by Todd,Charles
He glanced at his watch. The inquest would be over in less than an hour. His valise was already closed and standing by the door, and the motorcar has been filled with petrol early this morning, for the journey to London. A Thermos of tea and a packet of sandwiches waited for him in the kitchen.
Rutledge remembered seeing a dog-eared Guide in the lounge downstairs, likely left by a traveler several years before the war. He ran lightly down the steps and crossed Reception in long, brisk strides. It took him only a matter of minutes to find Burling Gap in the index.
He knew Beachy Head. Far too well. He had stood on the cliff’s edge, staring down at the new lighthouse below, and considered how easy it would be to step over the last few inches of wiry grass and plummet to the spreading arc of flints washed in by the last high tide. It had seemed an easy death, but he had not taken that last step. Afterward he’d never been sure why he hadn’t.
Burling Gap was not far away. Nearer, even, to the now-defunct Belle Tout light.
The Guide spared only a few words for the hamlet: Once a wrecker’s haven before the Belle Tout light put paid to this activity, the hamlet sits on the crumbling edge of the cliffs, and on the South Downs Way, a walk along the southern coast. Indications of Iron Age man at excavations nearby.
Hardly a hotbed of crime?
Rutledge flipped to the title page of the book: 1901, before the lighthouse there had been decommissioned.
Perhaps the war had changed the hamlet for the worse.
He put the Guide back on the shelf by the hearth and was just turning to go up to his room when he was summoned to the inquest once more to answer a few questions about his earlier evidence. From the nature of these he surmised that Mrs. Hardy was being given the benefit of the doubt. She would still stand her trial, but in every likelihood, she would escape the gallows. As he gave his answers, he felt a sense of relief. Justice, he thought, has many faces, but they don’t always include mercy.
It was shortly after noon—he’d heard the clock in the church tower strike the hour as he was walking out of his room—that he was at last free to put The Boar and the house where Mrs. Hardy had lived behind him and turn the bonnet of his motorcar toward the south coast.
He spent the night in Newhaven and arrived close on to ten the next morning on the high downs above Burling Gap. The sun was a watery disk in the cloudy sky, but the rain had held off for the time being. Passing through East Dedham, he saw only sheep on the downs until he came to a crossroad that climbed steeply to his left. He made the turn for Burling Gap instead, running down toward what must be the Belle Tout light and the edge of the cliffs overlooking the sea. Staying to his right, he found himself among scattered cottages that for the most part looked their age. The police station was in the front room of one of the cottages facing what passed for a road. From what he could see, there was no inn, no church, no town hall, only a general store and a tiny pub called The Seven Sisters. A faded sign swinging on rusted hinges showed a sailing ship coming to grief below a long undulating line of high chalk cliffs. Far below where he stood, the sea ran in and out, a whisper almost lost in the wind. Farther out, the water was a gray-blue under heavy clouds.
Resigning himself to the inevitable, he left the motorcar in the road and walked into the police station.
The man behind the worn wooden table looked up, looked past him at the motorcar, and suppressed a grin.
“You must be the man from London. Constable Neville, sir.”
“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. You sent for me?”
“Sir, I did.” He rose and indicated the chair. “Would you care for a cup of tea while we talk?”
“That would be very kind.”
Neville nodded and disappeared into another part of the house, where Rutledge could hear him setting the kettle on and opening a cabinet to bring out cups and saucers.
As he worked, Neville said, “There was an accident on the Saturday night. Out there on the road that comes down to Burling Gap from the direction of Eastbourne. If you came from London, you passed the turning after you left East Dedham.”
“Yes, I saw it. Quite steep and twisting, and not in the best of conditions.”
“That night there was a very hard rain, a good deal of wind, and it’s likely that the man driving couldn’t see his way very well. It must have been quite slippery, and the verges aren’t that straight. The motorcar came to grief, and the driver was thrown clear, but his neck was broken when the driver’s door caught him as it swung to.” He stepped back into the front room as he waited for the kettle to boil. “A tragedy, but nothing, you might say, out of the ordinary.”
