Authors: Charles Todd
A Lonely Death (36 page)
“I’ll speak to Mr. Gramling soon.”
“He didn’t want a priest at the end. He said it would be wrong to ask for anyone to save two souls, his as well as Maxwell’s.” She hesitated. “Did he kill himself, Ian?”
“No. God, no, Rosemary. He—simply stopped breathing.”
“I thought that was why he wanted a policeman at the end.”
“I wasn’t a policeman upstairs tonight. I was a friend. I’ve sat with the dying before this.”
She reached out and put her hand over his. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”
Half an hour later, he left her still sitting at the table and went out to find Mr. Gramling.
R
utledge didn’t read the letter until much later that day, when he had gone to visit Maxwell Hume’s grave.
Max,
I hesitate to put this on your conscience as well as mine. But I face my first battle tomorrow, and if I die, I don’t want to carry this with me into whatever hell I find. And so I’m writing to you, and when you read this, you will know I’m dead and out of any man’s reach. I must tell you that when I was much younger, I killed a man. I should have taken my chances with the courts. But I was very frightened, and the people I turned to told me that given the circumstances, I would ruin the rest of my life if I went to the police. I listened to them, not because I really believed them but because I wanted to believe them. And so through circumstances that aided us and the careful planning of two other people, we carried it off.
The victim was William Norman. Do you know the name? He went exploring and never came back. Only it was a poor man who worked for the school whom we dressed as William Norman and sent to sea with the promise of a return ticket two weeks after he landed. For our sins, he died of a fever instead and never came home. I blame myself for that as well.
William Norman was a schoolmaster who hurt people for his own pleasure. Sadistic and clever, he forced his boys to make choices. Lie about a friend or he would tell the headmaster a worse lie in its place. Steal money and swear that it was one of the servants, who would then be sacked without a reference. Or he would fail someone we liked whose marks were already poor, and see that he was sent down. When it was my turn, the choice was particularly heinous. I refused, I said I’d die first, and he told me he could arrange for me to die, and showed me the knife. He also told me who would be blamed for my death. I didn’t know where to turn. He told me he’d leave me for a quarter of an hour, to make my decision. I did. I took the only course I could see. I picked up the weapon from his desk and then bent over it as if weeping. He came in, took my hair in his hand and pulled my head up. I drove the sharp blade into his body. By some fluke, it nicked the great artery and he died. I don’t know where I found the strength or the courage to watch it happen. I cleaned up as best I could and went to find my housemaster. He and one of the younger masters and I sat there and decided to cover up the crime. I asked if William Norman’s family would suffer, and they thought not. He’d been estranged from them for some years. That was all I needed to know.
If I survive this war, I’ll burn the letter. Don’t blame the others, will you? They hadn’t known what he was doing, but when I told them, they believed me and did their best to save me. I was always grateful.
And below Reginald’s signature was a postscript.
Forgive me, Ian, for exacting a promise once I discovered you were a policeman. In truth, our friendship was genuine. And I have tried to make up for that night, short of confessing. Does that mean William Norman won after all?
Rutledge read it again, then folded it and returned the sheet to the envelope.
Would he take it to Cummins—who knew much of the story already? He himself had been zealous in search of a truth not for the sake of that truth but because he was a good policeman and it was his duty to pursue the guilty. What truth would be served by closing the case, when the principals were beyond the law’s reach?
Rutledge didn’t know. Just now his duty was to bury the recent dead and mourn them with honor.
Hamish said, “Do ye regret giving your forgiveness before ye knew why you were being asked?”
Rutledge said, “I don’t. God knows, I need forgiveness of my own.”
He walked back to the house. Rosemary was ready, and it was time to follow Reginald to his final rest.
CHARLES TODD
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of twelve Ian Rutledge mysteries, two Bess Crawford mysteries, and one stand-alone novel. A mother-and-son writing team, they live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively.
The Ian Rutledge Mysteries
A Test of Wills
Wings of Fire
Search the Dark
Watchers of Time
Legacy of the Dead
A Fearsome Doubt
A Cold Treachery
A Long Shadow
A False Mirror
A Pale Horse
A Matter of Justice
The Red Door
The Bess Crawford Mysteries
A Duty to the Dead
An Impartial Witness
Other Fiction
The Murder Stone
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A LONELY DEATH
. Copyright © 2011 by Charles Todd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition January 2011 ISBN: 9780062034687
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