An Unwilling Accomplice (12 page)

“He was on extended leave.”

“Odder still. Are you sure?”

“It’s what the Inspector told me.”

I could tell this was troubling Simon. After a time, he shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll find him.”

“I wish I could have spoken to his sister. She must know more.”

Now we had to concentrate on where the sergeant and the bay horse had parted company.

Easier said than done. We couldn’t ask outright. And so we concocted a story, Simon and I, that we hoped wouldn’t travel back to Inspector Jester’s ears. It had taken us half an hour to work out the details so that we wouldn’t be caught out in an obvious lie.

We stopped at the fourth village south of Ironbridge. It was an arbitrary choice, but it was outside the twenty-mile radius that the Inspector had set. I was window dressing. My role was to sit in the motorcar, staring straight ahead, while Simon spoke to the local constable.

He was searching for his brother, who had stepped off a train heading to Worchester and disappeared.

“A head wound,” I heard Simon tell the constable. “Sometimes he doesn’t know where he is. Or even who he is.” He went on to describe this imaginary brother, his height, coloring, and rank.

“Why do you think he might have come this way?” It was invariably the next question. “It’s a long way from Worcester.”

“We’ve been scouring the countryside for days,” Simon answered. “My brothers and I. I’m taking our sister back to London. It’s unlikely he came this direction. On the other hand . . .” He shrugged. “We’re nearly out of hope.”

But in each village, the constable shook his head. No sign of a stranger, no sign of our “brother.” Which told us that either Sergeant Wilkins had never come this way, or that if he had, he’d left no trace. No strangers, no stolen food, no stolen horse or bicycle or any unsolved robberies. Nothing that would draw the attention of the police.

We varied the story a little, as needs must. But the answer was always the same.

It was a little after ten o’clock when Simon said, “I don’t think we should wake up the constable in this next village. At this hour he just might become suspicious.”

But we didn’t have to. The constable was walking his rounds as we came down the High Street, and he nodded to us as Simon slowed the motorcar.

“Odd that you should ask,” the man said, lifting his helmet to scratch his balding head. “One of the farmers spotted a bay horse out on the road one morning as he was going to market. This was ten days ago, I should think. No bridle, no saddle. It looked as if it had run off. He tried to coax it close enough to catch, but the bay was shying away. Finally it just took off across the fields, and as the farmer was driving a cart, there was no way he could follow. No one has said anything about seeing it since. But you said your brother stepped off a train.”

Simon smiled. “I’m afraid so. Much as I’d like to think . . . but I doubt he could remember how to ride.”

“Sad. Sorry I can’t help you. But there it is.”

Thanking him, Simon let in the clutch as he took off the brake, and we drove sedately away.

“What do you think?” he asked when we were out of hearing and around the bend in the road.

“We’ve found the bay.” I’d been feeling the tension of the search, tired and more than a little depressed. Now my fatigue had vanished. I was revived, excited. “Simon, he got this far—and farther. He must have been near his wits’ end, weary and hungry and in pain. He could very easily have fallen off the bay, too tired to stay awake. But where is he now? What’s become of him?”

“He could be dead somewhere. In a copse of trees, in a hedgerow, an unharvested field.”

“Then we’ll never know if it’s Sergeant Wilkins—or if the murderer is someone who had a grudge against the victim in Ironbridge and just caught up with him finally.” I could feel my spirits plummeting again. “And I can’t clear my name and reputation.”

Still, against all odds we’d found a trace of the bay horse. I ought to be grateful for even such a small triumph.

But the next question was—where had this triumph led us, if we couldn’t find the man we were after and determine once and for all if it was Sergeant Wilkins or a complete stranger?

We weren’t as lucky in the next village. It was silent, windows dark and no one about, not even a dog following a scent. I smiled, thinking that he would have been better off than we, because he could sniff the ground and know where to go.

Driving on, we found the next village just as dark.

By now it was well after eleven, and we’d been at this for hours.

We found a small inn where there were rooms to be had, just a short distance from the local constabulary. A sleepy clerk came out of the unlit nether regions and greeted us with surprise.

