The Gate Keeper

by Charles Todd

  Dedication

  For Tubby, with a heart twice his size.

  For Marla too, whose heart and home have sheltered so many cats over the years, not even counting those in the wild she has fed and tended.

  And for Biddle, dearest Biddle, who walks on tiptoe and has a sense of humor.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  About the Author

  Also by Charles Todd

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  December 1920

  Ian Rutledge drove through the night, his mind only partly on the road unwinding before him. He was north of London, and a little to the east of it as well. But he had no particular destination in mind.

  At this late hour, he should have been asleep in his flat in London. He’d gone there with that in mind, but as soon as he’d crossed the threshold it had felt different. Stuffy. Claustrophobic. Almost alien. It was where he lived—but it was not his home, had never really been his home. In the end, he’d tossed a razor and a change of clothes in a small valise and returned to the motorcar. Telling himself that he’d be back in London in time for breakfast with Melinda in the morning.

  His sister, Frances, had been married that afternoon, and the reception afterward had gone on until close to midnight. But he remembered the day only in snatches, moments that seemed to loom out of the darkness, to fill his thoughts.

  Standing at the foot of the stairs, waiting for Frances and her attendants to come out of her room and walk down to join him. Thinking that his parents should have lived to share this moment with her. That his father should be the one to give her away, and that his mother should be upstairs with her now, putting the final touches on whatever was keeping them. Her hair or her gown. Bridal nerves.

  And then Melinda Crawford was coming to the head of the stairs, heralding his first glimpse of his sister in her gown.

  It had been a shaft to the heart to see her, as beautiful as she had ever been and happier than he’d remembered her being for a very long time. There had been someone during the war, while he was in France. An officer. She had loved him very deeply, but he had been killed, and she’d never spoken his name afterward. Rutledge had found out about him quite by chance, and never mentioned what he knew. There had been another man after the war, one she’d thought she loved. Rutledge had been through the aftermath with her, offering what comfort he could. But this time, he thought, she’d made the right choice.

  Then he was sorting the wedding party out as they got themselves and their gowns into the line of motorcars waiting to take them to the church, much laughter and confusion as Frances remembered something blue, and Melinda had had to go back upstairs to find the ribbon that had once belonged to their mother.

  He’d been afraid from the start that Frances might choose St. Margaret’s for her own wedding. It was very fashionable—and rather beautiful as well. But the last time he’d seen Jean, the woman he’d expected to marry, she’d been coming out of St. Margaret’s after conferring with her bridesmaids over some detail of her own wedding. But not to him. To a man who was being posted to Canada, taking Jean with him to a very different life from the one a shell-shocked former officer of His Majesty’s Army could hope to offer.

  Frances, tactfully, had chosen St. Martin-in-the-Fields instead, a church his parents had often attended, particularly for Evensong. It had significance for Peter as well. His ancestors had been Navy, and St. Martin’s was the Admiralty church.

  It was just off Trafalgar Square, not very far. He couldn’t remember much about that drive, except for his sister’s hand holding his, and nervously squeezing it sometimes.

  His next clear memory was of walking through the doors of the church with Frances on his arm, seeing the bunches of silk flowers decorating the pews, ribbons trailing to the floor, and everywhere, candlelight, the scent of melting beeswax perfuming the air. The organ was playing, and with a last smile for Frances, Melinda was being led down the aisle on the arm of one of the groomsmen. The music changed, and it was the turn of the bridesmaids, a sea of faces smiling as they passed.

  Peter was standing by the altar, his face turned toward the door, but he couldn’t see Frances yet. There was happiness there, and a sense of wonder, as if he couldn’t believe this day had come at last.

  Waiting for the signal, Rutledge could feel his own heartbeat, and then Frances had looked up at him, tears in her lashes, smiling. He brought her arm closer to his side.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said softly, “and so are you.”

  It was what his father might have said, and he knew at once it was the right thing.

  And then they were pacing down the aisle to the rhythm of the music, and when it had stopped, he took Frances’s hand and placed it in Peter’s before stepping back.

  He remembered his lines, when the question was asked: “Who giveth this woman?”

  “Her parents and I,” he’d said firmly, because that was what his sister had wanted.

  He found his seat next to Melinda Crawford, and she reached out to rest her hand on his arm for a moment, as if she knew what was in his heart.

  She probably did. Melinda was one of the most unusual women he’d ever met. As a child, she’d been caught up in the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, a heroine in the bloody siege of Lucknow that had cost so many lives. And she had never looked back, her life taking its course through marriage and widowhood and years of travel before she returned home to England. She had been a friend of his parents, and she had been close to him and his sister throughout their childhood. She had been there when news came that their father and mother were dead.

  What he didn’t know, sitting there beside her as Frances and her fiancé spoke their vows, was just how much Melinda cared for him. But he thought he could guess. He was the son she’d never had, for she had never remarried.

  And then Frances was turning from the altar, her eyes lit with joy, and the new husband and wife went up the aisle together, leaving him to follow.

