Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 11

by A Matter of Justice

  “No, sir, it isn’t. Have you also retired?”

  “To my sorrow, no. I advise people on how to invest their money. And they won’t hear of my giving it up.” Caldwell smiled. “The day will come, inevitably. I expect I shall have to ease them into accepting it. My wife is eager for me to grow roses and spend more time with her.” He made a face. “I’d much rather fish, you know. I’m an angler by nature, not a gardener.”

  In the early afternoon, the bridal pair set off on their wedding trip. Edgar drove, waving gaily to guests as he and Elise bounced over the cobbles and turned beyond the castle. The motorcar had been modified so that he could manage. It was, he’d told Rutledge, a matter of pride. Once out of sight, Elise would take the wheel for the rest of their journey.

  The remaining guests left the inn in the next hour, many of them on their way back to London, and Rutledge found himself face-to-face with Meredith Channing as she came to say good-bye. They had been thrown together often during the morning, and Rutledge had to admit that he’d enjoyed her company.

  “Safe journey,” he said, and she nodded.

  “Same to you. I’m driving with friends. We ought to make good time. That was a lovely toast you proposed to the bride and groom. You have a way with words.”

  “Thank you. It was heartfelt.”

  “Yes, Edgar was touched. It was good to see you again, Ian.” She offered her hand, and he took it. They shook briefly, and then she was gone, leaving an unexpected emptiness behind her.

  Rutledge told himself it was because everyone else had left, and the day that had begun with such glorious sunshine for the wedding was now changing.

  He turned to say good-bye to Elise’s parents as they followed the last of the guests out the door. Caldwell clapped him on the shoulder and said, “If you’re in the City, stop in.”

  “I will, sir. Thank you.”

  And then he was back at the house on the hill, where the view was magnificent and his footsteps echoed through the rooms. The ghosts of laughter and excitement and happy voices made the silence seem almost ominous, and he shrugged off the sudden upsweep of melancholy.

  He spent the next hour clearing away, as Edgar had asked him to do, preparing to close up the house before he left in the morning. And then he sat on the terrace to watch the sun set behind a bank of clouds. Restless, he was in no mood to sleep, but finally he took himself off to bed, with a small whiskey and the voice of Hamish MacLeod for company.

  When someone knocked at Maitland’s door shortly after midnight, Rutledge came awake with a start. He fumbled for his dressing gown and slippers, then went to answer the summons.

  At first sight of the grim-faced uniformed constable standing on the doorstep, he thought, Oh, dear God, Edgar insisted on driving all the way—and there’s been a crash. And then the next thought, Pray God they aren’t hurt badly!

  He could feel the presence of Hamish, stark and loud in his ears as he said, “Good evening, Constable. Not bad news, I hope!”

  And waited to hear the worst.

  But the middle-aged man standing there in the quiet night air asked, “Mr. Rutledge, sir?”

  “Yes, I’m Rutledge. What is it, man?”

  “There’s been a telephone call from London. Chief Superintendent Bowles, sir. He says you’re the nearest man to the scene and would you return his call at the Yard straightaway.”

  Relief washed over him.

  “Let me find my shoes and a coat.”

  He went back up the stairs to the guest room, leaving the constable standing in the hall, waiting for him.

  When Chief Superintendent Bowles wanted a man, it paid to be prompt. Throwing his coat on over his pajamas and thrusting his bare feet into the shoes he’d worn for the wedding, he wasted no time wondering about the summons. Closest to the scene generally meant that Bowles had little choice in the matter of which man to send and was putting speed before preference.

  He helped the constable lash his bicycle to the boot of the motorcar rather than the rear seat, unwilling in the dark to risk finding Hamish in what always seemed to be his accustomed place, just behind Rutledge’s shoulder. It was a silent drive down to Dunster; the air was warm and heavy, the stars vanished. The only sign of life they saw was a hare bounding off into the high grass by the road.

