The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  “Miss Hatton? Sergeant Nelson. I thought I ought to say something—”

  “You and your men were everywhere. I can’t thank you enough!”

  “Duty, Miss, that’s all it was. What I wanted to say is that the fire was deliberately set.”

  “Deliberately?” She stared at him, and then looked over her shoulder to Leighton, who was still sitting in the kitchen, listening. “Come in, Sergeant. You know Mr. Leighton, I think?”

  “Yes, Miss. From The Spotted Calf.” Nelson nodded to him as he followed Francesca into the room.

  “We found signs that the fire was started. Old rags and petrol. You could smell it when I first got here. Do you have any enemies?”

  She wanted to laugh, thinking of the people who had hated her grandfather—whose hatred she had apparently inherited. She met Leighton’s glance and answered quietly, “My grandfather did.”

  Leighton’s eyebrows rose, as if she had accused him.

  The sergeant was saying, “If I had to make a guess, I’d say it was the shooter.”

  “But why?” she demanded. “What reason could he have to do such an abominable thing? He had no grudge against us!”

  “On the contrary, begging your pardon, Miss. A diversion, d’ye see, drawing us all up here while he made good his escape. We was getting too close. I was saying as much just last night.”

  “No, you’re quite wrong! I know who did it. A man named Walsham! He threatened me only days ago—”

  “That’s as may be,” the sergeant answered. “If you can show proof of such a threat, of course you must call in the police. Fire-starting is a serious matter, Miss, it can’t be overlooked. But for my money, it’s our shooter.”

  “No, you don’t understand—” Yet she could see that he didn’t want to understand.

  “To put it plainly, Miss, some of these patients are deranged,” he told her kindly. “Suffering strikes different men in different ways. When it’s unbearable, there’s no saying how the mind is twisted by it. Men do things they would never think of doing in their right senses, and become a danger to themselves and others.”

  “I’ve seen men suffering,” she snapped, irritated by his attempt to coax her around to his viewpoint. “I’ve seen them crying in pain and begging for morphine. I don’t believe the shooter would come here and deliberately burn down my buildings for no better reason than a diversion.”

  “Well, Miss, there’s no better way of proving the matter than catching the shooter and asking him.” He nodded to the silent Leighton and walked to the door. “Miss,” he said, and went out into the morning.

  Francesca sat down in one of the kitchen chairs. “What am I to do?” she asked Leighton. “I’m too tired to think.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. Sergeant Nelson will redouble his efforts now. I hope to hell the shooter is well out of it.”

  “Then who set fire to the shed?” she demanded, and shook her head. “I’m certain it must have been Walsham, trying to frighten me into returning the Essex property to him.”

  “He would be mad to do such a thing.”

  “No, he’s arrogant enough to think he can get away with it.” She remembered what Miss Trotter had told her about Leighton walking in the night. “Where were you tonight?”

  He stiffened. “Do you think I tried to burn down your house?”

  “I simply wondered if you had seen anyone. I’ve been told that when you can’t sleep, you walk.”

  “No. I never saw anyone,” he answered curtly, and rose from the chair. “I’m going to bed. It’s been a long night. You should do the same.”

  And without as much as touching her shoulder in affection as he passed her chair, he was gone.

  CHAPTER 31

  Francesca slept heavily for two hours. Then after bathing her feet in water still warm from the stove, she went to the door to look out at the damage. The ashes were still smoking, charred timbers raising stark fingers to the sky. She crossed over the churned-up earth to see for herself what the cost was.

  It was a warning. She could feel Walsham’s message: Next time it could be the house, with you in it. Unless you give Willows back to me. She wouldn’t put it past him to do something as cowardly as burn out a woman.

  Impossible to prove, though. And the shooter would no doubt take the blame. The Army would be harsh and unforgiving.

  She wondered what her grandfather would do. And then she knew the answer. Walsham hadn’t believed the first warning. She’d have her solicitor draw up papers to donate the property to the National Trust, then send copies to Walsham. Another act of violence and these will be signed.

