A Long Shadow

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge thought, I don't need to climb farther—

  But he knew he did. Coming down was something else, and he wasn't prepared to think about that yet.

  The ladder was steadier than he'd expected, and with a sigh of relief, he started up it.

  When he came to the first window, he realized that it looked toward the village, while its brother on the far side overlooked the fields.

  But the next pair of windows, facing north and south, gave him a bird's-eye view of Frith's Wood, and he could see more detail from here than he'd anticipated. With his arms wrapped tightly about the side rails of the ladder, he brought up the field glasses. Through them, he could have roughly followed movement across the breadth of the wood, and even down into the thickets of undergrowth. Especially at this time of year, when the trees were bare and even the briars and weeds mere stalks and thorny strands. It was interesting to see just how closely he could bring it in. Far better than from the rectory attic, surely.

  Who would have the courage to come here, just on the off chance of seeing where Hensley had gone?

  Letting the glasses hang from their leather strap around his neck, he began to back down the ladder. It was just light enough to see where he was going without the aid of his torch, but the tolerances were much tighter at this height, and he was beginning to feel the pressure of claustrophobia sealing him in. A nail sticking out farther than most of its neighbors plucked at his coat, yanking at him. It was easy enough to free himself, but the sense of losing his balance was strong.

  Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he went down the ladder another few rungs.

  God, but it was dangerous! And just behind him, making it impossible to look down, was Hamish—

  He continued his descent and finally arrived at the lower pair of windows. He stopped for a moment to look at the village, a toy city for a child. Like seeing it from an airplane, he thought, picking out the narrow canyons that were the streets, and the chimney pots of houses he recognized. The nearer ones showed him their back gardens, where sheds held tools and other gear, and lines for drying clothes ran helter-skelter across the space available, to give them as much length as possible.

  A child's bicycle lay against the back steps in one, and in another a man was just visible bringing up a giant cabbage from the coal cellar where it had been stored. A wagon moved into view, leaving one of the shops. The rectory's slate roof was mossy, and he could see into the rector's bedroom, glimpsing the foot of the bed and the edge of a door through the open drapes.

  He was staring at the Baylor house, beyond the rectory, when he saw that someone was at a window on the top floor, apparently staring directly back at him.

  It was a shock, because inside this tight cocoon of wood, he'd felt invisible. The question was, could the figure at the window actually see him, or was he only gazing out at the church?

  Rutledge brought up the field glasses, but it was impossible to pick out details through the windowpane. A dark, irregular shape, but certainly human. He'd have missed it altogether if the figure hadn't moved and drawn his attention. And yet he seemed to feel the intensity of the watcher's scrutiny.

  Curiosity, or something more sinister?

  On the other side of the coin, the sun had just come out from behind the clouds, reaching through the narrow opening beside him and touching the ladder on which he stood, highlighting his right shoulder. He was pinned there, vulnerable, with the long descent blocked by Hamish just below him. Caught like a bird in a sack.

  But that was nonsense. Any threat to him would come from outside Dudlington, not from a house whose owner he knew.

  He tried to shake off the sense of urgency pressing him now and concentrated instead on the placement of each foot, feeling his way downward. There was a sense of relief when he finally reached the mouth of the bell and the real stairs. However rudimentary they had seemed before, they felt sturdier and safer than that abominable ladder. He reached out to touch the bell for a moment, his hand against the icy cold metal. And from this angle, he noticed for the first time the mechanism that connected the bell to the clock.

  "Hark!" Hamish warned, from somewhere below him, and he saw the gears begin to move.

  The clock was about to strike, and he was standing there beside the bell.

  Wasting no time, he went as fast as he dared down the next set of stairs, reached the last flight, the one of stone, and was halfway down it when the great bronze tongue over his head tolled the hour, the wash of sound enveloping him.

  On solid ground at last, he went straight to the sanctuary and found a pane of clear glass facing the direction of the Baylor house.

  But if there had been someone in the upstairs window, he was gone now. All Rutledge could see was the movement of clouds reflected in the dark glass, like the shadow of leaves stirring in the wind. He was beginning to think he'd let his imagination run away with him up in that spire.

  Hamish taunted, "Aye, you've lost your nerve. It wasna' a stalker standing there, only a man looking out his ain window."

  "To hell with my nerve. What I want to know now is whether someone's accustomed to standing there. And did he see what happened in Frith's Wood last Friday, or at any other time? If there was someone looking at me through the spire's opening, had he seen anyone else up there in the past few weeks."

  "There's verra' little warmth at the top of yon house in winter," Hamish countered derisively. "And only two people, ye ken, with no' much time to stand about watching ithers. It's no' likely they'll ha' seen anything. Unless they were verra' lucky."

  "Then it's time to find out how good their luck is."

  19

  When Rutledge used the brass knocker on the door, there was no answer. He walked around the side of the house to the kitchen garden.

  The door there was ajar, and he stepped in, calling, "Baylor? Are you there?"

  He could hear voices somewhere inside, and he walked down the passage to the kitchen. It was empty too. Although it was tidy, the room was masculine in tone— shades rather than curtains at the windows, and an oil cloth covering the table. The only feminine concession was a frilled but worn cushion on one of the chairs, as if this was where a woman had once sat.

