by Charles Todd
“No, of course I didn’t. He never talked about his family. I thought he must not have any. No one came to spend a Sunday afternoon with him, that sort of thing. It was just a guess that the girl who knocked at his door was his daughter. Mrs. Cathcart likes happy endings. For all we know, she might well have been the daughter of a friend. You would think, wouldn’t you, that being alone would make the cottages a friendlier place, but it doesn’t work that way.”
“Is Hill still giving you trouble over Willingham’s death?”
“He’s told me I’ll be taken in to sign my statement. I don’t know when that will be. Or if he’ll keep me once he has me there.” He was morose. “I’ve not done anything wrong. But the sexton has said I’m a liar and a cheat. I don’t see that that leads a man to murder, but Inspector Hill seems to believe it does.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think he actually believes that you did this. But he has to look at all the possibilities. Did you know Willingham before he moved here?”
“I didn’t know any of these people. Including Mr. Partridge.”
“And what do the other inhabitants of the Tomlin Cottages have to say about the murder?”
“They aren’t saying anything. No one works in their garden, even as warm as it is this morning. No one answers the door. You’d think we collaborated on the murder, drawing straws to see who did the actual stabbing. Like Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare’s play, when everyone turns against him. I remember reading that, and thinking he should have known the Ides of March meant trouble. But I suppose there wouldn’t have been a play at all, if he’d listened to his wife in the first place.”
Rutledge smiled. “You cut through the chaff to the kernel.” The smile faded. “Are you all right, Slater?”
“As best as I can be. But I’m too anxious to work. And if I can’t work, in the end I won’t eat either. No one will bring business to me if I’m under a cloud of suspicion.”
“I must go to Brady’s cottage,” he said, “but if there’s anything you need, let me know.”
“How? If they take me away, there’s nothing you can do.”
“I can try,” Rutledge replied simply.
He left the smith’s cottage and walked on down the lane to Brady’s. There was no answer to his knock, and he’d expected none. A stranger arriving here would have sworn that all the cottages were empty, their inhabitants fled. But behind the shut doors and the drawn shades of the windows, there were people who had nowhere else to turn.
Dublin came to greet him as he returned to his motorcar, rubbing herself against his ankles, and he bent down to pet her just as a sparrow flitted by and she turned to give chase.
What did Dublin know about the murder of Willingham? She prowled the cottages, looking for mice. Had she been outside Willingham’s two nights ago when a murderer came to call?
Hamish said irritably, “It wouldna’ matter if she did. She’s no’ able to tell ye what she saw.”
He climbed to the muzzle of the horse and sat there, watching scudding clouds cross the sky. It would rain before long, and he’d be wet if he didn’t leave while he could. But still he sat there, waiting for someone to stir. He could feel the eyes watching for him, wondering where he might turn up next, and whether or not he was doing his own work or Hill’s.
And then Mr. Allen stepped out of his door. Rutledge could hear him coughing, the sound captured and bounced up the hill to where he sat. Allen puttered a little in his front garden, casting wary eyes toward his neighbors.
Cabin fever, Rutledge thought, watching him. And a small defiance in the face of death. I’m alive, you haven’t gathered me in yet…
Or was it because they all knew that Rutledge was sitting here, watching, that they felt free to move about.
Quincy opened his door and set a bowl of water down for Dublin, and looked up at the building clouds.
Mrs. Cathcart timidly crept out, and moved a flower pot to where it better caught the waning sun.
Miller was next, putting something in the dust bin by the corner of his house, and then looking fixedly at Rutledge. As if to ask why he was still here, when it was clear that Partridge wasn’t coming back.
Rutledge hadn’t met the man, but it wouldn’t do any good to hurry down to the lane. Miller would be inside long before that.
They were all accounted for, except for Brady. But he was the watcher, accustomed to peering between his curtains and not showing his face. Rutledge found it interesting that Brady was still here, when Deloran knew perfectly well that Partridge was never coming back. Just as Gerald Parkinson would never return.
