and fed me, thinking I was about to pass out from lack of food. I never told her what was going through my mind. I was too ashamed. There were other men in the ward with horrendous injuries, and I had been too wrapped up in myself to notice. I made up for it, helping feed some of the patients once they allowed me out of bed.”
I said, “You haven’t been the only man who feared amputation. I’ve had to hold them afterward, when they cried.”
“A doctor asked me if I wished to go to England to recover, and I couldn’t accept when there were so many others in worse shape. So they found me a house in a little village behind the lines. Chalfleur, it was. And the woman in that house was much like Lydia. Her husband was at the Front, she hadn’t heard from him in weeks. While I was there, he came home on a twenty-four-hour pass, which meant he had less than twelve hours with her. And two weeks after he left, she got me drunk one night and slept with me. That was the only time, and I left the next day.”
He drank a little of his wine and made a face. I thought it must be as bad as my coffee.
“At any rate, some months later I received a letter from Claudette, telling me that her husband had been killed, and that she was expecting his child. I was glad for her and wrote to let her know I was. The next message I had was that she had given birth to a little girl, and that she wanted me to know that the child must be mine, not her husband’s. I didn’t want to believe it. For my sins, I didn’t answer the letter, and then word came that she’d died. I sent what money I could scrape together to the convent where she’d been taken, for her burial and to ask the nuns to look after her child. After that I sent money regularly. But then the fighting drove the nuns and their charges south, and by the time I’d learned of it, I was in the middle of the Somme fighting and there was no way to trace them. Afterward I was too tired to try, and I told myself that I’d done all I could. But George got it into his head that I was hiding something and started his own search. And apparently he found the nuns and saw this child.” He shrugged. “You know the rest, I think.”
“He was going to adopt her himself. With Malcolm dead, I think he wanted to believe he had someone at home. A tie to life, as it were.”
“Yes, and I begrudged him even that. Because I knew if the child did look like Juliana, my family would hear of it soon enough. And Lydia would know who the father was. But by law, the child is not mine. Since Claudette’s husband didn’t disown it-in fact died before he knew she’d borne it-it carries his name, and not mine. It is-was- legally his.” He shook his head. “God knows, there are enough orphans in France. Why did George insist on saving that particular one?”
“Because he loved Juliana, just as you did. And he wanted in some fashion to bring her back again. In war, these things seem important. Because life is important.”
“I know. And because George is dead, I realized that I had to shoulder my own responsibility. I’ve looked, when I could. The question is, have you had any better luck? Is she here in Rouen, is that why you’ve come here?”
I didn’t know what to say. Could I trust him? Could I believe anything he’d told me? It had the ring of truth. Watching him, watching his eyes as he spoke, I thought it was probably the truth. But he had changed stripes so many times that I wondered whether to tell him or not.
The thought occurred to me that he could be killed in the next action, and then what would I do about Sophie?
I said, buying a little time, “What will you do if you find the little girl? You’ve talked to me about responsibility, about George and his foolishness over her, about the fact that she doesn’t bear your name. You seem to have no feeling at all for the mother, even though you slept with her.”
“I liked her very well, Bess. She had a very appealing laugh. Her eyes crinkled at the corners when she was amused. And she was well read. Don’t mistake me, she wasn’t a loose woman, she was quite respectable. And rather pretty. But I didn’t fall in love with her. It wasn’t even lust. That night when she got into my bed, I’d had enough to drink and the guns were loud in the room, reminding me that I was going back to my regiment very soon, and it happened. Damn it, I oughtn’t to be telling you this.”
“I give you my word I won’t repeat any of this to Lydia or anyone else. You haven’t told me about the child.”
He rubbed his face with both hands. “God knows. She ought to be brought up in a French family that will love her as she ought to be loved. I’ve never seen her. And men don’t have the same feeling for babies that women do. We don’t know what to do with them. Women seem to have a natural knack for that. I’d see that she was well taken care of. I’ve money enough to do well by her, whether she’s mine or not. But I love Lydia, Bess, and I won’t break her heart.”
“You came close enough to that when you were on leave. Did you know I found her huddled in my doorway, chilled to the bone, crying and lost and without enough money to find a decent hotel for the night? If I hadn’t returned from France that evening, I don’t know what would have become of her.”
I thought he would throw the glass of wine across the room. His fingers clenched around it with such force that it was a wonder the glass didn’t crack. And then he said, “Do you know where she is, Bess? If you did would you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” I said, answering the last question rather than the first. “I’ve been given no reason to trust you. And there’s still the matter of George Hughes’s murder. I don’t even know whether they’ve found his murderer.”
“My mother says the police have not located Davis Merrit. Someone in London thought they’d seen him. And there was another report in Wales. Wild goose chases, on both accounts. The police are still looking. Mother says that the frightful-her word-Constable Bates has come back a time or two to interview one or the other of the family. And Inspector Rother has been scouring the Forest. I think he believes Merrit is dead. That he killed himself after killing Hughes.”
“But that’s unlikely,” I replied.
“Did you know the man?” he asked me sharply.
“I saw him in Hartfield at the same time you did,” I replied with some asperity. “It’s just that I can’t find a reason for him to kill Hughes. I don’t think he was in love with Lydia, or she with him, whatever you chose to believe. And I can’t accept that he was trying to save her grief. If he meant to do that, he’d have murdered you.”
Roger Ellis opened his mouth, and then shut it again smartly. Finally he said, “The police may know more than you do.”
“That’s true,” I agreed.
He toyed with the glass. “If I tell you something, will you swear never to reveal it to anyone?”
“If you’re confessing to murder-” I began, for it was a secret I didn’t want to have on my conscience.
“Damn it, no.”
“Then I’ll promise.”
“No. Swear.”
I did, with some trepidation, uncertain what I was getting myself into.
And Roger Ellis surprised me.
Ever after, I knew I would remember that little bistro, the small table between us, and the face of the man across from me, the smoke burning both our eyes, making them red.
“I had a feeling that someone killed my brother. Or I should say, shortened his suffering. I don’t know who it was. I thought for a time that it was either Eleanor, unable to watch him die so slowly, or her brother, because he knew how hard it was for her. I even suspected George, because they were in the room alone for some time, and it was possible that Alan asked him to help him die.”
“Dear God,” I said, and could think of nothing else to add.
“I know. I said nothing. There would have been no point in involving the police. I looked at it as a kindness. Something I myself should have thought to ask my brother. But I loved him and I didn’t want him to die. Selfish of me, but there it is.”
“But you should have said something after George was killed. It could have been important. Instead you let Davis Merrit take the blame because you didn’t like him.”
“No, that’s not true. I was jealous of him. What’s more, I was trying to shield my mother. I couldn’t let her know what I suspected.”
“Be that as it may, we’ve strayed from the subject,” I said, not wanting to take this any farther. “I can’t tell you where to find this child-” I’d nearly slipped up and called her Sophie.
