A Fearsome Doubt

by Charles Todd

  As the lamps of his motorcar pinned the figure in their bright beams, he would have sworn in that instant that it was the face he’d seen the night of the Guy Fawkes bonfire.

  Elizabeth came awake as the motorcar veered wildly. She said quickly, “What’s wrong—?”

  Rutledge’s heart rate seemed to have doubled as he fought the wheel to bring the car back to the road. He had all but killed the man!

  “Someone—in the road—I didn’t see him until I was on him—”

  He must stop, he told himself disjointedly—be certain the man was all right—the wing had missed him—given the idiot a shock perhaps as severe as his own—but done the man no harm—there had been no contact—

  Yet he didn’t want to go back—he didn’t want to find that the figure on the road had existed only in his dream-filled brain as he had drifted unexpectedly into sleep.

  “I don’t see anyone in the road.” Elizabeth said it doubtfully, turning to look over her shoulder. “Are you sure, Ian? There’s no one there—Ought we to go back?”

  Hamish said, “You must go back! You canna’ leave him to bleed to death in a hedgerow!”

  Rutledge was already slowing the motorcar, and with some difficulty turning it on the narrow road. Dread filled him, a deep and abiding belief that if he was right, there would be no body and no sign of one.

  And when they reached the crossroads again, although he searched for a good ten minutes, no one was there—

  RUTLEDGE WAS AWAKE before dawn, standing at the windows looking out over the back lawns of Elizabeth Mayhew’s house. It was a pretty view, even in the early morning mists. Flower beds laid out asymmetrically formed a pattern that led the eye down a grassy walk to a bench overlooking the small pool at the bottom of the garden. In summer the beds held a wonderful variety of blooming plants, but an early frost had blighted summer’s growth, leaving behind only the skeletons of what once was.

  But what he saw at this moment was not a Kentish garden; it was the blighted landscape of France. It seemed he could still hear the guns, using up their stockpiled shells in a mad frenzy of noise and destruction. It was as if there was to be no Armistice in a few hours. The rattle of machine guns, punctuated by the sharper fire of rifles, added to the din, and men were still dying, and would go on dying until the eleventh hour. He had tried to husband them, to stop the waste of life and the long, long lists of the wounded, but he could hear the cries of pain and the screams of the dying and the scything whisper of bullets overhead.

  A political decision it had been, not a battlefield victory: The Armistice would commence on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, at the eleventh hour of the morning—11 November, 1918, eleven A.M.

  It had held no reality for Rutledge. He had stood in the trenches, Hamish alive in his mind, and stared across the bleak, tortured land he had known intimately for four unthinkable years. And the Scot’s words kept forming in his head: “I shallna’ see this eleventh hour, I shallna’ go home with the rest, I shallna’ prosper in the years ahead. And you willna’ prosper, either.”

  Better to be dead. Better to walk out into that machine-gun fire and be dead, than to go home to nothing. . . .

  He could hear the voices around him, men who had survived, talking tentatively about what would actually happen here. But not of home. Not yet. No one could quite grasp an end to the bloody Great War. There was neither jubilation nor hope, only an odd reluctance to think beyond the appointed hour. As if it would be unlucky. He wondered if the Germans in their hidden trenches were feeling the same fatalistic acceptance, or if they, too, counted their dead in their thoughts, and wondered why it had all begun anyway.

  He didn’t know why it had begun, this war. He understood the political reasoning, the invoked alliances, the assassination in Sarajevo, where the Austrian archduke had died. He had succumbed to the banners and the enthusiasm and the euphoria as all the others had, he had trained and shipped out for France, and gone into battle with a sense of duty and honor. Then he had watched it metamorphose into the most appalling slaughter in living memory. And still the generals and the political leaders and the press had fought on, safe in their cocoons far from the dying . . .

  Appalling . . .

  Coming back to the present, he watched a wind lift the boughs of the trees and run lightly across the grass.

  Was it barely a year ago that this slaughter had ended, with no banners and no enthusiasm and no posturing, in a last barrage of shells and the cold gray November dawn? He shivered. For too many men, this was not a day of solemn commemoration but a day of agonized remembrance.

