A Lonely Death ir-13

by Charles Todd

  He didn't reply. He knew she didn't want his sympathy or his compassion.

  "I kept telling myself that I could always go away, if there were problems. After all, I was still married. And I couldn't-wouldn't-let myself deny that."

  This time when she fell silent, he said, "Meredith. Would tea help? Sherry?"

  She shook her head.

  That poise he'd found so attractive had deserted her now. He could see her hands shaking, even though she clasped them tightly in her lap.

  "A little while ago-no, it must have been this afternoon," she went on, frowning. "There was a telephone call. A group that works to find the missing has kept in touch from time to time. They told me they believe they've found Mark. He's in a Belgian hospital, very badly damaged. In fact, for some reason they'd believed he was a Belgian, a Fleming from Bruges. There were a few who fought with the British, you see. But when he improved a little last week, they realized he doesn't seem to understand Flemish. He responded a little to English, and so the hospital called in someone who could speak to him in English. It was necessary, you see, so that his answers could be taken down accurately."

  Her voice broke as she added, "I must go to Belgium, Ian. I need to see this man. And I can't go alone. Will you come with me? As a friend?"

  He could hear only Hamish in his head, Meredith's words a distant hum, and yet he knew what she was asking. He didn't think he could do it. Not with this inquiry ongoing, he told himself. Not when I care too much, he added, facing the truth.

  Someone was saying, "Yes, of course I'll do what I can. If the Yard will allow me to take leave."

  A thought flitted through his head: the last time he'd asked for leave of his own accord, it was to attend Max Hume's funeral.

  He expected her to cry again, then. Instead, she looked down at her hands and replied quietly, "Thank you, Ian. From the bottom of my heart."

  "I'll speak to them tomorrow."

  He took her home soon after, touching her only to help her into the motorcar, seeing her to her door, and saying good night when her maid had opened it.

  She smiled a little, and went inside.

  The next morning he was as good as his word. He went to the Yard, ignoring the stares and the whispers as he passed along the corridors. Chief Superintendent Bowles was in his office and was caught quite by surprise by his inspector's sudden appearance.

  Rutledge faced him grimly, knowing Bowles for what he was, giving no ground as the man behind the desk seemed rattled for a moment, then collected himself.

  "I thought you were in Sussex," Bowles said gruffly. "Or failing that, in Dover."

  "There's nothing I can do in Dover. And as long as Summers is in France, then Sussex is safe. I've come to ask for a few days of leave."

  Bowles's face brightened. But he said, "I thought I'd just given you leave."

  "It's been some time since then. This is a personal matter."

  He could see Bowles mulling it over, vacillating, emotions flitting across his face like shadows. The good fortune of being rid of Rutledge at this impossibly sticky time. The realization that if Summers reappeared in England while Rutledge was away, he could send another man to cope with it. The knowledge that Rutledge was the butt of gossip and speculation which Bowles himself could do without-they were all there. He had even heard one rumor that Rutledge had had his revenge for Mickelson's interference-embarrassing the Chief Superintendent.

  "Yes, all right," Bowles declared finally. "Take your leave and report back in four days. By that time, something should have turned up at the ports."

  He clearly expected Rutledge to be satisfied, for he picked up the paper he'd been reading when he was interrupted.

  But Rutledge stood his ground, and said with something in his voice that made Bowles look up sharply, "About Inspector Mickelson's theory that I was involved in the attack on him. I would suggest that it's an aftereffect of that blow on the head. You know as well as I do that I was not involved. I couldn't have been. I had no reason to be. Whatever my personal feelings may be about Inspector Mickelson."

  "A combination of misinformation and mistake," Bowles agreed hastily.

  Rutledge left it at that. He would never have an apology from this man, and while he'd been angry enough to beard him in his den and tell him publicly what he thought about him, he had more to lose than Bowles: his position at the Yard, which was still his lifeline to sanity.

  He didn't want to call on Meredith Channing. Last night was still too fresh in his mind. But he drove to her house anyway and knocked at the door.

  And she had foreseen his difficulty. Her maid answered his knock, and he gave her the message for her mistress.

  "Mrs. Channing would like to leave for Dover this afternoon, if that's possible," the maid replied. "Will that be convenient?"

  The sooner it was over, the better, he thought, but said only, "I'll be here at one o'clock."

  "Thank you, sir." She closed the door. He stood there for a moment, then turned and walked away.

  Hamish was giving him no peace, a reflection of the strain he was under. As a precaution when he went home to pack a small valise, he added some things to his clothing and shaving gear.

  One o'clock came all too soon, and he was outside the Channing house five minutes early.

  And she was ready. The door opened almost at once, and he went to meet her, taking her case and adding it to his own in the boot. She said, "Ian-" and then shook her head, stepping into the motorcar when he opened her door.

  They drove through London in silence, and were soon on the Dover Road.

  They arrived in good time for their crossing, and Rutledge took a few minutes to call on Sergeant Bell.

  "The laddie is still restless," he said. "I took him for a walk along the strand today, and he was searching for scents, wanting to run up to anyone he spotted. There's no word on Mrs. Summers?"

