A Lonely Death

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge had listened closely, a frown on his face.

  “Three dead. And no apparent connection among them? Except that they were alone at the time of their murder? And killed with the same type of weapon?”

  “Well, there’s the war, sir,” Walker admitted. “And they’re of an age, having fought in France together. Please, if you will, sir, speak to Mr. Pierce.”

  Rutledge agreed, although with reluctance. It was not usual to have a civilian passing on the details of an inquiry. But he could see, from Walker’s anxious face, that Pierce was a man to be reckoned with in Eastfield, and until he knew just exactly what he was dealing with, it might be as well to see what Pierce had to say.

  Leaving the motorcar where it was, they walked to Drum Street and the tall, mellowed brick facade of the brewery buildings. A large gold arrow had been affixed to the front of the main building under the name PIERCE BROTHERS, and Rutledge realized that this was the beer famous in three counties for its Rose of Picardy label.

  They found the senior Pierce in his office, an old-fashioned but elegantly styled room in oak, with paintings of the founders on the walls and a large marble hearth that held pride of place to one side of the partners’ desk by the windows.

  A tall man stood up as Rutledge and Walker were admitted by an elderly clerk.

  Scanning Rutledge’s face, he came forward and said to Walker, “Good morning, Constable.”

  “This is Inspector Rutledge, Mr. Pierce. From Scotland Yard, as you requested.”

  Pierce held out his hand, and Rutledge shook it, saying, “I’m told you would prefer to tell me what’s been happening here in Eastfield.” He had kept his voice neutral, neither accepting Pierce’s authority to do any such thing, nor disputing it.

  Pierce led them to the chairs set out before the empty hearth. “I apologize for that, Mr. Rutledge. Constable Walker here has handled events so far with his usual skill, and I am grateful for that. It’s just that I have a very personal stake in finding this madman. Two days ago my own son was his third victim. That doesn’t make Anthony any more important than the other two victims, but William Jeffers’s wife and Jimmy Roper’s father aren’t able to speak for themselves at this time. Their loss was as devastating as mine, but they are alone in their grief, and I have a staff at my disposal to see me through the next few weeks.”

  “I understand,” Rutledge answered, without committing himself. Pierce was a man used to giving orders, and it was possible that Mrs. Jeffers and Jimmy Roper’s father were grateful that he was taking charge.

  Clearing his throat, as if to dispose of all emotion before he began, Pierce said, “The first Constable Walker, here, knew of Jeffers’s death was sometime after midnight when a goods van, driven by one Sammy Black, came through Eastfield on his way to Hastings. He’d had a problem with his van and was several hours late as it was. Soon after passing the church, he saw something in the middle of the road. To use his own words, he said that it looked like a bundle of old rags lost off a dustman’s cart. But he slowed, because there wasn’t sufficient room to pass on either side, and he was wary about driving straight over the rags. He’d served as a driver in the war and was accustomed to watching out for unexploded ordnance in his path. By that time his headlamps had reached the bundle and he could see it more clearly. He realized it was someone lying in the road, and he stopped to see if it was a drunkard or if the man had been struck by another vehicle.

  “He got out of his van, and walked over to what lay in the road, getting in the way of his own headlamps and having to step aside. Now he had no doubt the man was dead. His eyes were open, and there was a great deal of blood around his neck. At first Black believed that the man had cut his own throat. Unwilling to leave him there, Black finally decided to protect his body by leaving the van in the road, and he walked back into Eastfield to find the police station.”

  He turned to Constable Walker. “Have I got that right, Constable?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s exactly what he’d written in the statement he signed.”

  “Then perhaps you’d like to take up the account at this point.”

  “I sometimes sleep on a cot in the room above the station, Mr. Rutledge, my wife being dead for some years. I heard Mr. Black banging on the door, as I had only just gone to bed. I opened the window and called out to him, asking what the problem might be. He told me he’d just discovered a dead man in the road and would I come at once? I asked if he was certain the man was dead. He told me he’d seen enough dead men in the war, and he was certain. All the same, I took the time to summon Dr. Gooding, and he brought his trap with him, in the event we needed it. We reached the body, and Mr. Black drew his van to one side. Both Dr. Gooding and I had brought a lamp with us, and we could see fairly clearly. Mr. Black was right, the man was dead, and as the light reached his face, both of us recognized him at the same time. Dr. Gooding leaned closer, and then straightened up, looking up at me. ‘He’s been garroted,’ he said, shock in his voice, and I bent over to see for myself. It was the only explanation—the wire had cut deep and yet it was clear from Jeffers’s face that he had been strangled. Mr. Black at this point had gone back to his van, and I believe he was sick by some bushes along the verge. Knowing that this was a heavily traveled route from about four o’clock in the morning until first light, we cast about to see if we could find anything of importance. Dr. Gooding in particular wanted to find the ligature that had been used. But there was nothing to find. Just the body in the middle of the road. The doctor did say that Mr. Jeffers had been dead for some time, an hour or more at a guess.”