  The door on the far side led to the rest of the house, and he walked quietly down a second passage. He'd just reached a room with an open door when Baylor came out and nearly collided with him.

  "What the hell!" he exclaimed, startled to find someone in his house.

  "I've knocked on the front door and called from the kitchen—perhaps it's time to think of answering. You must have heard me."

  "Damn you, you've no right to come in like this." Baylor was furious, his face red.

  "I came to ask if I could look out your upper windows toward Frith's Wood. Surely there's no harm in that. It's probably the best observation post in Dudlington."

  "What are you saying, that someone here used it to watch the wood? You must be mad. We had nothing to do with Hensley's attack that day. Except to save his life."

  "Don't deliberately misunderstand me, Baylor. I simply want to stand at the window to judge how much of the wood is visible from there."

  Hamish said quietly, "There's someone in yon room. And you must pass it to reach the stairs—"

  Rutledge could feel the presence in the room, silent and apprehensive.

  "Look, I'll just go up the back stairs to the attic, if you'll lead the way. I needn't disturb the rest of the household." Torn, Baylor considered the alternatives. "Oh, very well. This way."

  He brushed past Rutledge with the intention of irritating him and walked back toward the kitchen. Through another door were the back stairs, narrow, curving, and with short treads. Baylor went up them with accustomed ease, but Rutledge had to duck through the door and keep a hand on the wall as he climbed.

  They came out on the floor above, and then walked a short distance to a second flight of steps going up to the next floor.

  It wasn't an attic as Rutledge
had thought, but another passage with small rooms intended for children or servants. The doors were shut, giving a claustrophobic air to the corridor, making it appear to be narrower than the one below. The carpet running down the center was worn with use but sound.

  It would, Hamish was pointing out, muffle footsteps. Baylor opened the door into a bright corner room, with square windows and an iron bedstead against one wall, a washstand nearest the door, and a tall chest of drawers to Rutledge's left. The room seemed unused, empty of personal touches or the ordinary signs of someone's presence. There was a desk between the north windows, and he went to it to lean his hands on the wooden top so that he could look out.

  He could see the wood quite well, but not into it as clearly as he had from the church spire.

  "It would be helpful if I could send someone into the wood and then stand here to observe his progress," Rutledge said. "A test of sorts. Would you be agreeable to walking there for ten minutes or so?"

  "I don't set foot in the wood if I can help it. Find yourself another ferret."

  Without haste, Rutledge turned to the west window, where he could look toward the church, and found himself facing the narrow east opening where he'd stood on the ladder not twenty minutes before. A pale light came through from the opposite side of the spire, illuminating the interior, and he thought, Someone could have seen me, it's not impossible.

  "Do you have a woman who cleans for you?" he asked aloud, turning to Baylor. "Or perhaps your brother comes up here from time to time, to look out at the fields. It's really quite a fine vantage point."

  "Nobody uses this floor. We haven't since we were children, and my parents were still alive."

  "Can you be sure of that?"

  "I told you. We don't use this floor."

  But Rutledge was nearly sure someone had, at least for a short time, not more than half an hour ago. There was the partial print of a hand in the dust collecting on the windowsill beside him.

  As they came down the stairs and into the kitchen, the kettle was just on the boil.

  Baylor said, "I won't offer you a cup of tea."

  It was a clear message to leave.

  "Thank you for your willingness to help." Rutledge went out the door and heard it shut behind him, almost on his heels.

  He retraced his steps as far as the rectory, and an exhausted Hillary Timmons opened the door at his knock. She stood aside, almost wary of him, and he remembered his outburst of anger in the kitchen of The Oaks.

  "How is the rector?" he asked after greeting her. "Tiresome." She smiled a little to take the sting out of the word. "He doesn't feel like doing much of anything, and that drags at his patience."

  "Perhaps a visitor will help."

  "Oh, if you would, please. I need to see to his dinner, and there's been no time."

  He went up the stairs to the first floor and down the passage to the rector's bedroom. Towson greeted him with undisguised relief. "Thank God you're here," he said. "I need so many things, and young Hillary is hopeless."

  "What would you like?" Rutledge inquired, setting his hat to one side and tossing his coat over a chair.

  "Tsk! There's a coat-tree in the hall, didn't she point it out?"

  "It doesn't matter. What can I find for you?"

  "There are three books by the desk in my study. Paper, pens, and something to write on. Ink. My blotter—" He went on urgently, as if afraid Rutledge would desert him before he'd finished his requests.

  "I'm surprised Hillary couldn't have helped you earlier," Rutledge said. "It doesn't seem all that complicated."

  "She doesn't like touching anything in my study. She never even ventures in there to dust it. You'd think she was afraid of it, as if God lived there, to help me with my sermons."

  Rutledge laughed. "Very well, I'll do my best."

  He went to the study, a small room overlooking the church, and began to search for the items Towson had listed.

