Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge rose slightly, raising an imaginary rifle, then bringing it to bear on McBride.

  It was an easy shot. Easier than peering over the edge of the parapet at Ely Cathedral, easier than shooting at Swift through the wavering torchlight and wafting smoke. Why then had the killer missed?

  Hamish said, “The horse. As soon as he moved, yon horse would see him.”

  It was very likely. Even a slight shift by the horse could have made the difference between life and death. The other two victims had either been standing or walking slowly.

  And that was a miscalculation on the part of the killer, if he’d known nothing about horses.

  The question now was, had Burrows been the target? If so, how had the killer tracked him to this particular place? Had he seen him in Burwell earlier?

  Or had the man with the rifle missed at the last minute when he realized that Burrows was not the rider he was expecting?

  Finally, would any target have done? Was this a third attempt to murder? Or just a tactic to muddle the issue?

  Rutledge got to his feet and walked back to McBride, who jogged forward in his turn to have a look at the far side of the bridge.

  Driving on to Wriston, Rutledge said, “I’m intrigued with Burrows’s description of what he’d seen. I want to go back and speak to Mrs. Percy. And then I’ll continue on to Ely. Get me that list of men who were in France. I’ll need that when I get back.”

  But Mrs. Percy wasn’t moved by Burrows’s close call or his description of the killer.

  “I never saw anything,” she told Rutledge a second time. “When I gave my statement to Constable McBride, I’d been blinded by the torches and all that smoke. And there’s an end to it.”

  “It isn’t the end. You signed your statement. By doing so, you were swearing to the truth of it. Is the memory of what was in that window too frightening to think about now?”

  “How can I be afraid of something I didn’t see?” she countered.

  “If you won’t describe it, will you try to draw it?” Rutledge took out his notebook and held it out to her. “I’d like to show it to Mr. Burrows.”

  But she refused to take it, and finally he withdrew the notebook.

  “I didn’t see anything to draw. There was only a man with a rifle in his hands.”

  He didn’t think she’d seen a rifle. He wasn’t sure she would even have recognized the difference between it and a shotgun. Not in the few seconds she’d had to take in what she was looking at. According to McBride, there had been no mention of a weapon in her original statement.

  But she’d been questioned. Not only by the police but just as surely by her neighbors, curious about her monster.

  And in the end, she had recanted. A man with a rifle in his hands.

  What was acceptable to the world. What would never again make her a laughingstock.

  “A pity. We might have confirmed what you’d seen, on the basis of what Mr. Burrows has reported. It would have vindicated you.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “That’s as may be. It was daylight when he saw what he saw. There’s a difference.”

  He thanked her and left. He was just bending down to the crank when he noticed that in the house next to hers a curtain twitched.

  Mrs. Percy’s neighbor would be over as soon as he had turned out of the lane, out of sight, to find out what the police had wanted. And the news of Burrows’s wounding would spread like wildfire.

  It couldn’t be helped. He’d had no choice but to tell Mrs. Percy she wasn’t alone in seeing something incomprehensible, hoping that the fact that the killer had struck again would encourage her to talk to him. Putting together her evidence with Ruskin’s and Burrows’s, he might just have something more definitive than monster.

  Rutledge stopped to tell McBride that he’d got nowhere and would be driving on to Ely.

  McBride shook his head. “Stubborn woman. But the main question now has to be where does this man go when he’s not using that rifle? Cambridge? Peterborough? King’s Lynn? Even Inspector Warren doesn’t have enough men to look everywhere.”

  “Nor can we take a chance that there’s another target out there who might not be as lucky as Burrows.”

  “Do you think he’ll try to come back for Mr. Burrows? Just wounding him might not be enough.”

  “God knows. But I think Burrows will stay close to his house for a while. Which is probably his best protection just now.”

  “But not in the long haul.”

  Rutledge took a deep breath. “True. He could bide his time, whoever he is, and try when we’ve given up. Or brought him in.”

  “A soldier. A solicitor. A farmer. It makes no sense.”

  When Rutledge reached Ely and reported to Inspector Warren, he heard the same comment. It makes no sense.

  “If he’s satisfied,” Rutledge pointed out, “he can disappear as easily as he appeared. If he isn’t, Burrows won’t be his last target. We don’t have time to worry about motive or connections. We’ve got to find him.”

  “Will he come back for Burrows, do you think?” It was the same question that McBride had asked, but this time it was from a different perspective. “Do you think we could use that possibility to trap him?”

  “God knows. It depends on why he shot at him. How deep his feelings went. What worries me is that he missed. It was a clear shot, an easy shot. Was it the shifting of the horse? Or was he having qualms of conscience?”

  “My money is on the horse. He’s shown no signs of a conscience so far, interrupting that wedding and then killing Swift in front of women and children.”

  “I’ve asked McBride to send out word that I’d like a list of all the ex-soldiers in each village. Can you draw up one for Ely?”

  “It will take time, we’ll have to go door to door. It’s the only way to be sure we have all the names. Do you think it’s one of them?”

