A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [56]
Dr. Fleming, who had saved his sanity, had warned him that there would be flashbacks from time to time as the mind sorted through the dark recesses and found a way to cope with them.
“It’s only natural. Nature abhors a vacuum, you know,” Dr. Fleming had said, far more cheerfully than Rutledge had thought warranted. “The mind’s amazing. It will bury something it can’t face—and then begin to resurrect it to fill in the empty places of memory.” He had studied the haunted man in front of his desk. “You don’t remember the end of the war, do you? You don’t recall where you went, what you did, or why. I’ve got some of the pieces; they came from your military file. But they don’t make much sense. Only you can fill in the blanks. And eventually you will. How you will handle it will depend on how strong you are emotionally—how stable your life seems at the time. All I can offer you is this: an open door. Come and talk to me. I’ll do what I can to make it more comfortable for you.”
Rutledge pulled out of the hotel yard and turned north. Even if he could simply walk in on Fleming and sit down in his office, what would he say? That he was afraid of someone he’d seen, someone who was dead—who was German?
How many Germans had he killed? he wondered wryly. He should be haunted not by one face, but by thousands. . . .
Without consciously addressing a destination, Rutledge drove out the Marling road and soon found himself close by the place where the first ex-soldier had been killed. It was as if one part of his brain had continued the conversation with Hamish about the murders, and the other had wandered into a No Man’s Land of its own.
He could see the leaning stone pillars through the rain and slowed the motorcar. It was true—the tall weeds and grass growing up the drive had that tangled, springing airiness that told him no vehicle had passed over them in some time. Weather had beaten the stalks down here and there, without breaking or crushing them.
It was nearing dusk. He drove on toward the line of trees, searching for any other means of reaching the house in the distance. But it was an unlikely possibility—Dowling and his men would already have taken note of any attempt to go through the grounds.
His head was turned, and so it was almost peripherally that he saw the woman standing at the side of the road in the rain, staring up at the gray laden clouds visible between the trees.
Rutledge’s first thought was that it was Mrs. Shaw, waylaying him again, for this woman wore a dark coat that seemed to engulf rather than fit her, her silhouette shapeless and without grace. He saw as he came closer that she was wearing a man’s greatcoat, and that it swallowed her slimmer figure. She clutched it close to her throat as he touched the brakes.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked, drawing even with her.
Her face was pale, the line of her brows like charcoal smudges above the dark-circled eyes.
“I’m all right,” she said. And then as an afterthought, “Thank you.”
He shifted into neutral, uncertain, and then switched off the engine. Opening his door, he stepped out into the road. She turned away, as if trying to ignore him. “I don’t like leaving you here. It will be dark soon. My name’s Rutledge, Inspector Rutledge, from London. If you will let me take you to your house—or to the police station—”
She turned at that, her eyes seeming to bore into him. “London, is it?” She took a shuddering breath. “Well. It won’t bring Will back.”
“Will?”
“Will Taylor. He was my husband. They found his body just here, they said. I’ve come to see it for myself. I didn’t want to before. But I—” She stopped.
Rutledge said gently as he walked toward her, “Perhaps it wasn’t the best of ideas . . . to come to this place. Not in the rain, surely.”
“I never really knew him, you see. We were married and then he went off to war. He came home twice, once with the broken arm, and then again when the Germans blew his foot off. They kept him in hospital then, and I’d go and sit by the bed, but the ward was full. There