A Fearsome Doubt ir-6

by Charles Todd

  “Didn’t do them much good, did it, serving together?” the woman wearing spectacles wanted to know. “My Fred says they lost more because of that.”

  The first speaker, the one with her back to Rutledge, said soothingly, “I wouldn’t give young Peter’s words any weight. Like as not he means well, but my guess is, he’s hoping for a little attention. No need to upset his mother again.”

  There was agreement at the table, and then the feathered hat said, “We ought to do something for Mrs. Bartlett, as well. I’ve a bit of ham left from Sunday’s dinner, and I’ll take it over to her straightaway. With some of the bread and the potatoes. If you’ll look in on her tomorrow, and the next day-just until she gets past the worst of it.”

  The woman wearing spectacles said, “I’ll see what’s in the gardens, that she might care for.”

  The mourners rose and walked across the tearoom to settle their account.

  As they closed the shop door behind them, the owner spoke briefly to the new couple, and then came over to clear away the empty table.

  Rutledge waited until she was nearest where he sat. “Those women,” he said. “Do they live in Marling?”

  The woman wiped her hands on her apron and turned. He was the stranger here, and she was debating how to respond to his curiosity.

  “Inspector Rutledge. Scotland Yard,” he told her. “I’ve a need to know.”

  “They’re local.” The owner’s face remained doubtful as she studied him. “They’ve just been to the funeral of the man killed along the road the other night. Peggy Bartlett couldn’t offer them anything afterward, though the Women’s Institute had said they’d see to some refreshment. But Peggy wouldn’t hear of it. I can’t say that I blame her-she’s beholden enough for the vicar and the coffin. I hope the police find whoever did these terrible things and send him to the gallows!”

  Her kind face was suddenly grim and unforgiving.

  15

  Walking to the police station, Rutledge decided it would be best to speak to Sergeant Burke. The man was just settling into his chair. He looked up at Rutledge, his eyes tired. “I expect you’re wanting Inspector Dowling, sir. He hasn’t come back from the Bartlett funeral. I was glad to escape early. It’s hard to watch women cry and not have any comfort to give!”

  Rutledge answered, “Actually I’ve come to ask if anyone spoke to young Peter Webber after his father’s death.”

  Burke rubbed his forehead with a thick fist. “He was that upset, no one had the heart to ask him anything. He’s just turned eight; there wasn’t much he could tell us about his father. Webber was away most of the lad’s life. They were just getting acquainted again, you might say.”

  Rutledge took the chair in front of the sergeant’s desk. “I understand that. But I have a feeling it might be a good idea to speak to him.”

  Burke said warily, “What put you onto the lad?”

  “I heard four women in the tea shop discussing the funeral, and his name came up in the conversation. Peter doesn’t know me, but he’d speak to you, I think. If you encouraged him.” Rutledge repeated what he’d overheard.

  Burke heaved himself out of his chair. “Well, then, Peter’ll be on his way home from school about now. We can look for him.”

  They found the boy trudging along the road in the rain, head down, his shabby coat dark across the shoulders. A slim child, with long hands and long feet, a promise of height to come.

  Burke instructed Rutledge to stop the motorcar just ahead of the boy.

  “You’re wet through, lad,” he called. “Mr. Rutledge here will give you a lift home,” Burke said, getting out to open the rear passenger door. “Come along, then, and mind you don’t set your muddy feet on the seat!”

  With alacrity the boy did as he was told. It wasn’t often he was offered an opportunity to ride in a motorcar. He settled quickly in the seat, but leaned forward (as Hamish seemed to do from time to time), his eyes fixed on the instrument panel.

  “Could you blow the horn, then?” he asked, bubbling with excitement.

  “Could you blow the horn, please, sir?” Burke chided him.

  “Please, sir?” Peter repeated shyly, and laughed with glee as Rutledge squeezed the rubber bulb.

  Rutledge thought, Ben Shaw’s son was this age when his father was hanged…

  There was something about the boy, the fineness of his hands and skin, that spoke of better breeding than a laborer’s child. In that lay the similarity Burke said, “Your mum getting on all right, is she? Enough food on the table?” He quietly gestured to Rutledge to stop the car at the next house.