“We’re accustomed to lorry drivers and commercial travelers,” he said apologetically. “Still. The rooms are clean—the sheets as well.”

It was all that mattered. He led us up stairs that creaked with every step and down a dark, stuffy passage. The first door he came to opened into a fairly narrow room, and Simon shook his head. The next was wider, the high ceiling making it seem even larger. The bed was Victorian, massive and ornate, the washstand and chairs much simpler. A window looked out on the street, and the clerk walked across to draw the curtains while I tested the bed. Simon glanced at me, and I nodded. He put my kit on one of the chairs and the clerk shut the door, wishing me a good night as he handed me the heavy key.

I could hear them across the passage, and then the door shut. Simon was satisfied as well.

I had slept in worse places, cots beneath dripping canvas, the ruins of a convent, and even under a sky filled with stars. I bathed my face and hands in the cold water on the washstand, found my nightdress, and climbed up into the high bed. The mattress was lumpy but comfortable enough. When I closed my eyes, I could still feel the motion of the motorcar as we’d traveled over the rough roads between villages. But that was all I remembered.

Simon insisted that I have breakfast in my room the next morning, because the common room was busy with commercial travelers. We set out shortly afterward, but we hadn’t gone more than two miles when I saw a man standing by the side of the road with a pair of hens in a coop and a basket of cabbages at his feet.

“He’s waiting for someone to take him to market,” I said, having seen this many times at home in Somerset. Then a thought occurred to me. “Simon? If Sergeant Wilkins is without a horse now, he can’t expect to get very far on foot. He must be searching for someone, a farmer or a lorry driver or the like, to take him wherever he’s heading. Or as near to it as he can manage.”

“A very good idea.”

We went back to the inn where we’d stayed the night, and while I waited in the motorcar, Simon went inside to ask those at breakfast if any of them had given a lift to a soldier heading for London.

I could hear the voices inside but not the words. After a few minutes, Simon came out again and joined me in the motorcar.

“No one has seen anyone answering Sergeant Wilkins’s description. Do you suppose he’s changed clothes?”

“Short of stealing them, where would he find them?”

“He’s been clever enough so far.”

We were reversing to continue on our way when I touched Simon’s arm. “Look, the police station. It’s only a stone’s throw from this inn.”

“He’d be a fool to draw attention to himself here. It’s one of the reasons Scotland Yard hasn’t found him. He’s canny enough to realize that if the local constable is contacted, he’ll report what he knows or has been told.”

And so began a very different sort of search. We bypassed any village with a police station, but stopped in those too small to have a constable. Of course there would be a constable in a nearby village or town who oversaw any problems that might arise, but who would think to mention a soldier looking for help?

Ten miles farther on, we had a bit of success when we stopped for petrol at a place simply called
BURT
’
S
.

The talkative man in the converted smithy, who proudly introduced himself as Burt, asked where we were heading, and Simon gave him the name of a village farther down the road, thinking it safe enough.

“Aye, my brother lives there. Do you know him?” He told us the name of his brother and the location of his cottage—“second lane past the church, Buttercup it’s called, although why that’s so nobody quite knows.” He wiped his hands on an oily rag. I thought he must be close to forty, his hair heavy with gray, his face lined.

Simon answered, “Actually the Sister and I are searching for my brother. He went missing on leave from a clinic in Ludlow, and it’s feared his wound may have reopened. He can’t have had much money with him. He wasn’t going far.”

“Can you describe him?” Burt asked, suddenly interested. “I was in the Wiltshire’s until I lost a kidney outside Ypres.”

Simon did the best he could, this time without embellishments, although we knew precious little about what our quarry really looked like now. What’s more, we were far enough from Ironbridge that we needn’t worry as much about word getting back to Inspector Jester.

“Limping, you say? And in the Duke’s Own? Here, now, I saw him not a week past. He was set down by a farmer on his way home from looking to buy a bull. And late that afternoon, a lorry coming through took him on. The lorry was heading for Oxford, though the lad said he was from Kenilworth.”

Kenilworth? What associations did Sergeant Wilkins have with Warwickshire?

