A Long Shadow Read Free Page B

was in France for four years, and doesn't often attend parties now. Such a shame! He and Peter were better at charades than any of us, and it was always great fun. But his sister has promised to persuade him."
    "Was he severely wounded?" she had asked.
    "He was in hospital for several months, I'm not sure why. Frances never said. But nothing serious, apparently. He's returned to the Yard. Of course the woman he was to marry broke off their engagement as soon as he came home, and wed someone else. That must have been a crushing blow. We were all so heartbroken for him, but I never liked Jean, myself. I thought he could do much better!" And then the first of her guests had arrived, and Mrs. Browning had gone to greet them.
    Mrs. Channing saw no reason to tell her hostess that she'd seen Ian Rutledge before, once, but only at a distance. She hadn't needed to include him in that silly business at the table to know his secrets.
    War, she thought, is such devastation for the living—for the dead—and for those who are not sure any longer where they fit in.
    But that brought her little comfort. There were some things that one couldn't explain away.
    Grace Letteridge lay awake as well. The woman who cleaned for her on Tuesdays had told her she had seen Constable Hensley coming out of Frith's Wood.
    "I was taking the Christmas bells to the attic for the rector. The window was all dusty, and I took out my rag to clean away the worst of it. And I could just see him, hurrying away on that bicycle of his, for all the world like a hunted man. I can't for the life of me understand why he goes there. You'd think he'd stay away, like everyone else." She shook her head, considering the constable's foolishness. "But then he's not one of us, is he?" she added. "Else he'd know."
    A guilty conscience, Grace thought now. It makes people do foolish things. Betray themselves, even.
    She turned on her side, not wanting to think about Hensley—or Emma.
    Emma was dead, and yet she might as well be alive. What was it the Romans believed? That a spirit wandered if the body wasn't given decent burial? Emma's wandered. Grace was certain of it, and it gave her no peace.
    Someone knew the secret of what had happened to Emma Mason. And Grace was convinced it was Hensley.
    Why else had he failed to find Emma's murderer?
     

3
     
    Mid-January 1920
     
    Rutledge stood on the cliffs above Beachy Head Light. Below him the gray waters of the Atlantic moved in angry swirls, clawing at the land. All around him the grass seemed to sway and dance, whispering in the echoes of the wind like disturbed voices.
    He had come here after a difficult twenty-four hours forcing a would-be murderer to give himself up and release the hostages he had taken in a small cottage outside the village of Belton. The man, tired and unshaven, unrepentant and silent, offered no explanation for stabbing his wife. He went with the constables without giving them any trouble, and the local man, Inspector Pearson, had said only, "I was convinced in the end he'd kill all his family. It's a miracle he didn't. In for a penny, in for a pound. We can only hang him once."
    "He had nowhere to go," Rutledge pointed out. "And whatever anger was driving him, it had finally burned away." He could still see the eyes of the man's mother-in- law, staring at him in undisguised relief, something in her face that was old, as if twenty-four hours had aged her. Her daughter, trembling with exhaustion and pain, allowed the doctor to wrap her in a blanket and take her away in his carriage to his surgery. Blood had soaked through her dress, and her hands were clenched on the blanket's folds as if to hide the sight. Her mother had followed in a second carriage with an elderly aunt, a thin, pale woman who appeared to be in shock. Even the ex-soldier standing near the horses mirrored her numbness, his face turned away.
    As soon as the affair had been dealt with and he was free to go back to London, Rutledge had driven