Cold Comfort: A Novella by Charles Todd

Author:Charles Todd [Todd, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780062315724
Amazon: B00DL011GI
Barnesnoble: B00DL011GI
Goodreads: 18129413
Publisher: William Morrow Impulse
Published: 2013-11-19T06:00:00+00:00

Read on for a sneak peek at the next Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery from Charles Todd.

HUNTING SHADOWS

Chapter 1

The Fen Country, Cambridgeshire, August 1920

HE READ THE telegram with dismay, and a second time with a heavy sense of loss.

Major Clayton was dead. He’d been in hospital outside London since the closing days of the war, fighting a different battle. Sometimes winning. More often than not losing. They had kept in touch until three months before, when Clayton had been too ill to write, and his sister had been too distressed to write for him.

Dropping the telegram on the table, he gazed out his window. Clayton would be brought back to the Fen country for burial. Services would be held at two o’clock Friday next in the Church of St. Mary’s, Burwell. Only a few miles away.

He intended to be there.

He’d tried hard to put the war behind him. Avoiding weddings and funerals alike, refusing even to deliver the eulogy for men he’d known well. It would bring back too many memories, and he wanted them to stay buried, along with the dead left behind in the torn earth of Flanders Fields. Unable to explain, he’d simply cited ill health as his reason for declining. Burying himself here, he had shut out as much of the rest of the world as he could. He had even stopped reading obituaries. They were too sharp a reminder of the fact that he had survived when so many had not. For the dying had not stopped with the Armistice.

The service for Major Clayton was different. Clayton had saved his life, and in doing so nearly lost his own. The leg had never healed correctly, and in the end it had become the source of the gangrene that overtook first his foot, then his knee, his leg, and finally his body. Dying by inches, he’d called it.

For Major Clayton, he would have to make an exception. He hadn’t been asked by Clayton’s sister to deliver the eulogy, even though he knew the man better than anyone living. And he was just as glad.

Instead the sister had invited a Colonel from London to do that honor. He wondered what Clayton would have made of that, given his feelings for HQ and the generals who had given orders they themselves would never have to carry out. Decisions that sent men to their deaths, maimed them, made them numbers on interminable lists, names and ranks and dates but never the faces or shortened lives that should have reminded the generals that they were dealing in flesh and blood.

Of course St. Mary’s would be full for the service. He reminded himself that he would have to stay well back, where he wouldn’t be noticed.

Only for Clayton, he thought on the Friday as he shaved and then dressed himself with more than his usual care. The Major had been a stickler for appearances; he’d said often enough that if a man respected his uniform, he would respect himself. It would not do to be less than parade perfect even in civilian clothes.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.