  She would have other allegiances now. Husband, please God children of her own, and he would take his rightful place in the background of her new life. Much as he wished her happiness, the sense of loneliness he’d felt since her engagement was still raw. He wanted her to marry. He wanted her to move on. And yet he would miss the knowledge that she was there if he needed her. He hadn’t. Not in the two years since the end of the war. He’d made a point not to need her, not to draw her into the horror of his war, the shell shock, the voice he carried in his head. He had never told anyone but the doctor who had treated him and saved his sanity. Most certainly not Frances. Still, she had been an anchor in his life that he’d needed badly once Jean had deserted him. A sense of responsibility for someone else, when the desire to end it all swept him in the darkness before dawn.

  It had been Frances, uncertain why he was locked away in the silence of his mind, who had brought Dr. Fleming to see him. He would never be able to tell her how grateful he was for that decision. Without Dr. Fleming, he would have been shut up in a clinic for incurable cases.

  His next memory was of the reception at the Savoy beneath those splendid chandeliers. Frances, dancing with her husband, and then with him, in his father’s place. Afterward he’d danced with Melinda, and she’d made him laugh. He’d wondered if she knew how much he cared for her, and how muc
h he didn’t want her to know the truth about him. She was Army, she would not look lightly at shell shock.

  To his surprise, Kate Gordon was a wedding guest. She was Jean’s cousin, but so very different from Jean. He’d always liked her. But one awful night in Cornwall, he’d found out just how much courage she possessed. And how much she had cared. He’d avoided her since then, not wanting to hurt her, not wanting to drag her into his world. She too was Army, both her father and her uncle and most of her friends.

  Still, they’d danced a number of times, and he’d done his duty with the bridesmaids, the wallflowers, the older women who remembered his parents and commented on how much they would have loved this night.

  And then he’d danced again with Kate, the strain of Cornwall gone, and her presence in his arms feeling very natural.

  The bride and groom had left after the dinner and more dancing, running out of the hotel’s ballroom in a shower of rice and good wishes. It was late when he’d said good night to everyone, driven Melinda back to the house that had been his parents’ and now belonged to Frances. Melinda had asked him to come in for a cup of tea, but he’d smiled and said he was tired. She’d looked at him with that direct gaze that seemed to see through the wall he’d put up to prevent her from guessing what he kept from her, and how he felt at this moment. And she’d said, quietly, “My dear, you were a tower of strength today. Come and have breakfast with me in the morning.”

  Instead here he was, on a dark road somewhere—he thought in Suffolk. He seemed to remember a sign reading cambridge an hour back.

  Too many memories . . .

  Tired now, having to blink his eyes to keep them from closing, he knew he’d have to find somewhere to sleep, and soon, if he wasn’t to run off the road into a ditch. And that, he told himself, he could not do. Nothing must cloud Frances’s happiness.

  Hamish had—blessedly—been silent all day. As Rutledge was getting dressed, driving to the house to meet his sister, then to the wedding, the reception, it was the one thing he’d feared, that the war would come back and shame him, frighten Frances and her guests, and expose his nightmare for all the world to see. Somehow, he’d held the past at bay. It had taken all the will he possessed, but somehow it had worked.

  Now, tired as he was, lonely as he felt, he was vulnerable, and suddenly Hamish was there in the motorcar with him, sitting in the seat behind him, a voice in his ear. Corporal Hamish MacLeod was dead, buried in France. Rutledge was as sure of that as any man could be. After all, he’d shot Hamish, and watched the light fade from his eyes as he died. He’d heard the young Scot’s last whisper before he’d pulled the trigger in the coup de grâce: Fiona. The woman Hamish loved and wanted more than life itself to come home to. And yet, knowing the cost, Hamish had refused to lead any more men into the teeth of the machine-gun nest that had already killed too many of them. And Rutledge had had no choice but to make an example of him. It had to be done, or none of the men in his command would have followed him over the top again. What’s more, they would have faced court-martial and, most certainly, another firing squad. Sacrifice one man to save many. Send them over the top to silence the machine gun, before it killed more men tomorrow when the big push began.

  He shook his head, trying to shove those memories back into the shadows. Trying to stop Hamish while he could, but it was too late, and the brightness of the headlamps became the flashes of artillery fire, followed by the machine guns. And the war was back.

  He fought it, and never knew how many miles he’d driven by rote, unaware of where he was and what he was doing, his hands gripping the wheel as he’d gripped his revolver and his whistle.

  The screams of the wounded and dying filled his mind, and he shouted to his men, encouraging them, urging them on, and all the while he cursed himself as one by one they fell.

  Without warning, the sounds began to recede and the darkness in his mind once more became the bright beams of his headlamps probing the night.

  And almost too late he saw what they picked out just ahead of him.

  A motorcar was stopped in the middle of the road, its doors standing wide. He’d hardly taken that in when he realized there was a woman in the road too, bending over the body of someone—a man—lying haphazardly at her feet.

