Page 71 of The Devil in Oxford
“About Leona? Already?” I dared not hope.
He nodded, shutting the door behind me before slowly walking over to a glass pitcher on a nearby table, pouring a glass of water, and handing it to me. Hari gestured to a chair, urging me to sit. “The woman will be here soon I suspect. She was eager to speak with you.”
I glanced down at the water glass, running my finger over the cut crystal. “Tell me what you learned.”
Hari sank down onto the edge of the brocade high-backed chair, rubbing at the spot where his prosthetic affixed to his thigh. He seldom complained about anything, but I recalled that mornings had always been a challenge. He splayed his fingers across the bright blue of his trousers. “You had said she worked for this Frederick Reaver fellow.”
I wet my lips uncertainly. “She did. I don’t trust him, Hari. Not at all—but I don’t get a sense that he’s our killer.”
“Your mistrust is good.” His hazel eyes remained unfocused inthe dim morning light of his hotel room. “I do not know this for certain…”
“But you suspect something.”
Hari leaned forward. “I looked into the fellow. Everyone I have met here in Oxford during my inquiries spoke highly of his war record. I thought it prudent to phone an acquaintance of mine in the War Department, see what he was up to back then.”
“And?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
I blinked. “What do you mean? Doesn’t havewhat?”
“Doesn’t have a war record. Not under the name Frederick Reaver, that’s for certain.”
“The man is a professor, and the Keeper of the Egyptology collection at the Ashmolean. You cannot expect me to believe that one in such a prominent position has”—my hands flew of their own accord—“simply manufactured a war record for himself. Surely someone would have known, questioned it…”
Hari frowned. “One would think… and yet when I inquired, I was told in no uncertain terms to let the matter be. A quick denial, then told to stop asking. Typically, one either does or does not have a war record. It’s a straightforward question.”
Treadway and Leona both intimated that there was somethingelseat play here in Oxford. Some undercurrent that was none of my affair. “Are you telling me that you believe that whatever he did during the war… he didn’t do as Frederick Reaver at all…”
Hari unfolded his arms. “That is exactly what I think. Either he did it under another name, or his own record is sealed. I have never been denied this type of information in such a way. But there’s more.” He hesitated, moving to the window and pulling the curtains before peering out onto the bustling street below. “I also mentionedyouon the call…”
“You mentioned me…to the War Department.”
“They know your name. In truth, they know a great deal about you, my old friend. More than I expected.”
A door slammed somewhere down the hall, followed by the laughter of a couple heading out for the day. “Who doesn’t? That dreadful reporter is adamant on exaggerating my every movement lately.”
“I’m afraid it is more than your public persona they are interested in…” He stared at the entrance to the Ashmolean. “Do you remember during the war when you asked me if a person would know if they’d gone mad?”
His words brought back a flurry of memories. None of them good. It wasn’t long after we’d first met. I’d liked Hari from the very start—a great deal more than any of the other wounded men I’d brought back. Enough that the two of us would sneak out some nights when I was off duty. I’d take him in his chair into the woods behind the hospital. We’d sit by the pond there, watching the planes overhead. Under the cover of darkness, we’d talk of our fears. Of losing our families. His worry that he might never walk again, and once—late at night—after far too much gin and far too little supper, I asked him if he thought I was mad. He told me no, but evenheknew why I went away for a week. When I returned, I no longer asked questions. I did my bit, and kept my mouth shut.
A light had gone out of me. One that took a very long time to turn back on.
I’d been scarcely twenty-four years old back then. Sent to an abandoned field hospital near Armentières to bring back a wounded American officer who’d escaped German captivity. The matron gave me no papers—a thing that should have struck me as odd at the time—but I was young. Young and naïve. As soon as I reached that bombed-out aid station, I knew it was all a lie. The American was missing the better part of his face, clinging to life in the arms of a wounded British aviator, rocking him like a newborn babe. They’dnot escaped German lines at all. They’d been retrieved from them. Retrieved and waiting for me to bring them to hospital.
“Will he survive?” I had asked the British airman after we arrived back at the hospital in Amiens, while watching two strangers gently load the groaning American into another vehicle. The Brit had a wicked wound below his right eye, going down toward his ear, from where someone had recently taken a blade to him. His coat smelled of petrol and castor oil from the engine of his plane. Some of it still smeared across his face. The wound hadn’t been stitched, just badly scabbed over. He leaned close and murmured, “Don’t fear for him, love, he’s already dead.”
He’s already dead…
The words haunted me for weeks.
The American was badly wounded, but no more dead than I.
I never saw either man again. According to the matron, no one else saw them either. There were no men. I’d not even been sent to that bombed-out hospital—my orders, the paper ones she pulled from my jacket pocket, said I had gone to Rouen. A city in the entirely opposite direction.
At first, I thought the fellow another of my dreams—like those I had of my mother—but never before had I confused my dreams with reality.
“Ruby…” Hari’s gentle voice snapped me back to the present. “What I’m trying to say to you, is I did not think you mad then, and I do not think you mad now. I saw you that day when you returned from that assignment. Matron said you would be gone for two days to fetch supplies, and I had believed her. That was until I saw the man being taken from the back of your ambulance. I was so bloody pleased to see you. I started over to tell you the same—but that’s when Isawa soldier speaking to you. An aviator with a bloody gash beneath his eye.”
