A Cruel Deception Page 9
“Absinthe. But I couldn’t stand the taste of it.”
It had once been a popular drink in France, a mixture of herbs—grand wormwood, green anise, and sweet fennel. It had a high alcohol content, a green color, and tasted like anise or licorice. I’d heard soldiers back from leave in Paris talk about it, even though it had been banned. Or possibly because it had been banned. Some drinkers claimed it caused hallucinations, but that only added to its popularity.
Lieutenant Bedford gave me a mock bow as he wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his hand, said, “Sister,” and was about to walk away when I asked, “Who wanted to see Lawrence Minton dead? Who provided you with these vials of laudanum?”
He stopped at the edge of the street and smiled. “For all I know, it was you. To stop him from using it. Surely you know more about poisons than I ever did.”
And he was gone. Some of the swagger I’d seen when last he’d walked away from the house was no longer there. I thought his mouth and jaw ached more than he cared for me to see.
I wanted to follow him—it was the only chance I’d had to see him. But I had no coat, and I had to watch him disappear from sight toward the railway station.
When I stepped inside, I saw Marina standing by the door that led to the kitchens. I shut the outer door.
“How much did you see?” I walked toward her, keeping my voice low.
“Did Lawrence hit him?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so. But no harm done. A bruised chin and a cut lip.”
“Did he think the Lieutenant had poisoned the laudanum?”
“Apparently. Yes. He didn’t say anything, he just lashed out.” I shrugged. “We may have seen the last of Lieutenant Bedford.”
“It’s as well.”
We went back to the kitchen, finished hanging up my damp clothes, and then she went to a cabinet and, reaching up, took out a bottle of wine.
“There’s no tea. But I think we should celebrate, a little. With no laudanum, Lawrence will be better, he’ll be able to return to Paris and his duties.” Taking down two wineglasses, she poured some wine in each, then handed me one.
Lifting hers, she said, “To Paris, then.” Taking a sip, she added, “I feel rather giddy, and I’ve only had a taste. I expect it’s relief.”
“To Paris,” I agreed.
I didn’t want to tell her that her troubles weren’t over, however much she might wish to believe they were. I didn’t have the heart.
Chapter 5
I WAS SITTING in the parlor, where I’d added more coal to the small fire on the hearth, warming myself a bit before facing my cold room. Marina had finished in the kitchen and gone up to bed.
The parlor door opened, and I looked up, expecting she had come down again for something. But it was Lawrence.
Surprised, I stood. “I was just going to bed.”
He came in, closed the door behind him, and said, “Last night. Did I rave?”
Did he not remember?
I said carefully, “I heard some shouting. Even in my room. Yes.”
He put both hands up to his face, covering his eyes, then dropped them to his sides again. “I can’t—I don’t remember much.”
“I’m used to hearing men cry out in their sleep. Or walk, for that matter, if they can.”
He stood there, uncertain. “I expect you are.” Then crossing the room, he pulled another chair close to the flames and sat down. “I’m afraid to go to sleep.”
“It’s hard, sometimes,” I agreed, sympathy in my voice, but not accusation. “I worked close to the Front. I try not to remember what I saw there. Still, it’s there. And I know it will come back. It hasn’t gone away.”
He rubbed his eyes again. “What did you see, that gives you nightmares?” It was almost a sneer, as if he thought I was patronizing him.
“Broken bodies. Blood everywhere. Men screaming as they died. Men dying because we didn’t have the skills to save them. Struggling not to cry as I held the hands of men who called for their wives or mothers.” I hadn’t meant it to. Yet in spite of my fierce control, the truth slipped through.
Lawrence stared at me. I realized it had never occurred to him that the nurses tending wounds, holding the hands of frightened men about to have a limb taken off, closing the eyes of the dead, washing the tables where others had bled, emptying buckets filled with filthy cloths and bandaging and worse, might be haunted by what they had seen and done.
