Search the Dark - Charles Todd [7]
In France half a dozen men under Rutledge’s command had applied for compassionate leave at one time or another, most of them men whose wives wanted to leave them and had told them so in a letter. One had been furiously angry….
“Private Wilson,” Hamish reminded him. “He said he’d have her back or know the reason why. He was brought up on assault charges in Slough and given six months.”
Johnston seemed to know what Rutledge was thinking, adding, “Hard on the poor sod who’s told his family’s dead, but I daresay she never thought about that. Only that he wouldn’t come tearing home in a rage.” He squared his shoulders with an effort, as if the weight of the world lay on them.
Rutledge studied the long, thin face, lined with something more than age or exhaustion. That was a look he, Rutledge, had seen often enough since he came home from France. And recognized. This man had lost a son in the war and was still grieving hard. The murder of a young woman, someone he didn’t know and didn’t love, had less reality to him than the death in a foreign country of the only flesh and blood that had mattered to him. Johnston was going through the motions for his client. That was all he could do.
“Thank you for being so frank,” Rutledge said, preparing to walk on into the police station.
Johnston seemed to realize how hopeless he himself thought the evidence was. He summoned a smile and added, “Early days yet, of course! Early days!” But there was a hollowness in the words and the smile.
Rutledge watched him move on down the street, then opened the door of the station, finding himself in a scene of turmoil. There were some half a dozen people crammed into a room meant to hold two at best, and the sudden sense of claustrophobia that swept over him was so fierce he drew in his breath with the shock of it.
Someone looked up, a constable, and said sharply, “What is it you want?”
“Rutledge, from London,” he managed to say, but it came out harshly. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him, making the sense of suffocation worse. He could feel the knob on the door behind him jammed into his back.
“Ah!” the constable replied noncommittally. “Come this way, sir, if you please.” He led Rutledge through the anarchy and into a dark, stuffy hall that smelled of cabbage and dust. “That’s the leaders of the next search parties,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ve not found the others—the man or the children.”
Rutledge didn’t answer. They reached a door painted brown, and the constable knocked, then turned the knob.
The room beyond was bright with late sun, and a long pair of windows stood wide, looking out into a small courtyard overgrown with weeds. Although the windows provided little air movement, they gave the sense of openness he badly needed—an escape into light and freedom. Hamish, in the back of his mind, sighed with a relief as great as his own.
“Inspector Rutledge, Inspector Hildebrand. If you’ll excuse me, sir …?” The constable left the end of his request dangling in the silence as he retreated, closing the door softly behind him.
Hildebrand looked Rutledge up and down. “They said they were sending an experienced man.”
“I was with the Yard before the war,” Rutledge replied.
“But away through the better part of it,” Hildebrand finished for him. He himself was white-haired, with a youngish face. Rutledge put his age at not more than forty-five. “Ah, well. Sit down, man! Here’s what we have. Murder victim presumed to be Mrs. Mary Sandra Mowbray, of London. Matches the general description of the late Mrs. Mowbray, or I should say, presumed late. Even Londoners can’t die twice, can they? In his wallet Mr. Mowbray had a photograph of her with the children, taken in 1915, just before he was shipped over to France. We’ve had copies made to circulate. So far nothing’s come of it.” He tossed a file across the cluttered desk, and Rutledge found himself looking down at a faded photograph of a woman facing the camera and the sun at the same time, squinting