A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [46]
She was saying anxiously, “Should I offer you tea or—or coffee? I don’t know when Helena’s coming back, truly I don’t, it would be useless to wait, and there’s the cleaning still to be done….”
Taking pity on her, he left, dodging the goose again, but he was sorely tempted to sideswipe it after one last onslaught as he cranked the car. The heavy wings had caught the side of his head a nasty clip as he bent over.
“At least it wasn’t a goat,” Davies said, enjoying himself. “You’d have sailed over yon wall like one of the Captain’s aeroplanes.”
When they reached Upper Streetham again, they found a message from Dr. Warren saying that he must see them urgently.
He was in his surgery when they arrived and he took them upstairs to a small room with an iron bedstead, a table, a single chair, and a very still form under starched sheets.
“Hickam,” Warren said shortly.
“What the devil’s happened to him?” Rutledge demanded, drawing up the only chair and sitting down to stare at the closed, gray face. “He looks half dead!”
“He is. Alcoholic poisoning—he drank enough to kill himself. A miracle he didn’t. I’ve never seen a man so full of gin in all my years of practice. Hickam must have the constitution of an ox.”
Rutledge felt a surge of guilt. “Where did you find him? How?”
“I was coming home last night from the Pinters’ farm—just over the ridge, one of Haldane’s tenants, little girl’s in rough shape, and I’d stayed until the sedative finally started to work. This was about two in the morning. Hickam was lying in the middle of the road. He’d crawled that far, though God knows from where, and then passed out. I damned near ran over him, to tell you the truth of it, didn’t see him until the last minute because he was in the darker shadows cast by the trees along the High Street there, and I didn’t have my headlamps on—there’s something wrong with the fool things. I was so tired that I thought it was a sleeping dog and swerved to miss it, and damned near rammed the horse trough outside Miss Millard’s dress shop. Then I realized it was Hickam, and for a brass farthing would have just left him there in the road to sleep it off. But I got the car started again, managed to haul him into it, and brought him here. And a good thing too, or we’d have lost him for a fact.”
Rutledge could see the man’s unsteady breathing, the sheet over his chest rising and falling with soft but ragged irregularity, and said, “Are you sure he’ll live?” He found himself torn between wishing Hickam dead and keeping him alive. But if he died, and it was Rutledge’s doing—he cursed himself savagely.
Warren shrugged. “Nothing is sure in medicine. But at least the odds are on his side now. God knows, there must have been a pint of gin still in his belly when I pumped him out. And that would have killed him for certain before morning.”
“Where did he find enough money to drink that much?” Davies demanded, leaning over Rutledge’s shoulder for a closer examination of the sunken eyes, the scraggle of beard, the slack mouth.
Without answering him, Rutledge glanced up at Warren. “Did you know I’ve been looking for him? Most of this morning?”
“Forrest said something about it when I spoke to him about Hickam. That’s when I left the message for you. But if you’re thinking of questioning him now, you’re mad. He’s too weak to know what he’s saying—even if he could manage to speak.”
Rutledge nodded. He could see that much for himself. But he said, “Then I want you to keep him here until I can question him. Use any pretext you can think of, tie him to the bed if you have to, but keep him here, out of harm’s way. And no visitors, absolutely none.”
“You don’t seriously believe he can tell you anything useful!” Warren scoffed. “A man like Hickam? Nonsense!”
Rutledge’s eyes were dark with anger as he said, “Why? Because he’s a drunk? A coward? Out of his head? You might be the same