  “If they didn’t do the shooting, they could have brought back a rifle as a souvenir for themselves or someone else. Or know who did. Meanwhile, I’ve spoken to Swift’s brother. He seems to think he’s a likely target as well. I must say, isolated as the farm is, he could easily be picked off from a distance. The question is, how to protect a population as scattered as it is here in the Fen country. You can’t watch them all. On another matter: What do you know about Hutchinson’s sister? Did you inform her of her brother’s death, or did Fallowfield?”

  “Fallowfield asked if he could tell her. I thought it best. He also identified the body and saw to it that the remains were taken to London as soon as they were released, accompanied by a man of the cloth, someone related to the new Mrs. Fallowfield. He felt responsible. After all the man had come to Ely for his wedding.”

  “Burrows swears he had no connection with the other two men. That could mean that whatever links them is in the mind of the killer. Not something we can easily track down.” Hamish was saying something. Hearing him, Rutledge asked, “Do you have ghosts, phantoms, or other specters in the Fens here?”

  Surprised by the question, Warren laughed. “Do you think our killer is a phantom?”

  “No. But if he can appear and disappear at will, perhaps he keeps himself out of sight in some place people are afraid—or unlikely—to go.”

  “We have a great hound—Black Shuck—who is a sign that something is about to happen. A harbinger, so to speak. I don’t know anyone who has seen him in the last few years, but I was told that he was spotted near Isleham the day before we declared war on Germany. It was never confirmed. Excitement was running high then, and people were ready to believe in any omen.”

  “Is this Black Shuck like Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles?”

  “Oh, yes, the story. Our black dog hasn’t been known to harm anyone. On the contrary, he’s a warning. Then there’s the black mill at Wriston. People have always thought it was h
aunted. A man was killed there a century or more ago, hung up on one of the arms. An accident most likely—no one was ever taken up for the crime. Several of the old mills have stories attached to them. And one of the old lagoons had a legend about something that lived in the water. That’s gone, along with the lagoon. Not much help, I’m afraid.”

  It wasn’t.

  Rutledge went back to the telephone he’d used before—in the passage to Reception at a hotel—and this time he found Sergeant Gibson at the Yard.

  “There’s not much to tell,” Gibson said. “I spoke to the Captain’s sister. She was upset, said no one could possibly hate her brother, and told me that it must have been a madman that shot him.”

  “What’s their background?”

  “Hutchinson and his sister were orphaned young and shifted from relative to relative until he went to Sandhurst. He was a young Lieutenant when he met and married a woman who had money of her own and a house in London, where they went to live. There was some story she’d been engaged to another man, but I couldn’t confirm that. Hutchinson had his first taste of war with the Expeditionary Force that went over in those early days, trying to stop the German advance. He was wounded at Mons but not sent home. His wife lost the child she was carrying, and her death was put down to despair. The short of it was, she didn’t want to live. The sister—she lived with him and his wife—says it was a very happy marriage, but another source claims the wife was unhappy.”

  “No foul play suspected in the wife’s death? If he married her for her money, he could have killed her for it as well.”

  “It appears he was in France at the time.”

  “What about the jilted lover?”

  “Never heard of again. I’d guess he decided he was well out of a bad bargain. The sister couldn’t even remember his name. She said it was never official, their engagement, just something understood from childhood.”

  “Did Hutchinson’s wife have any relatives who might have felt she was married for her money and then neglected?”

  “None the sister knew of. There was an uncle who was her guardian, but he’s long since dead. I did speak to the Rector at Mrs. Hutchinson’s church. St. Timothy’s, in Warwick, where she’s buried. He was inclined to agree with the official cause of death. I did learn that a maid disappeared from the London house not long ago, but she wasn’t there when Mrs. Hutchinson was alive.”

  “What became of her? Did you ask Miss Hutchinson about her?”

  “I was told there was probably a man involved. The girl had come highly recommended, and she did her work well, they had no complaints of her. But she was young, unused to the city. Then one day she seemed very unhappy and just walked out. Miss Hutchinson called in the police after she failed to return by the end of the week, but they had no luck finding her. She wouldn’t be the first to wind up in the river. Miss Hutchinson says she was young enough to believe promises made to her by a man, only to find herself deceived.”

  It was not uncommon.

  “She wasn’t pregnant, was she?”

  “There’s no way of knowing the answer to that. But she hadn’t confided in anyone at the house.”

  “What about Hutchinson?”

  “The sister says he was away more often than not, and she was indignant that we should think her brother had interfered with the maids. Besides, there’s no evidence of that anywhere. The staff said he left the management of the house to his sister and treated the staff with indifference.”

  Digesting what Gibson had said, Rutledge could see that Hutchinson had probably married for money, using that charm several people had spoken of to find himself a rich wife, then ignored her. He’d been kind to Major Clayton’s sister, but more or less as his opportunity to spend time with Colonel Nelson. It was a pattern of sorts. A housemaid would hold little interest for him.

  “Turning to Fallowfield. What did you learn?”

