A Lonely Death

2

London, July 1920

Chief Inspector Cummins walked into Scotland Yard at half past nine, went directly to his office, and set about finishing packing his books. It was his last day, and he wanted no fanfare. An injury sustained in the line of duty had put an end to his career.

"And not a day too soon," he said to Inspector Ian Rutledge who had stepped in to wish him well. "I should have left at the end of the war. But I found one excuse after another to stay on. This case pending, that case passing through the courts. And here I still am, well past my time." He looked up, another stack of books in his hand. "No regrets."

"I feel responsible-" Rutledge began, but Cummins cut him short.

"Nonsense. I knew what I was doing. I hadn't reckoned on the toll the years had taken, that's all. I wasn't quite fast enough. At fifty-five, one still believes one is thirty until he looks in his mirror as he shaves."

"Will you be content in Scotland, after the bustle of London?"

"My God, yes. And if I'm not, my wife will tell me that I am." Cummins reached for the roll of tape to seal that box and then turned to fill another. "When do you intend to marry? Don't leave it too long. I'll be a grandfather, next month."

Rutledge laughed, as he was meant to do. "You've left behind a splendid record. We'll be living up to it for decades to come."

Cummins set the books down on a corner of his cluttered desk and looked around the office. The shelves were nearly empty, the desk as well, and the photographs had been removed from the walls. He took a deep breath and said pensively, "Yes, well. I enjoyed the hunt, you see. More than I should have done. All the same, there was one case I never solved. I was a little superstitious about it, if you want the truth. I kept the folder on my desk for years, telling myself I'd get to the bottom of it, sooner or later. I even dreamed about it sometimes, when I was tired. What bothered me most was not knowing whether the dead man was a sacrifice or a victim. And if his murderer had ever killed again."

"A sacrifice?" It was an odd choice of words for a man like Cummins.

Cummins glanced sheepishly at Rutledge. "It was what struck me as soon as I saw the man. That he was left there for a purpose. A warning, if you will. Or a sacrifice of some sort. Not religious, I don't mean that kind of thing…" He broke off, then shrugged, as if to make light of what he'd said. "It was the setting. It made me fanciful, I dare say."

"When was this?"

"Long before your time. It was Midsummer's Eve, 1905." Cummins turned away and walked to the window, where sunlight had just broken through the morning clouds and was turning the wet pavements from a dull gray to bright pewter. "Some fifteen people had come to Stonehenge dressed as Druids. Unbleached muslin, handmade sandals, staffs of peeled oak boughs. Mind you, I doubt they knew much about ancient druidism, but they'd come to watch the sun rise and chant nonsense, and feel something-God knows what. Anyway, they walked to the stones, sang and marched, drank a little homemade mead-honey laced with rum, we were told later-and waited for sunrise."

Cummins paused, staring not at the view outside his window but back into a past he reluctantly remembered, and Rutledge thought, He's not going to finish it. It cuts too deep. Still, he waited quietly, ignoring the dull rumble of Hamish's voice in the back of his mind.

Finally Cummins went on, as if compelled. "They were misguided, playing at something they didn't understand. But harmless enough, I suppose. At length the sun rose. One of the women told me later that it was magnificent. Her word. She said the dark sky turned to opal and rose, then purest gold. As they watched, the rim of the sun appeared on the eastern horizon. She said that what followed was unbelievable-a shaft of light came spilling across the dark earth and touched her face. She said she could feel it. Just as the schoolmaster had told them. He was the one who talked them into this silliness. But even he was taken by surprise."

Losing his train of thought, Cummins turned and said, "Where was I? Oh, yes. This young woman-her name was Sarah Harmon-was still staring at what she called the stone of sacrifice. That's what the schoolmaster had told them it was called. It stands along the eastern avenue between the main section of Stonehenge and the horizon. Do you know it?"

"Yes. I do."