It was, Rutledge thought, a fanciful public façade, Deloran keeping his watcher there to report to him and to make it appear that he himself believed Partridge was coming back. Or perhaps Brady had already been put out to pasture, and lived on here because it was his home. Rutledge expected the man would claim that, if he were questioned.
Rutledge sat there, listening to Hamish in his head, for another quarter of an hour. He hadn’t seen so much as the corner of a curtain twitch in Brady’s cottage. No sign of life that would attract Rutledge’s attention and bring him down the hill to knock again.
A crow came to perch on Brady’s chimneytop, scolding Dublin as she made her rounds. Mrs. Cathcart, seeing it, went quickly back inside. Quincy called to the cat, then shut his own door. Allen, still in the garden in front of his house, looked up at the sound of Quincy’s door closing. And after a few minutes, his defiance turning practical as the first drops of rain danced on the flagstones that made up his garden path, he disappeared as well.
Rutledge came down the hill, feeling the heavy drops strike his shoulders with some force. They were only the forerunners of the storm, but the clouds had thickened to the west and rain would come in earnest in the next ten minutes or so.
Rutledge went up the lane between the cottages and knocked again on Brady’s door, calling to him when it remained shut.
There was no answer.
Feeling a stirring of his intuition, Rutledge put his hand on the latch and lifted it.
The door wasn’t locked.
He pushed it open, calling, “Brady, I know you’re in there. I want to talk to you.”
The crow flew away, cawing as he went, shattering the silence that sometimes foretells a storm.
Rutledge stood there, waiting. But there was no response from Brady.
He stepped inside, Hamish loud in his ears, and looked at the untidy room, dishes left on a table, books and papers scattered about, a pair of field glasses standing on the shelf under the window. From his vantage point Brady had a sweeping view toward the hill of the White Horse, and also of Partridge’s cottage.
For an instant Rutledge wondered if Deloran was mad enough to send Brady to do his dirty work for him at Partridge Fields, then laughed at the thought. A man who drank as Brady was said to do couldn’t be trusted with murder…
And then as his eyes adjusted to the storm-induced gloom of the sitting room, he saw Brady staring back at him, as if accusing him of trespassing.
But Brady was not accusing anyone of anything.
A knife protruded from his chest, and both his hands were wrapped around the hilt, frozen there by death.
19
It appeared to Rutledge, looking down at the body, as if Brady had stabbed himself, his grip on the blade almost like iron. Sitting in his chair, forcing the blade into the soft flesh under his rib cage, he appeared to have sliced through an artery.
And on the table beside him there was a sheet of paper. Rutledge could see the writing on it from where he stood, but couldn’t manage to read the words.
His guess was that Brady had died sometime in the night, and the letter would express his fear of hanging, or a full confession.
Rutledge looked at the man’s narrow face, unshaven chin, thin graying hair. There was depression in the circles under his eyes, indicating sleepless nights and watchful days, and nothing to show for it but a shabby cotta
ge and a reputation for the bottle.
At his back, the rain had begun in earnest, and Rutledge turned to look at the ground behind him. Whatever tracks were there, the rain would quickly obliterate. Yet all he could see from where he stood were his own, and the mixed prints of Hill’s men, trampling about as they came to interview Brady.
If the murderer had come up the garden path, he knew he would be safe.
If, that is, murder had been done…
He looked about the room, staying where he was in the open door. A gust of wind came up and whisked the sheet of paper from the table, sending it into the ash-strewn hearth behind it.
What would Hill make of this death? An easy solution to Willingham’s murder? Whatever path the inspector took, it would give Rutledge insight into the man.
He closed the door against the rising wind and walked away. He would have to send the smith again to summon the police.
Slater was reluctant to go.
“Why me? He’ll think I’ve had something to do with it, as sure as the dawn follows the dark.”
