The Pretty Little Box Read online

  But you haven’t, have you? Not in this carriage full of the injured and dying. And you’ve been a thief as well. The voice of his conscience was loud in his ears, and he tried to shut it off, so that he didn’t have to hear it.

  The conductor was shouting from somewhere forward, calling for a priest. He shrunk farther into his seat, trying to ignore the plea for help.

  The voice of his conscience grew louder and he clapped his hands over his ears, bending forward as if in pain. He wasn’t a priest now, he couldn’t comfort the dying! He had no right—they needed to believe they were being saved. And it would be a sham.

  People from the nearest village were running across the fields toward the tracks. He could hear their voices as they came to help. He opened the carriage door and stepped out into the cloudy day, and simply walked away, taking nothing with him but the little book.

  Her husband finally caught up with him in the third village he’d walked through in as many days. He was just coming out of a tea shop, and her husband waited. There were too many people about to call out to him. The man followed his former priest at a distance, and when they were well away from the last straggle of houses, out of sight of church spires and curious sheep, he caught up with his quarry.

  Not far from where they were standing, a stream sang as it ran over rocks fallen from the higher ground above. Although they couldn’t see it, the sound it made served to cover their raised voices.

  “She never loved me,” the priest protested as the argument began to get out of hand. There was almost a whine in his voice. He hadn’t made it to London, and he hadn’t found a way to serve. The lovely book in his pocket seemed by turns to mock and torment him. He hated it and he needed it. As he had both hated and needed the woman who had betrayed him. He was feeling too sorry for himself to notice the rage in his interrogator’s eyes. “And no, I never slept with her. I wanted to, but I never did.”

  The cuckolded husband didn’t believe him. And he was too much in love with his wife to blame her. She had been the victim, this ex-priest her pursuer.

  The husband would tell himself later that he hadn’t intended to kill. That he’d brought the ball peen hammer with him for self-defense. But it wasn’t self-defense, it was murder.

  He undressed the priest and tossed his body down into the singing water. Then he began the long walk home. The hammer he left under the hayrick where he’d slept peacefully that night, untroubled by what he’d done in the afternoon

  Anything that might identify the priest he took with him to bury in some distant place. He was tempted by the little book, but he was afraid his wife might recognize it and begin to suspect why he’d gone away so suddenly.

  He couldn’t risk that. He considered selling it, to profit from what he’d done. But that also might lead the police back to him.

  And then the husband thought of a far more satisfying use of the pretty little box.

  No one would know that these ordinary garments had belonged to a defrocked priest. He’d be buried in them because they were all he had. Except for the little box with its angels and apostles on every page. It would be put into the coffin too. And it would lie there on his body to torment him through all eternity: This was what I was, and can be no more.

  Taking his soul as the cold river water had taken his body.

  They found his body after they’d found his clothing neatly stacked by the river. Coat, shirt, trousers, stockings, boots.

  There was no name. Whatever identification he’d had was missing, as if he had not wished to be known. There was, however, a small beautiful box, with an equally beautiful book inside it.

  The Constable who had been called in, looked at the quality of the man’s clothing and at the little box, and said to the doctor who had been summoned, “He must have come from a good family. Have a look at this.”

  Standing over the corpse, he said, “Dear God. Good thing he didn’t take it into the river with him. It would have been such a waste.”

  “Suicide then?” the Constable asked.

  “There is some bruising, but I expect that came from the river. It’s turbulent just below here, rocks and the like. Doesn’t appear to be anything more than that. What shall we do with this?”

  “We’ll put an advert in the papers and alert the Yard. Someone may come along to identify him. We’ll keep it safe until then.” He looked down at the body. “Poor sod. I wonder what drove him to it.”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know. I’ll send the undertaker to bring in him in.” The doctor nodded and walked back to his horse.

  A year later, when Constable Donaldson was killed in action in France, his mother went through his belongings and gave most of his clothing to the church for distribution to the poor. Her son had little enough left to show for ten years as a policeman. Some money put aside, which the undertakers would take, a good watch, a sturdy pair of boots. There was his helmet and uniform, of course, and she thought he’d have liked being buried in that uniform, rather than the King’s. But the Army had had the last word there. She offered them to the older man who had been sent to replace her son, and he was grateful for them. The boots didn’t fit.

  There was the little book, of course. She found it in the top drawer of the chest by his bed. How he’d come by it, she didn’t know. He wasn’t one for reading, and he went to services of a Sunday to show a proper face to the world. Not religious, precisely, but certain of the rightness of being seen there every week, part of his duty to the village.

  She took it with her after she’d cleaned out the little room above the police station where her son had lived. The furniture the incoming Constable was grateful for too, although she kept the quilt from her son’s bed. She had made it for him herself, out of the scraps she’d saved from her work as a seamstress. Her needle had kept them in food and clothes since her husband had been killed in a farming accident. She had never learned to read, of course, having gone to work young to help out her parents, and then married at seventeen. Well, that wasn’t completely true, she could read enough to make her way in life, but the fancy script in the little book, elegantly shaped and with flourishes on the capitals, was beyond her.

