Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 08

by A Long Shadow

  He found his way to the hospital there, only to be turned away because Hensley was still recovering from his surgery.

  Rutledge spent what was left of the night in a hotel recommended by an orderly and returned early in the morning.

  Over the objections of Matron, he stepped into the ward to see if Hensley was awake.

  The constable was in the men’s surgical ward, halfway down the row and on the left, watching through half-closed lids as a nursing sister bathed his neighbor in the next bed. There were some six or seven other patients in the long room, two of them snoring heavily, and the others lying quietly, as if in too much pain to move.

  Hensley looked up as Rutledge stopped by his bed. “You a doctor, then?” he asked hoarsely. “I was told they were giving me something for the pain.”

  He was pale, his barrel chest swathed in bandages, his thinning dark hair combed and parted, as if he’d already been tidied by the plump sister who now turned to Rutledge.

  “It’s not visiting hours for another forty minutes,” she told him crisply. “I’ll have to ask you to leave!”

  “I’m here on police business, Sister,” Rutledge said, bringing a chair from another bedside to place it next to Hensley’s.

  She tried to stare him down and failed. “You won’t tire my patient, then. Or I must ask Matron to throw you out.”

  “No, I won’t tire him.” Rutledge sat down, dropping his hat on the foot of the bed. “How are you feeling?” he asked Hensley. It was a rhetorical question, asked as a courtesy.

  “Bloody awful,” Hensley complained in a strained voice. The roughly handsome features were drawn, giving them a sharper edge. He made an effort to collect himself. “I’m told the doctors here saved my life. I can’t say. I don’t remember much about what happened. Who are you? Not a local man…”

  “The name’s Rutledge. I’ve come from London to look into this business.”

  “Was it Old Bowels who sent you?” Hensley asked, showing more interest. “He always did look after his own.” Not waiting for Rutledge to answer, he shifted uncomfortably. “It’s these damned bandages—they stick and pull at the stitches, and there’s no help for it. Bad enough what they did to remove the point of the arrow. Aches like the very devil! Between that and the catgut, I’ve not had a minute’s peace since I came out of the ether and found myself in this bed.” He shot a black look in the direction of the sister, but she ignored him.

  “You say you remember very little of what’s happened. Do you remember where you were when the arrow struck you?”

  Even as Rutledge spoke, his mind conjured up an image of the windscreen shattering, and he pushed it back into the shadows.

  Hensley looked away. “I’m told they found me at the southern edge of Frith’s Wood. I can’t say if that’s true or not. If it was, I didn’t get there under my own power.”

  “Would this wood normally be a part of your regular rounds? Close enough, for example, for you to see or hear something that attracted your attention? Even if now you can’t remember going that far?”

  Hensley answered him with more intensity than the question merited. “The last thing I remember was riding my bicycle along the road to Letherington, well to the east of the wood! How could I see or hear anything from there? I draw a blank on the rest of it. They tell me I came to my senses as they were lifting the stretcher into Mr. Staley’s wagon. If I did, I couldn’t tell you what was said to me.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have shot you? Would someone practice archery in the wood, or hunt rabbits there?”

  “Not in Frith’s Wood, they wouldn’t. People avoid it.” He stirred again, trying to find a little comfort. “At any rate, the trees are too close for true archery or much of anything else.”

  “Is there anyone in Dudlington who bears you a grudge?”

  Something flitted across Hensley’s face, a shadow of guilt, Rutledge thought.

  “I don’t have any notion what happened, much less why,” he answered just as a patient three beds away began to cough heavily. The sister hurried to his side, and Hensley watched her prop the man higher on his pillows. “No one goes to that wood. Not if they’ve got any sense. Least of all me. I can’t think why anyone might drag me there. Unless it was to hide what he’d done.”

  “He’s no’ a light man to be hauled about,” Hamish said, stirring, his voice no more than a thread in Rutledge’s mind. “No’ in the middle of the day, when people are about.”

