Charles Todd - A test of wills

Turning out of the gates, Rutledge said between his teeth, "When I've finished, there won't be any need to drag Hickam anywhere. I'll have other proof."

Hamish's derisive laughter followed him the rest of the way back to Upper Streetham. Bowles had called from Scotland Yard.

When Rutledge rang him back, Bowles said, "You've had two days, what's happened?"

"We're holding the Inquest tomorrow. And it will be adjourned. I need more time," he answered, trying to keep the tenseness, the uncertainty out of his voice.

There was an appreciative silence at the other end of the line, and then Bowles asked, "I'm being pushed for results myself, you know; I can't put them off with 'Rutledge needs more time.' What kind of progress have you made?"

"We've found the shotgun. At least, I think we have. The owner has witnesses that place him elsewhere at the time of the murder, but the general consensus is, he's got the best motive for killing the Colonel. The problem is, I don't see what it achieved-why now? This feud between them is of long standing. Why not twenty years ago, when it all started? But the man's house is unlocked, it's isolated, and anyone who knew about the shotgun could have walked in and taken it. And several people did know. It would have been a simple matter to put it back afterward. I'm presently exploring who had the best opportunity."

"Not Captain Wilton, I do hope?"

Rutledge answered reluctantly. "Among others, yes."

"The Palace will have a collective stroke if word of that leaks out. For God's sake, say nothing until you're absolutely sure!"

"Which is why I need more time," Rutledge pointed out reasonably. "Can we afford to make a mistake? Either way?"

"Very well. But keep me informed, will you? I've got people breathing down my neck. I can go out on a limb for you at the moment, but we'll need something soon or heads may start to roll. Mine among them!"

"Yes, I understand. I'll call you on Monday morning. At the latest."

He waited, let the silence drag on, but Bowles had finished and cut the connection.

Rutledge hung up, unable to see the pleased smile at the other end of the line as Bowles replaced the receiver. The situation in Warwickshire, in Bowles's opinion, was progressing exactly as he had planned.

Still turning their conversation over in his mind, Rut- ledge told himself that the exchange had gone well enough. The Yard wanted answers, yes, but it was also prepared to accept his judgment in the field rather than forcing him into hasty decisions. A sign that nothing had been held back intentionally?

Badly needed encouragement, then, whether the Yard realized it or not-he should feel only a sense of relief.

But Hamish, who had a knack for cutting to the heart of Rutledge's moods, asked softly, "Why hasn't he asked about Hickam, then?" Stopping by Warren's surgery as he walked toward the Inn, Rutledge asked the housekeeper for a report on Hickam.

"He's still alive, if that's any help. But he just lays there, for all the world a dead man. Do you want to know what I think?" She gave him a penetrating look. "He's gone away, so far back into that mad war he came from that he can't find his way home again. While he's there on the bed, not moving, not seeing, not hearing, I keep wondering what's happening inside his head. Where we can't follow him."

"God only knows," Rutledge answered her, not wanting to think about it.

She frowned. "Do you suppose he's afraid? I watched him on the street sometimes, and saw the anger in him, and the strangeness that unsettled everybody-well, of course it was unsettling, we didn't know what to do about it, whether to ignore him or shout at him or lock him up! But when he was sober I saw the fear too, and that worried me. I'd not like to think that wherever he's gone, he's taken the fear with him, as well as the horrors of the war. When he can't move, he can't run from it."

Rutledge considered her. "I don't know," he told her honestly. "You're probably the only person in the town who cares."

"I've seen too much suffering in my life not to recognize it, even in a drunkard," she said. "And that man suffered. Whatever he did in the war, good or evil, he's paid for it every hour since. You'll remember that, won't you, when and if you can talk to him? I don't suppose you were in the war, but pity is something even a policeman ought to understand. And like him or not, that man deserves pity."

She grasped the door firmly, ready to shut it, her face suddenly still as if she regretted offering opinions to a stranger. "Call again after dinner, if you want. I don't expect he'll come around before then, if he comes around at all." Her voice was crisp again, businesslike. "It won't do any good to try before that, mind!" She closed the door, leaving him standing there on the pavement.

Hamish, stirring again, said, "If he dies, and it's proved you gave him the money that brought him to his grave, a man with your past, what do you suppose they'll do to you?"

"It will be the end of my career. If not worse."

Hamish chuckled, a cold, bitter sound. "But no firing squad. You remember those, now, don't you? The Army's way of doing things. A cold gray dawn before the sun rises, because no man wants to see a shameful death. That bleak hour of morning when the soul shrivels inside you and the heart has no courage and the body shrinks with terror. You remember those, don't you! A pity. I'd thought to remind you…"

But Rutledge was striding toward the Inn, head down, nearly blundering into a bicycle, ignoring the woman who hastily moved out of his path and the voice of someone saying his name. The world had narrowed down to the agony that drove him and the memories that devoured him. Back in France, back to the final horror, the disintegration of all he had been and might be, in the face of blazing guns. The machine gunner was still there, and the main assault was set for dawn. He had to be stopped before then. Rut- ledge sent his men across again, calling to them as he ran, and watched them fall, his sergeant the first to go down, watched the remnants turn and stagger back to their lines through the darkness, cursing savagely, eyes wild with pain and fury.

"It's no' the dying, it's the waste!" Corporal MacLeod screamed at him, leaping back into the trench, faces turning his way. "If they want it taken out so badly, let them shell it!"

Rutledge, pistol in hand, shouted, "If we don't silence it, hundreds of men will die-it's our lot coming, we can't let them walk into that!"

"I won't go back-you can shoot me here, I won't go back! I won't take another man across that line, never again, as God's my witness!"

"I tell you, there's no choice!" He looked at the mutiny in the wild eyes surrounding him, looked at the desolation of spirit in weary, stooped shoulders, and forced himself to ruthless anger: "There's never a choice!"

"Aye, man, there's a choice." The Corporal turned and pointed to the dead and dying, caught in a no-man's-land between the gunner and the lines. "But that's cold-blooded murder, and I'll no' be a part of it again. Never again!"

He was tall and thin and very young, burned out by the fighting, battered and torn by too many offenses and too many retreats, by blood and terror and fear, tormented by a strong Calvinistic sense of right and wrong that somehow survived through it all. It wasn't courage he lacked; Rutledge knew him too well to think him a coward. He had quite simply broken-but others had seen it. There was nothing Rut- ledge could do for him now, too many lives were at stake to let one more stand in the way. Grief vied with anger, and neither won.

He'd had Hamish MacLeod arrested on the spot, and then he'd led the last charge out into the icy, slippery mud, challenging them to let him do it alone, and they'd followed in a straggle, and somehow the gun had been silenced, and there was nothing left afterward but to see to the firing party. Then he'd sat with Hamish throughout what was left of that long night, listening to the wind blowing snow against the huts they'd somehow rigged in the trenches. Listening to Hamish talk.