A Long Shadow

Dudlington, 1919

Constable Hensley walked quietly through Frith's Wood, looking left and right for some sign that others had been here before him. But the wet, matted leaves showed him nothing, and the cold sun, slanting through bare trees, was more primitive than comforting. It would be dark soon enough. The light never lasted this time of year, unlike the gloriously bright evenings of summer, when it seemed to linger as if unaware of dusk creeping toward it.

And one particular summer evening...

He came to the end of the wood and turned to retrace his steps to the small clearing where he'd left his bicycle.

Halfway there, he could have sworn he heard someone moving behind him, a soft step barely audible. But his ears were attuned to the lightest sound.

Wheeling about, he scanned the trees around him, but there was no one to be seen through the tangle of undergrowth and trunks.
No one living . . .

Imagination, he told himself. Nerves, a small voice in his head countered, and he shivered in spite of himself.

After a moment he went hurrying on, not looking back again until he'd retrieved his bicycle and mounted it. Then he scanned Frith's Wood a final time, wondering how a place so small could appear to be so gloomy and somehow threatening, even in winter.

The Saxons, so it was said, had beheaded men here once, long ago. Taking no prisoners, unwilling to be hindered by captives, they'd come only for booty, and nothing else. Not slaves, not land or farms, just gold or silver or whatever else could be bartered at home. A greedy people, he thought, giving his bicycle a little push to start it forward. Greedy and bloody, by all accounts. But nearly fifteen hundred years later, the name of the wood hadn't changed. And no one cared to set foot there after dark.

He was glad to be out of it.

Yet he could still feel someone watching him, someone on the edge of the wood, someone without substance or reality. Dead men, most likely. Or their ghosts.

One ghost.

He didn't look again until he'd reached the main road. Out of the fields, away from the wood, he felt safer. Now he could pedal back the way he'd come, make the turning at The Oaks, and sweep down into Dudlington. Anyone seeing him would think he'd been at the pub, or sent for from Letherington. He'd been clever, covering his tracks. It made sense to plan ahead and not go rushing about. If he had to go there.

Of course a really clever man, he told himself, would stay away altogether.

The way behind him was still empty.

London, New Year's Eve, 1919

Frances was saying as their cab dropped them in Marlborough Square, "Maryanne will be so happy to see you. It will do her good!"

"Yes, well, don't expect me to play bridge," Rutledge answered her, half in jest, half in earnest. He had worked for the past hour to convince her that he was in good spirits. She had always been too quick to read shadows on his face. "You haven't forgot the last time, have you? At the Moores'? I was partnered by that awful woman, what was her name? Stillwell? She dissected every hand ad nauseum. Put me off bridge for the better part of a year!"

In the square behind them he heard the gate creak as someone came out of the garden and walked briskly away. The policeman in him noted the fact as the footfalls stopped, another gate down the street opened and shut, and there was silence once more.

"You don't bring in the new year playing bridge, silly! Besides, you ought to know Maryanne doesn't care for card games," his sister informed him, walking up the steps to the door of Number 18. She glanced up at him, thinking how handsome he was in his evening dress, his dark hair and dark eyes a sharp contrast with the gleaming white shirtfront. Too bad she couldn't persuade him to wear it more often ... he'd become reclusive since the war. Was Jean's shadow still hanging over him? She didn't want to believe it was France. Or shell shock lingering ... He refused to talk about himself, however hard she probed. And Dr. Fleming was as tight-lipped as her brother. "Maryanne said something about an entertainment—probably a new soprano . . ." Mischief danced in her eyes as she waited for his reaction.

"Good God! That was at the Porters', just before the war. She was Austrian and made the chandeliers quake."

"Now that's an outright lie, Ian! She was Italian!" Frances's laughter was silvery in the cold air, her breath a frosty puff. "She insisted you take her in to supper and then spent the rest of the evening trying to persuade you to visit her in Venice!" She lifted the knocker and then added, "Jean was in a terrible huff. She was left with that colonel, the one with—"

The door opened, and Maryanne Browning enveloped Frances in a warm embrace. "Hallo, my dear, I'm so glad you could come! And Ian—you've been a stranger far too long. Give your coats to Iris, here, and join us in the drawing room!"

She swept them with her, made introductions, settled them with drinks, and sat down herself to resume a conversation about Canada, which their arrival had interrupted.