  What had possessed him to buy such a thing? She wished she knew. And how had he come by the money in the first place?

  And then she had a horrible thought. Had he taken it from the corpse by the river? The dead man they’d pulled out of the water had seemed to trouble her son more than most of the bodies he’d seen. He’d told her once he sometimes dreamed of the youngish man with the soft fair hair tangled in roots and wet leaves. There must be a mother grieving somewhere…

  “Didn’t seem right for one that young to take his own life. I couldn’t get it out of my head, that he must have a family somewhere. But he didn’t want them to know, did he, what he’d done? He saw to it that he had no name. And I wondered what could be so bad that even his parents couldn’t forgive him?”

  Well, Harry had seen far worse carnage in France since then. He’d written several times about the haunting sights he’d witnessed. I thought a policeman’s life showed him the worst that people could do to each other. But I was wrong, Ma. This is what hell must look like.

  She didn’t like to keep the little box with its pretty book. Not if her son had come by it dishonestly. She found that hard to believe, but as long as the little box sat on the shelf in her parlor, she couldn’t help but doubt. She told herself that if no one had ever claimed the poor young man’s body, there was no one to claim the box either. That gave her some comfort. Still, Harry’d never shown it to her, and she’d only found it by chance amongst his clean handkerchiefs. Not hidden, precisely. But not downstairs in the Constable’s desk drawer either. That was what troubled her.

  In the end, that spring of 1916, she gave it to the church fete. Anonymously, of course. That way there would be no accusations against her son, no tarnishing of his name. S
he did notice, when the day of the fete came, that the little box was marked very high.

  That worried her more, and she didn’t stand around to see who might pay that much for it.

  Miss Cunningham spotted the little box almost the minute she stepped into the stall. It was where the more precious items were for sale, bits of china and a piece of Coalport that had a tiny chip in one of the leaves. There was also a sandalwood fan, a Paisley shawl, and a lace parasol that had yellowed with age but nevertheless was in good condition.

  Miss Oglethorpe hadn’t yet arrived to help with the money tin, and so Miss Cunningham lifted the little box and examined it surreptitiously, keeping it out of sight under the stall shelf.

  She knew at once what it was, having had a very expensive governess who had taken her—with her father’s permission—to London and various museums.

  It was quite real, she was certain of that. The quality of the workmanship spoke for itself. And the price was outrageously low—twenty pounds. But twenty pounds she did not have. Her father had always kept her short of money, believing that too much of it led to unpleasant temptations. If she wanted a new bonnet or even a new pair of gloves, she was forced to ask for it. Not that he refused her, but he must know how every penny was spent. “Your husband will expect you to be careful with his money, and if you have never been indulged at home, you will not expect to be indulged as a wife.”

  A Victorian prude whose view of life saw sin lurking in every direction. It made her wonder sometimes how he’d spent his own youth, to be so deeply suspicious.

  Of course she had wanted to marry, if only to get out from beneath his thumb, but she was not so foolish as to jump at any offer made to her. Most of them with an eye to the money she would bring with her. What she wanted was a taste of freedom, and most of the young men of her acquaintance were hardly likely to take that view of marriage. And then the war had come along, and every eligible (in her father’s opinion) male had enlisted. What was left was under seventeen and over fifty.

  And here was an Opportunity, if ever she’d seen one. This little book of hours must be worth a fortune as old as it was—surely fourteenth century!—and in surprisingly good condition. She wondered where it had come from, and who had donated it to the Church Spring Fete. Not her father, not the Vicar, nor the elderly physician who had taken Dr. Smithson’s place when war came.

  But there was no time to wonder; here was Miss Oglethorpe bearing down on her with that stupid grin of hers.

  Miss Cunningham pocketed the little book, and when Miss Oglethorpe wasn’t looking, deposited a pound in the tin box that was to hold their earnings. It was far from enough, but it was all she had in her purse, and it salved her conscience.

  By the end of the day, no one had come forward to ask how much the little book had brought. And so she walked confidently across the meadow to the house where she’d lived all her life.

  But not for long. After dinner, her father went to bed, tired from judging jams and heifers and the three-legged race. When she was certain he was asleep, she rose from her own bed and began to pack the valise she had surreptitiously brought down from the attics while he was having his bath.

  She took only what she was fairly certain she would need. And added one silk gown to err on the side of caution. One could never tell what one might be called upon to do in her new position. Because she already knew what she intended to do: war work. Her brother was at the Front, and if he could serve his country, so could she. If they wouldn’t have her in the munitions plants or as a farm worker, if they couldn’t teach her how to drive an omnibus, she would apply to one of the nursing services. Meanwhile, the little book would bring in what she needed, until she was settled. She had already been putting aside as much as she could from her meager allowance, and that would pay for the morning train and a few nights in lodgings. No hotel for her. She’s been rigorously told from childhood that respectable women didn’t go to one alone,

  Satisfied that she hadn’t overlooked anything, Miss Cunningham went to bed. At five in the morning, before the servants had stirred—what was left of them now that the men had gone off to fight for King and Country—she stole out of the house and walked to the railway station. The valise was heavier than she’d expected, and she had to stop half a dozen times to catch her breath. But she was there, ticket in hand, long before the train to London rolled into sight in a cloud of steam and cinders. She had lied to the station master, telling him that a cousin was ill and had no one else to care for her, for fear he might send a message to her father asking if she had had his permission to go.