"Hmm. She was trying to recapture a little of the emotion she'd felt when the sun struck her face, and then she noticed something odd about that stone. It was light enough, by then, you see. When she began screaming, everyone turned toward her, startled. She pointed to the stone. They could just make out something there and rushed down the avenue to find a man strapped to it. He was dead. Even they could see that, and when they held up their lanterns for a better view, they realized he'd been stabbed." Cummins cleared his throat. "He was strapped to the dark side. Not toward the light."

"Hadn't they seen anything? Anyone?"

"Apparently not. I questioned them for hours. The body could have been out there before ever they arrived. In the dark, they wouldn't have noticed."

"They didn't know the victim?"

"They swore they didn't."

"Not even this schoolmaster, who'd lured them out there? It would have been a perfect cover for murder."

"Terrence Nolan? He was as frightened as the rest of them. And in the end, I believed them. I expect the murderer, whoever he was, had counted on no one finding the victim for days. As for the dead man, he was young-thirty to thirty-five at a guess-and he was wearing only a scrap of cloth, like a loincloth-there was no clothing at all, no marks on the body, nothing through which we could identify him. Even the bit of cloth was a cheap cotton that could be bought anywhere. It took us six weeks to discover his name."

"Who was he?" Rutledge asked, intrigued.

"One Harvey Wheeler. He came from Orkney. A ne'er-do-well, according to the authorities there. His father had gone to Kirkwall to run the post, and Harvey grew up rather wild and unruly, a truant from school, roaming the island at will and never sorry for his escapades. His parents gave up trying to control him, apparently, and he went missing in 1902 after a brush with the police. It was thought he'd come south into Scotland. At any rate, he reappeared in Edinburgh in late 1903, and then left a step ahead of the police, who were after him for attempting to defraud a woman he'd met there. That was the last anyone had heard of him until he was found dead on Salisbury Plain. Why anyone would wish to kill him is still a mystery. It must have had to do with the missing two years of his life, although it always struck me as odd that someone like Harvey Wheeler should end that way. As murders go, it didn't fit."

"Were you certain of the identification?"

"As certain as may be. When Edinburgh took an interest in the description we'd passed around, we sent along a photograph. That was when they recommended we contact Orkney. They in turn felt it was very likely that our corpse was this young man. His father was dead by that time, and his mother too ill to be shown the photograph. But the Kirkwall police had no doubts. And so he was buried in a churchyard on the outskirts of Winchester. No one saw any point in sending the body north. That was the end of it. His murderer was never found." Cummins paused, looking toward the window, as if it held the answer, before bringing his gaze back to Rutledge. "It was an odd inquiry from start to finish. I never felt comfortable with it. I'd have liked to go to Kirkwall myself, but the Orkney Islands are at the northern tip of Scotland, and the Yard felt it was money wasted to send me there. All the same, I'd have liked to know more about Harvey Wheeler. What brought him into England, for one thing, and where he might have lived on this side of the border."

"The murder weapon never turned up?"

"We searched the area, every inch of it. We came to the conclusion that the murderer carried it off with him. It could be anywhere-thrown from a bridge, buried in a dustbin, returned to wherever it had come from. There would be no way to know, would there, that it had anything to do with a crime? What was odd was the coroner found a tiny flake of flint in the wound. The feeling was it was on his clothing and driven in by the force of the blow. That led us to believe two facts: that he was dressed when he was killed, although his clothing was never found, and that he must have come from a part of England where flint was readily available. And that covered a good bit of ground."

"Was he killed there at Stonehenge?"

"Very likely not. There was no sign of a struggle. Unless of course Wheeler was drugged and carried there. Still, the coroner found no evidence of his being either drugged or knocked unconscious prior to his death. And there wasn't enough blood at the site." Cummins hesitated. "It was his face, I think, that disturbed me as much as the rest of it. A handsome enough man, fit and well made, more a gentleman than Wheeler appeared to be. Or perhaps that was his charm, and why he nearly succeeded in defrauding that widow. How many more women were there that we never heard of?"

"I can understand why Wheeler's murder has remained fresh in your mind."

