The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

“It was a great sea battle. And of course it’s a cape along the southern Spanish coast. The battle was named from it, I believe.”

“That’s no’ likely to figure largely in a military man’s death in Cambridgeshire,” Hamish commented.

Rutledge thanked the rector, and Harris went in search of Mrs Gravely, to offer what comfort he could.

There was a tap at the door, and Rutledge went to open it himself.

Dr Taylor had returned, and nodding over his shoulder to the hearse from Cambridge, he said, “If you’ve finished, I’ll take charge of the body.”

“Yes, go ahead. When will you have your report?”

“By tomorrow morning, I should think. It ought to be fairly straightforward. We have a clear idea of when Mrs Gravely left for market, and when she returned. And the wounds more or less speak for themselves. I don’t expect any surprises.”

Nor did Rutledge. But he said, “Have a care, all the same.”

Taylor said sharply, “I always do.”

Rutledge stepped aside, watching as the men collected Sir John’s body from the study and carried it out the door.

As he walked with them to the hearse, one of them said to him, “I was in the war. I’ll see he’s taken care of.” Rutledge nodded, standing in the cold wind until the hearse had turned and made its way back on to the road into Mumford.

As he swung around to go back inside, he saw Mrs Gravely at an upstairs window, a handkerchief to her mouth, tears running down her cheeks. Behind her stood the rector, a hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Rutledge was glad to shut the door against the wind, and rubbed his palms smartly together as he stood there thinking. Had the killer knocked, he wondered, and waited until Sir John had answered the summons, or had he come in through the unlocked door and made his way to the study?

Hamish said, “He knocked.”

“Why are you so certain?” Rutledge answered the voice in his head. It was always there — had been since July of 1916, when Corporal Hamish MacLeod was executed for refusing to carry out a direct order from a superior officer. The price, Rutledge knew, of MacLeod’s care of his men, shifting the burden of guilt from his own shoulders to Rutledge’s. It had not been easy that day to send weary, sleep-deprived soldiers over the top again and again and again, knowing they would not survive. But orders were orders, and, although numbed to the cost, as the battle of the Somme raged on, Rutledge had done what he could to shield them. It hadn’t been enough, he knew that, and Hamish knew it. And Hamish had broken first, willing to die himself rather than watch more men sacrificed. The machine-gun nest was impregnable, and every soldier in the line was all too aware of it. No amount of persuasion had shifted Hamish MacLeod from his determination not to lead another attack and, in the end, an example had had to be made.

And Rutledge, well aware that the young Scottish corporal would not see home again, had delivered the coup de grace to the dying man. But Hamish MacLeod did come back — in Rutledge’s battered mind: an angry and vengeful voice at first, and then with time, a relentless companion who yielded no quarter, sharing the days and nights, and silent only when Rutledge slept, although dreams often brought him awake again, into Hamish’s grip once more.

“Because the man was struck from behind. He wouldna’ have let a stranger get behind him.”

It was a very good point, and Rutledge agreed. A knock, then, and Sir John opened the door to someone he knew. They walked back into the study, and at some point the old dog was put out. Before or after Sir John had been attacked? There was no way of knowing. Yet.

He went into the study and began his search.

He saw the Bible at once, on the shelf just as the rector had told him. Opening it to the parchment pages between the old and new testaments, Rutledge scanned the record of family marriages, then turned the page to look through the listing of deaths.

There was the entry for Middleton’s first marriage and, in darker ink but the same hand years later, his second. Entries also of his wives’ deaths.

Althea Margaret Barnes Middleton, of cholera, he read, with the date and Calcutta, India after it.

And then, in a hand that was shaking with grief, Elizabeth Alice Mowbray Middleton, in childbirth. Under that, John Francis Mowbray Middleton, stillborn.