by Charles Todd
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 mocker
y 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."
"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.
"What happened?" Mrs. Channing asked again, standing a little behind him. "Was that man waiting on the road, as we'd feared?"
He told her briefly.
"How will you explain this gunshot wound to Inspector Cain?"
"I don't know. Somehow. I can't even give him a description of the man. He was ordinary, no different from thousands of others who came back in 1918. I must have passed him in the street half a hundred times and never noticed him. But I'm almost certain now he's the one who brought my shoe back, after my encounter with the lorry. Daring me to recognize him."
"He'll come for you again. When you least expect it."
"I don't know. Possibly not. I think killing Mrs. Ellison instead has shaken him."
"Until he discovers she was a murderess and deserved to die." Changing the subject, she said, "I haven't looked in the cabinet in the cellar. I didn't want to see."
"No. It's best you didn't."
They went through the house, turning out the lamps that Frank Keating had lit during his search for his daughter's body. When Rutledge reached the kitchen again, he said, "I don't think I want to go down to the cellar myself. We'll leave it to Cain, when he comes. It's his case, after all. Mine is finished."
"You look terrible. And you ought to wash off her blood."
"Thank you. As soon as Cain arrives."
Dr. Middleton walked in just then, looking from Mrs. Channing to Rutledge. "Where is she?"
"Upstairs. In her room."
He nodded and left. In a few minutes he came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table, his shoulders hunched. "Keating made me look in the cabinet. I didn't touch them. I couldn't. After all these years, you'd think I had become inured to death." He ran a finger around his collar. "Where was she trying to go? It seemed so—futile, fleeing like that."
"She wanted to die where no one knew her. There's an unused plot in London, she asked me to bury her there."
"I'll do what I can. I don't think anyone would want her final resting place to be St. Luke's anyway. Best if it's all forgotten. Who shot her? That's a gunshot wound, you know. And you weren't armed."
"I heard the shot. I wasn't there to see it. No one from Dudlington. I'm certain of that. No one here could have caught up with us in time. Someone out after a fox, who knows?"
He could hear motorcars arriving outside. He said to Middleton, "I don't suppose you know a man named Sandridge."
Middleton raised his head to look at Rutledge. "There's not going to be more killing, is there?"
"Not if I can prevent it."
"Sandridge is Joel Baylor's mother's name. His father recognized him when they were married, but I don't know that it's official."
"The brother who was gassed." Rutledge turned to go. "I'll send in Cain. And then there's one more thing I must do."
In the event, it was nearly dawn by the time he had finished with Inspector Cain. After that he walked to the barn where the Baylor cattle were housed. As he expected, he found Ted Baylor mucking out.
The man turned to him. "Haven't you caused enough trouble? That was a wild-goose chase to Frith's Wood."
"I didn't know at the time that it wasn't a matter of life and death. You've lost nothing except perhaps a few hours' sleep."
Grunting, Baylor turned back to his work, raking the warm piles of manure out into the center of the barn. "What do you want?"
"To speak to your brother. Joel."
"It won't do you any good to see him."
"It might clear up many things. For instance, why he hid from Constable Hensley. Hensley had known from the start that he was here."
"I didn't know about Hensley." Baylor sighed. "Not until I heard them arguing one night soon after Joel had come home. After that, they avoided each other. Hensley swaggered on the streets, but he knew better than to show his face here. I don't think they trusted each other, to tell you the truth. I was always afraid it was Joel in Frith's Wood with that bow and arrow. We had them as children. He knew how to use a bow. Look, I didn't know about what Joel had done either. Not until much later. When he learned a man had been killed in that London fire, he joined the army. And he's paid for what he did. I don't think it will do any good to bring him to justice. He won't live to see the hangman, you know that."
"Still. . ."
Baylor said, "All right. I want to be there." He stood his rake against a barn pillar and dusted his hands. "He's still my brother. The only one left. Let's get it over with."
They walked in silence from the barn toward the house.
A few flakes of snow began to fall, desultorily at first, and then with gathering intent.
"It won't last. But it will be colder tomorrow. By March the d
affodils will be in bloom. Hard to believe, isn't it?"
"Yes." And then, endeavoring to bring something good out of so much pain and grief, Rutledge said to his companion, "Barbara Melford deserved better of you. You ought to tell her why you haven't kept your promise."
"It's not your affair—" Baylor started to say, but Rutledge cut him off in midsentence.
"Good God, man, are you going to throw away your life and hers? She'll wait for you, if you explain about Joel. And who's to inherit when both your brothers are dead, and you're locked in your own bitterness, too stubborn to beg her forgiveness?"
"You don't know anything about it." But in the snow-filled darkness, Baylor's voice was less sure.
"No, I don't. That's true. Perhaps you don't care, after all."
"Don't care?" The words were wrenched from him. "Gentle God!"
"Then tell her. When Joel is dead, she'll believe you've spoken out of duty. And she'll refuse, from pride."
"I didn't want to drag her into the shambles Joel had made of things. I thought it best."
Rutledge held the door for Baylor and followed him into the house and up the stairs. "Rightly or wrongly your brother lived his life as he saw fit. In spite of that, you owe him the obligations of blood. That's admirable. But Barbara Melford shouldn't be expected to pay for his sins too." Ahead of him there was a quiet "No. I'll see she doesn't." Joel Baylor's windows overlooked the barns and Frith's Wood. He wasn't asleep. Instead he was sitting in a chair, struggling to breathe through burned lungs. The sound of his efforts filled the room. He had been a strong and handsome man at one time. Now his clothes hung on his thin frame, and his face was lined with suffering.
"Hensley is dead," Rutledge said as he walked in. "I've just been told."
"Did he talk before he died?" The question was guarded but resigned.
"No. He was loyal to the end."
"Is that the God's honest truth?"
"Did you shoot him with that bow and arrow?"
"I probably would have, if I could have walked as far as that wood. He made me feel like a prisoner in my own house."