Read Online A Question of Honor by Charles Todd - Free Book Online Page B

You’re bringing it all back again. For all of us.”
    “No, I’m trying to lay the Subedar’s words to rest. There must be someone out there in France who bears a resemblance to Wade. If it isn’t Wade—then he’s dead, his bones already dust in the Khyber Pass. Where they ought to be.”
    Simon turned to look at me. “Then why are you going to Petersfield?”
    I gave that some thought. “I want to know something. Did Lieutenant Wade go to the Khyber Pass hoping to make it to the other side and then cross first Afghanistan and then Persia and even Turkey? To escape? Or did he go to the Pass knowing it would be a better death than hanging?”
    It was Simon’s turn to be silent. “A very interesting point. He knew enough of the languages of the Frontier. He might have passed himself off as a native. But it would have been an odyssey, that crossing. I don’t know many men with the fortitude even to try.”
    “We aren’t the only ones who served in India with Lieutenant Wade. If the Subedar recognized him, if I did, then someone else will eventually. What happens then?”
    “We must hope it doesn’t.”
    “If we can find out why he killed the family in Petersfield, we just might learn why he killed his parents. Did he do it to keep them from learning what he’d done, what he’d become—what was surely going to catch up with him in the end? If that’s true, then he died out there in the Pass. And whoever we think we’ve seen in France, the Subedar and I, it’s been ten years.”
    “You’re very persuasive.”
    “I’m just trying to explain all this to myself. And why it has disturbed me so much.”
    He reached out and touched my hand for a moment, then concentrated on his driving as we came into another busy town, motorcars and carts and wagons filling the street, and villagers crossing haphazardly from one side of the road to the other.
    We paused for lunch along the way, then arrived in Petersfield just as the market was closing. The square in front of St. Peter’s Church was filled with stalls and barrows and tables offering everything from sausages and cheese and bread to cloth and dried flowers and secondhand goods. In the shadow cast by the equestrian statue of William III, a man had a litter of puppies tumbling over themselves in a box, the mother watching anxiously beside it. Fat tummies and flailing tails and overlarge feet waiting to be grown into. I stopped to watch them while Simon made inquiries at the next stall.
    “You’ll like one to take home,” the man said, smiling at me. “Which one catches your fancy, Sister? The little brown and tan? The one with the white face? Or the little ’un with the white paws?”
    I could have taken every one of them, but I thanked him and moved on as I saw Simon signal me to follow him.
    “The house we’re after is outside the town. Not far, I’m told.”
    “How on earth did you elicit that bit of information?” I asked.
    “Deviously,” he replied, and we went back to the motorcar.
    We drove past the market and a black and white Tudor inn, then followed the road to the outskirts of town, where we quickly picked up a low stone wall that led to gates into an overgrown park.
    “This is the house?” I asked, surprised.
    “It’s on the market. Has been since 1914 when the previous owner died. His nephew is selling up.”
    “But how did you know?”
    Simon grinned suddenly. “The old man selling brooms and patching pots and pans was garrulous. It didn’t take me long to find out what I needed to know.”
    I was reminded again that Simon was a master at interrogating prisoners and suspicious camp followers. We’d had enough of them in India, from musicians to traveling buyers and sellers of every imaginable goods, from mendicants and holy men to beggars and thieves, scoundrels and snake charmers.
    We left the motorcar by the gates and walked up the drive to the house. It was in a better state of repair than I’d expected, given the overgrown