A Fearsome Doubt

22

Trying to clear his head, to concentrate on the present and leave the past, Rutledge reached across the motorcar and examined the bandaging on the German’s chest. “You’re bleeding again. Which is it to be, the doctor or the police? I’m too tired to care.”

“I don’t want either. I want to get out of Marling and back where I belong-”

He stopped, as if he’d said too much.

“Where do you belong?” Rutledge asked. The cold night air was beginning to smell of dawn. He wondered how many people, looking out their windows, had seen the odd sight of a London policeman and a wounded German ex-soldier sitting together in a motorcar in the middle of the square, for all the world like old friends.

“I belong in Germany, damn it. But there’s nothing there. No food, no work, no hope. I came here using a cousin’s papers-Gunter Manthy is Dutch, but through our mothers, a Friesian, like me-because I was looking for something stolen from me during the war. It happened-” He stopped, swallowing the pain. “It happened when I was briefly taken prisoner by a unit from Kent. The thing’s valuable. At least to my family it is. I shouldn’t have carried it with me when I went to fight, but it had belonged to every soldier in my family since the time of Frederick the Great. It was a talisman, to bring me home safely. If I can find it I shall have to sell it. I have nothing else of value-except a farm which no one can afford to buy and that no one will work with me unless I can pay them. The money will take me-me and my children-to Chile or Argentina, away from Germany. I must find it. I can’t go home empty-handed. You don’t know what it is like there now.”

“And that’s why you’ve been killing these ex-soldiers, because they didn’t have it? Or won’t tell you who does? How many more have died, that we know nothing about?” He thought, How shall I tell Elizabeth “I haven’t killed anybody, damn it!” the German retorted wearily. “But who-whoever it was nearly got me killed tonight! I tell you, he was stabbing me before I could even throw up an arm to stop him! It was worse than the war-in the war, you knew to be on your guard!”

Rutledge rubbed his eyes. They felt as if sand had scoured them. “Don’t lie to me. I’ve proof that you’ve been searching for Jimsy Ridger!”

The German stared at him. “Who told you that?”

Rutledge waited.

After a moment, the German said, “Yes, all right. His name was given me when I protested to an officer as we arrived behind your lines. ‘Ask for Jimsy Ridger. Tell him it’s an order. He’s to give it back.’ But Ridger had returned to the trenches. And no one could tell me how to find him there.”

“What did he take from you?”

“A small silver traveling cup. Very beautifully chased. And the-the story told in my family is this: Since the Friedrichtasse came into our possession, we’ve survived every war we’ve fought in. I wanted very much to come home again. And I foolishly carried it with me.”

“How valuable is it?”

“In pounds? I can’t tell you. I was hoping I might sell it to a museum, or to the Treasury in the church at Oldenburg, I don’t know. But to the highest bidder, certainly.” He let his head fall back on the seat. “I’m hurting like hell. What are you going to do with me? I can’t sit here any longer.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “There are witnesses. A woman in Seelyham…”

“Yes, in the churchyard. A busybody. I left there as soon as she was out of sight.”

“A child…”

“Yes, yes, he was very nice. I did him no harm.”

“But he believes he saw his father’s killer.”

“His father was dead before I could find and speak with him.”

“And a drunken ex-soldier you stopped on the road.”

“He told me a lie. But I suppose I’d have done the same in his shoes.”

“It’s evidence enough, given a good prosecution, to see you hanged.” But there was another agenda besides hanging. And Rutledge had come face to face with it. “Where are you living?”

“If I tell you,” was the wry retort, “you’ll have grounds to take me in charge anyway.”

“I haven’t rejected the idea. With Mrs. Mayhew?”

“God, no. In an empty house. Out on the Marling road. Close by where the first soldier was killed. I told you, it was grounds-”

Rutledge put the engine in gear. “I want to see for myself.”

“There’s not much to see. Except in the kitchen, where I have made a bed for myself. I’m not a vandal. I needed a safe haven, and I can’t afford to pay for it.”

“Is that why you’re courting Elizabeth Mayhew?”

