Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

“Yon drunk you questioned,” Hamish pointed out, “is a verra’ strong possibility. In the dark, he may have mistaken Hauser for you.”

“He doesn’t fit Hauser’s description-”

“Aye, well, you canna’ be sure o’ that!”

Rutledge concentrated his attention on Hauser. “At a guess, you didn’t tell Dowling how long you’d lived rough at the manor house.”

“It is one thing to confess. Another to confess everything. I learned that in the war, you know. There’s no certainty that others will see a situation quite as you do.”

Rutledge got up to leave.

“Elizabeth will blame you,” the German said. “But there’s not much either of us can do about it.”

“I’m not in love with her, if that’s what you’re asking.” It was true.

“No, but you feel a Cavalier’s responsibility. Elizabeth is stronger than you think.”

Rutledge went out the door without responding.

Tired and in no mood to talk to Dowling or anyone else in Marling, Rutledge found himself driving toward the small cottage where Tom Brereton lived.

It was old, a half-timbered yeoman’s house with a crooked roof beam and a massive wisteria twining up the porch and into the thatch. Boasting only a few rooms upstairs and down, land enough around it for a pretty cottage garden, and an atmosphere of sturdiness that belied its age, it was ideal for a man living alone. At the gate a small sign next to a bicycle identified it as Rover’s End.

He left the motorcar on the grassy verge and went up the short walk to the door.

Brereton opened it, surprise in his face when he saw who had come to call.

“I’d offer you a warm welcome, but from the look of you, whisky would be more acceptable.”

“I expect it would.”

Rutledge had to bend his head to step through the door, and inside, the beams were hardly more than an inch or two above him. The room was small, but there were windows at either end, and a fire on the hearth. Bookshelves, chairs, tables, and chests were crowded in upon each other, as if Brereton had crammed the contents of two houses into this tiny space.

“For a man going blind, it isna’ a verra’ safe place to walk.”

Rutledge found a chair by the hearth and watched a gray cat rise up from it, yawning with arched back. It blinked at him and then leapt to the floor, tail high, as if reminding him that his use of the chair was at most temporary.

“That’s Lucinda. She came with the furniture. Both inherited. But I don’t mind, she’s company of a sort. Sit down.”

Brereton poured two small whiskies and handed one to Rutledge. “It’s prewar. I inherited that, too. An aunt raised me, and she detested sherry. Like the late Queen Victoria, she preferred the smoky flavor. What brings you here?”

Rutledge sat and stretched his legs out to the fire. “What do you know about these murders?”

“What do I know?” Brereton sounded surprised. “Only what I hear. And that’s generally what gossip considers worthwhile passing on. Are you looking for information?”

“No. Peace.”

Brereton chuckled. “You’ll find that in plenty out here. The only house near Rover’s End belongs to Raleigh Masters. And as neighbors go, he’s invisible. I can step out into my garden of an evening and hear nothing but birdsong or the cry of an owl. I like it. Most people would find it daunting.”

Most people, Rutledge thought, would find approaching blindness daunting. But as Hamish was pointing out, what was the alternative?

“How is your neighbor, by the way?”

“He just went up to London, to visit his doctor. I drove him. Bella-Mrs. Masters-didn’t accompany him. There’s no change in his condition. But colder weather won’t help his circulation. Six years ago he might have considered the south of France during the winter. Not now, not so soon after the war.” Changing the subject, Brereton added, “How are Elizabeth’s puppies faring? I ought to go see for myself, I suppose.”

Something in his voice, the way he looked away, caught Rutledge’s attention. A yearning. Was there an attraction there, carefully concealed?

“Thriving,” Rutledge replied. “What will Lucinda make of a dog joining the household?”

“She’ll whip him into shape, just as she did me.”

A comfortable silence lengthened.

Rutledge toyed with his whisky, watching the firelight in the swirls of amber liquid. He thought, If I gave up the Yard, I could live like this-but for how long? How long would I be content?

“Of an evening lately, I’ve been thinking about your murders,” Brereton said after a time. “And I’ve come to a possible answer.”

Rutledge set his glass down on the table at his elbow, and said with interest, “I’d like to hear it.”

“Yes, well, I’m no policeman. But it was a gentle death, was it not? As murders go, I mean.”

“Suicide? Is that what you’re thinking?”

Brereton frowned. “Not exactly. But an-easing-into what the murderer might see as a better world.”

Unbidden, the image of Melinda Crawford’s face rose in Rutledge’s mind. “How does he choose his victims?”

“I don’t know. So far his compassion extends only to ex-soldiers. It may be that he was one himself.”

Hamish was pointing out that Melinda Crawford had nursed wounded men during the Mutiny. Rutledge shut the voice away.

Remembering Mrs. Parker struggling for breath and sleeping upright in her chair by her window, he said, “Then you’re suggesting that he doesn’t have a wide circle to choose from. Or that he’s wary of approaching people in their houses. For example, Bob Nester, who died of burned-out lungs.”

The logs shifted on the hearth, throwing Brereton’s face into the shadows. “Or your presence in Marling has deterred him before he could widen his net.”

“All right. We’ll accept that. Why does he use wine, do you think?”

“The wine doesn’t worry me. For all we know, it’s what our man prefers anyway. If you’d found an empty bottle, now, that might help narrow the field. You could ask wine merchants in the larger towns who purchased it. No, what intrigues me is the merciful death.”

“It’s a chilling idea,” Rutledge agreed. He wondered where Brereton was taking his discussion. At first it had seemed no more than an intellectual exercise. Now…

“Is it? Chilling, I mean. We’re looking at it from our own viewpoint, aren’t we? The murderer may see it entirely differently.”

“Raleigh Masters has lost part of a limb. He’s very likely to lose the rest of his leg. He’d have a better understanding than most of what Taylor, Webber, and Bartlett were suffering.”

Brereton laughed. “Raleigh doesn’t have compassion to spare for his own wife. I doubt he’d give much thought to ex-soldiers struggling to scratch a living.”

“There’s your blindness…”

“Yes, well, it won’t ease my suffering to kill blind men. However much I may sympathize. I’ll tell you what started me down this road, though. Mrs. Crawford once remarked that as a child during the Lucknow siege, she learned what deprivation was. For a very long time afterward she felt terribly guilty about wasting even a scrap of food or a drop of water. If she couldn’t eat a crust of bread, she’d feed it to the birds-the ants-even the monkeys that sometimes came into her mother’s garden. Later, she was sure this obsession must have driven her mother to distraction, but the point is, she had to deal with this guilt in her own fashion. What other kinds of guilt are there, and what other ways have people found to work through them?”

“Mrs. Crawford is not a likely suspect,” Rutledge answered.

“No, of course not. But she proves a point, in a way. What if someone can’t bear to watch these men hobbling down a road, and finally decides to put an end to it?”