The smell in the basement sickened Betsy, but she knew she should remove Henry Tucker’s effects before the end of the week, when the items belonging to the dead would be removed to make more room.

Tucker’s pile of personal effects was typical, except for the tan canvas backpack, which wasn’t uniform or BEF issue. But other escapees from Dunkirk’s bloody beach had brought non-issue bags, and even a few small suitcases. Dunkirk had been chaos, and the men occupying hospital beds had made it clear that the only rule there was to survive.

Betsy looked at Henry’s pitiful collection besides the backpack. A hastily folded bloody uniform. No helmet. Either the Germans or the sea had taken that. Socks and underwear had been disposed of rather than saved. Lying on top of the folded clothing was a pair of worn-down muddy boots. There was a fresh-looking notch in one of the heels, as if a bullet had come close to Tucker’s foot and left a reminder.

Betsy used a pencil to line out everything on the ID card except the backpack, and weighted down the card with one of Henry’s worn-down boots. For some reason she smiled, realizing she was worn down in the same way—like Henry’s boots.

Knowing that fatigue had muddled her mind, she lifted the backpack—heavier than she’d thought—and carried it by one of its straps toward the exit.

As she was leaving the hospital, Betsy was motioned to the duty desk by Nurse Nora. The head nurse had been working hard, too. Her hair was wispy and mussed, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her beefy face.

She pointed and drew Betsy down to the end of the long desk, where they wouldn’t be overheard.

“A woman was by earlier about Henry Tucker,” Nurse Nora said, her intense dark stare locked on Betsy’s face.

Betsy was confused. “You mean she didn’t know he was dead?”

“Oh, she knew he died, all right. What she wanted was the body and his possessions.”

“Henry’s wife died,” Betsy said.

Nurse Nora nodded. “I know. In a lorry-bicycle accident. It was listed on entry.”

“What did you do?”

“Sent her away. She didn’t argue after I showed her this.” The older woman handed Betsy an envelope with Betsy’s name on it. “I took the liberty of opening and reading it, as that kind of personal relationship between patient and nurse is forbidden.”

“But that’s—”

“If you read it,” Nurse Nora said, “you’ll see it’s a note from Henry Tucker bequeathing his earthly goods to you.”

“A will . . .”

“Same as,” Nurse Nora said.

Betsy read the letter quickly. It was simple, and it was signed With Love.

“I’m assuming,” the head nurse said, “that the letter refers to that backpack and whatever is in it.”

“I’m assuming that too,” Betsy said.

Nurse Nora smiled wearily. “Have you looked inside?”

“No.”

“Wait till you get home to do that, so I don’t have to lie if that woman comes back with some kind of authority.”

“I will.” Betsy hoisted the backpack off the floor. “And thank you.”

“I didn’t see you, and we didn’t have this conversation.”

“No, ma’am.”

When Betsy was halfway home, a cabdriver pulled over to the curb and invited her to get in with her heavy package. He would drive her to where she was going without charging her. Betsy knew it was because of her nurse’s uniform showing beneath her light jacket, but she was no less grateful for the driver’s generosity.

It was odd how the war was bringing out the best of the British people. Betsy thought that if Hitler knew that, he would also know the Germans didn’t stand a chance.

As she climbed into the back of the cab, she saw that the driver was a man in his sixties, wearing a black eye patch.

“Wasn’t for the likes of you in the last war, I wouldn’t be able to see out my other eye,” he told her with a crooked smile.

“There’s plenty of the likes of me,” Betsy assured him, pulling the cab’s door shut.

He ground the gears and the cab rolled forward.

“You wouldn’t know it,” he said, “but I’m winking at you.”

It was a relief to be rid of the backpack’s weight when she got home. She thought about opening it right away, then paused. She was sure it would contain Tucker’s change of clothes, possibly tin military-issue eating utensils, maybe a second pair of boots, a few other personal effects.

For now, she slid it beneath the bed.

Then she lay down on the bed, thinking she had never been so tired.

She was admitting also the real reason she wanted to put the backpack out of her mind. It would pierce her heart to open it and have to sort and feel various objects and material that had been so intimately Henry Tucker’s.

Briefly as they’d known each other, she had lost something dear when he died, and she didn’t want to visit its reminders.

Sleep would help her to escape.

Betsy could ignore Henry Tucker’s backpack for only so long. Grief at last gave in to curiosity, and finally she slid the backpack from beneath her bed. She was surprised again by how excessively heavy it was. She hoisted it up onto the bed and then sat beside it at an angle so she could work clasps and buttons.

When she opened the canvas flap, the scent carried her back to the hospital, to charred flesh and antiseptics and stale human sweat. To cries in the night.

But how much of that was in the mind?

There was actually little that was personal in Corporal Henry Tucker’s backpack. Nothing that made Betsy think jarringly of him. Things inside were either dry or only slightly damp, still smelling of the Channel water that had tried to claim Tucker. She stared at an address written on a water-stained, folded sheet of paper. It was pinned on top of some object that was wrapped mummy-like in a French newspaper and fastened with yards of tape. Also in the backpack were two sealed envelopes. Each bore a name—one male, one female—that meant nothing to Betsy. The ink had gotten damp and spread slightly, but everything was fairly legible.

There was a third envelope, stapled to the newspaper wrapping where Betsy hadn’t seen it before. It was also sealed, and addressed in a neat hand to an M. Gundelheimer.

Betsy didn’t know about the letters, but obviously Henry had intended to deliver the heavy object to the address stapled to its wrappings, to M. Gundelheimer, whoever he was. There was no way to unwrap the thing partially without her snooping being obvious. She somehow understood, anyway, that she wasn’t supposed to peek.

It was almost dusk. The bombers, after a lull in the Dunkirk evacuation, came mostly at night, so if she hurried she’d have time to take the backpack to the address, and do a last favor for Henry Tucker. It was a promise she knew she had to keep. Betsy sighed, thinking of Henry. There definitely had been something between them, a relationship beyond patient-nurse. If only Tucker had lived . . .

But it was pointless to dwell on might-have-beens. The war had taught her, and almost every other British citizen, that hard fact.

She looked at her nurse’s wristwatch. There was still time. And she had a duty that didn’t involve nursing.

She replaced everything in the backpack and hefted it. Heavy, all right. But she could handle it. She decided to use it for what it was, and placed it upright on the edge of the table. She backed up to it and slipped her arms through the straps, then stood up straight.

The straps dug in and hurt her shoulders somewhat, but they were wide enough to disperse the weight. She adjusted the backpack so it was more comfortable, then, as the folded paper inside it directed, started out for Treasure Island Collectibles, a shop on Dalenby off of Clerkenwell. It was an area she knew fairly well. Perhaps at the Dalenby address she would meet M. Gundelheimer.