Charles Todd - An Impartial Witness

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.