by Charles Todd
What if Hutchinson hadn’t tried to seduce Catriona? What if he’d fallen in love with her? And she with him? Even a man out for the main chance might fall in love with a poor girl. Only he hadn’t known, had he, that she came from very different stock.
His wife had died while he was in France. Catriona had disappeared while he was away in Gloucestershire.
Miss Hutchinson hadn’t come north when her brother was murdered . . .
That handsome house on a handsome square.
Rutledge said, “Dear God. I’m not sure that he did.”
“Did what? What are you talking about, man?”
“I don’t know that Hutchinson had anything to do with your granddaughter’s death. It was his sister. And that house. It had belonged to Mary Hutchinson. She was pregnant. The child had died, but there was every likelihood she would have another. An heir. The question is, was she driven to kill herself, or was she murdered?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not sure. But I think both of us got it wrong. It wasn’t Hutchinson who was responsible for her death, although he was self-absorbed enough not to realize his role in it. It was his sister. Any woman Hutchinson married would be mistress of that house. And now Miss Hutchinson is. Because everyone else is dead. Her brother’s wife. Catriona. And the Captain.”
He was still trying to work it out, his mind rapidly sorting through what he knew. But MacLaren was there before him. He picked up one of the lengths of wood that framed the hurdles and swung it with all the strength of his lean body.
Rutledge dropped like a stone, in spite of Hamish’s warning. His guard down, it had taken precious seconds to realize what was happening.
Dazed, his wits scattered, he lay there, fighting to hold on to consciousness. And then Thornton was bending over him.
Even as he did so, he straightened, whirled around, and said, “He’s taken the motorcar.”
Rutledge struggled to his feet. “It’s MacLaren. He’s on the way to London.”
“There’s my motorcar. But it’s in Isleham.”
Shaking his head, desperate to clear it, Rutledge said, “We don’t have time. Find someone with a motorcar. Quickly.” He put up a hand and touched the wetness on the side of his head. His fingers came away dark with blood.
“You’re in no condition to drive. You need a doctor. Let Warren deal with it. They’ll find him soon enough.”
“Damn it, I’m ordering you. Find a motorcar. You can drive it, can’t you? We can’t let him reach London or there will be another murder. I’ll explain on the road.”
Thornton turned on his heel and ran out toward the street. It was nearly a quarter of an hour later when he came back, driving a well-polished Rolls with a dark green body. Rutledge was standing by the road, waiting.
“I had to twist some arms. Get in.”
Rutledge did. It was a chauffeur-driven car, and they sat up front. Rutledge could smell something but dared not look over his shoulder. Later he discovered a bouquet of wilting heliotrope in the crystal vase on the lady’s side of the passenger compartment. For hours its heavy sweetness made him feel slightly ill.
Gingerly leaning his head back, he closed his eyes and let Thornton drive. After they had passed Newmarket, Thornton said, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“All right.” He told the story slowly, putting it together in his own mind as he did.
Thornton swore. “It wasn’t Hutchinson who killed Mary?”
“I’ve no doubt he neglected her. He was a selfish man, looking out for himself. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sister had done all she could to make her sister-in-law wretched enough to believe he didn’t care for her, only for the house and the money.”
“I was there at your last meeting with her. A cold woman. She was sitting at the head of the table, did you notice? Her brother’s chair. Not at what must have been her usual place. What do you think MacLaren will do?”
“I don’t think he has a weapon.” But what about that sharp knife used to cut the osiers and withies, the stiff stalks of reeds and young trees? Easier to carry inside a London house than a rifle.
Thornton was making good time, but they were still nearly half an hour behind MacLaren, and Rutledge’s touring car was probably faster. As it was, they were thundering down the long straight roads. It would be different once they had left the Fens behind. Their speed would have to drop considerably. And so would MacLaren’s.
It was some time after Cambridge that Thornton said, “He killed two people. MacLaren. The wrong two people, as it transpired. He’ll kill her as well. I don’t know that I wouldn’t much prefer arriving too late to stop him. I loved Mary, you know. Very deeply. And there was nothing I could do.”
“Just as well. You’d hang instead of MacLaren. Pull over, I’ll drive now.”
“You’ve a lump the size of a goose egg on the side of your head. I don’t want to find myself in a ditch.”
On the outskirts of London, late into the night, Rutledge said, “I’ll drop you at Scotland Yard. Ask for Sergeant Gibson. If he isn’t there, tell someone where to find us.”
“I told you,” Thornton said grimly, “I’ll see this through.”
“And if he’s there? If he hasn’t killed her by the time we reach the house? Will you stop him—or stop me?”
Thornton considered the question. “I’d rather not hang. That’s the only reason I’d act. But if God is good, she’ll be dead when we get there.”
There was no time to argue, although Hamish was warning Rutledge that he was taking a grave risk. But Miss Hutchinson’s life hung in the balance, and he would have to take his chances with Thornton.
The late traffic was heavy, laden wagons and lorries and vans bringing foodstuffs and flowers and everything else London lacked to stock the markets and the shops for the coming day. They followed a butcher’s van, the back open, great carcasses of beef and pork swaying as it made its way over the uneven cobbles. And then they were in the clear, only a mile or less from the square where Miss Hutchinson lived. As they turned into the street, even in the gray light of a cloudy dawn, they could see Rutledge’s motorcar standing before the house door.
