No Shred of Evidence

by Charles Todd

  He had thought, surely, that he was mad already. All the same, he knew that if he gave in to that madness, if he took out his ser­vice revolver from where he’d kept it safe in his trunk, killing himself would mean killing Hamish a second time, taking him with him into the dark. It was all that had kept him alive, that single fear.

  This night, listening to the voice warning him not to cross the Tamar, to turn back to London before it was too late, he knew it was good advice. But he was an officer of the Yard now, and unable to refuse a direct order.

  The alternative was to resign.

  But the Yard, for all its shortcomings, had kept him alive too, forcing him to cope at any cost or face admitting to the world that he was a victim of shell shock. A man lacking moral fiber. A coward. No longer fit to be a policeman . . .

  At dawn the next morning, he crossed the River Tamar, and a line of O. A. Manning poetry ran though his mind, welcoming him against his will.

  This river

  Does more

  Than cut off the world.

  It is a wall to shut it out.

  For here I am at peace, I know this land,

  And I am safe

  In this, my house above the sea.

  Only she hadn’t been safe there. She had been driven to suicide, with her half brother Nicholas.

  There was still the drive across Cornwall to Padstow on the north coast. The roads were not the best. Having eaten no breakfast, he had stopped in a village shop for a pasty hot from the oven, and in the pub bought a jar of Devon cider to drink with it.

  The local ­people had watched him warily, this man from the outside world. They questioned him as he made his purchases, and seemed glad to see the back of him when he pulled out of the village and found the next turning.

  At the approach to the many-­arched ancient stone bridge over the Camel in Wadebridge, he stretched his legs, then finished the last of the tea in the Thermos he’d refilled in a town he had passed through shortly before dusk. The shop had been about to close, but the owner had been willing to put the kettle on again. Standing there now, looking at the bridge, he thought about the man who had built it.

  The ford over the Camel in the little town of Wade had claimed more than its share of lives. So dangerous was it that a chapel had been put up on each side of the crossing. ­People could pray for a safe journey over—­and pray again in thankfulness for having survived. It was a clergyman who saw the need for a bridge instead of walking through the swift water, and in the 1400s, it had been built, a marvel in its day with all the arches stretching from one side to the other. And it was still a marvel when Oliver Cromwell took it during the Civil Wars, fully aware of its strategic importance.

  Tonight it was quiet, and empty save for a cat trotting briskly across. She looked up as she passed his motorcar but otherwise paid no heed to him. Smiling, he got back behind the wheel for the last leg of his journey.

  It was very late when he reached the village of Heyl, named for where the river broadened. According to the file Markham had given him, it was to the landing here that the four women had rowed after the near-­drowning had occurred. The street was dark, no lamps to light it, as there were in London. Inspector Barrington had been staying at a small inn just before the village’s center. Rutledge thought it must be used most often by travelers hiking the coast paths or following the Camel down to the sea. It was not particularly picturesque.

  A fair man of forty-­five or so answered Rutledge’s knock and peered out at him as if seeing a ghost.

  Rutledge smiled, though he didn’t feel like it. “I’m down from London,” he said pleasantly. “I’m told Inspector Barrington’s room is still available.”

  “It’s true. They sent for his things. I boxed them up myself. But there’s no one to take them off my hands.”

  “I’ll see to them. May I look at the room, please?”

  Shielding his lamp with one hand, the man gestured toward the stairs. Carrying his valise, Rutledge mounted them. The inn, from what he could tell by lamplight, was probably a hundred years old, built of good Cornish granite, with paneled walls, a bar to one side of what must be the dining room, and a smell of damp about the lot.

  The passage up the stairs was dark and silent except for their footsteps.

  “Here,” his guide told Rutledge, pointing to his right.

  Rutledge pushed open the door nearest him and stepped inside.

  To his relief, claustrophobic as he’d been since the war—­he’d been buried alive when the shell had blown his sector into the night sky—­he saw in the glow of the lamp that the room was quite large, with a pair of windows, an ornate wardrobe that could have been Jacobean, and a sturdy bed with a gay floral coverlet.

  “This will do nicely,” he said, and meant it. As the man lit the lamps, Rutledge asked for water and a basin to wash off the dust of travel, and then shut the door on the sleepy innkeeper when that was done. For a moment, he simply stood there in the middle of the room.

  He’d been told that Barrington had died in the dining room below, gasping for air and then falling to the floor. But he’d been brought up here to his room while Dr. Carrick was sent for, and he was pronounced dead here.

  Not one who believed in ghosts, Rutledge had seen men die, and dealt with the dead more times than he cared to remember. Still, he’d known Barrington fairly well, and met his wife on several occasions.

  But the room was clean as a pin, the coverlet looked as if it had been freshly laundered, and Rutledge was tired. He undressed, opened the curtains to look out at the gleam of moonlight on the Camel, and went to bed.

  If Barrington shared his dreams, he knew nothing about it.

  The next morning it was clear that news of his arrival had spread quickly. His breakfast was accompanied by stares, as if everyone feared he too would fall facedown in his eggs.