  For him, a reminder that Hamish MacLeod had not come home.

  WHEN HE WENT down to breakfast, Elizabeth was already there. “Good morning!” she said cheerily, then seeing his face, the tired lines that marked a sleepless night, she went on in a more subdued tone, “Melinda Crawford has asked us to tea. There’s a note that just arrived. I’m to send back an answer.”

  “Yes, why not?” Rutledge answered. “And I’ll take you both to dinner afterward, if you like.”

  “I’d like that,” she agreed. She watched him lift the lids of serving dishes on the handsome buffet, and fill his plate. “I’ll give the staff the day off. They’ll be delighted.”

  Sitting down across from her, he picked up the napkin ring and then reached for the teapot. It was a quiet domestic scene, far removed from the images that had haunted him only a short hour ago, soothing in a way that he hadn’t anticipated. As if it had the power to wipe away the past, simply by being so normal, so undemanding.

  As he looked up, he thought Elizabeth was about to say something to him, and he waited, expecting her to suggest plans for the morning. But she finished her toast instead, eyes dropping to her plate.

  “I’ll just tell the chauffeur we’re coming,” she said after a moment. “He’s waiting in the kitchen for my reply.” Rising, she walked gracefully to the door and left him to his own meal. He knew, none better, that an appearance of hearty appetite was an accepted indication of good health. The knowledge had served him well when he had spent more than a week in his sister’s home, an invalid after being shot in Scotland.

  But Elizabeth had been picking at the food on her plate, and he wondered what was on her mind. The policeman in him was too well trained not to take notice. It would, he thought, come out one way or another in its own good time.

  The door opened and she came back into the room, frowning. “Ian. The most horrid thing. There’s been another murder—closer to us this time. And on the road we took just last night. Mrs. Crawford’s chauffeur, Hadley, was regaling the cook and scullery maid with the gruesome details. He’d come that way this morning—the police stopped him to ask his business—”

  Rutledge stared at her. Had he struck the man in his headlamps? Was this the body that the police were examining even now?

  “Who was killed? Was the driver told?” He kept his voice steady with an effort of will.

  “The police didn’t say. But a farmer who was bringing his horse to the farrier had seen the body and told Hadley that it was a one-legged man. Like the others.”

  “How did he die?”

  “I don’t think they know yet. It wasn’t an accident. Hadley was certain of that. Ought you to do something?”

  The last thing Rutledge wanted to do was to go back to that crossroads and look down on the face of a man he might recognize. And yet he knew very well that the figure he’d seen had had two good legs. It was coincidence—and a damned uncomfortable one. He had to believe that. Whatever he’d glimpsed was a trick of memory, a startling but harmless tearing of the curtain between sleeping and waking.

  Hamish was saying, “You werena’ asleep at the bonfire . . .”

  “There’s nothing I can do to help. I don’t have the authority here,” Rutledge told Elizabeth truthfully.

  She pressed her hand to her cheek as if for comfort. “What a terrifying start to the morning—”

  “Come eat
your breakfast, and don’t dwell on it,” Rutledge responded quietly. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing I can do, for that matter. I’d only be in the way.”

  With a twist of her shoulders as if trying to shake off her unsettled mood, she said, “I’d never realized, quite, how unpleasant your work must be. Dealing with such things.”

  “No different, in fact, from a doctor’s surgery, where one patient has hiccoughs and another has a gall bladder.” He lied with a lightness that he didn’t feel. But it earned him a smile from Elizabeth. He reached for the jam pot and said in a more cheerful voice, “What would you like to do this morning? I’m at your service.”

  She bit her lip. “Would it be too much to ask—could you help me go through Richard’s things? I haven’t been able to face it alone. And that’s not why I asked you to come and stay—but this isn’t starting out as the morning I’d planned—and—” She broke off, distracted by what she was trying to say. But the words wouldn’t come, whatever they were.

  “I’ll help you,” Rutledge told her. “On one condition. That we try not to make it morbid. For your sake, if not mine.”