  “What’s wrong with this wood?” Rutledge asked. “Why do people avoid it?”

  “It’s haunted by the dead. So it’s said.”

  “What dead?”

  Hensley shut his eyes, as if keeping them open was an effort. “It’s not a police matter. Saxon dead, a long time ago. The story is there was a massacre, raiders herding everyone from the village into the wood and slaughtering them. You haven’t been there, you don’t know what it’s like. Strange. That’s all I can say.”

  “Who found you?” Rutledge asked.

  “I don’t know. I asked Dr. Middleton that, and he said I wasn’t to talk.” He shifted again. “They did tell me I lay there bleeding for more than two hours. I was that cold, they thought I was already dead. That was afterward, on the journey down to Northampton. I can recall a little of that.”

  “Anyone on your patch who uses a bow?”

  He moved his hand slightly, indicating he didn’t know. “Sister,” he called as the nurse eased the coughing patient and started down the ward with her basin of bathwater. “Is it time yet?”

  “I’ll tell you when it’s time,” she said. “Mr. Rutledge, I believe you’ve asked enough questions.”

  Hensley turned his head restlessly. “Bloody woman,” he said under his breath. “I’m the one here in the bed, not her. How does she know how I feel?”

  “How often do you go to Letherington? Could someone have expected to find you on the road there at a particular time of day?”

  “I go to Letherington when I need to meet with Inspector Cain. Or report to him. There’s no pattern to it.” He hesitated. “I thought I heard crows above the fields, making a bloody racket. I stopped my bicycle and stood there, looking around. That’s the last I remember.”

  Distracting Rutledge, Hamish reminded him, “Ye ken, the crows flew up fra’ the trees by the road at the sound of yon shot. No’ at the sound of the motorcar.”

  That’s true, Rutledge agreed silently. They weren’t disturbed until the revolver was fired. Whoever it was had lain quietly in wait for some time. Long enough for them to settle. He brought his mind back from Hertfordshire to Constable Hensley’s attacker. What agitated them in this case? Not an arrow being loosed.

  The man in the bed was saying, “At a guess, I never got to Letherington. But you’ll have to ask Inspector Cain about that. I remember setting out, I remember the crows.” He shook his head, as if bewildered. “It wearies me, this business of not knowing.”

  “If you can bring back any more details, ask Matron to call Chief Inspector Kelmore or one of his people here in Northampton, and he’ll get word to me.” Rutledge retrieved his hat. “Do you have a station in Dudlington?”

  Hensley’s voice was weaker, and he closed his eyes against the dim lamplight. “We don’t run to station houses. I use my parlor as my office. You’ll find whatever you need there. Make yourself at home. I won’t be back for a bit, if these bloody butchers have their say.”

  Rutledge stood for moment beside the bed, looking down at the wounded man. He appeared to be in no hurry to find his attacker. And that in itself was odd. No anger, no fierce need to help speed the inquiry along.

  But then Hensley’s eyelids opened, and he said, as if realizing his own mistake, “I’ll worry about it when I’m better. I can’t now. You can see that. Tell Inspector Kelmore I’m not fit enough for questions yet.”

  Matron was coming with a little tray of medicines and a cup of water. Hensley saw her, and his face cleared. “Thank God!”

>   Matron nodded to Rutledge as she reached the bed. “You promised me only five minutes.”

  “Yes, I was just going. Tell me, do you know what became of the arrow that was taken from Hensley’s back?”

  “You must ask the surgical sister about that.”

  But the surgical sister, when Rutledge had run her to earth, said, “They’d removed the shaft before he was brought here. You must ask Dr. Middleton what became of it. As for the tip, it was an ordinary metal one. Chief Inspector Kelmore took it, but I doubt it did him much good. We had rather butchered it, extracting it from the rib. Constable Hensley was very lucky. His injury might have been far worse. If the arrow had got past the ribs, he’d be a dead man.”

