11
It was just dawn when Rutledge walked out of the Abbey and went around to his motorcar. Even the gulls were quiet at this hour, and he had the roads to himself, except for the van delivering milk. There was a petrol station just opening as he passed, and he made the necessary stop.
He had to push the motorcar hard to reach Dover before the ferry was scheduled to leave. What’s more, the crossing at Gravesend was delayed, putting him on an even tighter schedule.
And it was imperative to have the time to find a telephone.
He was successful in that at least, and put through a call to Haldane.
The man answered almost at once.
“Rutledge. Are you in Dover?”
“I am. Why should I take the ferry to France?”
“You rather owe me, I think. There’s a small matter to attend to there.”
“I’m in the middle of an inquiry—”
“Nevertheless, you will be on that ferry. It’s important to both of us.”
“Where am I going? And why?”
“Did you read the map?”
“Yes. Somewhere close by the Ypres road, apparently.”
“Exactly. A motorcar will be waiting for you in Calais. You can’t miss it. The port master will know. Drive to the village circled on the map, and don’t use your name or title. Find the house of one Michel Vermuelen.”
“Who is Vermuelen?”
“You’ll see soon enough. Don’t miss the ferry.”
And the receiver was put up, the connection broken.
Rutledge debated whether or not to go to France. For one thing, it brought back too many memories, grief that hadn’t healed. For another he was not a man who liked being used.
He’d always suspected that one day, Haldane would call in his debt.
He left the motorcar in the ferry office compound, told the Customs Officers why it was there—official business, even though he had no idea what that business was. He had no jurisdiction in France. Besides, it would require a great deal of bureaucratic formalities to arrange for him to do more than travel there as a private citizen.
Rutledge was the last passenger to come aboard the ferry. He’d made certain of that, still uneasy. And as the ferry pulled out into the road and started the crossing, he felt a stronger surge of uneasiness about what he might be leaving behind in Essex.
The motorcar was waiting, a Citroën, the first one produced, almost at war’s end, in 1919. He looked it over, decided he could cope, and got in.
It was not a comfortable motorcar compared to his own, but it seemed to drive reasonably well, and he left the harbor, climbed to the town at the top of the hill, forcing himself not to remember marching his men up the winding approach to Calais, where they were given their orders for proceeding to the Front.
It was here too that he and Meredith Channing had begun their journey to Belgium. That was another memory he didn’t wish to relive. The traffic coming out of Calais and finding the road north toward Ypres managed to keep Hamish at bay, and then he could see how the wounds of war had healed—or not.
And then he was on the long flat stretch of road he knew too well.
Heavy fighting in 1914 and onward had left scars. Shattered trees, buildings in ruin or patched together sufficiently to be habitable. The road itself had had to be regraded, to make it passable.
He found the little village of Langville on a side road closer to the sea, but in spite of himself, he found he couldn’t take the turning.
Instead he travelled on to the Belgian town of Bruges and bought flowers at a tiny shop on the street. It didn’t take him long to find what he was after, the pretty little church that he and Meredith Channing had visited, with the perfect little Madonna with Saint John. As he approached the church, the priest, just stepping through the great door, nodded to him, pausing to see if the stranger might be calling for him. Satisfied he was not, he disappeared inside.
There were a number of fresh graves, but after a time, Rutledge found what he’d been looking for.
There was a joint stone, and he winced as he saw that her husband was buried beside her. He told himself that the man lying there with Meredith Channing was not to blame for what had happened to her. And yet what had happened was unforgiveable.
Channing had been ill, damaged by the war to the point he hadn’t known his own name when he had been found wandering in the middle of nowhere, a released prisoner with no idea who he was or where he’d come from. Even whether he was French or German or Belgian. His torn uniform could have been stolen from the living or the dead.
The nuns had taken him in, they had worked diligently to learn which army he might have belonged to, and in the end, they had found out his name, and through the Red Cross or some such, they had found Meredith.
She had been searching for her husband since he’d gone missing, presumed dead. Her own sense of duty had never let her stop searching, even when all hope had gone. And yet Channing’s survival had shocked her as much as it had shocked Rutledge. But when the letter had come from the nuns, inquiring if this shell of a man could be her husband, she had asked Rutledge to take her to Bruges to find out if the man with the broken mind was Channing.
Rutledge had begun to fall in love with her. But he took her to Belgium—and tragically she had recognized Channing. Rutledge had had to leave her there, at her bidding. Even though he had known that she didn’t love the shambling, half-mad figure who had stared blankly at her without any idea who she was. That she had stayed out of duty, not love.
Had stayed and nursed the man who would eventually kill her in one of his violent fits.
He hadn’t known Meredith was dead until the nuns had written again—and she was already in her grave by then.
Rutledge knelt there in the churchyard for a time. Remembering her, remembering what he’d felt for her. What he’d believed she’d felt for him.
And then he laid the flowers by her half of the joint stone.
I came back . . .
It was all he could find to say, as he got to his feet.
As he was leaving, the priest came out of the church.
“I saw you there. Is it a loved one you visited?”
“Yes . . .”
“Do you need comfort, my son?” the priest asked in concern.
“Thank you, Father, but no.”
“So many come here, and to the graves of the war dead.” He shook his head. “It was not the peace we’d hoped for.”
“No.”
With a nod, the priest went back inside.
He didn’t remember finding his way back to the motorcar.
It was late when Rutledge came back to the turning to the little village near the coast. Later than Haldane might have liked, but then Haldane wasn’t here, he thought grimly.
There was a man walking along the road, on his way to a row of houses, hardly more than cottages, that heralded the village of Langville, Rutledge pulled over and asked for the home of Michel Vermuelen, but the man shook his head.
“Why do you wish this man?” he asked in French with a heavy accent that made the question difficult to follow.
“I knew him in the war.”
The man studied him in the reflected light of the headlamps. “Then you also know he is dead.”
“I think not. Or someone would have told me.”