The German moved too quickly and swore furiously. “I am not going to hurt her! But she has been kind, and I didn’t know where else to turn tonight.”

I’m not going to hurt her How many men had said that-and then had done it anyway?

Hamish insisted, “I canna’ believe a word he’s told you!”

“You’ve already hurt her,” Rutledge replied as he turned the motorcar. “She’s vulnerable, and she thinks she’s in love. Is there a wife back in Germany?”

“She died when my son was born. I have not made love to Mrs. Mayhew!”

“No. But you didn’t need to. She’s already compromising herself for your sake. If you don’t find this cup of yours, will you convince her to marry you, and use her money instead?”

“I tell you, I have not hurt her! I can’t-I won’t. I’ve come-believe me or not as you choose. But I swear she will come to no harm through me!”

The damage, Rutledge thought, had been done. Small wonder that Elizabeth Mayhew had never had the courage to tell him where her heart lay.

It was along the Marling road near a burned-out oast house that the German roused himself, and said, “Just there. I was stabbed there.” He pointed clumsily with his good arm. “See for yourself, there is no body lying about-not even mine!”

Rutledge stopped the motorcar and got out to examine the road in the light of his headlamps. But there was not much to see. Several scuff marks, but no blood.

Hamish commented, “The sweater would have soaked first.”

Which was true enough.

Rutledge walked along the verge on either side of the road, finding himself a sturdy stick with which he could probe the tall grasses and bushes, laying them aside to look beyond them. If a body had been left here, it was gone now. Or had crept away He got back into the motorcar, and the German demanded, “Did you see?”

“I’ll come back at first light. There’s nothing now. Neither your blood nor anyone else’s.”

The German grunted. “Then you must be blind,” he accused. “Or else determined not to see.”

Rutledge made no comment, driving on into the night.

“I don’t know your name,” Rutledge told the man beside him as the motorcar turned down the dark and rutted drive that led between the stone posts and up to the empty house, the dry grass thrashing against the coachwork.

“Hauser. Gunter Hauser,” the German said, rousing himself again. “If there is whisky in that house, I shall drain the bottle!”

He directed Rutledge around to the rear of the house, where a yard door had been pried open, then held closed again with a bit of wire.

For a manor house, this one was small-a country squire’s home rather than a grand estate-with gardens along the south front and outbuildings in a courtyard formed by the stables on the west. There was an air of solidity about the house, and at the same time a forlornness, as if the last owners had not foreseen the straits to which it had come: waiting for the lawyers to settle the family’s affairs and find a relative who had probably never seen nor ever wanted the responsibility for the family dwelling. The gardens, standing out in the headlamps as Rutledge turned the car, were overgrown with a summer’s weeds, their outline no longer sharp and clear. Nature had already begun her efforts to reshape the manicured paths between the beds, and grass lifted seed heads like small rockets in the darkness. The paint on the outbuildings had begun to flake and peel, giving a scabrous look to the walls where the headlamps spread them with light. A window high in the stable had blown in from a windstorm, and the air of decay all around the yard seemed to promise a dreary interior.

With some difficulty, Rutledge managed to get the German into the stone-flagged kitchen and, after the man had lit a lamp on the table, deposited him in the nearest chair. Hauser’s face was gray with pain and exhaustion. Rutledge himself felt like falling asleep where he stood. Instead, he walked along the passage toward the formal rooms of the house.

The stairs ran up into blackness beside him as he reached the main hall; paintings or mirrors, carefully shrouded and secretive, climbed the wall beside the steps.

Dust sheets covered the furniture like shadowy ghosts, looming out of the darkness without sufficient definition to betray what was beneath them. Here, he thought, in the drawing room, must be a piano, and over there, a square table. And a cabinet or a chair here…

He lifted that sheet to look under it, and found a drinks cabinet with cut-glass decanters still half full. Taking up a pair of them, he walked back to the kitchen.

He found Hauser leaning on his good arm, lips tight against the pain.

“Here.” Rutledge set the decanters on the table beside him and crossed to the cabinets to find something to put the whisky in. “In for a penny, in for a pound. I don’t suppose anyone will care, anyway, if we drink all of it.”

