"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.