'Meriwether? A good man. He didn't deserve what happened to him.' He'd found a table napkin in one of the drawers of the sideboard and was busy toweling his head. Pausing, he looked at me from between the folds. 'I thought I remembered you. A nursing sister, aren't you? From Britannic, I think. I was in Mesopotamia.'
I fished quickly for a face in a hospital bed, then smiled as I remembered. 'George Bellis! The leg's healed, I see.' I didn't add that the thin, sun-baked man with a broken leg and cracked ribs, a fractured skull and the bites of myriad insects looked nothing like the tall, muscular officer standing before me now. His brother was a captain in one of the county regiments. I tried to recall which. Wiltshire?
'Indeed it has,' he said as we shook hands like lost friends. 'I was sent to France after I recovered. Were you still with Britannic when she sank? I'd wondered.'
'I was,' I told him, 'and escaped with a broken arm.'
'Harrowing experience, I should think.'
'I still dream of it sometimes.'
He nodded, folded the napkin, and put it aside. 'Not surprising. My dreams aren't what they once were.' He made a gesture intended to lighten his next words. 'My favorite is finding myself flying through a hail of bullets, diving headfirst into the nearest trench, only to find it crowded with the most despicable collection of Turkish soldiers you can imagine. Bazaar thieves, guttersnipes, and murderers all. Better than any rooster for a fast wake up.'
But the lines around his mouth as he spoke told me that it had really happened, only to be repeated over and over again in his dreams.
I smiled, as I was expected to do, and then said, 'Who wins?'
'I never find out. Since I'm still here, I expect it was me.'
We laughed together, then I quickly changed the subject. 'Wasn't there a girl? I seem to remember writing a letter for you. You could have written your own, but you were malingering.'
'So I was. A few minutes with the pretty ward sister, and I was envied by every man present. Yes, there was-is-a girl. She's in Norfolk, helping her family grow whatever it is they grow in Norfolk. Worse luck, she couldn't meet me in London. It was harvest-time for something.'
I could hear the disappointment in his voice. 'Why didn't you go to her?'
He grimaced. 'Apparently marrows or parsnips or whatever they are rank higher than a mere lieutenant.' And then he brightened. 'But I'm taking the train from here to London, meeting my brother, and we're driving on to Gloucestershire.'
'How nice!' I was trying to think how to bring Meriwether Evanson back into the conversation when George did it himself.
'When did you know Merry? After his first crash or his second?'
'The second.'
'Ah. The burns.' He stared out the window, watching the rain. 'I've always had a horror of fire. I can't imagine finding myself aflame. How bad were they?'
'Head. Hands and feet. Part of his torso. Infection is the greatest danger.'
'Bloody hell,' he said, shuddering as he considered that. Then he realized he'd sworn aloud and was busy apologizing.
'Did you know his wife?' I asked.
He smiled. 'If you knew Merry, you knew Marjorie. She's all he ever talked about. I'm surprised he didn't name that bitch in the stables for her.' And once more he realized he'd put foot in mouth. 'Sorry-I didn't mean it the way it came out.'
'I'd seen her photograph. She seemed to be such a lovely woman. In every sense.'
'Yes, well, she most certainly was pretty.' He smiled, remembering. 'But it hadn't turned her head. Do you know what I mean? She was a thoroughly nice person. That's what makes it so hard to believe she was murdered. I mean to say,' he went on, frowning now, 'one doesn't think of murder touching nice people.'
Before I could stop myself, I spoke in defense of Marjorie Evanson. 'I don't think murderers care if one is nice or not.'
'Oddly enough, Serena asked me yesterday if I thought Marjorie had fallen in with the wrong sort of people. I couldn't imagine what she was getting at. Marjorie wasn't like that.' He took a deep breath. 'Is there something worrying her?'
'I expect she's also having trouble understanding murder,' I said. 'Grasping at straws-the wrong sort of people, money, debts, secrets-anything to explain what happened.'
'I doubt if it was money or debts. Marjorie was comfortably off in her own right, but not rich. As I remember, she and her sister shared the inheritance from their father.'
Someone-Inspector Herbert?-had mentioned a sister.
'As for secrets,' he went on, 'Marjorie was hopeless there. Merry told me she couldn't wait for an anniversary or a birthday, and was forever asking if he wanted to know straightaway what she was giving him.'
And yet she had kept a very different secret from her husband and everyone else.
Lieutenant Bellis began to pace restlessly. 'How did we get on such a morbid subject? The weather is wretched enough.'
Taking the hint, I said, 'It does seem a little lighter in the west.'
'Your imagination,' he replied, grinning, coming to stand by me at the windows. 'It's still as black as the bottom of a witch's kettle out there. This could go on for hours.'
But it didn't. A tiny square of blue grew to the size of a counterpane, and then spread quickly, offering us the spectacle of a rainbow as the sun finally burst through.
The grass was too wet for sport, and so we collected in the study for our tea.
Jack was looking tired, as if he rather regretted inviting so many guests for the weekend. Watching him, I thought perhaps he was feeling the strain of his duties. It must be a burden to know the truth about what was happening in France or the North Atlantic and say nothing. I'd noticed several times that when he was asked for his views on the course of the war or the prospect for the Americans to come in, he evaded a direct answer, giving instead the public view we could read for ourselves in any newspaper.
My own father had told me privately that if the Americans didn't commit themselves soon, we would run short of men. I'd asked him if the Germans were in the same state, and he'd answered gravely, 'We'd better start praying they are.' It was a worrying possibility that we could lose the war. That so many might have died in vain.
The men drifted off to the billiard room, and the women settled down to read or knit. We were all expected to do our share with our needles, and most of us were thoroughly tired of the drab khaki wool intended for stockings, scarves, gloves, hoods, and even waistcoats to keep men warm in the trenches.
Serena came to join us after seeing to matters in the kitchen, and I noticed the shadows on her face as she sat by one of the lamps, rolling yarn into a ball.
Cynthia Newley said, 'Serena, is there any news regarding Marjorie? Has the Yard learned anything more?'
'Apparently not,' she answered coldly. 'At least we haven't been told.'
'It seems so-odd. You would think Marjorie's death would receive top priority.'
'Indeed.'
I glimpsed Serena's eyes as she looked up briefly at her friend. There was angry denial there. It was a pity the police had had to tell her about the unborn child. It had only added to her distress. Any indiscretion on Marjorie's part should have died quietly with her. But this was murder, and there were no secrets in cases of murder.
And then Serena was saying, as if unable to stop herself, 'I don't know what's wrong with me. I can't seem to concentrate on anything. You knew Marjorie, Cynthia. So did you, Patricia. Those last months in London-what did she do? Where did she go? I wasn't in London often, I seldom saw her. When the police asked me if she had met any new friends, I had no idea. Or if she was worried about something. I was so out of touch, I couldn't give them an answer.'
Patricia, a quiet woman with dark hair, said, 'These past few months-well, since late winter for that matter-I saw her hardly at all. A few memorial services, and once at a morning church service. I asked Helen Calder if
