Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [134]
Blevins swore. “You’ll do the doctor’s work for him, if you damage that wound!”
Then they stood back, as if by unspoken command, and stared mutely at Walsh. It was an unexpected ending to the night, the adrenaline that had energized them through the long hours of searching beginning to fade and leaving them with an odd sort of feeling—of having lost, not won. Keyed to action, there was nothing to do now but go home.
The dead man’s eyes seemed to gaze at the side of the cart as if distracted by the rough pattern. The horses stirred uneasily, troubled by the smell of blood and sweat and death. One stamped its hoof, and the harness jingled.
Rutledge thought of the corpses he had seen in France, loaded like cords of wood onto wagons, stiff in the cold air that did nothing to stop the heavy odor of maggot-infested wounds and rotting flesh from choking the men handling the dead. There was no honor in death, whatever the poets claimed.
O. A. Manning, the poet who had never seen the Western Front, had said it best: “The bodies lie like lumber, / Obscene, without grace, / Like a house uninhabited and not yet ready / For ghosts . . .”
As the sun reached over the hill behind them, Rutledge could see the wound more clearly now.
It reminded him of something, and he was too weary to bring it to the fore of his mind. Something he’d seen, as a young policeman—
Hamish said, “What? Think, man!”
But it had escaped him. . . . It didn’t matter. And he was too tired to care.
At his elbow, Blevins was saying to Rutledge as the farmer raised the tailgate and turned his horses, “You’ll be wanting to start back for London, I daresay.”
“What? Yes, I suppose so.” Rutledge looked back at the trees, as the cart began its rumbling descent down the hill, the farmer talking to his team as if they were old friends. There was no reason to stay. . . .
“Easy as you go, Nell. There’s no haste, lass—”
Rutledge turned to Blevins and said, “Where’s the mare?”
“The mare? What mare?”
“Honey. She isn’t here. There’s no sign of her.”
“At a guess she’s halfway home by now!”
They started down in the wake of the cart. Rutledge said, “I’m surprised Walsh hadn’t made better time than this. I’d have put him farther west by first light.” He rubbed his hand along his chin, feeling the roughness of his beard against the skin of his fingers.
In the quiet morning air, the clump of their boots on the muddy hillside and the harsh breathing of men and horses was a counterpoint to the creaking of the cart’s wheels echoing across the valley.
Blevins was still finding it hard to manage what he regarded as failure. “She cast her shoe, and it slowed him. What difference does it make?” he continued impatiently. “I’m not in the mood to speculate on the late Matthew Walsh’s last hours. I’m cold and tired, I’ve not had my breakfast, and he’s dead. It’s finished. I’ll write my report and officially close the case, and that’s the end of it.” He stared hard at Rutledge. “Unless you’ve got a more likely suspect to hand me, from all those questions you’ve been badgering people with. Oh, yes, it’s my town, I hear what’s been said! Right now, to tell you the truth, I feel like stringing up the bloody corpse! A live one would be a hell of a lot more to my liking!”
May Trent’s name came unbidden into Rutledge’s mind.
CHAPTER 22
THE LONG ORDEAL WASN’T OVER FOR Rutledge.
Someone had telephoned the Osterley Hotel and left a message for the man from London. A farmer’s dairyman had come across Priscilla Connaught in her wrecked car, weeping hysterically, on a road a little east from where Matthew Walsh had been found dead.
Rutledge had forgotten her—she had left her house in a rush, looking for Walsh, and he had forgotten her.
The sleepless night showed in the dark circles under Mrs. Barnett’s eyes, and in the faded color of her face. He couldn’t ask more of her. Instead he said, “Will you go up to Miss Trent’s room, and ask if she’d mind accompanying me when I fetch Miss Connaught and her car? I think it best to have a woman