  Peter answered, “We’re faring well enough.” But he had the thinness of a growing child who was always hungry.

  “Mr. Rutledge here is interested to know more about your pa, hoping to help us find the devil that did it. Did anyone come looking for him, do you think, before he died?”

  The boy squirmed a little in his seat. “I don’t remember!”

  “Yes, you do, Peter. It won’t go any further, I promise you. But it might do some good. Tell us, then.”

  After a short silence the boy said, “I never saw him before.”

  “There’s a start,” Burke said, encouraging. “Not from Marling, then, do you suppose?”

  “No. At least, no one I’d know by sight.”

  “What else can you remember?”

  “Not very much.” As if the lengthening silence urged him to say more, Peter added, “He wasn’t as heavy as you are. But tall, like the vicar.” After a moment, consideringly, “He wore a greatcoat. Like a soldier. But he wasn’t a soldier.”

  “I’d say the vicar is five foot eleven,” Burke said in an aside to Rutledge. And to Peter, “What was his coloring, then?”

  Peter shrugged, fingering the back of Rutledge’s seat, his hands busy and his eyes on them. “He was fair. He took off his hat as he stood talking to me, smoothing back his hair. That was after I’d told him Pa wasn’t at home.”

  “What did he want with your father? Did he say?”

  “No.” And then, “He just asked where he’d fought in the war, and with what regiment. As if he was looking for someone, and Pa might have known the man.”

  “I see. And his age, Peter, what would you say that was?”

  “He was Pa’s age. Thereabouts. Could you please blow the horn again, sir? My little sister’s looking out the window!”

  Rutledge obliged. Peter laughed again, but it wasn’t as carefree as the first time. He made a movement to leave the car, but Burke sat where he was.

  “Anything that set this man’s face apart, that you remember? A large nose? A cleft in the chin? Eyes too close together?”

  Peter shook his head and turned to see if his sister was still watching. The house was a small cottage on the edge of Marling, with a rough garden in the front and a roof that needed rethatching. Chickens and geese scratched in the muddy earth in a large pen behind the cottage. Peter began fumbling with the door, unsure how to let himself out.

  Burke said, “All right, Peter, answer my question, and you can go in to your tea.”

  “There’s nothing about his face,” Peter protested. “I don’t remember his face. Just his voice.”

  “What about his voice?”

  “He sounded strange. As if he come from Liverpool, or maybe Cornwall. Different.” He was fidgeting with anxiety, eager to be gone.

  “Not like a Londoner, then?”

  The boy shook his head. “I know what Londoners sound like! They come for the hop picking.”

  “So they do.” Burke got out in the rain and let the boy down. “Well done, Peter. You needn’t talk about it to anyone else. Best not.”

  Peter nodded. With a bob of his head toward Rutledge, he was gone up the walk to the door, where his little sister let him in.

  As Burke got back into the motorcar, he said to Rutledge, “Not much there, I’d say. A fair man, tallish, and not from Kent. Well. I’d just as soon believe this murderer wasn’t one of
ours!”

  It was a familiar refrain -None of us would be guilty of such a thing…

  Hamish, who had reclaimed the rear seat for his own, commented, “Yon description would fit half the men in England.”

  Burke was adding, “Like as not, he’d lost his way. There was a man dying that night, you know. Gassed. A good many friends came to say good-bye.”

  But in the middle of the week, a working man couldn’t travel far. Most of the dying man’s visitors would have been Kent men, their accents familiar to the boy.

  Rutledge was uneasy. Fair, tallish, and not from Kent. It was a description that also fit the man he’d thought for an instant he’d glimpsed at the bonfire. And again along the road near to where the last victim, Bartlett, was found.

  Hamish said with relish, “You willna’ be satisfied until you find a rational answer. But there’s no’ likely to be one.”

  Burke was saying, “All the same, I’ll ask for a list of the men who came to say good-bye to Bob Nester. The ex-soldier dying of his lungs. It’ll do no harm.”

