The Confession - Charles Todd [38]
Together they walked on across the field, and then turned toward the barn. Here Rutledge saw great stacks of wood and brick out behind the building, where the thrifty farmer had retrieved what the Royal Flying Corps had left behind. In another pile were broken propellers, cracked struts, and even torn bits of canvas and metal, where aircraft had crashed or been in a dogfight, and the equally thrifty ground crew had salvaged what they could. He wondered what the farmer intended to do with such bits.
The dog wandered into the farmyard, and Rutledge turned back the way he’d come. Finding the gap in the fence was harder from this side, but after several tries, he came across it.
On the road again, he walked toward the village. He was almost there, the river glinting in the distance, when he heard oars in oarlocks and quiet voices echoing across the water. Then close by, the sound of a boat being dragged up on the rough shale.
He stepped quickly into the shadows of the large plane tree at the bend in the road, well hidden beneath the broad leaves weighing down the branches overhead.
Three men strode up from the water, silent and staying close to one another as they made their way along the side of The Rowing Boat, keeping between the tall shrubs that marked the pub’s boundary line and the darker shadows under the roof ’s overhang. As they reached the High, Rutledge could see that each man carried a haversack slung over his left shoulder, hunching a little under of the weight of it. And under his right arm, each man carried a shotgun, the barrel just catching the starlight and glinting dully.
Smuggling, Rutledge realized, and slid deeper into the shadows until his back touched the smooth bark of the tree. He stood no chance against three shotguns.
The men separated without a word, two hurrying off up the High and the third coming directly toward him.
Chapter 8
There was nothing he could do but stand where he was, his back pressed against the tree trunk, his body braced for whatever he would have to do. There was no time to pull his hat lower to cover the paleness of his face or even to turn away. He carefully ducked his head so that his chin was nearly touching his collar, and waited.
Hamish, his voice a low growl, seemed to be waiting too, just behind his shoulder. But Hamish was not there, and no help if it came down to a fight.
Rutledge watched as the man cut diagonally across the road, grunting as he shifted the haversack a little to ease his shoulder.
Fifty feet. Thirty. Twenty feet and closing.
Near enough now to see him standing there, surely. And the men who had gone the other way were still within hearing. One shout and they’d turn. He could deal with one of them, he even stood a good chance of disarming the man nearest him, given the element of surprise. The other two could bring him down from a distance, and his only hope was to make it out of range before they fired.
Barber had had no qualms about clubbing him to death. These men would shoot first and worry later.
Something in the way the man walked was familiar. Had he seen him before? When he was here with Frances?
Just then, only ten feet away, the man grunted as he shifted the haversack again.
And the haversack was all that stood between them, blocking the man’s view of Rutledge there under the tree. He walked on, whistling under his breath.
It also prevented Rutledge from seeing the man’s face.
He wouldn’t have been able to identify him if his life had depended on it. Not in a courtroom. There was just that instinctive recognition. And it too could be wrong.
A door opened a little farther along on Rutledge’s side of the street and then shut again as quietly as possible. By that time it was too late to move away from the tree to see where the other two men had gone.
Hamish said, his voice seeming loud enough to be heard on the far side of the river, “Ye ken, this is why no one is happy to have