A Long Shadow

36

Rutledge moved his own motorcar to the side of the road and then lifted the body of Mary Ellison into Mrs. Channing’s vehicle, his rug still wrapped around her.

There was nowhere else to put her except in the rear seat— where Hamish sat.

Turning to drive back to Dudlington, he wondered if the stalker was watching him, and what was going through his mind.

Meredith Channing and Grace Letteridge sat waiting in the office that Hensley used for police business.

Their faces were drawn with anxiety and exhaustion, and he thought, as he stepped over the threshold, that they had already said to each other all that there was to say, and silence had long since fallen in the room.

Mrs. Channing started to her feet when she saw him, her gaze sweeping him and the blood still wet on his coat, his hands.

“What happened?” Her voice was tense. “Are you hurt?”

“She’s in the motorcar. Mrs. Ellison. There was an— accident—on the road. She’s dead. I must take her home.”

“I’ll come with you,” Mrs. Channing said, as if she had read more in his answer than he’d intended.

Grace Letteridge stood where she was, waiting for a chance to speak to him. She seemed to have aged since he’d seen her last, not an hour before.

“I told you once that I’d kill Constable Hensley, if I discovered he’d murdered Emma.”

“I remember.”

“He’s dead,” she said. “The message came half an hour ago.” She lost her composure then, and her eyes filled with tears of guilt.

Rutledge found himself thinking, Beware what you ask for.

But he’d lost any chance now of finding out the truth about what role Bowles had played in the Barstow affair.

He would have to face that later, when there was time to consider it. He thought about this house, and how empty it was, yet how much Hensley had wanted to come back to it.

The constable hadn’t expected his life to end this way.

Hamish said, “You werena’ prepared, yoursel’...”

Grace Letteridge, struggling to keep her voice steady, was still speaking to him. He tried to listen. “I also asked the messenger to tell Inspector Cain about—about Mrs. Ellison as soon as possible. Was that proper? He should be here, very soon.”

“Yes, thank you. I don’t think I could have driven that far tonight. And Frank Keating?”

“He’s badly injured, but he’ll live. They’re to take him to Letherington, to be cared for,” Grace said. “I don’t think I could have killed anyone, after all. And I felt so certain.”

She shook herself, trying to come to terms with an old anger.

“Will you send Dr. Middleton to Mrs. Ellison’s house?” he asked her.

“Yes. After that I’m going home.” She turned to Mrs.

Channing. “I’ll make tea, if you’d like a cup.” She glanced toward the street and said, “I’ll just wait until—until she’s inside.”

Mrs. Channing held the motorcar’s door as Rutledge lifted Mrs. Ellison’s body and carried it into the house. He went up the stairs and laid her gently on her bed. It was all he could do.

“What happened?” Mrs. Channing asked again, standing a little behind him. “Was that man waiting on the road, as we’d feared?”

He told her briefly.

“How will you explain this gunshot wound to Inspector Cain?”

“I don’t know. Somehow. I can’t even give him a description of the man. He was ordinary, no different from thousands of others who came back in 1918. I must have passed him in the street half a hundred times and never noticed him. But I’m almost certain now he’s the one who brought my shoe back, after my encounter with the lorry.

Daring me to recognize him.”

“He’ll come for you again. When you least expect it.”

“I don’t know. Possibly not. I think killing Mrs. Ellison instead has shaken him.”

“Until he discovers she was a murderess and deserved to die.” Changing the subject, she said, “I haven’t looked in the cabinet in the cellar. I didn’t want to see.”

“No. It’s best you didn’t.”

They went through the house, turning out the lamps that Frank Keating had lit during his search for his daughter’s body. When Rutledge reached the kitchen again, he said,

“I don’t think I want to go down to the cellar myself. We’ll leave it to Cain, when he comes. It’s his case, after all.

Mine is finished.”

“You look terrible. And you ought to wash off her blood.”

“Thank you. As soon as Cain arrives.”

Dr. Middleton walked in just then, looking from Mrs.

Channing to Rutledge. “Where is she?”

“Upstairs. In her room.”

He nodded and left. In a few minutes he came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table, his shoulders hunched. “Keating made me look in the cabinet. I didn’t touch them. I couldn’t. After all these years, you’d think I had become inured to death.” He ran a finger around his collar. “Where was she trying to go? It seemed so—futile, fleeing like that.”