But we couldn’t ignore it, for Burt described his limp very well.

“Felt sorry for him. He looked tired, as if he’d been living rough. I asked about that, and he said he was set on and robbed. They knocked him down, and he said his leg was hurting something fierce. I asked why he didn’t go back to the clinic, and he said it was his only chance to see his mother. She wasn’t well, she couldn’t travel. I had a little beer in the back and I shared it with him.”

“And the driver was on his way to Oxford?” Simon queried.

“Aye, so he said.”

“Do you remember the firm that owned the lorry?” I asked.

“I do. As it happens, I see Danny from time to time, passing through. He’ll stop for a pint, if he can spare a few minutes. General Hauling is the firm.”

And how many lorries by that name plied the roads of England? It was a more or less common name for long-distance firms. But it was a start.

“Have you seen Danny since he offered the Sergeant-Major’s brother a lift?” I asked.

“He hasn’t come back this way since then. Is your brother in trouble with the Army for disappearing?” The man turned to Simon, and it was too close to the mark for comfort.

“Sadly, I don’t think he’ll be going back to France anytime in the near future. We offered to help the clinic search for him. They believed we might have better luck than they’d had. But then they don’t have the people or the time to go far afield.”

“Well, Danny will see him right. You’ll find him at your mother’s, waiting.”

I didn’t think we’d have a ghost of a chance finding the sergeant in Kenilworth—he could disappear in a town that size or from there go in any direction he chose.

“He was looking to reach Kenilworth? Are you sure?” I asked

“Well, just outside it. He said that was close enough, he could find his way to his village from there.” Burt glanced from one to the other of us. He was beginning to wonder, since Simon must know where his own mother lived, why we were still asking directions.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said hastily. “I couldn’t think why he wouldn’t go directly home. Of course there was a girl in Kenilworth . . .”

Burt nodded. “I doubt he had the strength left to go courting.”

I smiled. We were becoming very good at making up stories about Sergeant Wilkins, Simon and I. If the Yard ever traced us, they would begin to wonder about our own role in this search. It was something to consider.

“Did the soldier tell you his name, while you were sharing a beer?” It was Simon’s question. “My brother has had some trouble with his memory. There was a head wound, I’m told.”

That elicited another nugget of information.

“If you ask me, it must have reopened when he was set upon. He went out back and cleaned it up a bit. Fearsome great knot, it was. I thought it must be hurting like the very devil. He called himself Wheeler. Jack Wheeler.”

“Then he’s all right,” I said, giving every appearance of relief. “If he still knows who he is, he can most certainly find his way home.”

All the while, I was thinking that the name he’d given was remarkably close to
Jason Wilkins
. And yet that was hardly proof of his identity. No doubt the Army records could produce several dozen soldiers by the name of Wheeler and Wilkins. We could actually be chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.

Simon, concluding the questions before Burt began to wonder why we were asking about a man Simon at least should know well, thanked him for his help and paid him for the petrol.

Driving away, I said, “Do you think the sergeant was heading for Kenilworth?”

“Who knows? He was wise enough not to travel as far as Oxford. Warwickshire is a large enough county. By the time Scotland Yard or the Army MFP could search it, Wilkins could be anywhere. Oxford however is too close to London. If that’s where he’s heading, he wouldn’t want to show his hand quite so obviously.”

“He must be going
somewhere,
” I said with a sigh. “But where?”

“Assuming Wheeler and Wilkins are the same man.”

“Yes, I’d already considered that possibility.”

“Wilkins has no real roots. I looked at his record, remember? He has no family. He isn’t married—” Simon broke off, frowning. “Hold on. Let me think.”

We drove another mile or two before Simon spoke again. “By God, I believe I’m right. Jason Richard Albright Wilkins. As the elder son he was named for his two grandfathers and given his mother’s maiden name. His brother was Jeremy Arthur Wheeler Wilkins. Wheeler was his father’s mother’s maiden name.”

“You not only looked in the Army records, you went to Somerset House,” I said, surprised. “Where is this brother? Did you look him up as well?”