  “Well liked, no skeletons that I could discover. The same with the Sedleys. Above reproach, I was told at Mr. Sedley’s London club. A good man, according to his solicitor.”

  “That leaves Swift.”

  “He’s never been to London. At least if he came, he kept himself to himself and left no trace. He was to come down the week after the election to look for a flat that would serve when he was in Commons. He’d written to ask if there were any likely places close by Westminster. He was told there was no such list, he’d have to find something for himself before the House sat. I had that from an acquaintance at Westminster. He said Mr. Swift would wait until he was elected before making living arrangements. But it appeared that with his lackluster opposition, he was the most likely to win the by-election, and the general view was, he’d be a happy backbencher.”

  That corroborated all he’d learned in Ely and Wriston about Mr. Swift, the solicitor.

  “There are two new names for you to look at. Anson Swift, the illegitimate brother of the dead man. And a farmer named Burrows. Any luck with Lowell, the artillery Major?”

  “Good officer, careful of his men. A bachelor. Steady. No vices.”

  “Good.” Lowell, it seemed, was not a suspect.

  “There’ve been changes here, the new broom and all that. Constables reassigned. And speaking of that, the Acting Chief Superintendent was wanting to know if there was any news from Ely. Sir.”

  “Yes, well, it’s more complicated that we had anticipated.”

  “That may be, but Himself is looking for an arrest sooner rather than later.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Rutledge said dryly and broke the connection.

  He sat there in the little enclosure for the telephone, thinking over what he’d learned.

  Nothing useful. Nothing that would lead to Hutchinson’s death in Ely in the summer of 1920.

  Somewhere there had to be a strand of information that would help in the inquiry. A list of ex-soldiers was not likely to produce a killer in time to make Markham happy. But there would have to be a report in a day or two, and Rutledge accepted that with a sigh. Even if it offered no motive, no suspects, and no evidence to be going on with.

  Leaving the telephone closet, he went back to the police station, but Inspector Warren, he was told, had already gone home for the evening. He scribbled a note to leave on the man’s desk. It said simply, Nothing useful from London.

  On his way back to Wriston, Hamish was busy in the back of his mind.

  Trying to ignore the probing, the querulous demands for answers, the unsettling reminders of France, he looked up at the western sky. Clouds were streaked across the horizon, a blaze of color, and visible wherever the road took him, because of the flatness of the land and the lack of woods or towns or hills to break the view.

  A fiery gold in the last bank of clouds, a blazing red above that, and then, as the red faded to rose and the rose to lavender, the earth seemed to reflect the light.

  Not a night to be looking for a murderer, he thought. But he had the feeling that he should not linger on the road, he should be in Wriston by nightfall. It was an odd feeling, very like the one he’d had when he woke to find the fog lifted, as if someone had been there, looking up at his window.

  And yet the sky held him in thrall, for the light seemed to fill the motorcar, to warm his face, and as he drove he watched it slowly fade until there was nothing but the afterglow.

  When at last he could shut out Hamish no longer, he heard what the voice in his head was telling him.

  “He can see ye as clearly as he saw yon farmer. Ye’re a target. Ye’re Scotland Yard, and he knows ye’re after him. This land is no’ as empty as it seems. Ye’ll be dead before ye hear the shot.”

  Was it a reflection of his own mood, or was Hamish warning him?

  By that time he was less than two miles from Wriston. Beside him in the ditches and the fields, insects and frogs set up an invisible chorus. Over the quiet running
of the motor, it was unexpectedly loud. And as he drove into the village, his headlamps picking out the road ahead now, that sense of vulnerability seemed to increase.

  Death could be lurking anywhere. Behind the buildings, among the trees, in the shadows by the church . . .

  In this inquiry, McBride and Inspector Warren, with the best will in the world, had come up empty-handed. Scotland Yard was expected to find those elusive answers.

  And right now the killer had no way of knowing that Rutledge too was getting nowhere, had so far learned nothing useful.

  Chapter 10

  The list of ex-soldiers arrived the next morning by a special messenger who came roaring into Wriston on his motorcycle, his goggles and cuffed gloves a souvenir of France.

  Leafing through it, Rutledge could guess how many men had set out from this handful of villages to fight the Kaiser. Perhaps less than half had returned. He remembered the small corner of Isleham churchyard where a memorial had been set up, and the long rows of names on the plinth of the cross. He had not paused there. It had seemed too much of a burden to carry with him just then.

  The constables in the various villages had been thorough, giving him ranks and sometimes other brief notations by some of the names.

  Lost his leg.

  Lost his arm.

  Blind.

  Gassed.

  Troubled.

  Rutledge needed no explanation of that last. Men who had brought the war home with them, physically or mentally.

  He could mark off the severely wounded, those who couldn’t manage a rifle, much less the stairs in the ironmonger’s house or those up into Ely’s tower. They might hate as much as the next man, but they weren’t the killer he was after.

  Still, he’d have to interview the troubled men. He could feel his stomach clenching at the thought.

  McBride, who’d heard the roar of the Indian coming down the road, had hailed Rutledge and was trotting toward him.