We Shall Not Sleep (12 page)

He swallowed hard, his eyes stinging. "We've got to get this solved, and get Schenckendorff back to London," he finally said. "His foot is a bit better today. His fever seems to be breaking."

"That's the least of our worries," Matthew answered grimly. "Somebody butchered that girl, which would be bad enough at any time, but as you know, out here nurses are viewed pretty well like angels. They're the one link with the women they love who represent home, and decency, and everything they're fighting for. For one or two I spoke to, it was as if something inside them had been violated, too."

Joseph stared, realizing suddenly that this was what he had seen in Morel and the others he had spoken to. They assumed it was rape, although the details of the crime had been kept quiet. That kind of
violation, he realized, causes a deep internal injury to men also, all decent men.

Matthew gave a little shrug. "If we don't solve it soon, Joe, there's going to be a whole lot more violence, possibly toward the German prisoners. Our men want it to be one of them, not one of our own. I've heard some ugly things said. The veneer is thin; it won't take much to break it."

It was another hard night, but most of the casualties were taken to a clearing station five miles away, which was closer to the actual fighting as it moved eastward. Joseph arrived back to find Matthew waiting for him outside the tent for the walking wounded. His face was haggard and his uniform sodden wet in the rain. As soon as he saw Joseph he strode toward him, splashing through the mud with complete disregard.

"Joe, it's getting worse," he said abruptly. "There's been more violence. Several British soldiers, three or four at least, lit into half a dozen German prisoners and beat the hell out of them. The worst thing is that the officer in charge didn't do anything to stop it. He didn't even punish them for it after. What in God's name is this ... this whole bloody slaughter for"—he swung his arm around violently to encompass the entire battlefield—"if we end up acting like barbarians ourselves? We might just as well have surrendered in the first place. We had nothing worth saving." He was so shaken that his hands were trembling. "We've got to get Schenckendorff out of here," he went on, deliberately lowering his voice. "If he still thinks we're worth saving?"

Joseph understood his anger. The sight and the stench of so much suffering, and so unaccountably many dead, had temporarily torn away his normal reserve. His brother was used to the intellectual tensions of waiting, of cat-and-mouse games of the mind, but the sheer physicality of the line was new to him. "Who were they, do you know?" he asked.

"Two of them were Black and Youngman. I don't know the others."

"Bill Harrisons men. I'll go and speak to him."

"The officer already knows!" Matthew said impatiently. "I told you, he didn't give a damn. He just let it go."

"I'll deal with it." Joseph turned and walked away.

He found Harrison surprisingly easily in the Casualty Clearing Station. Stan Tidyman, one of his men, had lost a leg; the officer had come to see if he was still alive and give whatever support he could.

Joseph looked at Stan's gray face and sunken eyes, and waited until Harrison was ready to leave him. Not that you were ever ready, but there came a time when it was necessary.

He waited outside and spoke to Harrison as he stepped onto the boards and into the wind. His face was tight and vulnerable with pity, and he looked relieved to see Joseph. "There's not much you can do right now, Chaplain," he said grimly. "But he'll be pleased to see you."

Joseph felt a stab of guilt. "Actually it is you I was looking for," he answered. "Four men beat more injured German prisoners last night. Two of them at least were from your unit, Black and Youngman. It's got to stop, Bill. Apparently the lieutenant on duty didn't do anything. That isn't good enough."

"I didn't know," Harrison said unhappily. "They're on guard duty, and they resent it. They're only slightly injured and they want to be pressing forward with the rest of the regiment." He gave a slight, rueful smile. "We've been telling them to go and kill Germans for the last four years, Chaplain. Some of them hated doing it so much they were almost paralyzed at the thought of deliberately blowing another man's body to pieces, even if he was German. They look just like us, walk and talk, have homes, parents, pet dogs, things they like to do."

He was obviously distressed, his disgust running deep, but he refused to evade the issue. "I've had to punish men because they couldn't pull the trigger, and I hated doing it. I've seen hundreds of men aim high, on purpose. And I've seen those who didn't, and the nightmares they've had afterward."

