An Unwilling Accomplice by Charles Todd Page B

was a pleasure talking to you, all the same. I hope you’ll come back to Ironbridge soon.”
    “I’ll try, if my duties allow it,” I said, not wanting to make a promise I couldn’t keep. And with a nod and a smile, she was gone.
    The soldier she had encountered on the bridge might not be Sergeant Wilkins. And she was right, there might well have been someone else who spoke to the murdered man after the soldier—whoever he was—had moved on.
    But the timing had been perfect. Close to the dinner hour when even the man in the tollbooth had gone home. The days were shorter, it would have been dark early, just as it was now.
    It was damning evidence and would require a court of law to untangle it. But what on earth had brought Sergeant Wilkins to this place? He was in fact a stranger here, since no one had recognized him. Was it the other man on the bridge he’d come to see? How had he learned he was here? Or had he known all along? Had some casual remark been made one morning or afternoon in the hospital in Shrewsbury that set this whole affair in motion? Remember Sergeant Lessup? You’ll never guess. He’s home on extended leave. Lucky devil.
    And Sergeant Wilkins need only ask, Where’s home, then?
    Less than twenty miles or so from here. A village called Ironbridge.
    I’d have liked to ask the grieving members of Sergeant Lessup’s family if the sergeant had known anyone in Shrewsbury’s hospital. But there was no excuse I could make for disobeying the Inspector’s direct order, and I couldn’t risk being reported to my superiors for interfering in the inquiry into Sergeant Wilkins’s affairs.
    I looked down at the racing waters of the Severn, then up the Gorge. Such a lovely place, so wrong for a vicious murder.
    Leaving the bridge, I turned toward The Ironmaster pub. Halfway there, I met Inspector Jester just coming out of a shop.
    “I hope you’ve come to say good-bye. That you’re leaving Ironbridge.”
    “I was. I am. The problem is, I don’t quite know how to go about it. There isn’t a train from Coalport until morning, and as I don’t know anyone here, I can hardly ask for a lift to Shrewsbury.”
    “There’s a very early train. I’ll drive you over to Coalport myself in time to take it.”
    “That’s very kind of you,” I replied, wanting to add that I would be as happy to go as he would be to see the last of me.
    “Seven o’clock then.” He touched his hat to me and walked on.
    As I went the rest of the way to The Ironmaster pub, my thoughts busy, I wondered why it was that the Inspector had taken such a dislike to me. Did it mean that by coming here to ask questions, I had made him doubt his own conclusions about the evidence?
    Stepping through the pub door, I looked up to see Simon Brandon standing in the small parlor off the main bar, obviously fuming at being kept waiting.

C HAPTER E IGHT
    “Y OUR MOTHER ,” S IMON remarked, turning to see who had come through the door and realizing it was me, “thought you were in London. Mrs. Hennessey thought you had gone on to Somerset.”
    “I traveled to Shrewsbury,” I answered, “to speak to people at Lovering Hall. Yes,” I went on, to forestall what he was about to say, “I shouldn’t have. But, Simon, I learned a great deal about the sergeant. And I could see he’d planned very carefully for what he did. If nothing else, it made me feel a little less guilty. There’s no excuse for my part in this business, I know that, but it has helped me come to better terms with what’s happened.”
    “And then you traveled to Ironbridge after Shrewsbury.”
    “As you see.”
    “Bess,” he began in exasperation.
    “I know. But, Simon, what else was I to do? I couldn’t sit idly, waiting for what was to come. And I needed to understand . . .”
    Glancing around at the busy pub beyond the stairs, he said, “We can’t talk here. Walk with me as far as the bridge.”
    We turned to leave, passing a young officer just coming in.
    We