  She nodded. “I won’t cry on your shoulder. Nor you on mine. This is what one does after a death in the family, isn’t it? A practical matter. Before the moths get into the clothes.” It was her turn to try for lightness; she failed wretchedly. “Oh, hell!” she ended bitterly. “Why couldn’t he have come home!”

  Hamish answered her, but of course she couldn’t hear the words. “Because the guid died, and left only the dregs to make the new world . . .”

  AS IT TURNED out, the morning passed uneventfully. The clothes hanging in the wardrobes no longer carried the scent of the man who had worn them in 1914. A faint mustiness had crept in, despite applications of lavender, and they had lost the personality that had given them vitality. Elizabeth folded and packed them as Rutledge took them out and handed them to her. The drawers of the chest were easier, their contents already folded, already in neat piles. In the top drawer, Elizabeth came upon a pair of cuff links engraved with initials. She held them for a moment in her hand, then passed them to Rutledge. “You gave him these—a wedding gift. Would you like them back to remember him by?”

  He thanked her and took them. He’d liked Richard immensely, and had found in him a good friend. It was kind of his widow to remember that.

  As the tall case clock in the hall struck the eleventh hour with its deep tolling chimes, they both paused in silence. Standing where they were, in the midst of their work, as a natural thing.

  Rutledge thought he could hear the distant sound of the bagpipes that had buried Hamish MacLeod, but it was only a trick of the mind.

  9

  TEA WITH MELINDA CRAWFORD WAS TYPICAL.

  She was in great spirits and refused to allow her guests to enjoy anything less. She chided Elizabeth for bringing a pot of honey, saying, “You know I’m not allowed to indulge in such things.” But the expression of delight in her eyes told them that she would enjoy it hugely.

  Turning to Rutledge, she said, “Growing old is not for most people. It’s too trying. One daren’t eat this or do that, or even bend over to smell the garden flowers, for fear one’s back won’t straighten up again.”

  “You seem to thrive on it, all the same,” he told her.

  “Well, it’s most certainly better than the alternative.”

  He looked around the room, found it unchanged from his last visit before going off to war. There were the personal possessions she’d brought home from India with her, beautiful carvings and silks, sandalwood fans that scented the warm air, and a small teak curio cabinet with ivory inlays, where she always kept smaller treasures. They were as fascinating as the stories she told about them.

  It was, in a way, like stepping back into his own past, and he found it unexpectedly soothing.

  She rang a little bell at her elbow, and tea appeared like magic, a wheeled cart with a silver service, fine china, and from somewhere, a single yellow rose. She had remembered that Rutledge liked cake, and had ordered two kinds, one with a lemon filling and the other with raisins.

  Elizabeth was asked to pour, and as she passed a cup to Rutledge, Mrs. Crawford said, “You met Tom Brereton the other night at the Hamiltons. What did you think of him?”

  Rutledge replied, “Sound enough. A friend, I take it, of Mr. and Mrs. Masters.”

  “Brereton was to be Raleigh’s protégé and read the law. A brilliant future ahead of him. The war put a stop to that.”

  Elizabeth said, “He’s nice. We had lunch one day, when he came into Marling to see the doctor. He regaled me with tales about the American Expeditionary forces. He’s a wonderful mimic.”

  “I was thinking,” Mrs. Crawford said, “of leaving him something in my will. His life won’t be easy if he loses his sight.” She smiled. “Of course, it could be a long wait; I’m not in the mood to shuffle off my mortal coil. All the same, it would please me to help someone in need. Brereton doesn’t have a great deal of money, and independence when one is blind is important.”

  “It would be a kindness, certainly,” Elizabeth said. “But do you know him well enough? Can you be sure it’s for the best?”

  “I intend to know him better before making a final decision. But Ian here is a good judge of character. I’d like him to keep my notion in the back of his mind.”

  Which, Rutledge thought, was a veiled suggestion that he use his resources at the Yard to verify Brereton’s worthiness. But why had she chosen to speak of this in front of Elizabeth?

  The answer followed on the heels of the thought.

  Elizabeth said, “Richard knew his family, of course. Tom’s grandfather served in India at one time. Did you ever meet him out there?”

