“There you are, my dear. Come in. Will he live?”
“We believe he will.”
“Good,” Captain Barclay said grimly.
Trelawney said, “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’d just as soon not let the Sergeant out of my sight until he’s in custody. Wounded or no.”
Constable Medford said, “I’ll go with you.” He thanked my father, nodded to me, and accompanied Trelawney into the passage.
I shut the door behind them and smiled at the Colonel Sahib. He looked tired. For that matter it had been a long and trying day for all of us. But he was safe, and that made up for everything else.
He’d been studying my face as well. He said now, “I believe the Sergeant-Major will be very pleased to learn that you are as fine a shot as even he could have hoped.”
Captain Barclay frowned, uncertain how to take the remark.
But I understood it. High praise from the Colonel to his daughter. I couldn’t ask for better.
I was about to say something on the order of “It appears that we’ve been very fortunate,” when I remembered that in all the excitement neither Iris nor our Cook had appeared. Julia Palmer’s maid had been shot. Had Sergeant Mitchell got to them before he found my father?
“Dear God!” I ran out of the room and began to call, but there was no answer. I hurried down the back stairs to the kitchen, my anxiety mounting. And in nearly the last place I looked, I found them.
They had locked themselves into the butler’s pantry, where my mother kept her tea service and table silver and other valuables. I had called through the door, heard nothing, and was about to head for the attics when the heavy key turned and they came out, faces pale and eyes wide.
“What’s happened, Miss? Did we hear gunshots? Is everyone all right?”
“How did you know to lock yourselves in?” I asked. “Did my father warn you?”
“Oh, no, Miss, we talked about your telephone call, then your mother telephoned from the clinic and told us not to go to the door if anyone came. When I heard a motorcar coming up the drive, we decided to come down here and stay until help arrived.”
From the way the two motorcars had been left in the drive, my father had arrived first, and he must have gone into the study without any warning that Sergeant Mitchell was on his way.
I felt ill, thinking about it.
Surely he’d seen the color of the man’s eyes when he came through the study door. Surely that had alerted him to his danger.
Private Morton was waiting when I came back up the stairs.
I thought, after so much exertion, he must be in great pain, and I said, “It’s best if you stay out of sight. Let the doctor look at your wound, and then I’ll find a way to get you to Wales as soon as it’s safe. No one will think to look for you in the footman’s old rooms. They’ve been empty since the war began.”
“I want to go back to France,” he said. “I don’t know why I thought my father would want a coward creeping home, even to work the farm. Can you find a way to get me there? And a satisfactory explanation for my disappearance? I don’t want to be shot for deserting, much as I deserve it. I’d be grateful. I’ve let everyone down. I can’t live with that.”
I wondered what had made him change his mind. And he answered that without my asking.
“I must have run mad.”
But I thought he had felt like so many men had, that the only end to their suffering would be death, and home seemed so very far away and unreachable.
CHAPTER TWENTY
IT WASN’T UNTIL much later that my father and I could talk quietly. Sergeant Mitchell had been removed from this house, and Iris was already on her hands and knees, scrubbing his blood out of the carpet. She’d taken an instant dislike to him as he was being carried out the door on a makeshift stretcher, with Trelawney, Constable Medford, and Dr. Everett hovering in the background.
“Vicious, that’s what he is. I could see it in his face.”
I wasn’t certain that she could, for his eyes were for a mercy closed again. I’d seen the look of absolute hatred in them when I had stepped into the study to tell Dr. Everett that the ambulance had arrived. He hadn’t got what he wanted, after all, Sergeant Mitchell. And I was quite happy to be the person who had thwarted him.
We were sitting together in my mother’s morning room. The Colonel had personally searched the motorcar the Sergeant had been driving, and he had found the name of the true owner as well as an officer’s kit that Sergeant Mitchell had brought to England with him as part of his disguise.
He opened it now, and I saw that beneath the extra clothing it contained personal items-toothbrush and powder, shaving brush and straight razor, a cake of soap, the small box of thread and needles that most soldiers carried with them, several boiled sweets, and a silver frame with a photograph of the girl left behind in England. A very young Julia Baldwin. Digging deeper, my father found an oiled packet. He pulled it out and opened it. There was a worn Testament on top and, under it, a book bound in Moroccan leather. Even that wasn’t unusual, for many soldiers as well as officers carried a favorite volume with them. Shakespeare, a treasury of English verse, the works of a favorite poet-it varied with each man’s taste. Something to read during the crushing boredom waiting for the next attack or to steady the nerves in the long hours before an assault.
The Colonel Sahib took out the volume, opened it at random, and then seemed to be riveted by what he could see written on the page. Opposite him, I sat and waited.
“It’s a journal,” he said slowly. “And if I’m right about the handwriting, it belonged to Vincent.” He leafed through a few more pages and then passed it to me.
I also chose a page at random, and read, next to the date, Attack came just before dawn.
There followed every scrap of information he could remember: the length of the attack, the number of Germans in each wave, ground won or lost, which German regiment had been involved, number of casualties on both sides, weather conditions, whether or not gas was used, how many men were sent to the aid station, whether there had been air or artillery support, and, finally, strength in numbers remaining after the attack. It was an impressive accounting, and I could see why my father had believed that Vincent Carson would one day be the Colonel.
Turning a few more pages, I discovered a copy of a letter written to Julia. I didn’t read it. Instead I went to the beginning of the journal to see what name was inscribed on the board. But there was none, only a scribble that seemed to make no sense-unless one had been in India and recognized it.
It was the date when Vincent Carson received his commission, written in Hindi, and below that a copy of the inscription on a sword that hung in the Officers’ Mess wherever the regiment was stationed. No evening ended without a toast repeating it.
I die at the pleasure of my God. I serve at the pleasure of my King.
It was as personal as a signature. Sergeant Mitchell, a farmer’s son from Dorset, had never served in India. But Vincent Carson had. With this journal in the Sergeant’s possession, we could show positively that he had killed the Major.
After a moment, I said, “Julia will be pleased to have it. But what of the other Julia-Julia Palmer? Did her father know she was being courted by Sergeant Mitchell before she met Lieutenant Palmer?”
“I doubt it. It was my doing that young Palmer went to Dorset in the first place. And he was most persuasive. Captain Baldwin agreed to come out of retirement. Sadly, it cost him his life. We were fairly certain Captain Baldwin was murdered in 1916. But we could never discover who his killer was. Until now.”
“That’s why the cause of death was listed as a Zeppelin raid.”
“Yes. We didn’t want it to be generally known.”
“And Simon’s spy? What’s become of him?”