A matter of Justice ir-11

by Charles Todd

  Falling on his knees, he reached out to touch the bag just as Quar- les snatched it away. Evering, behind them, said quite clearly, "Put it back! "

  But Quarles had no intention of obeying. He picked up the two bags. "Four wounded," he repeated. "Five counting him." He got to his feet and reached for his rifle, starting toward the engine. "Wait here."

  "I'm coming."

  "Stay with him, I say!"

  Quarles went forward to find three men bleeding profusely but still alive. The fourth was already unconscious, his face gray.

  "Water?" one of the men begged, reaching out, his hand shaking like a palsy.

  Quarles shot him, and before the others could move, he shot them as well. Then he moved on to the locomotive. Both the engineer and the fireman were dead. Looking out, he could see the Boers had pulled out the tracks and piled the ties in plain view, to force the engineer to stop. There would be no going forward now. And no returning to the depot unless Penrith knew how to manage the damned controls. He went back to the last carriage and knelt beside Evering.

  "Is there any more of this?" He held up the bags for the lieutenant to see them.

  Evering shook his head.

  "What's it for, then?"

  Evering, fighting to stay alert, didn't answer.

  Penrith, crouched in a corner, said, "I heard gunfire! They're back-"

  Quarles was on the point of shooting him as well. And then he thought better of it. "I was afraid there was something out there. Never mind, it was nothing. Nerves. Penrith-can you run the locomotive? The way ahead is blocked, we have to go back."

  "Me? No. What are we to do, then? We've got to get the wounded to cover, and one of us ought to go for help." Even as he said the words, he read the decision in Quarles's face, and began shaking his head. "Why does it have to be me?"

  Quarles was in no frame of mind to argue. "I'll see to the men. Go on, then, walk as far as you can before dark, then find somewhere to dig in. I'll stay here until you come back."

  "I don't want to go. And what about this money? What are you going to do with it? "

  "I'll see to that as well. Mind you don't mention it to anyone! Otherwise they'll take it from us."

  "I'm not leaving it behind. I don't trust you."

  "You've done nothing to earn it, my lad. Not yet. Go for help. Leave me to clear away here. And when you find that help, mind you act dazed, confused. Just tell them the Boers attacked, and the lieutenant here sent you for help. The less you say to them, the better."

  Without warning, he set aside his rifle and swung his fist as hard as he could, catching Penrith on the cheekbone, and then hit him again. Blood ran from a torn lip, dripping onto his uniform.

  Penrith, angrier than he could ever remember being, lunged at Quarles, but the man had already retrieved his rifle and kept him at bay.

  "Don't be a fool, Penrith! If you arrive after a fight with the Boer looking fresh as a bleeding daisy, they'll be suspicious."

  Something in his face made Penrith look sharply at him. "I counted four shots. You killed them, didn't you? The wounded."

  "Yes, and I'll kill you too, if you don't listen. You want a share of that money? How are we going to do that, hmmm? Tell the Army we've taken a fancy to it? Tell them no one else is alive, so we thought we'd help ourselves? They'll hunt us like animals. First we must deal with this lot. Go back to the camp. And think about it as you walk. If we're smart, we'll let the Army blame the Boers for the money going missing. We know nothing about it, eh? It was the lieutenant's little secret, and we never laid eyes on it."

  "But he's alive-"

  "Look at him. Do you think he'll last the day? I'm no doctor, I can't save him. He's the only one can talk, if we keep our heads. What's it to be, then? Do your part or die with the others. It's all the same to me."

  Penrith, staring at the rifle in the other man's hands, said with as much bravado as he could muster, "I'll go. But play any tricks on me, and I'll see you hang."

  He backed out of the carriage, his gaze on Quarles, and nearly stumbled over a railroad tie as he stepped down. Then he stopped. Fool that he was, he'd left his own rifle in the train.

  As if he'd read Penrith's mind, Quarles reached down, picked up a rifle, and tossed it to him. "Take the sergeant's. You won't get far without it."

