Betrayal by J. Robert Janes Read Free Book Online

new here, Sergeant, but I’m Mary Fraser, the doctor’s wife.’
    She might just as well have been Saint Jude or Joan of Arc for all he cared.
    â€˜I’m sorry, madam, but we have our orders.’
    â€˜Is it because of what happened last night?’ She’d forgotten about the Second Lieutenant Bachmann and should have remembered. Had Hamish tried to warn her?
    The sergeant, tough, hard and in his late forties, gave her the once over and, unsmiling, un-anything, simply said, ‘I wouldn’t know about that, Mrs. Fraser. My orders are to turn away all civilians until further notice.’
    â€˜Even the greengrocer’s van and the butcher’s?’
    He waited, saying nothing further. She was up against the British Army again, and hadn’t it taken special permission to get her in here in the first place? Hadn’t it only been because this was Ireland and the prisoners were officers and gentlemen to whom honour was their bond, or should have been, Colonel Bannerman wanting to keep them content, or had he? Hadn’t he and Major Trant seen in her presence a means of finding things out, she naively repeating what she’d overheard at times even to Jimmy?
    They’d given no hint. None whatsoever. Sickened by the thought, Mary tried to calm her voice. ‘Sergeant, please ask Captain Allanby to let me know when things are back to normal.’
    Turning at his nod, she began to walk the bike away, only to remember the books, but she couldn’t tuck a note into any of them, couldn’t chance asking that they be given to Erich or one of the others, since she’d mentioned Jimmy’s name.
    â€˜Sergeant?’
    â€˜Yes, miss?’
    â€˜Mrs. Could I ask that you see that these books are delivered to the library?’
    â€˜Library’s off limits until further notice.’
    All recreation, such as it was, must have been cancelled, but had it all been for nothing, the trip South, the meeting with Brenda Darcy, the crossing of the border?
    Back at the house, Mrs. Haney didn’t wait. ‘A hanging, m’am. A hanging!’
    Bridget Leahy, all of seventeen, was jumping. ‘By the neck it was, m’am, and he one of their own!’
    â€˜But not one enough, I’m thinking,’ said Mrs. Haney with a grim, sharp nod, she waiting for some response while Bridget remained wild-eyed and all over the place, but Mrs. Haney chose not to discipline the girl in front of others.
    â€˜Sure and didn’t I tell you they’d be up to no good in that place and you being turned away like that,’ the woman said, fiercely clucking her tongue. ‘You was turned away, Missus Fraser? Am I right now, m’am? Sure it is that I am.’
    â€˜Mrs. Haney …’
    â€˜M’am?’ and she looking pale and bleached about the gills and coming into the kitchen like that for answers now. Answers!
    Wanting to shout at her, ‘Don’t you dare insinuate such things!’ Wanting to wipe that brooding Celtic look from that thick, brown-brow of a face with its swift brown eyes that saw everything, Mary said, ‘Nothing … It’s nothing. Bridget, would you do a bit of tidying up in the doctor’s library for me, please?’
    Ria reached for the long-handled iron spoon that hung above the cast-iron range but paused. ‘Bridget! You bring me them taters from the garden like I asked you.’
    â€˜Mrs. Haney …’
    â€˜M’am?’
    â€˜Oh never mind! Just never mind!’ Retreating quickly, visions of the woman followed of their own accord. The front, the back, the side—all were nearly of the same dimension—a tower of strength, a pillar of it, the woman standing firmly in her kitchen, her territory where others, the owner’s wife and mistress of the house, her employer, for God’s sake, were persona non grata, the jade-green skirt being hitched up, the off-white blouse with its bits of lace