Free A Fearsome Doubt by Charles Todd

something?”
    The last thing Rutledge wanted to do was to go back to that crossroads and look down on the face of a man he might recognize. And yet he knew very well that the figure he’d seen had had two good legs. It was coincidence—and a damned uncomfortable one. He had to believe that. Whatever he’d glimpsed was a trick of memory, a startling but harmless tearing of the curtain between sleeping and waking.
    Hamish was saying, “You werena’ asleep at the bonfire . . .”
    “There’s nothing I can do to help. I don’t have the authority here,” Rutledge told Elizabeth truthfully.
    She pressed her hand to her cheek as if for comfort. “What a terrifying start to the morning—”
    “Come eat your breakfast, and don’t dwell on it,” Rutledge responded quietly. “There’s nothing you can do. Nothing I can do, for that matter. I’d only be in the way.”
    With a twist of her shoulders as if trying to shake off her unsettled mood, she said, “I’d never realized, quite, how unpleasant your work must be. Dealing with such things.”
    “No different, in fact, from a doctor’s surgery, where one patient has hiccoughs and another has a gall bladder.” He lied with a lightness that he didn’t feel. But it earned him a smile from Elizabeth. He reached for the jam pot and said in a more cheerful voice, “What would you like to do this morning? I’m at your service.”
    She bit her lip. “Would it be too much to ask—could you help me go through Richard’s things? I haven’t been able to face it alone. And that’s not why I asked you to come and stay—but this isn’t starting out as the morning I’d planned—and—” She broke off, distracted by what she was trying to say. But the words wouldn’t come, whatever they were.
    “I’ll help you,” Rutledge told her. “On one condition. That we try not to make it morbid. For your sake, if not mine.”
    She nodded. “I won’t cry on your shoulder. Nor you on mine. This is what one does after a death in the family, isn’t it? A practical matter. Before the moths get into the clothes.” It was her turn to try for lightness; she failed wretchedly. “Oh, hell!” she ended bitterly. “Why couldn’t he have come home !”
    Hamish answered her, but of course she couldn’t hear the words. “Because the guid died, and left only the dregs to make the new world . . .”
     
    A S IT TURNED out, the morning passed uneventfully. The clothes hanging in the wardrobes no longer carried the scent of the man who had worn them in 1914. A faint mustiness had crept in, despite applications of lavender, and they had lost the personality that had given them vitality. Elizabeth folded and packed them as Rutledge took them out and handed them to her. The drawers of the chest were easier, their contents already folded, already in neat piles. In the top drawer, Elizabeth came upon a pair of cuff links engraved with initials. She held them for a moment in her hand, then passed them to Rutledge. “You gave him these—a wedding gift. Would you like them back to remember him by?”
    He thanked her and took them. He’d liked Richard immensely, and had found in him a good friend. It was kind of his widow to remember that.
    As the tall case clock in the hall struck the eleventh hour with its deep tolling chimes, they both paused in silence. Standing where they were, in the midst of their work, as a natural thing.
    Rutledge thought he could hear the distant sound of the bagpipes that had buried Hamish MacLeod, but it was only a trick of the mind.

9
    T EA WITH M ELINDA C RAWFORD WAS TYPICAL.
    She was in great spirits and refused to allow her guests to enjoy anything less. She chided Elizabeth for bringing a pot of honey, saying, “You know I’m not allowed to indulge in such things.” But the expression of delight in her eyes told them that she would enjoy it hugely.
    Turning to Rutledge, she said, “Growing old is not for most people. It’s too trying. One daren’t