  The constable commented as they reached the town’s outskirts, “Easier coming down by motorcar than peddling up as I did on that confounded bicycle.”

  Dunster’s streets were quiet, the police station’s lights almost blinding as Rutledge stepped through the door. It was five minutes after the connection was made before Bowles’s voice came booming down the line. “In Somerset, are you?”

  “Yes, sir. I took several days’ leave,” he reminded the chief superintendent. “For a friend’s wedding. I’ll be back in London on Monday.”

  “Indeed. Well, there’s a change in plan. You’re to go at once to Cambury. It’s just south of Glastonbury, I’m told. The local man is on the scene already, and he’s handing the case over to us. You’re the closest inspector I’ve got to Cambury. By my reckoning you can be there in three hours or less.”

  “Why is he asking for our help at this early stage?”

  “A man’s been killed. Name of Quarles. His place of business is in Leadenhall Street here in London. His country house is in Somerset, and apparently he’d come down for the weekend. Ghastly business, I can’t think why anyone would wish to do such a thing, but there you are. They’re expecting you, see that you don’t dally!”

  “No, sir—”

  But Bowles had cut the connection and the line was dead.

  6

  Rutledge closed up Maitland’s house, left a note for Edgar regarding the sheets the laundress wouldn’t be able to collect with the door locked, then took his luggage out to his motorcar. He thought ruefully that evening dress and casual attire would hardly be what Cambury was expecting, but it was all he had with him.

  A low-lying mist had crept in on the heels of the warm air, wreathing the night in a soft veil that threw the light from his headlamps back in his face and from time to time made the road seem to vanish into a white void.

  He was given directions to Cambury by the police in Dunster and found that the road was fairly good most of the distance. “It’s a village that’s outgrown itself,” the constable had said, “and much like Dunster in its own way. Though we have the castle, don’t we, and there’s none such in Cambury. Still, there are those who claim King Arthur knew it, and might be buried thereabouts. My wife’s sister plumps for Glastonbury, of course. That’s where she lives.”

  When he could relax his concentration on the road, Rutledge considered what Bowles had told him. The chief superintendent took a perverse pleasure in giving out as little information as possible to any subordinate he didn’t like. But everyone at the Yard knew that it was one of the methods Bowles used to weed out men he didn’t wish to see climb the ladder of promotion.

  The victim, Quarles, had a place of business in Leadenhall Street and thus lived in London. Who then was taking over that part of the inquiry while Rutledge was busy in Somerset? It would be revealing to have the answer to that.

  Rutledge drove on through the mist with only Hamish for company, the voice from the rear seat, just behind his ear, keeping up a running commentary. Hamish had been—for him—unusually silent during the weekend, his comments brief enough to be ignored. It was never clear why Hamish sometimes had nothing to say. Like an army that had lost contact with the main body of the enemy, Rutledge was always on his guard at such times, distrustful of the silence, prepared for an attack from any quarter when he least expected it.

  Dr. Fleming, who had saved Rutledge’s sanity and his life in the clinic barely twelve months ago, forcing him against his will to acknowledge what was in his head, had promised that his patient would learn to manage his heavy burden of guilt. Instead, Rutledge had become a master at hiding it.

  All the same, he answered that voice aloud
more often than he liked, both out of habit and because of the compelling presence he could feel and not see. He stood in constant danger of disgracing himself in front of friends or colleagues, drawing comment or questions about the thin edge of self-control that kept him whole. Shell shock was a humiliation, proof of cowardice and a lack of moral fiber, never mind the medals pinned on his breast. And so the tension within himself built sometimes to intolerable levels.

  It was the only scar he could show from his four years in the trenches. Unlike Edgar Maitland. His men had commented on his luck, watched him with misgivings at first, and then with something more like fear. Many an inexperienced officer gained a reputation for reckless daring and wild courage, believing himself invulnerable. More often than not, he died with most of his men, not so much as an inch of ground gained. But the young Scots under Rutledge soon realized that their officer put the care of his men above all else, and so they had followed him into whatever hell was out there, across the barbed wire. Knowing he would spare them where he could, and bring them back when he couldn’t.