“He’s here.”
Thornton sped down the street, braking sharply as they reached the house. The front door stood open, and they could see a lamp lit on a table by the stairs.
Thornton didn’t waste time pulling in behind Rutledge’s motorcar. He left the borrowed vehicle in the middle of the street and was close on Rutledge’s heels as they raced to the door and up the stairs. Rutledge had no way of knowing which room belonged to Miss Hutchinson. He stopped at the top of the steps, and Thornton nearly plowed into him.
Somewhere they could hear a woman crying, soft mewing cries.
“This way, I think.” Rutledge moved swiftly down the passage, found an open door, and stepped into the room.
It appeared to be the master bedroom, very masculine, with dark woods and heavy drapes over the windows. There were no lamps lit. Rutledge stepped forward and flung open the drapes. In the pale light coming through the glass, he could see Miss Hutchinson lying across her bed. A pool of dark blood had soaked the sheets and the coverlet, and her hair was black with it.
Cowering by the washstand, he saw Mrs. Cookson, the housekeeper. Looking up with tears running down her cheeks, she said, “I tried to stop him. I thought he would kill me too, when he was done.”
“Where is he?”
“There.” Thornton pointed to the shadows beside the bed. The hurdle maker was lying there, blood blackening the front of his shirt, his head bowed. Rutledge went across to him and knelt by his side while Thornton bent over Miss Hutchinson.
MacLaren was still alive. Just.
He glanced up at Rutledge, his eyes a fierce blue. “It’s better this way. She told me. She took Catriona
to the country and stabbed her. In a wood. Hers was the body the police had found, after all. My darling girl buried in a pauper’s grave. She feared her brother was going to marry Catriona. He loved her, she said. And it wouldn’t be like before, when he was away in France. I killed that woman in spite of her confession. She had no room for mercy. Nor did I.” The Highland accent was more pronounced now, as if he were too tired to care.
Thornton said, from where he was standing by the bed, “Too late. She’s gone.”
The blue eyes were dulling, his breathing more difficult. “Don’t tell Marcella it was the windmill keeper. He died long ago, anyway. He had nothing to live for.”
“But you continued to live as Lovat.”
MacLaren smiled faintly. “The Boers always said I couldn’t be killed. I tried drink. It didn’t dull the pain of losing Ellen Trowbridge. I tried to starve myself, and my body refused to quit. In the end, I came back to the Fens and simply existed. To tell truth, I’m glad it’s finally over. There will be no trial. No need to sully her name.”
He meant the woman he’d loved.
His body shuddered and the knife slipped out of his hand, falling down beside his hip. He paid it no heed. “I’m sorry for nothing. Except perhaps for the farmer, Burrows. He was merely a diversion. Still. It was his own stubbornness that nearly killed him. The wound was slight enough. I made sure of that.”
And then he reached out, his fingers fastening over Rutledge’s wrist. “Please. Tell them I killed for Catriona. A servant girl. But don’t tell them who Catriona really was. Don’t shame the memory . . .” His voice caught. Then it strengthened again. “I was always a killer. It was my skill, and they’d taught me well. She taught me love.”
The grip tightened, almost as a death grip, and then MacLaren’s hand fell away. The blue eyes were empty, the strong face now slack.
After a moment Rutledge reached out and touched the man’s throat. Rising to his feet, he said, “He’s dead.”
“I’m glad he won’t hang.” Thornton walked away to the window. After a moment, he added in a very different voice, “How do you cope with this sort of thing? God, it brings back the war!”
But Rutledge was bending over Mrs. Cookson, helping her to her feet and drawing her out the door. “Go down to the servants’ hall and send someone for the constable. Tell him to go for Sergeant Gibson at Scotland Yard. At once.”
She clung to his arm, still weeping. “I couldn’t stop him. He was too strong.”
“You did your best,” he told her. “Now you must go for the police.”
“But you are the police.”
He had to help her down the stairs, but when she saw the door standing wide, she seemed to come to her senses. She hurried to close it, and then turned toward the servants’ hall. He watched until she had shut that door behind her, then went back up the stairs.
Thornton was still by the window. “Am I a suspect?”
“Until this is settled. So far we have no rifle. And until we do, you’re under suspicion.”
He cleared his throat. “Are you going to keep Miss Trowbridge’s grandmother out of this?”
“Yes. And I’d advise you to do the same. All that matters right now is the hurdle maker Lovat whose granddaughter went missing in London.”
Turning, Thornton nodded, then added, “I feel like a fifth thumb. How will you explain my presence to the Yard?”
Rutledge looked toward MacLaren’s body, half hidden in the shadows by the bed. “I’ll think of something,” he said. “You’re a witness, after all.”
“I wish I hadn’t been,” Thornton said under his breath. Then aloud he said, “It’s different from the war, isn’t it? Murder.”
Listening to Hamish in the back of his mind, Rutledge said curtly, “Very.”
