Todd, Charles

by A Matter of Justice

  "There's always that, of course. But Little seems to feel very confident of his times." Rutledge stopped and turned to look over his shoulder. Brunswick was hurrying toward St. Martin's, his black robe streaming behind him. Rutledge watched him go.

  Would a man in Brunswick's state of mind go meekly to bed in the hope of sleeping, after being humiliated by a more successful friend?

  Especially if he'd had a little too much to drink? Of course there was the long ride to Cambury to cool his temper and wear him down. But Tommy Little had seen the man's face, and it appeared he was still smarting from the visit.

  Looking up at the Perpendicular tower of St. Martin's, Rutledge realized that the rectory overlooked the church on its far side. He went back to The Unicorn and bided his time until the morning services were over.

  When he reached the rectory an hour after noon, Rutledge found Heller dozing in a wicker chair in his garden, a floppy hat over his face. He woke up as he heard someone approaching, and sat up, pulling down his vest and smoothing his hair.

  "Is this an official call?" he asked, trying for a little humor, but the words were heavy with worry.

  Rutledge joined him in the shade, squatting to pick up a twig and twist it through his fingers.

  "It's about Michael Brunswick," he said after a moment, not looking up at the rector. "I believe it's customary for him to practice your selections for the Sunday services on Saturday morning. Do you recall if he did that on the Saturday that Quarles died? He was meeting a friend in Glastonbury. There might not have been time for him to play beforehand."

  Heller was caught without an answer. He sat there, studying Rutledge, then said, "He did indeed come into practice that morning. A little earlier than usual, as I recall. I was there and heard him. We talked about the anthem I'd chosen. It's a favorite of mine."

  "And so there was no need for him to play the organ that evening, after his return?"

  Heller sighed. "No need. But of course he did. The windows were open, I could hear him from my study. He wasn't playing my selections. It was tortured music. Unhappy music. I did wonder if it was his own composition. And it ended in a horrid clash of notes, followed by silence." He looked back at the rectory, as if he could find answers there in the stone and glass and mortar. "He's a wretched man. He wants more than life has chosen to give him. He plays perfectly well for us during services. We are fortunate to have him. Why should he feel that he needs to reach for more? If God had intended for him to be a great organist, he wouldn't have brought him to us at Cambury, would he have? There is much to be said for contentment. And in contentment there is service."

  Rutledge stood up, without answering the rector.

  Heller said, "You mustn't misunderstand. Michael Brunswick's music isn't going to drive him to kill. It's eating at him, he's the only victim."

  Rutledge said, "Perhaps his music is the last straw in a life full of disappointments. What time did he finish playing?"

  "I don't know. Perhaps it was twenty past ten. If you remember there was a mist coming in. Hardly noticeable at that time, but an hour later, it was thick enough that strands of it were already wrapping around the trees in my garden. I was worried about Michael, and looked to see if his house was dark. It was, and so I went to bed myself."

  "If there had been lights on?"

  "I'd have found an excuse to go and speak to him. To offer comfort if he needed it. Or if not, to assure myself that he was all right." He took a deep breath and examined his gardening hat to avoid looking at Rutledge. "You mustn't misconstrue what I've told you. It would be wrong."

  "It would be wrong to let someone else take the blame for Quarles's death. Mr. Jones has already suffered for his daughter's sake."

  "Yes, I heard what had happened at the bakery. Mr. Padgett believes it was boys acting out of spite, but I think someone is grieving for Quarles. A woman, perhaps, who cared for him and believes the gossip about Mr. Jones. You warned me once, Mr. Rutledge. You told me someone might come to me frightened by what they'd done and I must be careful how I dealt with them. In return I warn you now.

  Rumor has always maintained that Harold Quarles had a mistress in Cambury. I don't know if it's true or not, but if it is, she's not one of the women he flirts with in public, she's someone he visited quietly, I suspect, when no one was looking. If she exists, I say, she's had no way to grieve openly while everyone in sight is gloating over Quarles's death. Alone, lonely, she must be desolate, and it will turn her mind in time. Just beware."

