I leaned forward to search for an identification tag. To my surprise, there was none. And he wasn’t in uniform. It was true, we sometimes got patients so badly wounded we had no idea who they were or what regiment they’d served with. A tunic already torn in the trenches, cut off in the forward aid station for a better look at the site, or removed entirely for emergency surgery, and any hope of identifying him could be lost well before a man arrived in our ward. But as a rule, the ambulance driver could tell us his unit, or there were other wounded from his sector who could give us a name and rank until the patient was able to speak for himself.

“Please, I need a little more light,” I whispered, trying to see where he’d been wounded.

“We need to mind the time, Sister. The burial detail will be here soon. And we don’t want to attract anyone else’s attention.” Still, he brought the light nearer. I couldn’t find any other marks on the man’s body, except for a few scars, some of them half healed, others from before the war. I looked at him again. Death had changed his features, of course, but not so much that I could have doubted the evidence of my own eyes. I hadn’t been wrong. And there was only one conclusion I could draw.

I stepped back, thoroughly shaken.

“Dear God.” It was all I could manage to say.

What should I do? My first inclination was to call someone and have the Major’s body taken out of the shed to somewhere the circumstances of his death could be looked into.

It was then I realized that he hadn’t been dead for very long. Rigor hadn’t set in yet. Which meant that whoever had killed him was very likely still somewhere in the vicinity. But who could have done this? Why should Major Carson have been murdered?