  Francesca thought, I’m beginning to understand my grandfather better. I’m beginning to learn. Such people had underestimated Francis Hatton, to their regret. His granddaughter must have seemed an inviting target, young, alone, inexperienced in the world. They had forgotten she was also a Hatton.

  She was about to turn back to the kitchen, when she realized that Richard was sitting on an overturned box, nearly invisible behind stacks of gear and tools and harness that hadn’t been put away again.

  He must have seen her.

  But he didn’t call to her.

  When Leighton did return to the sitting room, he looked like a man who hadn’t slept at all.

  And Francesca could easily guess what he was about to tell her. It was not just the fire that had kept him awake.

  “I spoke to my father,” he began. “He was very clear. As I expected him to be. ‘If you love this woman, marry her. I have long since outgrown any animosity I felt toward that family. Your happiness means more to me than anything.’”

  “How kind of him!” she said, and yet it was a strange way of putting his feelings . . . outgrown . . . As if with age had come some sort of understanding. “And—your grandfather?”

  Leighton’s face hardened. “He was beyond reasoning with. He can’t forget—he won’t forgive. He tells me I’ve forsaken my duty.”

  “Yes, he was bound to say as much,” she answered quietly, responding to the grief she could hear in his voice. It pierced her to see his suffering.

  “I remind myself that she was his only child. All he had in the world. He was in torment all those years ago, hounding the police, driving himself and my father to the point of exhaustion. You can’t imagine how it was! And that anger—I could see it, as fresh as the day he heard the news. I was told, when I went away to war, not to get myself killed. I was needed more here. In England. It was a bracing good-bye.”

  She found herself making excuses for a despicable old man selfish to the end. “How can he forgive? It’s all he has left, this bitterness, and he can’t live long enough now to change. He wants to believe that after he’s gone, someone will take his place. Without considering the cost to you.”

  “I’ve realized on the journey back to the Valley, what a barren life he’s lived. The house is a shrine to his hate, cold and dark and empty. I’m surprised you didn’t feel it.”

  “I suppose I was tired that day—” She couldn’t explain that it was the man on the stairs, not the building, that had absorbed her attention. “I wish I hadn’t insisted that you speak to him.”

  “Yes, well. I was in honor bound. He has loved me in his fashion.”

  They stared at each other, neither of them certain what to say next.

  She was reminding herself that she had failed to recognize, in her fierce defense of her own family’s honor, how strong the force of conviction was in Richard’s. Would that change anything?

  She remembered Chatham’s words, about the guilt that had seemed to shatter her grandfather at the time. What role had he played in the tragedy of Victoria Leighton? What had he known? What had he done—or not done—to prevent it? But she must leave it there, now, and not look back. Better never to know.

  Yet it had been easier, when she could throw his accusations back in Richard’s face, to believe herself that they were false.

  If I care at all for this man,
I must also find a way to put the past behind me. And never look back. Grandfather—

  She steadied herself on her crutches and said in an effort toward lightness, “We’ve had a rather bumpy road to romance, haven’t we?”

  “I wish so much of it hadn’t been my doing.”

  She held out her hands. “Richard. Marry me. Not Francis Hatton’s granddaughter!”

  He crossed the room to her in two swift strides, taking her hands and then pulling her into his arms.

  “It will be different,” he said against her hair. “I promise you, it will be different.”

  She moved her cheek against the rough tweed of his coat.

  It wasn’t happily ever after, and she knew it as well as he did.

  And yet in his arms she found a safe haven she hadn’t known since July. A stark loneliness seemed to drain out of her, and Francesca swore to herself she would fight for their future together with all the strength she possessed.

  Nothing, not the ghost of Victoria Leighton, nor the virulence of Alasdair MacPherson, nor the deeds of her grandfather would ever come between the two of them again.

  She was a Hatton. That was courage enough to build with.