  He’d raised his eyebrows when he saw her—it was an ungodly hour of the morning, and she had walked to the station rather than arrive in her father’s carriage. But she had found the courage to lie and was convincing enough, she felt, to keep him from doing anything rash before she got on the train. It was clear enough that the entire village knew how she was treated, and she flushed at the thought as she stepped on board. As it rolled out of the station without her father appearing in a storm of fury to forbid her to leave, she sighed with relief.

  When she got down in Charing Cross station, she was stunned by the number of men in uniform waiting for the trains to wherever their transport waited, many of them surrounded by family tearfully or bravely sending them off to fight. She hadn’t been allowed to see her brother off. Her father had decided it would be too emotional for her, and so she had had to say her goodbyes in the hall, watching him follow his father out to the carriage and disappear down the drive.

  Giving in her ticket, she strode out of the station and into the watery sunlight of the capital of Empire. She had some idea of how the city was laid out, thanks to her governess, and so she found her way to the City, where she hoped to sell the little book. But there she encountered a woman dressed in the uniform of one of the nursing services and on impulse asked her where it was located.

  Two hours later Miss Cunningham was sitting in the waiting room for an interview with one of the senior matrons.

  She had been wary enough of her father charging down to London to find her, and so she gave her own name—Florence Cunningham—but gave her address as Keswick, in the north. Far enough north, she hoped, that no one could show her up for a liar. Her mother was dead, she informed Matron, and that was true enough. Her father was a country vicar, and had given his blessing for his eldest daughter to serve her country and God. She herself had written the letter she presented as proof of this, using her left hand. The scrawl was legible, and sounded like a man of the cloth. She had certainly heard the Rector at St. Stephens drone on enough times to quote him at length, but only three paragraphs were needed for “permission” to work at any “respectable and godly war work”, words vague enough to suit any situation she might choose to apply for. She had made certain the stationery was appropriately fine as well.

  It was clear enough that this Miss Cunningham was educated and of good family—one had only to look at the cut and cloth of her walking dress, a demure dark blue wool with a white and blue striped shirtwaist. Neither terribly fashionable nor second hand. Just what a vicar’s daughter might choose for a visit to London.

  By five o’clock that afternoon, Miss Cunningham found herself accepted into the service and given a list of lodgings suitable for her to live in while she trained.

  The little case with the book inside it was still in her valise when she unpacked it in Mrs. Downing’s Lodgings for Gentlewomen. She was beginning to feel that it was bringing her luck, and she was almost reluctant to part with it. Her own funds were sufficient at the moment, and so she’d buried it deep in a drawer where it was safe until she needed to sell it.

  Six months later it went to France with her. She had no safer place to leave it. Her training had been arduous and had required more of her than she’d anticipated. But she had been an apt pupil, and Matron had praised her diligence and her determination.


  There had been no message from her father—neither his blessing nor his curses. In some sense, it had hurt her that he had so easily let her go, a measure of his anger. The other side of that coin was that she had not dared to write to her own brother for fear he would side with his father.

  A German breakthrough on the first month she was at a forward aid station had sent the lot of them scrambling for safety, and she had had no time to worry about her kit, not with seven severely wounded men to get out of danger in a hurry.

  She never found the little book again, and she grieved for it. Sometimes she prayed that it had fallen into caring hands.

  The young German soldier who pillaged the kit was looking for cigarettes or chocolates. He was homesick and heartily tired of fighting, but his three elder brothers had gone into the army, and he’d wanted desperately to do the same thing. Only he hadn’t been suited for killing. He sometimes fired his rifle high, if he thought his comrades were in no danger from the advancing British, and closed his eyes when he had to fire at men. He’d seen sights that haunted him, too many men blown apart or left half alive with the gas or horrendous wounds. He wanted only to go home, but to leave his post was to invite being shot as a deserter, and that was no solution either. What he longed for now was to be taken prisoner, and kept safe for the rest of the war.

  A Lutheran, he had no idea what the pretty little box was, nor could he read the words, but from the tiny, exquisite paintings of angels and what appeared to be Apostles, he knew it was a religious book, and so he’d kept it, his war souvenir. Much better than the revolvers and field caps and shell casings that appealed to his comrades.

  He’d been in France with his regiment for another five months when he was finally shot in the leg and left behind by his company as the British advanced. A nursing sister had cleaned his wound, bandaged it, and offered him tea. He had no taste for tea, but she was young and pretty, and he pretended to be grateful, all the while worrying that he might be sent back to his regiment in a prisoner exchange, since his wounded knee would make him noncombatant for months to come.