Rutledge shuddered at the thought.
It could probably be done, this digging. But it would have left scars on the ground for all the world to see. That is, if the world bothered to come and look here.
Rutledge made his way deeper into the trees, taking his time. The farther he went, the dimmer the light, as if it had been sucked away from the heart of the wood. What’s more, it was hard to see behind or ahead, and that alone would make a man feel—
He stopped short, listening.
But there was no one moving behind him, though he would have sworn he heard footsteps there.
Who would be bold enough to walk into Frith’s Wood after him?
Hamish said, “I canna’ say I like it in here. We’d best be gone.”
But Rutledge continued straight ahead, hoping to come out of the wood on the far side.
Instead he had gone in a half circle and wound up where he’d come in.
I’ve got a better sense of direction than that, he told himself. Yet it would have been easy enough to get off track as he avoided thickets and trunks grown too close together.
He stopped to listen again, but the footfalls he’d believed he had heard were silent. In a way, that was more chilling than knowing they were still behind him.
It would take ten men and the better part of a day to cover all the wood as carefully as he’d done in his own circle, and he wasn’t sure he could find ten men in Dudlington who would be willing.
Frith’s Wood was an excellent place for an ambush.
On his way back to Hensley’s house, Rutledge saw a stooped man puttering in the small garden of what must be the rectory, set as it was almost in the precincts of the church. He turned that direction and came to lean on the low wall that separated the churchyard from the rectory grounds as he called out, “Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. May I come in and speak with you?”
The man looked up and waved. “Come around to the gate—just there.”
Rutledge did as he was told and found his way around the side of the house to where the man waited, leaning on his pitchfork.
“I’m Frederick Towson, rector of St. Luke’s,” he said, taking off one of his gardening gloves to offer his hand. “Or has someone already told you as much?”
“No. I’ve only just met a handful of people here.”
“I saw you walking toward the wood. Looking for clues, are you? Come in, and we’ll have some tea to warm our bones.” Towson smiled. “Yours may not be as old as mine, but this cold isn’t particular.”
Rutledge followed him into the tall, narrow stone house, surely far too big for one man to manage on his own. There must be a woman who came in to clean. He made a mental note to find out who it was.
“I try to do a little work in the gardens each day, to keep my hand in, but the truth is, my thumbs are brown, not green. If anything grows at all, it’s through the kindness of my neighbors. They come to offer advice, and I listen.” He opened the kitchen door and pulled off his muddy boots before stepping inside. Rutledge stopped long enough to use the iron scraper, shaped like a sleeping cat crouched by the door.
The kitchen was a warm, cozy room painted a pleasing shade of blue. The furnishings were old but well polished, and there were blue-and-white-patterned curtains at the windows, matching the cloth on the table.
“Sit down. I’ll just put on the kettle.”
Rutledge tried to judge the man’s age, and decided he was perhaps sixty, although his hands were knotted and crippled by rheumatism. Those knuckles, he thought, must give Towson a good deal of pain at night.
But the rector was quick and economical in his movements, and he had the wood-burning cookstove fired up in no time. From a cupboard he took out bread and butter, setting them before Rutledge with a pot of jam.
“I’m fond of a little something with my tea,” he explained, reaching for the bowl of sugar and then disappearing into the pantry to find milk.
The tea was steeping when he finally settled down across from Rutledge and sighed. “I’ve heard no news of Hensley. Is he recovering—or dead?”
“Recovering. But in a good deal of pain. You can see the wood from your upper windows, surely. Did you notice him walking that way three days ago? Was there anyone with him? Apparently he can’t remember where he was just before he was shot. I’m trying to fill in the gaps.”
“I can see Frith’s Wood only from the attic windows, I’m afraid—because of the church cutting into the view. And I was in my study, working on my sermon. You’d think I knew how to write one by now, but it comes hard. I expect I’ve said everything I have it in me to say.” He smiled wryly. “No, the first I knew of the incident, one of my neighbors came to tell me. By that time, Hensley was on his way to Northampton. Even Middleton, good as he is, couldn’t handle a wound of that nature.” He nodded as Rutledge got up to fill their cups. “Thank you, Inspector. Ah, this is what I need, inner warmth.”
“You and Dr. Middleton are of an age,” Rutledge said. “What is Dudlington to do when you are gone?”
“I expect someone will fill our shoes. Nature doesn’t much care for a vacuum, you know.”
“Tell me about Hensley. Has he been a good man to have here in Dudlington? Is he likely to grow old here as you’ve done?”
“I expect he might, or so I’d have said last week. I can’t think how someone came to shoot him with an arrow. Very uncivilized thing to do.”
Rutledge hid his smile. “Did most of the people get along well with him? He comes from London, after all, and knew very little about living in a village this size. He might have had difficulty understanding the differences. That could have made enemies for him.”
Towson was busy buttering slices of bread. “We don’t have all that much crime here. I daresay he kept out of everyone’s way, most of the time. He told me once he was rather glad of the respite.”
“Tell me about Emma Mason.”
The knife stopped in midair. Towson stared at Rutledge. “You move quickly, young man. How did you come to hear that name?”
