An Indecent Obsession Read online

  ‘Isn’t it?’ he asked harshly.

  ‘Stop it!’ she cried, terrified.

  ‘I should have been there with him, not here with you. I had no right to leave him.’

  Appalled, she stared at him as if she hardly knew him, but then somehow she managed to find a small mocking smile from somewhere in her grab bag of emergency expressions, and smeared it across her mouth. ‘My word!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s quite a compliment to me!’

  ‘Oh, Sis, I didn’t mean it that way!’ he cried wretchedly. ‘I wouldn’t hurt you for the world!’

  ‘Can’t you remember to call me Honour even now?’

  ‘I wish I could. It suits you—oh yes, it does suit you. Yet I always think of you as Sis, even now. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, Sis. But if I had stayed where I belonged, this could never have happened. He’d be safe, and I—I’d be free. It is my fault!’

  His agony could mean nothing to her, for she didn’t know its source. Who was he? What was he? A nauseated revulsion and huge nameless sorrow welled up from some central part of her, spread insidiously through her from fingertips to wide incredulous eyes. Who was he, that after spending hours making the most passionate and loving of love to her, he could stand now bewailing it, dismissing it in favor of Luce? Horror, grief, pain, she might have dealt with those, but not when he was experiencing all of them for Luce. She had never in her life felt less a woman, less a human being. He had thrown her love right back in her face in favor of Luce Daggett.

  ‘I see,’ she said tautly. ‘I’ve been terribly mistaken about a lot of things, haven’t I? Oh, how stupid of me!’ The bitter laugh came unbidden, and was so successful he flinched. ‘Hang on for a minute, would you?’ she asked, turning away. ‘I must have a quick wash. Then I’ll take you back to X. Colonel Chinstrap wants to ask you a few questions, and I’d much rather he didn’t find you still here.’

  There was a tin dish on a little shelf below the back window, and it contained a small quantity of water. With face averted she hurried to it, the tears pouring down, and made a great show of splashing in the water, then stood with a towel pressed against her eyes and cheeks and nose, willing with will of iron those senseless, shaming tears to stop.

  He was what he was; should that therefore automatically mean her love for him was worthless? Should that mean there was nothing in him worth loving, that he could prefer Luce to her? Oh, Michael, Michael! In all her life she had never felt so betrayed, so dishonored, Honour without honor indeed, and yet why should she feel so? He was what he was and it had to be beautiful or she would never have loved him. But the void between reason and her own feminine feelings was unbridgeable. No rival woman could ever have hurt like that. Luce. Weighed and found wanting in favor of Luce.

  What an idiot Colonel Chinstrap was, to suspect Michael of killing Luce! A pity he couldn’t have witnessed this little scene. It would have scotched his suspicions on the spot. If any man was ever sorry another man was dead, that man was Sergeant Michael Wilson. He could have done it, she supposed; during the night she had been absent from her room long enough for him to have made the journey, done the deed and returned. But he hadn’t. Nothing would ever convince her he had. Poor Michael. He was probably right. If he had remained in ward X, Luce would not have needed to kill himself. His victory over her would have been complete—no, more complete.

  Oh, God, the mess! What a tangle of desires, a confusion of motives. Why had she removed Michael from the ward? At the time it had seemed the right thing to do, the only thing to do. But had she planned all along to seize any opportunity to have Michael to herself? Ward X gave one no chance of that; they were all so jealous of time spent alone with any of them. And men, she supposed, were men. Since she had virtually thrown herself at a Michael suffering some sort of withdrawal from his encounter in the bathhouse, why should she blame him for picking her up and using her?

  The tears dried. She put the towel down and walked to the mirror. Good, the tears hadn’t lasted long enough to mar. Her veil was crooked, her duty hat that never, never betrayed her. Love might; duty never did. You knew where you stood with duty—what you gave to it, you got back. She slid open some deep dark drawer in her mind and dropped the love into it, straightening her veil in the mirror above eyes as cool and detached as that sister tutor so many years ago. Not a viable proposition. She turned away from herself.