“Because I must stay here to keep an eye on the cottage—”
“But no one would go in there. And I could as easily keep watch.”
“Slater. Go on. I don’t have my motorcar here, it’s at The Smith’s Arms. You’ll find it there. And hurry.”
“There’s no need to hurry. Brady will still be there when Inspector Hill comes.” Slater collected rain gear from the cupboard where he kept his clothes and then paused at the door. “You’re safe enough, getting yourself involved in this. You’re a policeman. Who is willing to believe me?”
And he was gone, out into the storm.
Rutledge turned so that he could watch the Brady cottage. The smith’s house reeked of wood smoke. He’d never noticed it before, but the dampness outside somehow brought it to the fore.
Slater used fire and hammer for his work. It was evident everywhere Rutledge looked. The hinges of doors and cabinets, the bolts that held them closed, the tongs on the hearth, the scoop of the shovel used to take out the ashes. So many details he’d never had time to notice.
Even the latches of the windows had been replaced by wrought iron, and the candlestick holders on the windowsill were attractively turned. There was a boot scraper by the door, made in the shape of a hedgehog, the bristles of broom on his back looking like the bristles on the hedgehog’s back.
Overhead a wrought-iron lamp dropped down out of the ceiling on a finely made chain, the sconces shaped like tulips, the candle in the fold of the petals.
Alone here, he realized how the smith’s presence, tall and vibrant, filled the room. Now it seemed larger, outsized, because he wasn’t there.
Rutledge kept his eye on the Brady cottage, saw the rain running hard off the roof and cascading onto the path and spreading out into the garden, only trickles at first, and then tiny lakes that came together and separated as the wind pushed them back.
By the time Inspector Hill came dashing in from the motorcar, his hair shining with rain, the shoulders of his coat dark with it, the clouds were thinning, the worst of the cloudburst passed.
He shook himself like a dog as he crossed the threshold, and said, “All right, I’m here. I’ll deal with Brady. The rest of my men are following.” He looked up into Rutledge’s face and said, “You seem to bring death in your wake.”
“You have it the wrong way round,” Rutledge answered mildly.
“Too bad the rain has washed away any sign of footprints along the walk. But there may not have been any if we’ve got a suicide. Still, better safe than sorry, keep an open mind and all that.”
“I looked, before I left the cottage. It was hard to pick out any print in particular. Too much traffic.”
Hill grunted. “I hope the rain is finished before we go inside there. As it is, we’ll be tracking in half the garden.”
“Where’s Slater?”
“He’s still in your motorcar. I think he’s half afraid I’m about to arrest him on the spot. Early days yet. I don’t know whether to take it as a sign of guilt or just his way of looking at things.” Suddenly he could hear himself speak. The rain had stopped. “All right, I’m off. You’ll stay here?”
It was more a statement than a question.
He went out and splashed quickly up the lane to Brady’s cottage, stopping on the threshold for a time and then disappearing inside, shutting the door behind him. He was in the cottage for several minutes, his men collecting at the bottom of the lane, awaiting instructions. Then he hurried back to Slater’s cottage just as the sun broke hazily through the thinning clouds.
In his hand, protected by his coat, Hill held what appeared to be the sheet of paper that had fallen from Brady’s table.
He came inside and offered it to Rutledge.
Rutledge scanned the words written there.
Willingham called me worthless and a disgrace. I don’t stand for that from any man. I killed Partridge as well, patronizing sod that he was. I don’t regret either of them. Find Partridge if you can. If you can’t, you’ll find me in hell. I won’t hang, I’ve no taste for it. A knife is faster and cleaner. Bury me where you will. I don’t care. It’s over, and I’m just as glad.
There was no signature.
Rutledge looked up. “Can you be sure this is Brady’s handwriting?”
“There are papers and notes all over the floor, but whether they can tell us conclusively or not that this is his, I don’t know.” He took the letter back. “Looks as if Brady were keeping a diary. Dates and times scribbled down.”
