by Todd,Charles
“Know anything about church organs?”
The man stared at him as if he’d run mad. “Should I?”
“I was expecting someone who did.”
“Ah. Not me, I’m afraid. Visiting my sister for a few days.” And with a nod he walked on into the dining room.
When he was out of hearing, Rutledge stopped the hotel’s clerk who’d shown him his room, and said, “The gentleman who just came in—he’s in the dining room now—do you know who he is?”
“Yes, sir. He’s a regular visitor. Mr. Davidson. His sister lives here in the village. War widow. He looks in on her from time to time. If you’ll excuse me, sir, we’re expecting a crowd. It’s market day.”
Finishing his own breakfast, Rutledge collected his coat and a scarf and went out into the wind. Men and women were busy in the tiny square in front of the pub, putting up tables and tents, anchoring them against the weather before setting up their stalls. One woman was just taking a tray out of a basket, and it caught his eye. The pattern, violets on a cream background, was quite lovely, and violets were a favorite of his sister’s. Frances busy planning for her wedding, spending much of her time shopping with the friends who would be her attendants. She would take pleasure in the fact that he’d thought about her. He stopped long enough to buy the tray, chatting for a moment with the stall’s owner.
Like everyone in East Dedham, she knew who he was, and commented on the Rector’s death as she was wrapping the tray for him. “Such a good man,” she said, shaking her head. “And so young. A shame, really.”
“I wonder what took him out on such a night?”
“I saw him out on the headland Friday, near the Belle Tout light,” she said. “That was in the afternoon, before the rain came up. He was talking to a man.”
Was he indeed? Rutledge said, “Someone from Gap village?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t see him well, but I didn’t recognize him. I thought it might be a friend of Rector’s. But they didn’t part like friends. I don’t know that I ever remember Rector losing his temper.”
“Was the man on foot? Or did he come by bicycle to Belle Tout?”
“He must have been walking. But then I can’t say for certain, because he might have left a bicycle up by the lighthouse. I’d come here to ask Constable Brewster about help putting up my stall. My husband hurt his foot, and I knew I couldn’t manage it myself.”
“Where did you come from?”
“Eastbourne. I have a little shop there, but I come to market days whenever I can. This time of year, visitors are thin on the ground at the seaside.” She smiled ruefully as she handed him the tray, well wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. “Keeps the roof over our heads and food on the table.”
He thanked her and moved on. Three women sat in another stall, wearing kerchiefs against the wind. They were selling items made from wool, mostly caps and scarves and mittens, some of them knitted in brighter patterns for the Christmas trade. Beyond, a woman was selling embroidered pillow slips, and an older couple offered jams, jellies, and small jars of honey, done up with colorful ribbons. In the corner stall a man with a large whetstone run by a foot pedal sharpened knives and tools.
Rutledge continued to wander among the stalls, where sausages and loaves of bread, cheeses and dried fruit, bits of wood worked into small toys or pretty boxes were all for sale. Mrs. Saunders was there buying sausages for her dinner. She looked more than a little harassed, as if Barnes’s continued presence was making her life difficult. He was about to speak to her when he glimpsed the woman who had come to dine in the pub.
He changed directions just as she moved on, and when he came around the stall at one end of a row, she had vanished.
Swearing under his breath, he circled the outer rows of stalls, but there was no sign of her.
Where had she gone? The pub door had been within his line of sight at all times, and he was certain she hadn’t slipped in there. One of the other shops? But she wasn’t in the greengrocer’s or the baker’s, the dress shop or the stationer’s. Rutledge even took the stairs to the solicitors’ chambers, but Edgecombe & Edgecombe was closed for the day.
And then he saw her walking up to the churchyard, and he went after her, threading his way through the marketgoers with as much haste as possible.
He found her standing by a gravesite, looking down at the stone, her face sad. He waited by the marker for a PARSON DARBY, THE SAILOR’S FRIEND.
At length the woman turned to leave, and he stayed there until she had almost reached the low wall surrounding the churchyard before catching her up.
Touching his hat courteously, he said, “I’m sorry—but I believe we’ve met before. I thought I recognized you the other night at dinner in the pub. My name is Rutledge.”
She regarded him. “Rutledge? I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“But surely we met at the rectory?”
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” she said coldly. “I’ve never been to the rectory.”
“But you have just visited a grave—”
“My grandmother. She died when I was only three. It’s none of your business, but she left me her jewelry, and so I often come to pay my respects.” She started to walk on to the gate in the wall.
“I’m from Scotland Yard, investigating the accident that killed the Rector of the church just there,” he said flatly.
This time she stopped and stared at him. “The Rector? But—I thought—was someone else killed?”
“Only Mr. Wright.”
She was clearly upset. “I should like a cup of tea. Is there anywhere we could go?”
“The pub.”
She shook her head. “No, not there. Wasn’t there a tearoom once in the old lighthouse?”
“Belle Tout? I don’t think it’s there any longer. The building is derelict.”
“Oh.”
“My motorcar is at the pub. Eastbourne isn’t far.”
“Are you really from Scotland Yard?” she demanded.
