A False Mirror - Charles Todd [5]
The voice was not really there—although Rutledge had never dared to turn his head to see. It was in his own mind, deep-seated since July 1916, when both he and Corporal MacLeod had cracked under the stress of the ferocious Somme Offensive. But it was Hamish MacLeod, the good soldier, the caring young Scot putting his men ahead of himself, who had faced the hastily collected firing squad intended to keep order in the midst of the bedlam of battle. The charge was refusing an order, but the order had been to lead his men back into heavy fire for one more hopeless attempt to reach the German machine gunners—one more suicidal command sent up from the rear. Hamish had continued to refuse, and Rutledge had had no choice but to execute his corporal. For the greater good, for the men who would have to die anyway, whether their corporal was with them or not. Military necessity. He himself had delivered the coup de grâce, refusing to leave to any of his men that last horror—only to be buried alive moments later by a British shell fired too short.
And Rutledge knew then, and in all his waking moments since that dreadful half-death, that one more night—one more day—would have seen him refuse orders as well, refuse to be a party to more ungodly slaughter. Instead, he’d been patched up at the nearest aid station and sent back to the trenches, a man emotionally destroyed, trying desperately to protect his men, and all the while, the voice of a dead man ringing in his head and in his dreams and in his ears.
Rutledge said, “There’s the park.” He wasn’t aware that he’d spoken aloud, but the dog turned its head as if the words were meant for him. “Good dog,” he said, and then considered Hamish’s remark. Rutledge’s godfather, David Trevor, had shut himself away in his Scottish hunting lodge after the death of his son Ross at sea. There had been times when Rutledge had been sorely tempted to confide in Trevor about his own war, about what he had done, but Scotland held too many memories now. And however much Trevor had wanted Rutledge to befriend and guide Fiona, the young woman who was foster mother to Trevor’s grandson, it was not possible. She was the girl Hamish had intended to marry after the war, and she still grieved for her dead fiancé. Every time Rutledge looked into her face, his own wretched guilt closed his throat.
It should have been Hamish, not himself, who had come home at the end of the war.
He could feel himself losing touch with the present, the London street he was crossing in the midst of traffic. His surroundings faded into images of torn and bloody young bodies lying in the mud, and the sounds of men who screamed in agony as they were mortally hit, or begged for their wives and mothers to help them. He could hear the bolts on the rifles of the firing squad as a round was chambered, and see his men shivering in a trench, deathly afraid of going over the top one more time, too exhausted to fire their weapons, and yet driven to climb the ladders out of the greater fear of letting their comrades down.
“’Ware!”
A motorcar’s horn blew in his face, jolting him into the realization that he and the dog were in the middle of the street, vehicles swerving to miss them.
Rutledge swore, pulled the dog’s lead closer, and managed to get them to the far side of the road as Hamish told him roundly to mind what he was about.
And what would Chief Inspector Phipps think of half of London staring at the madman and dog intent on getting themselves killed on The Mall? If that didn’t attract the attention of the murderer, nothing Phipps had planned would distract him.
But the shock of what had just happened reminded Rutledge that it was cowardly to ask another man, even his godfather, to hear what no one should have to hear, just to buy a little peace for himself. He’d managed on his own thus far. He could manage a little longer. But dear God, it was lonely!
Round and round it went, the circle that had nowhere to end.
They had reached Green Park, he and the dog, and Rutledge could see Bevins