As I heard the clock in a nearby church tower strike four, I broke away from Captain Barclay’s clutches and stepped out into the street. Walking sedately toward the motorcar, I took my time. I could now see that one wing was dented, but that not surprising. Most of the motorcars anywhere near the Front were dented and rusty. When I was some ten or fifteen feet away, I stopped, looking around, as if expecting to find my driver.
“Hallo?” I called after a moment. “Anyone there?” I took a step or two nearer the bonnet, and then-apparently uncertain-I turned and took four back the way I’d come. This gave me a chance to look around me, scanning doorways and the windows of a cafe just down the street without appearing to be suspicious.
I was almost facing the motorcar again when, without any warning at all, out of the corner of my eye I saw movement behind the windscreen, as if someone had been lying out of sight across the seats. In the same instant the great, bright headlamps came on, their black paint gone, and I was pinned in their glare, startled and unable to see or move.
But I could hear the motor as it was gunned, and the headlamps were speeding toward me.
Behind me I heard Captain Barclay shout, but I knew that if I moved too soon, the driver behind the glare of the lights could see where I was leaping, and compensate.
I almost left it too late.
Prepared to spring to the left, where I had the whole street in which to maneuver, I realized that he too could use that space to swerve toward me. And so without hesitating, I flung myself right, into the ragged line of unkempt shrubbery that marked that side of the road.
He swerved too, just as I had feared, but in this direction he had no room-he dared not come too close to the shrubbery, or at that speed he’d lose control and crash into it. Still, he cut it close. I felt the force of his passage, the leading edge of the rusted wing brushing my hip, catching my apron, and nearly dragging me under the rear wheels before the cloth ripped and freed me. I cried out, catching at the prickly, scrubby branches of the shrubs to keep my balance.
The pistol was in my pocket, and I scrabbled for it, trying to reach it in the folds of my uniform, but I already knew it would be impossible to bring it out in time to fire at my tormentor. All the same, I was frightened and angry enough to do just that.
I twisted to take a hard look at him. But his face was half covered by a muffler, a dark striped length of woolen cloth that must have been hot this time of year. All I could see were his eyes.
Matron had said they were gray. But in the reflected light of the lamps, I couldn’t be sure. For they gleamed so palely it was almost as if there were no eyes at all under dark, heavy brows.
A very pale blue? A clear gray like lake water in moonlight?
And then he was gone, roaring off down the street, narrowly missing Captain Barclay, who was already rushing toward me as fast as he could.
It was in the light of the headlamps that I saw Captain Barclay clearly for the first time.
He was disheveled, his uniform torn and bloody.
I hadn’t asked him why he had disappeared, but now I had a feeling that I knew.
Captain Barclay reached me, pulling me out of the shrubbery, brushing at my coat where leaves and twigs had caught, all the while cursing me in words as vivid as any I had ever heard in the Army.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded in the next breath. “Were you trying to get yourself killed? Damn it, Bess Crawford, that was the most brazenly foolish thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
“But I had to see his face. I had to be sure. And he has gray eyes, Captain, just as Matron had said he did. Or very pale blue. I could see them above the muffler. You can change a good many things, but not the color of your eyes. What’s more, I wasn’t entirely convinced he was inside the motorcar. He could have killed my driver and waited for me somewhere nearby. Just as we were concealed in the shadows! When he came out he’d have to face me, and I’d have had a clearer view of him. Even a clear shot, if need be.”
He shook me, his hands gripping my shoulders. “And he nearly killed you. A few inches closer, and he could have hurt you badly. If you’d slipped, you’d have been under his wheels. I couldn’t believe you would do anything so rash. Your father warned me you were headstrong, but I never dreamed-”
He released me suddenly and I nearly stumbled into him before I got my balance again. “Come on,” he said, and taking my arm firmly enough to keep me by his side, he started walking. “It isn’t a good idea to stay here. He could decide to swing back this way. And I’ve told you I’m in no shape to do battle.”
We walked as quickly as we could down the street, then at the first corner took the next street and then the next. We finally came to a small church in a cul-de-sac, and he strode toward the door. Finding it open, we went inside, greeted by the smell of musty walls, incense, and stone. Cold and dark as it was, I felt vulnerable, even though I knew logically that there was no possible way we could have been followed here. As my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, I could make out the baptismal font, a line of pillars leading down to the altar, and the faint glow of the altar lamp. All of them familiar things that pushed away my initial anxiety.
Captain Barclay found a row of chairs and we sat down. Wincing, he thrust one leg out in front of him, as if it ached unbearably.
“Are you badly hurt?” I asked after a moment, and saw him shake his head. “What happened? Where were you? I looked for you before I left the aid station.”
“He was clever. I never saw the blow coming. The next thing I knew, I was out in the middle of nowhere, near one of the relief trenches. I fell into one of them while I was still dazed, then had to make my way back. You had already gone, and I set out on foot for Rouen. I got a lift from a lorry coming back from the Front, carrying the dead. I’ve been waiting there for you, in the shadows of that doorway, for hours. I saw the motorcar arrive, and I went on waiting, knowing you had to come. Where were you? They told me at the Base Hospital that you weren’t given a room there.”
“I’d been told they were expecting me, but they weren’t. I stayed in a convent I know of.”
“Well, at least you were safe. For all I knew…” He shook his head helplessly.
“What are we to do now? I’m supposed to report to an aid station south of Ypres, but if what’s happened here in Rouen is any indication, they have no reason to expect me there. And I don’t have the proper authorization to return to Dr. Hicks. Or to leave France.”
He was still nursing his grievance. “I couldn’t believe you’d gone away without waiting for me. It could have been a hoax. In fact it was. A trick to lure you away from the protective Dr. Hicks. To Rouen, for instance, where if anything happened to you, you wouldn’t be missed straightaway.”
“Yes, but there was the message.”
“Anyone who knew how to use a field telephone could have sent that,” he scoffed.
“Dr. Hicks assured me the request was genuine. I asked him. He’d spoken to an officer, he said. And so I didn’t have much choice, except to leave with the convoy. When there was no room waiting at the Base Hospital, I couldn’t turn back. It was too late.” I shook my head and felt my hair tumbling down. Quickly putting it up again, I said, “I shall have to get word to my father.”
“It’s more urgent to get you back to England. Bess, you can’t stay in France. Don’t you see? One attack can be put down to luck on his part. Two? A damned close call. Let’s not wait for three.”
I was reminded of Simon telling me that he was superstitious enough not to want to see me come close to dying a third time.
Captain Barclay was saying, “I thought I could protect you. I even told your father that I could. But I was wrong. Falling into that trench was the last straw.”
“I don’t want to go home to England. If I do, whoever this is will slip away and we’ll never find out why he killed Major Carson.”
“I don’t know that it’s important to find out,” Captain Barclay said wearily. “Not if it puts you in danger like this.”
“If I could find a way to return to Dr. Hicks and tell him that the message he received was only a ruse, he’d be happy to keep me there. And I’d be safer there than anywhere else. The only alternative is to go on to Ypres and let them decide what should be done about me.”
“England, Bess. For your own sake. Or if not for your sake, then for your father’s.”
I sat there, trying to think. If I went to Ypres, whoever was out there would know where to look for me. If I returned to the forward aid station that I’d just left, he’d still know.
Perhaps it would be wiser to go to England, after all. Out of reach. But it went against the grain to see a murderer go free. To leave the patients I believed I could help. I had the sinking feeling that I’d be letting down not
