A Cruel Deception Page 5

  “What did you do?”

  “I was afraid to make too much of a fuss. I smiled and pretended all was well. But on the Sunday I went to the house where he’d taken rooms, hoping the woman who owns the house might be at Mass. But she was there, and she wouldn’t let me come in. It wasn’t proper, she told me, and I’d have to leave. I explained that my mother had sent me—it was a lie, but I thought she might help me if she saw I wasn’t there to visit him myself. That’s when she informed me he was ill, he hadn’t left his room for days, but he refused to hear of a doctor being summoned. I found his friend again, and I asked him to go to the flat and find out how ill Lawrence was. His friend was shocked—Lawrence looked terrible, he told me, as if he hadn’t slept or eaten or taken care of himself at all. Thin, a beard from not shaving, his clothes unwashed. I was very worried by that time.”

  “Why didn’t this friend try to help him? Why was it left to you?”

  “He wanted to report what he’d seen to one of the officers. I knew that would not be the best thing for Lawrence. Or his future in the regiment. I told him a lie, I said that my father would come from Lyon, that Lawrence would listen to him. And I watched the house for two days, until I saw Madame go out. I went in then, found Lawrence, and hired a taxi to take him to St. Ives. The driver wanted no part of him—Lawrence was in a terrible state, I had to pay extra just to the Gare. You can imagine what it was like on the train. I had to tell more lies—he was my brother, I was taking him to my parents in St. Ives, he was still recovering from a head wound—whatever I could think of at the time. Nevertheless, I got him here, and I found two maids and a cook who were glad of the work. But then I couldn’t pay them any longer.” There were tears in her eyes. “Still, I made him bathe and shave, I cut his hair and kept his clothes clean. I told him I would write to his mother if he didn’t take care of himself. I think he would have left then, but he had nowhere to go.”

  Madame must have come home—seen her taking Lawrence away, and was glad to hand the problem to someone else. Yet she had kept his room.

  “He never told you what had happened? Or tried to account for this change in him?”

  “Before, we had talked easily. Laughed, even. Now, he won’t speak, he won’t eat, much less tell me anything. If I press, he walks away and locks his door. So I stopped asking. It was better that way.”

  I could see how tired and worn she was. Lawrence Minton had changed, but he had changed her as well. And refused to see that he’d done this. He took whatever she gave him, food and warmth, a roof over his head, but he offered her nothing in return.

  “Let me try,” I said, in an effort to lift her spirits. “I’ve had some experience with men who were ill. It may take a while. You must be patient.”

  That only alarmed her more. “Is it illness? Something—something dreadful?”

  I smiled, although I didn’t feel much like it. “I think he’s worried about something. Something that might have happened the night you dined together. Between seeing you safely home and the next morning. I can’t imagine what it might have been. But I intend to find out.” And once I did, I could summon his mother—

  “He won’t tell you. If he won’t tell me, how will you manage to break through his silence?”

  “I won’t ask him. That’s the difference.”

  The next day I walked down to the station, and took the morning train to Paris.

  My first stop was the flat that the Lieutenant had taken when he was first seconded to the peace conference.

  The woman who had opened the door to me the first time was there again, and before I could greet her with the usual Bonjour, she said, “Did you not find the Lieutenant?”

  I realized that she had been worried as well.

  “I have found him,” I told her. “But now I’m looking for a friend of his, to ask his help in caring for the Lieutenant. Perhaps you know where I might find him? I believe his name is Bedford. I also believe he’s an officer, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember his rank.”

  I had expected her to turn me away, but she said, “Yes, he also has a flat here in my house. But he is not receiving visitors.”

  “I’m not a visitor,” I said rather bluntly. “And it’s urgent that I speak with him. If you will please tell him that Sister Crawford is here?”

  “Does he know you, Sister?” she responded. And I thought there was more than a hint of suspicion in her voice.