  "None."

  Bell said, "Well, then. We'll see that he's fed and kept safe."

  The boat left on time. Meredith stayed below, while Rutledge stood by the rail, watching the water pass under the hull.

  He had sworn, once, that he would never set foot in France again. And here he was, not on police business after all but to support a friend.

  Friend.

  He ignored that thought and instead considered the letter that had come into Chief Inspector Cummins's possession.

  What sort of man would have a flint knife sitting on his desk, what kinds of interests would he have? Historian, schoolmaster, world traveler, expert in ancient weapons, geologist, even a collector of oddities.

  It would take hundreds of man-hours to find likely men in those fields and interview them.

  Schoolmaster… Hadn't it been a schoolmaster who had brought the latter-day Druids to Stonehenge for the summer solstice?

  He was above suspicion, Cummins had said when Rutledge asked about him. But where had he taught? And were there other masters in that same school? Had Cummins interviewed any of them? But of course at the time Cummins hadn't had the benefit of Rutledge's find of the flint knife. He had been completely in the dark about the murder weapon.

  Hindsight seldom caught murderers.

  He walked along the deck, watching the white cliffs of England recede, the castle a gray mass on the top of the highest cliff. France was still a blue smudge on the horizon. The wind striking his face was warm, and sometimes laden with salt spray. Skirting the busy crew coiling ropes, stowing gear, and seeing to the general running of the ferry, he paced for a few minutes, deep in thought.

  If the killer considered the victim's murder well deserved, what had the man done to earn it?

  Rutledge recalled studying the photograph of the dead face and thinking that the victim looked far more intelligent and of a better class than Harvey Wheeler was said to have been.

  There was only a small window of time when the body could have been carried to Stonehenge-or the living man brought there to be dispatched. After all, this was the shor
test night of the year. And the situation was complicated by the latter-day Druids celebrating the Summer Solstice.

  He could have been there when the Druids arrived, depending on what route they had taken to cross Salisbury Plain to the site. In fact, he must have been put there as soon as it was completely dark. Too much activity by the heel stone after they'd reached the stone ruins, and the killer could have been discovered in the act of tying his victim there. But had the killer and his accomplices known about the celebrants? Or had they left the body there because it was an isolated place and it was unlikely to be discovered for several days?

  The letter writer hadn't mentioned the Druids.

  But the Druids had been drinking mead and chanting. To distract them from what was happening just out of sight?

  He must write to Cummins again and open a new avenue to explore.

  Pausing by the railing, he could just make out the coastline of France now.

  Someone stepped to the rail beside him, and he turned to see that Meredith Channing had come on deck.

  Staring at the landfall in the distance, she said, "I shouldn't have come. I should have listened to my better judgment. This won't be Mark. None of the others were. I shouldn't have brought you into this. But I was afraid this time. I don't know why. Very cowardly of me."

  Her shoulder was touching his, her unconscious need for human comfort overcoming her reticence.

  "I'm glad you did," he said, and wondered if it were true.

  "When it seemed that you weren't at home, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go to Frances, or to the Yard, and ask where you might be."

  "How did you know where to find me?"

  "I've known for a very long time where you lived. I'd just never had occasion to go there. Until last night."

  They were silent for a time. He could feel her shivering, whether from the wind or from nerves, he didn't know. After a moment, he put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into him until the shivering stopped.

  When the boat had docked, and they had cleared the formalities, they turned north, on the road to Ypres and Belgium. To make conversation, Rutledge said, "I lost a murderer to France this week." And he told her how the dog had been found, and what the French had had to say about Mr. and Mrs. Summers.

  "Do you think she was just ill from the crossing? Or had he given her something to make certain she didn't say anything untoward?"

  "She was probably given something. I can't see how she would have let her husband leave the boat without bringing her dog to her. Most certainly she'd have created a scene. And why get rid of the animal, unless he intended to do away with her as well?" He slowed to pass a procession of villagers carrying the small statue of a saint and bouquets of flowers. They appeared to be on their way to the church on a slight rise.

  "He needn't, you know. Rid himself of her. There used to be these little convents scattered about, where the nuns took in the ill or the mad, and if there was money to pay for her board, she could stay indefinitely in their care."

  It was an interesting thought.

  They were driving now on what had been the road where the German Army and the small British Expeditionary Force sent to stop their progress had clashed. Roofless ruins, shattered walls, toppled church towers still marked where the fighting had been most intense, and some fields lay fallow and torn. Villages and towns were striving to rebuild, life was struggling to return to normal, but as Rutledge looked around him, he felt a surge of tension, of memory. This was what he'd lived with for four bloody years and had hoped never to see again. But night was falling, covering what they didn't want to see in blessed darkness.

  Rutledge stopped just before the Belgian frontier for dinner and found a small pension that smelled of new mortar and paint, as if it had just been refurbished, where they could spend the night. The food was not up to French standards, but they had very little appetite. Rutledge saw Mrs. Channing to her room, and she wished him a good night. He waited until her door had been locked from the inside before going on down the passage to his to sit by the window instead of going to bed.

