The policeman, however, walked briskly to Reception and turned the book toward him to see who had registered with Barrington.
There were two names. Separate rooms. S. Barrington and J. Fellowes. Barrington had given his address as London, but Fellowes had listed Boston.
The clerk saw what Rutledge was doing and came out of the office. “Here—”
“Police business,” Rutledge said curtly, and went out to find his dinner.
He reached London in the late afternoon, stopping twice on the road for a brief respite.
Hamish had rumbled through the night, as he’d often done in the trenches, and the soft Scots voice had brought tension with it.
Rutledge went straight to his flat, and he found Frances waiting as promised, her face filled with concern. He knew at once that someone was dead.
“Who is it?” he asked, bracing himself. “Not Melinda—”
Melinda Trent, the intriguing elderly woman who’d lived through the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, had been a friend of his family for as long as he could remember, and cared for him as well. He returned that love in full measure, leavened by a strong suspicion that she saw through him more often than not. If she’d found Hamish in his shadows, she had spoken of that only obliquely. Her home was in Kent, and he promised himself he would find a way to go on there tonight, taking Frances with him.
“No.” She crossed the room to greet him, hands on his shoulders, and said, “Oh, my dear, I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Quickly would be best,” he replied tightly.
“It’s Jean,” she told him then. “She’s dead.”
“Jean—”
The woman he should—would—have married, if there had been no war.
He had got over her, he had told himself that often enough through a long dark year. Now it struck him that he had never said good-bye. That day in the clinic when he’d broken off their engagement so that she wouldn’t have to ask him to set her free, letting her go because it was what she desperately wanted and didn’t know how to tell him, she had walked out of his room promising to come again as soon as she could. But she never had. He had known she wouldn’t be able to brace herself for another visit.
Dead—
He could feel Frances’s hands on his shoulders, hear her voice, and knew that she was there.
“Who told you?” he asked hoarsely. “How did you find out?”
“Melinda telephoned to me. A friend of hers had sent her a cable from Canada. It was in the papers in Toronto.”
That too was a blow. That Jean had died and he had felt nothing.
“How did it happen?”
“Complications of pregnancy. She lost her child—a miscarriage—and infection set in afterward. They did all that was possible to save her.”
Women died in childbirth every day. Only he hadn’t expected one of them to be Jean.
“Is she coming back to England?”
“The obituary says she’ll be buried in Canada. Her husband is still serving there.”
And so he would never say good-bye. Not now.
The last time he’d seen her, she was coming out of St. Margaret’s Church, where she was soon to be married. A cluster of her friends surrounded her, their voices traveling to him where he stood. Her face was shining with happiness and excitement as she discussed flowers and candles and ribbons. It had broken his heart—and yet he had never hated her for leaving him. He had known what sort of husband he would have made. She was better off without him.
Still, he felt a surge of guilt for letting her go.
If she had stayed in England—
But that was pointless.
Rutledge set Frances aside and went to the window to look out on the street, not seeing it.
She went away, and came back presently with a cup of tea.
Rutledge drank it, the hot strong liquid cutting through the shock of Frances’s news.
There was nothing he could do. No word of comfort for the bereaved husband—who probably had never known Rutledge existed—and no flowers for the raw earth of the grave.
He finished his tea and said, “I need to walk. Will you wait?”
“Of course.”
He had never taken off his coat. He just went out the door.
An hour later, he saw that there was a church on the next corner, smoke-stained stone, with a spire that gleamed in the sun.
The door was unlocked and he went inside into the silent dimness. His footsteps echoed against the stone walls, and he got as far as the first row of chairs. There he sat down. It wasn’t the comfort of God he sought so much as the need to be alone. And Hamish, mercifully, was quiet.
He hadn’t expected it. That was the problem. The loss was emotional, sharp.
Their engagement had not been spent growing closer to each other, settling into a warm and responsive companionship that would carry them into old age, as it should have been. Four years of war had seen to that and changed them both. She was another man’s wife, now. Not his, never his. And while he grieved for the girl he had asked to marry him in 1914, she had left a long time ago.
He rose after a while and walked back the way he’d come.
Hamish, at his shoulder, said only, “It was verra’ different with my Fiona. I should ha’ come home to her, and left you dead in France. Your Jean wouldna’ have missed you…”
The voice was sad, as if half convincing himself that this was true.
Together the two men, one of whom didn’t exist, went back to the flat.
15
Frances was waiting, as she’d promised.
She said as he came through the door, “The Yard sent someone. You are to come at once.”
Rutledge swore silently. There was never any time…
“Yes, I’ll go. Shall I give you a lift home?”
“As far as Trafalgar Square, if you don’t mind. Ian—are you all right? Do you want me to call the Yard and ask them to give you an hour or two?”
“Work,” he said bitterly, “is its own panacea. But thanks.”
He stopped long enough to change clothes. And then he shut the flat door behind them as he led the way to his motorcar. He couldn’t help but wonder how long it would be before he crossed his threshold again without remembering the news that had been waiting here today.
Frances kept him busy with trivial gossip until he put her down in the square, and she leaned across to kiss him before she got out.
He watched her walk briskly in the direction of St. Martin’s in the Fields, and then turned toward the Yard. He hadn’t mentioned seeing Simon Barrington. It hadn’t seemed the right moment, and then too important to be a parting remark.
It was Simon’s business and none of his, after all. As long as Frances wasn’t hurt. But he thought she was going to be.
His eye was caught by a familiar figure walking toward him along the street. It was Meredith Channing, dressed in a becoming dark red coat and matching hat. She didn’t look his way, but he could have sworn she had seen his motorcar and recognized it as quickly as he had recognized her.
Bowles was waiting for him at the Yard and almost as he walked in the door asked abruptly for his report.
“There’s no time to write it out, but I want to know what’s going on.”
Rutledge gave it orally, as Bowles stood fuming by the window.
When he’d finished, Bowles grunted, and Rutledge couldn’t tell whether he was satisfied or still irritated. It was often difficult to read the man’s moods.
“Stepping on toes is never prudent. I want you back in Berkshire tonight. I want to see the end of this business with Partridge or Parkinson or whatever his name is. Finish it as fast as you can, and report to me. Yorkshire is complaining we’re playing merry hell with their inquiry, and giving them damn all in return. They still have that godforsaken body, and don’t know what to do with it.”