He shook his head. "We gave medals to the ones who could do it without flinching. They were ordinary men when they came here, bakers and blacksmiths, bank clerks, farm boys, bus drivers. A lot of them have lost brothers, friends, even parents at home from the bombings." His voice dropped. "Wives have been unfaithful over the long years alone, sweethearts have found someone else. It hurts. It doesn't seem fair to punish them now for being what we've made them into." His gray eyes looked steadily into Joseph's with an honesty that would not flinch or accommodate. "I'll speak to them, but I'm not going to punish them, sir."

Joseph admired his loyalty, stubborn though it was, and perhaps technically wrong. He could understand it, and he knew that from Bill Harrison he should even have expected it.

"What if
it takes us awhile to find this man?" he asked aloud. "Closed up here like this, these incidents could get worse, especially since he got away with it this time. I know that what someone did to Sarah Price was bestial, but that isn't the reason for this, it's the excuse. Next time someone may be critically injured, or even killed. Then we will have to charge whoever did it with murder, because beating to death an injured and unarmed prisoner is murder, Bill. You know it, and so do they. So do the Germans, incidentally."

Harrison stood very stiffly, shoulders square. "I'll talk to the men, Chaplain. I won't let that happen."

"Good." Should he trust him? What if the violence did break out again, and this time Schenckendorff were killed? He dare not say anything. The Peacemaker had eyes and ears in all sorts of places, followers who were often good men, idealists whose dreams were more passionate than their understanding of human nature. They killed for another man's vision, and Joseph could not afford that. They were so close. This was the last hand to play against the Peacemaker, win or lose.

It was not Harrison's honor he didn't trust; it was his wisdom, his ability to see evil where he had a right to expect it would not be.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was Judith's turn to be questioned by Jacobson. She had known it would come, and tried to prepare herself for it. He was speaking to all the women, asking them where they had been at the time of Sarah's death and which of the men they could account for. Had anyone seemed troubled recently, or had they noticed anyone behaving peculiarly? It was the obvious thing to do, but Judith was still uncomfortable when she was ordered to enter the tent that had been hastily put up for him. Someone had found a table, two chairs, and a box for him to keep his papers in. There was a duckboard floor, but it was bitterly cold.

Judith went in and closed the flap behind her. She stood to attention, not out of any particular respect, but because it marked her as part of the army and was a tacit statement of unity with the others. He was civilian, even if he was employed by the military police for this specific crime.

"Thank you for coming, Miss Reavley," he said without expression. He pointed to the wooden chair opposite the desk. "You may sit down."

She considered it for a moment. It would be more comfortable, but it would also instantly put her on a physical level with him and take away any resemblance she had to a soldier.

"Thank you, but I prefer to stand," she replied. She was also not going to call him
sir.
"I sit a great deal," she added. "I drive an ambulance."

"Yes, I know." He indicated a piece of paper in front of him on the table. "You've been here a long time."

"Since the beginning."

"Then you will know the other people here as well as anyone can. You will have known Sarah Price."

"Not much. I'm a driver, not a nurse," she pointed out.

"Don't you bring wounded men here to be treated?" he asked.

She thought he was a plain man, but in other circumstances he would not have been unpleasant. There was intelligence in his face. "Yes," she answered. "The orderlies help me unload them off the ambulance, then I turn around to go back for more."

He blinked. "Don't you tend them at all on the way?"

"I can't drive an ambulance through the mud and shellfire and tend to wounded at the same time!" she said tartly.

"Don't you have anyone to help you?" He looked at her with intent.

"Yes, most of the time."

"People trained to give medical help?"

"Of
course. Otherwise they wouldn't be of any use." She was keeping her temper with difficulty. It was unfair to resent him—none of this was his fault—but he was still an outsider probing with a civilian's lack of understanding for the terror, the grief, and the loyalties of soldiers.

