[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
sudden, like a flash of light. Mum heard her calling, and then the sound
of someone falling down the stairs. Frightened her witless to find Mrs.
Cutter lying up against the balustrades halfway down, and not able to
move. Doris and Betsy and I had nightmares, hearing it, but the boys
wanted her to tell it over and over again.
Where was your mother when this happened?
Hanging out the clothes. She left a sheet dragging, to run in.
He thanked the girl, still more of a child than a woman, and walked
back to his motorcar, thoughtful and uneasy.
I ought to find Henry Cutter, he told himself as he drove on to the
Lambeth Road, and turned toward Kent.
It s no been pressing for all these years, Hamish reminded him.
It hasn t, no, Rutledge agreed, and fell silent. Trying to remember
the case not in hindsight but the way it had unfolded at the time that
a fearsome doubt 79
was what was hard. How he d felt, how he d thought, how he d
watched the evidence build.
He had been another man then. Young, idealistic. A stranger to the
hollow shell who had come back from the war and for months struggled
to rebuild his peacetime skills. He had more in common with the voice
of Hamish MacLeod than he did with his prewar self. That Ian
Rutledge might have lived six centuries ago, not a mere six years.
Somewhere they had lost each other.
November anywhere in England was a cold and often rainy
month. The air was heavy, damp, and chill, and with the sun retreating
toward the equator, the shorter days seemed to drag through their ap-
pointed hours with a dullness that sometimes made the difference be-
tween sunrise and sunset a matter only of conjecture. Had the sun risen?
Was it setting or was there another squall of rain on its way? Along the
rivers, fog could hold on for a good part of the morning, and heavy
clouds finished the late afternoon long before night could fall. The lin-
gering sunsets of Midsummer, when light filled the air well past eight
and nine, and sometimes as late as ten, were a thing of memory.
A depressing season. . .
Hamish said, The rain was worst, in France. I couldna get used to
the rain.
It had soaked their greatcoats and left shoes a soggy, rotting mess,
and it had ruined tempers, brought out the miasma of smells from the
trenches, and made the heavy mud so slippery that a man could lose his
footing and go down as he raced across No Man s Land. Rutledge had
fallen more than once, feeling the swift plucking at his shoulder or el-
bow where machine-gun fire had barely missed him. And then scram-
bled back to his feet into the steady scything, waiting for the blow to his
body that never came, never more than just that ghostly plucking.
Living a charmed life had frightened him as much as it had defeated
him. He d wanted to die.
80 charles todd
Kent was a fertile part of the country, covered with pasturage and
hop gardens, with orchards blazingly white in spring, and apples or
plums or cherries hanging darkly from summer boughs. Agriculture
was its mainstay, though there had been iron at one time, and the cut-
ting of the great forests for making charcoal to smelt the iron had
opened up the Weald to grass for sheep or horses or the plow. There was
still industry along the Medway, and shipbuilding on the coast where
the tradition of putting to sea was strong. But most of Kent was green,
with ash and beech and sometimes oak in the hedgerows or marching in
shady rows down the lanes.
This was also the gateway to England from the Continent, the path
taken by invaders, by priests, by merchants, and by the weavers who at
the request of Edward III had come to teach the English how to turn
their valuable wool into far more valuable cloth. Prosperous and rural
and content, most of the villages turned their backs on the Dover London
road, and got on with their lives in peace.
Marling was a pretty village, even by Kentish standards, settled on
a ridge overlooking the long slope of land that fell away toward the
Weald. A High Street ran through the center, dividing where a triangu-
lar space opened up and created the irregular square that had held the
Guy Fawkes bonfire. The Tuesday Market here had been one of the vil-
lage s mainstays for generations, giving it status among its neighbors.
The square had been cleared long since of the last of the ashes, and
today lay quiet and colorless in the cold rain that had followed at
Rutledge s heels. Even the Cavalier standing bravely in the wet on his
plinth appeared to huddle under his plumed hat.
Rutledge knew where to find the police station it was several
doors down from the hotel where he d dined with Elizabeth Mayhew
and her friends after the bonfire. Tucked in between a bakery on the one
side and a haberdashery on the other, the station occupied one of the old
brick buildings still carrying proudly the Georgian facades that gave
Marling its particular character.
The midday traffic was light, a few carriages and carts, a motorcar
or two, and women hurrying from butcher to greengrocer to draper s
shop one, pausing to speak to a friend, pushed her covered pram with
metronomic rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. Another, carrying
a fearsome doubt 81
a small wet dog in her arms, was lecturing the animal for running into
the road, warning it of dire consequences.
On the surface, it was a peaceful scene, a prewar England in some
ways, seemingly detached from the hardships and shortages that
scarred Sansom Street s inhabitants in London.
