The odor of cooking wafted up to him, coming from the kitchen below. Beyond the rooftops of Walmer, the sun was almost summer bright but casting long shadows.
There was a knock at the door, and when he opened it, a young man stood there with a tray and various dishes covered by a napkin.
When Rutledge had thanked him and set the tray on the small table, he discovered that someone had added a tart to his order.
Then he pulled the napkin across the food again and reached for his notebook, only to set it aside, and pour himself a cup of tea.
Anything to keep at bay what was to come . . .
His supper was cold when he finally forced himself to eat it, and set the tray outside his door for collection.
When at last it was fully dark, and the candles at all nine of the tables were clearly visible, he undressed, pulled the coverlet and top sheet down, and reached for the lamp, intending to turn it off. And stopped short. Turning back to the bed, he stared at the sheet he was about to lie on. He’d thought he’d seen shadows, the way the coverlet had fallen back.
Lifting the lamp, he brought it closer to the bed.
The sheet was smeared with dry blood. He knew too well what that looked like.
Ghosts didn’t bleed . . . And the victim in the Abbey gardens hadn’t bled at all.
He simply left it there, tossing the coverlet over the bed again, sitting in the only chair in the room, and waited for the darkness.
When he came down in the morning, Rutledge went to find the manager, who was speechless at first, shocked and disturbed by the request.
“Are—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “Are you sure, Inspector?”
“Come with me, and tell me what you see.”
“I—um—I’ll have the sheets—the entire bed—would you prefer another room?”
“No. Just see that it’s gone before I’ve finished my breakfast.”
“Yes—yes, of course, Inspector. I am so sorry—”
“Had anyone asked for me, last evening?” The boy, Eddie Dunn, had waited outside . . .
“Asking—no—that’s to say there were a good many people here early on—a party for the young couple—we were quite busy . . .” His voice trailed off.
Rutledge didn’t pursue the matter. His motorcar had been in the yard. It would have been easy enough to slip up the back stairs, unnoticed by the busy staff, open doors until the right room was found, and foul the sheets. The question was, had someone decided to play a little joke on the man hunting a ghostly killer? Or was it an attempt to persuade him that the ghost was another prank, and no harm was meant by either of them? That Scotland Yard was wasting its time in Walmer?
The manager was still apologizing as Rutledge left the office.
He chose a table in the corner of the dining room where he hoped he wouldn’t be disturbed.
He had finally slept around four, drained and exhausted by the battering he’d endured as Hamish filled the darkness with one memory after another. Wave after wave of attacks across No Man’s Land that had gone wrong because their intelligence had been wrong, he and the other survivors dragging the bodies of his men back across the wire, the wounded and the dead—the faces and the names went on and on. For he remembered them, all of them—he’d written the letters of condolences for every officer and man. Lies to families that let them believe that their loved ones had died swiftly and bravely, fighting for King and Country, their last thoughts about those at home. Keeping to himself the agony of their dying and their screams, the torn bodies and the blood.
The price of living, Dr. Fleming had called it. “You don’t owe them your own death,” he’d told Rutledge. “It was mere fate that you survived and they didn’t. You can’t carry that guilt with you, or you’ll go mad. What you can do is honor them by not wasting the future you’ve been given.”
Easier said than done . . .
It was one of the reasons he’d gone back to the Yard sooner than even Fleming had advised. Because he didn’t know how much future he would have.
When he went back to his room after he’d finished his breakfast, he found the bed pristine, so perfectly made that it would have satisfied any barracks Sergeant.
That done, he went out to his motorcar, half-expecting that someone had tampered with it as well. But he could find nothing wrong.
Turning the crank, he got in and started out of Walmer.
He was still annoyed by the blood in the sheets.
Who had done that? Who had fouled his bed with blood? Was it a prank, or was it someone who wanted Scotland Yard to go away?
If that was the point, he told himself, they’d damned well gone the wrong way about it.
He followed the main road back to the Abbey, then continued past it, searching for access to the airfield without going through the estate. And as he’d thought while exploring the day before, it turned out to be the same lane that served the stables. When he came out past the long thick hedge, this end of it stopping just short of the lane, he left his motorcar in its shadow, and walked on.
And even though he quartered the entire installation, he found nothing to explain the disappearance of Gerald Dunn or what Lady Benton had claimed she’d seen.
Nothing, as well, to explain what Hamilton’s son and his friends had seen here that frightened them when they had taken the dare to explore the airfield one night.
He looked in the handful of remaining buildings, but they were empty, no indication that a body had been left there until it could safely be reclaimed.
The long close-cropped grass strip where the aircraft had taken off was already losing its definition, returning to its natural state.
When he could, during the war, he himself had gone up a few times in the observer’s seat. It had given him a different perspective of the battle. Once his craft had come within range of rifles in the trenches, and he’d heard the fabric tear when fire found them.
Now there was only the sound of the wind blowing.
It would be impossible to bury a body in a place where even a hare hopping across the flat meadow would be noticed. For one thing, there would have been a night watch on the airfield, and for another, given the number of men posted here, there must have been eyes everywhere, even in the dark. Had Gerald Dunn deserted after all, and was even now living in Manchester or perhaps London, afraid still to come home?
Turning back toward the hedges and the house beyond, he saw a figure standing on the terrace overlooking the lawns, waving.
He couldn’t tell from this distance whether it was Lady Benton or one of her staff. That brought home to him how the household had heard and even seen the aircraft taking off or coming in. Without wishing to, this proximity had drawn Lady Benton and anyone in the Abbey into the life of the airfield.
It explained too why Lady Benton had allowed the men to use part of her grounds. If she had counted the aircraft that went out and the numbers that returned, she must have known the losses, and if there had been a crash landing, she would have heard it or even witnessed the flames.
He wondered if anyone from the house had seen the Captain’s motorcar crash. With that thought in mind, he turned his gaze toward the long line of the hedge, searching for the exact spot where the vehicle had struck it. From anywhere on the airfield, it would have been easy to see where the hedge stopped and the farm lane led up to the main road. The Captain couldn’t have misjudged that, even if he’d come from far out onto the airfield, where the aircraft were parked. And so whatever had gone wrong—driver error or mechanical failure—he must have struck the hedge just about—there. Close by the tennis courts? Trying for the lane, and failing to reach it because his steering had failed or he himself had lost control.