An Unmarked Grave Read Online Free PDF Page B

the post bag for me, I thanked them and said no.
    For in spite of everything, I felt that I was betraying Simon.
    I paced the veranda before lunch and after tea, and happened to see Mrs. Campbell leave the hotel, the manager himself seeing her into her hired car. Had the whispers been too much for her?
    Two days later I scolded myself for my reluctance to post that envelope. My parents would be returning to Eastbourne shortly, and I would surely lose my nerve altogether once they were there to persuade me in person. I was on my way down to Reception to see to it personally when I met Simon himself just coming through the hotel door.
    It had been raining somewhere along the road, for the shoulders of his coat were wet. His face was grim, and I suddenly had a premonition of bad news.
    Nodding to me, he took my arm and said, “Shall we walk along the seafront? It won’t rain for another hour or more. You won’t need a coat.”
    “Yes, I— Simon, what’s wrong?”
    “Not here.”
    And so it was we walked down to the water and stopped halfway to the pier, standing for a moment to watch dark clouds building far out to sea. Lightning was playing in them, bright flickers against a gunmetal sky. The air was oppressively warm, even though the wind was just picking up.
    We were out of hearing of anyone. Simon, leaning his shoulders on the parapet of the seawall, seemed lost in thought.
    My mind was running through a mental list of our acquaintance. Who was dead? Why couldn’t he find the courage to tell me?
    “Please,” I said baldly. “Don’t—I’d rather you didn’t try to find the right words to break the news.”
    He straightened and looked down at me, as if he hadn’t realized that I was there. “No, it isn’t bad news, Bess . . . it’s . . . I don’t quite know what to make of it.” He turned and led me to a bench. After we’d sat down, he said, busy with his driving gloves, “I inquired of London where Private Wilson could be reached. I thought perhaps you could write to him, even if you couldn’t return to France. My contact was reluctant to tell me anything at first, and I had to use your father’s authority to pry the information out of him. Which was odd in itself. But then I understood why. The Army isn’t eager to give out such information. It seems— I was told that Private Gerald Wilson, who was an orderly in the hospital where you were working when you fell ill—a man close to forty-one years of age, just as you’d described him to me—was found hanged in the shed where bodies were left to await burial. The doctor who declared him dead felt that his work had turned the man’s mind. Fearful of falling victim to influenza himself, he’d decided to die by his own hand.”
    I sat there aghast.
    After a moment I said, “Are you sure you were given the correct information? There must be a dozen men by that name and of the same rank.” But looking at Simon’s face, I could already read the answer.
    “I knew him, Simon,” I said earnestly. “I worked with him every day. He wasn’t the sort to kill himself. He recognized the sadness of his work, but he understood too that a man of his age was more useful as an orderly than at the Front. He handled the dead—wounded and influenza victims. He knew the risks.”
    I realized that I had fallen into the past tense, as if I had already accepted the truth. But I refused to believe it.
    “It’s in the official record, Bess.”
    “Yes, but it’s wrong, I tell you. It must be wrong .”
    We sat in silence while I dealt with the turmoil in my mind. Finally I said, “It isn’t true. Yes, it may well be that Private Wilson was found hanging, that part I can’t question because I wasn’t there. And, of course, someone had to cut him down, which means the record is correct—as far as it went. But it wasn’t suicide. He must have been killed because he’d seen that body in the shed. When I fell ill so suddenly, he must have had to speak to