down the length of it, she said, “Sister Crawford?”

I replied, “Indeed. I was passing on my way to my quarters and I thought I heard someone ask for water.”

“Who was it?”

I was already halfway up the ward. “I expect he was calling out in his sleep.”

“Oh, yes, of course, that must be the surgical case from this afternoon,” she answered, coming to look down on the sleeping man. “He’s not allowed anything to drink yet. I’ll just find a cloth and dip it in cool water. That should help.”

I knew better than to offer to do it for her. I wished her good night and went on to my room.

It had been a long day, and to my surprise I slept well. It would be at least two days, possibly three, before I had an answer to my letter.

My father was difficult to convince.

He said, as we walked under the trees, “Have you mentioned this to Brandon?”