“She wanted to die where no one knew her. There’s an unused plot in London, she asked me to bury her there.”

“I’ll do what I can. I don’t think anyone would want her final resting place to be St. Luke’s anyway. Best if it’s all forgotten. Who shot her? That’s a gunshot wound, you know. And you weren’t armed.”

“I heard the shot. I wasn’t there to see it. No one from Dudlington. I’m certain of that. No one here could have caught up with us in time. Someone out after a fox, who knows?”

He could hear motorcars arriving outside. He said to Middleton, “I don’t suppose you know a man named Sandridge.”

Middleton raised his head to look at Rutledge. “There’s not going to be more killing, is there?”

“Not if I can prevent it.”

“Sandridge is Joel Baylor’s mother’s name. His father recognized him when they were married, but I don’t know that it’s official.”

“The brother who was gassed.” Rutledge turned to go.

“I’ll send in Cain. And then there’s one more thing I must do.”

***

In the event, it was nearly dawn by the time he had finished with Inspector Cain. After that he walked to the barn where the Baylor cattle were housed. As he expected, he found Ted Baylor mucking out.

The man turned to him. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble? That was a wild-goose chase to Frith’s Wood.”

“I didn’t know at the time that it wasn’t a matter of life and death. You’ve lost nothing except perhaps a few hours’ sleep.”

Grunting, Baylor turned back to his work, raking the warm piles of manure out into the center of the barn.

“What do you want?”

“To speak to your brother. Joel.”

“It won’t do you any good to see him.”

“It might clear up many things. For instance, why he hid from Constable Hensley. Hensley had known from the start that he was here.”

“I didn’t know about Hensley.” Baylor sighed. “Not until I heard them arguing one night soon after Joel had come home. After that, they avoided each other. Hensley swag-gered on the streets, but he knew better than to show his face here. I don’t think they trusted each other, to tell you the truth. I was always afraid it was Joel in Frith’s Wood with that bow and arrow. We had them as children. He knew how to use a bow. Look, I didn’t know about what Joel had done either. Not until much later. When he learned a man had been killed in that London fire, he joined the army. And he’s paid for what he did. I don’t think it will do any good to bring him to justice. He won’t live to see the hangman, you know that.”

“Still...”

Baylor said, “All right. I want to be there.” He stood his rake against a barn pillar and dusted his hands. “He’s still my brother. The only one left. Let’s get it over with.”

They walked in silence from the barn toward the house.

A few flakes of snow began to fall, desultorily at first, and then with gathering intent.

“It won’t last. But it will be colder tomorrow. By March the daffodils will be in bloom. Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” And then, endeavoring to bring something good out of so much pain and grief, Rutledge said to his companion, “Barbara Melford deserved better of you. You ought to tell her why you haven’t kept your promise.”

“It’s not your affair—” Baylor started to say, but Rutledge cut him off in midsentence.

“Good God, man, are you going to throw away your life and hers? She’ll wait for you, if you explain about Joel.

And who’s to inherit when both your brothers are dead, and you’re locked in your own bitterness, too stubborn to beg her forgiveness?”

“You don’t know anything about it.” But in the snow-filled darkness, Baylor’s voice was less sure.

“No, I don’t. That’s true. Perhaps you don’t care, after all.”

“Don’t care?” The words were wrenched from him.

“Gentle God!”

“Then tell her. When Joel is dead, she’ll believe you’ve spoken out of duty. And she’ll refuse, from pride.”

“I didn’t want to drag her into the shambles Joel had made of things. I thought it best.”

Rutledge held the door for Baylor and followed him into the house and up the stairs. “Rightly or wrongly your brother lived his life as he saw fit. In spite of that, you owe him the obligations of blood. That’s admirable. But Barbara Melford shouldn’t be expected to pay for his sins too.”

Ahead of him there was a quiet “No. I’ll see she doesn’t.”

Joel Baylor’s windows overlooked the barns and Frith’s Wood. He wasn’t asleep. Instead he was sitting in a chair, struggling to breathe through burned lungs. The sound of his efforts filled the room. He had been a strong and handsome man at one time. Now his clothes hung on his thin frame, and his face was lined with suffering.

