An Impartial Witness: A Bess Crawford Mystery - By Charles Todd Page 0,3

for the wedding!”

We munched on stale biscuits that we’d found tucked in the scarf, and speculated on the chances of the marriage taking place in early autumn as planned.

I coughed as the next shell landed, catching me with a mouthful of biscuit crumbs. “If I were her,” I said, clearing my throat, “I’d want to be married as soon as may be. Still, a Christmas wedding would be nice.”

“If Henry can manage leave…”

We fell silent. Henry had proposed on his last leave. There might not be another.

Sister James said, “Well. We can hope.” She took the engagement notice out of the newspaper and folded it carefully, stowing it in her trunk. I picked up the rest of the pages to search for the obituaries.

Instead I found myself staring at a pen-and-ink drawing of a woman’s face. Beneath it was the caption: Police Ask for Witnesses—Evanson Murder Still Unsolved.

Startled—for I recognized the face—I read on.

The murder of Mrs. Marjorie Evanson, wife of Lieutenant Meriwether Evanson, presently in hospital in Hampshire, remains a mystery. Police are asking any witnesses who may have seen her to step forward. Mrs. Evanson left her residence shortly after noon on 15 May and was never seen alive again. Tracing her movements that fateful day has proved difficult, and Scotland Yard has now turned to the public for assistance in learning where she might have gone and whom she may have seen…

I put the newspaper down. Sister James, shoving her trunk back under her bed, said, “What is it? You look as if someone has walked over your grave.”

It was just an expression, one I’d heard many times, but I said without thinking, “Not mine—but someone I may have seen. Look, read this.”

Sister James took the newspaper from me and scanned the column. “I don’t know her. Do you?”

“Her husband was among that group of wounded I escorted to Hampshire. The badly burned pilot. Remember? He kept his wife’s photograph by him—and that’s his wife. I can’t bear to think how he must have felt when he was told.”

“But, Bess, murdered? That’s awful.”

“Yes, but what’s more important is that I saw her late that very afternoon. She was at the railway station, seeing off an officer in a Wiltshire regiment. She was crying. Terribly upset. I’m afraid I stood there staring. I was so surprised to recognize her.” I winced as the next shell landed. They seemed to be coming closer together now.

“Who was the man with her?”

“I’ve no idea.” I shook my head, trying to come to terms with the fact that she’d been murdered that very same day. “That poor man—her husband—was counting the hours until he saw her again. It was what kept him fighting to live. I wonder who had to break the news to him. I can’t imagine having to do it.”

“Bess, if you saw her that day, you must tell the Yard.”

“But I don’t know who she was with, or where she went after she left the station. Only that she was there for a few minutes, seeing someone off, and that’s not terribly useful. It’s been a week since this request came out in the newspaper—surely someone else has come forward. A waiter in a restaurant, a cabbie, a friend who ran into her somewhere.” But what if they were saying the same thing: someone else will do it.

“If he’s at the Front, this Wiltshire officer hasn’t spoken to the police,” she pointed out. “And just now, what Lieutenant Evanson probably wants more than anything else is for the police to find her killer.”

“Does it say there how she died? I didn’t read the rest of the article.”

She went back to the newspaper, scanning down the column of close print. “Here it is. She was stabbed and then thrown in the river. They say that she was still alive when she went into the water, but was most likely unconscious.”

“How awful.” I tried to bring up the image of the woman I’d seen in London, her face streaked with tears. Yes, it was the same person. I’d have no problem swearing to that. And the man? Could I remember him as clearly? Dark hair, blue eyes, a rather weak chin…

More to the point, would I know him again?

“What if this officer hasn’t seen the newspapers? Or been told yet that she’s dead? If the police find him, it’s possible he could tell them where she was going after she left the station. There’s no way of knowing where that might