Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Who could be trusted to keep such a dark and horrible secret?

Someone who might not know what it was…

Rutledge got up and went to the wardrobe. He’d brought a heavy sweater with him, dark wool-with dark trousers he was nearly invisible in the night. And there was an entrenching tool in the boot of his car. Changing quickly, he shut the door of his room and went downstairs. No one was around, though he could hear voices from the back, by the kitchens. Letting himself out the front door, he went around to his car, found the small shovel, and set off on his macabre errand.

He’d learned, in the war, to move silently in the darkness. Snipers, trip wires, booby traps, mines-every step might bring sudden death. Where you put your feet and how decided whether you came back safely and unseen, or not at all. And so he walked with stealth and care, leaving the village, circling well out of his way, letting the starlight and his own sense of direction guide him. After half an hour he came to the small cottage half-nestled, half-crouched in its narrow valley. There was lamplight at one of the windows, and he stood in the shadows of the hillside, waiting and listening.

Women like Sadie sometimes had a sixth sense. And the cat she kept would hear him if she didn’t. The lift of its head, the twitching ears, the eyes narrowed and still-it was as good as any alarm.

After a time, moving with extreme care, the wind blowing towards him to carry both scent and sound away, he searched the gardens,

When he’d asked whether or not she grew pansies, Sadie had answered that they didn’t dry well. That was probably true. But he’d taken it to mean that she didn’t have any of the plants in her garden. And that had been his mistake.

How much did the old woman know?

Or, perhaps more to the point, how much had she known? She hadn’t always been senile… there might have been a time when she was a willing party to what was happening. But just as it was impossible to turn back the clock, it was nearly impossible to lift the veil in that old and tired brain.

Well, then, make some assumptions. Could Richard have been brought here without in any way involving Sadie?

If the boy had been buried here, could Sadie have been told that a small patch of pansies set apart from her own flowers was a reminder of a brother lost, a private place to grieve? Possible, yes. Likely, no. On the other hand, she might have pretended to believe. And whatever suspicions she might have harbored deep in her unsettled mind, she’d have kept them to herself. It all came down to how much she understood about the killings at the Hall. And whether she knew the face of a murderer.

He made each step with minute attention to the ground, so as not to leave prints in the earth or crushed blossoms in his wake, his eyes roving this way and then that. Not near the cottage, no, and not where the herbs and flowers grew best. Not where heavy rains might wash the bones out, nor where the boy wouldn’t be under the eye of his mentally frail and possibly unwitting guardian. And disguised, somehow, the kind of place that wouldn’t draw attention to itself or tempt anyone to rearrange it.

And he found it on the hillside, just where a small natural outcropping formed the anchor of an asymmetrical rock garden. It was no more than a few feet wide in any direction, yet large enough for a child’s curled body. A spill of unusual white stones brought from somewhere else lay like a small river tucked in among the flowers. Pansies, and some sort of small, narrow leafed things that formed a mat. Plants that would reseed themselves, half tame, half wild, clinging among the stones and holding the earth with their roots.

He squatted there in the darkness, studying the rock garden.

Very simple, not the sort of thing that would catch the eye of a casual observer, a little patch of color above an outcropping that lent itself to this one use only, wild and half-neglected, unimportant and oddly touching.

There was the sound of a door opening, and he froze, keeping his silhouette low and dark against the greater darkness of the hillside.

Sadie stood for a moment, a hunched figure against the lamplight behind her, in the open doorway. Rutledge could feel her eyes on him, although he knew she couldn’t possibly see him where he was.

‘‘Who’s there?” she called. After a moment, she went on, “Have you come for me?”

His mouth tightened in anger at himself for disturbing her, giving her a fright. It had been the last thing he’d wanted.

“But she has a sixth sense,” Hamish reminded him.

“I’m going to bed,” she said, when Rutledge didn’t answer her. “Come again in the light, if you have honest business here.”

He was very close to standing up and identifying himself. But she shut the door again, and in a minute or two more, the lamp was snuffed out.

His legs were stiff from squatting, but he waited for a little longer, then turned his attention back to the garden.

If the body had been hidden here, how much would be found now? The long bones, perhaps, the jaw. Kneeling, feeling the night’s damp soaking into his trousers, he lifted a few of the stones very carefully from their bed and touched the soil beneath. His fingers worked down into it, among the plant roots and the friable earth, spreading and probing. There were no tree roots here, on the hillside. If there had been a body in this ground, some trace would remain to a trained eye. He mustn’t disturb it too much.

It was useless to dig. In the dark. Leaving behind signs of his presence. Wait until later, and let the experts His fingers struck something rough and hard. In spite of himself, a coldness swept over him even though common sense told him he couldn’t have found bone at this shallow depth. And not the boy’s bones.

Someone had been here before him, lifting the rocks in the center just as he’d done, loosening the soil. He should have realized that as soon as he touched the earth-it would have made sense if he’d had his wits about him.

Working carefully, winkling it and using his other hand to clear a little space here, a little there, he very soon had the long slender length of wood out of its hiding place.

A carving. No, something else, the sides were too smooth.

He let his fingers gently feel the thing in his hand. It was not old wood-he knew the texture of that. They’d used and reused whatever lumber came to hand in the trenches, scavenged for boardwalks to keep their feet dry above the filth, for shelter from the rain, for a place out of the hot sun or the cold wind. On the Somme the generals had forbidden even such simple, rough comforts, while the Germans had lived in tunnels they’d efficiently dug deep in the earth. No, this wood was hard and firm and new to the ground it had been buried in. Three sides were smooth as sanding could make them. The fourth had something cut into it. Deeply incised, and at midlength. Like a blind man he worked at the shapes, slowly letting his sense of touch and not his eyes tell him what was there. There was a flow to the shapes, but they were separate. Letters, then.

R, yes, most certainly an R. Then a space before the next. A. Next to that an E, he thought. No, he was wrong. H. And the very last, C.

He thought back to the photographs he’d been given by Rachel Marlowe, and the names on the reverse. Richard Allen Harris Cheney.

Nicholas had left his calling card. And not very long ago…

Rutledge put everything back exactly as he’d found it, brushing the pansy leaves clean of any bits of earth, using his hands to smooth and press the disturbed earth. Then he got to his feet and thought about what he’d done, whether he’d left any task undone. Then he remembered the entrenching tool, and groped for that.