Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

Rutledge’s motorcar arrived, pulling up at the gate just as the farm cart reached the trees. Blevins went to meet the farmer, calling, “Leave the cart there. Better to carry him across to it than to muck up the ground.”

“I’ll just lower the tail, then.” The farmer, red-faced from years in the wind, took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses. “Doctor says he was kicked by a horse. The dead man. Not one of mine. They never left their stalls last night.”

“No. Not yours.” Blevins answered curtly.

The other constable was climbing toward them now, the smooth movements of a countryman in his stride.

With the farmer holding the horses’ heads to steady the cart, the four men lifted Walsh, grunting under his weight. The body shifted awkwardly in their grip, mocking them in death as it had in life. They tried to move in step over the uneven ground, until one of the constables slipped, barely regaining his balance in time to prevent pulling the others down with him. It was as if Walsh were still struggling to stay free, fighting their efforts, and they were breathing hard by the time they got him to the wagon.

Heaving the corpse into its bed, they misjudged the weight again, and the head brushed along the wooden bottom, leaving a smear of drying blood.

Blevins swore. “You’ll do the doctor’s work for him, if you damage that wound!”

Then they stood back, as if by unspoken command, and stared mutely at Walsh. It was an unexpected ending to the night, the adrenaline that had energized them through the long hours of searching beginning to fade and leaving them with an odd sort of feeling-of having lost, not won. Keyed to action, there was nothing to do now but go home.

The dead man’s eyes seemed to gaze at the side of the cart as if distracted by the rough pattern. The horses stirred uneasily, troubled by the smell of blood and sweat and death. One stamped its hoof, and the harness jingled.

Rutledge thought of the corpses he had seen in France, loaded like cords of wood onto wagons, stiff in the cold air that did nothing to stop the heavy odor of maggot-infested wounds and rotting flesh from choking the men handling the dead. There was no honor in death, whatever the poets claimed.

O. A. Manning, the poet who had never seen the Western Front, had said it best: “The bodies lie like lumber, / Obscene, without grace, / Like a house uninhabited and not yet ready / For ghosts…”

As the sun reached over the hill behind them, Rutledge could see the wound more clearly now.

It reminded him of something, and he was too weary to bring it to the fore of his mind. Something he’d seen, as a young policeman Hamish said, “What? Think, man!”

But it had escaped him… It didn’t matter. And he was too tired to care.

At his elbow, Blevins was saying to Rutledge as the farmer raised the tailgate and turned his horses, “You’ll be wanting to start back for London, I daresay.”

“What? Yes, I suppose so.” Rutledge looked back at the trees, as the cart began its rumbling descent down the hill, the farmer talking to his team as if they were old friends. There was no reason to stay.

…

“Easy as you go, Nell. There’s no haste, lass-”

Rutledge turned to Blevins and said, “Where’s the mare?”

“The mare? What mare?”

“Honey. She isn’t here. There’s no sign of her.”

“At a guess she’s halfway home by now!”

They started down in the wake of the cart. Rutledge said, “I’m surprised Walsh hadn’t made better time than this. I’d have put him farther west by first light.” He rubbed his hand along his chin, feeling the roughness of his beard against the skin of his fingers.

In the quiet morning air, the clump of their boots on the muddy hillside and the harsh breathing of men and horses was a counterpoint to the creaking of the cart’s wheels echoing across the valley.

Blevins was still finding it hard to manage what he regarded as failure. “She cast her shoe, and it slowed him. What difference does it make?” he continued impatiently. “I’m not in the mood to speculate on the late Matthew Walsh’s last hours. I’m cold and tired, I’ve not had my breakfast, and he’s dead. It’s finished. I’ll write my report and officially close the case, and that’s the end of it.” He stared hard at Rutledge. “Unless you’ve got a more likely suspect to hand me, from all those questions you’ve been badgering people with. Oh, yes, it’s my town, I hear what’s been said! Right now, to tell you the truth, I feel like stringing up the bloody corpse! A live one would be a hell of a lot more to my liking!”

May Trent’s name came unbidden into Rutledge’s mind.

THE LONG ORDEAL WASN’T OVER FOR Rutledge.

Someone had telephoned the Osterley Hotel and left a message for the man from London. A farmer’s dairyman had come across Priscilla Connaught in her wrecked car, weeping hysterically, on a road a little east from where Matthew Walsh had been found dead.

Rutledge had forgotten her-she had left her house in a rush, looking for Walsh, and he had forgotten her.

The sleepless night showed in the dark circles under Mrs. Barnett’s eyes, and in the faded color of her face. He couldn’t ask more of her. Instead he said, “Will you go up to Miss Trent’s room, and ask if she’d mind accompanying me when I fetch Miss Connaught and her car? I think it best to have a woman with me.”

Mrs. Barnett raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But she left last night shortly after you did. Miss Trent. I thought you knew!”

“She hasn’t come back?”

“No. I’d locked the outer door, you see. Until a quarter of an hour ago. Of course I’d have heard the bell, she’d have no other way of getting in. And I’ve been awake since the telephone rang.”

“Never mind, then. Er-do you think I could have a cup of tea before I leave?” He couldn’t worry about May Trent now…

She looked at him, must have seen the weariness eating into the bones of his face. “Must you go out again? Surely Miss Connaught is better off where she is, while they’re still searching!”

“Blevins has called it off. The search. Walsh was found.”

“Well, that’s a great relief, isn’t it? It means we’re all safe. I’ve just put the kettle on. And I think there’s some cold bacon and a little cheese, if you want me to make up a sandwich.”

“Please!”

As Rutledge climbed the stairs, Hamish said, “The woman’s right. Sleep for an hour-there isna’ any need for haste.”

He answered, “She gave someone my name-the farmer or the dairyman-and sent him out to find a telephone. I should have stopped her rather than drive half the night on a fool’s quest. In a way, whatever has happened is my fault.”

When he opened the door of his room it seemed to open its arms to him, welcoming and silent and still dark, with the shades drawn. But he ignored the temptation of the waiting bed and walked across the carpet to run his fingers again over the bristles of his chin. He felt grimy, unkempt. Shaving and a clean shirt would help.

The face staring back at him from his mirror as he worked up a lather in his mug and applied the brush to his cheeks and throat was gaunt, with the dark growth of beard lending it a sinister look. Hamish reminded him that he could pass more easily as a murderer than the dead Walsh.

Rutledge could still see the big hands lying limp, without force, on the grass, and the flaccid muscles that had once given the impression of great power to the Strong Man’s shoulders. In his mind’s eye, as he shaved, he reexamined the wound. An irony-a horseshoe spelling the end of the road for an escaping murderer.

What were the lines he’d found so fascinating as a boy? Something about for want of a shoe, a horse was lost-for want of a horse, a rider was lost-and it went on in that vein until a battle was lost.. ..