  Rutledge went in search of Chief Inspector Kelmore and found him in his office, a stuffy little room reeking of pipe smoke. Kelmore was a graying man in his late forties, with yellowed teeth and ears too large for his head.

  The Chief Inspector shook hands with Rutledge and said, “I was just leaving. The wife’s ill, and I’m taking the rest of the day off. They’ve sent you here about Hensley, have they? Lucky he wasn’t killed, according to the surgeon.” He began to dig through the contents of his desk drawer, then reached instead for a box sitting on the floor. “Here’s what’s left of the arrow. I expect that’s what you came for.” He passed the broken shaft with its mangled metal tip to Rutledge. “Nothing unusual about it, except where it was found, in a constable’s back.”

  Rutledge studied the wooden shaft, then the tip. “I should think it would have depended on the distance the arrow flew as to how deep it might have gone.”

  “Yes, that was my view as well. Hence the luck I spoke of. I daresay whoever loosed this arrow is afraid to come forward and admit to his carelessness.” He held out his hand for the tip.

  “And that’s what you put it down to? Carelessness?” Rutledge asked, returning it.

  “What else should I read into it? As you’ll see for yourself, Dudlington is hardly a hotbed of murderers. I can’t think why someone would have wished Hensley ill. Seems to be a decent enough chap, had no complaints against him. Nor has Inspector Cain, who oversees Dudlington, along with two other hamlets, Fairfield and Letherington. Letherington, to the north of Dudlington, is the largest of the three. Fairfield is a little more to the east.” He pointed to a county map on the wall.

  “I’ll call on Cain tomorrow. Was there any indication in that wood—what’s it called? Frith’s Wood—how Hensley had been carried or dragged there?”

  “I don’t think they looked. Does he claim he wasn’t in the wood when he was shot? That’s odd.”

  “He says he remembers riding his bicycle on the main road, and the next thing he knew he was on his way to hospital. He doesn’t know how he got to the wood. Or when he was shot.”

  “They do say that sudden and severe injury can shock the mind, and events just before it happened are lost. His memory might return as he heals. I’m not sure why the Yard was brought into this business before we’d had a chance to look into it ourselves. But there you are. No offense intended.”

  “None taken. I expect London was concerned because Hensley came from there. And it was possible that someone he’d helped convict had a long memory.”

  “That’s always possible, of course. Yes, I can see where it might have caused concern.” Kelmore stored the arrow away again and rose to his feet. “I’ll speak to Hensley myself tomorrow. I must go. The doctor is coming to my wife, again, and I must be there. If there’s anything you need, let me know. If you can’t find me, leave your message with Sergeant Thompson. He’ll see that I get it.”

  He was ushering Rutledge out of the tiny office and into the drab corridor. “How are you getting to Dudlington? It’s isolated, you know. No bus service.”

  “I have my own motorcar.”

  “What luck! You can drive me home. It’s on your way out of town.”

  8

  It was nearly dusk when Rutledge came to the turning for Dudlington, and if he hadn’t been on the lookout for it, he’d have missed it.

  An inn, standing alone on a rise, was all that could be seen in a wide landscape of fields running from his left down the slope of the land toward a little stream only visible because of the straggling line of trees that followed it. In the distance he could just see a low line of roofs that indicated barns.

  He passed the inn as he turned, and made a note of it. Then he was in the village some hundred yards beyond.

  Holly Street was narrow, with houses on either side set directly on the road. Farther on, Whitby Lane turned off to his left, and when he followed that, he saw that Church Street, coming in on his right, led to the churchyard, with the slender steeple of the church rising over the roofs surrounding it.

  No one was about, except a dog trotting down the lane toward his dinner. And there was no sign to indicate where Constable Hensley lived. Rutledge turned the motorcar near the churchyard and went back the way he’d come, toward the inn.

  The Oaks stood on higher ground than the village, a large inn for its location, with a pedimented front door that spoke of better days.

