We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [37]
“Did she flirt, to lead anyone to suppose…” He did not know how to finish the sentence.
She gave a tight little smile, meeting his eyes. Then, seeing him color faintly, her smile widened. “Probably,” she agreed. “But that’s no excuse.”
Of course she had not seen the body. The bestial intimacy of it flooded his mind with a revulsion so violent, it made him feel physically sick.
Lizzie saw it, and without hesitation moved forward to put her hand very lightly on his sleeve. “I’m sorry. Was it terrible?”
“Yes.” She had seen her husband’s body. She was a nurse. He should be able to trust her strength. “Yes, it was bad. Please be very careful.” That was a ridiculously inadequate thing to say. The thought of anything happening to her was worse than it happening to himself. How had he not realized that she was so much more than a friend, even the best kind of friend to whom one could talk of the innermost things, or keep silence and still feel the warmth of trust? He had crossed a boundary within himself, and there was no way to retrace his steps, even if he wished to. Part of him did want that; he was afraid to care again so much. In fact, he was more afraid, because new places had been carved out inside him to a depth he had never touched before, an emotion that was not part of him, but all of him.
“We are all being careful,” she said wryly. “None of us has gone anywhere alone today. It’s all ridiculous and ugly. I find myself talking to someone quite naturally, a doctor or an orderly or driver, or a man wounded but not disabled by it. Then suddenly I remember, and I can see that he does, too, and neither of us knows what to say. I’m frightened of him, embarrassed, and he knows it and is sorry for me, or angry because I’m being unjust. It’s all horrible.”
He nodded. It was a situation he had never faced before, and he tried to imagine it. “It won’t be long,” he said aloud. “We’ll be able to prove pretty soon that there were only a few people it could have been, then all the others will be cleared.” Please God that was true. Apart from the other sordid and dangerous things, they had to solve the murder and be free to get Schenckendorff back to London. But he dare not tell Lizzie that, for her own safety.
“Is that what you are doing?” she asked. “Helping the police?”
“Yes. Can you account for any of the men last night, from three o’clock onward, or when you last saw Sarah?”
She thought hard before answering. “I was working with two of the orderlies for most of the couple of hours when the new cases came in. I don’t think they were out of the Admissions tent for more than a few minutes at a time, and then it was to take them into the Pre-operation tent.”
“Names?” he asked.
“Carter and Appleby. I think the surgeons were operating all the time, or with people in Resuscitation.” She looked at him anxiously, searching his eyes. “I saw people after that, of course, but about five or six in the morning. You don’t look at watches when you’re trying to stop people from dying. And everyone was covered with blood. We always are.”
He nodded. There was nothing to say. He took brief notes of all she told him, then reluctantly left her and started to speak to the injured British men who had been here last night. The first he saw was Major Morel. They had known each other since Morel had first come to Cambridge as Joseph’s student in 1912, to learn biblical languages. He had been there when Sebastian Allard had died. That had been his first experience of the shock and emotional confusion of murder. They had served four years of war, seeing most of the same horror, enduring the grief for loss of men they both knew. Morel had been the leader of those who had come so close to mutiny last year, and together he and Joseph had gone east and through the lines into Germany to bring back the one man guilty of murder.
Morel had been injured in