Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

by Charles Todd

  “If you remember anything else, send me word.”

  “I promise. But you’re telling me that Mary was married to that man who was shot in front of Ely Cathedral?” He had her fall attention now. Shivering, she said, “But I didn’t know. How awful.”

  “Mary Hutchinson died in the first months of the war. In childbirth. She and the child didn’t survive.” It was a kind lie.

  “How very sad. There’s something that Mr. Swift and that Captain had in common, then. Both lost their wives in the same way.”

  But not quite the same. One was a beloved wife deeply mourned. And the other was a neglected wife who was wretched enough to take her own life.

  Rutledge thanked Miss Burrows and was about to leave when he remembered the barrister in Ely who enjoyed Newmarket.

  Burrows scratched his chin. “I expect that would be Thomas Bacon. No, Thomas Baron. Ask anyone in Ely, they can tell you where to find him.”

  Miss Bartram was delighted to see him again. When he told her he’d been in London, she was eager to hear about his journey.

  Mindful of what had kept this inn in business for so many years, he asked her, “Does the name Thaddeus Whiting mean anything to you? Did he ever come to Wriston for the shooting?”

  “And who is he, when he’s at home?”

  “He’s from Warwickshire. He came sometimes to Newmarket. It’s possible he also knew about The Dutchman Inn.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sure I’d have remembered if he had. I’ll look in my father’s book, of course, but I don’t expect I’ll find him.”

  In Ely, Rutledge was greeted by a morose Inspector Warren.

  “I hope you’re bringing me good news. I’ve spent the past two days reviewing statements, and I’m damned if they’re any more useful now than they were when they were written.”

  “We took Burrows to a Dr. Harris in Burwell. He’d neglected that graze on his cheek. And I went on to London, since London hasn’t been very forthcoming with information. I’m beginning to see why. There’s very little to be had. At the moment I’m interested in finding a barrister by the name of Baron.”

  “Baron? Good God, you don’t think he’s involved, do you?”

  “He isn’t, as far as I know. But he sometimes went to Newmarket with Swift.”

  “Now that’s interesting.” Warren got up from behind his desk. “I’ll go with you.”

  They found Thomas Baron in his chambers, and after the client who had been consulting him had left, he ushered the two men into his office.

  Warren made the introductions, and Baron asked how the inquiry was progressing. “I knew Swift. We weren’t close friends, but we had consulted on several matters. Before the war we’d travel occasionally to Newmarket, enjoy an expensive lunch, and talk about anything but the law.”

  “Did you meet any of these people while you and Swift were there? Captain Hutchinson, Thaddeus Whiting, Whiting’s niece, Mary, her fiancé, or a farmer named Burrows.”

  “Hutchinson? The man who was murdered? Never met him, but there were usually a number of Army officers up from London in the season. He could have been one of those. They kept to themselves as a rule. Thaddeus Whiting. The name’s familiar. Before the war? If he brought his niece with him, I never heard of it. Burrows I know by sight, but I’ve seen him there only once or twice. I’ll tell you who is mad about the horses—or was. Surprised me. The cooper over in Soham. Ruskin? I think that’s his name. Thornton, in Isleham, used to be interested in racing, but the war put paid to that.”

  “How well do you know Thornton?”

  “Not well. He’s an interesting man to dine with. Very well read. Before the war, he and Swift sometimes got into heated arguments over obscure points of history. Mind you, neither man had been to Athens or Rome, but to listen to them you’d think they were regular visitors.”

  And yet Thornton had said he barely knew Swift.

  “How heated?”

  “No, no, nothing that would lead to murder. It was more the pleasure of proving the other man wrong.” He smiled. “It was generally a chance meeting, a casual remark, and they were off. An entertaining evening for everyone.”

  Rutledge thanked him, and they left.

  Inspector Warren said, “Who is this man Whiting?”

  “Mary Hutchinson’s uncle and guardian. He’s dead, but the question is, since he knew Hutchinson, is it possible he also knew Swift? Is that our connection between the two victims?”

  “They are all three dead,” Warren pointed out. “You’re not likely to find out.”

  “What happened to the windmill keeper in Wriston?”

  “After the cottage beside it burned, he left. Drank himself to death, if you ask me. That’s very likely how the fire started. Although there are some who said the cottage was haunted and the old man burned it down to rid it of its ghosts. God knows what he thought he’d seen. The way those wooden arms creak, you’d believe in anything.”

  Rutledge remembered their creaking, the night of the mist, and how unnatural it had seemed. Unnoticed perhaps in the daylight, when one could see them move. But in the mist or late at night, it would be very different.

  He left Inspector Warren at the police station and drove to the Cathedral.

  It was beautiful in the afternoon sun, and he wondered as he always had when looking at these Medieval masterpieces how they had been designed and built by masons and workmen who might not have lived to see their work finished. A leap of faith, leaving something to the future. A name scratched out of sight on a gargoyle’s ear, or on a beam high above the nave, or wherever a man could leave his mark unseen. To show he had been there, and created something.

  “What will ye leave behind?” Hamish asked into the silence.