Would Deloran wash his hands of Brady as easily as he had of Partridge?
Hamish replied, “He willna’ care to have it known that this was his man.”
Hill might believe what was in the note, but Rutledge did not. What struck him was the reference to Partridge, but no admission that the body had been left in Yorkshire.
Half a confession…
Hamish said, “If Partridge’s murder and Willingham’s are solved sae easily, who will be best pleased wi’ that?”
A very good question. Deloran for one.
And what about the two sisters?
Rutledge said aloud to Hill, “Do you think Brady killed Willingham? I’m not sure I can accept the admission that he killed Partridge.” For one thing, Parkinson hadn’t been killed with a knife.
Hill frowned. “That’s the problem. Where’s Partridge’s body? Brady must have taken it away.”
“Have you searched Partridge’s cottage?”
“Not yet, but I’ll see that it’s done.”
“I’d like to be there when you go in.”
“I’m not certain—”
“It will be easy enough for me to obtain the necessary permission.”
Hill grudgingly agreed, then asked, “What’s this man Partridge to you? Did you have a suspicion that he’s been murdered? Is that what brought you here in the first place?”
Rutledge chose his words carefully. “My instructions were to discover where he could be found, if he didn’t return in a reasonable period of time.”
“And he hasn’t. Which may mean that what’s on this sheet is the solution to your problems as well.” He was probing.
“If I’m lucky,” Rutledge agreed.
In the background, Hamish was reminding him that once more someone was using Partridge’s disappearance for his own ends.
“I’ll see to searching the Partridge cottage later in the day,” Hill went on. “I’ll set my men to asking the other cottagers when they last saw Brady. I doubt it’ll be much use to me, but there you are. Has to be done.” He rubbed his chin, as if something were on his mind, then thought better of speaking of whatever it was. “All right then. The doctor is on his way. The question will be whether or not Brady could have used that knife on himself. And after that I must ask myself why, if we had no inkling that he was involved with Willingham’s murder, he felt compelled to confess.”
Rutledge answered neutrally, �
�A very good question. Especially since you showed considerable interest in Slater, rather than the other residents. Brady was in the clear, still. But I’m told he was often drunk and not always thinking very clearly.”
“True enough.” Hill turned as a constable tapped lightly on Slater’s door.
He nodded to the silent Rutledge. “The doctor is here,” he informed Hill.
Slater finally brought himself to get out of the motorcar. He crossed to where the men were standing in his doorway and said, “Where will it end?”
“I’m not sure.” Rutledge turned back to the room as Hill walked away. “I think we could use a cup of tea.”
Slater came inside and began to prepare it. Rutledge quietly asked him, “Who lived in Brady’s cottage before he moved here?”
“It was an elderly woman. Miss Chandler. A lawyer came to tell her a cousin had died and left her a goodly sum in his will. She didn’t remember this cousin, but it wasn’t surprising. She was a little daft, her mind going. Still, she thought she could recall her father telling her that someone in the family had gone to Australia to seek his fortune. I expect that was who died.”
Quite a convenient windfall…
“Where did she go from here?”
“There’s a nice home run by a Mrs. Deacon in the Cotswolds. She’s well known for taking in elderly ladies without families. A bit pricey, but Miss Chandler could afford it now, couldn’t she? She was very pleased. And she’d hardly got the good news when Mr. Brady came round asking about a cottage. They must have come to an agreement, because she left him most of her furniture.”
“What did he offer as a reason for coming here to live?”
Slater brought in the tea tray. “How should I know? But she told me he was looking for a quiet life.”
Deloran had been very clever. First the sizable bequest, and then someone there to take the cottage off Miss Chandler’s hands at the right moment.
Rutledge took his cup from Slater, and said, “Did Partridge have any contact with Miss Chandler?”
“Fancy your asking that. I’d quite forgot. She was a typist, and the week before she left, he took her a handful of papers to type up for him. He had a machine and she told him she knew how to use it.”