Rutledge knew most of the people there. Simon, Maryanne's brother, vicar at a country church in Sussex. Dr. Philip Gavin, a Harley Street surgeon, and his wife, who had been friends with Maryanne for years. A younger couple, the man missing an arm from the war, were the Talbots, George and Sally. Rutledge had met them at one of his sister's parties. Across from him sat a naval officer, Commander Farnum, and his wife, Becky, who lived just down the road from Frances. The last guest was a darkhaired woman of infinite poise, whose eyes were turned on him as if she could read his thoughts. The intensity of her gaze made him uncomfortable. Her name was Mrs. Channing, and she was new to him.

Maryanne's husband, Peter Browning, had died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. A civil servant in the war ministry, he had appeared well at seven in the morning as he kissed his wife good-bye. At three o'clock, he dropped dead at his desk, overwhelmed by swift, massive infection. A silver frame on the mantel held his photograph: a thin-faced man with kind eyes. Rutledge had liked him immensely.

The evening passed with pleasant conversation, and Rutledge found himself relaxing, the voice in his head silent for now, the company interesting enough to draw his attention away from his own thoughts. They had been bleak enough, lines from the letters lying on his desk still echoing in his mind. He was glad to escape them, if only for an hour or so.

Mrs. Channing, sitting across the room from him, made no effort to charm her fellow guests, and yet she seemed to become the heart of the party, her voice never dominating but often bringing laughter with a well-timed comment.

He found himself wondering what her age was—closer to his than Frances's, he decided. Or perhaps younger than both of them, it was hard to tell, because she seldom spoke of herself or of her late husband, as if too private a person to thrust her experiences on strangers. There were no benchmarks . . .

An attractive woman, most certainly, with what Frances would call good cheekbones, her dark hair touched with gold under the soft spill of light from the sconce behind her, her extraordinary poise intriguing, her laugh pleasing.

Rutledge's deep dread of watching his soul stripped naked in public—the abiding fear of someone discovering the guilt he carried with him, the horrors of shell shock, the voice of a dead man he heard as clearly as his own— faded. The policeman in him was lulled as well, and any misgivings he'd felt when introduced to her had vanished.

All the same, he was glad to be seated down the table from Mrs. Channing, his hostess on his right and Mrs. Talbot on his left.

Dinner was nearly up to prewar standards.

It began with a consommé a la Celestine, followed by a roast loin of mutton with a port wine sauce, baked onions, potatoes a la duchesse, and spinach, with anchovy éclairs or an apricot gateau to end.

Maryanne explained that her cook was a French refugee and a miracle worker, a widow who had charmed the butcher and the greengrocer into slavish devotion.

It was not until they were settled comfortably again in the drawing room, the tea tray removed, and the hands of the great clock in the hall touching 11:25, that Maryanne surprised everyone with the news that Meredith Channing could raise spirits.

"And I've asked her to conduct a séance to bring in the new year—and the new decade," she ended, excitement bringing a flush to her face. "She's to discover if all of us will be wealthy and happy in ten years' time."

The women laughed, Maryanne's enthusiasm contagious. But Farnum and Talbot exchanged glances and stirred uneasily, while Simon started to say something to his sister, and then held his tongue. And in the back of his mind, his dread lurching into life again, Rutledge heard Hamish exclaim,
"No—!"

The single word seemed to fill Rutledge's head and ricochet around the room. But no one turned to stare at him, no one else could hear it. He stepped back, shaken.

As if she'd sensed the apprehension among her male guests, Maryanne went on, "It's all in fun, of course. We did this on Boxing Day at the Montgomerys'. John raised Napoleon, of all people. The most outrageous things happened, and we laughed ourselves silly—"

The other men made polite if halfhearted noises and moved reluctantly toward the table, leaving Rutledge stranded in the middle of the room.

Mrs. Channing came to her hostess's aid, her eyes on Rutledge's face. "I fear we have one too many, Maryanne. I did say numbers mattered. Perhaps Mr. Rutledge would be content to watch, rather than take part?"

Maryanne glanced at him in disappointment. "Oh, Ian, that would be no fun for you at all. I'll sit out, instead. I don't want to give away any of the tricks and I might, at the table."

"No, Mrs. Channing is right," he said, his heart thudding in his chest at the thought of confronting his own ghosts in public. It was all he could do to keep a rising panic out of his face. "I'm a policeman, after all, hardly susceptible to raising the dead, although Dr. Gavin and I might find the talent useful."

He had managed to make light of it, and they laughed, although he felt anything but amusement.
There were too many dead on his soul—it would do no good to raise them, if he couldn't offer them life again.
And if by accident Mrs. Channing summoned Hamish—

It was unthinkable.

Panic was closer, the spacious room shrinking uncomfortably, until all he could see was Mrs. Channing's face, as if in a halo of brightness, her expression compassionate.