"Nurses?" he questioned. "Orderlies?"

"VA.D.'s," she answered.

"What happens if your ambulance breaks down?"

"I mend it!" she said with her eyebrows raised.

"Yourself?"

"Of course. There's no one else."

"You must be extremely competent. Where do you do the regular maintenance work?"

At last she saw his point. "Usually here. But I don't often see many nurses. None of us has a lot of time to stand around."

"But you see a lot of orderlies, other drivers, doctors, soldiers?"

"Of course. But I have no idea who attacked Sarah Price. If I had, I would have told you."

"Would you, Miss Reavley?"

"Of course I would!” The anger burned through now. It was a stupid question, and offensive. "No decent person would defend a man who killed one of the nurses! Or any woman, for that matter." She stood even more stiffly. "We work together, Mr. Jacobson. We have done so in more hideous circumstances than you could imagine. You know nothing about it. I can see that in your face, even if I didn't know. We have a kind of loyalty to one another that peacetime couldn't create."

The ghost of a smile crossed his face, full of regret.

"I believe that, Miss Reavley, which is why I think that one of you could well be defending a man with whom you have shared danger and pain, perhaps who has even saved your life, because you cannot believe he would do what he has. You will have different judgments of right and wrong from mine, and debts of honor I couldn't understand."

With amazement like a slow-burning fire inside her, she realized what he was saying. "You think I would defend the man who did this?" she said incredulously. She could feel her temper slipping out of control. "I want him found and arrested even more than you do! The worst that can happen to you is that you fail!" Her voice was shaking now, and she was gulping for air. "I could be assaulted or murdered, or both. So could my friends! Of course I want him caught... and ... and got rid of... like ... sewage!"

"Even if he were, for example, your friend Wil Sloan?" Jacobson asked. "A man who would never hurt you, surely?"

"That's disgusting. Wil would never even think of doing something like that!"

"What kind of a man would, Miss Reavley? Do you know who would and who wouldn't?"

He had caught her, this ordinary civilian who knew nothing about the reality of war. She had walked straight into his verbal trap without seeing anything of it. She hesitated, unable to frame an answer. He was right: She was trying to protect those she cared for most, because they could not be guilty, not because she feared they were. But any such reply would sound ridiculous.

"Of course I don't," she said at last. "All I know is who couldn't have because they were somewhere else." How lame that sounded.

"And was Wil Sloan somewhere else?" he asked, almost casually.

Her mind raced. How could she say anything that was of value without making him suspicious? She did not even know when the murder had happened, or if he had already spoken to Wil. The only time she and Wil had been at the Casualty Clearing Station was roughly between three o'clock and half past four. If it were not then, would Jacobson even be asking?

"Miss Reavley?" he prompted.

She tried to look innocent. She must not seem too clever, or that in itself would make him distrustful of her. "We were both in the ambulance most of the night," she answered. "Miles away from here."

"But not all of it," he pointed out. "You brought the wounded back. Surely that was your entire purpose?"

"Yes, of course. We were here a couple of times, a little before midnight, and again at about three."

"And when did you leave again?" His face was almost expressionless.

"The first time about quarter to one, the second at half past four, roughly."

"So there were at least two and a half hours that you were both here," he pointed out.

She wanted to say something sarcastic, referring to their whole purpose, but swallowed her temper. "Yes. We have to get the wounded off and into the Admissions tent, then clean the ambulance and refuel it." She nearly added that it had needed maintenance, too, but since she'd mended it without Wil, it would be walking into another trap. Where had Wil been the second time? She did not know. But he could not have killed Sarah. No one who knew Wil would have had such an idea even enter their minds. He was hot-tempered on very rare occasions, but never toward women. He was generous to a fault, and idealistic; otherwise he would not even have been here. An American, he had come voluntarily in 1915, when his own country had had nothing to do with the war. Like many others, he had simply believed it was the right thing to do, and so he had done it. He was patient, funny, too honest, a little unsophisticated, and one of the kindest people she knew.