  When the meal was over, he asked the man who had shown him to his room the night before—­who had brought his tea and introduced himself as Joseph Hays, the owner of the inn—­if there had been any papers in Inspector Barrington’s belongings.

  Hays shook his head. “Scotland Yard asked that as well. But there was nothing. On the desk in his room or in the wardrobe.”

  Barrington had had a reputation for keeping his notes in his head until he could see the inquiry clearly enough to put them down on paper.

  So. Rutledge was on his own with only the meager file that Chief Superintendent Markham had handed him.

  He began by saying to Hays, “That’s not a Cornish name, is it? Hays?”

  “My mother’s family was Cornish. My grandfather came down to Padstow on a matter of business to do with shipping, and never left.”

  “Well, then, perhaps you can give me a picture of what happened here last week?”

  Hays shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about it until the pub opened that evening, and everyone was talking about it. How Bradford Trevose had seen the four women struggling to drown Harry Saunders. Trevose was walking home from market and heard the commotion out on the river. It seemed to him they were trying to shove Harry’s head beneath the water, but he was strong enough to withstand the worst and was on the point of climbing into the boat when one of the women struck him over the head with an oar.”

  “And Trevose accused them of attempting to murder Saunders.”

  “That’s right. If he hadn’t come along, they’d have succeeded, and it would have been a murder charge, right enough.”

  “But why should four young women from Padstow Place wish to kill a villager?”

  Hays shrugged. “Who can say what was in their heads? Several ­people came forward later to say the women had rowed upriver looking for him, with no luck, then spotted him on their way back and took him aboard. I don’t know the truth of that, but they did pass by the Place’s landing.”

  When he had
finished speaking to Hays, Rutledge asked to see Inspector Barrington’s belongings, but the innkeeper was right, a cursory search showed there was nothing in them related to the case. They still smelled faintly of Barrington’s favorite cigars.

  Rutledge was shutting the valise again when Hays added, “The clothes he was wearing when he died went with the body to the undertaker’s, thence to London. I put his shaving gear and the like into the valise.”

  Rutledge thanked him for his help, and went to look for the constable.

  It was a typically Cornish village, scattered along the river and up the gently sloping land behind it. The church and churchyard were on higher ground, circled by a low wall of the same dark granite stone. Along the water were two pubs, The Cornishman and The Pilot, and behind them a row of shops. The police station was at the end of the row, perfectly situated between the water and the rest of the town to deal with whatever trouble might arise, from drunken Saturday nights to housebreaking.

  Rutledge left his motorcar at the inn and set out on foot, walking along the water for some twenty yards before he came to the village landing. Boats bobbed in the tide as wind rippled the gray surface of the water. For a moment he studied the view, giving himself a sense of what lay upstream and down, then he turned toward the police station.

  Pendennis was the name on the board outside. He was in, sitting at a table reading through several papers, a broad man with dark hair and sharp brown eyes. He looked up as Rutledge came through the station’s door, and with a scowl said, “If you’re representing one of the young ladies, I’ve nothing more to say to you. The matter is still under investigation.”

  “My name is Rutledge. From Scotland Yard. I take it you’ve had a lively time with the lawyers.”

  Constable Pendennis rose from behind his desk, and gave Rutledge a wry grin. “Beg pardon, sir. We’ve been beleaguered of late. The families of the young ladies are understandably upset. I expect I’d feel much the same in their shoes. Still, it’s rained solicitors and barristers for days. I’m heartily sick of the sight of them. I tell them that I have nothing new to give them, that I was awaiting word from the Yard, but they don’t listen. I’m very glad you’re here to take charge.”

  Rutledge moved out the chair on the far side of the desk and said as he sat down, “Who are they? The accused?”

  “Miss Grenville and Miss St. Ives, local families, and two visitors come for the weekend. So I’m told. A Miss Langley and a Miss Gordon.”

  He had known a Grenville at school. But from Devon, as he remembered, not Cornwall.

  “Tell me, do you believe these women are guilty of attempted murder?”

  Pendennis sighed. “I don’t know what to say, sir, and that’s the truth. Nor did Mr. Barrington, as far as that goes. Brad Trevose swears to what he saw. He tells me that if he hadn’t leapt into the water, cold as it was, and swum to the rowboat, Harry Saunders would be a dead man. There were witnesses down by the village landing as well, drawn by the cries of the women, but they were too far away to see what Trevose saw. They could tell there was a man clinging to the side of the boat, they could see two of the women leaning over that side. But whether they were intent on saving the man or killing him, there was no way to know.”

  “And so the entire case rests on Trevose’s statement.”

  “That’s right, sir. But he’s a man of good reputation, sound as they come. Why would he lie about what happened?”

  “Good point. Where are the women now?”

  “Not here in the station’s only cell, sir,” he exclaimed, as if Rutledge had suggested they might be in the castle dungeon, chained to the wall. “It’s not for the likes of them. Mr. Grenville, Miss Victoria’s father, has taken them into custody and kept them at the house. Padstow Place. He’s the local magistrate, sir. I thought he could be depended upon to keep his word.”

  “And rightly so. Why was Scotland Yard called in?”