  “He does not,” I said firmly. “But I am representing Lieutenant Minton’s mother, who is unable to come to Paris just now. If he is truly a friend of the Lieutenant, then he will wish to hear what I have to say.”

  “I shall ask, of course,” she said. “But I do not expect he will wish to be disturbed.”

  She shut the door, leaving me there to wait in the cold. The minutes ticked by. I watched a street sweeper, a nanny pushing a small child in a pram, saw two men exchange greetings on the corner of the street, and was beginning to think she had deliberately shut me out, when she opened the door again.

  “Lieutenant Bedford was late at the talks last evening. He asks that you come another time.”

  She was about to close the door again, but I’d brought my umbrella, and I wedged it into the opening as she intended to swing it shut.

  “That will not do, Madame. I have told you this is an urgent matter. If you are unwilling to persuade Lieutenant Bedford to come down, I’ll be happy to do that for you. But I intend to see him, you understand.” We’d been speaking French.

  A voice behind me said in English, “Hallo. What seems to be the problem, Madame Periard? Sister?”

  I turned to see a British officer standing behind me. Summoning a smile that would have made my flatmate Diana proud of me, I said pleasantly, “Good morning, Major. I’m here on behalf of Lieutenant Minton’s mother, and I’ve come to see Lieutenant Bedford, who is, I’m told, a friend. But he refuses to see me. I—um—believe Lieutenant Minton is traveling, and it’s urgent that I get a message to him.”

  The last thing I wished to do was give this officer any reason to think that Lawrence Minton was troubled or even in trouble. The Major wore the insignia of the Lieutenant’s regiment—and my father’s.

  He nodded, and said, “In that case, perhaps I can help you. I can’t invite you in, but there’s a café just around the corner. The coffee is terrible, and the tea is much worse, but at least we’ll be out of this cold wind.”

  I was getting nowhere with Madame. But at this juncture, if I couldn’t find a way to help Lieutenant Minton, I didn’t foresee much hope for his career anyway.

  “Could you instead persuade the Lieutenant to see me?”

  The Major shook his head. “I don’t think you’ll get much satisfaction from Bedford even if I dragged him to the door.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then I will accept your kind invitation.”

  Relieved to be rid of me, Madame thrust my umbrella out of the way and shut the door in my face.

  I salvaged my dignity with an effort and let the Major lead me to the café he’d mentioned.

  “We haven’t been introduced, Sister. My name is Webb. Harry Webb.”

  “Sister Crawford,” I said, hoping that wouldn’t remind him of a past Colonel of his regiment. But apparently it didn’t, and he nodded. “A pleasure to meet you, Sister, although I must apologize for the circumstances.” He cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. I really don’t believe you’d have had any luck trying to talk to Bedford. He can be very—difficult.”

  “Unfortunately he appears to be the only person who can tell me anything at all about Lieutenant Minton.”

  He looked down at me. “You mentioned that you were here on behalf of his mother?”

  Oh, dear. I’d used Matron as an acceptable reason for calling on Lieutenant Bedford, but I could hardly tell the Major why I’d come.

  I said, “She asked me to look in on Lawrence while I was in Paris.”

  “Ah. A duty call,” the Major said as we turned the corner a
nd felt the full force of the wind in our faces. I put up a gloved hand to keep my cap in place.

  “It’s just there,” Major Webb assured me, pointing. And I saw the sign above the door halfway down the street.

  LE COCHON BLEU. The Blue Pig.

  “That’s an odd name for a café,” I said, glad to change the subject.

  “The story is, the owner inherited a blue pig from his father, and sold it for enough money to travel to Paris. He went to work in this café, and when he’d earned enough to purchase it from the original owner, he renamed it for that pig.”

  “Was it truly blue?”

  “God knows. Probably gray or black. But blue is more interesting, don’t you think?”

  We had reached the door, and he held it open for me.

  The café wasn’t much different from a dozen others I’d seen in Paris, except for the oil painting of a blue pig over the bar, gloriously blue. And judging by its size, more hog than pig as well.