  As Rutledge climbed the stairs to his hotel room, Hamish said, “The Shaw woman. She’s distracting you fra’ your duty here.”

  Answering from habit, Rutledge said tiredly, “It doesn’t matter. I’ve given her my word.”

  “Oh, aye? And these dead ex-soldiers. Did ye gie them your word as well?”

  “What have we got so far to build with? A child’s description of a stranger? The wine? The fact that all of these men had lost limbs-that they’d served together? And they died at night. It will take more than that to find a killer.”

  “If you were no’ so distracted, you’d see another link-”

  Rutledge had hung his coat across a chair, to dry. He stopped as he bent to remove his shoes, waiting for Hamish to go on.

  But there was only silence.

  He said, “Where they drank the wine? I’ve already considered that. Someone had transportation. A cart. A wagon. A lorry. A motorcar… In some fashion, those men were lured into traveling with someone. Or stopping somewhere with someone.”

  “But no’ in the empty house with its stone pillars. There was no sign that the grass had been beaten down.”

  It was true. No vehicle had traveled up that drive since the summer. Rutledge had seen the tall grass but not registered its significance.

  “If you were a weary man walking home on a cold night, and someone offered you wine for warmth and courage,” Rutledge said, pacing the room, “would you take a drink?”

  “If I knew him, I’d no’ be suspicious. Except to wonder how he’d come by the wine, if he was poor, like me.”

  “Yes. I agree. But if he was a stranger-”

  “Aye, it would be different.”

  And the difference would be the manner in which the wine was offered.

  To drink enough to die from the laudanum, a man would have to be well on his way to being drunk…

  Apropos of nothing, Hamish quietly quoted an old toast: “Here’s tae us. Wha’s like us? Gey few, and they’re all deid!”

  Rutledge shuddered. “… all deid.”

  The words triggered a memory that had no beginning and no end, that was only an unexpected glimpse through the shadows of Rutledge’s mind. A resurrected image that made no sense and yet was as clear in that instant as it must have been in a very different venue.

  The man by the bonfire-he ought to have been in uniform. But not an English uniform. A torn and bloody German uniform…

  His room was suffocating, closing in on him. Rutledge lifted his coat, still wet, from the chair and pulled it on again.

  Better the out-of-doors, even the rain, than staying here and smothering.

  He couldn’t understand why these bits of unrelated memory seemed to jump into his mind and then lead nowhere. What was triggering them? What was bringing them to the surface when-whatever they represented-they had been buried in the depths of a past the conscious brain rejected?

  Dr. Fleming, who had saved his sanity, had warned him that there would be flashbacks from time to time as the mind sorted through the dark recesses and found a way to cope with them.

  “It’s only natural. Nature abhors a vacuum, you know,” Dr. Fleming had said, far more cheerfully than Rutledge had thought warranted. “The mind’s amazing. It will bury something it can’t face-and then begin to resurrect it to fill in the empty places of memory.” He had studied the haunted man in front of his desk. “You don’t remember the end of the war, do you? You don’t recall where you went, what you did, or why. I’ve got some of the pieces; they came from your military file. But they don’t make much sense. Only you can fill in the blanks. And eventually you will. How you will handle it will depend on how strong you are emotionally-how stable your life seems at the time. All I can offer you is this: an open door. Come and talk to me. I’ll do what I can to make it more comfortable for you.”

  Rutledge pulled out of the hotel yard and turned north. Even if he could simply walk in on Fleming and sit down in his office, what would he say? That he was afraid of someone he’d seen, someone who was dead-who was German?

  How many Germans had he killed? he wondered wryly. He should be haunted not by one face, but by thousands…

  Without consciously addressing a destination, Rutledge drove out the Marling road and soon found himself close by the place where the first ex-soldier had been killed. It was as if one part of his brain had continued the conversation with Hamish about the murders, and the other had wandered into a No Man’s Land of its own.

  He could see the leaning stone pillars through the rain and slowed the motorcar. It was true-the tall weeds and grass growing up the drive had that tangled, springing airiness that told him no vehicle had passed over them in some time. Weather had beaten the stalks down here and there, without breaking or crushing them.

