A Long Shadow (12 page)

"A policeman always makes certain his information is correct. You were the only person at Maryanne's party I didn't know."

"I see." She digested that.

"You hold séances for the amusement of your friends. What would you do, if you raised the dead during one of them?"

"I'd be stunned, Inspector. It isn't my intention and I have no—talent in that direction, thank God! What I do have is a rather good instinct for what people find entertaining. As soon as one of Maryanne's guests thought that the King's spaniel was her own beloved dog, I made certain not to tread in that direction. We had a rather interesting discussion instead on whether or not Charles II had climbed that oak tree, or if it were merely a legend. After that we had a few words with Lord Nelson, to amuse Commander Farnum. You had nothing to fear, you know."

"What makes you believe I was fearful?"

"It was there in the strain of your voice, and in your eyes. I had no intention of exposing your secrets. I'd have avoided them. But you couldn't believe that, of course. Whether that was a policeman's natural distrust of everyone or your own vulnerability, I couldn't say. I should think it was the latter."

"My secrets?" He made it a question. Hamish was loud in his ears.

"Ah, we come at last to the real reason why you're here today. I saw you once before New Year's Eve, if that's what's worrying you. But I'd never have said so, unless you spoke of it first. I was in a casualty station in France, well behind the lines, but still close enough to receive the worst cases. You'd come to ask about a young soldier, and when the doctor told you he was dying in spite of all we could do, you sat there with him until the end. I never forgot that."

He didn't have to ask who the man was. He remembered him vividly. Sergeant Williams, who should have died on the battlefield but somehow held on long enough to be sent back. Machine-gun fire had struck him in both legs. Rutledge had had to write a letter to his parents that night.
Your son was a good and brave soldier. It was an honor to serve with him, and you can be proud of his courage under fire and the care he showed to his men . . .

It hadn't begun to say what Rutledge knew about Williams—little things, like how fond he was of sweets, and how he shouted at his wounded, telling them they weren't to die on his watch, by God, and how he hated the machine gunners—

Coming back to the present, Rutledge asked, "And was that the only time you saw me?" For it hadn't been many months before he'd been brought in to the same station suffering from shell shock and claustrophobia, barely alive because Hamish's body had given him a tiny pocket of air to breathe long enough to be dug out of the shell hole in time and carried half-conscious back to the doctors. They had patched him up and sent him forward again, after a few hours' rest and a shot of whiskey.

"It was." She didn't add that it wasn't the last time she'd had news of him.

"You'd make a good policeman," he said, trying to divert the conversation.

She laughed, a throaty laugh that was warm and filled with humor. "Surely policemen aren't the only ones who understand human nature. A good clergyman must, and a good doctor as well. Why shouldn't a mere woman have the same gift?"

He smiled in response. "I never thought of you as a 'mere woman.' But you use your gifts in unexpected ways."

"Your intuition brought you here. My intuition can take me places as well."

"Then tell me, if you will, where these shell casings are coming from. Why I've found them wherever I go." It was a challenge.

After a moment, she said, "May I see it again?" And this time she took the casing and held it for a moment without looking at it. Finally, she examined the design.

"Were the others the same? Just poppies in rows, perhaps a reminder of the dead in France?"

"No. Look just there. See that face, or skull, just visible? It grows more noticeable in each of the others. And the last one had no pattern at all."

Turning the case, she found the skull and nodded. "Perhaps whoever is doing this only had three that were engraved."

He had considered that possibility.

"If I were to tell you what I think, you must realize it's nothing more than an educated guess."

"I'll accept that."

"Someone would like to see you suffer as he's suffered. You're to feel hunted, persecuted. Afraid. The suggestion is that you belong among the war dead, not here in London, alive—"

Mrs. Channing broke off as she saw the expression on his face.

"You've already thought about that, haven't you?"

"Many times," he managed to say. But he had answered her with the unvarnished truth as well as his interpretation of the designs on the cases.

"You must ask yourself whether whoever is doing this chose you—that is to say, Ian Rutledge—or if you are, so to speak, a surrogate for others. As opposed to a purely random target."

He was beginning to feel claustrophobic in this handsome, feminine room. Hamish, in the back of his mind, was keeping up a barrage of furious comment. And the woman before him was too aware of what he was thinking. What he was feeling.

Rutledge got to his feet. "I must go, I've a long drive ahead of me."

"Yes." She made no attempt to persuade him to stay. Instead she followed him to the door, handing him his hat and coat.

"You've been very helpful," he told her, trying to make amends for his rudeness. "Thank you."

"I've only confused you more, Inspector," she answered ruefully. "I'm sorry."

She closed the door before he was halfway down the walk. He searched the motorcar carefully as he got in, expecting to find another casing there. If he could be followed to Hertford and Northamptonshire, he could be followed back to London.

But there was nothing on the seats or on the floor.

For some reason that was not reassuring.

It wasn't until much later that he realized he'd left the original cartridge case behind.

Rutledge drove to within a mile of the Yard, left the motorcar behind a hotel, and stood on a street corner within sight of the main entrance of the Yard. He waited there for half an hour, watching for Sergeant Gibson to leave at the end of the day.

Gibson was surprised to see him and said bluntly, "You're supposed to be in the North. Sir."

"I know. I need information."

"About Constable Hensley?"

"Exactly."

"I don't know more than I told you. He was posted to the North without fanfare."

"Something to do with the Barstow inquiry."