“Mary is avenged. Why don’t I feel happier about that?”
But it was a rhetorical question, and Rutledge let it go. He went to another room and found two chairs, setting them out in the passage for himself and Thornton.
And there he waited for Sergeant Gibson and the machinery of the Yard.
Chapter 20
When the bodies had been removed and the master bedroom shut off, when Rutledge and Thornton and Mrs. Cookson had given their statements, it was finished.
Acting Chief Superintendent Markham made an appearance, striding into the house with the air of a man who was pleased to see an inquiry closed.
But Rutledge told him quite frankly that it was necessary to return to Wriston and Ely. “We don’t have the rifle, you see. Or the helmet. We need them to connect the dead man with the shootings there. Otherwise, that inquiry is still open.”
“See that you’re quick about it, then.” Markham rubbed his hands together in a gesture of satisfaction. “Took you long enough, Rutledge. But well done. Well done, I say.” He seemed to notice Thornton. “Who is this?”
“His name is Thornton. He’s been helping us with our inquiries.”
Markham looked the other man up and down. “He has the look of a soldier.” There was speculation in his gaze. “Certain he’s no more than that?”
“Not unless the rifle turns up in his house.”
Thornton threw Rutledge an angry look, but Markham said, “See it doesn’t.” And then he was gone, followed by one of his people.
“Who the hell was that?” Thornton asked. “I can’t say I like him.”
“He’s my superior,” Rutledge said mildly.
“More’s the pity,” Thornton retorted and walked out to the motorcar to wait.
Rutledge took two rooms in a hotel in Cambridge where they slept most of what was left of the day and started early the next morning for Soham. They had brought both motorcars in tandem, Rutledge’s and the one Thornton had commandeered.
Rutledge had remembered the message from Inspector Warren that he’d neglected to answer, but it could wait another day. In Soham, after restoring the motorcar to its still irate owner, they searched both the small house where the man who called himself Lovat had lived and the shop where he dried the reeds and made his hurdles.
All they found were the belongings of a man who lived quietly and frugally. Rutledge even emptied the dustbins, and there he found several bloody bandages. Had MacLaren been wounded by Burrows’s shotgun? It hadn’t been visible. And it hadn’t slowed the man. But here was proof.
Where then was the rifle?
Standing where Lovat was sitting when he first saw him, Rutledge looked down at the bottom of the unfinished basket the man had been making. A rain had fallen, and the reeds had begun to curl.
MacLaren had been a tormented man, and Rutledge knew a little about torment. But it was Thornton who said, “I think he was glad of a reason to die. Finally. Better than the hangman.”
The tone of his voice conveyed what he’d left unsaid, that he also knew what torment was.
After a moment Thornton added, looking up and down the stream that flowed quietly just beyond where they were standing, “He must have known all these waterways. He went out to find his materials for the hurdles. He could have stowed anything anywhere. It would take weeks to search.” Turning back to Rutledge, he went on. “Are you going to keep me here until you find the rifle?”
“If I must.” He walked back into the house. “He was a tidy man. I don’t think he would leave the rifle to be caught in a storm and ruined.” Stepping outside again, he said, “But there is one place he could be sure to leave something. Back to the motorcar, Thornton.”
They drove on to Wriston but didn’t stop until they’d reached the windmill and the ruins of the keeper’s house.
“Why here?”
“Because no one would connect anything found here with the hurdle maker in Soham.”
He got out of the motorcar and moved carefully into the foundations. Anything salvageable had been taken away long sinc
e. The rough stones of the foundation itself were still in place. The ground here was too low to dig a proper cellar, but there were steps leading up to what once had been the main door, and opposite them on the far side, a second pair of steps going to the small back garden and the path to the windmill.
Was this the reason why the ruins were said to be haunted? Because MacLaren had come here, like a shadow in the night, to retrieve what he needed?
Rutledge searched carefully, testing every crack and crevice, to see if it yielded anything that might be a hiding place. It would make sense, if Rutledge found what he was looking for here.
But there was nothing, not so much as a hollow behind those steps, no receptacle large enough for a rifle and the other things the man would wish to hide. Still—it couldn’t have been left where someone might stumble over it—a curious child or a scavenging Traveler.
Rutledge refused to give up, probing every inch of the ruins.
Nothing.
Where, then?
Thornton swore as he tripped on rubble. “He’d have broken his neck, coming here in the dark. He must have been more clever than that.”
“What are you looking for?”
The two men turned in unison. Marcella Trowbridge was standing in the road, watching them.
Rutledge said, “There has been a suggestion that the shooter might have left his rifle here.”
“But that’s impossible. Who would do such a thing?”
Rutledge’s gaze met Thornton, then he said, “Someone from Soham.”
“Oh. No one I know. That’s all right, then.”
He went on searching, to no avail, and then walked to the windmill. But that was now managed by the ironmonger, he remembered as he looked up at the weather-stained sails. It would not serve MacLaren to have the ironmonger pawing through his things, out of simple curiosity.
Miss Trowbridge was still there on the road watching. Rutledge said to Thornton, “For the love of God, go and distract her.”
Reluctantly Thornton did as he was told.