  Penrith caught it, retreating, watching those cold eyes watching him and expecting to be shot in the back when he turned. When he was safely out of range, Quarles was still standing there in the carriage door, his face a mask of blood and determination. Penrith turned on his heel and began to walk the tracks back to the depot. He didn't trust Quarles. On the other hand, he told himself, the man was right. If he didn't share the money, Penrith could turn him in. And he thought, on the whole, the Army was more likely to believe him, a curate's son, than Quarles, a less than exemplary soldier. Time would tell what would come of this day's work.

  He could still see those pound notes, thick wads of them.

  It was all he could think of as he walked steadily toward the depot.

  On the train, Quarles waited until Penrith was out of sight and no threat to him. Then he did three things. He went through the carriages again to be certain there were no more wounded, he scanned the veldt for miles to be certain the Boers had gone away, and then he searched every inch of the last carriage for other bags of money. As he did, he could feel Evering's eyes on him, baleful and full of pain.

  There was no more. He'd found it all.

  Quarles took the two bags, ignoring the weak protests of the severely wounded man, and stacked the notes to one side. He remembered an oiled cloth he'd seen near the dead fireman and trotted forward to fetch it. It was thick with coal dust and torn, but it was still large enough for his purpose. Wrapping the money carefully in the cloth, he took it outside and searched for a place to dig. He found that some thirty yards from the tracks, and with his bare hands he worked furiously at creating a hole deep enough to conceal the bundle.

  It took him over an hour. But when he was finished, there was nothing to show that he'd been there. A small branch, swept across where he'd worked, erased any signs of digging. He stepped back, considering his handiwork. The question was, how to mark the spot? Looking around, he saw a flat rock, shaped like a turtle. It was heavy, but he carried it across to where the money was hidden and set it on top. It was the best he could do.

  When he got back to the carriage, he was surprised to find Evering still alive. The man was holding on tenaciously, determination in the set of his jaw. His eyes watched Quarles, bright against the flushed skin of his face, as if recording everything he saw for the court-martial to come.

  Quarles ignored him, going about his next task with cold efficiency. He placed the empty money bags at Evering's feet, and then went searching for lanterns.

  After pouring all their oil over the last carriage, he took the lanterns back to where he'd found them. Evering was still watching him, but with alarm in his eyes now.

  "What are you doing, man?" he managed to say with sufficient force to be heard.

  "You're the only one who knew about the money. And when they come, they'll want to know where it is. They're not going to believe that the Boers took it, are they? So I don't have any choice."

  He had found matches in the sergeant's kit, and he struck them now and lit the spreading puddles of oil. The old carriages were tender dry. They'd burn in a hurry, they wouldn't need the oil after a few minutes.

  Evering cried, "You can't do this! It's inhuman-"

  "Watch me," Quarles said and jumped out of the carriage. He tried to walk far enough away to shut out the cries of the burning man, but he could hear them in his mind if not his ears. They would haunt him for a long time.

  But it was so much money. It would set him up for life. Even if he shared it with Penrith. Or not. It would depend on how useful the man was.

  He waited until the flames had nearly died down, then went back to the blackened carriages and thrust his hands into
the remnants of the fire. He hadn't known it would hurt that badly, but he forced himself to put his face close enough to singe his hair and his skin.

  And then, fighting the pain as best he could, he crawled under what was left of the first carriage, out of the sun. hen help arrived many hours later, Quarles was half out of his

  He hadn't looked at what was left of Lieutenant Timothy Barton Evering. mind with pain and thirst. They dealt with him gently, and the doctor did what he could. He didn't see Penrith and didn't ask for him. He lay on the stretcher, calling Evering's name until someone bent over him and said, "He's dead. There was nothing you could do." After that he shut his eyes and was quiet.

  The inquiry into the ambush was not lengthy. Penrith supported the account that a shot could have broken a lantern and set the last carriage on fire. "But I didn't see it burning when I left. All I could think of was the wounded, and getting help for them as fast as possible." His face was pale, and his voice tended to shake.

  Penrith was the son of a curate. They believed him. Quarles, when interviewed, remembered only beating at the flames to reach the lieutenant. His burns were serious, and his bandages spoke to his courage.

