A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [92]
“No!” He had shouted the single word in disbelief. Somehow they had shot the wrong man—
And then with the swiftness of habit, he was on his knees, ripping open the buttons, fumbling in his pocket for a dressing, stuffing it into the bubbling wound. But before he could staunch the bleeding, the German officer sighed and went limp.
Rutledge became aware that there was someone standing over them. Rutledge looked up, seeing him clearly for the first time. A refugee—an old man—
“I need dressings—a doctor—un médicin—vite!”
“Il est mort,” the Frenchman said contemptuously. “Bien sûr.” And then in rough English, “One less Boche.”
Rutledge looked down and saw that there was a pistol in the old man’s hand, still pointed at the German’s throat.
“You should be glad, Englishman. They killed enough of you. They killed my wife and my child in the bombardment, these bastards.”
Rutledge staggered to his feet, his mind suddenly clear and fury wracking him.
The Frenchman shrugged. “They nearly took Paris that time. I said I’d get even. God has been good. He has offered me many chances.” The venom in his voice was as shocking as what he’d just done. The German hadn’t even had time to draw his Luger in self-defense.
He spat on the still body. Stooped, his hair a straggling gray under an old beret, a twisted foot, with hatred burning in his eyes and the madness of revenge burning in his soul, he looked a last time at his victim. Then he walked on, as gnarled fingers began to reload the pistol, stroking it like a mother fussing over her child.
Rutledge found his own pistol and raised it to bring the man down—and then held his fire.
There had been enough killing. Enough. Enough—
He tried to revive the German, and when that failed, he walked on.
“I THOUGHT YOU were dead,” Rutledge told the wounded man. “I watched you die.” He had said the words before—this time he understood them.
“I lost consciousness. From the collapsed lung. Thank God someone else came that way, and got me to hospital. Did you kill that old fool? He was insane!”
“He’d lost his family,” Rutledge said tiredly. “You were there, and he shot you. Because you were wearing a German uniform.” He didn’t add the final irony, that the old man’s family had died forty years before, in another war. It didn’t signify anyway.
The German sighed. “And what the hell were you doing, coming through the German lines like a sleepwalker! Scared the hell out of us! Was it a head wound? I’ve never seen such agony in one man’s face. You just stood there, as if you wanted to be shot and put out of your misery.”
“I did,” Rutledge said.
After that shooting, he must have walked until he was too exhausted to carry on. He never knew for certain where or when he’d been stopped. Someone had given him strong coffee, and let him sleep, and soon after he must have been turned over to a doctor and a pair of nursing sisters. He remembered the bitter odor of disinfectant on their clothes as they took him in charge: a silent, gray-faced officer with no visible wounds and no way of communicating.
He was shipped to England finally, a tag pinned to his coat giving rank and name and destination. Like so much baggage. He knew he’d crossed the channel—the smell of the vomit of seasick men filled the compartment.
After that, nothing. A man with no memory save for a voice in his head that no one else could hear, and nowhere to go that wasn’t another living hell. A man who was already dead and had not found a way to die. Until one doctor, found by his distraught sister, had unlocked the silence and made him feel again.
It was the one thing he had prayed would never happen. He had not wanted to go home. . . .
22
TRYING TO CLEAR HIS HEAD, TO CONCENTRATE ON THE present and leave the past, Rutledge reached across the motorcar and examined the bandaging on the German’s chest. “You’re bleeding again. Which is it to be, the doctor or the police? I’m too