A Bitter Truth

by Charles Todd

This is the third mystery featuring the WWI nurse, Bess Crawford.

The story starts with Bess returning on leave from the front in France.  She finds a woman huddled on the front steps of the boarding house where she lives.  The woman has a large bruise on her face.  Bess convinces the woman to come inside to get warm.

The woman eventually tells Bess that she has run away from her husband because he hit her following an argument.  She doesn't know what to do but is afraid to go home.  She finally agrees to go home if Bess will accompany her.  Bess feels that she should be visiting her parents but agrees to take the time to see the woman home.  She only plans to spend one night at the woman's home in the country.

However, one of the visitors at the house is found murdered near the cemetery in the church yard and Bess is required to stay by the police.  She finds out that the woman's husband's family has never recovered from the death of the man's sister when she was a little girl.  The dead man had had an argument with the woman's husband on the night before he was killed.  He insisted that he had seen a young orphan in France who looked like the husband's dead sister -- implication - the child is the man's.

One of the people suspected of the murder is a blind man whom the woman had been reading to.  Her husband suspects that there is more to the relationship than reading.  The blind man disappears.

The woman asks Bess to try to find this child when she is in France and with the help of an Australian soldier she nursed to health she is able to find the home where the girl is being cared for by nuns.  She runs into the woman's husband but doesn't admit she has found the girl.  Things get even more complicated when Bess learns that the Australian soldier has smuggled the young girl into England.

The woman and her husband cannot seem to overcome their distrust of each other.  At one point the man's mother admits to the murders to take suspicion off her husband.  However, Bess and her family friend eventually figure out that the murderer is a local police officer who killed the two men because they served on a court martial against him.

The story was okay but I really didn't have any sympathy for the woman.  She seemed to be quite clueless, acting on impulse with little thought of the consequences for her or others.