pleasant. But I think you’ll agree afterward that it’s necessary.”
Mystified, I said, “Very well.”
He guided me deeper inside the shed. The torch beam picked out the sheet-shrouded remains on either side of me. “This way,” he said and took me to the back row in the far left corner. In spite of the disinfectant, the shed smelled of death, and I felt like turning on my heel and hurrying out again as quickly as I could. But I followed him as he added, “The burial detail will be here in an hour. And he’ll be gone.”
Who would be gone?
He steadied the beam of the torch and then knelt. Over his shoulder I could see a man’s arm just visible in an opening in the sheet wrapping him. I was surprised. And then I realized why the sheet was unwinding-it hadn’t been done up properly in the first place. Reaching beneath the corpse above, Private Wilson managed to uncover the body so that I could just pick out a shoulder, throat, and, finally, the side of a face.
“He’s not an influenza victim,” Private Wilson said. “Look at him.”
He reached out to pull the sheet wider for a better view, shifting the body above this one and nearly starting an avalanche of the dead. I caught my breath until the swaying stopped.
He was right.
This one corpse among so many showed none of the darkening of the skin of the Spanish Influenza victim. Instead his head lolled as Private Wilson worked with him, and I realized that his neck must have been broken.
That was odd. For one thing, we seldom saw such a wound, and for another, he would have died instantly. There would have been no reason for the forward aid station to send him on to us.
“I don’t understand-” I began doubtfully, then stopped as Private Wilson’s torch settled on the face of the corpse.
Even in the shielded light of the torch, I was sure.
And I was just as sure that he’d never been a patient here. I would have recognized him straightaway. Or if he’d been in another ward, one of the other sisters would have said something to me. They knew I was always on the lookout for anyone who served in my father’s old regiment. Then why was he lying among our dead?
I stood there, my tired mind trying to absorb this shock. Finally it occurred to me that he’d indeed been wounded and that in the ambulance something had happened-a freak accident when the driver hit a deep hole, a fall from the upper berth onto the steel floor. But if that was true, where were the bruises to support it?
I leaned forward to search for an identification tag. To my surprise, there was none. And he wasn’t in uniform. It was true, we sometimes got patients so badly wounded we had no idea who they were or what regiment they’d served with. A tunic already torn in the trenches, cut off in the forward aid station for a better look at the site, or removed entirely for emergency surgery, and any hope of identifying him could be lost well before a man arrived in our ward. But as a rule, the ambulance driver could tell us his unit, or there were other wounded from his sector who could give us a name and rank until the patient was able to speak for himself.
“Please, I need a little more light,” I whispered, trying to see where he’d been wounded.
“We need to mind the time, Sister. The burial detail will be here soon. And we don’t want to attract anyone else’s attention.” Still, he brought the light nearer. I couldn’t find any other marks on the man’s body, except for a few scars, some of them half healed, others from before the war. I looked at him again. Death had changed his features, of course, but not so much that I could have doubted the evidence of my own eyes. I hadn’t been wrong. And there was only one conclusion I could draw.
I stepped back, thoroughly shaken.
“Dear God.” It was all I could manage to say.
What should I do? My first inclination was to call someone and have the Major’s body taken out of the shed to somewhere the circumstances of his death could be looked into.
It was then I realized that he hadn’t been dead for very long. Rigor hadn’t set in yet. Which meant that whoever had killed him was very likely still somewhere in the vicinity. But who could have done this? Why should Major Carson have been murdered?
There. I had put it into words.
Private Wilson had already come to that conclusion. He’d brought me here to be his witness.
My mind refused to function. Where to start? Matron, of course.
Pulling the sheet back over the body and then the face, I said, “How did you discover him?”
“By accident,” Private Wilson answered. “I was doing a count of the bodies, as I always do, for the burial detail’s records, and I found there were fifty-seven, not fifty-six. I started again, and actually walked by each of the rows, to be sure. That’s when I saw the arm. He wasn’t put here by my men, Sister. I see to it that those who died of their wounds are on the far side of the shed, the influenza patients over here. It’s been my way of doing things since this epidemic began in earnest.”
“How did he come to be here in the first place? This far behind the lines?”
“That’s a very good question. My guess is, it’s likely whoever killed him thought to hide him here. But he didn’t know how it was done, did he? How to wind the sheet properly, or which side to put him on, or that my count would be off.” He hesitated. “Do you know him, Sister? Can you put a name to him?”
“I- It’s been quite a few years. But he was a Lieutenant in my father’s old regiment. I’d been told that he’d been promoted again and was now a Major. His name is Vincent Carson.”
“I didn’t wish to speak to anyone else about this business until I’d talked to someone I could trust. I didn’t wish to find myself accused of putting him here. After all, I’m the one in charge of the dead, you might say.”
“No, of course, I understand. Matron is finally sleeping. I’m to wake her in an hour’s time. I’ll tell her then. She’ll know what’s best to do. Can you put off the burial detail? Just for a bit? Once he’s taken away, there’s no hope of proving he was here, how he died, or even who he is. He’ll be in an unmarked grave.”
“I’ll do my best. Perhaps we shouldn’t wait-perhaps we should go to one of the doctors.”
I shook my head. “They’ve got their hands full with the living. More wounded just arrived. No, Matron is the best choice. I’ve seen her cope in every sort of emergency you can imagine.” But could she cope with murder? It was my turn to hesitate. “You do understand, don’t you? It hasn’t been very long since Major Carson was killed. Whoever put him here could be one of us-an orderly, someone from the canteen, you, me, one of the ambulance drivers.”
“Not a pleasant thought, is it?” Private Wilson said.
He helped me finish wrapping the Major as best we could, so that he appeared to look more or less like his neighbors. I’d been dizzy before, but the disinfectant in here seemed to be aggravating it. I was finding it hard to concentrate, was eager to leave the shed and step out into the fresh air to clear my head. But duty was duty.
I stood there for a moment longer, remembering Lieutenant Carson. He’d been young and eager, his shock of unruly red hair setting him apart, and his grin had been contagious. Now his hair was short-cropped and showing signs of graying, and it was a man’s face I’d looked into, thinner, deeply etched by his years in the trenches, dark circles beneath his eyes from lack of sleep and too many horrors witnessed. The face of war, my father had called it.
I felt a pang for my father when the news reached him. He’d thought highly of Lieutenant Carson, and he’d told me once that he wouldn’t be surprised to see Lieutenant Carson in command of the regiment one day. Even then his knowledge of military strategy and tactics had been outstanding, and I had believed the Colonel Sahib’s prediction.
“We’d best be going, Sister,” Private Wilson said, urging me toward the shed doors. “We don’t want to arouse curiosity, lingering here, like.”
He was right. I turned and in silence walked with him to the door. “Thank you for confiding in me, Private Wilson.” I shivered in the chilly air of the night as I crossed the bruised grass. “I’ll bring Matron as soon as possible. With any luck the burial detail will be late anyway, but hold them off as long as you can. Tell them-tell them that Matron wishes to speak to them.”
“Rather a dirty business, murder,” he said grimly. “I couldn’t believe the evidence of my own eyes when I found him.” Then, turning to me, he asked, “Are you all right, Sister?”
“I think I forgot to eat. I’ll just go across to the canteen and have some tea.”
“Thank you, Sister. It was a brave thing to do, coming with me in that shambles. I’ll be close by, on call, if Matron wishes to see the man for herself. And I’ll keep an eye on the shed.”
