Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“Gossip. You should have thought of that before passing out on her doorstep.”

“I had very little choice. I was nearer this house than where-where I am living now.”

“You’re a German national.” Rutledge was still trying to sort through it.

The man managed a smile. “Even German nationals need a-need a roof when they travel. This hurts like the very devil!”

The knife blade had slashed down from the shoulder across another, older wound that had scarred over on the man’s chest. Deep, but not dangerously so. Rutledge, working carefully, explored the wound.

“Someone didn’t very much care whether they killed you or not,” he told the German. “What had you done to him, to deserve this?”

“I had done nothing. I was walking along the road, my coat over my-over my arm. There was a man at the side of the road. As I came closer, he hobbled out and struck. Then he was-he was gone.”

Sweat was running down the man’s face. His jaw, set now against another wave of pain, quivered with the effort to keep himself alert.

Elizabeth came back with the water in a kettle, and cloths with which to bathe the wound lying across a basin. She handed them to Rutledge and stood back, looking close to fainting herself.

“Go find the doctor,” Rutledge told her, pouring the water into the basin and dipping a cloth into it. Almost too warm, he thought; the stove must have just been banked for the night.

But she stood there, mesmerized, unable to move.

Rutledge cleaned up the wound as best he could, unable to staunch the bleeding even with the water and pads of cloths. In the end, he simply packed it and wound strips of linen around it. It reminded him, more than he cared to admit, of his own wound, hardly a month healed.

“The cook,” Hamish was saying, “willna’ know where her tea towels have got to.”

And Rutledge saw the embroidered initials on one of the strips. An absurdity in the nightmare. Like all nightmares, he thought to himself…

“Give him something to drink. Whisky, with a little of the hot water to dilute it,” he said to Elizabeth, and like a sleepwalker, she turned away to do as he asked.

The German drank it down gratefully, when she handed him the crystal glass, and he gave it back to her with a wry smile. “However will you explain this to the servants tomorrow?” he asked, glancing at the bloodied cloths and the basin full of dark red water.

It was as if he were trying to tell her to get rid of the evidence of his presence. Elizabeth, starting awake from her shock, said, “I’ll-I’ll deal with it.” She bent down to lift the basin of water at Rutledge’s feet and nearly dropped it as she looked into the bloody depths.

As she walked away to pour it out, forgetting the kettle sitting on the floor by the chair, the German said, “You have a motorcar? I thought I heard one before you came.”

“Yes. It’s in the drive.”

“Then if you will get me out of here, I will tell you whatever you want to know.”

“I’m taking you to the local doctor, and then to the police station.”

“No, I think you will not do eith-either of these things once you-once you have heard what I have to tell you.” He tried to stand, to pull his coat over his bare shoulders. But the effort was too much. He sank back in the chair, saying ruefully, “I think you must help me again. I don’t quite seem to know-to know where my feet are!”

Elizabeth came back, picked up the bloody towels and strips of clothing with distaste, and carried them away with the kettle.

She said, returning, “I put the cloths in the stove. It’s an awful smell! But they’ll burn.” She looked up at Rutledge expectantly, as if waiting for him to solve all their problems.

Hamish said, “She wants him to go. But she isna’ happy with his going.”

Indeed, she seemed to be torn, her hands gripping each other tightly, the knuckles white as the silence in the hall lengthened.

Rutledge said peremptorily, “Elizabeth, go to bed. I’ll see to him. You look as if you’ll fall down any minute. He’s not dying. There’s nothing more you can do. He needs better medical care than this-” He gestured to the rough bandaging.

Rousing herself with an effort, she said angrily, “Just because you’re a policeman-” And then she stopped, thoroughly ashamed.

“It’s because I’m a policeman that I’m telling you to go to bed,” he answered without heat. “Leave this to me. He will live, and I’ll see to him.”

She stared at him for an instant longer and then, without looking at the German, walked to the staircase.

It was with some difficulty that Rutledge got the wounded man out of the Mayhew house and into the motorcar. Afterward he walked back through the open door and looked around the room. There was no sign that they had been there, neither blood nor bits of cloth nor shifted furniture. He went out again, shutting the door firmly behind him.

The man in the passenger seat was slumped to one side, as if trying to cushion the torn muscles of his shoulder.

Hamish was asking, “Where does your duty lie, then? Ye canna’ protect the lass from this folly.”

It was true. Throw the German into a police cell, and by morning Elizabeth would be pounding on the door demanding to see him. Folly indeed “She’s no’ the only person who has seen him,” Hamish reminded him. “He canna’ go free!”

There was the Webber child, for one. And certainly Miss Whelkin, in Seelyham, who had described Tristan. And the drunk on the road? Holcomb. Would he be able to identify this man? Witnesses indeed. And even though they had failed to place the accent the German strove to conceal, they were all certain that he was not a Kent man.

“They wouldna’ know him for a German. He speaks verra’ well!”

Rutledge cranked the motor and got in, thinking rapidly.

The wound was clean enough, and bandaged well enough despite the simple field dressing he’d applied to stop the worst of the bleeding. There was time-time to decide whether he carried this man to the doctor, or directly to the police station, leaving it to Dowling to summon the doctor.

Hamish was muttering behind him-loudly enough, or so it seemed, to be heard by all but the very deaf.

“I can’t deal with it now,” he silently responded. “Leave it!” He pulled out of the driveway and drove back into the center of Marling, stopping his vehicle under the gaze of the Cavalier.

Beneath the broad brim the eyes seemed to bore into Rutledge’s, as if judging him.

Rutledge looked away and took the car out of gear, setting the brake. He turned to consider his companion.

As if sensing his attention, the other man struggled back to alertness.

“I know who you are.” Rutledge spoke with more confidence than he felt. “You’re a German officer. That much has come back to me. I don’t know why you should be in Britain, much less here in Kent. I don’t know why a man should stab you without provocation. If I’m to decide what to do with you, I need the truth.”

The man said nothing. And in the lengthening silence, under the barrage of Hamish’s complaint, Rutledge was thrown back to another time-another place…

There had been speculation since the beginning of the month, the first of November, a year ago now. The Allies had made great strides-the Germans were in disarray-Berlin had been taken over by a Revolutionary council-the Kaiser was to lead his troops out of France to restore order at home-there was widespread famine in Germany-negotiations for a truce had begun-broken down-It was impossible to separate truth from rumor.

The only certainty was that the fighting and dying hadn’t stopped.

And then, on 11 November, word came down just after nine in the morning that a document had finally been signed and an Armistice would go into effect at the eleventh hour of that day. Not a victory. A truce to end the stalemate.