  Mrs. Crawford set her teacup on the tray. “We danced a waltz together in Agra. I was all of twelve, and terribly in love. He was quite dashing in his uniform.” But Rutledge had the strongest feeling that she was not telling the entire story.

  As they finished their tea and he dutifully ate the last of the raisin cake, Mrs. Crawford turned to Elizabeth. “My dear, will you go up to my room and fetch the small box you’ll find on the desk there? I don’t like to ask Shanta to do it. Her bones are older than mine!”

  Shanta was the Indian ayah who had become the housekeeper, much to the shock of the neighbors. She ruled the household with an iron hand, reminding recalcitrant staff that even the Dear Queen had had an Indian servant, and that Mrs. Crawford was following royal tradition. Rutledge wondered at times how Mrs. Crawford kept any servants at all, but they seemed to adore her and seldom left until they were carried out in their coffins.

  As the door closed behind Elizabeth, Melinda Crawford turned to Rutledge and asked, “What is troubling you? That silly girl who turned you down for a diplomat?” She was referring to Jean, who had once been engaged to Rutledge and broke it off when he came home shell-shocked.

  “No. Besides, she’s off to Canada with him.”

  “Well, I hope he’s worthy of her—most diplomats are as shallow as she is.”

  Rutledge laughed. Mrs. Crawford was nothing if not partisan when she cared for someone.

  “Then it’s something else? Scotland? I had a long letter from your godfather. He’s been worried about you. He says the war has changed you. Well, war has changed us all, come to that. But you more than most, I think. It isn’t physical. I can count all your limbs. Therefore they must be in the mind, these wounds of yours. Too many bad memories? Or bad dreams?”

  “A little of both,” he answered ruefully. “It will pass.” He had feared she would be able to see too clearly. He had been right.

  “My dear, I lived through the Great Mutiny, when we all expected to die, and most unpleasantly. I’ve seen things no woman ought to see. No, nor a man either. It does not pass. One just grows—accustomed to it. One learns to crowd it out and put it into the farthest corner of one’s mind.”

  He couldn’t explain to her that Hamish already
lived there. “I try,” he said.

  “You’re young. And a remarkably attractive man, did you know that? It’s time you married, had a family, and looked forward.”

  “Elizabeth?” he asked, wondering if that was why Mrs. Crawford had sent her out of the room.

  But Melinda Crawford shook her head, frowning. “No, Elizabeth isn’t right for you, my dear, and I hope you have no thoughts in that direction. Besides—I rather think her fancy lies elsewhere.”

  His eyebrows flew up in surprise. Was that what had been on the tip of Elizabeth’s tongue at breakfast that morning, before the news of another murder had spoiled the chance to speak to him? He wondered. Bella Masters had also hinted at other attachments.

  Watching his face, Melinda Crawford nodded in satisfaction. As if pleased to discover no attachment here. He knew she was fond of Elizabeth, and was amused.

  Still, he was slow answering, unable to tell her why he could never offer marriage to any woman. How would she—could she—share his life with Hamish?

  Then, hearing footsteps coming down the stairs, his hostess said in a low voice, rapidly and with an intensity that was unlike her, “Remember one thing, Ian. I have seen war at its worst. Nothing you can tell me will shock me or disturb me. If you ever find you need to talk about things best forgotten, I shall be here. For a time, at least. Don’t leave it too long!”

  THE BOX, INLAID marble, contained photographs of a garden party Mrs. Crawford had given nearly thirty years ago, and Rutledge recognized his parents among the faces, his father stooping over his mother with loving attention as he brought a plate of food to her table. His sister Frances, in a trailing lacy gown that all but swallowed her, stared at the camera with sober curiosity. Richard was there, a fair smiling child with girlish curls to his shoulders, his pose already exhibiting that sturdy, masculine grace that had made him a natural athlete and one of the finest cricket bowlers in Kent. Rutledge sat astride a pony, his shoes dangling high above the stirrups, his face half hidden by a pith helmet tipped over one eye. Mrs. Crawford, in an elegant hat that was a froth of ostrich feathers, was surreptitiously gripping his belt to keep him safely in the saddle.