Tales: Short Stories Featuring Ian Rutledge and Bess Crawford by Charles Todd Page B

motorcar.
    News of my train was not very reassuring.
    “There’s a troop train coming through shortly, and it will be filled with wounded going back,” the harassed stationmaster told us. “I’d find a room, if I were you, Sister. It could be morning before I’ve got anything for you.”
    “Never mind,” the Major said. “But let’s collect your kit, shall we?”
    I looked at the baggage—now piled high by the side of the station, even overflowing onto the platform. I could just see mine squeezed between a large steamer trunk and the wall.
    “A very good idea,” I agreed, and Major Ashton helped me extract it. I could just picture what my clean uniforms must look like now, crumpled into a wrinkled twist. But there would be an iron I could borrow in Mrs. Ashton’s kitchen.
    As we walked back to his motorcar, he said, “There’s more than enough room at the Hall. The hotels are crowded, and you’ll be better off with us.”
    I protested that I didn’t intend to presume on his mother’s hospitality, but he said firmly, “Nonsense. You can’t wander around this town all day, only to discover there will be no train after all. Tomorrow the lines should be straightened out.”
    I hoped he was right. I still had my heart set on reaching London.
    And so we threaded our way out of Canterbury and took the main road toward Rochester, the old Watling Street of the Romans.
    The countryside was so beautiful. Roadside wildflowers had gone to seed, but the hedgerows were still thick and green, and sometimes trees along the way provided a canopy of cool shadows overhead.
    Major Ashton said, his eyes on the road, “Do you think you could manage to call me Mark? God knows we’ve known each other for several years. It wouldn’t be improper, would it? And ‘Sister Crawford’ reminds me too much of my wounds.”
    We were not encouraged to call patients by their first names. It fostered a familiarity that was unprofessional. But the Major was no longer my patient, and so I said, “Thank you. Mark, then.”
    “Much better.” He turned his head and grinned at me. Those blue eyes were twinkling. “I still look over my shoulder when someone calls ‘Major’ to see who it is they’re speaking to.”
    He was young to have achieved his majority. Thirty? But the war had seen the deaths of so many officers that it was more a mark of survival than time served, as it had been before the war.
    We were enjoying the drive in silence when the Major said, “Bess, don’t say anything about the explosion.”
    “When the tunnel went up?” I asked, turning to him in surprise. “Doesn’t your family know that’s how you lost your hearing?”
    It was his turn to be surprised. “Sorry. No. The explosion and fire in Cranbourne. Hadn’t you heard about it? Two years ago, it was. I wasn’t here, but it must have been as bad as anything in France. Over a hundred men were killed.”
    “I didn’t know—what happened?” I couldn’t imagine anything in a village that could cause such terrible damage.
    “It was the gunpowder mill. No one knows what happened. It just—blew up.”
    I remembered then that his family owned a mill where gunpowder had been made for over a century, and in early 1915, the Government stepped in and took it over, increasing size and production to meet the needs of a nation at war.
    “There was a fire as well,” he was saying. “God knows whether it was the cause of the main explosion or if it started afterward in the dust. I can’t believe anyone survived the blast. Still, no one could get to them in time, and that has haunted my father to this day. It was a Sunday, Bess. There were no women in the mill because it was Sunday. Or the loss of life would have been unthinkable.”
    “How awful!”
    He took a deep breath. “Everyone’s first thought was sabotage. Well, the mill is close by The Swale, it could have happened that way. A small boat putting in at night? Easier to believe that than think the