  And that had finally broken him. Aware of the faith put in him, trying to live up to it, and watching men die when it was impossible to save them—even while he himself lived—had taken an incalculable toll of mind and spirit. Hamish’s unnecessary death had been the last straw. Finding a way back had somehow seemed to be a final betrayal of the dead.

  In that last dark hour before the spring dawn, the road Rutledge had been following rounded a bend and swept down a low hill into a knot of thatched cottages. Then, like a magician’s trick, the road became Cambury’s High Street, leading him into the sleeping village. The mist that had kept pace with him most of the way was in tatters now, a patch here and there still lying in wait, and sometimes rising to embrace the trees on the far side of the duck pond. The Perpendicular church tower, to his left, loomed above the clouds like a beacon.

  The village’s modest prosperity was visible in the shop fronts and in the houses that lined the street. Typical of Somerset, there was an air of contentment here, as if the inhabitants neither needed nor expected anything from the outside world.

  He noted several lanes that crossed the High Street, vanishing into the darkness on either side. Like Dunster, whatever Cambury had been at the height of the wool trade, when it had had the money to build such a church, it was now a quiet byway.

  What, he wondered, had brought Quarles here? It wasn’t the sort of village that had much to offer a wealthy Londoner. Unless there were family ties to Somerset…

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, it’s a long way to London.”

  In miles and in pace and outlook.

  An interesting point. What reputation did Quarles have here, and was it different from that of the man of business in the City? And could that have led to murder?

  He saw the police station just ahead and pulled over.

  Inside a constable was waiting for him, yawning in spite of himself as he got up from his chair to greet Rutledge.

  “You made good time, sir,” he said. “I’m to take you along to the house straightaway. My name is Daniels, sir. Constable Daniels.”

  For the second time that night, Rutledge helped a constable lash his bicycle to the boot, and then the man cranked the motor for him, before getting in and shutting the door.

  “Where are we going?” Rutledge asked as Daniels directed him out of the village.

  “The house is called Hallowfields. This was mainly monastery land once, and there’s a tithe barn built to hold whatever goods the local tenants owed the monks as rent.”

  The High Street had turned back into the main road again, and as they crested a slight rise, walled parkland on their right marked the beginning of an estate.

  “The tithe barn is on his property, and so Mr. Quarles set himself up as squire, taking over from the monks, you might say.”

  “Was this popular in the village? Surely not?”

  “He wasn’t the first owner to claim squire’s rights, but as he was mostly in London, it wasn’t hard to ignore him. Though some of the farmers came to him for help when their crops were bad or their plows broke or their roofs leaked.” Daniels grinned at Rutledge, his face bright in the reflected glow of the headlamps. “A costly business, being squire. There, you can just see the gates coming up ahead. We’ll pass them and turn instead at the entrance to the Home Farm.”

  Hamish said, “He doesna’ grieve o’er much for the dead man.”

  A pair of handsome iron gates, disembodied in the mist, closed off what could be seen of the drive before it vanished into the night, a gray ribbon that appeared to go nowhere.

  They came to a break in the wall, where a small, whitewashed gatehouse marked the way into the working part of the estate. The cottage was very pretty, with roses climbing up the front, framing the windows and the single door.

  “Here we are, sir.”

  “Does anyone live there?” Rutledge asked, nodding at the gatehouse.

  “No, sir. It’s been empty for some time.”

  Rutledge turned into the lane that led to the farm, and almost immediately his headlamps picked out a track bearing to the left.

  “That way, sir, if you please. We don’t go as far as the farm.”