The dishes had been packed away. Settling for two clean jam jars, he came back and poured a stiff drink in one of them, a smaller amount in the other. Adding water from a metal pitcher, he pushed the full glass toward the German.

The man drank, shuddering. “Thank you. I should have seen that doctor, after all. But there would have been too many questions.”

Rutledge was silent.

“So.” After a moment, the man said, “What is it you want with me? There’s something. Or you would have handed me over to the local police.” The blue eyes, narrowed with effort, studied Rutledge intently.

Unwilling to be led too far too soon, Rutledge said thoughtfully, “There’s enough evidence to hang you. You know that. We haven’t found any other explanation for these murders. Witnesses. Motive. Opportunity. Only what points to you.”

“I haven’t come here to kill Englishmen. I was sick of that long before the war ended.”

“There may be good wine left in the cellars of this house. Did you use it to trick your victims? There’s your weapon.” He watched the face before him with interest. “A good K.C. could bring a conviction.” Suddenly he could see an image of Raleigh Masters in a courtroom, using his voice and his dry wit to shape the thinking of a jury…

“You can’t kill men with wine.” The German’s voice was bitter.

“No. But you can with laudanum.”

“I have no laudanum.”

“You’re resourceful. You’d find it if you wanted it. A few drops in the glass, to start with, and then more in the second glass. The victim would be drowsy by then, and not realize how dangerously close to disaster he was. Especially if he’s already taking the medication for pain. Did you bring them here, and kill them?” Rutledge looked around the kitchen, with the bedclothes heaped in one corner, nearest the stove. “You could drag them out and find some means of carrying them off. A bicycle. A horse borrowed in the night. A handcart. Leaving them beside the road, where someone would discover them sooner or later…”

The German said appreciatively, “It’s a clever picture you’ve drawn. A jury would no doubt believe it. As a matter of interest-having left me for dead once-would it sit well with your conscience if I was hanged?”

Rutledge flinched. “No.” And then as if the words were drawn out of him against his will, he said, “Where did you find me? When the war had ended?”

He tried to keep his voice steady. He failed.

Hauser looked at him. “You really don’t know? No. If I had a map, I could probably show you. One of my men asked you if you had any English cigarettes. We had none, and no beer either. But you merely stood there. Damnedest thing I’d ever seen! And you don’t remember?”

“Very little.”

“What was it? A head injury? We couldn’t see a wound. And nobody wanted to touch you, to try to take your cap off.”

“Something like that,” Rutledge agreed. The tension in his body almost choked off his breath.

Hauser nodded. “That’s the conclusion we came to. Someone said, ‘You’d better get him back to his own lines,’ but no one volunteered. We didn’t care, in a way. The war was over for us, and we didn’t care about much, to be honest.”

“And yet you took me back?”

“I took you as far as I could. Too far, as it happened. I stopped a Frenchman, an old man, to ask if he’d guide you back to the English lines. He gaped at me as if he didn’t understand me. My French is fairly good-accented, but good. Instead, he pulled an ancient pistol from his pocket, and shot me!”

The astonishment of it was still in his voice. “I saw you kneel and start to do something with a dressing. And then everything went black. I thought he’d probably kill you as well, but when I asked the men who’d found me, they said there wasn’t another body. Just mine. I decided you’d simply walked away, and never looked back.”

Rutledge drew a harsh breath. “I don’t know what happened after that. I suppose someone thought at first I was a released prisoner. Later-back in England-someone came to visit me in hospital. Out of curiosity, I expect. Or the doctors may have sent for him. But I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying. And the nursing sister came and took him away.” He cleared his throat.

He couldn’t tell this man, dressed in ordinary civilian clothes and a long way from the Front, how badly shell-shocked he’d been. How confused those months in hospital had been.

“Head wounds,” Hauser was saying. “They do strange things.” He made as if to shrug it off, as if it were too far in the past to matter anyway. “The question now is, what are you to do with me?” He swallowed the rest of his whisky at a gulp, set down the jam jar, and waited, his eyes fixed on Rutledge’s face.