No Shred of Evidence

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge considered his request. “Are you being absolutely truthful, Vicar?”

  “On my soul, I am. She has nothing to do with what happened here on that terrible Saturday afternoon. She wasn’t even in Cornwall. I see no purpose in putting her through an inquisition by the police.”

  “Hardly an inquisition.” Still, he recalled Elaine St. Ives’s anxiety when he’d first questioned her. He finished his own whisky and considered the vicar.

  “I will agree to this. If I discover that this woman was in any way involved with Harry Saunders, I will expect you to tell me whatever I need to know.”

  Rutledge could see that Toup was not happy about the bargain, but he had found himself in a corner and really had no choice.

  Reluctantly the vicar agreed. And then he rose, set his glass and Rutledge’s on the cabinet, and said, “I won’t keep you, Inspector. But thank you.”

  Rutledge stood and said quietly, “I’ll see myself out.”

  “No. I have not forgot my manners,” he said, and walked with Rutledge to the door.

  Dissatisfied, Rutledge went to his motorcar and found what he wanted in the boot. Then he set out on foot in the direction of the Trevose farm.

  His eyes were soon accustomed to what light there was, allowing him to avoid the worst of the obstacles in his way as he cut across country. The cow pats and sheep droppings were invisible, but he persevered, hoping that in the rougher patches, the animals had found nothing worth the effort of grazing in that direction.

  It was fully dark now, and he was still some distance from the house. Without warning he stumbled over an old, rotting stump where shoots had begun to grow up from the roots in a last desperate attempt to survive. He was just about to move around it when his boot struck stone, and not a stone in the earth but what remained of a low shelter of some sort. Unwilling to risk using his torch, he ran his gloved hands over it. Stone walls. Moss-­covered stone roof. An opening on one side. A cold, wet spring running over his fingers. He realized that it was a small shrine, and the whispering sound he’d been hearing for the past two minutes was the soft bubbling of water out of a sacred well.

  Such wells were common all over Cornwall, dedicated to obscure Cornish saints with often unpronounceable names. Was this St. Marina’s well? From its condition, he thought it must be a more neglected saint whose fame had been lost to time. Or perhaps, Hamish was suggesting, it was Trevose who’d neglected it.

  Then Rutledge remembered something Trevose had said when he and Constable Pendennis had walked out into the fields to find him. Something about praying, although the constable was a Chapel man. Assuming it was a personal taunt between the two men, Rutledge had said nothing at the time, but now he smiled to himself.

  Glancing up to take his bearings, he could see that the well offered a direct line of sight to the front of the Trevose house. As good a spot as any, he thought, and downwind of any dogs on the property.

  He settled himself there and opened the clasp on the case holding his field glasses. They were familiar in his hands, and he focused them on the door of the house, watching for some time before it opened in a flash of lamplight, then closed again. He could just pick out the shape of a man, Trevose he thought, and he followed the shape as it set off down the lane, then cut across the fields in the direction Rutledge had just come from.

  To the pub?

  He waited for nearly a quarter of an hour, in the event the man had gone to fetch some farm implement he’d left behind when he came in for his dinner.

  When there was no sign of him, Rutledge rose to his feet and made his way to the door.

  Mrs. Penwith, a tea towel in her hands, said crossly, “You can’t lift the latch for your—­?” Breaking off as she recognized Rutledge, she started to close the door, but he put his foot in the space before she could manage it.

  “I’d like to speak to you,” he said quietly. “It won’t take long.”

  “I have nothing to say,” she told him querulously. “I wasn’t there.”

  “You weren’t,” he agreed. “What I’d like to know is why Trevose dislikes the Grenvilles.”

  “Does he?” she asked, surprise in her voice. Was it genuine, or ironic?

  “He appears to hold some grudge. He seems determined to see Grenville’s daughter and her friends held by the police for murder.”

  “He told me young Saunders was dead,” she agreed. Her eyes were impossible to read, unlit by the lamplight in the room behind her. “It would appear to me that someone was at fault for that. Else, why are you here?”

  He had no intention of telling her about the holes in the dinghy. Instead he countered, “How well has he got on with the Grenvilles in the past? Is there a land dispute?”

  He watched her frown. “What sort of land dispute? He’s told me nothing of that.”

  “Or is it more personal, do you think?” he suggested.

  “There never was any trouble with the Grenvilles. Unless you want to count the deer. Ever seen what deer can do to a farmer’s field? Trevose was within his rights to complain.”

  “One of the family, then. The daughter? Victoria Grenville?”

  She stirred a little. “He’s never mentioned the daughter.”

  “If not her father, her mother, perhaps?”

  “He’s never liked her. But I can’t say why.”

  “Would his dislike of the mother turn him against her daughter? Or perhaps make him decide to use her daughter to reach her, punish her?”

  “Punish her for what?” There was a sharpness in her voice now.

  He changed direction. “You’ve worked for Trevose for some time. Does he have any family to speak of? Perhaps they’re the ones with a grudge against the Grenvilles.”

