Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

The Frenchman shrugged. “They nearly took Paris that time. I said I’d get even. God has been good. He has offered me many chances.” The venom in his voice was as shocking as what he’d just done. The German hadn’t even had time to draw his Luger in self-defense.

He spat on the still body. Stooped, his hair a straggling gray under an old beret, a twisted foot, with hatred burning in his eyes and the madness of revenge burning in his soul, he looked a last time at his victim. Then he walked on, as gnarled fingers began to reload the pistol, stroking it like a mother fussing over her child.

Rutledge found his own pistol and raised it to bring the man down-and then held his fire.

There had been enough killing. Enough. Enough He tried to revive the German, and when that failed, he walked on.

“Ithought you were dead,” Rutledge told the wounded man. “I watched you die.” He had said the words before-this time he understood them.

“I lost consciousness. From the collapsed lung. Thank God someone else came that way, and got me to hospital. Did you kill that old fool? He was insane!”

“He’d lost his family,” Rutledge said tiredly. “You were there, and he shot you. Because you were wearing a German uniform.” He didn’t add the final irony, that the old man’s family had died forty years before, in another war. It didn’t signify anyway.

The German sighed. “And what the hell were you doing, coming through the German lines like a sleepwalker! Scared the hell out of us! Was it a head wound? I’ve never seen such agony in one man’s face. You just stood there, as if you wanted to be shot and put out of your misery.”

“I did,” Rutledge said.

After that shooting, he must have walked until he was too exhausted to carry on. He never knew for certain where or when he’d been stopped. Someone had given him strong coffee, and let him sleep, and soon after he must have been turned over to a doctor and a pair of nursing sisters. He remembered the bitter odor of disinfectant on their clothes as they took him in charge: a silent, gray-faced officer with no visible wounds and no way of communicating.

He was shipped to England finally, a tag pinned to his coat giving rank and name and destination. Like so much baggage. He knew he’d crossed the channel-the smell of the vomit of seasick men filled the compartment.

After that, nothing. A man with no memory save for a voice in his head that no one else could hear, and nowhere to go that wasn’t another living hell. A man who was already dead and had not found a way to die. Until one doctor, found by his distraught sister, had unlocked the silence and made him feel again.

It was the one thing he had prayed would never happen. He had not wanted to go home…

Trying to clear his head, to concentrate on the present and leave the past, Rutledge reached across the motorcar and examined the bandaging on the German’s chest. “You’re bleeding again. Which is it to be, the doctor or the police? I’m too tired to care.”

“I don’t want either. I want to get out of Marling and back where I belong-”

He stopped, as if he’d said too much.

“Where do you belong?” Rutledge asked. The cold night air was beginning to smell of dawn. He wondered how many people, looking out their windows, had seen the odd sight of a London policeman and a wounded German ex-soldier sitting together in a motorcar in the middle of the square, for all the world like old friends.

“I belong in Germany, damn it. But there’s nothing there. No food, no work, no hope. I came here using a cousin’s papers-Gunter Manthy is Dutch, but through our mothers, a Friesian, like me-because I was looking for something stolen from me during the war. It happened-” He stopped, swallowing the pain. “It happened when I was briefly taken prisoner by a unit from Kent. The thing’s valuable. At least to my family it is. I shouldn’t have carried it with me when I went to fight, but it had belonged to every soldier in my family since the time of Frederick the Great. It was a talisman, to bring me home safely. If I can find it I shall have to sell it. I have nothing else of value-except a farm which no one can afford to buy and that no one will work with me unless I can pay them. The money will take me-me and my children-to Chile or Argentina, away from Germany. I must find it. I can’t go home empty-handed. You don’t know what it is like there now.”

“And that’s why you’ve been killing these ex-soldiers, because they didn’t have it? Or won’t tell you who does? How many more have died, that we know nothing about?” He thought, How shall I tell Elizabeth “I haven’t killed anybody, damn it!” the German retorted wearily. “But who-whoever it was nearly got me killed tonight! I tell you, he was stabbing me before I could even throw up an arm to stop him! It was worse than the war-in the war, you knew to be on your guard!”

Rutledge rubbed his eyes. They felt as if sand had scoured them. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve proof that you’ve been searching for Jimsy Ridger!”

The German stared at him. “Who told you that?”

Rutledge waited.

After a moment, the German said, “Yes, all right. His name was given me when I protested to an officer as we arrived behind your lines. ‘Ask for Jimsy Ridger. Tell him it’s an order. He’s to give it back.’ But Ridger had returned to the trenches. And no one could tell me how to find him there.”

“What did he take from you?”

“A small silver traveling cup. Very beautifully chased. And the-the story told in my family is this: Since the Friedrichtasse came into our possession, we’ve survived every war we’ve fought in. I wanted very much to come home again. And I foolishly carried it with me.”

“How valuable is it?”

“In pounds? I can’t tell you. I was hoping I might sell it to a museum, or to the Treasury in the church at Oldenburg, I don’t know. But to the highest bidder, certainly.” He let his head fall back on the seat. “I’m hurting like hell. What are you going to do with me? I can’t sit here any longer.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “There are witnesses. A woman in Seelyham…”

“Yes, in the churchyard. A busybody. I left there as soon as she was out of sight.”

“A child…”

“Yes, yes, he was very nice. I did him no harm.”

“But he believes he saw his father’s killer.”

“His father was dead before I could find and speak with him.”

“And a drunken ex-soldier you stopped on the road.”

“He told me a lie. But I suppose I’d have done the same in his shoes.”

“It’s evidence enough, given a good prosecution, to see you hanged.” But there was another agenda besides hanging. And Rutledge had come face to face with it. “Where are you living?”

“If I tell you,” was the wry retort, “you’ll have grounds to take me in charge anyway.”

“I haven’t rejected the idea. With Mrs. Mayhew?”

“God, no. In an empty house. Out on the Marling road. Close by where the first soldier was killed. I told you, it was grounds-”

Rutledge put the engine in gear. “I want to see for myself.”

“There’s not much to see. Except in the kitchen, where I have made a bed for myself. I’m not a vandal. I needed a safe haven, and I can’t afford to pay for it.”

“Is that why you’re courting Elizabeth Mayhew?”

The German moved too quickly and swore furiously. “I am not going to hurt her! But she has been kind, and I didn’t know where else to turn tonight.”

I’m not going to hurt her How many men had said that-and then had done it anyway?

Hamish insisted, “I canna’ believe a word he’s told you!”

“You’ve already hurt her,” Rutledge replied as he turned the motorcar. “She’s vulnerable, and she thinks she’s in love. Is there a wife back in Germany?”