Charles Todd - A Lonely Death

Northern France, Early June 1920

The sod had grown over the graves, turning the torn earth a soft green, and the rows of white crosses gleamed brightly in the morning sun. Except for the fact that a fallen soldier lay beneath each wooden marker, it was pretty there under the blue bowl of the French sky, peaceful finally after four tumultuous years of war. Even the birds had come back, picking at the grass for seeds, insects, and worms.

The man watched them, those birds, and was reminded of a line from Hamlet, that somehow had caught a schoolboy's imagination and then lingered in a corner of his adult mind-that a worm may feed on a king. Had these fed on lesser dead?

Many had been hastily buried where they fell, others in mass graves. Sorting the dead for proper burial had been gruesome at best. Many had never been identified. Walking down the rows now, looking at names, remembering burial details, broken bodies, bits of them, endless lines of them, he wondered if he was changed by them.

No, on the whole, he thought not. The war had been a part of the fabric of his life, and he had endured it, survived it, and was still steadfast in his purpose.

He stopped, his gaze sweeping the crosses. It was the living who concerned him now. A few had escaped him, but there were still eight left. And he was ready.

Were they?

Not that the state of their souls troubled him overmuch.

He turned his back on the cemetery, striding toward the Paris taxi that had brought him out here. And as he did, the slanting June sun warmed his shoulders.

Listening to the sound of his footfalls, he realized that he hadn't bargained for the silence here. He wondered if those lying beneath the crosses savored it after the noise of battle. Or was it unnerving?

There was a train to Calais tonight. Another from Dover to London. But he was in no hurry.

A good dinner first, if he could find one, a bottle of wine, and then a sound night's sleep.

As the taxi turned and drove back the way it had come, he leaned his head against the cracked leather of the seat and closed his eyes.

London, July 1920

Chief Inspector Cummins walked into Scotland Yard at half past nine, went directly to his office, and set about finishing packing his books. It was his last day, and he wanted no fanfare. An injury sustained in the line of duty had put an end to his career.

"And not a day too soon," he said to Inspector Ian Rutledge who had stepped in to wish him well. "I should have left at the end of the war. But I found one excuse after another to stay on. This case pending, that case passing through the courts. And here I still am, well past my time." He looked up, another stack of books in his hand. "No regrets."

"I feel responsible-" Rutledge began, but Cummins cut him short.

"Nonsense. I knew what I was doing. I hadn't reckoned on the toll the years had taken, that's all. I wasn't quite fast enough. At fifty-five, one still believes one is thirty until he looks in his mirror as he shaves."

"Will you be content in Scotland, after the bustle of London?"

"My God, yes. And if I'm not, my wife will tell me that I am." Cummins reached for the roll of tape to seal that box and then turned to fill another. "When do you intend to marry? Don't leave it too long. I'll be a grandfather, next month."

Rutledge laughed, as he was meant to do. "You've left behind a splendid record. We'll be living up to it for decades to come."

Cummins set the books down on a corner of his cluttered desk and looked around the office. The shelves were nearly empty, the desk as well, and the photographs had been removed from the walls. He took a deep breath and said pensively, "Yes, well. I enjoyed the hunt, you see. More than I should have done. All the same, there was one case I never solved. I was a little superstitious about it, if you want the truth. I kept the folder on my desk for years, telling myself I'd get to the bottom of it, sooner or later. I even dreamed about it sometimes, when I was tired. What bothered me most was not knowing whether the dead man was a sacrifice or a victim. And if his murderer had ever killed again."

"A sacrifice?" It was an odd choice of words for a man like Cummins.

Cummins glanced sheepishly at Rutledge. "It was what struck me as soon as I saw the man. That he was left there for a purpose. A warning, if you will. Or a sacrifice of some sort. Not religious, I don't mean that kind of thing…" He broke off, then shrugged, as if to make light of what he'd said. "It was the setting. It made me fanciful, I dare say."

"When was this?"

"Long before your time. It was Midsummer's Eve, 1905." Cummins turned away and walked to the window, where sunlight had just broken through the morning clouds and was turning the wet pavements from a dull gray to bright pewter. "Some fifteen people had come to Stonehenge dressed as Druids. Unbleached muslin, handmade sandals, staffs of peeled oak boughs. Mind you, I doubt they knew much about ancient druidism, but they'd come to watch the sun rise and chant nonsense, and feel something-God knows what. Anyway, they walked to the stones, sang and marched, drank a little homemade mead-honey laced with rum, we were told later-and waited for sunrise."

Cummins paused, staring not at the view outside his window but back into a past he reluctantly remembered, and Rutledge thought, He's not going to finish it. It cuts too deep. Still, he waited quietly, ignoring the dull rumble of Hamish's voice in the back of his mind.

Finally Cummins went on, as if compelled. "They were misguided, playing at something they didn't understand. But harmless enough, I suppose. At length the sun rose. One of the women told me later that it was magnificent. Her word. She said the dark sky turned to opal and rose, then purest gold. As they watched, the rim of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. She said that what followed was unbelievable-a shaft of light came spilling across the dark earth and touched her face. She said she could feel it. Just as the schoolmaster had told them. He was the one who talked them into this silliness. But even he was taken by surprise."

Losing his train of thought, Cummins turned and said, "Where was I? Oh, yes. This young woman-her name was Sarah Harmon-was still staring at what she called the stone of sacrifice. That's what the schoolmaster had told them it was called. It stands along the eastern avenue between the main section of Stonehenge and the horizon. Do you know it?"

"Yes. I do."

"Hmm. She was trying to recapture a little of the emotion she'd felt when the sun struck her face, and then she noticed something odd about that stone. It was light enough, by then, you see. When she began screaming, everyone turned toward her, startled. She pointed to the stone. They could just make out something there and rushed down the avenue to find a man strapped to it. He was dead. Even they could see that, and when they held up their lanterns for a better view, they realized he'd been stabbed." Cummins cleared his throat. "He was strapped to the dark side. Not toward the light."

"Hadn't they seen anything? Anyone?"

"Apparently not. I questioned them for hours. The body could have been out there before ever they arrived. In the dark, they wouldn't have noticed."

"They didn't know the victim?"

"They swore they didn't."

"Not even this schoolmaster, who'd lured them out there? It would have been a perfect cover for murder."

"Terrence Nolan? He was as frightened as the rest of them. And in the end, I believed them. I expect the murderer, whoever he was, had counted on no one finding the victim for days. As for the dead man, he was young-thirty to thirty-five at a guess-and he was wearing only a scrap of cloth, like a loincloth-there was no clothing at all, no marks on the body, nothing through which we could identify him. Even the bit of cloth was a cheap cotton that could be bought anywhere. It took us six weeks to discover his name."