“Can’t-or won’t.”
“I expect we came to Rouen on the same errand,” I said. “There is a house of nuns here with no children in their care, and another on a street not far from here where there are children. I’ve spoken to both of them. I’ve seen the children in their care. She isn’t one of them. You can go there yourself, if you like. Or I’ll take you there.”
“Is this the truth?”
“The absolute truth,” I answered.
He swore. “All right. I believe you. I should have done this a year ago. It’s my fault. And now she’s somewhere in France, and we may never find her.”
“Then all your problems will be solved.”
“No, not all of them,” he said wearily and pulled some coins from his pocket, tossing them on the table. “I’ll see you to your motorcar.”
I rose as well and walked with him to the door. Outside the rain was coming down in earnest, and over its noisy patter I could hear the guns at the Front, and from the river, the sounds of a boat coming up the Seine to the dock, its whistle carrying on the damp air.
Roger Ellis took my arm and led me across to the Major’s motorcar. He turned the crank and then came to my door.
“I didn’t kill George. Either to keep my secret or to avenge Alan.” The rain was cascading off the brim of his cap now.
The shelling to the north of us was getting heavier. In the flashes of light, the Butter Tower was spectral against the sheets of rain falling from the black sky.
“Oddly enough, I think I believe you,” I said.
But even if I did, I still wasn’t sure I trusted Roger Ellis.
I think he must have read the shadow of doubt in my eyes. His hand on the door clenched, and then he said, “All right. Go on.” He gestured to the gun flashes. “They’ll be needing you soon.”
“Yes. Good-bye, Captain Ellis.”
And I drove away, leaving him there, wondering if I’d done the right thing.
Chapter Thirteen
I reached Calais in time to meet the Major as he came out of the port and strode down the busy street, looking this way and that. He smiled as he saw me, and hurried over to where I’d put the motorcar.
“On time,” he said approvingly. “Thank you, Sister.” He ran his eye over the bonnet and the wings, as if searching for dents or scrapes. Then he laughed as he saw me watching him. “I brought this motorcar over to France in the summer of 1914, and I was in Paris when the war began. I stored her in a house in Neuilly, and came home to enlist. She was still there when I got back three months later. I’d heard that the French Army used even the Paris taxis to ferry men to the Marne, when the Germans first broke through. God knows they could have used her too.”
I laughed too, and thanked him as well. We drove back through the shattered landscape and the rutted, rain- soaked roads to report to my sector. As Roger Ellis had predicted and the shelling had foretold, they needed me desperately.
After quickly changing into a fresh uniform, I hurried to take my place, sorting the long line of wounded into manageable units-the walking wounded, the seriously wounded, those needing immediate attention, and those who were dying, for whom nothing could be done. The sounds of machine-gun fire, rifles, and the booms of the shells were deafening.
Yet from the surgical ward behind me I heard a burst of the same maniacal laughter I’d heard once before, only this time cut short with a curse.
Ten minutes later, directing the stretcher bearers, stalwart Scots with grim faces, to follow me with the chest wound they’d brought in, I saw another stretcher being brought out of the surgical ward. Even though he was pale and groggy, I recognized the Australian Sergeant.
He saw me as well, blinking to clear his vision as he peered in my direction. The morphine was taking effect. He grinned and did a very poor imitation of that same laugh.
He must have noticed the surprise on my face.
“Kookaburra,” he said. “It’s a bird, love.” And then he closed his eyes and lay back.
I took his hand. “I found her,” I said, leaning down to whisper in his ear. “Thank you. You made it possible.”
I couldn’t be sure whether he’d heard me or not. And my chest wound was in need of urgent care. I walked away from the Sergeant and found the tired, overworked doctor waiting for me.
My chest wound survived and was sent down the line for further treatment. I had very little time to think about anything after that as the level of severe wounds rose. It was another ten hours before I was relieved, and I walked wearily back to my quarters, falling into my cot to sleep heavily.
The next morning I was back at work, and the next. And finally, as the flow of wounded slowed with the desultory sounds of firing from the Front, I could take a deep breath and massage my aching shoulders and the small of my back.
I found one of the ambulance drivers who had taken patients back to the main dressing station. He smiled, his eyes bloodshot and strained, as weary as I was.
I asked if my chest wound and several other very difficult cases had survived, and he told me they had reached the next station alive. That spoke well for the immediate care they had received here. “And the Aussie Sergeant?”
“He wasn’t doing well. I’m sorry, Sister, we did our best. But his breathing was ragged when we got him there.”
I thanked him and let him go to a well-deserved rest.
A day later when I ran into an Australian officer in consultation with an English Major as they stood in the entrance of a tent out of the fierce wind that had begun to blow across the flat, decimated landscape of war, I walked up and begged their pardon for the interruption. Then I turned to the Australian officer and asked, “Sir, what is a kookaburra?”
He glanced at the English Major and smiled. “It’s a very large kingfisher. Very striking bird. When half a dozen of them gather in the trees, you can’t hear yourself think. Its call is something you won’t forget, once you’ve heard it.” The smile faded. “You haven’t treated Sergeant Larimore, have you? It’s his signature, so to speak.”
“Yes, sir, I have. He was brought in a few days ago. I was just speaking to the ambulance driver. He said the Sergeant wasn’t doing well when he arrived at the main dressing station.”
“A pity, that. He’s a good man, one of the best.”
I thanked him and walked on.
There was no time to return to Rouen. The next fortnight was busy, and besides, I’d just been given leave. I couldn’t ask for more so soon.
I found three soldiers from my father’s old regiment and put out the word that I was concerned about an Australian Sergeant named Larimore who had been under my care.
Word came back that he’d been taken to Rouen and sent on to Boulogne for transport to England. And then someone else reported that he had died before he reached Rouen.
I could feel the tears in the back of my eyes.
I was still feeling low from the shock of that, when I received a visit from Matron. She came in with a frown between her gray eyes, and I did a hasty review of my sins, for I thought she was angry about something.
Instead she asked, almost with distaste, “Sister Crawford, have you been involved in a murder inquiry in Sussex?”
“Yes. Before Christmas. A guest in the house where I was staying was found dead.”
