“She has a point,” Captain Barclay put in. “With a big push coming, Morton would have been anxious to know the matter was settled. Either one-or both-could have died. One of my men asked for leave to see his widowed mother. He wanted me to sign the request before we fought. I did, but he was killed in the second wave.”
“I must go up to London tomorrow,” my father said. “I’ll see what I can discover.”
Simon hadn’t been in the house, much to my surprise. What’s more, my mother had put me off when I had asked to go and visit him in his cottage. She was also rather vague about his condition.
And so when my father took the Captain off to the clinic the next morning and my mother went to see a woman who had lost her husband at Passchendaele, I slipped out of the house and walked through the back garden and the wood to Simon’s cottage.
It was small but comfortable, and it had suited him well. Filled with well-read books and memorabilia from his years in the Army, it had a masculine air that I’d always found pleasant.
Coming up the walk, I kept an eye to the windows, expecting him to see me approaching and pretend not to be at home. My mother was right; men were often not very good at waiting to heal, impatient and eager to be about their business again. And I suspected that he probably wouldn’t be pleased to have me know he had not taken as good care of himself as he should.
I tapped at the door, waiting to be admitted. But he didn’t answer the summons or come to the door. I tapped again, in case he was sleeping, and when he still didn’t open the door to me, I was angry enough to open it myself, and standing on the threshold, I called his name.
“There’s no use in hiding,” I added. “I know you’re here.”
But my voice echoed in the cottage, and I knew it must be empty. Simon wasn’t there.
Disbelieving, I walked in and searched. The bed was made up, there were no newspapers neatly stacked by the table where he ate his meals, and when I looked in the wardrobe, I saw that his valise was gone.
Frightened, I went out of the cottage and shut the door behind me before almost running back to the house.
When my mother came in an hour later, I was waiting for her.
“Where is Simon?” I asked. “He’s not here, and he’s not in the cottage. What is it you’re keeping from me?”
She set down her basket, her expression suddenly kind, and I had the most dreadful premonition.
I wanted to cover my ears or tell her not to answer my question. But she was already saying the words, and there was no way to stop them now.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MY DEAR, HE’S been very ill-”
“I was there when he was brought in, I know how serious his wound was. I thought-I was told you were nursing him. I took that to mean that he was here, or at the cottage.”
“He did come here when he was well enough. He signed himself out of hospital and a driver brought him to Somerset. But there was infection, you see, and his arm-we thought for a time he would lose it. Dr. Gaines cleaned it as best he could, but Simon is still running a fever. He doesn’t always remember where he is.”
“Dr. Gaines? Then Simon is at the clinic.”
“Yes, but he specifically asked-I wasn’t to tell you.”
“Why did he sign himself out of hospital? He knew the risk he’d be taking.”
“There was some pressing matter he had to deal with. He came here to use your father’s telephone. He didn’t have access to one in Portsmouth. Too many ears, he said.”
I remembered his urgent need to reach England, and how I had given him morphine to keep him quiet. Biting my lip, I considered all the possible outcomes of gangrene.
“I’m going to Longleigh House.”
“Bess, is that such a good idea? Simon-”
“I’m a nurse, Mother, I am very good at what I do, as Dr. Gaines himself told me. I could be able to help. Can Father pull a few strings? I need an interim posting there while my situation is being considered. I can’t walk in and ask to be allowed to help with a single surgical case.”
“Yes, I’m sure he can see to that. If not, then I’m sure Dr. Gaines will be able to arrange it.” She started toward the telephone closet, then stopped. “If it’s any consolation, I think you’re doing the right thing. Simon made me promise, you see. And I don’t break promises to Simon Brandon lightly.” She turned on her heel and left me standing there.
Several hours and countless telephone conversations later, I was told to report to the clinic on Wednesday morning at nine. That was two days away. I didn’t know how I was to keep myself from pacing the floor into the night.
I found my mother in the kitchen, scrubbing the tabletop while our Cook stood there frowning at her, tight-lipped and clearly troubled.
I said, “We’re going to find Sabrina Morton. I don’t know how we’ll manage it, but we will.”
Her face brightened. “I believe your father left her direction on his desk. He hadn’t decided to give it to you.”
“Why not?”
“I think he was worried about this business with Major Carson. That you might discover something speaking to her that would take you back to France. Darling, Simon is fighting for his life, and that nice Captain Barclay has reinjured his leg. Your father is looking for some way to keep you safe. Until then, he wants you to stay in England.”
I remembered that arm around my neck in the darkness as I was about to wash my face. And the way the wing of that motorcar brushed against me in Rouen. But I said resolutely, “I don’t need protection. Dr. Hicks and his people were keeping an eye on me. They would again.”
“You might not be posted there next time. And your father has learned that you weren’t expected in Ypres at all. Once you left the security of Dr. Hicks’s aid station, you were vulnerable. And you said yourself that he believed the message was completely genuine. He could be wrong another time as well.”
Dr. Hicks had done his best for me, but he was overworked and exhausted like the rest of us. He couldn’t be expected to ward off every danger.
“Then let’s go speak to Sabrina. She can’t do me any harm, and we just might learn something that would put an end to this frightful business.”
And so it was that we found ourselves on the road to Cornwall. I’d thought that Sabrina lived in Oxfordshire, but my father didn’t often make mistakes, and if he said Cornwall, then Cornwall it was. Because of the distance, we had planned to stay the night.
We drove through Devon, crossed the Tamar, and set out across Cornwall to the seaside village of Fowey, which actually sat above the river for which it was named. Taking a room at the Fowey Hotel, we had dinner there on the charming terrace overlooking the estuary where the river met the sea.
Afterward, as the evening was fine, we walked down toward the harbor. Unlike other harbor towns, Fowey had very little flat land along the riverbank for a settlement to grow, and so it was built upward, a maze of gardens and paths and houses and cottages cheek by jowl and leading ever downward until we reached St. Fimbarrus Church, and from there it was only a few steps to the water.
The clerk at the hotel had told us that The Mermaid Inn was along the water, and more accessible by boat than by foot. But we strolled along the river for a bit and watched the ferry plow toward Polruan across the way, and then saw the sign for The Mermaid. A narrow walkway bridged the gap from the small restaurant where we stood to the entrance to the inn, and led up steep stairs to the doorway. From there I could see just below where boats could tie up.
The inn had seen better days, thanks to the war and the fact that many of the men who brought their own boats or yachts to this place were now fighting in France.
There was a woman behind the desk who watched our approach without enthusiasm, as if she knew we weren’t looking for lodgings. I moved slightly ahead of my mother and said pleasantly, “I believe Mrs. William Morton lives here?”