"That, and the fact that it was the only case I failed to solve to my own satisfaction." Cummins made a wry gesture and smiled. "Sheer arrogance, of course. I took pride in my record, all the same. The men used to call me Cautious Cummins. But it was always my way, to work out each detail until I could make a case out of the pieces. You remind me of myself as a young inspector, you know." The smile widened. "I bequeath you this albatross of a case. If you ever solve it, let me know." He went back to packing. "Don't let Bowles lay the blame for my going on you, Rutledge," he warned. "Because he will try. He has it in for you, he has from the day you returned to the Yard after the war. I don't know precisely why, but he's been instrumental in blocking promotions and failing to give you proper credit where it was due. He's mean and vindictive. I've never liked him, and I'm not about to pretend now."

"Warning taken," Rutledge said, surprised that Cummins would speak so bluntly.

"I should finish this," the Chief Inspector said, glancing around the room. "Two more boxes should do it, I think. I'm not one for prolonging the inevitable." He put out his hand, and Rutledge took it in a firm grip. "I wish you well, Ian."

"Thank you, sir. I hope your retirement will be a happy one."

Rutledge walked to the door and was on the point of opening it when Cummins said, "Inspector. I would have no objection to hearing from you from time to time." And then his attention returned to the half dozen books in his hands.

As Rutledge strode down the passage toward his own office, his footsteps loud on the bare boards, he wondered if he would look back at the end of his career and remember a case the way Cummins had lived with his.

"Aye, but first ye must survive long enough to leave the force on your ain twa feet," Hamish said, his voice seeming to follow Rutledge the short distance to his own room.

Hamish was his penance for what he'd done in the war: a voice that was relentless and unforgiving, like the guilt that haunted him. In life Corporal Hamish MacLeod had been the closest thing Rutledge had had to a friend during the darkest hours of the Somme Offensive, despite the vast difference in rank between them. The young Highlander would have made sergeant if he'd survived the battle. He was a natural leader, the sort who cared for his men and understood the tactics of war. But that had been his undoing. Refusing a direct order on a battlefield had led to a firing squad. It wasn't cowardice, it was an unwillingness to lead tired and dispirited men in another useless charge against a well-concealed machine gun nest. Yet even knowing as well as Hamish did what it would cost in lives, knowing that it was impossible to dislodge the enemy, Rutledge had had no choice but to give the order to try one more time in an effort to clear out the nest before the main attack began along the entire line. The few sacrificed for the sake of the many. And then as an example to his men, he'd had no choice but to give the order to fire that had ended Hamish's life. Military necessity, but in human terms, despicable to Rutledge's already battered mind.

After days of endless fighting that had killed thousands of good men for mere inches of ground and did nothing to bring the war nearer its inevitable end, this one death had seemed insupportable. A decision made at HQ, a decision that appeared sound and workable to officers far from the fighting, officers who didn't have to look exhausted men in the face and ask them to climb over the top one more time and die to satisfy a strategy that was broken before it had even begun, had resulted in a bloodbath that was incomprehensible. Hamish MacLeod had simply given that bloodbath a personal face.

Dr. Fleming had explained it best-though it was no comfort to Rutledge to hear it: "You couldn't accept that one man's death. And so you refused to let him die. He's every young soldier you tried to keep alive and failed. He's your expression of guilt for that failure, and he will be in your head as long as that guilt lasts. Or until you die and take Hamish MacLeod with you to the grave."

Guilt or not, Hamish's voice sounded as clear as if it had come from a foot or so behind Rutledge's shoulder, where Hamish had so often stood and fought. And explanations did nothing to ease the strain of knowing the voice was there, that it would speak or not as it chose, and there was nothing on God's earth to prevent it or keep others from hearing it, even when Rutledge knew they could not. He could never be certain of anything except that Hamish had never forgiven him, just as he had never forgiven himself-even though he had never been given any choice in the matter. Hamish had taken that away too and left Rutledge to cope alone. And yet never alone.

Trying to shut out the soft Scots words in his mind, Rutledge tried to settle to the papers on his desk, and after a time he managed to concentrate on them. He knew he would miss Cummins. There were already rumors that Inspector Mickelson would be promoted to fill his place.