  “Nothing,” Rutledge said, and turned to go to the motorcar.

  And then he wheeled, realizing that the man standing nearer the Cathedral, staring up at it as he himself had been doing, looked familiar.

  Sure now that he hadn’t been mistaken, he strode forward just as the man began to walk away.

  Lengthening his stride, he called, “Thornton.”

  The man looked over his shoulder to see who was addressing him. Startled to find that it was Rutledge, he hesitated for a moment, and then stopped to wait for him to catch him up.

  “Inspector.”

  “Mr. Thornton. Admiring the Cathedral?”

  “I always come here when I’m in Ely. It’s an amazing building. I’d like to have a painting of the view I can see across the Fens. I’d think about that view when I was in the trenches. That was my escape.”

  For Rutledge, it had been the poems of O. A. Manning.

  “I understand you sometimes went to Newmarket before the war.”

  “Another lifetime,” he said wryly. “I didn’t have the heart for it when I came home from France.”

  “Did you meet friends there, or go alone?”

  “Does it matter? Sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. I was young, fancy free. It was something to do. Farming doesn’t let you escape for very long. At least not as far as London. Newmarket was close enough to waste a few hours there.”

  “Did you ever meet someone named called Thaddeus Whiting?”

  “I may have done. Is he a trainer? A rider?”

  “What about Herbert Swift?”

  “Ah. You’re remembering what I’d said earlier. That I didn’t know him well. It’s true. I never visited his home or anything of the sort.” Thornton smiled. “We were single, we’d come down from Cambridge, although he was ahead of me and I’d never met him there, and we made fools of ourselves a time or two, showing off our knowledge of the classical world.” He turned to look up at the tower, sadness in his face now. “It was a very different time. Carefree and happy. Nothing could happen to us in that bright, sunny world. He was married shortly afterwa
rd, as I remember, and that put paid to visits to Newmarket and drinking ourselves silly of an evening. I didn’t know him, what he feared or what he loved or what made him angry. Just that he had a very sharp mind and I could test my own against it.”

  “Did you marry, as he did?”

  “I’d grown up in Isleham, I wanted to see a little more of life before I settled down. Then Germany attacked Belgium and suddenly I was at war. Marriage seemed to be a luxury I couldn’t afford, given what was happening in France.”

  Rutledge thought he was telling the absolute truth—but not the whole truth.

  He said, “And Captain Hutchinson? Lieutenant Hutchinson, as he was then. Did you meet him?”

  “At Newmarket? No. I don’t believe I ever saw him there. Or if I did, I had no way of knowing who he was.” He looked up at the Cathedral again. “I was thinking before you spoke to me that it was shameful to use this beautiful edifice for murder. Whoever he is, I hope you find him.”

  And with a nod he walked away.

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, he’s a canny one.”

  Rutledge nearly answered the voice aloud. Why do you think that?

  “I wouldna’ care to play cards with him.”

  What had taught Thornton to conceal his feelings so well?

  After a moment Rutledge walked back to his motorcar. If Alice Worth had given him a name, would it have been Thornton’s?

  He stopped again at the police station to ask if Thornton had had any encounters with the police. There was often inconclusive evidence or a warning given that never made it into official reports. Yet they formed a pattern.

  But when he was asked about the man, Inspector Warren shook his head. “Impeccable record. Although I was told that once before the war, he was warned in Newmarket for public drunkenness. But he went home and slept it off. It was put down to high spirits, and that was that. He’s not the sort of man you’d expect to see brought up before the magistrate. A gentleman. This is twice you’ve brought his name up. Any particular reason why?”

  “Curiosity. He served during the war in the ranks.” But Rutledge was wondering to himself if that one night of drunkenness had been the same night he learned Mary Whiting was marrying Lieutenant Hutchinson.

  Inspector Warren looked at him straightly. “That doesn’t make him a murderer.”

  “True enough.”

  “Did you ask him about arguing with Swift?”

  “He told me it was before the war, a mere acquaintance, not a friendship. He claims it was nothing more than a kind of boasting. Certainly Swift stopped coming to Newmarket after his marriage.”

  “That was probably true enough. Swift and his wife were inseparable. Her death nearly broke the man. Some men take to drink or become reclusive after a wife has died. Swift wanted to turn his back on everything that could possibly remind him of her. To shut out the misery. It took him four years to work up the courage to come home again.”

  “Still—’’

  “I can’t think Thornton harbored a grudge for six years, thirsting for revenge because Swift got a date in history wrong.”

  But it wasn’t arguing with Swift that interested Rutledge. Still, he could see that when it came to choosing a second target—if Hutchinson had been the first and most important one—it might have appealed to Thornton to think of shooting Swift as having the last word. Rutledge remembered what he’d said to Alice Worth. That revenge was best savored cold.

  “Is there any chance that Thornton was courting the woman Swift married?”

  “I hardly think so. There have never been any rumors to that effect.”

  Rutledge shook his head. “Wherever I turn, there’s no pattern to point the way.”

  “I don’t like to say it, but so far you’ve done no better than I have in this search.”

  “Early days,” Rutledge answered him grimly.