“No,” Rutledge agreed. Neville disappeared again, and a minute later returned with a tray holding a teapot, milk jug, and cups. These looked as if they might have belonged to his mother or perhaps his wife, treasured bits of good china kept for visitors and Sundays.
Neville carefully set the tray in front of Rutledge and went back to his chair behind the table.
Rutledge poured two cups, passing one to Neville, and sat back to wait for the rest of the story.
“The dead man was the Rector at St. Simon’s in East Dedham. You will have passed through it on your way. A prosperous village. The problem is, the motorcar Rector was driving wasn’t his. It belongs to Captain Standish, who lives in a large house a mile or two inland from East Dedham. I went to call on the Captain, to explain what had happened. And he tells me he hadn’t lent his motorcar to Rector or anyone else. He’d been away visiting friends in Brighton, and only got home late Sunday evening, the night after the accident.”
“How did he travel to Brighton? If he didn’t drive himself?”
“As to that, sir, it appears that he went with a friend. She’s a widow, husband was killed in the war. He’s helped her from time to time with her husband’s affairs.”
“Any idea why the Rector had borrowed the motorcar—or why he’d needed one?”
“No, sir. His housekeeper thought he’d gone out to the Melford farm—their son was dying, and the Rector had been stopping in to offer comfort. But he hadn’t been there. Not for days.”
“How well did Mr. Wright know Captain Standish?”
For the first time Neville seemed to be at a loss. “I can’t say, sir. I should think they were acquainted. But as to how well they knew each other, you’ll have to ask the Captain.” There was a pause. “I’m a Chapel man myself, sir. I don’t attend services at St. Simon’s. I can’t tell you if Captain Standish does or not.”
“And the motorcar?”
He was clearly on safer ground here. “It’s with Trotter, sir. He’s turned the smithy on the outskirts of East Dedham into a garage. He was ground crew for aeroplanes during the war, and set up as a mechanic when he came home. Coming things, automobiles. I was to speak to him today, to see what he’d discovered. Now that you’re here, we might call on him together.”
“So far I see a mystery of a sort, but no reason to call in the Yard.”
“No, sir. Still, there was another motorcar on the scene the night of the accident. I found two sets of tracks, crossing each other up there on the Down.” He reached into his pocket. “I sketched them, sir, in the event they might be important.”
“And the other driver never stopped or went for help?”
“Not to my knowledge, sir, and Constable Brewster over in East Dedham knew nothing about the accident until I stepped in to speak to him.”
He found the pages in the notebook with his rough sketches and passed them across the table.
Rutledge set down his cup, took the notebook, and studied them. The treads were very similar, the type to be found on most motorcars, including his own. But the second drawing showed a small tear in the outer rim of one tire, small but distinctive.
“You’re certain that this is an accurate drawing?”
“Yes, sir. I grant you it was much later in the day, and the light wasn’t the best as I worked, but I noticed that mark in the morning, when I f
irst discovered the second set of tracks. At that time I wasn’t sure what to make of them. I came back later because I knew they’d be gone soon enough and I couldn’t think of any other way of preserving what I’d seen.”
“Yes, well done.” Rutledge looked up at Neville as he returned the notebook. He thought to himself that Neville was the sort of man who would have made a very good sergeant in the Army. He was nearly Rutledge’s height, strongly built, and clearly quite capable. But his graying hair and a limp that he’d tried to disguise as he walked indicated that he had probably missed the Great War. What was he doing here in this backwater? “This puts a different complexion on the accident. I think we should pay a visit to Captain Standish and see what he can tell us. But first I’d like to see where the motorcar came to grief.” He set his cup back on the pretty tray and rose.
Neville said, “I’ll just carry this to the kitchen, sir.”
Rutledge went out and turned the crank, and by that time Constable Neville had joined him.