“Oh, yes,” I said, more harshly than I’d intended. “There are nights when I can’t sleep. And I am not alone. I can’t tell you how many of us, doctors and nursing Sisters, say nothing.”
“I’m—sorry,” he said then. “You are always so blood—so cheerful.”
But that had been our duty, also, to raise spirits. It was not about our suffering, it was about theirs.
The minutes ticked by, the coal settling in the hearth the only sound in the room. I went on sitting quietly. Waiting. I wasn’t certain what for, but I had a feeling there might be more. For the first time since I’d arrived, the Lieutenant was sober enough to talk to me. I could see the stress he was under, and how much he wanted help. But sober, did he know why he needed help? Or did that come out only in drunken or drugged moments when his defenses were down and the nightmares slipped through?
“I’ve come to dread the nights,” he said finally. “It’s why I took the laudanum.”
“If it would help to talk, what you tell me will go no further.”
“Not to my mother?” he asked, giving me a twisted smile.
“Least of all to your mother. Or to Marina. Your commanding officer. I’m a nursing Sister, I am expected to keep to myself what I see or learn in the course of my duties.”
He stared into the depths of the fire. The red heart had gone, and the gold, but there was still a blue flame licking at the last of the coal, a lump that had escaped so far.
“I don’t remember,” he said at length. “That’s just it, you see. I had a severe concussion on the coast road as we retreated before the German advance, trying to hold them back from reaching the sea while the French struggled to stop them on the Marne. They couldn’t do both, and it was up to us to keep the sea open, it was the only way to supply us or send reinforcements. If the Germans reached the Channel, they could launch an attack on Britain. That retreat was costly, but we’d expected as much. I was told later—by the doctors—that a house had collapsed on top of me. I was in and out of consciousness, but I can remember a little. A German officer who must have noticed my boots sticking out of the debris. I think he must have ordered his men to dig me out. I just had sense enough to stop breathing, hoping they’d decide I was dead. It must have worked, because when they saw my bloody head, they left. Later—it was dark, but how much time had passed I can’t judge—half a dozen of my own side appeared and finished the job of pulling me out, expecting to bury me. Instead they picked me up and carried me with them back to our lines. I had been miles inside the German lines, and I had no idea why or even where I was. When they could question me some days later, I couldn’t even tell them my name or regiment. They were beginning to suspect I was a German spy.”
I said nothing, letting him talk. But I knew how that running battle had been fought on the coast road, and what he was telling me had the ring of truth.
He glanced across at me. “Given the situation, it was very likely I’d have been shot. But my own men had been looking for me, they found me in hospital, and they vouched for me. They even located an officer I’d played cards with in London to identify me. And later there was a Sister I’d danced with before the war. Diana. I wasn’t so far gone that I couldn’t see how remarkably beautiful she was, but I couldn’t bring back her name. There are still wide gaps in my memory. My other wounds healed, and I could function perfectly well, and so I was soon back in the line. I simply lied when they asked if I’d fully recovered. I didn’t want to t
ell them the truth. I wasn’t wounded again until late in the war. Almost the end.”
I was wondering if the Diana who remembered him was my flatmate, the one who was recently married. She was extraordinary, she turned heads wherever she went, flirting outrageously without in any way leading anyone on, until 1916, when she met the man she wanted to marry. I’d introduced them.
I said, frowning, “And you recall nothing about what you’d been doing before the concussion?”
“Nothing.”
But I thought he wasn’t telling me the truth there. I wondered if he’d briefly deserted, yet his war after that, his decision to make a career in the military, belied it. If the Army had had any inkling, they would have dealt severely with him. And the fact that his men had searched for him while he was missing spoke well of him as an officer. Just as Major Webb had said.
“And nothing since then has offered you any glimpse behind the curtain of lost memory?” I’d phrased it that way intentionally.
“I wish to God it had.”
Again, there was something in the way he avoided my gaze that made me wonder.
“How long have you had these nightmares?”
