Drawing a chair up to the bedside, he said, “Vermuelen? Haldane sent me. I found your reports, what you’d done in the war. But there must be something else. I understand your need to be circumspect.”
There was no response from the man in the bed.
“If I had come here to find out what you knew, or to kill you and the Sister, I would have burned down the house with both of you in it, and been done with it. Instead, I have waited for the truth.”
Rutledge sat patiently, then was about to try again when Vermuelen spoke.
His accent was heavier, his voice weak as he fought for air. “Notes.”
“I have the war notes.”
“Not war. More.”
“You will have to tell me. I don’t know where to look.”
The man lifted a hand trembling with weakness. “Not finished.” He pointed to a table by the window. It held medicines, a bowl of what appeared to be broth, several glasses, and a spoon. Nothing else.
“Where?”
“Under. In case—someone came—to kill—”
Rutledge stood up and went to the table. It was old, very heavy wood, intended to last down the generations. As it must have done. But there was nothing to be seen. He turned to speak to the nun, but she had quietly left the room.
Dropping down on one knee, Rutledge ran his hands up under the table’s top, where the wood was unfinished. At first his fingers found nothing, and then just as he was about to give up, he felt something.
Not an envelope this time. A roll of papers, taped to the inner front edge.
He pulled them out carefully, then rose and returned to his chair.
“These?”
The man on the bed made an effort, opening his eyes. “Not finished,” he said again with a brief nod. “Ask. Ask him.”
“I shall. And I’ll see that these and the other papers reach London. Is there anything else I can do for you? Is there any message for Haldane?”
But what followed was almost unintelligible, sometimes a rambling murmur, and then the occasional single word. Rutledge found it nearly impossible to follow what Vermuelen was trying to tell him. From the effort the man was making, it was clear that it mattered in some way.
Were these instructions for Haldane? Information for Rutledge, that there hadn’t been time to add to the pages? Vermuelen himself had said that they weren’t finished. Or was his mind wandering as the poisoning in his blood spread? Several times, Rutledge thought he could make out what sounded like lake, and then more clearly, must look, followed by lake once more, and possibly body or was it bloody?
Twice Rutledge had to ask him to repeat something that made no sense at all, but it seemed that Vermuelen was struggling to pass on something that was on his mind and paid no attention.
A pause, finally, before he managed to speak as if to Rutledge directly. “Sister. She will stay.”
Rutledge couldn’t be sure whether the man was speaking of the nun or a relative. And then there was something more, hardly above a whisper. He leaned closer to Vermuelen, but couldn’t make it out.
And then he said, struggling to form the words, but still clearly enough for Rutledge to understand him, “Tell—tell him that it was a privilege to—to—”
His voice faded into silence. For an instant, Rutledge thought the man had died, but he was asleep, the deep sleep of medication. The nun had been giving him his next draft of laudanum or morphine, Rutledge wasn’t sure which.
He sat there for several minutes longer, then rose and went to the kitchen.
The nun was sitting at the table, her head in her hands. She looked up.
“He’s asleep.”
She nodded. “Better that way.”
“Are you his nurse? Or his sister?”
“Both,” she replied, her voice weary. “I will not leave until it is finished.”
“Shall I stay?” he asked.
But she shook her head. “It will happen in God’s good time. I am patient.”
“Who was he?”
“He hated the Germans for what they did to our country. He was lame, he couldn’t be a soldier. He found a different way. It took great courage. He was taken prisoner three times, and three times, he escaped. But not without cost each time. It is a wonder he has lived this long.”
“You must be proud of him.”
“It isn’t pride,” she said harshly. “It was duty.”
And then she added in her usual tone of voice, “I am sad there was no food to offer you. If you have found what you need, please go. He will be with God soon.”
He thanked her and left. But he stopped by the workroom and took up the map of the Essex coast, rolling it carefully.
And then he got into the borrowed motorcar and drove back to Calais.
He had much of the ferry to himself on this crossing and sat where he could read Vermuelen’s additional notes without someone looking over his shoulder. He had purchased some food in Calais, a little cheese and bread, and was glad of the hot tea on board.
The notes were as cryptic as the report had been. It was clear that after the war had ended with the Armistice, there was still work to be done.
Vermuelen had only a brief respite to return to his family in Belgium, and then he was in Paris, where he was set to look for deserters as a cover. But what did he need a cover for?
He was also, it seemed, searching for a killer . . .
Rutledge sat back, staring out at the sea and just ahead, the towering white cliffs just above Dover Castle.
So this was why Haldane had sent him to call on a dying man.
Hamish, quiet in the back of his mind as he had struggled to read the finely written lines on the thin sheets of paper, said, “Ye ken. It’s no’ verra’ much.”
That was true. But Vermuelen’s notes and Haldane’s insistence that he go to Langville had convinced him that he wasn’t hunting a ghost. If Haldane was right, he was after a cold-blooded killer. Who had come back to Essex, where he was killing again.
But who the hell was he now?
12
It wasn’t until the ferry had docked and he’d retrieved his own motorcar that Rutledge could put in a telephone call to Haldane. And then he thought better of it, because there would be other ears on the line.
He went to find a shop that sold postal cards. There was one of the castle on its hill overlooking the Channel, dark against a stormy sky. He paid for it, wrote a short message, added a stamp the woman in the shop had offered him, and then dropped the card in the nearest post box.
It read simply, Sadly, our uncle is dying. I am back, I was given the cuff links he wished you to have. More when I see you. R.
If Haldane wished to play at cryptic messages, he, Rutledge, could do the same.
As he took the road to Gravesend, he was tempted to drive a little farther, to call on Melinda. And Kate.
But he’d been away too long as it was, and there was a murderer to find.
He went over what he’d learned in Vermuelen’s report, trying to compare it with what he already knew.
Early in the war, a man named Miles Franklin had killed three people in Dorset, had been caught and taken into custody, and somehow had managed to escape on his way to trial. He had disappeared.
Shortly after that, a man’s nude body was found in a ditch ten miles away. It was soon identified as Timothy Robinson, a soldier home on compassionate leave. The Army was informed.