Hamish, observing it, said, You wouldna think murder had been [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl karpacz24.htw.pl
sudden, like a flash of light. Mum heard her calling, and then the sound
of someone falling down the stairs. Frightened her witless to find Mrs.
Cutter lying up against the balustrades halfway down, and not able to
move. Doris and Betsy and I had nightmares, hearing it, but the boys
wanted her to tell it over and over again.
Where was your mother when this happened?
Hanging out the clothes. She left a sheet dragging, to run in.
He thanked the girl, still more of a child than a woman, and walked
back to his motorcar, thoughtful and uneasy.
I ought to find Henry Cutter, he told himself as he drove on to the
Lambeth Road, and turned toward Kent.
It s no been pressing for all these years, Hamish reminded him.
It hasn t, no, Rutledge agreed, and fell silent. Trying to remember
the case not in hindsight but the way it had unfolded at the time that
a fearsome doubt 79
was what was hard. How he d felt, how he d thought, how he d
watched the evidence build.
He had been another man then. Young, idealistic. A stranger to the
hollow shell who had come back from the war and for months struggled
to rebuild his peacetime skills. He had more in common with the voice
of Hamish MacLeod than he did with his prewar self. That Ian
Rutledge might have lived six centuries ago, not a mere six years.
Somewhere they had lost each other.
November anywhere in England was a cold and often rainy
month. The air was heavy, damp, and chill, and with the sun retreating
toward the equator, the shorter days seemed to drag through their ap-
pointed hours with a dullness that sometimes made the difference be-
tween sunrise and sunset a matter only of conjecture. Had the sun risen?
Was it setting or was there another squall of rain on its way? Along the
rivers, fog could hold on for a good part of the morning, and heavy
clouds finished the late afternoon long before night could fall. The lin-
gering sunsets of Midsummer, when light filled the air well past eight
and nine, and sometimes as late as ten, were a thing of memory.
A depressing season. . .
Hamish said, The rain was worst, in France. I couldna get used to
the rain.
It had soaked their greatcoats and left shoes a soggy, rotting mess,
and it had ruined tempers, brought out the miasma of smells from the
trenches, and made the heavy mud so slippery that a man could lose his
footing and go down as he raced across No Man s Land. Rutledge had
fallen more than once, feeling the swift plucking at his shoulder or el-
bow where machine-gun fire had barely missed him. And then scram-
bled back to his feet into the steady scything, waiting for the blow to his
body that never came, never more than just that ghostly plucking.
Living a charmed life had frightened him as much as it had defeated
him. He d wanted to die.
80 charles todd
Kent was a fertile part of the country, covered with pasturage and
hop gardens, with orchards blazingly white in spring, and apples or
plums or cherries hanging darkly from summer boughs. Agriculture
was its mainstay, though there had been iron at one time, and the cut-
ting of the great forests for making charcoal to smelt the iron had
opened up the Weald to grass for sheep or horses or the plow. There was
still industry along the Medway, and shipbuilding on the coast where
the tradition of putting to sea was strong. But most of Kent was green,
with ash and beech and sometimes oak in the hedgerows or marching in
shady rows down the lanes.
This was also the gateway to England from the Continent, the path
taken by invaders, by priests, by merchants, and by the weavers who at
the request of Edward III had come to teach the English how to turn
their valuable wool into far more valuable cloth. Prosperous and rural
and content, most of the villages turned their backs on the Dover London
road, and got on with their lives in peace.
Marling was a pretty village, even by Kentish standards, settled on
a ridge overlooking the long slope of land that fell away toward the
Weald. A High Street ran through the center, dividing where a triangu-
lar space opened up and created the irregular square that had held the
Guy Fawkes bonfire. The Tuesday Market here had been one of the vil-
lage s mainstays for generations, giving it status among its neighbors.
The square had been cleared long since of the last of the ashes, and
today lay quiet and colorless in the cold rain that had followed at
Rutledge s heels. Even the Cavalier standing bravely in the wet on his
plinth appeared to huddle under his plumed hat.
Rutledge knew where to find the police station it was several
doors down from the hotel where he d dined with Elizabeth Mayhew
and her friends after the bonfire. Tucked in between a bakery on the one
side and a haberdashery on the other, the station occupied one of the old
brick buildings still carrying proudly the Georgian facades that gave
Marling its particular character.
The midday traffic was light, a few carriages and carts, a motorcar
or two, and women hurrying from butcher to greengrocer to draper s
shop one, pausing to speak to a friend, pushed her covered pram with
metronomic rhythm, back and forth, back and forth. Another, carrying
a fearsome doubt 81
a small wet dog in her arms, was lecturing the animal for running into
the road, warning it of dire consequences.
On the surface, it was a peaceful scene, a prewar England in some
ways, seemingly detached from the hardships and shortages that
scarred Sansom Street s inhabitants in London.
Hamish, observing it, said, You wouldna think murder had been [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]