  It was nearing dusk. He drove on toward the line of trees, searching for any other means of reaching the house in the distance. But it was an unlikely possibility-Dowling and his men would already have taken note of any attempt to go through the grounds.

  His head was turned, and so it was almost peripherally that he saw the woman standing at the side of the road in the rain, staring up at the gray laden clouds visible between the trees.

  Rutledge’s first thought was that it was Mrs. Shaw, waylaying him again, for this woman wore a dark coat that seemed to engulf rather than fit her, her silhouette shapeless and without grace. He saw as he came closer that she was wearing a man’s greatcoat, and that it swallowed her slimmer figure. She clutched it close to her throat as he touched the brakes.

  “Is there anything you need?” he asked, drawing even with her.

  Her face was pale, the line of her brows like charcoal smudges above the dark-circled eyes.

  “I’m all right,” she said. And then as an afterthought, “Thank you.”

  He shifted into neutral, uncertain, and then switched off the engine. Opening his door, he stepped out into the road. She turned away, as if trying to ignore him. “I don’t like leaving you here. It will be dark soon. My name’s Rutledge, Inspector Rutledge, from London. If you will let me take you to your house-or to the police station-”

  She turned at that, her eyes seeming to bore into him. “London, is it?” She took a shuddering breath. “Well. It won’t bring Will back.”

  “Will?”

  “Will Taylor. He was my husband. They found his body just here, they said. I’ve come to see it for myself. I didn’t want to before. But I-” She stopped.

  Rutledge said gently as he walked toward her, “Perhaps it wasn’t the best of ideas… to come to this place. Not in the rain, surely.”

  “I never really knew him, you see. We were married and then he went off to war. He came home twice, once with the broken arm, and then again when the Germans blew his foot off. They kept him in hospital then, and I’d go and sit by the bed, but the ward was full. There was no privacy. You couldn’t talk. Not really -talk. ”

 
; “I understand,” he said.

  “No, you don’t,” she said bitterly. “Nobody does! He had more in common with them, the other men in that ward, than he did with me, his wife. They’d all lost a limb, too. He wasn’t-different-there. Still one of the lads.”

  She took a deep breath, fighting tears. “I was beginning to think there were no whole men left in England-”

  Rutledge said nothing. There was no comfort he could offer.

  Mrs. Taylor looked him up and down, as if assessing his wounds. They weren’t visible, and he felt himself flushing, as if guilty of being whole. “You were in the war, were you?” He nodded. “You came home with nothing missing. It’s all right for you, you didn’t have to find a new way of learning to live, to earn your keep. Will had to do that, and even when he was sent home the last time, we weren’t-comfortable-together. It was like having a stranger in the house. I hardly knew what to say to him! Nor he to me. Loving him wasn’t the same. I couldn’t get used to no foot. It hadn’t healed well, the stump. And we had no common ground of any kind, except the marriage and the children.”

  She was speaking not so much to him as she was to the place of her husband’s death. As if excusing to the shade of Will Taylor what had gone wrong in their fragile postwar relationship.

  It would bring no comfort to Mrs. Taylor to tell her that he’d seen the other side of this coin-hasty romantic weddings, a patriotic fervor, and in the beginning, dozens of love letters that flew back and forth like doves.

  How many men standing watch in the night had cleared their throats and gruffly admitted, “I’m worrit. There’s a difference in her letters noo. I think there’s someone else…” Darkness shielding anxious eyes, voices low-pitched.

  “She doesna’ write sae often. And she says she hardly kens what I look like, anymore. But then I have only a wee photograph, mysel’, and she must ha’ changed in two years. I’ve begged her for another, but she canna’ find anyone with a camera. She says…” A cough, as if denying the unspoken fear.

  They had sometimes come to him, to beg for leave. Not just the married men, but the single ones who had left someone behind. One soldier had stood there clutching in his hand a scrap of newspaper bearing the photograph of Gladys Cooper, the actress. Pointing to it, he’d said earnestly, “She’s mair real to me noo than Maggie. What am I to do?” Anguish sharpened his face and his eyes had pleaded.