Todd, Charles (3 page)

"You're the only one who knew about the money. And when they come, they'll want to know where it is. They're not going to believe that the Boers took it, are they? So I don't have any choice."

He had found matches in the sergeant's kit, and he struck them now and lit the spreading puddles of oil. The old carriages were tender dry. They'd burn in a hurry, they wouldn't need the oil after a few minutes.

Evering cried, "You can't do this! It's inhuman—"

"Watch me," Quarles said and jumped out of the carriage. He tried to walk far enough away to shut out the cries of the burning man, but he could hear them in his mind if not his ears. They would haunt him for a long time.

But it was so much money. It would set him up for life. Even if he shared it with Penrith. Or not. It would depend on how useful the man was.

He waited until the flames had nearly died down, then went back to the blackened carriages and thrust his hands into the remnants of the fire. He hadn't known it would hurt that badly, but he forced himself to put his face close enough to singe his hair and his skin.

And then, fighting the pain as best he could, he crawled under what was left of the first carriage, out of the sun.

He hadn't looked at what was left of Lieutenant Timothy Barton Evering.

When help arrived many hours later, Quarles was half out of his mind with pain and thirst. They dealt with him gently, and the doctor did what he could. He didn't see Penrith and didn't ask for him. He lay on the stretcher, calling Evering's name until someone bent over him and said, "He's dead. There was nothing you could do." After that he shut his eyes and was quiet.

The inquiry into the ambush was not lengthy. Penrith supported the account that a shot could have broken a lantern and set the last carriage on fire. "But I didn't see it burning when I left. All I could think of was the wounded, and getting help for them as fast as possible." His face was pale, and his voice tended to shake.

Penrith was the son of a curate. They believed him. Quarles, when interviewed, remembered only beating at the flames to reach the lieutenant. His burns were serious, and his bandages spoke to his courage.

He was sent to Cape Town, where doctors worked on his hands, and Penrith, whose feet had been badly blistered by his walk, was sent to a hospital in Port Elizabeth. They didn't meet again until the end of the war, in 1902.

It was Penrith who came to find Quarles, and he asked him outright for his share of the money. "I've earned it now. And I'll have it before we're sent home."

Quarles smiled. "Oh, yes, and you on a spending spree a private's pay couldn't explain? No, we split the money and take it home with us. We wait a year, and then decide how to hide it in plain sight. Do you think we've fooled them? Stupidity will get us hanged yet."

"As long as we split it now," Penrith said. "I want it in my hand, where you can't trick me or hide from me. Once we've split it, we're finished with each other."

"Did you hear they found the Boers that attacked our train and hanged the leader? I wouldn't press my luck if I were you. A misstep now, and we'll be decorating the gibbet he kept warm for us."

But Penrith was not to be put off.

Quarles took five days of leave and found a carriage and horse that he could borrow, though his hands were still stiff and almost useless. He located the site of the attack after some difficulty, found the flat stone after walking in circles for three hours, and dug up the packet in the oiled cloth. Most of it he split into two black valises he'd brought with him. For the rest, he found a black woman in an isolated hut and asked her to sew the money into pockets in the lining of his tunic. She thought him a mad Englishman, but he promised to pay her well. When the tunic was ready, he drowned her in the stream where she washed her clothes, for fear she would gossip. If he'd been a superstitious man, he'd have believed she put a curse on him as she died. As it was, she fought hard, and he was glad he hadn't put his tunic on before dealing with her.

Penrith was waiting for him at the livery stable when he brought the carriage back, and demanded that he take his pick of the two valises. "To be sure the split was fair and square."

"As God is my witness," Quarles answered him, "you'll find both hold the same sum. Look for yourself. It's more than either of us can ever expect to earn. Don't be greedy."

Penrith said, his curiosity getting the better of him as he examined both valises, "Does it ever bother you, how we came by this?"

"Does it bother
you?"
Quarles retorted, picking up the nearest case. He walked off and didn't look back.

As luck would have it, the two men arrived in London on the same troop ship and were mustered out of the army in the same week. Quarles took Penrith to the nearest pub and made a suggestion: "We've got to find work. Until the Army's forgot us. It wouldn't look right, would it, for either of us to be rich as a nob, when we joined up with no more than a shilling to our names."

Penrith was stubborn. "You've put me off long enough. I have my share, I'll spend it as I please."

"You do that, and I'll tell them you stole the money while I was trying to save the lieutenant."

In the end, Quarles put the wind up Penrith, who was afraid of Quarles and would be for years to come. They each took up positions at a merchant bank, Penrith as the doorman because of his fair looks and his air of breeding, and general work for Quarles, with the ugly scars on his hands. His eyebrows had never grown out again properly, giving him a quizzical expression. But he was a big man with pale red hair and a charm that he practiced diligently, turning it on at need. The account he gave of his burns elicited laughter and sympathy, for he kept the story of rushing into a burning house to save a child droll rather than dramatic. There was no mention of the army or South Africa. And as far as anyone knew, neither Penrith nor Quarles had ever left the country.

Quarles had been good at numbers in school, and that training, together with a clever mind, was put to work. It wasn't long before he caught the eye of one of the junior partners, and six months later, he was promoted to Mr. James's clerk.

On that same day Quarles said to Penrith, "I can see that there's a way to be rich without suspicion," and outlined his plan.

