A Lonely Death Read Online Free Page A

for his murderer. The last thing he heard was a harsh whisper almost in his ear, and then nothing.
    When the first of the workmen arrived the next morning, he was lying on the stone floor within a few feet of the door, his body already cold.

4
    R utledge found a letter waiting for him in his flat. As he picked up the envelope from the floor, he recognized the handwriting at once. Setting his hat on the table by the door, he crossed to a window, opening the envelope as he went and pulling out the single sheet inside. He could feel the tension in his mind that was Hamish, and tried to ignore it as he spread the sheet wide.
    There was no salutation.
    I’m writing to say good-bye. My decision has been made and by the time you read this, there will be no turning back. I have tried, Ian. But the war changed me, it changed my family, it changed everything, and finding my way again to what I knew before isn’t possible. I went to Dr. Fleming, as you suggested, but he couldn’t help me. I think after so much time, there’s no real answer to be had. But he is a good man, and he did his best for me. I want you to know that. I have seen to financial matters, my wife will be taken care of, and I think she will be relieved not to have to deal with me. The nightmares are worse, and encroaching deafness from the guns is a frightful thing. It isolates a person, and I was already isolated. My wife must shout at me to ask the simplest questions, and even so I can barely hear her voice. Tenderness is impossible, and she sleeps in another room now so that I won’t keep her awake with my tossing and turning and the screams I don’t remember in the morning, but she does. We hardly knew each other when we married in 1914, and we never had a chance to build that common ground that might have seen us through. I’m tired, Ian, I can’t tell you how tired. And this is the only way to peace I can see. Forgive me, if you can. Pray for me if you will. But know that I will be happier out of this misery, and I have not decided that lightly. Fare thee well, my friend. I hope that you will see your way clear where I have not. You didn’t marry your Jean after all, and that may be your salvation. I have watched someone I believed I loved more than life itself withdraw a little more each day, until there’s only hurt and confusion left. It would break my heart, if it weren’t already broken. So good-bye, and may God have mercy on both of us.
    It was signed Max .
    Rutledge stared at the letter in his hand, and then slowly reread it. It was dated two days ago. Too late. Far too late.
    Maxwell Hume had been a captain of artillery whom Rutledge had come to know well at the start of the war. A career man, he was an experienced and able officer, liked by his troops and his superiors. Early in the war, the two men had shared their first leave, staying in a shell of a château, unable to find transportation to Paris or London—five days where their friendship had been cemented with laughter and more than a little wine salvaged from the destroyed cellars. The time had passed quickly, both men still able to see in the other an odd reflection of himself as he was before the war. And yet they had been as different as night and day. Max had possessed a mad sense of humor—“All artillerymen are mad. Just look at Napoleon”— while Rutledge had been blessed with a level head that kept both of them from breaking their necks in Max’s impromptu dares amongst the chimney pots or on the half-missing staircase or wherever else his wild fancy took them.
    They had convinced an elderly woman from the nearest village to cook for them and do their washing, closed their eyes to the minor pilfering that went with her, and dug through the ruins of a once-fine library to pass their evenings reading. It was the only time in all the war that Rutledge had been able to put aside what he had seen and done and felt. The certainty that the fighting would be over in the first year