Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“How well did you know them?”

“I watched them grow up, you might say, sir. Never any real trouble from any of them, except what you’d expect from high-spirited lads with time on their hands. Nothing vicious, or mean.”

“Yes, I understand,” Rutledge responded neutrally, knowing well that it was human nature to praise Caesar after he was dead. “That’s mainly why I’m here. Another pair of eyes, another perspective.”

“In the war, were you, sir?”

“Four years of it.”

Burke nodded. “Then you’ll know, better than most, what the lads went through. Well, then, Inspector Dowling’ll give you what little we’ve found. Shall I fetch him for you, sir?”

“No, let him finish in his own good time.”

Rutledge left, promising to return in half an hour. He thought for a moment about calling on Elizabeth Mayhew, but instead went to The Plough for his lunch. At a table to himself by the window, he looked out on the square and watched people going about their business in the rain. A bobbing of black umbrellas above black coats, a bowed head here or there, and one man hurrying along with a newspaper held over his hat. Rutledge’s own hat sat in the chair opposite him, darkly spotted with rain. It was, he thought, as good a way as any to prevent company-Hamish or someone else-from taking the empty chair. For the dark-paneled room was quite busy with custom, as if the rain had discouraged people from making the journey home for their midday meal.

Hamish said, from just behind his shoulder, “Yon sergeant has a level head.”

Rutledge came within a breath of answering the voice aloud, used to its cadence in his mind. Stopping himself in time, he responded silently, “Let’s hope Dowling is as competent.”

When he’d given his order, he turned again to the window, hoping to put an end to Hamish’s conversation. And he saw Elizabeth Mayhew just taking leave of a man in a heavy coat whose back was to him. She was smiling, her face alight, upturned, as she leaned toward the figure.

Rutledge found himself suddenly jealous. Not for himself but for Richard Mayhew, dead now and buried in France. As schoolboys, he and Richard had tramped in the face of cold winds that in winter blew across the Hoo peninsula like a knife, bringing mists on their heels. Or in summer followed the old Saxon ways that crisscrossed the Kent countryside, footpaths now but once the high roads of a dim past, serving settlers, warriors, or pilgrims.

Adventures that had shaped their boyhood, and through that fashioned the men they would become. They’d gone their different ways soon enough, but each had carried with him that mark of self-reliance and independence learned on the Downs and in the marshes-experience that had served them well in the war. They’d discussed that, once, on a bombed-out road in France where they’d briefly crossed paths-unaware that it was for the last time.

Richard had said, “The first thing I’ll do when I get home is walk out over the Downs again. When I’m too tired to sleep, I retrace my steps and find that solitude again, and the silence.”

Rutledge had answered, smiling, “I never expected that learning to tell time by the stars or guess at wind speed would save my life one day. It was a game then. Do you still have your uncle’s compass?”

Richard had dug it out of his pocket, holding it out like a holy relic. “Never without it. Do you remember the night we were washed out by the rain? I thought I’d never be that wet again. But we were, our first week in France. While my men were cursing and swearing, I was standing there laughing. Only, it was summer on the Downs, and a damned sight warmer than December in the lines!”

They had had nearly ten minutes before the snarl of traffic had opened up, and Rutledge had had to move on. Richard’s last words had been, “When the war is over, I’m going to have a son, and I’ll teach him everything I know about that safe other world. But I won’t tell him about this one. It’s too obscene…”

A week later Richard was dead, and there would be no sons.

In his second year at Oxford, Richard had fallen deeply in love with Elizabeth. He’d been absent-minded and daydreaming by turns, plotting ways to see her again, driving his tutor to despair when Elizabeth had gone to Italy in the spring, for her mother’s health. Rutledge had never seen a happier groom on their wedding day, or a bride more beautiful. Or two people more perfectly suited to each other. It was time for Elizabeth to put her mourning aside-he’d said as much himself-but was it time for her to fall in love again?

For the glow on her face was telling. Rutledge had seen it before.

Hamish said, “There’s no accounting for the heart.”

But surely, Rutledge countered, a love like theirs lasted?

“The man is dead,” Hamish reminded him. “There’s wee comfort in memories when the other side of the bed is cold and empty.”

Rutledge’s own fiancee had deserted him. But the woman who had loved Hamish mourned still. His last word as he lay dying had been her name. Fiona was more faithful than Jean, who had preferred to put the war behind her.

The man walked on, passing the Cavalier’s statue without looking back. Elizabeth followed him with her eyes, standing stock-still where he’d left her. Then, lifting the black bowl of her umbrella, she moved on with a spring in her step, as if the rain had vanished.

Rutledge felt an extraordinarily strong sweep of loneliness, as if here in the window of the hotel dining room he was cut off from the quiet voices and soft laughter that filled the room on the other side of him. And cut off, too, from the villagers going about their business in the weather. An observer with no role in the reality of life… He lived with the dead, in more ways than one.

Hamish said, “Ye’ll never know better. It’s the price of what ye are.”

Inspector Dowling was a thin man with a nose too large for his face. Its weight seemed to pull him forward, stooping his shoulders. But the brown eyes on either side were warm and friendly, like a dog’s.

Shaking hands with Rutledge, he said, “I’m glad you’re here. Sergeant Burke should have sent for me.”

“He was kind enough to suggest it, but I took the opportunity to have my own meal.”

“At the hotel? Good food there, is it?” Dowling said almost wistfully. “My wife, dear heart that she is, has never mastered the culinary arts.”

Rutledge smothered his smile.

Dowling shuffled papers on his desk with a sigh. “Well, then, on to this business of the murders. Each of the victims lived within a twenty-mile radius of Marling. All were ex-soldiers, men with perfectly sound reputations. The last victim was found close by Marling, but the others were discovered along the road coming in from the south. There were no signs of violence-no wounds, no bruises. You’d have thought, looking at them, that they’d stepped off the road for a brief rest.”

“How did they die, if there was no violence?”

“An overdose of laudanum, but in suspicious circumstances. I’m told by the local doctor that amputations often leave behind a residual pain, as if the limb’s still there and hurting from whatever it was that made removing it necessary-in these cases, machine-gun fire or shrapnel, and the infection that followed. Amputees, each of them got about on crutches.” He shook his head. “Myself, I don’t know how I’d deal with that. Thank God, I’ve never had to find out.”

“Suicide, then?” Machine-gun fire and shrapnel tore at a limb, making it nearly impossible to save. Rutledge had seen the aid stations with the bloody remains piled high under a tarpaulin, waiting for disposal.

“It’s not likely, for two very good reasons: Each was the sole support of his family, and his pension ended if he died. I don’t think any man in his right mind would leave his family destitute, if he could still feed them and clothe them. However bad the pain got.”