A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [38]
“Yes, I understand,” Rutledge responded neutrally, knowing well that it was human nature to praise Caesar after he was dead. “That’s mainly why I’m here. Another pair of eyes, another perspective.”
“In the war, were you, sir?”
“Four years of it.”
Burke nodded. “Then you’ll know, better than most, what the lads went through. Well, then, Inspector Dowling’ll give you what little we’ve found. Shall I fetch him for you, sir?”
“No, let him finish in his own good time.”
Rutledge left, promising to return in half an hour. He thought for a moment about calling on Elizabeth Mayhew, but instead went to The Plough for his lunch. At a table to himself by the window, he looked out on the square and watched people going about their business in the rain. A bobbing of black umbrellas above black coats, a bowed head here or there, and one man hurrying along with a newspaper held over his hat. Rutledge’s own hat sat in the chair opposite him, darkly spotted with rain. It was, he thought, as good a way as any to prevent company—Hamish or someone else—from taking the empty chair. For the dark-paneled room was quite busy with custom, as if the rain had discouraged people from making the journey home for their midday meal.
Hamish said, from just behind his shoulder, “Yon sergeant has a level head.”
Rutledge came within a breath of answering the voice aloud, used to its cadence in his mind. Stopping himself in time, he responded silently, “Let’s hope Dowling is as competent.”
When he’d given his order, he turned again to the window, hoping to put an end to Hamish’s conversation. And he saw Elizabeth Mayhew just taking leave of a man in a heavy coat whose back was to him. She was smiling, her face alight, upturned, as she leaned toward the figure.
Rutledge found himself suddenly jealous. Not for himself but for Richard Mayhew, dead now and buried in France. As schoolboys, he and Richard had tramped in the face of cold winds that in winter blew across the Hoo peninsula like a knife, bringing mists on their heels. Or in summer followed the old Saxon ways that crisscrossed the Kent countryside, footpaths now but once the high roads of a dim past, serving settlers, warriors, or pilgrims.
Adventures that had shaped their boyhood, and through that fashioned the men they would become. They’d gone their different ways soon enough, but each had carried with him that mark of self-reliance and independence learned on the Downs and in the marshes—experience that had served them well in the war. They’d discussed that, once, on a bombed-out road in France where they’d briefly crossed paths—unaware that it was for the last time.
Richard had said, “The first thing I’ll do when I get home is walk out over the Downs again. When I’m too tired to sleep, I retrace my steps and find that solitude again, and the silence.”
Rutledge had answered, smiling, “I never expected that learning to tell time by the stars or guess at wind speed would save my life one day. It was a game then. Do you still have your uncle’s compass?”
Richard had dug it out of his pocket, holding it out like a holy relic. “Never without it. Do you remember the night we were washed out by the rain? I thought I’d never be that wet again. But we were, our first week in France. While my men were cursing and swearing, I was standing there laughing. Only, it was summer on the Downs, and a damned sight warmer than December in the lines!”
They had had nearly ten minutes before the snarl of traffic had opened up, and Rutledge had had to move on. Richard’s last words had been, “When the war is over, I’m going to have a son, and I’ll teach him everything I know about that safe other world. But I won’t tell him about this one. It’s too obscene . . .”
A week later Richard was dead, and there would be no sons.
In his second year at Oxford, Richard had fallen deeply in love with Elizabeth. He’d been absent-minded and daydreaming by turns, plotting ways to see her again, driving his tutor to despair when Elizabeth had gone to Italy in the spring, for her mother’s health. Rutledge