  ‘Come on,’ she said kindly. ‘I’ll take you back where you belong now.’

  Stumbling occasionally, Michael plodded along beside her, so wrapped in his own misery he scarcely knew she was there. It was not merely beginning again; it had already begun, and it was a life sentence this time, a whole eternity of living. Why did it have to happen to him? What had he ever done? People kept dying. And all because of him, of something in him. A Jonah.

  The temptation to lie on her bed, smell her sheets, press his body flat where hers had lain… She was regretting it now, but she hadn’t then. All that love he had never known, and it was there. Like a dream. And it had come at the end of something hideous, was born in his shame at being caught naked and compromised by Luce Daggett. It was born in the destruction of his self-esteem, the total realization that he too hungered to kill.

  Visions of Luce danced in his brain, Luce laughing, Luce mocking, Luce staring at him in amazement because he had been willing to clean up the mess Luce had made, Luce in the bathhouse unable to believe his overtures were unwelcome, Luce sublimely unaware that murder hung above him like a sword. You stupid drongo! As Luce had once said it to him, so now he said it to the ghost of Luce. You stupid, stupid drongo! Didn’t you realize how you were asking for it? Didn’t you realize that war blunts a man’s objections to killing, accustoms him to it? Of course you didn’t. You never got closer to war than a base ordnance unit.

  There was no future left. No future for him. Perhaps there never had been. Ben would say a man always brought it upon himself. It wasn’t fair. Oh, God, how angry he was! And she, whom he didn’t know, he would never know now. She had looked at him just now as at a murderer. And he was a murderer; he had murdered hope.

  4

  The moment they arrived in the ward Michael hurried away; the one glance into his face that he permitted her tore afresh at her own ribboned feelings, for the grey eyes had gone beyond tears, so deeply troubled she would have been willing to put herself aside and offer him what comfort she could. But no; he hurried away as if he couldn’t escape from her quickly enough. And yet the moment he saw Benedict sitting disconsolate on the side of his bed he swerved, and sat down.

  Sister Langtry could bear it no longer, and turned to go into her office, as much angry now as anguished. Clearly everyone was more important to Michael than she was.

  When Neil came in with a cup of tea and a small plate of bread and butter she was tempted to order him out, but something in his face prevented her. Not a vulnerability, exactly, more a simple anxiety to serve and to help that could not thus be so lightly dismissed.

  ‘Drink and eat,’ he said. ‘You’ll feel better.’

  She was very grateful for the tea, but didn’t think she would be able to get any of the bread down; however, once her first cup was succeeded by her second she managed to eat about half of what was on the plate, and did indeed feel better.

  Neil sat down in the visitor’s chair and watched her intently, fretting at her grief, frustrated by his own impotence, chafing at the restrictions she had imposed upon his conduct toward her. What she was prepared to do and give for Michael did not apply to himself, and that was galling, for he knew he was the better man. Better for her in every way. He had more than an inkling that Michael knew it too, this morning if not yesterday. But how to convince her? She wouldn’t even want to hear.

  As she pushed the plate away he spoke. ‘I am so desperately sorry that you of all people had to be the one to find Luce. It can’t have been pretty.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. But I can cope with that sort of thing. You mustn’t let it wo
rry you.’ She smiled at him, unaware that she looked as if she waded through the depths of a private hell. ‘I must thank you for taking the blame for my decision to remove Michael from X.’

  He shrugged. ‘Well, it helped didn’t it? Let the colonel cling to his stronger-sex convictions. If I had told him I was drunk and incapable where you were well in command, he would have found me far less believable.’

  She pulled a face. ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Sis?’

  ‘Yes, perfectly all right. If I feel anything, it’s rather as if I’ve been cheated.’

  His brows twitched. ‘Cheated? That’s an odd word!’

  ‘Not to me. Did you know I had taken Michael to my quarters, or was it purely a shot in the dark?’

  ‘Logic. Where else would you take him? I knew last night that when it came to the morning you wouldn’t want to haul Luce up before the MOs or the MPs. So that meant you couldn’t create speculation by putting Mike in another ward, for instance.’