  He opened the door and found himself in a spacious lobby that had once been the entry to the house. A handsome stair climbed to a landing and turned out of sight.

  There was a bell on a table by the door, and he rang it.

  After a moment a woman came out of the back, tidying her hair, as if she had just taken off an apron.

  “Good afternoon, sir, are you stopping for dinner? We don’t serve for another two hours.”

  “I’m looking for a room.”

  She was skeptical. “I don’t know that we have one available. I’ll just ask Mr. Keating.”

  She left him there in the hall, and soon a balding man of about forty-five came out to speak to him.

  “You’re looking for a room, is that it, sir? For the night?”

  The inn appeared to be empty, except for the man and the woman.

  “For several days. Inspector Rutledge, from London.” He was curt, tired of delay.

  “Ah. You’re looking for Constable Hensley’s house, I take it. Second on the right, Whitby Lane. Not hard to find—follow the main road into the village and you can’t miss it.”

  “I’ve no intention of staying the night at Hensley’s house. I’m looking for a room here.”

  Keating was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We’ve got a room or two. I keep them for travelers. This is a rather isolated part of the world, as you must have noticed, and we’re accustomed to people late on the road, looking to stop the night. But I’m afraid we’re booked up, just now.”

  The words were firm, brooking no argument. But where were the motorcars or carriages by the door to support Keating’s claim?

  Rutledge was about to point that out when he recalled what an elderly sergeant had told him years before: “I remember the day when a policeman under the roof frightened away custom. I’d be offered poor service and a cramped little room at the back, beneath the eaves, in the hope I’d go away sooner.”

  He didn’t think Keating was prepared to offer him even that. The innkeeper stood there, inflexibility in every line, although the pleasant expression on his face stayed securely in place. Short of calling the man a liar, there was nothing more to be said.

  Rutledge turned on his heel and left.

  He found Hensley’s small house squeezed between a bakery and a greengrocer’s. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in, feeling the chill from no fire over the last several days. The cold seemed to hang in the air, and the darkness in the tiny entry compounded it.

  Retrieving his torch from the motorcar, he walked back inside searching for a lamp. The bloom of light dispelled the sense of emptiness, but it wasn’t until he’d got a fire going well in the parlor that served as an office that he took off his hat and coat and set them aside.

  The parlor was a square room, windows only on the front, and it was occupied by a desk sitting across from t
he hearth, papers scattered over its surface. Rutledge paused to look at them and found nothing of interest. Notices from Northampton, a letter inquiring for a Mr. Sandridge in the town, and a logbook that had been kept meticulously until the day Hensley was shot.

  In the back was a sitting room, a kitchen with an empty larder, and upstairs a bedroom with sheets on the bed that were damp and wrinkled.

  “It willna’ do,” Hamish told Rutledge. “It’s no’ a place to be comfortable.”

  Rutledge took out his pocket watch and looked at it. The Oaks would be serving dinner in another forty-five minutes, and the thought of a warm meal and a bed pulled at him. Keating be damned.

  There was a voice from the hall at the foot of the stairs. “Halloooo!”

  He went to the top of the steps and called down, “Inspector Rutledge here. What do you need?”

  “Well, I told myself it couldn’t be Bart Hensley.” She moved into the light of his torch as he pointed it down the stairs in her direction. “What are you doing here? He hasn’t died, has he?”

  “No.” He could see her now, a tall, slender woman wearing a knitted hat and a gray coat with a black collar. “I’ve come to investigate what happened to him.”

  “Well, then, dinner is at eight. I usually prepare it for him. An arrangement we’ve had since he came here in 1915. You might as well take your meals at my house too. There’s not much choice in Dudlington. I’m your neighbor next but one, on the other side of the bakery. Oh, and you can leave your motorcar just by the side of the house. It’s out of the way there.” And she was gone, shutting the door firmly behind her.