“Who are you?”
“My name is Broadhurst.” He’d put a man in Dartmoor by that name. It would do.
“And who is Monsieur Broadhurst?”
That was trickier. Rutledge said, “We—did some business once.”
“What sort of business, then?”
“Profitable.”
If Vermuelen had been a soldier, he would have had little contact with the English forces. But then again, if he were an older man, he might have helped the Expeditionary Force with information or as a translator . . .
To himself Rutledge swore at Haldane for not giving him more information.
But that response seemed to be the right one.
“He is in the house two from the church.”
Rutledge nodded and drove on.
Villages this near Ypres had seen heavy fighting. Patched roofs, broken walls and chimneys were proof of that. Gaps where houses had been, piles of bricks and wood where others had been shelled, and a church without a tower. He mentally cataloged these as he passed by a few shops, one with boarded windows, and reached the church itself. There were no houses next to the church on this side, except for the priest’s house. On the far side the one nearest the church was dark. Its neighbor had a lamp lit, a bright rectangle in the gathering darkness.
Pulling up in front of the small, two-story house, he stopped the motorcar and got out.
The yard was more rubble than grass, but the door appeared to be solid enough as Rutledge knocked.
After a time, a nun answered it, her headdress wide and curved like sails. Her face was lined and sad. But she said calmly in French, “Oui?” Behind her there was only darkness, as if the household was asleep.
“I’m looking for Michel Vermuelen. I’m told he lives in this house.”
“He does. But he is very ill, and does not have the strength to speak to visitors.”
“I’ve come from England to see him. I knew him once, in the war.”
The nun frowned. “In his present state, I do not think he wishes to remember the war.”
“Nevertheless,” Rutledge told her, “he would not wish to die with certain matters on his conscience.”
At that she moved aside, returning her hands to the sleeves of her habit, and led the way down a dark, unlit passage to a room near the end.
When she opened the door, the smell of sickness struck him.
Vermuelen must be very ill—and important enough, to have a nun for a nurse . . .
Rutledge stepped into the room. It appeared to have been a sitting room converted to a sickroom. He didn’t recognize the man in the bed, but as he approached, he wondered if even those who had known him would know him now.
In the light of a lamp shaded by a shawl, his body, once strapping, was wasted and thin, now, though he must have been tall, for his legs were long under the coverlet.
He appeared to be asleep, eyes closed, his mouth slightly open in the thin face.
Rutledge said to the nun in a whisper, “What is his illness?”
“Gangrene. It is not contagious.”
“How did he come by his wound?” Rutledge had seen gangrene in the trenches. It was ugly and not an easy way to die, bit by bit.
“A knife. The other injuries healed. The leg did not.”
Approaching the bed, Rutledge said quietly, “Michel? Are you awake?”
The man’s eyes blinked several times, then opened. They were wells of pain.
“I have come from England to see you.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Broadhurst.”
“I don’t know you.”
Taking a chance, Rutledge said, “Haldane sent me.”
To his surprise, the name brought recognition. The eyes focused sharply.
“Tell him I am dying.”
Rutledge had a feeling that the man in the bed was accustomed to being careful. That it was ingrained in him, even as he lay desperately ill.
“He sent me to you. He must know that.”
“What is your business with Haldane?”
What to answer? Rutledge finally replied, “I have come from Essex. About a murder.”
“I knew him in the war. We did good work, then.”
He wondered if Vermuelen was even aware of what he’d said. The man’s eyes had closed again.
Then he spoke. “What the Germans did in Belgium was not human.”
“I was not there. I was on the Somme. But there were refugees. We heard enough.” He paused, then added, “What can you tell me about Walmer and the Abbey there?”
The names didn’t seem to mean anything to the man on the bed. There was no sign that he recognized either of them.
“The airfield?”
Silence again. The weary, pain-ridden eyes stayed closed. Behind Rutledge, the nun said, “He must rest.”
Rutledge turned to her. “There doesn’t appear to be much time,” he said softly, so that her patient couldn’t hear him. “I must talk to him before the end comes. Then he will rest.”
“You must leave him now.”
There was no point in arguing. “Is there another part of the house where I can wait until he wakes again?
“Most of the house is closed. But there is his workroom.”
“That will do.”
She led him down the passage to another door and opened it. “There is a lamp on the table. Matches by the hearth.”
“Where will you be?”
“In the kitchen. Just there.” She nodded toward a door across from the sickroom and then went away.
Rutledge took out his lighter, and found the lamp on the table without barking his shins. He lit the wick, turned it up, but the chimney was grimy with smoke, as if it hadn’t been cleaned in some time. As the light strengthened, he turned to look around the room.
It was a workroom of sorts. The table was covered with maps, layered one on top of the other. The top one showed the countryside around Ypres. There were two chairs, and shelves against the wall holding books. The hearth was cold, and there was no fire lit, nor was it laid.
He sat down in one of the two chairs, just as Hamish spoke.
“I dona’ like this.”
Nor do I, he answered silently, glad of his heavy coat. The house was cold.
“If yon man worked for Haldane, why did you need to come here? He could ha’ sent that man of his.”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
He tried to make himself more comfortable, but there were no cushions in the chairs, and the furnishings, as the wick caught well and the light improved, were battered and chipped. Some of the books in the shelves were either missing—long gaps between them—or their spines were torn. Who the hell was Vermuelen?
The closer it got to dawn, the colder the house seemed to grow. Rutledge stood up and began to pace, but that was no help. Finally resigning himself to no sleep, he turned to the worktable.
He’d seen the map of the surrounds of Ypres, lying on top. And as he lifted it to see what lay beneath it, he realized that these were military maps of the French and Belgian coastline. How had Vermuelen come by them?
And on the bottom were military maps of the Essex coastline, with all its estuaries and waterways, marshes and lone strands.
Rutledge, frowning, pulled those out, just as the wick began to smoke. He had to stop and trim it by the glow of his lighter, but in the end he could at least see what he was looking at.