A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [89]
It was as if he were trying to tell her to get rid of the evidence of his presence. Elizabeth, starting awake from her shock, said, “I’ll—I’ll deal with it.” She bent down to lift the basin of water at Rutledge’s feet and nearly dropped it as she looked into the bloody depths.
As she walked away to pour it out, forgetting the kettle sitting on the floor by the chair, the German said, “You have a motorcar? I thought I heard one before you came.”
“Yes. It’s in the drive.”
“Then if you will get me out of here, I will tell you whatever you want to know.”
“I’m taking you to the local doctor, and then to the police station.”
“No, I think you will not do eith—either of these things once you—once you have heard what I have to tell you.” He tried to stand, to pull his coat over his bare shoulders. But the effort was too much. He sank back in the chair, saying ruefully, “I think you must help me again. I don’t quite seem to know—to know where my feet are!”
Elizabeth came back, picked up the bloody towels and strips of clothing with distaste, and carried them away with the kettle.
She said, returning, “I put the cloths in the stove. It’s an awful smell! But they’ll burn.” She looked up at Rutledge expectantly, as if waiting for him to solve all their problems.
Hamish said, “She wants him to go. But she isna’ happy with his going.”
Indeed, she seemed to be torn, her hands gripping each other tightly, the knuckles white as the silence in the hall lengthened.
Rutledge said peremptorily, “Elizabeth, go to bed. I’ll see to him. You look as if you’ll fall down any minute. He’s not dying. There’s nothing more you can do. He needs better medical care than this—” He gestured to the rough bandaging.
Rousing herself with an effort, she said angrily, “Just because you’re a policeman—” And then she stopped, thoroughly ashamed.
“It’s because I’m a policeman that I’m telling you to go to bed,” he answered without heat. “Leave this to me. He will live, and I’ll see to him.”
She stared at him for an instant longer and then, without looking at the German, walked to the staircase.
21
IT WAS WITH SOME DIFFICULTY THAT RUTLEDGE GOT THE wounded man out of the Mayhew house and into the motorcar. Afterward he walked back through the open door and looked around the room. There was no sign that they had been there, neither blood nor bits of cloth nor shifted furniture. He went out again, shutting the door firmly behind him.
The man in the passenger seat was slumped to one side, as if trying to cushion the torn muscles of his shoulder.
Hamish was asking, “Where does your duty lie, then? Ye canna’ protect the lass from this folly.”
It was true. Throw the German into a police cell, and by morning Elizabeth would be pounding on the door demanding to see him. Folly indeed—
“She’s no’ the only person who has seen him,” Hamish reminded him. “He canna’ go free!”
There was the Webber child, for one. And certainly Miss Whelkin, in Seelyham, who had described Tristan. And the drunk on the road? Holcomb. Would he be able to identify this man? Witnesses indeed. And even though they had failed to place the accent the German strove to conceal, they were all certain that he was not a Kent man.
“They wouldna’ know him for a German. He speaks verra’ well!”
Rutledge cranked the motor and got in, thinking rapidly.
The wound was clean enough, and bandaged well enough despite the simple field dressing he’d applied to stop the worst of the bleeding. There was time—time to decide whether he carried this man to the doctor, or directly to the police station, leaving it to Dowling to summon the doctor.
Hamish was muttering behind him—loudly enough, or so it seemed, to be heard by all but the very deaf.
“I can’t deal with it now,” he silently responded. “Leave it!” He pulled out of the driveway and drove back into the center of Marling, stopping his vehicle under the gaze