“I must say, this is an easier way of getting about than my bicycle, sir,” Neville said as he closed his door.
Rutledge had owned a bicycle in his early days at the Yard, and he’d taken omnibuses and even cabs as he crisscrossed London. But of course here the terrain was very different from city streets.
Still, before the war he’d been content to travel by train to wherever an inquiry took him. The touring car had been more or less a personal decision, and it had proved its worth from the start. Often he’d made better time cross-country than he would have done waiting for the trains, and he was his own master, independent of timetables. More to the point, being buried alive during the war had left him with severe claustrophobia, and the thought of traveling by train now—crowded carriages, airless and smoke-filled, shut up cheek by jowl with other passengers—was anathema. Where the motorcar had been an indulgence before, it had become a necessity. He was sure that some at the Yard, possibly including Acting Chief Superintendent Markham, considered it an extravagance, even an affectation, but he couldn’t really explain without telling them more than he wanted them to know about his war.
As he and Neville reached the point where he could look up to where the road curved, following the steep incline of the Down, Rutledge could see that in the dark, in the middle of a rainstorm, in an unfamiliar motorcar, and on a road he might not have known well as a driver, the Rector of St. Simon’s could have found himself veering off onto the verge, and realizing his mistake, he might well have jerked the wheel in a panic and set in motion the accident that he’d been trying to avoid.
Rutledge drove slowly up the long, twisting road to the spot where Neville said, “Just here, sir,” and in the same instant he saw the torn and bruised turf, the white bones of the chalk underneath showing through. Pulling to the other side of the road, Rutledge got out and went over to walk the ground.
Neville, coming up beside him, pointed. “The motorcar was lying on its side here, where you see the worst of the torn turf. Rector was lying over there, facedown. By the looks of him, he never stirred, never came to his senses.” Moving forward, he added, “It was up here, well before the crash, that I found the second set of tracks.” He cast about for a moment, then went on. “Just as I’d feared. There’s no sign of them now, nor of the Standish motorcar’s tire marks. Well. You’ll have to take my word, sir, that I saw them, clear as day.”
“No, I don’t doubt you,” Rutledge said, squatting for a moment to look for any trace of what Neville had seen. But it was useless. He rose, standing for a moment to consider the road in both directions. As a quiet place to commit a murder, it was ideal. But how had it been set up? Had the second driver followed at a distance, waiting for his chance? Or had he held back, with an eye to keeping out of sight until the two vehicles reached this stretch of road?
And where had Wright been coming from? Eastbourne? Hastings? Even Rye?
There was of course another possibility, another explanation for the two sets of tracks crossing each other: the second motorcar had not been involved in the crash, but had come upon it in the midst of the storm. Had the driver stopped, gotten down, and come hurrying to where the body lay, discovered that Wright was dead and that there was no one else in the overturned vehicle?
Then why hadn’t he driven directly to the police station in East Dedham, got the local man out of his bed, and brought him back here to recover the body? Why had he simply vanished into the storm, leaving Wright to be found by someone else?
What did he have to hide?
Rutledge finally turned to Neville. “All right, thank you, Constable.” Together they walked back to the motorcar. Underfoot the road was rough, slippery, rutted, and in places the verges were not very well defined.
At the crossroads, Rutledge drove on toward East Dedham.
“Tell me about Wright.”
“He’s been—was—Rector here for some twelve years, and I’ve never heard anything ill of him. He was liked even by us who go to Chapel. East Dedham was lucky to have him, from all reports. This is an out-of-the-way parish, for one thing, and a small church. That often means the least experienced man or one who’s already been shunted from parish to parish. He was in the war, you know. Chaplain to a Sussex regiment. By all accounts he came home a changed man. Quieter, keeping to himself a good deal of the time. A good man, all the same, one you could turn to in a time of trouble.”
