Guarded Ground by Anna Elliott

Author:Anna Elliott [Elliott, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Wilton Press
Published: 2021-10-07T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10: FLYNN

“Should we deal you in on this hand, Major?”

Flynn dragged himself away from his study of the ceiling to find that Hutchins, the young sergeant he’d rescued from no man’s land, was offering to cut him in on the game of cards that was currently taking place on two beds that had been pushed together at the far end of the ward.

Flynn levered himself up off the mattress. “Sure.”

Cards were better than wanting to crawl out of his own skin, which was how he’d spent most of the morning.

Two days had passed since the bombing, and other than the trenches—which, whatever else you could say about them, didn’t exactly lend themselves to boredom—this had to be the longest he’d ever spent in one place. The fact that his wounds were healing and he could get around without too much pain only made being stuck in the hospital that much worse.

So he got up and went over to the end of Hutchins’ bed, where the game was being played. Jenkins was another of the players, plus Claybourn and a couple of new arrivals whose names Flynn didn’t yet know. One of the new arrivals was in the bed next to Hutchins,’ with his right leg in a plaster cast that was held up in the air with wires and pulleys.

Flynn dragged over a chair, then whistled at the sight of the group of objects that formed the betting pool, spread out on Hutchins’ wool blanket.

“Where’d you get this lot?”

There was a gold-capped pen, a brass compass, a flashlight, a pair of silver field glasses, and—the most impressive of the bunch—a Luger automatic pistol, inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

It was Jenkins who answered. “From the Bosche. The one that popped off the other night.”

“What, Richter?” Flynn asked.

“Nah, not him. The other one. Dunno his name,” Jenkins said. “The one that got himself killed in the bombing. This lot”—he gestured to the collection on the bed—“belonged to him.”

Hutchins gave Flynn a slightly guilty sidelong glance. “We asked, sir, but no one knew how to find out if he had any next of kin or anything like that.”

Flynn brushed that aside. The stuff on the bed was expensive, right enough, but there was nothing really personal in the lot. Not like they were playing for the dead man’s grandmother’s wedding ring. And if the shoe were on the other foot, he was having a hard time picturing a lot of Germans returning the personal effects of any British prisoner of war.

From what he’d heard about the way the Germans treated prisoners, they’d be lucky to even see the inside of a hospital, no matter how bad their wounds were.

“I didn’t see a thing,” he told Hutchins, who relaxed, looking relieved, and started to deal out the cards.

Flynn took up his pile and looked at them without actually seeing them. He could practically hear Becky in the back of his head, commenting that this was a prime chance, and if he couldn’t find a way to work in a subtle question or two, he didn’t deserve to solve the question of Richter’s death.

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