  It was three days later that the Army got their man.

  Sergeant Nelson, with a determination expressed in cursing his company on to greater effort, had set out this time in earnest. No longer tramping through the hills looking for signs and returning after dark to the tiny pub in The Spotted Calf—no longer hounding his men through trees and undergrowth at night, where they fought shadows and tripped over their own feet. Instead he began by sending the lorries away and keeping his men under close cover. Then he put out spies, stringing them along the trails animals took down to the river, sending them up trees to perch through the long, cold hours, lying in wait in damp brambles, until something moved. He called it training for the trenches, and his men cursed him in turn with renewed energy.

  Mrs. Lane, reporting on the second day that the village of Hurley had had enough of occupation, added, “Every mother with a girl over the age of twelve is locking her in of a night, and Mrs. Ranson is tired of broken glassware and spit on the floor. But if that shooter started our shed fire, then it’s likely he’s far away. He’d be a fool not to go when he could!”

  Francesca, remembering what Mrs. Passmore had believed—that the shooter had been drawn back here because somewhere in his tormented mind there was a memory of the Valley—wasn’t as easily convinced.

  If he had gone to such effort to come here, why would he leave?

  Her worry clouded her happiness, and she made Leighton swear he would let her know if the Army flushed out the man.

  Miss Trotter, offering what comfort she could, said to Francesca, “If he’s eluded them this long, he won’t be tricked by the likes of Sergeant Nelson. Mark my words.”

  But Francesca had sat by the drafty window long into the night, listening for sounds even though the hunt had moved north and south of River’s End. Behind her, Miss Trotter seemed to sleep contentedly.

  Late on the third afternoon she heard the lorries on the road below the gates and sent Mrs. Lane running for Bill and the motorcar.

  They met Richard on his way up the hill to report.

  “Francesca—they’ve got him,” he said breathlessly, climbing into the rear seat beside her. “I don’t think it’s anyone you know—”

  “I want to see for myself! Have they hurt him?”

  “He put up a fight, the sergeant said. Bruised, but not badly hurt.”

  “Oh, God, what a terrible thing to do to a man who isn’t in his right mind!”

  “He led them a merry chase. They want their revenge. It’s not the first time.”

  “No.”

  As the motorcar clattered over the bridge, Francesca could see the throng of villagers gathered at the back of one of the lorries pulled up by the inn. Her heart stood still in her throat and then beat with a force that hurt.

  Was the man in that lorry one of hers? Or a stranger—

  Knowing had become as essential to her as to Mrs. Passmore. If it was one of the cousins—if—he might perhaps be well enough to give her away when the time came. Someone of her own. Something given back by the war that had taken away so much.

  It seemed forever before they reached the scene. She could hear everyone talking at once as they came within earshot. Mrs. Passmore was there, begging to be lifted into the truck to be with her son. As the motorcar swung just beyond the lorry, someone had taken pity on the woman and set her in the back of the vehicle. Francesca, impatient for her crutches, practically fell into Leighton’s arms as she got out of the motorcar and was steadied on her feet. Then she began to elbow her way through the mob of people, villagers and soldiers, staring at the sight of the elusive shooter.

  One more step and she could see him. Forgetting Leighton, forgetting everything, she leaned toward the tail of the lorry.

  And there he was.

  Barely a man—filthy, thin, ragged, his face curtained by long matted brown hair and a thick beard.

  Tall like Harry and Robin, she could tell that at once, even though he was sitting on a makeshift mound of haversacks.

  She could make out scrapes and bruises on his cheekbones, and around the cage of his eyes, the blood still bright red. And his knuckles below the torn sleeves of his coat were raw. He had given a good account of himself.

  Mrs. Passmore was kneeling beside him, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his bent knee, and Francesca could hear her, crooning, promising that he wouldn’t be alone again; she was there. He seemed not to hear her. His head was bowed as if the burden of lifting it was too great.