  “The families of the young ladies felt that the Yard was necessary, to get at the truth. I don’t know which of their fathers it was. Any one of them might have done it, for they are all wealthy enough and respected enough for the Chief Constable to give them his ear.”

  “Do you have the statements taken after the incident?”

  “I gave them to Inspector Barrington, sir. He wanted to read them before each personal interview.”

  “I have found nothing in his belongings about this case, and London had very little information as well.”

  The constable’s expression was bleak. “Then I don’t know what to tell you, sir. Except that he didn’t seem well when he arrived. The Inspector. He said it was only a spot of indigestion from an undercooked pasty he’d bought in St. Austell when the train stopped there.”

  Then where had Barrington put those statements—­and any other information he might have come by, in his short tenure as the Yard’s man on the scene?

  “I’ll start at the beginning, while a search is made for his papers. If need be, we can ask all the participants to give us a new statement.”

  Pendennis was skeptical. “It’s not been done before. At least, not here. And they’ll have had time to think. Not the same as taking it down while they’re still uncertain.”

  “We might not have much choice in the matter. Very well, I’ll start with the farmer. Trevose. Where can I find him?”

  He was given directions and set out on foot.

  The farm was tucked below the headland, the house upright and whitewashed, standing like a Neolithic stone on the landscape.

  A line of washing hung to one side of the kitchen door, and Rutledge could just see the edge of a sheet flapping in the onshore wind. He had forgot how windy Cornwall could be, especially where the toe of Land’s End jutted out into the Atlantic. Even this far north and this far inland, it shaped the trees and the ­people.

  There was an ornate brass knocker on the black-­painted door, and as he lifted it, Rutledge wondered who had chosen to put it there, Trevose or his wife.

  An older woman came to the door, her white hair setting off a wind-­browned face and startling blue eyes.

  “Who is it?” she asked, looking up at Rutledge. She came barely to his chest, diminutive and yet oddly forceful, as if by right.

  “Mr. Trevose, please. Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard.”

  She nodded. “They said someone was coming down from London. Step in, then.” He followed her into the front room of the house, where the horsehair furniture covered in a dark green fabric boasted antimacassars crocheted in intricate floral designs, like arbors full of roses. The carpet on the floor was worn but of good quality, and a low fire burned on the hearth, making the room feel slightly stuffy.

  The woman offered Rutledge a seat and disappeared into the back regions of the house.

  A few minutes later, Trevose walked in. He was dressed in corduroys and a flannel shirt, a well-­set-­up man of medium height with dark hair just showing flecks of gray at the temples. Rutledge thought he might have been quite handsome in his youth. He was still a striking man in his late thirties.

  “Inspector Rutledge, is it?” He didn’t offer to shake hands, instead crossing the room to sit in the chair on the other side of the hearth. “They said someone would be coming down to replace Inspector Barrington.”

  “And as I am new to the inquiry, I felt it would be best to start from the beginning and form my own opinions,” Rutledge answered pleasantly, neatly skirting the issue of the missing statements.

  “Well, it’s all in what I wrote down for Constable Pendennis. But I’ve no objection to going over it again.”

  He told his story briskly, and apparently objectively, withholding nothing.

  “I was leaving the village on the river path when I saw the boat from Padstow Place. It was late in the year to be taking it out, and I saw there were four young women in it. That’s when I realized tha
t two were half out of the boat, and my first thought was they’d taken a little dog with them and it had gone into the water. I stopped, and that’s when I saw that it was not a dog, it was a man’s head. His arms came up, as if trying to reach for the side of the boat, and the women were trying to push him away, back down again. That’s when the one in the bow dragged out an oar and hit the man over the head with it. I tore off my coat and kicked off my shoes, then jumped in. I’m a strong swimmer, even in cold water, and I reached the boat, swung myself into the well, and at that point, two of the women helped me pull the man into the bottom. I didn’t recognize him at first, I was too busy trying to pump the water out of him. Then I turned him over to see what damage that oar had done, and I could see he was unconscious, a bloody great gash across the top of his head. If I hadn’t been there, he’d have drowned. There’s no doubt about it. He couldn’t have fought to save himself, and they had only to hold his head under for a minute longer, and he’d have been a dead man.”

  “Was the boat lying within sight of the village?”

  “It was, and there were ­people on the landing, drawn to all the shouting. But at that distance, I doubt they could tell what was happening. Although there was no doubt about that oar.”

  “What did the women say to you when the man, Harry Saunders, was breathing and you could pay attention to them?”

  “One said, ‘Thank God, you’ve come,’ or words to that effect. But I made no bones about what I’d seen. I told them flat out that I knew they had tried to kill Saunders.”

  “What was their response?”

  “They began to deny it, speaking all at once. But I know what I saw.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Both Saunders and I were wet to the skin, and two of the women were wet from the struggle by the side of the boat. I took the oars from them and pulled for the village landing. There were men waiting who took Saunders to the doctor, and I called for the constable. But he was already on his way, and I explained what I’d seen. He took the young women into custody and sent a boy to Padstow Place to let them know what had happened.”