  He was sent to Cape Town, where doctors worked on his hands, and Penrith, whose feet had been badly blistered by his walk, was sent to a hospital in Port Elizabeth. They didn't meet again until the end of the war, in 1902.

  It was Penrith who came to find Quarles, and he asked him outright for his share of the money. "I've earned it now. And I'll have it before we're sent home."

  Quarles smiled. "Oh, yes, and you on a spending spree a private's pay couldn't explain? No, we split the money and take it home with us. We wait a year, and then decide how to hide it in plain sight. Do you think we've fooled them? Stupidity will get us hanged yet."

  "As long as we split it now," Penrith said. "I want it in my hand, where you can't trick me or hide from me. Once we've split it, we're finished with each other."

  "Did you hear they found the Boers that attacked our train and hanged the leader? I wouldn't press my luck if I were you. A misstep now, and we'll be decorating the gibbet he kept warm for us."

  But Penrith was not to be put off.

  Quarles took five days of leave and found a carriage and horse that he could borrow, though his hands were still stiff and almost useless. He located the site of the attack after some difficulty, found the flat stone after walking in circles for three hours, and dug up the packet in the oiled cloth. Most of it he split into two black valises he'd brought with him. For the rest, he found a black woman in an isolated hut and asked her to sew the money into pockets in the lining of his tunic. She thought him a mad Englishman, but he promised to pay her well. When the tunic was ready, he drowned her in the stream where she washed her clothes, for fear she would gossip. If he'd been a superstitious man, he'd have believed she put a curse on him as she died. As it was, she fought hard, and he was glad he hadn't put his tunic on before dealing with her.

  Penrith was waiting for him at the livery stable when he brought the carriage back, and demanded that he take his pick of the two valises. "To be sure the split was fair and square."

  "As God is my witness," Quarles answered him, "you'll find both hold the same sum. Look for yourself. It's more than either of us can ever expect to earn. Don't be greedy."

  Penrith said, his curiosity getting the better of him as he examined both valises, "Does it ever bother you, how we came by this?"

  "Does it bother you?" Quarles retorted, picking up the nearest case. He walked off and didn't look back.

  As luck would have it, the two men arrived in London on the same troop ship and were mustered out of the army in the same week. Quar- les took Penrith to the nearest pub and made a suggestion: "We've got to find work. Until the Army's forgot us. It wouldn't look right, would it, for either of us to be rich as a nob, when we joined up with no more than a shilling to our names."

  Penrith was stubborn. "You've put me off long enough. I have my share, I'll spend it as I please."

  "You do that, and I'll tell them you stole the money while I was trying to save the lieutenant."

  In the end, Quarles put the wind up Penrith, who was afraid of Quarles and would be for years to come. They each took up positions at a merchant bank, Penrith as the doorman because of his fair looks and his air of breeding, and general work for Quarles, with the ugly scars on his hands. His eyebrows had never grown out again properly, giving him a quizzical expression. But he was a big man with pale red hair and a charm that he practiced diligently, turning it on at need. The account he gave of his burns elicited laughter and sympathy, for he kept the story of rushing into a burning house to save a child droll rather than dramatic. There was no mention of the army or South Africa. And as far as anyone knew, neither Penrith nor Quarles had ever left the country.

  Quarles had been good at numbers in school, and that training, together with a clever mind, was put to work. It wasn't long before he caught the eye of one of the junior partners, and six months later, he was promoted to Mr. James's clerk.

  On that same day Quarles said to Penrith, "I can see that there's a way to be rich without suspicion," and outlined his plan.

  Penrith, ever slow to see what might be to his own advantage, said, "But we've got money, we don't need to work. You promised-"

  Quarles looked at him. "Have you counted what you've got? It's nothing compared to what comes in and out these doors every day. It looked like a king's ransom, there on the veldt, but I know better now. I've asked Mr. James if he'd be kind enough to invest what an old aunt left me. I told him I'd run through it in six months, else. And he's agreed. You'd be smart to do the same. Soon we'll be twice as rich, and then there's no stopping us." He smiled. "Mr. James sees a coal miner's brat with brains in his head. He's a snob, he thinks I'm a clever monkey doing tricks to amuse him. But in the end, it's Mr. James who's jumping through hoops of my making. I'm a clerk now, and mark my words, I'll go higher, as high as I please. And if you're a wise one, you'll hang on to my coattails. I didn't do you a bad turn in the Transvaal, did I? We haven't hanged yet, have we?"