  They reached Bruges the next day, and found their way to the old city inside its ring of canals. In the southern part, on a side street not far from the Begijnhof, a large house had been turned into a hospital that cared for the human detritus left behind by war.

  It was a tall building, and broader than most. Rutledge thought it must have once been the town house of a wealthy merchant family. Even here were the scars of war-bullet holes in the facade, a niche statue of the Virgin by the door decapitated, the hasty repairs of damage from shrapnel still visible. Someone had repainted the door, to hide the nicks and scratches in the wood.

  As he reached for the brass knob, Meredith Channing stopped him, putting out her hand. "Ian. I must do the rest myself. Will you wait?"

  He agreed, and went to sit in the motorcar. After a moment, she resolutely turned the knob and disappeared inside.

  An hour passed, and then the second. He walked for a time but never out of sight of the motorcar. Hamish was his constant companion, the voice dinning in his ear, the war seeming to crowd in on him.

  And then she was coming through the door, her face so pale he went to her at once, and took her hands. She had left her pretty hat somewhere. "Was it very bad?" he asked.

  "Worse than-oh, Ian, you should see him. He's lying there looking at nothing, his poor face so scarred I hardly knew him."

  They were in a very public place, people passing on the street around them, faces turned to stare. He led her to the motorcar and put her inside.

  She said as he got behind the wheel, "I was told there was a little church near the Gruuthuse Palace. Could we walk there, do you think?"

  He found it for her after going astray near the Begijnhof, where the Benedictine Sisters lived in their little white cottages in a tree-lined courtyard. Two or three were sitting in the sun, warming themselves, a small cushion on their knees, weaving the fine webs of their lace, bobbins flying in nimble fingers. There Meredith bought a small handkerchief to cover her dark hair in the church.

  The Church of Our Lady was known for its tall, striking tower. It soared above the surrounding buildings, and Rutledge found himself thinking it was an ideal mark for German artillery firing on the town.

  Down a side aisle was a chapel with a small but perfect white marble statue standing on the altar. It was, he realized, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child. She was seated, the child at her knee, the smile on her face movingly sweet. Rutledge's godfather, the architect David Trevor, had traveled in Europe on a Grand Tour as a young man, and he had told Rutledge that this face, young, serene, without shadows, was the same as that of the Virgin in the Pieta in Rome's St. Peter's, only there it was marked by sorrow and loss. The comparison, he had said, was heart-wrenching.

  Rutledge stood in the back of the chapel, staring up at that face while Meredith knelt near the altar, head bowed, but not, he thought, in prayer. If she was looking for anything here, it was strength. Or courage.

  Hamish had been there in the back of his mind ever since the night Meredith Channing had come to his flat. A dull, unceasing monologue of despair, the words nearly indistinguishable, but he knew them by heart.

  Fiona. He could hear that whisper as Hamish lay dying before the blessing of the coup de grace. You took my happiness from me. I'll take yours.

  Rutledge had tried to shut out all feeling after Jean had walked out of his life in the spring of 1919. He hadn't wanted to feel again. He didn't want to feel anything now.

  But he watched Meredith come to grips with what she had seen, and he wondered if she had wanted this man to be her husband. Or if he was. Either way, here was her chance for atonement.

  After a time, she rose and walked toward him. There were no tears now, just the resolve he was dreading, and she said, "Will you take me back to the hospital now?"

  It was too short a distance to say anything important, and so they walked in silence. When they re
ached the hospital with its frivolous roofline of chimneys, she asked that he carry her valise to the door. "They'll find somewhere for me to stay. Close by. I can visit every day."

  He did as she asked, numbly, knowing he had already been shut out.

  As he set the valise down with a click on the marble step, she said, "I'm so sorry. But this is something I have to do." Her voice was steady, but only just. A little deeper in note as well, from the tears she was holding back.

  "Duty is bitter company," he said quietly.

  "I don't know how long he will live. Months. Years. But I'll close the London house and live in Bruges for now."

  "Meredith-"

  "I wish I had met you then. I wouldn't have been so foolish as to marry without love." She rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. "Good-bye, Ian."

  Someone opened the door, as if he or she had been waiting to admit Mrs. Channing. She stepped inside, and it swung shut again behind her.

  He stood there for a moment longer, as if hoping she would change her mind. And then he went to the motorcar.

  France was just miles away, and he knew where Hamish had died. His service revolver was in his valise.

  It was time to end it.

  22

  R utledge crossed the frontier between France and Belgium and soon after found a deeply rutted road through devastated countryside that led in the direction of the River Somme, approaching it from what had been the German lines. The land was healing, after a fashion, grass and weeds struggling to reestablish themselves. Nature seemed to find a way to cover up the scars of tragedy. But men had marched down this road to kill other men, and the land was rough and desolate, as if no one cared to live here where so many had died. He couldn't blame them. If ghosts walked anywhere, surely they did here, and he felt that nothing grown in such bloody soil would ever prosper again.