  We took a table away from the door, out of the draft as it opened and closed. The breakfast patrons had gone, but it was still quite busy here. Of the twenty or so tables, eleven of them were occupied by Frenchmen, some of them with women, others alone. They stared as the English officer and the nursing Sister came in and sat down.

  The Major ignored them, signaled to the waiter, and asked me if I’d prefer the coffee or the tea.

  I chose the coffee. The tea must have been added for the British here for the peace conference, but I didn’t hold out much hope that it tasted anything like real India tea.

  Keeping his voice low, the Major said, “I’m sorry. I must tell you, if you’re looking for Lieutenant Minton, that he’s not been in his flat for some time.”

  “So I discovered when I called earlier. The only other name I knew to ask for was Lieutenant Bedford’s.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. “I’m surprised that Minton mentioned Bedford to his mother.”

  Oh, dear.

  “It was Madame who told me he was a friend.”

  “I’ve asked her if she knows where Minton is at present. But she swears she has no idea.”

  Was she protecting Minton? I had a feeling she might be, and not just because he’d taken lodgings there until September. After all, she’d told me where to look for him. But I’d been a different matter, representing his mother. She couldn’t simply put me off. Matron could raise questions about whether or not her house was suitable for officers’ billets.

  “His mother is going to worry,” I said, rather than lie to him about what I’d been told about Lawrence’s whereabouts. “This is the only address she could give me.”

  Our coffee came, black mud smelling of chicory.

  “Best not to drink it,” Major Webb said, smiling.

  I looked at him. Fair hair, blue eyes, a straight nose and firm jaw. Not precisely handsome, but attractive in the way that a man who knows himself often is.

  The smile faded as he went on. “Madame is a widow. Her only child, Armand, was killed at Verdun. Decorated for gallantry under fire, posthumously. Her husband died of the shock.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I believe he was a rising artist. He had a studio on the Left Bank, but he made a living painting sets for the theater. I have a feeling she’s glad of our presence. Certainly our money makes a difference, but she tends to mother us.” He grinned wryly. “It’s a lovely house, or else I’d move on.”

  It occurred to me that her losses might be why she was sympathetic toward Lawrence Minton. His mother was worried about her son too. If all else failed, if Madame refused to confide in me, perhaps Matron could speak to her and find out if she knew why Lawrence had changed so abruptly.

  I was still considering that when the Major frowned, clearly making up his mind about something.

  “I ought not tell you this. It will worry his mother even more. But there’s something amiss with Minton.”

  “Do you know what it might be?”

  “I could understand if he drank too much. Or if there were—um—women. This is Paris, after all. But I don’t think it’s either. For one thing, Madame guards the door as if she were Cerberus at the gates of Hades. And there isn’t an excessive number of bottles in the dustbin, no odor of alcohol as one passes his door. I haven’t seen him staggering in at all hours. I do know his rooms are rather unkempt. I caught a glimpse inside when Madame was bringing clean sheets around. I hadn’t expected it of him.”

  I took a chance and said, “Perhaps he’s been unhappy in love.”

  “There was a girl, French, I think. Quite attractive, and clearly from a good family. I’m not sure what her interest in Minton was. According to Madame, her family knows him.”

  Madame was sounding more and more like the French equivalent of Mrs. Hennessey! Keeping the secrets of the men in her house, just as Mrs. Hennessey protected her young ladies.

  And Major Webb was very observant, reminding me a little of Simon Brandon.

  “I had expected her to invite me into her parlor,” I said with a sigh of frustration, “and bring Lieutenant Bedford there, to speak to me. She could have been present, I only wanted to ask about Lieutenant Minton.”

  “I have a feeling that she didn’t want you to meet Bedford. She’s rather old-fashioned about propriety. When my sister was here, visiting, she gave me a list of restaurants where it would be unwise to take her.”

  Yes, very like Mrs. Hennessey!