  It was an odd speech for a man of the cloth to make to a policeman.

  "Surely you can guess—"

  "No. I've never wanted to know whose wife or sister or daughter she may be. I can do nothing for her until she comes to me. This is just a friendly warning."

  "Thank you, Rector. I'll bear it in mind." But he thought that Heller was intending to turn his attention away from Michael Brunswick by using village gossip to his own ends. He was a naive man in many ways. And he might consider a small white lie in God's cause no great problem for his conscience.

  "Ye ken," Hamish said, "he doesna' want to lose his organist. It's why he defends him sae fiercely."

  He turned to walk away, but Heller stopped him. "I told you that I refused to judge, lest I be judged. It's good advice, even for a policeman."

  But the fact remained, Rutledge told Hamish in the silence of his mind, that there was proof now that Michael Brunswick could have crossed paths with Harold Quarles.

  To test it, he stood on the street just above Michael Brunswick's door and looked toward the High Street. The angle was right, as he'd thought it might be. Coming home from St. Martin's, Brunswick would have had a clear view of Minton Street and the corner that Quarles would have turned on his way back to Hallowfields.

  The mist hadn't come down then. And Brunswick, needing someone or something on which to expend his anger and frustration, might have watched Quarles walk up the High Street alone. He could have cut across the green without being noticed, followed at a distance, and let the trees shield him on the straight stretch of road that marched with the wall of the estate.

  "Why did the dead man no' go through the gates and up the drive?"

  "Because it must be shorter to come in by the farm gate and cut across the parkland."

  Rutledge went to fetch the motorcar and drove out to Hallowfields, leaving it by the main gate. Then he paced the distances from there to the house, and again from the Home Farm lane to the house. Because of the twists and turns of the drive, allowing for vistas and specimen trees set out to be admired, it was nearly three hundred yards longer. If he was tired, it would have made sense for Harold Quarles to choose the shorter distance.

  Brunswick might have called to him, or challenged him. And if Quarles had turned away in rejection of what he wanted to say, that act could have precipitated the murder.

  "Listen to me...

  "I'm tired, I want my bed. You have nothing to say to me that I have any interest in hearing...

  Those white stones stood out—Brunswick needn't have thought to bring a weapon—and in a split second, without a word, Quarles would have been knocked down. It was the second blow that mattered. Had Brunswick intended it as the death stroke? Rutledge could see him still caught up in that fierce need to hurt as he'd been hurt, stepping back too late, shocked by the suddenness of death.

  It would have been easy to convince himself that Quarles had brought on the attack by his callous indifference. To feel no responsibility for what he'd just done.

  And then the slow realization that the man had got off too lightly, a quick death compared to Hazel Brunswick's drowning, must have triggered his next actions.

  The facts fit together neatly.

  Then why, Rutledge wondered, was he feeling dissatisfied, standing there on the lawns of Hallowfields, looking for holes in his own case?

  He walked on to the house and this time knocked at the door, asking for Mrs. Quarles when Downing opened it.

&nb
sp; "She's with her son. Come back another day."

  "If she could spare me a few minutes, I'd be grateful." His words were polite, but his voice was uncompromising.

  She went away, and in a few minutes conveyed him with clear disapproval to the formal drawing room. Mrs. Quarles came in after him, dressed in deep mourning. She was very pale, as if the ordeal of breaking the news to her son had taken its toll.

  Against the backdrop of the drawing room, pale blue and silver, she was almost a formidable figure, and he thought she must have intended to impress him after his impudence in demanding to see her.

  "What is it you want to know, Mr. Rutledge? Whether I've turned into a grieving widow?"

  "There are some questions about your husband's past—"

  "That could have waited. I bid you good day."

  He stood his ground. "I think you're probably the only person who knew your husband well. With the possible exception of Mr. Penrith."