He took out his identification and showed it to her.
“Oh. Then, yes, Eastbourne is fine.”
They walked in silence back toward the market stalls. He realized he was still carrying the tray he’d bought for Frances. When they reached his motorcar where he had left it next to the pub, he looked up at the sign. “The Sailor’s Friend. I just saw a gravestone where a parson was also called the sailor’s friend.”
“I don’t know where the name came from.”
Rutledge set the tray in the boot and then opened her door for her. After the briefest hesitation, she got in, and he went around to turn the crank.
When they were well out of East Dedham, climbing the Down where the accident had occurred, she looked away, as if she couldn’t bear to see the scene.
“Where is your coachman?”
Startled, she looked across at Rutledge. “He’s in East Dedham, on the far side of the green. I told him to enjoy the market. How did you know?”
“I was at the pub’s door the night you went there to dine. I saw him come up to you as you were leaving.”
“Oh.” She took a deep breath. “He was the one who told me that Captain Standish’s motorcar had had an accident over in the Gap. He’d only heard that someone had died in the crash. I—I couldn’t find out who was in the motorcar—if someone had been injured. The Captain would have been driving, surely. But no one in my village seemed to know. And I didn’t feel I should speak to the constable.”
“Do you know the Captain well? Why not simply call at the house?”
“We were engaged, when he came back from France. And then he went to Paris to meet some friends who also survived the war. But when he returned from his visit with them, he was very different. In fact, he asked me to release him.” She was staring out her window, her voice low. “I would have felt—it would have been awkward. Surely you see that.”
“You still love him?” It was more a statement than a question.
�
��I expect I do,” she whispered.
“And that’s why you came to market day?” He glanced at her. “In the hope of meeting him?”
“Not—meeting. I just wanted to see him, to know he was all right. Alive.”
“And the other night, in the pub?”
She took a deep breath. “I sent him a message, asking him to meet me there. I told him I needed to speak to him. But he never came. I ordered a meal, and it might as well have been chalk I was eating. Still, I thought—it was possible that he had decided not to come, and in the end might have changed his mind.” She stopped, then went on in a rush. “I was so ashamed. I only wanted to be sure he was all right, you see. Then it occurred to me that he was too badly hurt to come. And I didn’t know what to do.”
“Standish wasn’t driving that night. The Rector had borrowed his motorcar.”
She closed her eyes. “Oh, thank God.” He could see tears on her lashes.
Rutledge gave her time to recover. And then they were coming down into Eastbourne. The sea was rough, gray, driven by the wind, and she shivered in the raw cold.
“The hotel—just there—the large white one. There’s a tearoom.”
He found a place close by to leave the motorcar and they hurried up the long walk to the main door. The tearoom—mostly glass and palm trees—was to one side of Reception, and Rutledge found a table for them by the windows.
After they’d ordered tea, he asked for a plate of sandwiches and pastries as well. While they waited for it to be brought, she stared out the window at the sea. He thought she was still feeling the shock of relief that Standish was alive. There was no one on the Promenade, and the bandstand looked forlorn. Even the tearoom was nearly empty. But the water was wind-whipped, whitecaps rolling in toward the strand, and a pair of gulls were patrolling the surf.
“I don’t know your name,” he said after a while.
She turned, surprised, as if she had expected him to know it. “Emily Stuart.”
Their tea came, and when the woman serving them had left, Rutledge told her about the accident.
“He had no idea his motorcar was taken?” she said in surprise. “I find that hard to believe.”
“He was away. In Brighton.”
“Ah.” She bit her lip. “There’s someone else, then.”
He didn’t lie to her. “A woman drove him there in her carriage. I thought it might have been you.”
“No. Sadly.”
Standish had told Rutledge he was calling on the mother of a friend killed in the war, but it had been the woman’s daughter who had collected him, and there was no way to know whether the mother was the reason Standish had gone there, or the daughter. And so he said nothing about it to Miss Stuart.
“Why do you think he broke off the engagement?”
Shaking her head, she said, “It was sudden, unexpected. He came back from Paris, and I waited for him to come to see me. But he didn’t. I was just about to write to him when he appeared at my door, unannounced. I was so glad to see him that I didn’t realize at first that he wasn’t himself. He looked tired, worn. I was chatting away, making plans, overflowing with happiness, and he interrupted me. I don’t remember what he said next. I was so stunned. Something like, ‘Emily, listen to me. Please. This isn’t why I’ve come.’ And all I could do was stare at him, thinking I’d said something that upset him. In the silence he said, ‘I would like you to call off our engagement. It’s better that way. I won’t mind if I appear to be the villain. You can say whatever you like. But we aren’t well suited to each other, Emily, and the sooner we face it the better for both of us.’”
