I put the newspaper down. Sister James, shoving her trunk back under her bed, said, "What is it? You look as if someone has walked over your grave."

It was just an expression, one I'd heard many times, but I said without thinking, "Not mine-but someone I may have seen. Look, read this."

Sister James took the newspaper from me and scanned the column. "I don't know her. Do you?"

"Her husband was among that group of wounded I escorted to Hampshire. The badly burned pilot. Remember? He kept his wife's photograph by him-and that's his wife. I can't bear to think how he must have felt when he was told."

"But, Bess, murdered? That's awful."

"Yes, but what's more important is that I saw her late that very afternoon. She was at the railway station, seeing off an officer in a Wiltshire regiment. She was crying. Terribly upset. I'm afraid I stood there staring. I was so surprised to recognize her." I winced as the next shell landed. They seemed to be coming closer together now.

"Who was the man with her?"

"I've no idea." I shook my head, trying to come to terms with the fact that she'd been murdered that very same day. "That poor man-her husband-was counting the hours until he saw her again. It was what kept him fighting to live. I wonder who had to break the news to him. I can't imagine having to do it."

"Bess, if you saw her that day, you must tell the Yard."

"But I don't know who she was with, or where she went after she left the station. Only that she was there for a few minutes, seeing someone off, and that's not terribly useful. It's been a week since this request came out in the newspaper-surely someone else has come forward. A waiter in a restaurant, a cabbie, a friend who ran into her somewhere." But what if they were saying the same thing: someone else will do it.