He got up, and I thought he was leaving the room. But he was only going to the window, staring out at the street. “Will this rain never end?” he said, almost to himself. Then with his back to me, he said, “Paris. Since I came here.”
“You didn’t have them before?”
“I don’t—no.”
Remembering what Marina had told me, that Lawrence Minton hadn’t come the next morning as promised, I said, probing gently, “Was it Paris that caused them, do you think?”
“No,” he said impatiently. “Why should Paris remind me of a house collapsing on me?”
“Someone you passed on the street? Perhaps someone who reminded you of that German officer?”
“No—you’re grasping at straws in the wind.” He turned. “Don’t you think I’ve tried to remember? It’s hopeless.”
“You told me it was a house that had collapsed. Was it that—or a school—a church?”
“How do I know? They called it a house. Why should they have been wrong about that?” Lawrence was becoming increasingly irritable.
I smiled sympathetically. “Sometimes a question triggers a memory. Not always, of course. You didn’t want your supper, but Marina put it away for you. In the event you felt you could eat a little.”
“No. Yes. All right.” He hesitated. “Are you certain all the laudanum was contaminated?”
“I’m afraid you shouldn’t risk it. But yes, why only put something in one vial? Whoever did this couldn’t be sure which you might use first.” He was having troubles with withdrawal.
Moving restlessly around the room, he asked, “Was I in danger?”
What to say? If I told him he was not, he’d go back to using the drug. If I lied and was later proved wrong, he would never trust me again.
Looking for a middle way, I said, “You survived. This time.”
“Yes.” He thought of something. “Is there any wine?”
“Marina opened a bottle at dinner.”
“Then I’ll eat something. With the wine.”
It wouldn’t give him the oblivion he was after, and it might well upset his digestion again. But he was willing to accept food, and that was more important at the moment. I wished for a good, nutritious broth, but that was as elusive as my taste for porridge.
We went down to the kitchen, and I warmed his plate a little, and poured a glass of wine for him. He reached out and pulled the bottle out of my hand, keeping it beside his glass. I gave him no argument.
“It’s late,” I said. “I’ll go up to bed now. But if you need me, please knock at my door.”
He glanced at the bottle of wine. “God willing, I won’t need anyone tonight.
Well-rested now, the pigeon was eager for his crust of bread, and afterward went to peck at the window glass. But his wing wasn’t healed enough to fly very far, and I tried several times to put him back in his box with the scarf over it to block out the light. Finally I decided to get into bed with my hot water bottles and put out the lamp.
That settled the pigeon, but I was too restless to sleep. My mind roved at will—what I was to take as my bride-gift to Ireland when I went to a wedding there next month. The bride had been with me on board Britannic when the hospital ship had hit a mine and sunk in 1916. What I was to tell Matron about Lawrence. And how would she take it? Why had Simon gone to Scotland without a word to anyone? Was Iris right, that he had “a lassie” there? Was my father still in Paris—could he possibly find out about Lawrence Minton’s war, and most particularly about his head wound?
I looked at my little watch, holding it this way and that, but I couldn’t read the hands without the lamp, and the pigeon had settled, I didn’t want to disturb him again.
I tossed and turned for another hour, then came wide awake when I heard something fall, the sound echoing down the passage.
My first thought was that the Lieutenant had got himself drunk on wine and fallen down the stairs. I flung back the blankets, felt for my robe, and somehow found my slippers. They were cold from the floor, and I reminded myself to put them up on the bed in future.
I opened the door quickly but as quietly as I could, and went out into the passage. Marina’s room was dark, no light showing under the door, and it was firmly shut. I hurried on, my slippers making little sound on the floor.
When I got to the stairs I looked down, but even in the darkness, I could see that there was no one lying on the steps. I went down them, to search the hall. Nothing. Back upstairs I went, and this time turned toward the Lieutenant’s room.
I could see the light under the door, and I lifted my hand to knock. And then I heard the voice, swearing in anger and distress.