Many of the chaplains had had a bad war. They comforted the wounded, gave last rites to the dying, prayed for the dead, and tried to make sense of killing at a rate that no one had foreseen. More than a few had suffered a breakdown. Telling a weary, dispirited soldier to return to the battlefield for King and Country, assuring the frightened that they would fight bravely when the time came, listening to the horrors told by haunted men who had already seen too much and sometimes preferred to die than witness more carnage—
Without warning Rutledge was nearly overwhelmed by his own recollections of Corporal Hamish MacLeod. He shut down the memory with a harshness that must have shown in his face, because Neville, glancing his way, repeated uneasily, “He was a good man.” As if this stranger from London doubted it.
“Yes, I’m sure he was.” He wasn’t certain whether he was talking about Hamish MacLeod or the Rector.
Collecting himself, he said, gesturing toward the square tower of St. Simon’s just coming into view, “Tell me about Mrs. Saunders, the housekeeper. Was she devoted to Wright—would she have lied for him, if he’d asked her to?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Neville answered, striving to keep the shock out of his voice. “From all reports, she’s served him well, and the Rector before him. Constable Brewster tells me she keeps the rectory spotless, always had Rector’s meals ready for him, and isn’t above reminding him to eat when he’s come in from a long night with a parishioner, or has been out in all weathers.”
“He wasn’t married?”
Neville frowned. “I don’t know the whole of it, but I’ve been told there was a girl before the war he was keen about. Brewster says she was from London and not suitable to a country rectory.”
“Was he wounded in the war? Wright?”
“He was. He was a great one for comforting the dying, no matter where they were, and he carries a bit of shrapnel in his hip and has other scars to show for doing his bit. Carried,” he corrected himself. He cleared his throat, as if uncertain whether to continue.
“Yes?” Rutledge asked, glancing his way.
“There’s one odd thing I ought to mention. Rector wasn’t at the Melford farm when their son died of his wounds. And that wasn’t like him. What’s more, he’d told Mrs. Saunders that that was where he was going. But the Melfords hadn’t seen him for three or four days. Rector must have known that Dick’s time was near. The lad had been in and out of hospital for two years, but the doctors never got all the infection, and they finally sent him home to die. There’s another thing: Rector wasn’t one to sit still. I’d see him out
walking the cliffs or digging around in the Iron Age ruins, if he wasn’t about his duties, going all over the parish on his bicycle. I couldn’t help but wonder sometimes if he was hurrying as fast as he could go because there was something at his heels. I can’t tell you why it struck me that way, and it takes nothing away from him as Rector.”
But Rutledge could understand fleeing before the hounds of memory. He’d come back to the Yard for that very reason, haunted by a dead man who was not a ghost but whose presence in his mind was as vivid as if Hamish MacLeod had taken up residence just behind his right shoulder—where he had so often stood in life. Corporal MacLeod, one of the many young Scots he’d led in countless battles. One of the hundreds if not thousands he’d sent to their deaths on orders from the high command, orders it was his duty and responsibility as an officer to carry out to the letter. However ridiculous they might seem to men in the line. However many men were sacrificed to gain inches and not yards.
But he had had to execute Corporal MacLeod, a man he’d respected, whom he’d stood dozens of night watches with, waiting for the Germans to attack. The Battle of the Somme in July ’16 had been a bloody disaster. In the midst of that long and horrifying nightmare—it had in fact lasted for weeks—the young Scot had refused to lead another charge across a No Man’s Land already littered with their dead. Please God they were all dead, those bodies scattered among the shell holes and the barbed wire. He’d dreamed about them often enough, of their calling out to the living. And he, Rutledge, had had to order Hamish’s execution for disobeying a direct order, though he’d tried repeatedly to convince Hamish to relent.
And no sooner had the shots been fired and he’d given the coup de grace than a shell from his own artillery had buried them all alive. By the time help had come, he had been the only survivor, ironically saved by a small pocket of air between his face and Hamish’s body. The living and the dead locked in a macabre embrace in the thick, unspeakable, enveloping mud.
