"A great disguise, seasickness," Cummins said dryly.
"You forget, the ship's captain had never seen Norman. He was nothing more than a name on the manifest, and the few glimpses anyone had had of him."
"Hmmm. Who then took his place? The killer?"
Rutledge said, "I expect we'll never know. But if it was the killer, then he's dead." He paused. "He was a schoolmaster in a prestigious public school in Dorset. Norman. Not so very far from Stonehenge."
"What was his field?"
"History."
"Was his journey to Peru carefully planned or spur of the moment?"
"It was apparently arranged some months before his departure."
Cummins shook his head.
"Where did the schoolmaster who planned the Druids' trip to Stonehenge teach?"
"You've seen the file. At a public school in Dorset."
"Coincidence?"
"He was cleared. He couldn't have killed the man nor roped him to that bloody stone. He was within sight of his fellow Druids at all times."
"No, possibly not. But perhaps someone knew about his adventure to Stonehenge and thought it a very good idea to take an inconvenient body there."
"But what about Wheeler? He was identified."
"You know how uncertain identifications can be. At a guess, the Edinburgh police were happy to see the end of Wheeler. I've done some research. There was a Wheeler from Orkney killed at Gallipoli. He'd immigrated to Australia from Belfast in 1904."
"Did he, by God!"
"Where is your schoolmaster, now? Do you know?"
Cummins made a wry face. "Dead of cholera in India. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Rutledge, but it doesn't solve crimes."
He himself had said much the same, one day in Eastfield.
Cummins took up his menu. Without opening it, he said, "I was so sure about Wheeler. Even so, we could find no motive to explain why he'd been killed. And without the identity of the victim, we were still stymied as to motive. It was a vicious circle. That's what bothered me all these years. In spite of the loopholes in your arguments, I expect you've come closer to finding answers than I ever did."
"How do you suppose someone discovered your grandfather's name was Charles Henry?"
Cummins gave it some thought. "There was a solicitor connected with the case. His name was Charles Henry. I remember remarking to someone that my grandfather's name was Charles Henry. Charles Henry Cummins."
"Who overheard you?"
"Oh, I know who was there at the time. Our Druid leader, the schoolmaster." He smiled. "Before you leap to conclusions, that Charles Henry-the solicitor-was up in years. In fact, he died soon after the inquest. He was probably dying at the time and no one realized it. Weak heart." He set aside his menu and raised his glass. "I always knew you were a very good policeman, Ian. Bowles is a fool, damn his eyes."
The waiter was hovering, and Cummins looked up at him. "Yes, yes, all right. How is the fish here?"
When Rutledge returned to his flat at the end of the day, he found a letter waiting. It was from Rosemary Hume, and it was brief. It's time, Ian. Can you come?
He left a message for the Yard, and set out straightaway for Chaswell. When he got there, it was late, but Rosemary was waiting up for him. Even as he walked through the house door, he could hear Reginald's forced breathing. Rosemary took him directly up the staircase to the room her husband's cousin had been given.
"He asked to see you alone," she said as she turned back toward the stairs.
Reginald was in a chair, leaning forward, struggling for breath. He greeted Rutledge with a weary smile and a nod.
"I'm sorry to see you in such straits," he said, sitting down by the invalid chair. "Is there anything I can do?"
A paroxysm of coughing nearly doubled Reginald in two, and afterward he lay back against his pillows, drained. But he lifted a hand and pointed to his desk. It was a tall affair with bookshelves above, and then the drop-down front that formed the writing surface. Rutledge walked across the room, opened the desk. It was all but empty, and he turned to Reginald.
"Left."
There were cubbyholes on either side of a small central alcove, and Rutledge looked in the left one. He saw an envelope pushed deep into the narrow space and hardly visible. He pulled it out. Maxwell Hume's name was scrawled across it in a firm hand, and then, more recently, that had been crossed out and his own name had been written above Maxwell's. From the state of the envelope, Rutledge realized that Reginald must have written this some years earlier, for the original ink was already fading. "This?"
Reginald nodded.
Rutledge went back to sit by him. "Shall I open it now?"
Reginald said briefly, "Later."
And so they sat together for the rest of the night, mostly in companionable silence, although at times Rutledge talked quietly about their lives, about the war, and about Max.
Shortly after dawn, Reginald put out a clawlike hand and gripped Rutledge's arm with surprising strength. Rutledge gave him his own hand, and waited.
"Forgive me." The words were hardly more than a whisper.
He said, "You're forgiven. With all my heart."
"Truly?"
"As God is my witness."
After a time, the room fell quiet, the struggle to breathe finished. Rutledge held the thin hand for a while longer, and then laid it gently in his friend's lap and closed Reginald's eyes. He took the letter, then remembering, put it in his pocket where Rosemary wouldn't see it.
And he went down the stairs to where Rosemary, her eyes red with crying, was drinking tea. She passed a clean cup to Rutledge, and he poured his own. It was lukewarm, but he drank it for her sake.
A little later she said, "I finally slept. And then I awoke with a start. I didn't know where I was. It was then I heard the silence."
"I'll speak to Mr. Gramling soon."
"He didn't want a priest at the end. He said it would be wrong to ask for anyone to save two souls, his as well as Maxwell's." She hesitated. "Did he kill himself, Ian?"
"No. God, no, Rosemary. He-simply stopped breathing."
"I thought that was why he wanted a policeman at the end."
"I wasn't a policeman upstairs tonight. I was a friend. I've sat with the dying before this."
She reached out and put her hand over his. "I'm sorry. Thank you."
Half an hour later, he left her still sitting at the table and went out to find Mr. Gramling. R utledge didn't read the letter until much later that day, when he had gone to visit Maxwell Hume's grave. Max,
I hesitate to put this on your conscience as well as mine. But I face my first battle tomorrow, and if I die, I don't want to carry this with me into whatever hell I find. And so I'm writing to you, and when you read this, you will know I'm dead and out of any man's reach. I must tell you that when I was much younger, I killed a man. I should have taken my chances with the courts. But I was very frightened, and the people I turned to told me that given the circumstances, I would ruin the rest of my life if I went to the police. I listened to them, not because I really believed them but because I wanted to believe them. And so through circumstances that aided us and the careful planning of two other people, we carried it off.
The victim was William Norman. Do you know the name? He went exploring and never came back. Only it was a poor man who worked for the school whom we dressed as William Norman and sent to sea with the promise of a return ticket two weeks after he landed. For our sins, he died of a fever instead and never came home. I blame myself for that as well.
William Norman was a schoolmaster who hurt people for his own pleasure. Sadistic and clever, he forced his boys to make choices. Lie about a friend or he would tell the headmaster a worse lie in its place. Steal money and swear that it was one of the servants, who would then be sacked without a reference. Or he would fail someone we liked whose marks were already poor, and see that he was sent down. When it was my turn, the choice was particularly heinous. I refused, I said I'd die first, and he told me he could arrange for me to die, and showed me the knife. He also told me who would be blamed for my death. I didn't know where to turn. He told me he'd leave me for a quarter of an hour, to make my decision. I did. I took the only course I could see. I picked up the weapon from his desk and then bent over it as if weeping. He came in, took my hair in his hand and pulled my head up. I drove the sharp blade into his body. By some fluke, it nicked the great artery and he died. I don't know where I found the strength or the courage to watch it happen. I cleaned up as best I could and went to find my housemaster. He and one of the younger masters and I sat there and decided to cover up the crime. I asked if William Norman's family would suffer, and they thought not. He'd been estranged from them for some years. That was all I needed to know.