I hadn’t lived with soldiers most of my life not to know what he was saying, but I knew as well that he couldn’t have been badly hurt, whatever had happened.
About to walk away, I heard footsteps coming toward the door. Knowing I was about to be caught out, I fled for the stairs. I had just got myself down the first three or four when the door of the Lieutenant’s room opened.
“Go away. I don’t need—”
He must have stood there for a whole minute, must have peered up and down the passage, looking to see who had come to his door.
And then he slammed it hard, jarring the portrait in a gold frame just by my ear.
I stayed where I was. For all I knew, he was standing in the passage, waiting to see who would appear once the coast was clear.
The minutes ticked by. And my caution was repaid by the barely audible turning of the latch followed by the soft click of the door being closed as quietly as possible.
Again I waited, but there was no other sound from the direction of the Lieutenant’s room.
I made my way up the stairs and down the passage to my own room. Once there I looked back toward the Lieutenant’s door.
No one was there.
The morning dawned clear and milder than I’d expected. After breakfast I told Marina that I was taking the train to Paris.
“Are you leaving?” she asked in alarm.
“No, of course not. But I think my father may be in Paris, and if he is, I hope to ask him to find out what he can about the Lieutenant. I didn’t want to bring him into this problem if I could avoid it. Now I don’t have a choice.”
“You could speak to his mother.”
“Not yet, not until we know more about his situation and can give her a little hope.”
“Did you give him the rest of the wine last evening? The empty bottle and another from the cellar were in the dustbin.”
“No. He took it, trying to replace the laudanum. To help him sleep.”
She frowned. “I don’t know which is worse.”
“Do you know, is there a doctor that he saw in Paris?” Madame Moreau had mentioned someone—but her husband’s colleague had been sus
picious enough of the request for laudanum that he’d turned the patient away. Whether it was Lawrence he’d turned away or someone else, it was best to avoid him.
“I have no idea. The regimental surgeon?”
“He wouldn’t—couldn’t have felt that he could be honest with him.”
“No, I expect not.”
I left half an hour later, got to the station in time for the early train, and once in Paris, I went to see Dr. Moreau. He was just finishing a consultation with a patient when I was admitted by the maid.
I was surprised to see that it was Major Webb the doctor was showing out.
The Major greeted me as if I were a stranger. “Sister,” he said, touching his cap. Then to Dr. Moreau, “Thank you, sir. I’ll keep in touch.”
And then he was gone.
Looking after him as Dr. Moreau welcomed me, calling to his wife to see who had just arrived, I said, “How well do you know that officer?”
“He’s been here a time or two.”
Madame Moreau was there, greeting me warmly, begging me to stay for luncheon with them. I accepted, but with a smile, I added, “I’m afraid I’ve come to consult the doctor about a—a former patient.” Turning to him, I asked, “If you are free?”
“As it happens, I am.” He took me off to his surgery, shut the door, ushered me to a chair, and then said, “This patient of yours. Do I know him?”
“It’s better, perhaps, if you don’t.”
“Ah. Very well, then. Tell me how I may help you.”
“The patient in question has had a quite severe concussion in the course of his duties,” I began. “For several days he didn’t know his own name. Over time—several years, in fact, he’s recovered most of his memory, although there are some gaps. Still, he’s continued to—to go on with his work. But suddenly he’s begun to have night terrors. They must relate to the incident that caused the concussion, but he can’t remember how he came to be injured. Nor does there seem to be a sound reason for these nightmares to have begun. Why not immediately, if there was something that he can’t face?”
He’d listened carefully to my report then nodded. “Without examining your patient, I can only suggest that something triggered a memory that had been buried so deep in his mind that he could function without remembering it. Therefore, his work must not be connected with this event.” He smiled. “If he had been kicked in the head by a cow while milking it, he would be reminded of that when next he had to milk the animal. But if he was hit by a falling limb while walking through a wood, and never went back to that wood again, there would be no trouble in milking his cow. No memory to disturb him.”