“Hensley is dead,” Rutledge said as he walked in. “I’ve just been told.”

“Did he talk before he died?” The question was guarded but resigned.

“No. He was loyal to the end.”

“Is that the God’s honest truth?”

“Did you shoot him with that bow and arrow?”

“I probably would have, if I could have walked as far as that wood. He made me feel like a prisoner in my own house.”

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me now what happened in London. The only witness here is your own brother. My word against his.”

“You aren’t interested in what happened to Edgerton.

You didn’t know the man. It’s evidence you want, against Chief Superintendent Bowles.”

“If he was a party to that fire, even if he had no way of knowing what might happen, then something must be done. Edgerton had a family, they deserve an answer.”

Joel Baylor turned his head to look out the window. “If I’d stayed here and helped run the farm, my life would have been very different. But I was greedy.” His words were punctuated with short breaths, his back hunched with the effort. “I wasn’t raised to farming, that’s the trouble.”

“You can make amends. Even now. If you tell me what happened.”

He turned back to Rutledge. “I don’t know,” he said, and it was hard to judge whether he was lying or telling the truth. “I can’t tell you what lay between Hensley and Bowles. It might have had nothing to do with the fire. I set it, Hensley looked the other way. Barstow swore the building would be empty. Still, a man died. I was paid for my silence and Hensley for his. That’s all I was privy to. And it was bad enough. I never asked Hensley who else was involved. You should have.”

But Hensley was dead.

Joel began to cough, choking on the fluids in his lungs.

It was some time before he was able to catch his breath again. His brother had been right. The man wouldn’t live to stand trial.

Hamish said, “He’s no’ going to help.”

But Rutledge wasn’t ready to give up. “If you change your mind, you have only to send me word. Not at the Yard. It’s better to send a message to my flat.”

Joel Baylor shook his head in denial. “Nothing more,” he gasped.

Rutledge was halfway across the room, on his way to the door as Ted Baylor quietly urged him to leave his brother in peace. Then he stopped and swung around.

“Did Hensley ever tell you that the girl you’d known in London had written to ask what had become of you? A Miss Gregory, as I remember.”

That roused Joel Baylor. “No. I thought— no, damn him, he never said a word! ”

“So much for loyalty, then,” Rutledge responded, and walked out of the room.

It was nearly seven when Rutledge and Mrs. Channing drove to the place where he’d left his motorcar.

Rutledge was surprised to find it still there. He looked at the blood on the driver’s seat and remembered Mary Ellison collapsing in his arms as he’d opened his door. Her body had been heavy, without the strength to help him.

He thanked Mrs. Channing for the lift, and then walked up the hillside to begin his search again.

In the early-morning light he found what he was looking for.

Someone had dug a hiding place out of the earth, making himself a safe haven in this winter pasture where no one came in January. It was so well concealed that Rut ledge could have stepped on it in the dark and still not seen it.

There was a covering built of old wood and straw and earth, shielded by long stalks of grass and even mossy sod.

Rutledge lifted it, not sure what he expected to find.

Hamish said, “He’s gone.”

In a way Rutledge was glad. He’d expected to find the man dead of a self-inflicted wound.

Whoever he was, he must have been a sniper in the war.

Or a gamekeeper before it. He knew how to use the land in his favor, how to make it conceal him and protect him. He could have lain in wait for machine gunners to show themselves. Or poachers, coming for the estate game under cover of darkness. He’d learned from the animals he was paid to protect how to disguise himself and how to live off the land. But who was he? Where had he come from? And where had he gone?

Hamish said, “The shop where he swept the floor.”

“Perhaps,” Rutledge answered, not sure he meant it. Let sleeping dogs lie.

And he wondered what Dr. Fleming, who had brought him out of the darkness, would have made of the man.

There was a square of paper in one wall of the trench, caught between the prongs of a split stick.

Rutledge reached down to pull it out.

It read simply I was wrong.

Hamish said, “It was a near run thing.”

Rutledge slowly let the top fall back into place over the hole.

When he reached the motorcar, he found Mrs. Channing still there, waiting. That morning, just before Hillary Timmons had come to shut up the inn for several weeks, she’d packed her belongings and set the cases in her car, ready to return to London. Nothing had actually been said between them about her departure. But Rutledge had glimpsed her luggage in the boot.

