Charles Todd - Legacy of the Dead

There was nothing Rutledge could do but find out.

He went to the stairwell and listened, but heard nothing.

He began to move down, one step at a time. Swift-but sure.

At the bottom, he paused again. The cat had come down after him, and he tried to see if she had heard something he hadn’t. But she sat down on her haunches when he stopped. Her eyes were on his face.

He had left all the doors open behind him when he had come up the stairs. Now that served him well.

Moving quietly, he worked his way back to the bar.

And stumbled over something on the floor, nearly pitching forward, catching himself in time on the edge of the bar.

Reaching down, Rutledge groped at his feet, and touched hair. A woman’s soft hair. There was a white patch beside her. The christening gown He found her throat and searched for a pulse.

There was none.

Gentle God! Holden had killed his wife Anger swept him, following on the heels of shock.

He remembered what Holden had told him in the rain the previous night: that there was nowhere Rutledge could consider himself safe. It was true.

Rutledge got slowly to his feet, every nerve ending alive. Eyes sweeping the black shadows. All his training in France rushing back He was here-but where? Rutledge could feel him like a second skin.

The cat’s sharp hiss warned him. There was a blindingly bright flash, a deafening report, and he was already dropping. Not fast enough this time. Something spun him half around, slamming into his chest.

He had been hit He knew the drill. It had happened before. Shock. Numbness. And then the pain.

Almost in the same instant, he acted, instinct already guiding hand and brain, throwing the dirk-aiming for the place he’d seen the flash of powder.

The Scots under his command had taught him well. The harsh intake of breath told him he’d hit his mark. Something fell heavily, taking a bar stool over with it. The clatter was appalling. And then silence.

Rutledge moved toward it, his own breathing uneven. Whoever it was still had a pistol He reached out, felt heavy, immovable flesh, and instinctively flinched.

There was no sound except for his own breathing Fumbling, he turned on his torch and looked down into the dead face of Alexander Holden. The knife, protruding from his throat, had severed the artery. There was a great deal of blood. Staining the scrubbed floor. Rutledge stared at it. Black and red, where the torch picked it out.

He realized he was no longer thinking clearly.

Rutledge told himself, Fiona will have to explain-or they’ll find my notebook-London knows about Holden too He remembered the torch in his hand, staring down at it, then turning it off. Why did he have to kill her-why couldn’t Madelyn Holden have lived I wanted to save her. Most of all I wanted to save Fiona His breathing was harsh now, and his chest felt like fire. I’m bleeding, he told himself. And there’s nowhere to go for help.

He didn’t want to think about Fiona. She belonged to Hamish. She always would…

He found a chair and half fell, half slumped in it.

Hamish had been yelling at him, roaring in his ear. Or was it the sound of his own blood?

He couldn’t tell.

From somewhere he could hear the sounds of the pipes. They were faint, and then stronger. Coming toward him.

Rutledge knew what they were playing. He’d heard it too many times not to recognize it at once.

It was “The Flowers of the Forest.” The lament for the dead. He had heard it played for every dead Scot under his command. He’d heard the pipes skirling into battle, he’d heard them grieve. This was a dirge for the dying.

He was dying.

Hamish was like a trumpet in his head. “You will no’ die. Do you hear me? You willna’ die! ”

“You’re already dead, Corporal. You can’t stop me.” Rutledge was finding it hard to concentrate.

“You willna’ die! I willna’ let you die!”

The sound of the pipes had begun to fade. Rutledge thought, The funeral is over-they’ve buried Hamish. Hamish is dead, and I’m to blame-I’ve killed him. But where had this chair come from? They didn’t have chairs at the Front The fire in his chest was smothering him.

He could feel Hamish taking hold of him.

It was what Rutledge had feared for such a long time that now he was grateful for the dark so that he didn’t have to look up and see the dreaded face bending over him. He said to Hamish, “It’s too late. I’m dead. You can’t touch me now. I’m free of you-”

“YOU SHALL NOT DIE!”

In the lamplit Drummond Parlor, the ticking of the mantel clock competed with the soft patter of rain beyond the lacy curtains and glass panes that shut out the night. The soothing quiet was broken only by the dry rustle of the Edinburgh paper Drummond was reading and the regular click of his sister’s ivory knitting needles. It was late, the child already asleep, the clock’s hands nearly touching half past the hour of eleven.

A sound, heavily muffled but unmistakable, brought Drummond to his feet, the newspaper flying in all directions.

A shot He waited, but only for an instant. The image in his mind sent him headlong out into the small hallway. Brushing past the mirrored hat stand, he flung open the outer door and plunged into the rain, running hard.

His sister, calling his name, reached the door he’d left standing wide and leaned out, demanding to know what he thought he was doing.

Over his shoulder he shouted, “Go back inside, woman!”

But at the door of The Reivers, Drummond stopped, putting out his hand cautiously to touch the latch.

He’d seen her only that morning, she’d surely do nothing so rash-it wouldn’t save Fiona The latch lifted, and his heart began to thud.

She had the other key Kicking off his shoes, he swung the door open, tensed for whatever stood behind it. What if there were the two of them here-what if she had shot him? They’d hang her too!

Nothing happened. There was nothing in the darkness.

He listened intently, begging the silence to talk to him, to tell him if one person-or two-had come here…

No sound except for his own breathing, and the blowing of the rain against his back. The wind was picking up a little; he could feel it across his shoulders.

Making his way into the entry, he moved forward one step at a time, soft-footed in his stocking feet. The hair on the back of his neck standing on end, his eyes wide against the pitch-blackness, concentrating on the stairs just ahead of him.

But it wasn’t dark enough here Another step. On his wet skin he could feel the air from the open door that led from the family’s quarters into the side of the bar.

It had been closed before-he’d closed it when he fed the white cat.

Stretching out his hand, he could feel the frame of the door. Moving cautiously, he leaned forward to stare into the bar.

For an instant he thought he heard a word spoken softly.

A white smudge on the floor at the far end of the bar- The cat, then.

He took another step, unsure where the voice had come from, and in the same instant, his toe nudged something blocking the threshold, immovable, nearly tripping him up.

Startled, Drummond dropped swiftly to his knees, praying hard now.

“Don’t let it be her-please, God-”

His fingers found the rough fabric of a man’s overcoat.

A sudden gust of wind and rain blew into the open doorway behind him, shaking him, crouched and defenseless there. He flinched away.

Even as he realized that it was only the rain, his heart seemed to choke him, rising in his throat like a stone.

He reached for the coat again, found an arm-the warm blood soaking a shoulder-a face. Trying hard to find a pulse, he thought, She has shot him-not herself.