  His account had been vivid, where Pierce’s had been factual, without personal feelings coloring it. But Rutledge could see that Walker, whose quiet village must seldom produce violence of any kind, had been appalled by the brutality of Jeffers’s death.

  “Dr. Gooding had brought a blanket, and we wrapped the body in it and I helped to set it in the cart. I drove back with Mr. Black, and the doctor took the body to his surgery. Mr. Black gave me his statement, and I found that Mrs. Sanders, across from the hotel, had spent a restless night and had seen the goods van come down the street just when Mr. Black had said it came, and it was very likely that his statement of finding the body when he did was true. I went back to the scene later and still found nothing that would tell me who or why murder had been committed.”

  Walker paused. Rutledge thought that if the constable had been in his own office he would have got to his feet and begun to pace. There was more on his mind than the death, and Rutledge waited patiently to hear the rest of the story.

  “Dr. Gooding came to see me at half past ten,” Walker went on reluctantly. “He asked me to come with him to the surgery. I found that he’d removed the victim’s clothing, and it was obvious that he had been garroted, although neither Dr. Gooding nor I had ever seen a case before. But that was not what he wanted me to see. He had probed the mouth of the victim and found that inside it, almost dried to his tongue, was an identity disc.”

  Rutledge turned to stare at him. “From the war?” he asked in surprise.

  “Yes, sir. From the war. I recognized it. But it wasn’t Mr. Jeffers’s disc, if he ever had one. There was another name on it. One I didn’t know—” He reached into his pocket and brought out an oiled cloth, setting it on the low table in front of the hearth before unwrapping it.

  Inside were three flat fiberboard discs. In the war, both the Army and soldiers themselves had come up with ways to identify the dead and wounded, but none of them had been successful enough to see widespread use. Some men had simply sewn their names in their uniforms, a time-honored method. A variety of discs had been introduced as well, some on string, some on thin rope. These particular discs had an interesting history.

  Stamped from thin layers of compressed wood fibers, they came in pairs and were worn around the neck on a thin length of rope. If a man was killed, one of the discs was placed in his mouth for the burial detail to use in marking his grave. The
other of the pair was collected and sent back with his kit, eventually ending up with his family.

  But the war had been over for nearly two years. Why would such a disc be placed in the mouth of a murder victim?

  Hamish, who had been quiet for a time, said quite clearly, “Revenge.”

  Rutledge suppressed a start, for it seemed that the soft Scots voice had echoed around the room, obvious to everyone. But when neither of the other men responded to it, he said after a moment, “There are three discs here.”

  “One was also found in the mouth of Jimmy Roper, who was sitting with a cow suffering from colic when he was killed. There was no one else in the barn, no sign of forced entry, and no one in the house—Roper’s father or the maid who kept house and cooked for the two men—had heard anything,” Pierce answered. “As for my son, he was discovered on the ground floor of the brewery, just by the stairs. Dr. Gooding examined his mouth there and then, and found the third one.” Rutledge could hear the undercurrent of rage in the quiet voice.

  Rutledge looked closely at the names on the discs. One belonged to a corporal in a Yorkshire regiment, the second to a Welsh sapper, and the third to a private from Cheshire. Turning to Pierce, he asked, “Was your son an officer?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Officers weren’t issued identity discs,” he pointed out. “I wonder if these men survived the war?” He shook his head. “Three different regiments. What could these three soldiers have had in common with three men living quietly here in Sussex?”

  “That’s precisely why I asked the Yard to step in. We need to learn what we can about these soldiers if we’re to answer the question. I’m sure you must know someone in the War Office who can find out for us. Where they served, and if their paths ever crossed.”

  Rutledge did know such a man but had no intention of applying to him for answers. But Sergeant Gibson would have his own way of looking into the matter.

  “Tell me about their war records—Jeffers’s, Roper’s, and your son’s. Were they ever involved in any trouble during the fighting? Discipline, misconduct, brawling?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” Pierce retorted curtly. “They all served honorably. My son was an officer in the same regiment as a company of men who enlisted together from Eastfield, but he never commanded them. As it happened, they were in two different sectors of the Front.”

  “Their paths never crossed?”

  “I can’t say never with complete certainty, but I don’t recall my son ever speaking of encountering them. He’d have said something in his letters, asking me to relay the message to their families. He was that sort, thoughtful and responsible. There are others of that same company still alive, we could ask them.”

  “Two of the company died in France,” Walker added. “One missing. And the rest came home.”

  It was not the case generally. Men who served together as a rule died together. The Eastfield Company had been very lucky.

  Rutledge turned back to the discs. What were they intended to represent? Hamish had called it revenge, but how? Why?

  Pierce was saying, “I know regiments were split up—sometimes sent to bring up the strength of other regiments. But it seems unlikely that there’s a military connection. Still, these discs say otherwise.”