  There was a silence. Then she said, “There was a brother. He died long ago. No one else.”

  “How did he die?”

  “In ser­vice. He didn’t want to farm, he wanted to leave Cornwall behind. Easier said than done. But he thought ser­vice would give him a better chance.”

  “Did they quarrel over his leaving, Trevose and his brother?”

  “They fought over it one night. Came to blows. The next morning, the boy was gone. We never saw him again, until Trevose went to bring him home to bury him.”

  “Trevose must have felt bad about the manner of their parting.”

  “He was that upset he didn’t sleep for a dozen nights. Just sat there staring into space, saying nothing. Hardly eating, drinking heavily. It was a bad time. A terrible time.”

  There was little more he could learn from Mrs. Penwith. After another question or two, Rutledge was about to withdraw his boot from the doorway when he remembered the door knocker.

  “That’s an unusual design,” he said, pointing to it.

  “I can’t think what possessed Trevose to put it up there. We’d had an old horseshoe in its place for as long as I could remember, and it’ud served us well enough. But he said it was a reminder of a debt owed. That every time he looked at it, coming in his door or going out of it, he remembered.”

  “When was it put up?”

  “As I remember, it was about the time Miss Victoria was born. There was a fine christening in the church, and afterward, Mr. Grenville paid for all of us to wet her head at the pub.”

  Trevose had been safe enough putting it up. Mrs. Penwith was unlikely to see the original on the door of Padstow Place, and if the Grenvilles came to his door, they could make of it what they liked.

  He thanked her for her time and let her close the door. But she wanted the last word.

  “He won’t thank you. Not if he finds you here asking questions. And if he wants to know whether you came, I’ll swear you never did, and I’ll call you a liar to your face, if you say otherwise.”

  And she shut the door with force, leaving him there in the dark. Behind him he h
eard a dog growl low in its throat, as if at a signal. He realized it must have come stealthily up behind him, then sensed the tension in those last words with Mrs. Penwith.

  “Like dog, like master,” Hamish said quietly in the back of Rutledge’s mind.

  Rutledge was not eager for a confrontation with the animal, and he had a long walk back to the village. For that matter he couldn’t be sure Mrs. Penwith would call it off if it attacked. She could swear the dog had heard him banging on the door after she’d refused to let him in.

  Dropping to one knee, he said softly, “There’s a good fellow. Good dog.”

  After a moment he could see the dog’s tail drop from its ridged stance, and he kept speaking to it in the same tone of voice, not moving from where he knelt. He could sense Mrs. Penwith on the other side of the door, waiting. Finally the dog lowered its head. Rutledge held out a hand, palm up. “Good dog. Come here and let me scratch behind your ears.”

  He had always had a way with animals. The dog stretched forward and sniffed his fingers, then allowed Rutledge to stroke him. He reached behind the ears, then put both hands behind the dog’s head, ruffling the fur as he talked. When he rose slowly to his feet, the dog’s tail began to wag. And it followed him for some distance before breaking off and returning to the farm.

  Relieved to see him go, Rutledge made his way through the darkness until he was far enough away from the Trevose property to use his torch.

  Trevose had felt some guilt over his parting with his brother, and that might be strong enough to turn him against Mrs. Grenville, blaming her rather than accepting blame himself for what had happened. And it would be tempting, consciously or unconsciously, to take away someone she loved—­her daughter?—­for the brother she had accidentally taken from him. Grenville himself would have been a more formidable target. And to kill Mrs. Grenville would not assuage the suffering Trevose had endured.

  If that were true, Rutledge thought as he reached the outskirts of the village, it would be difficult to convince Trevose to change his mind about his statement. The man had already found it easy to face the prospect of sending Victoria’s friends to the gallows along with her, if that was the only way he could manage to achieve his revenge.

  Perhaps in his eyes, it was another young woman very much like them who had killed his brother. They were all guilty, because they could all have been in that room when the terrace door shut.

  “Or perhaps,” Hamish put in, “the weight on yon mother’s soul would be all the heavier, if all the lasses hanged.”

  Depend on a Scot, Rutledge thought wryly, with their long tradition of blood feuds, to see an advantage to showing no mercy to the other three women.

  The question was, did Trevose love his brother that much? Or was he intent on assuaging his own guilt at whatever cost?

  He was not ready to step into the brightly lit dining room for his dinner.

  Instead, he walked down to the village landing. He had it to himself, and there was a quiet broken only by the whisper of the water running there beyond where he stood. The moon was just rising, turning the water to silver and pewter. Rock, across the river, was a scattering of lamplight marking the houses there.

  Against his will he thought about Olivia Marlowe, who had died in the moonlight, preferring that to what lay ahead if she chose to live.

  Lines of her poetry came unbidden into his head.

  The night is quiet, the moon

  A brightness on the horizon.

  And I am here, waiting.

  Love, come to me

  In the moonlight,

  And leave war behind.

  Written for the man she loved above all others. He had envied that love. Envied the trust and joy and peace it brought her, even though it was beyond the pale in this life. He had been grieving for Jean, and Olivia Marlowe had touched him deeply, just as the O. A. Manning poems had touched him in France, long before he had known who O. A. Manning was.

