Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [125]
RUTLEDGE WALKED BACK to the hotel, depression settling in like a black shroud. He went to the telephone closet and began the long, wearing task of tracing the house that had been a military hospital during the war. Saxhall or Saxwold.
There was no listing for a Saxhall, but there was for Saxwold.
In the next hour, he tried to locate any staff who had served there. Chiefly the matron or doctor in charge. He found one sister, who gave him the name of three more, and the last one pointed him to Elizabeth Andrews.
In another half hour he was speaking to her. She had been the nurse in charge of Saxwold’s most seriously wounded men, and was now at a hospital in Cambridge.
Her voice came over the telephone clearly, forceful, with the slight accent of Yorkshire in it.
Rutledge explained what he was after. “I’m looking for anyone who might have been friends with a Captain Robert Burns who was at Saxwold in 1916. He was there for nearly a month, then was released to convalesce in London.”
“Ah, yes, I do recall Captain Burns. A very nice man. I heard much later that he’d returned to the Front and been killed. A waste.”
“Indeed. There was a woman, Eleanor Gray, who met him either in London or at Saxwold. Do you recall her?”
“I thought you wanted to know who among the wounded was friendly with him! I have no idea who Eleanor Gray is, Inspector. I had little time to waste on visitors. These were seriously wounded men in my care.”
“The problem is that I don’t know with any certainty whether Eleanor Gray introduced Captain Burns to the man I’m seeking or if she met him through Burns. If she met him through Burns, it might be someone he knew at Saxwold.”
“I understand now. Well, since I have no knowledge of this woman, I suggest we begin with the patients. There were a number of critically wounded men at Saxwold at the time, and they seldom mixed with the other patients. Certainly not often enough for a friendship to be formed. Therefore you must be interested in the men who were more or less able to move about or have visitors. If I remember correctly, there were at least twenty of those. Of them I would say that Captain Burns was friendly with three or four.”
She gave him names and told him how badly each was wounded. Three had lost limbs. Rutledge discounted them. Mrs. Raeburn had said she couldn’t tell how the man at her door had been wounded. The fourth had been blinded.
Trying to begin from another end of the puzzle, Rutledge asked, “Did you have patients from Palestine in Saxwold?”
“There was indeed one man who had served in Palestine. He’d been an intelligence officer, wounded, and sent home. Captured by the Turks, apparently, for he had been severely tortured. We feared more for his mind than his body, I must tell you that. He didn’t know who he was and he was by turns raving, silent, or alarmingly alert. Touch him and he was instantly back in captivity, striking out quick as a snake. We kept him in a room upstairs, under the eaves, where he didn’t disturb the other patients. Once Captain Burns could move about, he spent a good deal of time with the very ill, writing letters and so forth. The Captain made an effort to include Major Alexander in his rounds, though the stairs were difficult for a man with a serious back injury.”
“Alexander? Do you have a first name?”
“I’m sorry, no. He told me repeatedly that he was called Zander Holland, but the only name on his tag when he was brought in was Alexander. Which isn’t surprising, we’ve had men with no name at all. But as he began to improve, the Major was transferred to another hospital. I was told later that he made a full recovery. I was glad to hear it. One of the specialists who came to look at the burn cases had seen him in another hospital.”
“He’d been burned?”
“Oh, yes, it was part of the torture, you see. Systematic burning.”
Poor devil! Rutledge thought. “You have no record of his unit?”
“I told you. Once he began recovering,