  ‘You’re very acute, Neil.’

  ‘I don’t think you realize how acute I actually am.’

  Not being able to answer, she turned slightly away and looked out the window.

  ‘Here, have a cigarette,’ he said, pitying her, but bitter too, because he knew there were some things of which she would not permit him to speak.

  She turned back. ‘I daren’t, Neil. Matron is bound to be along any tick of the clock. By now the colonel will have told her and the super and the MPs, and she at least will be champing at the bit. The seedier the sensation the better, as far as she’s concerned, provided she’s not an active part of the seediness. She’s going to lap this little chapter of disasters up.’

  ‘How about if I light a cigarette for myself, and you sneak the odd puff from it? You need something more than tea.’

  ‘If you dare mention whisky to me, Neil Parkinson, I’ll order you to stay in your room for a month! And I can do without the cigarette, truly. I have to salvage what respectability I can or Matron will drum me out of the corps. She’d smell the smoke on my breath.’

  ‘Well, at least as the donor of the grog the colonel’s well and truly hoist with his own petard.’

  ‘Which reminds me of two things. First, I’d be grateful if none of you mentions the whisky to a soul. Second, take this glass to the ward with you and give yourself and the others a tablespoon each. It’ll cure your hangovers.’

  He grinned. ‘For that I could kiss your hands and feet!’

  At which point Matron bustled through the door, nostrils quivering like a bloodhound’s. Neil disappeared with a sketchy obeisance to Matron en route, leaving Sister Langtry to face her superior officer alone.

  5

  Matron was the start of a different kind of wearing day. She was followed by the super, a mild little red-hat colonel who really only cared about hospitals in the abstract, and felt quite helpless when faced with patients in the flesh. As commanding officer of Base Fifteen, he bore the responsibility of determining the style of the inquiry. After a brief inspection of the bathhouse, he rang the DAPM at divisional headquarters, and requested the services of a Special Investigations sergeant. A busy man, the super had scant interest in what his eyes clearly told him was an open and shut case of suicide, albeit suicide of a particularly unpleasant kind. So he handed the physical execution of the inquiry over to Base Fifteen’s quartermaster, a tall, amiable and most intelligent young man named John Penniquick; then with mind relieved of a burden having considerable nuisance value, he went back to the complicated business of closing a whole hospital down.

  Captain Penniquick was if anything even busier than the super, but he was also a very efficient and hard-working officer, so when the SI sergeant arrived from HQ he briefed him thoroughly.

  ‘I’ll see any of them myself whom you think I ought,’ he said, peering over his glasses at Sergeant Watkin, whom he found perceptive, sensible and likable. ‘However, it’s your pigeon entirely, unless the pigeon turns out to be a hawk, in which case, yell your head off and I’ll come running.’

  After ten minutes in the bathhouse with the major who was Base Fifteen’s pathologist, Sergeant Watkin walked carefully across the distance between the bathhouse and the back steps of ward X, then skirted the ward and came in up the ramp at its front. Though Sister Langtry was not in her office, the telltale rattle of the fly-curtain alerted her, and she came speeding up the ward. A neat little thing, thought the sergeant with approval; real officer material, too. It cost him no pangs to salute her.

  ‘Hello, Sergeant,’ she said, smiling.

  ‘Sister Langtry?’ he asked, removing his hat.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m from the DAPM’s office at divisional HQ, and I’m here to look into the death of Sergeant Lucius Daggett. My name’s Watkin,’ he said, his voice slow, almost sleepy.

  But he wasn’t a bit sleepy. He declined her offer of tea once they were established in her office, and got straight down to business. ‘I’ll need to see your patients, Sister, but I’d like to ask you a few questions first, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Please do,’ she said tranquilly.

  ‘The razor. Was it his own?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure it was. Several of the men use Bengals, but I fancy Luce’s was the only one with an ebony handle.’ She decided to be quite open, and thus establish the fact that she was in charge of things, too. ‘Though there’s surely no doubt in your mind as to suicide, Sergeant? I saw the way Luce was holding the razor. The fingers had spasmed on it exactly the way the living hand would have held it, and the hand and arm were caked with an enormous amount of blood, as they would be while he made incisions like those I saw. How many cuts were there?’