Her voice nearly broke on the last words, and then she got herself under control, and went on angrily. “No explanation. I asked him if there was someone else, and he swore to me there wasn’t. I don’t know whether I believed him or not. I asked if we could think it over, work out whatever the problem might be. And he said, quite baldly, ‘No.’ I felt—I remember flushing, my face going quite red. I could feel the heat in my skin. There was nothing more to say, and a thousand things to say. But my pride came to the rescue, and I thanked him for coming to speak to me in person, rose, and ushered him out the door. He said, ‘I’m sorry, Emily. Good-bye.’ And I shut the door before he could see me cry. I couldn’t let him see that. It would have been the final humiliation.”
She was very attractive: classic features, dark hair that curled about her face, dark blue eyes. She would turn heads wherever she went. What then, Rutledge asked himself, had caused this sudden change of heart on Standish’s part?
He said, “I mean no disrespect. But was it a matter of money?”
“I thought of that. It would have been a fairly even match. Socially we were certainly equals. Someone else? I don’t know. Perhaps he lied about that. I don’t know why it would have hurt me more than not knowing.”
He could understand that.
She concentrated on eating for a while, although he didn’t think she was particularly hungry. It was more likely that she was being polite. She had, after all, asked him for tea.
And then, setting her cup down, she added, her eyes dark as she looked again into a painful past, “Something happened to his hand in Paris. I can’t think how. There was nothing wrong with it before he left. And I didn’t know how to ask.”
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8
Rutledge put down the sandwich he had just picked up and studied Emily Stuart’s face.
“You said nothing to him about it?”
“I didn’t notice it at first. I was just so pleased that he’d come. And he must have been trying to conceal it. He had his coat over his arm—usually he’d have given it to Thompson, but I thought he’d been that eager to see me. And then I glimpsed bandaging under the edge of his coat. Heavy, not the sort one put over a cut—grotesque. He tried to cover it, but it was too late. Before I could even ask what had happened, he told me that he wanted to be released. That drove it out of my head entirely.”
“You said he was meeting friends in Paris. When was this?”
“Almost a year ago. He’d told me they were friends from the war, and that he had promised he would be there.” She crumbled the edge of her untouched pastry and pushed the bits across her plate. “A cousin said something once during the war, that men who lived so closely together and faced such horrors each day shared a bond that had nothing to do with friendship or blood. They counted on each other to survive, and they depended on each other not to let the side down.”
He said nothing, knowing all too well that the cousin had been right. And yet unable to explain it any better.
She was still speaking. “I remembered that, when he said it was a promise he had to keep. And I said good-bye without so much as a qualm, because I thought it was the right thing to do.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I thought I’d have him for the rest of my life, and what did a fortnight matter against that?”
“He didn’t tell you anything else about his promise, or what he and his friends expected to do while they were in Paris?”
“Only that it was something that mattered to all of them—to meet in Paris if they survived the war. It was very important to him, I could tell. Very personal. He didn’t want to talk about it very much. I didn’t press.”
Then, without warning, Emily Stuart reached for her coat. “This was wrong. I shouldn’t have told you these things. You listen too well—and I needed to talk to someone. But not to a stranger.”
Signaling for his bill, he said, “Sometimes strangers are better.”
She shook her head, struggling with her coat. “No. Usually I keep up a good front. After all, everyone thinks I jilted Roger, don’t they? And I could hardly stop someone on the streets of East Dedham and ask. I couldn’t even send Sewell—my coachman—to ask for me.”
He took her coat from her and helped her into it. She was a
lready walking to the door as he paid for the tea. He followed her, and they left the hotel in silence.
On the drive back to East Dedham, she sat huddled in her coat, staring out the window, hoping to discourage him from picking up the threads of their conversation.
It wasn’t until they had nearly reached the Gap that Miss Stuart, goaded by her need, asked, “Have you seen the Captain? You must have done, if only about the motorcar. How is he? How does he look?”
“He’s troubled by something, I think.”
“I wish I was on his mind. But I don’t expect him to care that much. I don’t know why,” she ended bitterly, “I should go on caring either.”
She wouldn’t let him take her to find her carriage. “I don’t wish to have the staff gossip about what I do. Most of them are new employees—since the war. I don’t know them well.” She pointed to the pub yard, and Rutledge pulled in there. As he came around to open her door for her, she said wryly, “As it is, they think I’m mad to wish to spend so much time in East Dedham. Perhaps I am.”
“Is there a way to reach you?”
“I don’t expect there to be any need for that.”
And with a nod she walked away.
He watched her until she turned the corner, thinking about what she’d said.
Hamish interrupted his thoughts. “It’s all verra’ weil, but what has it to do wi’ the death of yon Rector?”
“I don’t know,” Rutledge said slowly.
It wasn’t until he’d walked back toward the market stalls that he realized he’d answered Hamish aloud again. Why, he demanded of himself, couldn’t he break that habit? But it wasn’t a habit; it was far more deeply seated than that.
When Constable Neville came hurrying through the throng of marketgoers looking for Rutledge, he stopped short as he saw the man from London’s grim face.
“Is anything wrong, sir? Or have you already heard?”
“Heard? What?” Rutledge asked.
“Three of the local lads went up to Belle Tout. They’d nicked cigarettes from somewhere, and they wanted a place to do their smoking in peace. They climbed over the wall, out of the wind, and that’s when they found Grant.”