  Rutledge was already pulling hard on the brake, bringing the heavy motorcar to a skidding halt not twenty feet from the rear of the other vehicle. It was then he saw one more piece of the tableau in front of him.

  There was blood on the woman’s hands.

  The woman looked up, staring toward him in dismay, fright filling her eyes as she stood there like stone, all color washed out of her face, and the blood on her hands black in the brightness bridging the gap between them.

  2

  Rutledge, recovering from the shock more quickly than the woman standing in the road did, switched off the motor and got down, walking swiftly toward her, forcing his mind to concentrate on what he was seeing.

  “What happened here?” he asked, the voice of authority, of a Scotland Yard Inspector, taking over from habit. The voice didn’t seem to belong to him, somehow.

  And then he was once more in control.

  She couldn’t speak, her fear constricting her throat.

  He stopped. He could already see that the man was dead. And no weapon was visible. Both the woman and the man on the ground were wearing evening dress.

  “It’s all right,” he said more gently. “Just tell me what has happened.”

  “We were driving back to the village. There was someone standing in the road,” she said, her voice trembling, uncertain, as if she hadn’t been there but had heard the story from someone else. There was the slightest hint of a Scots accent as she went on. “We had to stop. I thought he must be in trouble, and we could help. Stephen told me to stay in the motorcar, and he himself got down. The figure didn’t move at first. He—he just stood there. It was—I was beginning to be frightened. And Stephen was saying something like ‘Do you need help?’ I think he asked twice, because it seemed that the other man didn’t grasp what he’d said. The man started forward, then, and I realized he had a revolver in his hand. He just walked up to Stephen, said something I didn’t hear—and he—he brought the weapon up until it pointed at Stephen’s chest, and he shot him. Just—shot him.”

  Rutledge could see the black patch across the front of the dead man’s shirt, open to the night. Not a lot of blood—his heart had stopped beating quickly.

  The woman looked down at her hands. “I opened his coat, I tried to stop the bleeding with his scarf. But I think he—I think he was already dead.”

  Rutledge glanced around, saying, “Where did he go? This man? Did you see?”

  “He just turned and walked across the road—that way—” She pointed to her left. “And vanished. I didn’t care, as long as he was gone. I had to help Stephen.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked her.

  “Elizabeth . . . Elizabeth MacRae.” She was beginning to shake now, in the aftermath of shock. Clasping her hands together to still them, she went on in rising hysteria. “I’ve never watched someone die. It was horrid.”

  Keeping her within his line of sight, Rutledge moved toward the man, knelt beside him, and felt for a pulse. The action was perfunctory, but it had to be done. The body was quite warm. This had only just happened. And it appeared that the man had been shot. Just as she’d described. He glanced quickly under the motorcar. If there was a revolver there, he couldn’t see it.

  “Is he—is he alive?” she asked, a flare of hope in her eyes.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She leaned against the frame of the door, looking faint.

  Rising, he took Miss MacRae’s arm and guided her away from the body to the far side of the motorcar. “Where had you come from? Where were you going?”

  “We—we were dining with friends. It was rather late, they—they urged us to stay the night. But—but Stephen had plans for tomorrow. To-today.” Her teeth wer
e chattering now, and he looked into the rear seat of the motorcar, found a folded rug there, and draped it around her shoulders. She clutched at it, pulling it closer.

  He thought she was on the verge of being sick, but he said, “Stephen?” She had no rings on her left hand.

  “Stephen Wentworth. He—he lives in Wolfpit. Lived.” She began to cry, and he handed her his handkerchief. She buried her face in it.

  Rutledge walked to the front of the motorcar and examined the road for any evidence that might support her account. But he couldn’t find any footprints. The deep winter ruts crisscrossed each other in irregular patterns, making it impossible to pick out details. Still, he searched carefully, even walking to the verge to look for signs that someone had passed that way. Or that a revolver had been tossed into the high grass there as soon as his headlamps were visible in the distance.

  The greatest danger, he knew, was that she was telling the truth.

  Was the killer out there somewhere, watching? Still armed . . .

  If, of course, he actually existed.

  It could as easily have been a lovers’ quarrel that ended in murder. But how many men carried a weapon in their motorcar? If it was a service revolver, had this Stephen Wentworth been afraid of something? Was that why it hadn’t been locked in the boot? Why wasn’t it put safely away in an attic or box room, with other reminders of the war brought back from France?

  His own was locked in the trunk under his bed . . .

  Rutledge walked back to Miss MacRae. She had stopped crying, her face streaked with tears and the blood from her hands, but he thought she was nearly at the end of her strength. She was leaning against the cold metal of a wing, head down, eyes looking inward. She raised her head, but said nothing.

  Rutledge was in a quandary. He could hardly shove Wentworth’s body into the rear of his own motorcar and leave this one where it stood. He had done a cursory examination of the vehicle, it was too dark for more than that, and he didn’t relish leaving it in the middle of the road where anyone might come upon it. Or the killer return to it.