Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 08

by A Long Shadow

  He turned to Mrs. Channing and then to Rutledge, his eyes pleading but his words harsh. “If you tell anyone—anyone!—I was her father, I’ll kill you too!”

  He had dropped his guard. Only for an instant, but it was enough.

  Rutledge shouted a warning, far too late for Keating to recover.

  Mrs. Ellison twisted herself out of his grip, dodged the knife, and with the full force of her body, pushed Frank Keating down the cellar stairs.

  Rutledge heard himself swear. Shoving Mrs. Ellison to one side, he went leaping down the steps to bend over the injured man.

  “Find Dr. Middleton!” he shouted at Meredith Channing. “Bring him here.”

  Keating lay at the foot of the stairs, bleeding from one ear, his body crumpled and one leg thrust out at an awkward angle.

  He looked up at Rutledge, his eyes trying to focus. “Never mind me. Stop her!”

  Rutledge dared not leave him. He knelt beside Keating and said, “Help is coming. Don’t move. Where can she go?”

  Mrs. Channing came back shortly afterward with Dr. Middleton. “Grace Letteridge told me where to find him,” she said. “Now go do your work and leave Mr. Keating to the doctor and to me.”

  When Rutledge came back up the stairs, he found Grace Letteridge in the Ellison kitchen. She was shaking, her arms wrapped around her body.

  “I was certain he’d kill her,” she said. “Not the other way round. I was in the passage just now, listening. I couldn’t stay there on the street, not knowing what was happening.”

  “Which way did Mrs. Ellison go?”

  “She ran straight into me, pushing me out of her way, and went out the door. Inspector—I think she’s taken your motorcar. I heard the motor turn over.”

  He went outside and looked. Somehow Mary Ellison had managed to crank the car and back it out of the narrow space between houses.

  “Where would she go?” he demanded, turning to Grace Letteridge.

  “I don’t know.”

  He remembered Mrs. Channing’s motorcar at The Oaks, and started out at a dead run.

  The motorcar had been moved to the side of the inn, out of the way of custom stopping there. He cranked it, stepped inside, and gunned the engine. It roared in his ears.

  Had she gone north—or south? As he sat there, looking out across the fields, he could see lanterns bobbing in a line, the search party returning empty-handed from Frith’s Wood.

  She’d have avoided them, he thought, and turned south.

  He followed suit, running fast, his headlamps piercing the darkness. It was some time before he caught up with his own motorcar.

  He could see it in the distance, tail lamps small red dots just vanishing around a bend in the road.

  If he could catch up with her here in these rolling, barren fields, it would be better than trying to stop her in a town, where she could lose him in a tangle of streets.

  Where was she going? What earthly reason did she have for fleeing? She might have stayed and faced Keating down.

  But then Keating had opened the cupboard in the cellar. There would be no facing that down.

  Hamish said into the wind, “She doesna’ want to die in Dudlington. Or on the hangman’s rope.”

  Somewhere anonymous, where she wasn’t a Harkness, wasn’t guilty of murder. A nameless woman taken from a canal or a river, buried in a pauper’s grave. The vanished Mary Ellison would be whispered about, speculation would be rife, but after a few months her name would pass into obscurity, untarnished.

  The certainty grew as he followed her. Mary Ellison was choosing her own end.

  Her husband had failed her somehow; and then her daughter, running away in defiance, had failed to reach the heights of fame through her art. Instead she’d married a man who was to become a common felon. Rutledge didn’t know what Emma’s sin had been, but he thought perhaps the fact that she was so beautiful had something to do with it. Mary Ellison had watched men making fools of themselves over the girl, and in the end, she had blamed Emma. No Harkness would wish to be a public spectacle. It was somehow—unsuitable.

  Then without warning, his motorcar’s headlamps swept the sky ahead of him, leaping upward and then dipping in a wild arc.

  His first thought was that he hadn’t anticipated her decision to crash the motorcar. They weren’t seven miles from Dudlington, her body would still be taken back for burial—

  And then the delayed echo of the shot reached him. Rutledge pressed down on the accelerator, sending Mrs. Channing’s motorcar speeding around the bend, only his driving skill keeping the tires on the road.

  It was nearly too late by the time he glimpsed the other car skewed across the roadway in front of him, directly in his path, seemingly unavoidable.

  His hand went out for the brake, pulling hard on it, putting his vehicle into a gravel-spewing skid.

  Hamish was shouting at him, and he was fighting the wheel, wondering if both of them were dead men.

  When the motorcar rocked to a hard stop, he was no more than two feet from his own bonnet. And through the windscreen he could see the driver slumped over the wheel, her head cradled in her arms, as if she had decided to stop and rest.

  He was out and running, without thinking. When he opened the driver’s door, Mary Ellison fell into his arms. Catching her, he laid her gently on the grass at the verge, then went back to look for his rug to cover her.

  In the dark there was no way of telling where she’d been hit. Blood seemed to be everywhere, and he wasn’t sure whether she had struck her head against the windscreen or if the wheel had caught her across the chest. He brushed back her hair and found the thin line of a cut there, blood welling out of it and into her face. It wasn’t deep enough, he thought, to account for a gunshot wound. There was a long gash on her chin, half hidden by the collar of her nightdress, and it was bleeding freely as well.

