Read A Question of Honor for Free Online Page B

didn’t he come back to call on her before he left? She might have seen a difference in him. Something—” I broke off, then added, “Was she ever interviewed by Scotland Yard, do you think?”
    “I doubt it. She wasn’t directly involved in . . . anything that happened. Bess, you don’t intend to pursue this business, do you?”
    I took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Simon. It’s just—if we had only the testimony of the dying Subedar, I would let it go, because there was no corroborating evidence. Only one man’s word that he’d seen Lieutenant Wade. But what did I see? Lieutenant Wade? Someone who looked like him, there in the rainy night? I need to know. I watched my father deal with the shocking charges against one of his men. You were there, you know how we felt.”
    “Yes, I was there. All right, if I help you with this visit, will you let it drop if we see there’s nothing to these sightings?”
    “I promise.”
    W e found Mrs. Standish not in Shepton Mallet but in a bungalow in the next but one village. Her garden was lovely, and as we walked up the path between the beds, I said to Simon, “I think it’s the flowers people missed most in India.”
    “Your mother would agree with you.”
    Knocking on the door, we waited. After a moment, an older woman dressed in the uniform of a housemaid opened it.
    We asked for Mrs. Standish, and we were taken to the back garden where she was sitting on a bench, a pot of water and a palette of watercolors at her side.
    I recognized her at once, in spite of the ten years since I’d seen her last, only her fair hair was graying now, and she was wearing glasses.
    She frowned when she saw me, then a broad smile spread across her face.
    “Bess? Bess Crawford? And it’s Sergeant-Major Brandon, isn’t it?” She set aside her paints and rose to take my hand, kissing my cheek before shaking hands with Simon. “What a lovely surprise!”
    “We are on our way to visit friends in the north,” I said, the agreed-upon tale Simon and I had concocted, “and as we were a little before the time, I thought I would say hello.”
    “I’m so glad you did. Your mother visits from time to time. She’s told me you are a Sister now. How very brave of you. But then you were brought up with the regiment, weren’t you?”
    We were offered chairs, which the maid and Simon brought out to the garden, and we sat talking for a time. I asked about Rosemary, who was engaged now to a young Lieutenant in the Black Watch.
    “She’s staying with his mother at the moment. She hasn’t been well, and Rosemary went to Gloucester to be with her. She’ll be sorry to have missed seeing you.”
    “I’m glad to hear she’s happy,” I said, wondering how I could, gracefully, bring up the past. Losing little Alice had been such a blow, and it was very likely that Mrs. Standish would prefer not to remember too much about that dreadful time.
    But she brought it up herself, saying, “I still find it hard to believe that that very kind Lieutenant Wade went back to India and committed such a dreadful crime. I find it even harder to believe he’d killed three people after he came to ask me if I wished to stay in England or return to India with him.”
    I knew so little about what had happened in England. Just what Simon had told me in passing. But Mrs. Standish would have read whatever newspaper accounts there were. I could imagine how they must have affected her. I cast a quick glance at Simon, then said to her, “You spent a great deal of time with the Lieutenant on the crossing. Did you see anything that would give you the feeling that he was distressed or angry?”
    “Not at all. He looked after me as well as if I’d been his sister. We talked a good bit about Alice, you know. It helped me, even though it was very painful at the time. He’d been fond of her, which made it easier. He told me that she reminded him of his own little sister. I hadn’t been aware that he’d had one. But it