A Long Shadow

35

Rutledge laid her back on the grass, covering her with the rug from the car.

She had been, he thought, a woman of great pride, and with it a strong sense of what was due her name. She had been the last of the Harkness family, and she would kill rather than bring dishonor to it. A paradox...

There was no time to think about Mary Ellison. Not now.

Hamish was shouting in his ear, and Rutledge got slowly to his feet, turning to look at the hillside behind him.

He hadn’t expected to come face-to-face with this man.

Not tonight, possibly not ever, unless a shot was fired point-blank at him. And in his concern for Mary Ellison, he had left himself vulnerable.

“She took the bullet meant for you,” the man said. “I didn’t intend to kill an innocent woman.”

He looked haggard, as if he’d slept rough and only a stubborn determination had kept him going.

And the revolver was still in his hand.

Rutledge said nothing, standing there in full view, waiting. The wind whistled down the hill, blowing through his hair. He couldn’t remember what had become of his hat.

He thought it was probably still in the parlor on Hensley’s coat-tree. It didn’t matter. It wouldn’t save his life. They’d learned that in the trenches, that helmets were necessary.

He wasn’t sure what had happened to his...

He fought to keep a grip on the present.

Hamish was there, in the forefront of his mind now.

“I’m no’ ready to die. And I willna’ let you die.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” Rutledge said in response.

For this time had been bound to come since he’d stood on the steps outside Maryanne Browning’s house in London.

He had been lucky that it hadn’t come sooner. That he’d finished his work. He felt suddenly tired, unwilling to fight.

“Ye didna’ want to die in Scotland. Ye canna’ die now.”

He was aware of the man across the empty road from him, dressed in workmen’s clothing, muddy corduroys, a flannel shirt, and a heavy coat. It looked like the remnants of a cast-off officer’s coat. The stalker seemed to be considering him in turn, both of them taking the measure of an adversary.

“I don’t know you,” Rutledge said at last. “Or why you have cast such a long shadow over my life. If you’re going to kill me, at least tell me why.”

“It’s the war’s shadow, not mine.” And then he added grudgingly, “I hadn’t expected you to show so much courage.”

“What happened to you in the war?”

“What happened to all of us? You were an officer, you should know. You bled us without mercy, you sat in safety well behind the lines, and sent us out to face the guns, day in and day out. For inches of land! What we lost in one attack, the next must win back again. For your own glory.

For no reason other than ignorance and stupidity and sheer, bloody waste!”

“I was in the trenches myself.”

“Don’t lie to me. I swore I’d make someone pay for what they’d done to us. I swore that if I survived the fighting, I’d come home and kill as many officers as I could find.”

“How did you know that I was to visit Mrs. Browning on New Year’s Eve?”

“The cook told me. I’d met her in a shop where I swept the floors, and sometimes we’d talked about France. That day she said to the butcher her mistress had guests coming to dine, and I asked her who they were. Commander Farnum, she said, and Captain Rutledge, she said. Was the captain in France? I asked her, and she said, He was. Four years, mind you, and home without a scratch on him! I knew then you’d been far from the Front. Safe as houses somewhere in the rear. Not many of my mates saw the war’s start and the war’s end. They fed the machine guns instead. Have you seen what those guns do to a man? Have you ever walked into a field hospital and looked!”

How to answer him without being accused of another lie?

“What’s your name?” Rutledge asked instead. He was drained, his mind refusing to work with any clarity.

“You never cared to know the names of the dead. Or the living for that matter. We were numbers on the chart table, without faces, pushed forward because it suited the French or the Americans or the War Ministry. And when those were slaughtered, you found more to send up the line. You found my brother and my cousin, and my neighbors, and my son.”

He stopped and looked at the body of Mary Ellison. “I didn’t mean to kill her, and that’s the truth. I wanted to make you afraid, as afraid as I ever was. I wanted you to know what it was like to look death in the face, to know there was no way out without shaming yourself. I wanted you to remember what the guns did to people like us. I didn’t intend to kill a woman. Why did you let her drive your bloody motorcar!”

There was a mixture of shame and anger in his voice.

“She borrowed it without asking. Have you lived out here, in the middle of nowhere? Where did you sleep?

How did you eat?”

“It’s better than the trenches.”

Perhaps it was, Rutledge thought. But it was no way for a soldier to live.

The man steadied the gun. “You can beg for your life.”

“I never begged for my life from a German, and I’m damned if I’ll beg it from an Englishman!” Rutledge said, anger rising in him.

The revolver fired, and he could hear the whine of the shot passing his ear.

“Beg!”

Rutledge stood where he was. “Her death was an accident,” he said. “Let me help you. Before it’s too late.”

The next shot seemed to ruffle his hair, and he flinched in spite of himself.

“Damn you, beg!”

Another shot went wild, the revolver wobbling as the man began to cry, the tears running down his face unheeded.

Then it steadied once more, the muzzle pointed straight at Rutledge.

Rutledge steeled himself. He couldn’t be sure how many shots were left in the weapon. But he couldn’t reach the man, and he knew that if he tried, the next shot wouldn’t miss.

“Listen to me,” Rutledge began. “My death won’t bring your dead back. It won’t even satisfy you. Even if you kill a dozen like me, it can’t change what happened in France.

Nothing can.”

“I never intended to kill you,” he said at last. “I just wanted to see the fear in your face and hear you beg to live.”

“Not for you, not for anyone.”

Hamish was as angry as he was, helpless in the confines of death.

The muzzle held steady, and it seemed that minutes ticked by. And then the man moved.

For an instant Rutledge thought he was going to kill himself. The revolver rose to his temple in one fluid action, but instead of pulling the trigger, he touched the barrel to his forehead in a salute. It was grotesque, a mockery of the acknowledgment of enlisted man to officer. And yet it was also an admission.

He turned away, striding up the rise and into the dark night.

Rutledge searched for an hour or more. But without a torch or a sense of which direction the man had taken, he couldn’t find his lair, the place where he’d gone to ground.

Hamish said, “Tomorrow. When it’s light.”