Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“He kept his ties in Kent?”

“I doubt he cared tuppence for Marling. It was more a case of going to earth when London got too warm for him. One spring he came back to work in the orchards, and after that he moved on to the hop gardens. He disappeared one day and then was back in the autumn with a swollen eye and a cut on his chin deep enough to leave a scar. I suppose he never had a home of his own in the true sense. His mother was a decent enough woman, but she produced children like rabbits and never seemed to know where half of them were. They fell into rivers and out of trees and over walls-we’d clean them up and send them back to her for a scolding.”

Rutledge said, “Not a vicious man, then, Ridger.”

Dowling frowned. “No, I’d not call him vicious. On the other hand, Ridger was out for himself. And that sort can sometimes turn violent.”

“He was in the war?”

The woman serving tables brought them a platter of roast chicken, and Dowling’s eyes gleamed with hungry relish. He fell to with an apologetic smile.

After a few mouthfuls, he answered, “He joined the army here in Kent, with the rest of the men hereabouts. He told Sergeant Burke at the time that he felt closer to them than to his friends in London. Or trusted them more, is my guess. Still, Ridger had a wonderful way with him, when it suited him. He could call the birds from the trees, as my grandmother was fond of saying. And from all reports, he was a good soldier. And the best scavenger in the regiment.”

Rutledge had known more than a few of those himself. A Scot in his company, a man called Campbell, had a knack for disappearing and then coming back hours later with a full haversack. Tins, biscuits, matches, even a cold roast hen with cold potatoes, probably scooped up from some French farmer’s abandoned kitchen. Campbell had found dry socks after a week of rain, and gloves in the middle of winter, and whisky for those too well to go back to aid stations and in too much pain to stand their duty. Officers tried to keep the thievery to a minimum, but what they didn’t see they couldn’t stop.

“What became of Ridger after the war?” Rutledge asked.

“He’s back in London, I expect.”

“Unless he’s gone to earth again,” Hamish suggested, “and someone thinks he’s in Kent…”

The Campbells of this world, excellent scavengers though they were, occasionally forgot the rules and made enemies.

Dowling ordered a flan for his dessert, and Rutledge settled for a plate of cheese.

The inspector sighed as he put down his spoon. “I must thank you,” he said with a wry smile. “I feel blissfully content.”

After Dowling had left the hotel, Rutledge searched for the man who usually served behind the desk. Haskins was his name, and he had just finished his own meal in the kitchen, his napkin still under his chin. He pointed out the telephone, and Rutledge put in a call to London.

Sergeant Gibson’s gruff voice came over the line. “Yes, sir, you wanted to speak to me?”

“I’m looking for a man named Jimsy Ridger.” Rutledge gave Gibson a brief sketch of Ridger’s background and history. “He’s probably in London, and he may have returned to his old ways. Or he may have acquired a new name and taken up a more respectable line of work. But someone will know how to find him, even so.”

Gibson chuckled. “He wouldn’t be the first to turn respectable, and find old friends on his doorstep. Anything else, sir?”

“He’s a personable man, with a scapegrace way about him when he puts his mind to it.” He added as an afterthought, “He could be passing himself off as an ex-officer rather than a common soldier.”

Gibson noted it. “Not many of them in the stews of London,” he retorted dryly. “I’ll see what I can come up with, sir. But it will take a little time.”

Rutledge gave him the number at The Plough and rang off.

As he walked up the stairs, Hamish said, “Yon Ridger is a wild-goose chase, like as not.”

“True enough,” Rutledge answered. “In police work, we often close more doors than we open. On the other hand, Will Taylor was killed hours after he was questioned about Ridger. And our drunken friend tonight had been asked about him. I don’t want to find Ridger appearing as our cooked goose in the middle of a trial.”

The night’s dreams were a mixture of unsettled thoughts and emotions-the sounds of gunfire in the dark, the flashes of light, the arcing descent of flares, the first finding shots of artillery, and Rutledge was hunched behind the barrier of the trench wall, waiting for a lull to go over the top. The living Hamish was with him, and others long since dead, and he tried to keep up their courage as the minutes wore on. And then he was standing in a twilit Kent road, talking to Alice Taylor, and searching through the hop fields for the boy, Peter Webber. Mrs. Shaw was sitting in the car, a baleful presence, with her daughter weeping in the seat beside her.

Rutledge woke with a start, his body wet with sweat, his eyes searching the room for something-anything-that was familiar. He had no idea where he was.

And then the shape of the window and the pale light of a moon feeling its way through the thinning clouds brought him back to The Plough Hotel and the small village of Marling.

He got up and washed his face.

Hamish, lurking in the shadows of the room, said something, and Rutledge shook his head. Hamish repeated, “It’s almost dawn.”

So it was.

Rutledge said, “The summer dawns came early at the Front. You never liked them.”

“There was no’ much worth seeing when the light strengthened. Except for the dead, and the wire, and the men coughing with the damp.”

“Or the gas rolling in.”

“Aye.” The Highland Scots, used to the open hills, had been good at spotting the telltale sweep of a German gas attack. All their lives they’d seen sea mists, and that particular floating gauze that was ground mist in the valleys. They knew the feel of the air before these blew in. And they knew the different feel of the air before the gas came toward them on still mornings when the wind wouldn’t disperse it too quickly.

Hamish had often been the first to cry a warning. They had fumbled for their masks, shielding any bare skin, and waited for the attack to pass over them. Anyone too slow, anyone with an ill-kept mask, breathed in the fumes and felt the linings of his throat and lungs burn with a fire that was unforgiving. The damage, once done, lingered for whatever remained of a man’s life.

Looking back at the past in that odd moment, there was something besides the haunting voice and the haunted man in the quiet, dark room. That bond that held together soldiers over millennia, the shared experience of the devastation of war.

Returning to bed was useless; it wouldn’t bring sleep. Rutledge bathed and shaved and then dressed, his mind occupied with murder in this quiet part of Kent.

Sitting in a chair by the window, he waited patiently for the hotel to rouse from the night, and then went down to breakfast at the appointed time. The dining room was empty, and a yawning girl was just opening the drapes that shut off the view of the street.

She looked up, smiled, and said, “I expect you’d like your tea.”

“I’d be grateful,” he said, returning the smile. She blushed and looked away, hurrying to the door that led through to the kitchen.

As he turned to the window, he saw a man driving a familiar motorcar pulling up at the hotel. The man, too, was familiar.

It was Tom Brereton, whom he’d met at Lawrence Hamilton’s dinner party. A guest brought by Raleigh and Bella Masters. The man whom Melinda Crawford was thinking of including in her will.