The Confession - Charles Todd [73]
He signed his name, put down the number of the room he’d been given before, and went up the stairs. In his absence, it had been cleaned and the bed newly made, fresh towels on the rack by the washstand.
Without bothering to turn on a light Rutledge undressed and went to bed, but it was some time before he actually fell asleep.
Hamish was awake and busy in the back of his mind, and Rutledge found himself mulling over the night’s events.
Who had been standing on the landing stage? And where had he gone?
Rutledge didn’t believe in coincidences. It had to be Russell, and it was very likely that he’d borrowed or taken a boat to make the long journey down the Hawking, reaching the house by river rather than over the road. Why he hadn’t stayed was anyone’s guess. At least for the night, late as it was. Bruised and tired as he must have been. Or had this simply been reconnaissance—to be sure, before he brought in supplies and prepared to stay, that no one was waiting for him here?
Because there was no other place, really, where Russell could go.
Sleep overtook Rutledge then, and the first rays of dawn were coming in the window when he awoke. The man behind the desk—clerk or owner, Rutledge had never been sure—was startled to find Rutledge coming down the stairs as he arrived the next morning.
It took several minutes of explanation and exclamation before the clerk would accept the fact that Rutledge intended to stay at the inn and wanted his breakfast. When it finally came, it consisted of overcooked eggs, burned toast and tea strong enough to walk back to London on its own. There was no sign of Molly, and he wondered if she was called in only when there were guests to serve.
As he was finishing his meal, he asked the man about the visitor in his absence, Frederick Marshall.
“Here, you’re not to be reading the register. It’s none of your affair!” the clerk told him, angry.
Rutledge said, “It’s done. Who is he?”
“He came to see if there was any good sport fishing here,” the clerk said, clearly against his will. “The other rivers in this part of Essex have a fair amount of it, and he thought the Hawking might as well. He was of a mind to buy land and set up a yacht club, if it was promising.”
“And is it promising?”
“I sent him over to the pub. He was told that the war had put paid to any good fishing, what with the Zeppelins and the fighters at the airfield, and the Coastguard mining the mouth of the river.”
“I should think Furnham would prosper with more contact with the rest of the country. It would mean some changes, but they’re inevitable.”
“And that’s what we don’t need,” the clerk said, goaded. “What will we do with ourselves when Furnham is overrun with strangers and there’s not a spot we can call our own? What we saw in the war will last us a lifetime. Prying, taking us for fools who didn’t know our elbow from our nose, cheating us where they could, laughing at us behind their hands. I saw it for myself, the way they lorded it over the rest of us. Loud and brash and not taking no for an answer when it was something they wanted.” He was incensed now. “It was a trial of the spirit, the four years they was here. If it hadn’t been for the war, we’d have run them off in the first six months. I wasn’t the only one went off to fight the war, not knowing if my wife would be mine when I got back, if this inn would still be standing after one of their wild parties. Betwixt the Coastguard and the airmen, it was four years of hell.” He turned and walked out of the dining room, leaving Rutledge sitting there.
He rose and left as well, but the clerk was nowhere in sight when he walked through Reception and went out to his motorcar.
This wasn’t the only village that war had disrupted and overrun. But for people more or less left to their own devices for hundreds of years, it was harsh reality with no respite, and for some of them, it was impossible to go back to the past.
Hard as Furnham was trying, he didn