  Working frantically, he could see her staring at him, her eyes wide in her face. “I don’t want to lie in Dudlington. There’s an unused grave in London,” she managed to say.

  “Be still, don’t talk.”

  She made an effort to bring her hand to her chest. “It hurts.”

  And he realized that most of the blood came from there, not the cut on her forehead or the scrape on her chin. This time the shooter hadn’t missed. Rutledge tried to stuff his handkerchief into the wound, binding it tight with the belt from her nightdress, but he wasn’t a doctor, there was no way to save her.

  “Not in Dudlington,” she repeated, trying to catch his hand and make him promise.

  “What had your husband done?” he asked. “Why did you kill him?”

  “He’d developed a taste for gambling. He was on the verge of losing all we had.”

  “And Emma? What had she done, to deserve to die?”

  “She found her mother, when she went looking for that cursed bow and quiver.” The face that had showed no emotion until now began to crumple. “I couldn’t let my granddaughter go back to London to live with a common criminal. Even if he was her father. And after—after she’d found Beatrice, there was no turning back. It broke my heart.”

  Her breathing changed, and he could feel her body struggling to draw in air, her lungs fighting the injury.

  “If I tell you something, will you bury me in London?” she asked rapidly, trying to hold on to consciousness.

  “I can’t promise—”

  “Then I’ll take what I know with me.” Her eyelids fluttered a little, and then, without warning, she was gone.

  35

  Rutledge laid her back on the grass, covering her with the rug from the car.

  She had been, he thought, a woman of great pride, and with it a strong sense of what was due her name. She had been the last of the Harkness family, and she would kill rather than bring dishonor to it. A paradox…

  There was no time to think about Mary Ellison. Not now. Hamish was shouting in his ear, and Rutledge got slowly to his feet, turning to look at the hillside behind him.


  He hadn’t expected to come face-to-face with this man. Not tonight, possibly not ever, unless a shot was fired point-blank at him. And in his concern for Mary Ellison, he had left himself vulnerable.

  “She took the bullet meant for you,” the man said. “I didn’t intend to kill an innocent woman.”

  He looked haggard, as if he’d slept rough and only a stubborn determination had kept him going.

  And the revolver was still in his hand.

  Rutledge said nothing, standing there in full view, waiting. The wind whistled down the hill, blowing through his hair. He couldn’t remember what had become of his hat. He thought it was probably still in the parlor on Hensley’s coat-tree. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t save his life. They’d learned that in the trenches, that helmets were necessary. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his…

  He fought to keep a grip on the present.

  Hamish was there, in the forefront of his mind now. “I’m no’ ready to die. And I willna’ let you die.”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” Rutledge said in response. For this time had been bound to come since he’d stood on the steps outside Maryanne Browning’s house in London. He had been lucky that it hadn’t come sooner. That he’d finished his work. He felt suddenly tired, unwilling to fight.

  “Ye didna’ want to die in Scotland. Ye canna’ die now.”

  He was aware of the man across the empty road from him, dressed in workmen’s clothing, muddy corduroys, a flannel shirt, and a heavy coat. It looked like the remnants of a cast-off officer’s coat. The stalker seemed to be considering him in turn, both of them taking the measure of an adversary.

  “I don’t know you,” Rutledge said at last. “Or why you have cast such a long shadow over my life. If you’re going to kill me, at least tell me why.”

  “It’s the war’s shadow, not mine.” And then he added grudgingly, “I hadn’t expected you to show so much courage.”

  “What happened to you in the war?”

  “What happened to all of us? You were an officer, you should know. You bled us without mercy, you sat in safety well behind the lines, and sent us out to face the guns, day in and day out. For inches of land! What we lost in one attack, the next must win back again. For your own glory. For no reason other than ignorance and stupidity and sheer, bloody waste!”

  “I was in the trenches myself.”

  “Don’t lie to me. I swore I’d make someone pay for what they’d done to us. I swore that if I survived the fighting, I’d come home and kill as many officers as I could find.”

  “How did you know that I was to visit Mrs. Browning on New Year’s Eve?”

  “The cook told me. I’d met her in a shop where I swept the floors, and sometimes we’d talked about France. That day she said to the butcher her mistress had guests coming to dine, and I asked her who they were. Commander Farnum, she said, and Captain Rutledge, she said. Was the captain in France? I asked her, and she said, He was. Four years, mind you, and home without a scratch on him! I knew then you’d been far from the Front. Safe as houses somewhere in the rear. Not many of my mates saw the war’s start and the war’s end. They fed the machine guns instead. Have you seen what those guns do to a man? Have you ever walked into a field hospital and looked!”

  How to answer him without being accused of another lie?

  “What’s your name?” Rutledge asked instead. He was drained, his mind refusing to work with any clarity.

  “You never cared to know the names of the dead. Or the living for that matter. We were numbers on the chart table, without faces, pushed forward because it suited the French or the Americans or the War Ministry. And when those were slaughtered, you found more to send up the line. You found my brother and my cousin, and my neighbors, and my son.”