"Talk in the canteen was that he'd stepped on the wrong toes and was being exiled. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak."

"I've heard that there was a fire at Barstow's place of business, and that someone died, a clerk who had come back to the office unexpectedly."

"He was badly burned, I remember that. And died months afterward."

"Will you find out what you can about the man, the fire, and Constable Hensley's role in the inquiry?"

Gibson gave him a sharp glance. "The minute I start to ask questions, word will fly to the Chief Super's ear."

St. Margaret's Church was just visible from where Rutledge was standing. It was where he'd last seen Jean, going in with her bridesmaids a few days before her wedding to the diplomat. He wondered if he would feel the same sense of loss today, if she walked up to the church door. The same grief.

He wanted to be gone from here. "If all else fails, there are newspaper files. Don't call me. Send the packet by post."

"Do you know what you're doing, sir?" Gibson asked, his eyes still on Rutledge's face.

"In my view, that arrow couldn't have been an accident. If it isn't Dudlington that's behind the intent to kill Hensley, then London must have caught up with him. If anyone gives you trouble over this, tell them we have to eliminate other possibilities."

"I'll be sure to do that, sir. In the fervent hope it'll do some good."

With that, Gibson pulled his collar up and walked off.

It was a long and cold drive back to Northamptonshire.

The rain caught up with him again thirty miles outside London, as if it had been lying in wait.

He regretted going to speak to Meredith Channing. It had achieved nothing, and he felt he'd betrayed more than he'd learned.

It had been unsettling to hear that she'd seen him in France. It was what he'd considered from the beginning, and he hadn't been pleased to confirm it.

For the next thirty miles, he debated her role in what had happened. He couldn't picture her shooting at him from behind a hedgerow.

"It was a dead soldier," Hamish reminded him. "So the lad said."

"Dead soldiers don't lie in wait with a real revolver. Whatever Tommy Crowell saw, it wasn't a corpse."

But then what had it been?

"It doesna' signify," Hamish told him. "You have a duty to yon constable."

"It won't help Hensley if I'm dead before he is," Rutledge retorted.

He stopped in Northampton. Matron was not pleased to see him, but late as it was, he received permission to step into the ward and have a look at Hensley.

"But you're not to wake him, do you hear? He's still in a great deal of pain, and we've just given him something to ease it so that he can sleep."

"I won't speak to him," Rutledge promised.

When he walked quietly down the row of beds, he was accompanied by a cacophony of snores. He couldn't help but wonder how anyone could sleep through the noise.

He reached Hensley's bed and went to stand beside the man stretched out there, half on his back, half on his side. Lines of pain marked his face, visible even in the dim light of the single lamp on the ward sister's table, and Hensley was not snoring. The sleep was deeper, drugged. One hand was curled into a fist, as if it had been clenched as Hensley drifted into unconsciousness.

After a moment, Rutledge turned and walked back the way he'd come.

The sister at the table said quietly, "You look very tired, Inspector. I hope you don't have far to go tonight."

"Thank you, no." She wasn't the plump nurse who had been angry with him on his first visit. A much younger woman, with kind eyes and a pleasant smile. A face it would be nice to wake up to, in the morning, if you were ill or in pain.

And even as he thought it, he realized how tired he actually was.

By the time he reached Hensley's house in Dudlington, closer to dawn than to midnight, he felt bone weary. Still, he walked through the rooms, torch in hand, and searched them carefully.

In one corner of his mind, he'd half expected to find the shell casing that he'd left in Chelsea sitting somewhere here, waiting for him.

The cold rain had given way to colder sunshine, and Rutledge felt the stiffness in his body that came from heavy sleep in a room without a fire.

Hamish, apparently already awake, said sourly, "The Oaks would be mair comfortable."

"That's very likely." Rutledge swung his feet out of bed and looked at the clock. He'd missed his breakfast. Mrs. Melford would be furious with him for missing his meals yesterday as well.

Just then he heard her calling to him from the foot of his stairs, and remembered that there was no key to the house door.

"Inspector! Your eggs are growing cold, and I shan't keep them warm more than five minutes longer."

The outer door slammed, and Rutledge went to fetch his shaving gear.

In the event, he was a good seven minutes late, and Mrs. Melford glared at him as he came into her dining room. But she brought his breakfast, and he found he was hungry.

"Any news of the constable?" she asked, as if assuming his absence had been spent in Northampton.

"Resting."

She went to fetch a rack of toast and set it before him with a pot of marmalade.

"Are you any closer to finding whoever it was shot him?"

"Not yet."

"Yes, well, we'd all expected the Yard to be more efficient."

"The Yard," he answered her shortly, "works with information. Apparently in Dudlington, there's none to be had." She disappeared again and came back with warmed milk. He found himself thinking how different mornings had been in Westmorland, where the kitchen had seemed an oasis of warmth and brightness. Had it been love he'd felt there, three weeks ago—or only his loneliness responding to something rare: unforced companionship? He'd probably never know the answer to that now. And he must learn not to wish for more than a brief friendship. The letter from Elizabeth Fraser had been clear.
Don't come back
—

Hamish was restless, urging him to finish his meal and leave the past where it could do no harm. "Ye canna' marry anyone. It's no wise."

Mrs. Melford was saying, "Everyone in Dudlington has been wondering why it was you interviewed Grace Letteridge."

He came back to the present with a jolt.

"Do you suspect her of complicity in Hensley's attack?" he countered.

Her mouth tightened. "Really, Inspector!"