  Penrith said, "You're a clever monkey, all right. The question is, do I trust you? And how far?"

  Quarles laughed harshly. "Suit yourself. But don't come whining to me when your pittance runs out and there's no way to replace it. And don't think you can blackmail me into saving your arse. You'll hang beside me."

  3

  Somerset, near Exmoor May 1920

  There was a stone terrace on the northern side of the house, with a dramatic view down to the sea. The town of Minehead was invisible around the next headland to the east, and to the west, Exmoor rolled to the horizon, empty as far as the eye could see.

  Not even a gull's cry broke the stillness, though they sailed on the wind above the water, wings bright in the morning sun. Rutledge sat in a comfortable chair by the terrace wall, more relaxed than he'd been in some time.

  Half an hour later a faint line of gray was making itself known in the far distance, storm clouds building somewhere over Cornwall. A pity, he thought, watching them. The weather had held fair so far. All that was needed was barely another twenty-four hours, for tomorrow's wedding. After that the rain could fall.

  He had taken a few days of leave. Edgar Maitland, a friend from before the war, had asked Rutledge to come to Somerset to meet his bride and to stand up with him at the wedding.

  This had been Maitland's grandfather's house, and Rutledge could understand why his friend preferred to live here most of the year now, keeping his flat for the occasional visit to London. Edgar had also inherited his grandfather's law firm in nearby Dunster and appeared to be well on his way to becoming a country solicitor.

  Rutledge and Maitland had lost touch after 1917, but when Mait- land had come to town in April to buy a ring for his bride, he'd tracked Rutledge down at Scotland Yard. France had changed both men, but they understood that these differences were safest left unspoken. What ha
d drawn them together at university had been an enthusiasm for tennis and cricket; what had made them friends was a feeling for the law, and this each of them, in their own way, had held on to through the nightmare of war, seeing their salvation in returning to it.

  Maitland had often good-naturedly berated Rutledge for choosing to join the police. "A waste, old man, you must see that."

  And Rutledge always answered, "I have no ambition to be a K.C. I've left that to you."

  When Rutledge had met Elise on his arrival in Dunster, he'd had reservations about the match. She was young, pretty, and in love. The question was whether she was up to the task of caring for a man who'd lost his leg in France, and with it, for many months, his self- worth. Unlike the steady, happy man Rutledge had seen in London, now Edgar was by turns moody and excited as the wedding day approached. And that boded ill for the future.

  Indeed, last night when they were alone on the terrace, darkness obscuring their faces and only their voices betraying their feelings, Edgar had said morosely, "I can't dance. She says she doesn't care for dancing. Or play tennis. She doesn't care for tennis. She says. But that's now. What about next year, or the year after, if she's bored and some other bloke asks her to dance, or to be his partner in a match? What then? Will she smile at me, and ask permission, and be relieved when I give it? "

  Rutledge had grinned. "Cold feet, Lieutenant? Where's the bane of the sappers, the man who never backed out of anything, even a burning tunnel?"

  "Yes, well, I was brave once too often. And it's cold foot, now. Do you know, I can still feel pain in my missing leg? Phantom pain, they call it, the nerve endings looking for something that isn't there and worrying themselves into knots."

  "That's common, I think?"

  "Apparently. But it's damned odd when it's your foot itching, and there's nothing there to scratch."

  They had laughed. But Edgar had drunk a little too much last night and was sleeping it off this morning.

  Rutledge watched that thin line of gray cloud for a time, decided that it was not growing any larger, and turned his attention to the sea below, tranquil before the turn of the tide. Behind him, the terrace door opened, and he looked up, expecting to see Edgar.