  ‘Three only, as a matter of fact. But they were two more than he needed to finish himself fast.’

  ‘What does the pathologist say? Have you brought in someone from outside, or are you using Major Menzies?’

  He laughed. ‘How about I just take a little snooze on one of your spare beds and let you handle the inquiry?’

  She looked mortified, demure, and somehow oddly girlish. ‘Oh, dear, I do sound bossy, don’t I? I’m so sorry, Sergeant! It’s just that I’m fascinated.’

  ‘It’s all right, Sister, ask away. You tickle me to death. Seriously, there’s very little doubt that it was suicide, and you’re quite right about the way the razor was held. Major Menzies says there’s no doubt in his mind that Sergeant Daggett inflicted the wounds on himself. I’ll just ask around among the men about the razor, and if it all tallies I reckon the whole thing can be wound up pretty quickly.’

  She heaved a huge sigh of relief and smiled at him enchantingly. ‘Oh, I’m so glad! I know everyone thinks mentally unstable patients are capable of anything, but truly my men are a gentle lot. Sergeant Daggett was the only violent one.’

  He looked at her curiously. ‘They’re all soldiers, aren’t they, Sister?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And mostly front line, I’ll bet, or they wouldn’t be troppo. Sorry to contradict you, Sister, but your men can’t be a gentle lot.’

  Which told her that the investigations he carried out would be as thorough as he felt necessary. So it all devolved upon whether he had spoken the truth when he said he believed Luce had committed suicide.

  His inquiries about the razor revealed that indeed the only ebony-handled Bengal had belonged to Luce. Matt owned an ivory-handled Bengal, and Neil a set of three with mother-of-pearl handles which had been custom-made for his father before the First World War. Michael used a safety razor; so did Benedict and Nugget.

  The men of X made no attempt to hide their dislike of the dead man, nor did they hinder Sergeant Watkin’s investigations by any of the means they had at their disposal, from assumed lunacy to assumed withdrawal. At first Sister Langtry had feared they would be recalcitrant, for loneliness, segregation and idleness sometimes did lead them to play childish games, as they had on the afternoon
of Michael’s admission. But they rallied to the call of good sense and cooperated splendidly. As to whether Sergeant Watkin found talking at length to them a pleasant task, he didn’t say, though he paid rapt attention to everything, including Nugget’s lyrical description of the scotomata which had prevented his seeing more than mere knobs and knotholes, and then only the left halves.

  Michael was the only member of ward X the quartermaster asked to see personally, but it was a friendly talk rather than an interrogation. He held it in his own office simply because ward X was a difficult place in which to obtain any real privacy.

  Though Michael didn’t realize it, his own appearance was his best defense. He reported in full uniform save for his hat, and so did not salute when he came in, only stood to attention until bidden to sit down.

  There’s no need to worry, Sergeant,’ said Captain John Penniquick, his desk clear except for the various papers pertaining to the death of Sergeant Lucius Daggett. The pathologist’s report covered two handwritten pages, and indicated besides a detailed description of the wounds which had caused death that there had been no foreign substances in stomach or bloodstream such as barbiturates or opiates. Sergeant Watkin’s report was longer, also handwritten, and included synopses of all the conversations he had had with the men of X and with Sister Langtry. Forensic investigations were extremely limited in a wartime army, and did not run to fingerprinting; had Sergeant Watkin seen anything suspicious he would heroically have done his duty in this respect, but a wartime army SI sergeant was not very conversant with fingerprints. As it was, he had seen nothing suspicious, and the pathologist had concurred.

  ‘I really only wanted to ask you about the circumstances which led up to Sergeant Daggett’s death,’ the quartermaster said, a little uncomfortably. ‘Had you any suspicion that Sergeant Daggett intended to proposition you? Had he made any sort of advance to you before?’