  Rutledge bumped into the rutted track that curled through a copse of trees. Ahead, his lights picked out the rising bulk of a gray stone building that appeared to block his way. The mist lingered here in the trees, as if caught among the branches, and then without warning he drove into a thicker patch, like cotton wool. It swallowed the motorcar, and he felt the sudden shock of claustrophobia as the track seemed to vanish as if by magic, leaving him in an opaque world. Just as suddenly he came out into a small clearing, where a bicycle and two other vehicles were clustered together, as if for comfort.

  At the edge of the clearing stood the tithe barn, vast, dark, and hunched, as if it had lurked there for hundreds of years, waiting patiently for the return of its builders.

  Judging from the size of it—a good 200 feet long and possibly closer to 250—this part of Somerset had been prosperous under the monks’ rule. The roof soared high above their heads as they got out of the motorcar, and something about the way it loomed in the darkness and shreds of mist was almost evil.

  He laughed at himself. A night without sleep played odd games with the imagination.

  Where once there had been a roofed entrance on the side of the barn facing him, there was a single door now, dwarfed by the heavy stone walls rising into the night sky.

  He turned to ask Daniels a question as the constable gestured toward the door. “That way, sir. They’re expecting you. I’m to fetch the doctor, now that you’re here.” He went around to the back of the motorcar and took down his bicycle, nodding to Rutledge as he mounted the machine and peddled into the mist.

  Rutledge walked toward the entrance. The heavy door creaked under his hand as he shoved it open and stepped inside.

  It was like stepping into the truncated, unfinished nave of an enormous church. There was no great west front, no transepts or choir or altar or apse, only a forest of huge squared wooden timbers rising like columns into the darkness overhead, where they supported a handsome array of beams. The silence was almost that of a church as well, where a whisper would carry round the bare stone walls.

  The only light came not from wax sanctuary candles but from three lanterns that rested on the flagstone floor, picking out three startled men standing staring at him, as if he were an apparition walking through the door.

  The taller of them, the one with a square face, cleared his throat.

  “Inspector Rutledge, I take it?”

  “Yes, I’m Rutledge.”

  “We weren’t expecting you for another two hours.” The speaker walked forward, hand outstretched. “Inspector Padgett. And two of my men, Constable Horton and Constable Jenkins. I expect you’ve met Constable Daniels. He was waiting to bring you here.”

  Rutledge acknowledged the introductions, and jus
t as he shook hands with Padgett, something in the rafters caught his eye.

  He stopped, his head raised, his gaze fixed.

  Above them, like an avenging angel high among the beams that held up the roof, was a man with out-flung arms and immense feathered wings springing from his back.

  “Gentle God,” Rutledge murmured before he could stop himself.

  “Quite,” Padgett replied.

  “Is that Quarles? Is he dead?”

  “Yes, on both counts. We didn’t touch him. I sent Constable Daniels to call Scotland Yard and then wait for whoever was coming. Of course we recognized him straightaway. It’s Harold Quarles, beyond any doubt. This is his land—his barn.”

  “What killed him?”

  “We don’t know yet.”

  “How in the name of God did anyone get him up there?”

  “It’s easy, if you know the trick. Quarles puts on a Christmas pageant here, complete with live sheep and a donkey and even an inflatable camel he brought down from London. The figures are local people, and it’s considered an honor to take part. Wise men, shepherds, and so on. There’s an angel as well, with a rig to hold him or her up there. Quite comfortably, I’m told, if a little hair-raising. I wouldn’t want to try it myself, I can tell you.” He gestured toward the shadows along the walls. “Trestle tables and benches over there, and on this side the manger and the bits that create the stable and its roof. And along there as well, the apparatus for the angel. It’s kept in a chest, out of sight, along with the wings. It’s very well known, our Christmas pageant. Even the London papers have written it up. And a gazette featured it one year. My son was the babe in the manger that Christmas.”

  “Which tells me a good many people knew the apparatus was here, and that it works.”

  “I would say so, yes.”

  “Is the door kept locked?”