Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [102]
Instead he had driven her so far away he had placed a barrier between them that he had no idea how to surmount.
But one thing he could do was trace the car Hadrian had used on the night of Prentice’s death, and see if it had broken down as he had said, and he had indeed used a silk scarf to jury-rig it until he got back to Poperinge. He could also check to see if anyone else had seen him at the various points of his journey. It might prove that he could not have been in no-man’s-land at the same time as Prentice.
He had almost completed his task when he spoke to the nurse, Marie O’Day, the following afternoon. It seemed incontrovertible that Hadrian had been where he had said, and Cullingford had certainly been ten or twelve miles in the opposite direction.
“It was a bad night,” Marie told him. “I saw Prentice, but he was alone. Why are you asking about him, Captain Reavley? What is it you need to know? He’s dead. Nobody liked him, and you know why. You were here when he did that to Charlie Gee, poor boy.” Her face twisted with grief at the memory. “It’s nobody’s fault he went over the top. Nobody else made him go!”
“Nobody suggested it?” he pressed. “You don’t know who gave him the idea?”
“Even if somebody egged him on, he didn’t have to do it!” she pointed out.
“Did they?”
“No. He’d already made up his mind when he reached us.” It was a statement of fact and there was no wavering, no overemphasis in her as if she were urging a lie.
“Reached you from where?” he asked curiously. “Where had he come from?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “To the east a little. He was full of himself, said he’d already been right as far as the German wire, and he wanted to go again.”
“Been as far as the German wire?” Joseph was incredulous. Had Prentice really been to another regiment, and gone over the top on a raid with them, and now he wanted to do it again, here? “Are you certain?”
“Oh, yes.” Her face was full of contempt. “He was bragging about it. Said it was exciting and dangerous, a taste of the real war he could write something about that would grab everybody’s attention. He wanted to add going over in a raid to what he already had! Maybe kill some Germans himself, then he could write as an actual soldier and tell people what it was really like, the feel of it, the smell of bodies, the rats, everything as it is, so they’d know.” Her face pinched. “Maybe it’s wicked of me, Captain Reavley, and you being a godly man, but I’m glad he didn’t live to do that.”
He was startled. He had not thought of correspondents writing so graphically. “Yes, I’m glad, too, Mrs. O’ Day. Perhaps I’m not as godly as you think. Thank you for your help.” He left her taking the mugs back inside, a tall, sad figure in a gray dress soiled with blood, busy with the small duties of habit and comfort.
He spoke later to Lucy Crowther, assistant to Marie O’Day. She was rolling bandages on the table in the first-aid station. Her dark hair was tied back severely and her knuckles were clenched and she avoided his eyes. “Yes. He was boasting that he was going over with the men,” she answered his question.
“For the second time,” he said.
She looked up at him. “No. He’d never been over before.”
“He told Mrs. O’Day that he’s been right up to the German wire!”
“Oh, that!” she said dismissively. “Any fool can do that, once the sappers have dug the tunnel!”
“You mean underground!” Again his belief was stretched to snapping.
Her face was twisted with contempt. “Yes, of course. You didn’t think he went on top, did you?”
“He was back here from eastward somewhere,” he asked, trying to piece it together in his mind.
“That’s right. The sappers were working along at Hill Sixty. Major Wetherall and his