Charles Todd is (are?) a mother and son who have been writing a series of mysteries since 1996. Their detective, Ian Rutledge, has never recovered from the trauma of the Great War and his guilt takes the form of the voice of a man he ordered shot for cowardice. It is, of course, his own mind speaking to him, but as the voice comes up with things that Todd is not aware of in his conscious mind he finds this haunting useful. Wonderful books and highly recomended, not just by me.
Well, in 2009 Todd began a second series about which I was initially sceptical as it seemed to be too much like the Ian Rutledge mysteries. It features Bess Crawford, a nurse, and happens during the war rather than after. Turns out I was very wrong and this second series may be just marginally better than the first. You will have to read a book or two from each and figure that out for yourself. (I know, I sound like a drug dealer, and I fear you will respond similarly.)
This second Bess Crawford mystery, An Impartial Witness, begins with Bess accompanying some wounded soldiers, including a badly burned pilot, to an English nursing home. She is given a bit of leave afterwards so she takes a train to London. As she gets off her train she sees a couple parting as the soldier is preparing to board the train for Portsmouth. She is stopped in her tracks when she sees the woman.
It is the wife of the badly burned pilot. She knows the woman's face very well indeed as the pilot has had her photo with him throughout his ordeal in the stations and hospitals of France. Bess would know her anywhere. But something is wrong with the body language. The woman is obviously wretched, sobbing and clinging to the officer, begging him for something. He is staring off into the distance, his hands clenched, shaking his head, no. He quickly kisses her on the cheek and boards the train as it leaves the station. The woman runs up the stairs and out into the rain and disappears before Bess can catch her.
Bess forgets about the incident but a few weeks later, back in France, she comes across an English newspaper reporting that the woman was murdered the night after Bess saw her. Anyone with any information, anyone who had seen the woman that day, is asked to talk to Scotland Yard. Bess writes to the Yard and in return is given leave to visit the detective in charge of the investigation in person.
Bess is a trained nurse and with her honed skills of observation she is an excellent and impartial witness. The detective tells her the woman was three months pregnant and a little counting back makes it obvious that her husband couldn't be the father of her child. It becomes imperative that the police find the soldier she was talking to the day Bess saw her in Waterloo Station. The burned pilot, learning that his wife is dead, kills himself. Since Bess again has a little leave she arranges to visit the family of the pilot and looks about her for the soldier she saw on the station platform.
Scotland Yard asks her to look at some photos to attempt to identify the man, and she shares with the inspector in charge some other information she has picked up. She meets a charming officer with a badly injured shoulder, the vicious sister of the dead woman, and the sister of the dead man. This woman is trying as hard as Bess to figure out who killed her sister-in-law.
Her father's sargeant-major, Simon Brandon, again assists Bess in her quest, while trying to discourage her more reckless forays into criminal investigation. We learn in this second book that Simon is half her father's age and enough older than Bess to have known her as a child. I couldn't help wondering if we had a Mr Knightly character here, but that is not particularly developed, only hinted at.
It's touch and go but Bess is able to identify the murderer at the last moment. There are a couple of scenes late in the book where Bess is apparently in trouble and may be attacked by the murderer, but they are short and she comes out ok. (I'm not giving a whole lot away telling you that as these are essentially cozies.) This was a complicated plot but did not resort to multiple murders, not exactly, in order to torque up the suspense. Bess is one of the most likeable protagonists I've encountered in a while.
2012 No 134
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