Page 51

She ran down the stairs to the first floor. Then she went down the center corridor of the left wing of the mansion, to what had once been the ballroom. Now it was the dispensary. She entered.

The former ballroom had been set up with sixteen field hospital beds. The beds were in two rows of eight each on either side of the high-ceilinged room. A small flat-roofed enclosure, fashioned from raw sheets of plywood over a framework of two-by-fours, was at the far end of the room. This “building” was remarkable in that it held an office for the two doctors assigned to OSS Whitbey House Station, two examining cubicles, a dentist chair and equipment, a pharmacy, an X-ray room, and a complete operating room.

One of the physicians and a nurse were making the late-afternoon rounds, attending to one of the ten patients, when she came running up.

“I need you both now, please!” she called. “Follow me!”

There was a small crowd gathered at the rear of the British ambulance as Charity Hoche arrived in great haste with the doctor and nurse. The large rear panel doors of the Humber light ambulance were swung open wide.

The only person she recognized was Bob Jamison. Most of the others were in British uniforms. Lieutenant Colonel Stevens was nowhere in sight.

“Who is it, Bob?” Charity said, looking inside the open doors.

“You don’t—” the young driver of the ambulance, a moonfaced, somewhat-portly British private, began.

“Don’t You don’t me, Private!” First Lieutenant Charity Hoche heard herself suddenly snap. “I’m in charge here.”

The driver, who looked to be barely out of his teen years, held up his hands chest high and palms out as a sign of surrender.

“Right, miss,” he said agreeably.

She glared at him, and he immediately stood stiffly, stamped his foot, and saluted sharply, palm outward and fingernails flat to his forehead. “I mean, YESSIR, Leftenant, SAH!”

The driver of the ambulance was looking above Charity’s head. His eyes twinkled.

“And might I say quite a lovely towel, SAH!”

He snapped his saluting hand to his side.

Charity’s eyes grew large. With a struggle, she ripped the dampened towel off of her head, then threw it to Jamison. It hit him in the chest with a damp thud, leaving a wet mark on his tunic. He caught the towel before it fell to the ground.

She turned on her heels and looked at the doctor and nurse.

“In there!” Lieutenant Hoche ordered and pointed in the back of the ambulance, rather unnecessarily.

As the doctor and nurse peered inside, Charity heard a somewhat-familiar British voice say, ?

?I’m afraid it’s a bit late for that.”

Charity turned to see Lieutenant Colonel Stevens coming down the steps to the front doors with a British officer on either side of him, one in an Army uniform and one in a Navy uniform.

The Army officer looked somewhat familiar, and when he spoke it was with the familiar voice she had just heard.

“So sorry,” he said with a smile. “Had to visit the loo.”

Lieutenant Colonel Stevens and the Navy officer just grinned.

The doctor had stepped into the back of the ambulance. He knelt beside a closed metal container that was more than large enough for a person to fit inside. Its lid was connected to the main box by a long hinge.

Charity Hoche had never seen anything like it. But then there was a very long list of things in England that she had come to see for the first time—that horrid haggis, for instance, being at the very top. She knew that there had to be someone injured inside of it—why in the world otherwise would they bring a body in a box to Whitbey House?

“There’s nothing to be done here,” the doctor said, his tone matter-of-fact.

“And just why is that, Doctor?” Lieutenant Hoche demanded.

“I’m afraid he’s right,” the British Army officer added softly as he lit a cigarette.

Lieutenant Hoche looked at him defiantly and said, “Surely there must be something that we can do.”