  The sergeant was asking him in an aggressive voice whether or not he had started the fire at River’s End.

  The man was no one she recognized.

  It was a blow.

  Francesca moved a little away from the lorry, letting the villagers surge past her for a better view. As if it were all a Roman spectacle. Pity welled up for the poor man sitting there, defeated. Had hunger drawn him from cover? Or had he just grown weary of struggling to survive on his own?

  I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, she thought, unless he can remember all this, once he’s well enough.

  She wished someone would show a little charity toward the wretched man, and offer him something to drink, a bed in which to rest, and quiet. Out on the hills, he hadn’t been faced with such clamor. It must be unnerving now.

  Mrs. Passmore reached up a trembling hand to brush the thick hair from his face as the man finally lifted his head.

  A pair of weary, bloodshot eyes looked out without emotion or recognition at the circle of people surrounding the lorry. And then as they wandered aimlessly from one face to the next, they met Francesca’s.

  And sharpened.

  Francesca thought for an instant that she would faint. Her blood seemed to have nowhere to go because her heart felt as if it had stopped.

  Her grandfather’s eyes had been that very shade of green—!

  It wasn’t Harry after all. His eyes had been hazel, like her own.

  Stunned, she met the haggard glance. It fixed itself on her where she stood a little apart from the others, as if she had been there waiting to be recognized.

  Only one of the cousins had inherited Francis Hatton’s remarkable eyes: Peter, the engineer.

  The thought staggered her. But what had happened to the contours of his face, what had become of the familiar lines? For one thing, the heavy beard concealed the underlying bone structure, and the thinness altered the shape.

  Was it Peter? This scarecrow who had aged, not in years but in spirit? He could pass for forty-five, not twenty-five.

  Peter had become a sapper, although he had loathed the tunnels. It was unreliable, claustrophobic, perilous work. He had set Yorkshire miners to dig under No Man’s Land to the German trenches, and then he himself packed charges where they’d do the most damage. And he’d set them off, watching the
blossoming cloud of earth as men were torn apart. He had burrowed to lay mines under machine-gun nests and blown up the pillboxes. He had killed as many with his skill and uncanny sense of direction in the dank, stinking tunnels of clay as others had done with their rifles. More than once his tunnel had collapsed around him, the damaged earth no longer able to support itself. And sometimes the uncertain charges had failed him and exploded prematurely. By his own account he had nearly smothered to death twice. It had been a terrible and harrowing existence. He had written only a little to her about it. But she had read between the lines.

  It would be no wonder he hadn’t survived with a whole mind. Yet they’d said he died when a charge hadn’t gone off on schedule, and he had had to crawl back in the tunnel to find out why—

  Burning hot tears filled Francesca’s eyes. Whoever this man was, she wanted more than anything to leap into the lorry and hold him in her arms, to tell him that she was here, he was safe now. For the first time, she knew what Mrs. Passmore had felt, a fierce protectiveness and the need to comfort.

  Could it be Peter?

  But even as she opened her mouth to call him by name, something in the pain-ridden eyes altered. As if pleading with her, begging her not to speak.

  Peter had also inherited his grandfather’s fierce pride—

  Whatever had happened to him, whatever he had become, he had managed to conceal his identity. Somewhere in the darkness that clouded his memory and his mind, he had been determined not to bring shame on his family. Better dead than like a tree stricken at the top, hardly living.

  Like Francis Hatton, his grandfather.

  Francesca stood there, listening to what he seemed to be silently telling her, swallowing the words on her lips. If only she could be sure—!

  Or—like Mrs. Passmore, was her need to believe one of the cousins had survived so great that she would see only what she wanted to see in this man?

  If she could only speak to him—hear his voice—spend five minutes in his company, she might know.

  She saw the rector watching her. He was between the lorry and the sign of The Spotted Calf that swung on an iron arm above the inn doorway. Stevens was waiting, pity in his face, for her to make the decision. He was no more certain than she was . . . he had barely known the cousins.