Free The Walnut Tree by Charles Todd

proof.
    There was nothing I could do without it. Those flecks of paint and that string would be gone by the time I’d even found a constable. It would be my word against the shopkeeper’s.
    Turning down the Highland scenes I’d been shown, I wandered around the shop for a few minutes, as if still in search of something my father would like. In fact, I was looking to see if there was anything out of place here.
    And I found it. A small study by Frans Hals. It was the same size and shape, certainly, as my parcel, and I couldn’t imagine how such a treasure had come to be in such a small shop. I turned to ask the proprietor how much he was asking for the work, and he told me that it was already sold, hastily offering me another painting by a lesser-known artist.
    I replied that I couldn’t make up my mind what my father would like, and I promised to come back soon to see if there was something new on display.
    â€œMoney is no object,” I said casually. “It’s my father’s happiness that matters.”
    He bowed me out of the shop, and I left knowing that the Frans Hals would disappear before I’d walked fifty feet.
    What was I to do about this? What could I do?
    The question, as it happened, was moot. That very day our orders were posted.
    To my great disappointment, I was not sent to France straightaway. I expect it was because I was untested, and far from being fully trained. But I felt I was ready, and I chafed at the delay.
    I was posted to Dover, to meet the boats coming in with wounded and help with the transfer to the trains for London. There, sorted and examined on the journey, men would be dispersed to whatever hospital or clinic was best suited to their wounds. Many of them were heavily drugged, to make the journey easier. Some were awake and screaming, while others lay in shocked or dazed silence, too badly injured to respond to our questions or our care. The doctors during our training had told us that the worst wounds, the appalling, mind-shattering ones, never left the battlefield. And yet despite my experience I had to learn all over again to ignore my own reaction to what I saw, and consider the needs of the patient.
    I talked to those I could, sometimes asking after Rory and Bruce without mentioning that they were cousins, hungry for fresh news. Cousin Kenneth had written to say that Bruce was now listed as missing and there had been no further word of him since that time. Rory had not been heard from either, but then his name had not appeared on any of the lists. And that I had to accept as accurate.
    If Rory was alive when I left France, then I prayed he was still alive.
    But Cousin Kenneth’s letter had taken so long to reach me, having been sent first to Cornwall, then forwarded to Mrs. Hennessey’s, that anything could have happened since it was written.
    And then one morning as I was walking down the hill toward the quay Sister Tomlinson came running after me, calling, “Sister? There’s a letter for you.”
    I turned and saw that she was all smiles as she waved the envelope. “It came with the morning post, and I just discovered it. From France. From the look of it, it traveled by way of China.”
    Good news, I prayed. Let it be good news. Of Alain, or Madeleine and Henri. Waiting for her to catch me up, I stood there in the autumn sunlight with the sea breeze on my face, my mind running ahead.
    But then I saw it was an English envelope, forwarded many times. To the closed London house, to Scotland, to Cornwall, to Mrs. Hennessey, and now here in Dover where we were quartered. The postal service, with its usual fervor, had tracked me down, war or no war.
    I didn’t recognize the handwriting. I’d never seen it before. Not Rory, then, nor anyone else in the family.
    I turned it over and broke the seal, slipped out the single sheet inside and unfolded it.
    No one could tell me what had happened to you. The ambulance was not there,