“It doesn’t matter. What does matter, though, is the lack of a file in Hensley’s records documenting her disappearance. A case of that magnitude? He must have interviewed people, traced her movements. There should have been something put to paper.”
“I expect Inspector Cain, in Letherington, kept all that. Emma was—still is, for all I know—a young girl on the brink of womanhood. Charming and intelligent and well liked. You can see for yourself how small Dudlington is, and of course everyone knew Emma and had watched her grow up.”
“Do her parents still live here?”
“Her father fell ill and died of a tumor in his bowels when she was a child. Her mother brought her home to Mary Ellison—Emma’s grandmother—and left her there to grow up. Then she went away and never came back again, as far as I’ve been told. Mary was devoted to the child, and I don’t think she’s been quite the same since Emma disappeared.”
“Why would Emma go away without telling anyone?”
“That’s the mystery. Emma was—it didn’t make sense that she’d do such a heartless thing. There wasn’t a cruel bone in her.”
“And nothing had been troubling her before her disappearance? A young man? Her schooling? Living with her grandmother?”
“If it did, none of us knew it. She seemed—sunny, never down.” He finished his slice of bread and began to butter another. “I will say one thing about Emma. Men—er—noticed her. She was quite lovely, dark hair, dark eyes, slender and shapely. I myself could see that she was an attractive child. It may be that someone else saw her a little differently—as perhaps more mature than she was. Perhaps she didn’t know how to cope with that kind of attention. A village like ours seldom breeds such beauty, you know. It could have been a temptation to some. Still, that’s not an excuse to run away.”
“And what about the wives of the men who noticed her? Were they jealous?”
“I expect they were. Emma wasn’t a flirt, mind
you. But she would smile at you, and your heart would skip a beat. Even mine, at my age. A lonely man might read into that more than was meant. And tell himself that she fancied him. If you see what I mean?”
Hamish said, “He’s no’ sae unworldly as he appears. And a lonely man could be yon constable.”
“Yes,” Rutledge answered slowly. “Did Hensley show an inordinate interest in her?” It might explain the missing file. He would hardly keep evidence pointing to himself.
“He spoke to her in passing, everyone did. But whether it went beyond a few words exchanged, it’s hard to say. The rectory is not in the heart of the village, you see. And I’m not as stable on a bicycle as I once was.”
“Where does Emma’s grandmother live?”
“On Whitby Lane, across from the bakery. She’s a little hard of hearing. You’ll have to remember that.”
Across from the bakery would put the Ellison house nearly opposite Hensley’s. He would have seen Emma coming and going every day.
As he rose to leave, Rutledge said, “Do you know of anyone here who owned—or used—a bow and arrow?”
“The only person who ever showed an interest in the bow was Emma. And that was when she was twelve.”
Rutledge stopped briefly at Mrs. Ellison’s house, but she didn’t answer his knock. A little hard of hearing, he remembered, and crossed the street to Hensley’s, looking up as a smattering of sunlight broke through the clouds and touched the pink brick of the buildings with a warm rose light. He nodded to a young woman carrying bread out of the bakery. She ducked her head, as if she hadn’t seen his greeting.
Opening the door, he walked into the hall of his temporary home and climbed the stairs to Hensley’s bedroom. He’d seen a pair of battered field glasses on a shelf between the windows and he intended to borrow them.
He found them where he’d remembered seeing them, next to the window. But as he reached for them, he discovered that this bedroom window in Hensley’s house stared directly into another window just across the lane. A window in the house where Mrs. Ellison lived.
He held the glasses to his eyes and was surprised at how clearly he could see into the room opposite.
Was that Emma’s room? And had Hensley been using the glasses to watch her at night?
“Why else were they sae handy?” Hamish asked.
It was an unpleasant thought.
He shoved the glasses into his coat pocket and was turning to go down to the motorcar when he saw it.
A cartridge casing, standing upright in the middle of his bed. This time without any carving defacing the smooth surface.
Whoever was stalking him had tracked him to Dudlington.
10
It was not a surprise. In many ways, he’d expected it. But Rutledge stood there looking at the small casing, not touching it. What disturbed him most was the fact that once more he had been so easy to find. Surely no one could guess that he would be staying at the wounded constable’s house—unless of course it had been a logical step after discovering that Rutledge didn’t have a room at The Oaks. After that, the motorcar left at the side of the house would have betrayed his presence.
Had anyone seen this invisible stalker walking into the constable’s house? After all, it was near the baker’s shop and the greengrocer’s, where people did their marketing.
Rutledge went back to the window fronting the street. Looking in one direction, he could see two women coming out of the greengrocer’s, talking animatedly to each other, and in the other, young children walking hand in hand, a nanny behind them, her starched apron hidden by her heavy coat.
And then two men in muddy Wellingtons came around the corner, heading briskly up the street toward the inn. Or the fields. It was hard to tell. Three houses away, a woman brought out a broom to sweep the walk in front of her door.