  “The Lieutenant couldn’t be that terrible.” But I remembered the rakish air about Lieutenant Bedford as I watched him walk away from the house after he’d called on Lawrence.

  “Terrible, no. I understand he was quite popular with his men during the war. But he’s rather rough around the edges. A battlefield commission.”

  Which meant he’d come up through the ranks, and many officers looked down on such commissions. As for popularity with his men, that depended on how he used it. Respect was not always the same thing as popularity. “Another source tells me Bedford was reckless to the point of foolhardiness. I can’t comment on the truth of that either. But it gives you some feeling for the man.”

  “Then why were he and Minton friends?”

  “Were they friends?” he asked, curious.

  “I assumed they must be. If Madame suggested it.”

  “I don’t know,” he replied doubtfully. “They had so little in common.”

  And yet Lieutenant Bedford had come all the way to St. Ives to call. And bring more laudanum? Was that truly friendship?

  “What kind of officer was Minton?”

  “Quite good, cared for his men, was mentioned in dispatches several times. But for bravery, not foolhardiness. Twice went out under heavy fire and brought in his wounded.”

  I considered him. “You’ve been looking into his records.”

  “Yes, I was just worried enough to be curious.” He smiled again, as if to make light of it. “I’m not usually the sort to go around coddling younger officers, but there’s the regiment to think about.”

  Very like my father. The Colonel Sahib had seen through Simon’s rebellion against authority and found something he liked. And he’d been right. He taught Simon strategy and tactics and most importantly, patience, discovering along the way that his protégé had a gift for languages and diplomacy. Then watched him rise through the ranks. The only time Simon had defied my father was when he’d suggested that Simon go to Sandhurst to train as an officer.

  I stirred the coffee with my spoon, surprised that it hadn’t melted, and considered the man across from me.

  Major Webb was friendly, helpful even. But I’d been brought up with a regiment, and despite his explanation, I couldn’t help but wonder why a Major was so interested in the affairs of a lowly Lieutenant like Bedford. Yes, they shared a lodgings. And of course they were in the same regiment. Still. From what I’d observed so far, Lieutenant Bedford didn’t have Simon’s abilities. And before he’d changed, Lieutenant Minton apparently was the better man.


  I found I was glad I’d been circumspect.

  “It does you credit, that you’re concerned about a fellow officer,” I said, looking up at him with a smile. “I’m not quite sure what I ought to do now. Matron will expect me to write and tell her how her son looks and what messages he sends back to her. How his lodgings are, if they’re in a good part of town. The sort of thing a mother wants to know.”

  There, that ought to give Major Webb an opening to tell me not to worry, that he’d keep an eye out for Lieutenant Minton, and see that all was well. After all, what mother wouldn’t be pleased to have a higher-ranking officer taking an interest in her son, especially when he was expecting to make a career of the Army?

  But I’d underestimated the man sitting across from me.

  He pushed his cup aside, and said, “You have your duties here in Paris, and I have mine. And we can’t neglect them. Still, I don’t see why, between us, we can’t find Minton. I’m willing to try, if you are.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” I said, giving him the chance to lead me in whatever direction he had in mind. “I know Paris a little. But hardly well enough to search the city for one man.”

  “Perhaps Madame will confide in you. If you keep trying.”

  That surprised me. “Do you think,” I asked, trying to sound earnest, “she knows more than she’s told either of us?” Then I added, “She hasn’t given me that impression. Why do you believe she hasn’t already told me all she knows?”

  “It’s just a feeling I had.” He turned to look out the window. “I can’t tell you why. Possibly Minton reminds her of her son, before the war. There’s a photograph of him in her sitting room. Rather handsome, in a Bohemian sort of way.”

  Drawing a breath, the Major added, “Well. What do you say? Shall we try to find Minton? I can’t think he’s in any difficulty, I expect he’s just young and easily distracted. But the Army won’t take his absence lightly.”

  I agreed with him about the Army. I said, “I’ll do what I can. I must travel with my duties. But Paris is my base for the moment.”