Lost Among the Living(42)

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Forsyth,” the colonel said. “Mrs. Manders, though I do not recall your husband, you can rest assured that he provided an invaluable service to England. Perhaps more so than you, a lady, can ever quite know. It is his sacrifice that matters. That much I am confident of, sight unseen.” He picked up his teacup and turned to Dottie. “Mrs. Forsyth, please continue.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



“He was lying,” I said to Martin.

We were sitting on the back terrace as night fell. I was perched on the tiled marble slabs of the steps, my coat around my shoulders, my arms hugging my knees. I still had my hair tied back neatly, and I still wore the new, modest heels Dottie had had me buy. I watched darkness creep over the trees, savoring the slap of fresh air that likely reddened my nose.

“That’s a tall accusation, Cousin Jo,” Martin replied. He sat next to me, a scarf wound around his neck. I hadn’t seen him all day, and the pained lines of his face told me why. Still, he seemed to enjoy our moment of peaceful privacy as the dinner preparations went on in the house behind us.

“He knew who Alex was,” I insisted. “I’d bet all of my money on it. He fed me a dose of claptrap about brave widows, but it was all a lie. I think he just wanted to watch me swallow it.”

“Jolly good,” Martin said, watching me with some wariness. “You’re a little frightening right now, I don’t mind saying. However, if you start shouting at one of Mother’s cronies, it’ll be the most entertainment I’ve seen in a year.”

“He lied to me,” I said. “Alex, I mean. He lied to me about his leave. I’ve spent three years not asking questions because I was terrified of the answers—it was too hard. But now I think I want to know. I’d like to know what Colonel Mabry could tell me, if only I could convince him to help me.”

Martin sighed and gazed off into the trees. “I know what you mean. I tried to find answers myself, you know—to his disappearance. While I was over there. I don’t suppose I’ve told you that.”

I stared at his pale profile. “No. You never told me.”

“I didn’t know you—I wasn’t sure you could handle it,” he admitted. “However, now you’ve asked. I was in the hospital when Alex disappeared, barely conscious most of the time. But it haunted me. The thought of him simply gone like that—it’s hard to get used to, in a different way than death, which I’ve seen plenty of. I started thinking about it, specifically about his plane.”

“His plane?” I asked.

“Yes. Did anyone see it go down? Who found it? How closely did they go over it? Was there some possibility, some clue that pointed in any direction? Anything at all? I was lying in bed with nothing to think about, nothing to do, and it tormented me. I kept having nightmares about his crashed plane, the cockpit splattered with blood and brains.” He stopped himself and stared at me. “Oh, God, Cousin, I’m sorry. I keep forgetting you weren’t over there with me, growing accustomed to it all. I’m an idiot.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’d rather your honesty than Colonel Mabry’s pabulum speeches. Go on.”

“When I was well enough, I made inquiries,” Martin said. “I had a few contacts, and I begged for favors. Alex was my beloved cousin, a heroic officer. I wanted to find answers for my family—et cetera, et cetera. There are certain phrases one can use when asking favors. I wrote letters from my hospital bed and used the hospital telephone a few times. I finally got the ear of someone in the RAF who found the file with the crash report. He had no authorization to send me a copy, but he read it to me over the telephone line from Berne.”

“For God’s sake, what did it say?”

“Not much,” Martin replied. He was looking off at the woods again now, though it had grown nearly too dark to see. The wind was blowing cold down the back of my neck. “It was the most frustrating thing. Alex’s flight that day was listed as a reconnaissance mission, though the objective was not recorded. He was not listed to fly with a gunner, which was a strange oversight—a pilot without a gunner can get into combat without being able to shoot back. Even on reconnaissance, a pilot should have been assigned a gunner, since it gave him a better chance to get back in one piece.”

“So he flew alone?”

“Yes. Odd, though not unheard of, especially at Alex’s level. He’d flown enough missions that I expect he could go without a gunner without question.”

I tried to picture Alex flying a plane, as I often had. I pictured him in a pilot’s heavy coat and gloves, in the hat and goggles. He’d been good, of course; he was good at everything he did. He’d passed pilot school easily.

Still lost in his own memories, Martin continued. “No one saw his plane shot down, at least no one on record. When he didn’t return, a second team, of two reconnaissance planes—this time with gunners—was sent to look for him. They found the plane crashed in the trees just beyond enemy lines, and one of them managed to get aground to look for him. They found his parachute gone, but no other sign of him.” He looked at me. “And there was no blood in the cockpit—that was specifically noted.”

“So he was shot at, and he parachuted out when his plane started to go down.” Though it had been three years, I had never spoken in detail to anyone about Alex’s disappearance, and to do it now was a massive relief, as if a pressure around my rib cage had started to ease. “If there was no blood, then he was not injured when he jumped.”