  "I have no idea what Mr. Penrith thinks or knows about my late husband. I have never asked him. Nor will I."

  "There are some discrepancies that I'd like to clear up. We've learned that Mr. Quarles removed the remains of his family from the village where they lived and died to another churchyard. But no one who lived in the old village has any recollection of him as a child."

  "You have been busy, haven't you? I can't speak for anyone who does or doesn't recall his childhood. He did move his family, but that was after our son was born. Or so I was told. He never took me north with him, it was a painful chapter in his life, and I was content to leave it closed."

  "We would also like more information about his enlistment in the Army. Did he see action during the Boer War, or was he posted elsewhere in the empire?"

  Her face changed, from irritation to a stillness that was unnatural. "Was he in that war? He never spoke of it to me." Her voice was crisp, dismissive, and her eyes were cold.

  "Was that when he met Davis Penrith?"

  "I have no idea. It was my impression they met at the firm where they were employed."

  "Can you tell me anything about the burns on your husband's hands? They were quite severe and possibly inflicted by someone else. If so, they may have a bearing on his murder."

  She moved swiftly, reaching for the bell. "Good day, Mr. Rutledge."

  Behind him, Downing opened the door, and Mrs. Quarles nodded to her.

  Rutledge turned to the housekeeper. "I don't believe we've finished our conversation. Thank you, Mrs. Downing."

  The housekeeper looked to her mistress for guidance. But Mrs. Quarles walked past Rutledge without a word or a glance and left him standing there.

  He could hear her heels clicking over the marble of the foyer and then the sound of footsteps as she climbed the stairs.

  Mrs. Downing was still waiting. He let her show him to the door.

  From somewhere in the house, he could hear a boy's voice, calling to someone, and lighter footsteps approaching.

  But the door was shut so swiftly behind him that he didn't see Marcus Quarles after all.

  20

  Walking back to where he'd left the motorcar along the road, Rutledge pondered his conversation with Mrs. Quarles.

  Most of his questions had been based on a little knowledge and good deal of guesswork. Nevertheless, the dead man's widow had been disturbed by them.

  Oddly enough he was beginning to see a pattern in Harold Quarles's actions.

  The man had removed his family from their original grave site and reburied them in a place where they weren't known. Only the headstones in the churchyard identified them, and no one in this other village would have any memory of them or the boy who wasn't—yet—laid to rest among them.

  And there was the story to explain his burns, lending an air of heroism to the other tales he'd spun. Of course there had to be an explanation. The scars were obvious to anyone who met him or shook hands over a business agreement. But Rutledge thought that Mrs. Quarles had a very good idea how he'd come by them, whatever the rest of the world believed.

  As for the army, Quarles's service had been quietly put behind him. Either because he hadn't particularly distinguished himself or his service record was dismal. And Davis Penrith had done the same thing.

  With any luck, London would have those records for him in another day. And a telephone call to Yorkshire would confirm the removal of the graves.

  Harold Quarles had created the face he showed his business associates with great care. What was behind the mask? Brunswick was right, something must be there.

  Hamish said, "Ye ken, he's the victim."

  "That's true," Rutledge answered, turning the motorcar back toward Cambury. "But where there are secrets, murder sometimes follows. Or blackmail. Was that what Brunswick had been moving toward? Take the bookseller, Stephenson. Quarles wouldn't tell him why he refused to contact the Army on the son's behalf. It must have seemed unbelievably cruel to a desperate father. And Stephenson brooded over it to the point that he wanted to kill the man. Who else is out there nursing a grudge and waiting for the chance to do something about it?"

  "A straw in a haystack," Hamish said.

  "Yes, well, the Yard is often very good at finding straws."

  But Hamish laughed without humor. "It doesna' signify. If the murderer here isna' the baker nor the bookseller, ye're left with the man who plays the church organ."

  He hammered on for the next hour as Rutledge sat by the long windows overlooking the High Street and wrote a report covering everything he'd learned so far.