It wasn’t that Dudlington was empty—it was that whereas a larger village or town might have forty or fifty people on the streets at any given moment, this tiny pocket in the middle of nowhere seldom saw more than ten abroad at a time. But the doctor had said gossip was the mainstay of life here. And a stranger would have drawn faces to the window, peering from behind the curtains to see where he was going and what his business might be.
Hamish said, “It’ud tak’ an army to interview all o’ them.”
Rutledge examined the cartridge casing. Was it intentionally plain? Or had whoever was stalking him run out of carved casings?
“It doesna’ matter,” Hamish pointed out. “There’s other business here.”
But beyond the shelter of the village streets, the land was flat and sere and rolling. No protection. A perfect field of fire.
Rutledge shivered. It was like No Man’s Land, where the only trees were blackened, disfigured apparitions in a barren, bloody world.
He started to put the casing in his pocket, out of sight. And then thought better of it.
Would whoever had set it out for him to find come back later to see if it had delivered its message?
It was an interesting point and worth considering.
Finally, with care, Rutledge set the cartridge casing exactly where he’d found it, and then went down the street to take his luncheon at Mrs. Melford’s.
She had set out sandwiches and a pudding for Rutledge. If she was in the house, he couldn’t hear her moving about.
He ate quickly, and then left. Driving up to The Oaks, where the main road ran beyond Dudlington, he found the proprietor in the bar serving several men in corduroys and heavy boots.
They looked around as Rutledge stepped through the door, then went back to their beer, ignoring him.
Rutledge nodded to the proprietor and sat down at a table near the window. When Keating came over to ask what he would have, he shook his head. “Later, perhaps.”
Conversation, which had stopped short at his entrance, resumed stiffly, as if the subject had been changed in midsentence.
It was another twenty minutes before the men took their leave and went out the door. The proprietor, collecting the empty glasses, said, “You have a chilling effect on custom.”
“Indeed.” Rutledge watched the men walk across the road to the fields and stride over them toward the stream. “Do you know Constable Hensley well?”
“To speak to. He’s not a regular, you might say. I don’t know that anyone would call him a friend.” Keating set about washing up.
“Has anyone asked for him in the last—say, two days?”
“Asked for him? Everyone wants to know how he’s faring.”
“Someone who doesn’t live in Dudlington.”
“We see our share of strangers in The Oaks. It’s the road yonder that brings us most of our custom. You know that. What is it you’re asking me in your roundabout policeman’s fashion?”
Rutledge smiled. “You know very well. Have you given directions to Hensley’s house to anyone stopping here? Or discussed the constable’s condition with anyone passing through?”
“Someone’s knocking at your door, unwelcomed?”
It was so near the mark that Rutledge considered him. “It’s not wise to obstruct a policeman in the course of his inquiries. What do you have against the law? Or is it Hensley that you dislike?”
“I don’t know that I care for either, to tell the truth.” He set the first glass on a mat to dry.
“Did you know Emma Mason?”
Keating stared at him, caught off guard by the sudden change in direction the conversation had taken. “Everyone knew her,” he said finally, his voice flat.
“What do you think became of her? Is she dead? Or did she run away?”
“I have no opinion on the subject.”
“Everyone else has.”
“I own The Oaks. I don’t have much to do with the people in Dudlington. They come here if they choose, or not. If they want to sit at my bar and drink, then I bring them their pints and leave them to it.”
“Did Emma Mason ever come here?”
“What wou
ld she be doing here, at a licensed house?” he countered, without answering the question directly.
“You aren’t a native. You’ve lived elsewhere. She might have found that attractive.”
“Here, now, I don’t meddle with schoolgirls!”
“I didn’t suggest you’d meddled with her. Only that she might have wanted more than Dudlington could offer. That she might have liked the idea of seeing motorcars or carriages on their way to more exciting destinations. It might have put the thought into her head that here was an escape. Did she look her age?”
“I don’t know how she looked. If you want to know, ask in the village, not here.” He was angry, far angrier than the question merited.
“She has to be somewhere,” Rutledge answered mildly. “She’s either alive or dead. She’s either buried in Dudlington or she’s gone away with one of the men who stopped here for a drink or directions or a dinner. They wouldn’t come to the village, there’s nothing in it for them. She had only to walk up the main street and climb the hill to reach The Oaks, and even if she didn’t set foot in the door, she could see the motorcars and the men—”
“You can get out of my pub!” Keating shouted. “Now! Or copper or not, I’ll take pleasure in throwing you out!”
Rutledge got to his feet, moving without haste. “I haven’t come here to cast doubt on the girl’s virtue. Her disappearance isn’t even my case. But the name keeps cropping up in connection with Frith’s Wood. And Constable Hensley was nearly killed in that same wood. You can see why I’m—curious.”
Keating slammed his fist down on the bar, rattling the glasses and bottles on it. “Emma Mason was a child. A decent child, with more beauty than it was safe to possess. If I thought Hensley had touched her, I’d do more than send an arrow into his back, I’d have wrung his neck! You’d have had your case of murder then, right enough!”
And with that, he disappeared through the door behind the bar, slamming it after him.
Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 08 Page 7