  The books were easy enough to find on the shelf by the rector's desk, and the writing materials lay next to the blotter. Rutledge was just looking around the room to find some means of carrying the lot back up the stairs, when he noticed a framed photograph on the small table by the only upholstered chair in the room. A lamp stood on the table as well, next to a book filled with strips of paper to mark various chapters. He crossed the room to look at the photograph, and then was distracted by the book.

  It was leather bound, an album of sorts, with cuttings pasted to the pages. He could see the curled edges sticking out.

  Rutledge reached to open it, and Hamish said, "I wouldna' pry—"

  He ignored the voice.

  The cuttings had come from various newspapers, with the name of the paper and the date written in ink on each of them.

  Most of them were obituaries. In the front was Mrs. Towson's, short but flowery, identifying her as the beloved wife of our dear rector. Others were of local men killed in the war, each one pasted carefully in the center of a sheet of black paper, as if honoring them. He ran his eye down one or two, thinking as he did that each of these young men hadn't had time to live very far beyond boyhood. The war had given them their only reality; their rank and dates and the battle in which they'd fallen stood out starkly as their only achievement.

  Son of. . . Young men who hadn't married, hadn't had families of their own, had left no mark in the world, and no posterity.

  How many of them had he seen go into battle and fall? How many had he tried to remember as individuals, repeating their names to himself as he stood in the trenches during the dark nights of winter and the short ones of summer. MacKay, Sutherland, Gordon, Campbell, Scott, MacIver, MacInnes, MacTaggert, Chisholm, Kerr, Fraser—

  He found himself reminded of Elizabeth Fraser, seeing her against the snow light, her hair so fair, like a crown, her body long and slim. The memory was slipping away from him now, and it hurt him to think that he was beginning to forget.

  He made himself return to the album, scanning the names and ages and battles.

  And then one name in particular caught his eye.

  Robert Baylor, age twenty, son of the late Robert and Ellen Baylor of Dudlington Farm, survived by his brothers Theodore and Joel, and his fiancée, Grace Letteridge.

  He closed the album carefully so as not to lose any of the markers.

  Hamish said, "It wasna' well done, looking without permission."

  "But now I know," he answered. One more of the dead on the Somme. A young man who was engaged to marry one woman—but who had been seen by Constable Markham rolling in the grass near the church with Emma Mason.

  Rutledge brought the books and writing materials to the rector, and set them on the bed where he could reach them. "I couldn't find anything to write on."

  "That small flat handkerchief box over there will work nicely," Towson told him, pointing to it. "I shan't do it any harm."

  Rutledge brought it to him and set that within reach also.

  "How can you write?"

  "I'm accustomed to using either hand. When the rheumatism is worse, I switch. My mother was told when I was a child that I was contrary, using my left hand more than my right. My schoolmaster forced me to use my right, and it took me nearly thirty years to forgive him." He added ruefully, "Now I'm grateful."

  "Who will deliver your sermon on Sunday?"

  "I shall, of course. Propped in the pulpit like a log. There's nothing wrong with my voice, and as soon as the tenderness in my leg and back has passed, I'm allowed to be up and about."

  Rutledge grinned at him. "You must be careful on the pulpit steps."

  "I always am, with my robes trailing about my ankles."

  "I was just across the way, speaking to Ted Baylor. His windows look out on Frith's Wood, perhaps a better view than yours."

  "Baylor told me once that the servants when he was a child hated that view and would refuse to sleep in that room, for fear of seeing something unspeakable in the night."

  "What became of the servants?"
<
br />   "Off to the war, of course, or to the cities, to work in the factories. There were only the three boys, after their parents died, and I expect they fared well enough. The house stood empty for two years, you know. Half of Dudlington helped care for the livestock. It muddled social standings when you were ankle-deep in muck, cleaning out the barns."

  "And all three of them survived the war? That's astonishing."

  But Hamish was chiding him for misleading the rector.

  "Ted did, although he was wounded twice. Robert was killed. Joel came back with strange notions about what had been done to the common soldier. He's not quite right in his head, I'm told. Ted takes care of him, but there's no one to take care of Ted. Life's not always fair."

  "What do you mean, not quite right in his head?"

  "I can't say with any certainty. Can you pass me that glass of water? Thank you. Joel never comes to church services, and he never sets foot out of the house, as far as I know. I doubt anyone has seen him at all. We leave him in peace, hoping one day he may heal."

  Rutledge stood to go as he heard Hillary Timmons coming up the stairs.

  She thanked him for spelling her and added, "I've found you a nice bit of ham for your dinner, Rector."

  "You feed me better than I feed myself, my dear."

  She blushed. "Mr. Keating says I'm a terrible cook. But I've noticed the inn guests never complain."

  "What did Mr. Keating do, before he bought The Oaks?" Rutledge asked her.

  "I don't know," she told him simply. "He never talks about himself. If I didn't know better, I'd say he had no other life before The Oaks. But he must've. There's a wicked scar—" She clapped a hand over her mouth, suddenly frightened. "I won't tell him," Rutledge assured her. "It's all right." But she hurried from the room, looking as if she was on the verge of tears.

  "What was that in aid of?" Towson asked, worried for her. "She's been warned not to talk about Keating. It's worth her job."