Penrith, ever slow to see what might be to his own advantage, said, "But we've got money, we don't need to work. You promised—"

Quarles looked at him. "Have you counted what you've got? It's nothing compared to what comes in and out these doors every day. It looked like a king's ransom, there on the veldt, but I know better now. I've asked Mr. James if he'd be kind enough to invest what an old aunt left me. I told him I'd run through it in six months, else. And he's agreed. You'd be smart to do the same. Soon we'll be twice as rich, and then there's no stopping us." He smiled. "Mr. James sees a coal miner's brat with brains in his head. He's a snob, he thinks I'm a clever monkey doing tricks to amuse him. But in the end, it's Mr. James who's jumping through hoops of
my
making. I'm a clerk now, and mark my words, I'll go higher, as high as I please. And if you're a wise one, you'll hang on to my coattails. I didn't do you a bad turn in the Transvaal, did I? We haven't hanged yet, have we?"

Penrith said, "You're a clever monkey, all right. The question is, do I trust you? And how far?"

Quarles laughed harshly. "Suit yourself. But don't come whining to me when your pittance runs out and there's no way to replace it. And don't think you can blackmail me into saving your arse. You'll hang beside me."

SOMERSET, NEAR EXMOOR
May 1920

There was a stone terrace on the northern side of the house, with a dramatic view down to the sea. The town of Minehead was invisible around the next headland to the east, and to the west, Exmoor rolled to the horizon, empty as far as the eye could see.

Not even a gull's cry broke the stillness, though they sailed on the wind above the water, wings bright in the morning sun. Rutledge sat in a comfortable chair by the terrace wall, more relaxed than he'd been in some time.

Half an hour later a faint line of gray was making itself known in the far distance, storm clouds building somewhere over Cornwall. A pity, he thought, watching them. The weather had held fair so far. All that was needed was barely another twenty-four hours, for tomorrow's wedding. After that the rain could fall.

He had taken a few days of leave. Edgar Maitland, a friend from before the war, had asked Rutledge to come to Somerset to meet his bride and to stand up with him at the wedding.

This had been Maitland's grandfather's house, and Rutledge could understand why his friend preferred to live here most of the year now, keeping his flat for the occasional visit to London. Edgar had also inherited his grandfather's law firm in nearby Dunster and appeared to be well on his way to becoming a country solicitor.

Rutledge and Maitland had lost touch after 1917, but when Maitland had come to town in April to buy a ring for his bride, he'd tracked Rutledge down at Scotland Yard. France had changed both men, but they understood that these differences were safest left unspoken. What had drawn them together at university had been an enthusiasm for tennis and cricket; what had made them friends was a feeling for the law, and this each of them, in their own way, had held on to through the nightmare of war, seeing their salvation in returning to it.

Maitland had often good-naturedly berated Rutledge for choosing to join the police. "A waste, old man, you must see that."

And Rutledge always answered, "I have no ambition to be a K.C. I've left that to you."

When Rutledge had met Elise on his arrival in Dunster, he'd had reservations about the match. She was young, pretty, and in love. The question was whether she was up to the task of caring for a man who'd lost his leg in France, and with it, for many months, his selfworth. Unlike the steady, happy man Rutledge had seen in London, now Edgar was by turns moody and excited as the wedding day approached. And that boded ill for the future.

Indeed, last night when they were alone on the terrace, darkness obscuring their faces and only their voices betraying their feelings, Edgar had said morosely, "I can't dance. She says she doesn't care for dancing. Or play tennis. She doesn't care for tennis. She says. But that's now. What about next year, or the year after, if she's bored and some other bloke asks her to dance, or to be his partner in a match?

What then? Will she smile at me, and ask permission, and be relieved when I give it?"

Rutledge had grinned. "Cold feet, Lieutenant? Where's the bane of the sappers, the man who never backed out of anything, even a burning tunnel?"

"Yes, well, I was brave once too often. And it's cold foot, now. Do you know, I can still feel pain in my missing leg? Phantom pain, they call it, the nerve endings looking for something that isn't there and worrying themselves into knots."

"That's common, I think?"

"Apparently. But it's damned odd when it's
your
foot itching, and there's nothing there to scratch."

They had laughed. But Edgar had drunk a little too much last night and was sleeping it off this morning.

Rutledge watched that thin line of gray cloud for a time, decided that it was not growing any larger, and turned his attention to the sea below, tranquil before the turn of the tide. Behind him, the terrace door opened, and he looked up, expecting to see Edgar.

Elise came out to join him. He hadn't heard her motorcar arriving in the forecourt, but she must have driven over from Dunster, looking for Edgar.

He wished her a good morning as he rose to bring a chair forward for her. She sat down, sighed, and watched the gulls in her turn.

"A penny for your thoughts?" he asked after a time.

"I wish I knew what was worrying Edgar. It's frustrating, he won't talk to me. That makes me feel young, useless. And the wedding's tomorrow."

He realized that she had come to find him, not Maitland. "You're several years younger in age," Rutledge pointed out gently. "And a hundred years younger in experience."

She shrugged irritably. "I know. The war. I've been told that until I'm sick of it. It doesn't explain
everything
!"

"In a way it does," Rutledge replied carefully. "It marked most of us. I expect that it will stay with us until we're dead."

"Yes, but that's looking back, isn't it? You survived—and so there's life
ahead,
marriage, a family, a future. You and Edgar were the lucky ones. You lived. Now get on with it."

He laughed. "Would that we could."

"Oh, don't be silly, Ian, you know what I mean. If you stay bogged down in the trenches, then they've won.
You
went on with your profession. Edgar can go on with his. He's not the only man in England with one leg. He's not a freak. He's not unique. A solicitor can
manage
with one leg, for heaven's sake."

He couldn't tell her why he'd returned to the Yard last year. At what cost and for what reasons. He answered only, "Have you ever had a terrifying nightmare, Elise?"

"Of course. Everyone has." She was impatient.

"Think about the worst one you can recall, then try to imagine waking up to find that it was real and would go on for years, not minutes, without respite."