  The headland where she was buried wasn’t visible from where he stood, but he knew it was there, he knew that he could get into his motorcar and drive there, and stand outside the house and as the moon rose, remember.

  And Meredith Channing held him in thrall as well, though she had chosen her husband over him. As it should be, as he knew it must be. For both their sakes, he must learn to let her go.

  He walked down to the landing’s edge and watched the water below it, dark in the shadows, and still swift and swollen with the rain. One more step, two, and he would find his own peace and rest.

  He had never felt quite so alone . . .

  Over his dinner that night, Rutledge wondered if he’d made a devil’s bargain with Toup over the name of the woman who had sometimes come to St. Marina’s with Harry Saunders. He couldn’t force the vicar to give him the information he’d asked for. Not until he could show that it was essential to closing the inquiry. But he was distinctly uneasy.

  The vicar had said that she was staying in Rock. Then why attend ser­vices in Padstow at all? It would make sense for her to attend here in Heyl, if she crossed the Camel.

  The other problem on his mind was the dinghy.

  It wasn’t Trevose who had put those holes in the bottom of the dinghy. Of that much he was fairly certain. What purpose would it have served? He couldn’t have predicted where or when the dinghy would sink. It had been sheer luck that someone else had been out on the water that day. But someone had wanted Harry Saunders to die. And he, Rutledge, was going to have to find out who it was, before he could either clear the names of the four accused, or condemn them.

  A niggling suspicion crept into his mind as he finished his tea.

  Had Victoria, despite her protests about her relationship with Harry Saunders, been jealous enough of the other woman to tamper with his boat? On the theory that if she couldn’t have him, no one else would? Was this the motive that had eluded him?

  Did she know enough about boats to have done the work?

  The one small piece of evidence in favor of that possibility was her reluctance to go to his aid when the dinghy was sinking. And dropping the oar on his head had been her reaction to the chance that he would be saved by her friends. After all, it would be difficult to find another opportunity to kill him.

  Rutledge reached into his pocket and took out the small square of cloth he’d found in the sand.

  Whom did it belong to? Victoria, as she was trying to put holes in the bottom of the dinghy? Or had it caught on a nail as a summer visitor strolled down to the water to watch a sunset or moonrise, a gust of wind whipping the delicate fabric against the rough planking of the landing? Too much could be read into bits of evidence. Wishful thinking on a detective’s part, hoping to find truth in what was actually irrelevant.

  Hamish, in the back of his mind, was telling him that he had not allowed the other four women to escape questioning. Why hadn’t he insisted that the vicar tell him the name of the fifth?

  “Yon lass,” he said, referring to Kate. “You do na’ believe she’s guilty, but you were verra’ cold wi’ her. Was it because of the ither?”

  He knew what Hamish was suggesting, that he had been giving Kate no quarter because she was Jean’s cousin, and he must not be seen favoring her.

  He didn’t think he had been harsh with her. He had tried to walk the narrow line between friendship and duty, bearing in mind too how Kate had once felt about him.

  “But does she feel the same way now?” Hamish asked.

  He didn’t know. It was not a subject he could broach.

  He remembered her distress when he’d asked if she would help him find out the truth—­she had seen it as a betrayal of her friendship with the others. He should not have put her in that position, even to conceal his real interest—­asking her about the bit of cloth he’d found. And yet he was faced with the very real possibility that all four women would be taken
to Bodmin and put in cells in the women’s prison there. He had managed so far to keep them safe from that horror—­but it had only been the holes in the dinghy that had saved them after Saunders died of his wound.

  He was tired, he told himself, and Hamish always found him vulnerable then.

  Kate Gordon’s father arrived with the morning post. He had had to leave a meeting in Dartmouth, and he was in a foul temper.

  His driver, a corporal, walked into the inn just as Rutledge was finishing his breakfast, seeking a room.

  Passing through Reception, Rutledge stopped at the sight of the uniform, and said, “Good morning. Inspector Rutledge. I take it that Major Gordon has come down to Cornwall?”

  “He has that,” the corporal replied, his mouth twisting in a grimace. “Corporal Dixon, sir. I’m to collect him tomorrow morning at ten. Sharp. I can only hope he’s in a better temper. I swear I could smell sulfur in the air, most of the way.”

  “I doubt he will be in a better mood.”

  He gave Gordon half an hour to greet his daughter before arriving himself at Padstow Place.

  The maid who opened the door was visibly rattled, and even from where he stood, Rutledge could hear raised voices.

  “I can find my way,” he said to the maid, and walked purposefully toward the library.

  He opened the door to find Gordon standing by the hearth, St. Ives by the window with his back turned, and Grenville at the table, leaning forward with his hands flat on the surface, his expression as hard as Gordon’s was furious.

  “And I say no jumped-­up Inspector from Scotland Yard is going to dictate to me about my daughter’s movements.”

  “If you take her away from here, all four of them will be put in—­”