Rutledge took a deep breath, toying with his cup, shutting out Hamish's warning. "Do you know what shell shock is?" he asked.
She met his gaze. "I've seen it," she answered. Warily, he thought.
He couldn't go on after all. He couldn't tell her. He finished lamely, "My sister knows a doctor who treats it in much the same way. By gaining the trust of his patients."
"A rare gift," she agreed, setting her cup aside. "Tell me more about Sussex."
There wasn't much to tell without bringing up the murders that had taken him there. But he scoured his memory. "There's a shop that sells all things military. From lead soldiers to a noon gun. Including a flint knife."
She was interested. "You mean worked from flint? How unusual. Is it very old?"
"Very. Or so I was assured. I bought it and sent it to a friend who was-intrigued by it. He has just retired from the Yard."
What had promised to be a pleasant hour had devolved into stilted conversation. Her coffee was half finished now. She took a deep breath. "Ian. You know I served as a nurse in France?"
He froze, certain he could guess where this subject was heading. That he would find out, finally, what she had seen when he was brought in to the aid station after nearly being buried alive. He had been shell-shocked, barely aware of where he was or what he was saying. He hadn't been aware of her, hadn't even known she was there until he'd met her last year at a New Year's Eve dinner they'd both attended. "Yes." It was all he could manage.
He was wrong. There was something else on her mind.
"I went into nursing for a very selfish reason. My husband was reported missing early on, in the fighting near Mons. I thought, if I could get to France myself-if I could be there-I could find him. Or hear something useful. Anything was better than sitting at home, with no news. But I was in France for nearly three years, and no one could tell me if he was alive and a prisoner-or dead."
She had never mentioned her husband before this.
"I'm sorry," Rutledge said, and meant it.
Meredith Channing looked at him, smiled briefly. "Thank you." And then her gaze moved on to the window, watching the passing traffic on the street.
"I call myself a widow," she went on. "It's more-convenient-in society. But am I?"
Rutledge asked, "Do you want to be a widow?"
She pushed her cup away. "It's late. I really must go. Thank you so much, Ian."
He stayed where he was. "Do you want to be a widow? Meredith?"
She turned to face him. "I go to concerts held every year on the anniversary of his birthday. I honor his memory in every way I can. I'm close to his family and visit them often." Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. "But it's you I dream about, Ian. And I can't go on living with that guilt."
Before he could respond or stop her, she had risen and was walking swiftly toward the hotel doors, head down so that no one could see her face. He started to follow, and realized at once that it was the wrong thing to do. A public hotel was not the place for a scene.
The waiter came to the table to ask if there was anything else that Rutledge wanted.
Watching Meredith pass by the window on her way to her motorcar, Rutledge answered without looking up.
"A whisky," he said. "If you have it."
Hamish said, "It doesna' matter if she's a widow or no'. You couldna' tell her the truth."
And those words were to follow him home, echoing in his head.
He realized that it didn't matter how he'd come to feel about Meredith Channing. Or how she felt about her own circumstances. In the end, there was nothing for either one of them. T he next morning, he stared at the paperwork on his desk awaiting his attention and decided he couldn't face it. Instead he drew out of his pocket the information he had collected about the flint knife and considered it.
Charles Henry. That was the name of the man who had claimed his grandfather had found the knife in his back garden in East Anglia, miles away. If it was true, what had decided Charles Henry to sell it to a shop in Hastings? Why not offer it to a museum, or if it was money he was after, there must be a dozen other places that would be interested in the knife. In London, for one. Why a small shop on a back street in Hastings? Unless Charles Henry lived nearby.
Cummins had been right, it was hard to put the case out of his mind, and the more Rutledge seemed to learn, the more the puzzle pulled at him. And how to go about finding this man? After so much time had passed, he could have died, gone to war, or immigrated to Australia.
The odd thing was, Charles Henry sounded as if someone had given his Christian names, not his surname. Charles Henry Blake, Charles Henry Browning, Charles Henry Tennyson. Or perhaps it was, simply, Charles Henry.
And what-if anything at all-did Charles Henry's grandfather have to do with Harvey Wheeler, the man who was found dead at Stonehenge?
Probably nothing at all.
Rutledge drew pen and paper toward him and wrote a note to Chief Inspector Cummins, giving him the details that the proprietor of the military shop had provided.
He added, This will provide enough information to lead you to no possible conclusions, but should keep your mind busy for a few days, guessing at answers.
He signed it, put it in an envelope, stamped it, and set it aside for mail collection.
But he was unsatisfied, and went down into the bowels of the Yard to find the file that was stored there.
There was nothing more of interest in the folder-during their conversation, Cummins had given him a thorough summary of all the details. All the same, Rutledge sat there, studying the face of Harvey Wheeler in the photograph attached to the file.
What sort of person had he been in life? The dead eyes told Rutledge very little beyond their color, and there was nothing in the face to indicate greed or kindness, passion or cruelty, honesty or slyness. All expression had been smoothed away.
And yet there were details, if one looked closely. The eyes were wide set, the jawline firm, the nose straight, the ears well shaped. A pleasing face, structurally.
Hamish said, "Ye canna' be sure, but dress him well, and he'd pass for a gentleman."
And that would be useful, if the man had set out to swindle women of their life savings. The appearance of trustworthiness, at least, if nothing else.
The police in Kirkwall and in Edinburgh had identified the likeness as Wheeler's. But what if they were wrong? They hadn't seen the man for several years, after all.
Hamish said, "Ye ken, two constabularies canna' be wrong."
Yes, and that was the assumption that everyone had made: they couldn't be wrong.
What if Wheeler, after his second brush with the police in Edinburgh, had turned himself around and lived an exemplary life thereafter? It was not likely, given his predilection for finding himself in trouble. But stranger things had happened. Men sometimes married a woman for whom they were willing and even eager to change. Or had a child, for whom a man would rethink his past and decide that being a proper father was worth the effort it entailed to transform himself into a hardworking, honest citizen. Even an encounter with the church could make a difference sometimes.
Or quite simply, Harvey Wheeler might have fallen under the wheels of a lorry or taken ill of pneumonia and died in a charity ward, an unknown consigned to a pauper's grave.
"Aye, but he died on yon Sacrifice Stone."
But what if he hadn't?
Still, Chief Inspector Cummins was a seasoned and clever policeman. If he had found no trace of Wheeler, then possibly there was none to be found.