  Rutledge left the motorcar by the Wriston inn and walked on to have a look at the ruins of the mill keeper’s cottage.

  Had the man who was charged with the upkeep of the mill tripped over a lantern in a drunken state—or set a fire to burn out the ghosts that haunted him?

  Rutledge could understand how that might happen.

  It wasn’t his inquiry, it had nothing to do with this one. It was the mill that actually drew him here again, and the memory of Miss Trowbridge standing near it, looking up at the sky. There had been more than stargazing on her mind that evening. He wondered what it was.

  Something twisted around his legs, and he looked down to see Clarissa winding herself back and forth, leaving a thick coat of white hairs on his trousers. When she lifted her head to beg for stroking, he could see that one eye was pale green, the other a pale blue. A striking combination. Mewing, she waited, and he reached down to touch her head, setting off a loud purring that made him smile.

  “She likes you.”

  He turned to see Marcella Trowbridge standing at her gate, a shopping basket over her arm.

  “I’m fond of animals,” he replied.

  “Sometimes they’re kinder than people.” As if she suddenly regretted the remark, she smiled and added, “They don’t disagree with you or dislike you because you’re grumpy in the morning or prefer your tea without milk.”

  Rutledge said, “Tell me about the man who used to live here.”

  “I liked him. He was kind to a lonely child. He’d sit with me on the steps and tell me stories or make things for me out of wood or string. My father had never had time to do that, and I never knew his father. My grandfather had died when he was still fairly young. My grandmother liked Angus too, and she was a very good judge of character. Mother would have been shocked if I’d told her I was entertained by the man who looked after the windmill. I sometimes wondered why Angus chose to live here when he could have lived in Scotland with his own people. But perhaps there had been a falling-out. I was far more romantically inclined, preferring to believe he’d lost the only woman he loved and had exiled himself forever. Too much Sir Walter Scott, I expect. But perhaps it was she who haunted him. Something did.”

  Her face colored suddenly, and she broke off. After a moment she asked, “Why do I tell you such things?”

  He thought he knew the answer to that. She was very much alone in the world. And loneliness brought with it longing. Or emptiness.

  Was that why Mary Hutchinson had taken her own life?

  Chapter 15

  Walking back from the windmill, Rutledge continued on to the police station, in search of McBride.

  “Burrows is at home. A chastened man. I think he’ll let his daughter attend to that wound now.”

  “Blood poisoning. He could have died.” McBride stood up and stretched.

  “Tell me what you know about this man Thornton. In Isleham.”

  “Not much, sir. Just that he’s kept to himself since the war. People hardly ever see him out and about.”

  And yet he’d been in Ely today.

  “He told me he barely knew Swift. And I’ve learned since then that they knew each other rather well, before the war.”

  “I doubt that makes him a murderer. People change in six years. And Swift wasn’t in the Army, he never went to France. They wouldn’t have much in common now, would they?”

  “Probably not. Was Thornton ever engaged to be married?”

  “I haven’t heard anything about it. Not to a local girl, at any rate.”

  Alice Worth had the key to that question. And she refused to give up the answer.

  “I’m driving back to Burwell. I want to speak to several people there. And then I’ll speak to Swift’s brother again. It may be late when I return.”

  “I’ll pass the word to Miss Bartram.”

  Rutledge changed his mind and went first to call on Swift’s brother, finding him just walking in from the fields.

  The man grinne
d and said, “You came the right way round this time.”

  “I did,” Rutledge said, answering the smile. “I need to ask a few more questions about your brother.”

  “Come in, then. I think there’s lemonade on offer.”

  Rutledge accepted the invitation and sat with Swift in the kitchen, sipping the cool drink.

  “Nothing like it on a warm day. But the lemons are hard to come by. And dear at any price. What is it you want to know?”

  “Did your brother go often to Newmarket?”

  “Newmarket? A few times with a friend from Ely.”

  “Did he see a man called Thornton there? From Isleham.”

  “God help me, I’d forgot about Thornton. They shared a love of ancient history, and my brother relished their arguments. I use the word loosely. Showing off was closer to the mark.”

  “Did they visit each other in Wriston or Isleham?”

  “My guess is, they never did. And it was about that same time that Herbert met his wife-to-be. After that, he lost interest in horses and Greek history and everything else, spending most of his free time running up to Ely to call on her.”

  “What about someone called Thaddeus Whiting?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him mention that name.”

  “Mary Whiting?”

  “There was a girl—Mary? Margaret? I can’t be sure what she was called—who caught Thornton’s eye. He met her in Newmarket, and that evening talked about nothing else, even refusing to take umbrage at something my brother brought up about Rome. Herbert came home gleeful, claiming that he’d found Thornton’s Achilles’ heel. That was before he’d met his wife, and he thought it amusing. Funny you should remind me of that.” He stared off into the distance. “I do fairly well, as a rule. The farm keeps me busy, there’s no time to mourn. And then something like this comes along and I can see my brother’s face as plainly as I see yours.” He cleared his throat. “We were all young then. I’d been married a year myself. They called me the Old Man. I was all of twenty-eight. We didn’t know what was to come, did we?”