  There were loose ends. There were always loose ends. Murder was never closed in a tidy package.

  Who had wrecked the bakery? How could anyone prove that Brunswick had indeed seen Quarles leaving the Greer house and turning for home? Who had argued with Quarles there? Brunswick himself? Greer?

  Rutledge left the sheets of paper on the table and went out again, crossing the High Street and walking on to knock on Brunswick's door.

  The man was haggard, and short-tempered as well. "What is it this time?"

  "I need to find some answers that are eluding me. When you stopped playing the organ that Saturday night a week ago, when Quarles was killed, did you leave the church at once, or sit there for a short period of time?"

  Brunswick blinked, as if uncertain where Rutledge had got his information and what it signified. "I—don't recall."

  "If you travel from the church to this house, for a small part of that journey, particularly when you're on foot, you have a clear view of Minton Street. At just about the time you might have done that, perhaps ten-thirty, Harold Quarles was coming out of the house where he'd dined. Between there and where Minton meets the High Street, he encountered someone who argued with him. Their voices were loud. They may have carried this far. I need to know the name of that man or woman with him."

  Brunswick stood there, his gaze not leaving Rutledge's face.

  It was a turning point, and the man was well aware of it. If he admitted to seeing Quarles, he was admitting as well that he could have killed the man.

  He had only to say: "I must have walked home earlier than that. I didn't see Quarles at all, much less hear him talking to someone on Minton Street."

  Or "I didn't leave the church for another quarter of an hour or more. I couldn't have seen him—the clock in the tower was striking eleven."

  And it would have been impossible, whatever the police suspected, to prove otherwise.

  Rutledge waited.

  Finally Michael Brunswick said, "I didn't see Quarles."

  "You must have heard his voice."

  "No."

  Hamish said, "He's afraid to tell ye."

  After a moment Brunswick went on. "If Quarles was there, he'd already gone."

  "All right, I'll accept that. The timing wasn't perfect. Who was still there? Who had been with him only a matter of seconds before?"

  "It was Davis Penrith."

  Brunswick had condemned himself with four words.

/>   Davis Penrith had been in Scotland that weekend, staying with his wife.

  Rutledge was torn between going to London himself and asking the Yard to request a statement from Penrith regarding his weekend in Scotland. In the end, he compromised and telephoned the man at his home.

  Penrith was distant when he came to take Rutledge's call. But as the reason for it was explained, he said, "Here, this is ridiculous. I've a letter from my wife. Let me fetch it."

  He came back to the telephone within two minutes.

  "It's dated the Thursday after my return. I'll read you the pertinent passage: 'Mama was so pleased you could come, however short the visit. And Mr. and Mrs. Douglas were delighted you were here to dine with them. We have become dear friends. Shall I invite them to stay with us in June, when they'll be in town?' "

  "Where does your motherin-law live?"

  "In Annan. That's just over the border from Carlisle."

  Rutledge knew that part of Scotland. If Penrith had been there for the weekend, he couldn't have reached Cambury and returned to Annan without losing the better part of two days—the journey was close on three hundred miles each way.

  "When did you leave for the weekend?"

  "My staff can tell you—I left here Thursday evening and I set out from Annan just after our luncheon on Sunday. As you may remember, you found me at home on Monday morning because I got in so late."

  "Will you go to Sergeant Gibson at the Yard and give him a written statement to that effect? Show him the letter as well."

  "If it will help to find Harold's killer."

  Rutledge thanked him and broke the connection.

  Sitting there by the telephone, he considered his next step. He had sufficient evidence for several inquests. He could show a very good case for Hugh Jones, Stephenson, and now Brunswick. They would undoubtedly be bound over for trial. His duty done?

  Why of all people had Brunswick named Penrith?

  To shield someone else?

  Or to make a point?

  Hamish said, "He told ye he didna' care."

  Rutledge crossed the room and opened the door before he answered Hamish. "Why did Brunswick look into Quarles's past?"