“Yes, you told me that, the night—” Rutledge began aloud, and then quickly stopped. Corporal Hamish MacLeod had talked to him about the August haying the night he’d died. In France. Odd that memory turned on something as simple as the smell of new-mown hay!
And yet he was accustomed to answering the voice in his head out of old habit. 1916. The Somme. A bloodbath for months, the toll climbing astronomically, and men so tired their minds simply shut down. Assault after futile assault, and still the German line held.
Set against such appalling losses, one more casualty was insignificant. Yet the death of a young Scottish corporal had inscribed itself on Rutledge’s soul. It was Rutledge who commanded the firing squad that killed him, and Rutledge’s pistol that had delivered the coup de grace in the hour before dawn.
The act had been a military necessity. Hamish MacLeod had refused a direct order in battle; refused to lead his men one last time into certain death. Not cowardice, but exhaustion, and the sheer bloody senselessness of throwing lives away, had broken him. But for the sake of every soldier watching, an example had to be made. For the sake of thousands of men readying for the next assault, and example had to be made. You had to know, facing death, that you could depend on the man next to you, as he depended on you.
Rutledge could still feel that late summer heat. Hear the din—artillery, machine-gun fire, the curses and cries of the wounded men. Smell the sweat and fear. He could still see the grief in his corporal’s eyes, and the acceptance. It was a relief to die rather than lead his men back into the black hail of German fire.
And all for nothing!
The artillery shell found its mark an instant later, buried living and dead, officers and men, in heavy, stinking mud. Killing most of them outright, leaving the wounded survivors to suffocate before the search dogs could find them many hours later. And ironically, the next shell sprayed shrapnel into the machine gun position they’d failed to take all that long night.
Rutledge had barely survived.
Deaf and blind, badly stunned, he lay under the corpse of one of his men in a tiny pocket of air that had sufficed to keep him alive. He hadn’t known until someone had told him at the aid station that it was Hamish’s blood soaking his coat, Hamish’s flesh clotting his face and hair, the smell of Hamish’s torn body haunting him all the rest of that day as he lay dazed. Severely claustrophobic from a living grave, severely shell-shocked, bruised and disoriented, he had been allowed a few hours’ rest and was then sent back to the Front. And Hamish went with him.
A living reality in his mind. A voice with its soft Scottish burr. A personality as strong as it had been in life.
Rutledge never spoke of it. He fought it alone, silently, as certain as the breath in his body that it was only a matter of time before death—or madness—brought an end. That expectation kept him sane.
And so he had brought Hamish home again, not as a ghost to be exorcised but as a deep-seated presence in the shocked and numbed recesses of his brain where only sleep could shut it out.
He’d shared his thoughts with a dead man for so long it was easier to respond than risk the tap of a ghostly hand on his shoulder to attract his attention or a white, empty face at the edge of his vision, demanding to be heard. That hadn’t happened—yet—but Hamish was so real to him that Rutledge lived in mortal dread of turning too quickly one day or glancing over his shoulder at the wrong instant and catching a glimpse of the shadowy figure that must surely be there, just behind him. Within touching distance. Close enough for its breath to ruffle his hair or brush his cheek.
“There was a picnic, that August,” Rutledge said, desperate to change the drift of thought. “Up the Thames, beneath a stand of beeches so heavy the sun came through the leaves in purple shadows—”
And that particular memory led to Jean ... she was as dead to him as Hamish. This very week he’d seen her engagement announced in the Times. To a man who’d served in a diplomatic posting in South America through most of the war. Away from guns and carnage and nightmares.
“He’s in line for a position in Ottawa,” Frances had said when she called round to offer what comfort there was to give. His sister knew everyone there was to know—few bits of gossip failed to find their way to her. “Away from all this.” She waved a languid hand in the air, and he’d known what she meant.
Away from a Britain still wearing the scars of death and pain and the poverty of peace. Away from Rutledge’s torment, which had frightened Jean.
“Jean has a knack for ignoring unpleasantness,” Frances had added wryly. “You won’t let it bother you, will you? That she found someone else so quickly? It simply means, my dear, that you’re well out of it, whether you’re aware of it yet or not. Shallow women make damnably dull and demanding wives. Although I must say, even I thought there was more to her. Or was that wishful thinking on my part too? Well, never mind, you’ll soon meet someone you can truly care about.”
Why was it that the mind was so adept at finding its own punishment? Jean—or Hamish—to fill his thoughts.
A bitter choice, Rutledge acknowledged with a sigh. The woman who had promised to marry him or the man whose life he’d taken. There was no surgery to mend a broken heart nor any to mend a broken mind.
The doctors had shrugged and told Rutledge, “Shell shock makes its own rules. When you’re able to sleep better—when the stress of the Great War—of your work—of your memories—fades a little, so will the reality of Hamish MacLeod.”
But stress was the nature of war. Stress was the very heart of his work at the Yard. He lived with death and blood and horror every day. It was what he did best, investigating murders. Hardly the most suitable work, perhaps, for a man back from the trenches, but he was trained for no other and didn’t have the spare energy to look for any other. And a prospective employer might well dig more deeply into his medical file than the Yard had done, taking him back after the war. Opening a Pandora’s box of things best left locked away.
Superintendent Bowles knew more of Rutledge’s war years—Rutledge was convinced of it—than anyone else at the Yard. It was there in his eyes, watchful and wary. In the sneer that sometimes passed for a smile. But there had been no overt attack on Rutledge’s character. Only the assignments that no one else wanted, for one reason or another. Like the summons taking him now to Dorset.
“Inspector Barton’s wife’s in the middle of a difficult pregnancy, and Dorset might as well be on the moon, she’s that upset about him leaving her. And Trask’s no countryman, they’ll be sending out search parties for him! As for Jack Bingham, he’s due for leave in two days.” Or so Bowles had claimed.
Not that it mattered; Rutledge was glad to be out of London. Loneliness had its own compensations, even when it brought Hamish in its wake.
Rutledge found his turning from the trunk road at the next signpost and was soon moving more southwesterly into the heart of Dorset. And with it the scent of hay faded. His mind found its way back from the past and slowly focused on the present.
This was Hardy country. But it was the difference in light that impressed Rutledge more than the author’s dark and murky characters. There was a golden-brown tint to the light here that seemed to come from the soil and the leaves of the trees. Not washed pastel like Norfolk, nor rich green like Kent. Nor gray damp like Lancaster. Dorset had been wool trade and stone, cottage industry and small farming towns strung along old roads that the Saxons had laid out long before the Norman conquest. Outlying meadows where cattle quietly grazed.