  He stopped and looked at the body of Mary Ellison. “I didn’t mean to kill her, and that’s the truth. I wanted to make you afraid, as afraid as I ever was. I wanted you to know what it was like to look death in the face, to know there was no way out without shaming yourself. I wanted you to remember what the guns did to people like us. I didn’t intend to kill a woman. Why did you let her drive your bloody motorcar!” There was a mixture of shame and anger in his voice.

  “She borrowed it without asking. Have you lived out here, in the middle of nowhere? Where did you sleep? How did you eat?”

  “It’s better than the trenches.”

  Perhaps it was, Rutledge thought. But it was no way for a soldier to live.

  The man steadied the gun. “You can beg for your life.”

  “I never begged for my life from a German, and I’m damned if I’ll beg it from an Englishman!” Rutledge said, anger rising in him.

  The revolver fired, and he could hear the whine of the shot passing his ear.

  “Beg!”

  Rutledge stood where he was. “Her death was an accident,” he said. “Let me help you. Before it’s too late.”

  The next shot seemed to ruffle his hair, and he flinched in spite of himself.

  “Damn you, beg!”

  Another shot went wild, the revolver wobbling as the man began to cry, the tears running down his face unheeded.

  Then it steadied once more, the muzzle pointed straight at Rutledge.

  Rutledge steeled himself. He couldn’t be sure how many shots were left in the weapon. But he couldn’t reach the man, and he knew that if he tried, the next shot wouldn’t miss.

  “Listen to me,” Rutledge began. “My death won’t bring your dead back. It won’t even satisfy you. Even if you kill a dozen like me, it can’t change what happened in France. Nothing can.”

  “I never intended to kill you,” he said at last. “I just wanted to see the fear in your face and hear you beg to live.”

  “Not for you, not for anyone.”

  Hamish was as angry as he was, helpless in the confines of death.

  The muzzle held steady, and it seemed that minutes ticked by. And then the man moved.

  For an instant Rutledge thought he was going to kill himself. The revolver rose to his temple in one fluid action, but instead of pulling the trigger, he touched the barrel to his forehead in a salute. It was grotesque, a mockery of the acknowledgment of enlisted man to officer. And yet it was also an admission.

  He turned away, striding up the rise and into the dark night.

  Rutledge searched for an hour or more. But without a torch or a sense of which direction the man had taken, he couldn’t find his lair, the place where he’d gone to ground.

  Hamish said, “Tomorrow. When it’s light.”

  36

  Rutledge moved his own motorcar to the side of the road and then lifted the body of Mary Ellison into Mrs. Channing’s vehicle, his rug still wrapped around her. There was nowhere else to put her except in the rear seat—where Hamish sat.

  Turning to drive back to Dudlington, he wondered if the stalker was watching him, and what was going through his mind.

  Meredith Channing and Grace Letteridge sat waiting in the office that Hensley used for police business.

  Their faces were drawn with anxiety and exhaustion, and he thought, as he stepped over the threshold, that they had already said to each other all that there was to say, and silence had long since fallen in the room.

  Mrs. Channing started to her feet when she saw him, her gaze sweeping him and the blood still wet on his coat, his hands.

  “What happened?” Her voice was tense. “Are you hurt?”

  “She’s in the motorcar. Mrs. Ellison. There was an—accident—on the road. She’s dead. I must take her home.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Mrs. Channing said, as if she had read more in his answer than he’d intended.

  Grace Letteridge stood where she was, waiting for a chance to speak to him. She seemed to have aged since he’d seen her last, not an hour before.

  “I told you once that I’d kill Constable Hensley, if I discovered he’d murdered Emma.”

  “I remember.”

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nbsp; “He’s dead,” she said. “The message came half an hour ago.” She lost her composure then, and her eyes filled with tears of guilt.

  Rutledge found himself thinking, Beware what you ask for.

  But he’d lost any chance now of finding out the truth about what role Bowles had played in the Barstow affair. He would have to face that later, when there was time to consider it. He thought about this house, and how empty it was, yet how much Hensley had wanted to come back to it. The constable hadn’t expected his life to end this way.

  Hamish said, “You werena’ prepared, yoursel’…”

  Grace Letteridge, struggling to keep her voice steady, was still speaking to him. He tried to listen. “I also asked the messenger to tell Inspector Cain about—about Mrs. Ellison as soon as possible. Was that proper? He should be here, very soon.”

  “Yes, thank you. I don’t think I could have driven that far tonight. And Frank Keating?”

  “He’s badly injured, but he’ll live. They’re to take him to Letherington, to be cared for,” Grace said. “I don’t think I could have killed anyone, after all. And I felt so certain.” She shook herself, trying to come to terms with an old anger.

  “Will you send Dr. Middleton to Mrs. Ellison’s house?” he asked her.

  “Yes. After that I’m going home.” She turned to Mrs. Channing. “I’ll make tea, if you’d like a cup.” She glanced toward the street and said, “I’ll just wait until—until she’s inside.”

  Mrs. Channing held the motorcar’s door as Rutledge lifted Mrs. Ellison’s body and carried it into the house. He went up the stairs and laid her gently on her bed. It was all he could do.