She looked up as he came down the slope of the land, her eyes searching his face.

“He was gone,” he said.

“Yes. I’d hoped he was. Let there be an end.”

He stood there by her car, listening to the motor ticking over under the bonnet. “I thought perhaps you were behind what was happening to me. You saw too much that first night...”

“I know what you thought.” She hesitated and then said,

“I wish now I’d done as you asked, and taken Mary Ellison to dinner. It might have turned out differently.”

“No. It was bound to end the way it did.”

“You can never be sure of that.” She met his glance then, holding it. “Don’t marry that girl in Westmorland, Ian.

She’s been through enough. Neither of you would be happy for very long.”

She put the motorcar in gear and left him standing there, staring after her.

Hamish, the first to recover, said, “Ye didna’ tell her about Westmorland.”

About the Author

CHARLES TODD is the author of nine Ian Rutledge mysteries—A False Mirror, A Long Shadow, A Cold Treachery, A Fearsome Doubt, Watchers of Time, Legacy of the Dead, Search the Dark, Wings of Fire, and A Test of Wills—and one stand-alone novel, The Murder Stone.

They are a mother-and-son writing team and live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively.

Visit their website at www.charlestodd.com.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Enthusiastic praise for

A LONG SHADOW and the previous extraordinary

INSPECTOR IAN RUTLEDGE novels by

CHARLES TODD

“One of the most respected writers in the genre.”

Denver Post

“No mystery series I can think of captures the sadness and loss that swept over England after World War I with the heart-breaking force of Charles Todd’s books about Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.”

Chicago Tribune

“Charles Todd continues the expert plotting and keen insight into the human psyche that has been a hallmark of this series.

In this eighth Rutledge novel, Todd balances the fragility of Rutledge’s mind with the detective’s attempts to claw his way back to humanity and sanity.... A Long Shadow plunges the reader into the atmosphere of post-World War I England.... A superior look at a country and one former soldier recovering from war’s devastation.”

Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“Todd is in complete control, and once he grabs you, there’s no putting the novel down.”

Detroit Free Press

“Like P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Charles Todd writes novels that transcend genre. They are well-plotted mysteries, taut with psychological suspense. They are also fine literature, with fully developed characters and evocative descriptions.

Above all, these stories peer deeply into human nature.”

Winston-Salem Journal

“Charles Todd continues to delve deeper and deeper into the national psyche of Britain during the unsettled years following World War I.... The characters [in A Long Shadow] have vivid personalities and psychological depths.... Although the scenery changes from book to book in this elegantly devised series, the bleak emotional landscape remains the same, waiting for someone like Rutledge to heal its wounds.”

New York Times Book Review

“I admire not just the book’s pace but also its seriousness, its darkness.... [Todd does] a nice job of capturing the era.... I found myself thinking of Agatha Christie as I read.”

Washington Post Book World

“Excellent.... Todd’s plotting and characterization are, as usual, first-rate, and the tormented motivations behind the novel’s dark acts are presented with a sensitivity and refinement reminiscent of the best of P. D. James....

[It] will leave both longtime fans and new readers anxiously awaiting the sequel.”

Publishers Weekly (*Starred Review*)

“Always rewarding.... As usual with Todd’s evocative and literary novels, the psychological motivations more than match the physical action.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Todd’s writing is graceful and evocative of bygone times and places.”

Miami Herald

“Spectacular.... The writing is so good—I actually read some sentences twice just to enjoy the beauty of the prose.”

Westchester Journal News

“Todd’s series has the feel of the classic whodunits of such Golden Age masters as Christie and Sayers. Its ever-thickening plot is sure to please serious puzzlers who thrill to a large cast of wary villagers spinning complex webs of rumor and deception.... [A] delight.”

Booklist

“Todd’s trademark is the insight he has into his characters.

Their emotions and reactions hint at guilt of something, but not necessarily murder. It keeps readers on edge right up to the stunning end.... But Rutledge’s journey isn’t finished. And, we hope, neither is Todd.”

Ft. Worth Star-Telegram

By Charles Todd

A Long Shadow

A Cold Treachery

The Murder Stone

A Fearsome Doubt

Legacy of the Dead

Watchers of Time

Search the Dark

Wings of Fire

A Test of Wills