Beside him Frances placed a steadying hand on his arm. She was saying, "Ian's had a very trying day. He's likely to raise the most boring spirits you can imagine. But I've always admired Sir Francis Drake, and I wouldn't mind asking him if he actually did bowl while waiting for the Armada!" It was the first name that had come to her. She moved to the table and smiled up at Dr. Gavin. "Unless you'd prefer someone in the field of science?"

"No, no, Drake will please me too," he answered, holding her chair.

With a last apologetic glance at Rutledge, Maryanne gathered her other guests. Then she added over her shoulder, "If you change your mind, Ian—"

"I'll tell you," he answered, relief bottled up in fear of what was still to come. It was a farce, this séance craze, but it was sweeping England just now, and more than a few men of good repute had been gullible enough to comment publicly on the possibilities of reaching behind the veil of death.

They dimmed the lamps with shawls, made up their table, and Mrs. Channing took her place at the head of it, asking everyone to clear their minds and join hands in silence.

The ticking of the hall clock could be heard clearly, and to one side of the group, Rutledge found himself gripping the arm of his chair. He uncurled his fingers and in defense tried to crowd his mind rather than empty it.

After a moment her voice filled the room, low, melodious, almost mesmerizing. In spite of his fierce resistance, he could feel the peace that seemed to wrap him, and the security that it seemed to offer. But there was an undercurrent of tension in the voice as well, as if, he thought, she was aware of him sitting to one side, observing, outside the ring. Disapproving.

The skeleton at the feast. He shivered at the thought.

"We are gathered here, at the turn of the year, to call upon those wandering in the night, those with knowledge, those willing to come to our table and reach across the darkness that divides the living from the dead, and take my hand in friendship ..."

He tried to think of an excuse to leave altogether, one that wouldn't embarrass Frances, or cause comment. Instead he was pinned to the chair, his mind frozen, unable to function, and he could hear Hamish calling this the Devil's business, urging him over and over again to go.
Now!

But there was no escape.

Mrs. Farnum exclaimed anxiously, "I felt the table lift!"

"And so you should, as the spirits surround us, taking their places beside us, looking over our shoulders. There's a little dog among them, a King Charles spaniel—"

Sally Talbot drew in a breath. "It couldn't be Jelly, could it? Oh, please, tell me it's mine."

Her husband said quickly, "Now, Sally—"

"Oh, but it would be lovely to know he's well and happy on the other side—you don't know how I've missed him." Mrs. Channing's voice rose above hers. "—and behind him is the King himself. We welcome you, Your Majesty, and we ask you to tell us the name of the little dog that has so graciously announced your presence—"

The door behind them opened, and Iris whispered into the dimness, "Inspector? The Yard is on the telephone."

He got to his feet with such haste he nearly knocked over the small table beside him. Gritting his teeth, he made his way as quietly as he could out of the room It was Sergeant Gibson on the line, wishing to confirm a detail in a case that had just been closed during the afternoon. Taking the upright chair in the stuffy little closet where the phone had been installed, Rutledge gave the sergeant the date he was after, and put up the receiver. For a moment he sat there, so relieved to be out of range of that compelling voice in the drawing room that he could feel himself taking the first deep breath.

It was as if he'd been granted a reprieve—and he intended to make the most of it.

Stepping out into the hall, he turned to the housemaid and asked, "Will you summon a cab for Miss Rutledge, when she's ready to leave? And tell her that I've been sent for by the Yard?"

"Indeed, sir, I will."

Iris helped him into his coat, and he left, relishing the winter air, cold and cleansing, feeling as if he'd been miraculously spared an unspeakable ordeal. Overhead the stars seemed extraordinarily bright above the streetlamps, and the noisy evening traffic on the road beyond the square had dwindled into an occasional motorcar passing.

Bless Gibson!
he thought, and Hamish echoed the sentiment, a dark growl that seemed to rumble in the space behind him.

On the steps, he turned to look up at the drawing room windows. Frances would give him hell for deserting her, but the Farnums would be glad to see her safely home. There would be no need of the cab.

He tried to tell himself that Mrs. Channing possessed no strange or exotic powers. But he could still feel her eyes on him, and recall the way she had made certain he was not in the circle. He went cold at the thought that she had somehow known his secrets, that she had seen into his mind and found the shadow of Hamish. And refused to make that knowledge public.

But that was ridiculous.

Walking home would clear his head of such nonsense.

Flipping up his coat collar against the night air, he went down the pair of stone steps to the pavement.

His shoe struck something that rolled, making a tinkling noise across the walk and into the gutter.

His first reaction was surprise. It was a sound he knew.