  Rutledge turned to Walker. “Was there any trouble among these local men? Have you heard any rumors of hard feelings, of unsettled issues?”

  “I have not,” Walker said with confidence. “My own nephew served with them.” And then his attention was focused on Rutledge. “My God. Are you suggesting that the killing hasn’t stopped? Should I be warning my nephew and the others that they could be in danger as well?”

  “If these murders have to do with the Eastfield Company, then why did my son have to die?” Pierce demanded, almost cutting across the constable’s question.

  “I can’t tell you the reason for that. Not yet,” Rutledge answered him, and then to Walker, he added, “It will do no harm to have a word with these men. But if the killer is a local man, why the identity discs belonging to these outsiders?” He paused, weighing the discs in his hand, then asked, “Was the Eastfield Company—or your son, sir—ever on burial detail?”

  Pierce shook his head. “I’m sure Anthony wasn’t.”

  “I don’t believe so,” Walker answered. “But I’ll ask. Are you saying that’s where these other discs came from?”

  “It’s possible. But we won’t know until we find out who these men are. And why their names are connected with three murders here.”

  “I’d rather believe it was one of them than one of ours,” Walker said.

  Pierce took a deep breath. “I don’t care who it is. I want it stopped. I want this murderer brought to justice.”

  “Then why did you refuse to let the Hastings police step in?” Rutledge asked.

  “Ah, that. I’ve had words with Inspector Norman in the past. Oh, not over anything of this nature, not murder. But my younger son, Danny, was troublesome in his day, and Inspector Norman wanted him clapped up in prison until he’d learned the errors of his ways. I refused to let Norman bully me or my son. And in the end, Danny won a medal for bravery, presented by the King himself, at Buckingham Palace. The same arrogance, as Norman called it when Danny was fourteen, saved the lives of dozens of men. Danny charged a machine gun nest single-handedly, and held the German detail at gunpoint until he could be relieved. They were taken prisoner. If he hadn’t stopped them from firing, God knows how many of our men would have been killed.”

  “Where is Daniel now?” Rutledge asked.

  Pierce flushed. “I don’t know. He came back from the war, spent two weeks with us here in Eastfield, and then disappeared one night. We haven’t heard from him since. I blame Inspector Norman there. Not two days after Danny came home, Norman was on my doorstep wanting to know if Danny had been part of a group of men who had robbed the owners of a small hotel and their dinner guests. He claimed that the description of one of them could have fit Danny quite easily.”

  “Did your son have an alibi?”

  The flush deepened. “He didn’t need one. His word was good enough.”

  But once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker, in the eyes of the police.

  Walker stirred uneasily, as if he’d been caught in the crossfire between Pierce and the Hastings police.

  Dropping the subject of Daniel Pierce, at least for the moment, Rutledge asked who had found the bodies of the other two victims.

  Walker said, “It was the housekeeper at the Roper farm. She thought Jimmy might still be sitting with Dandelion. Instead she found his body just outside the stall. And young Mr. Pierce was discovered by the foreman, coming in to work the next morning. He thought the killer might still be in the brew house, and sent his men to search, armed with whatever weapons they could lay hands to, while he stayed with the body and one of the other men came for me.”

  “But there was no sign of an intruder.”

  “No, sir. Whoever he was, he hadn’t broken in.”

  “Who survives Jeffers and Roper?”

  “Mrs. Jeffers, his wife. And Roper’s father—he’s old, frail.”

  Rutledge turned to Pierce. “Your son Anthony wasn’t married?”

  “The young woman he would have married at the end of the war died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. Of late, Anthony had been friends with Mrs. Farrell-Smith. She’s head mistress at the Misses Tate School. It’s a well-established institution here in Eastfield. A good many people from outside the village—Battle, Hastings, as far away as Rye—send their children here. Anthony attended it himself until he was twelve. The Tate sisters were still alive then.”

  “Have you seen any strangers here in Eastfield? Has anyone asked for Jeffers, Roper, or Pierce?”

  “I spoke to any number of people—in the hotel, the shops, the pubs, the restaurants,” Walker said, shaking his head. “And there hasn’t been anyone here that we didn’t know. And that’s what’s most worrisome. I
’d always thought of a garrote as being a French weapon. But the only Frenchman in Eastfield is in the churchyard, and he’s been there these thirty years and more.”

  Ten minutes later, when Rutledge and Constable Walker had taken their leave of Pierce, Rutledge waited until they were well out of earshot of the brewery and any of its workers before asking, “What do you think became of Daniel Pierce?”

  “Daniel?” Walker repeated, and then looked away. “I don’t know. He just—left. In the middle of the night. If you want to know what I think, he didn’t wish to be a burden on his father. The Pierces have enjoyed a fine reputation all through the years. And Anthony was a good man, best suited to being the heir in temperament. Not one to carouse and come home drunk in the middle of the night, singing bawdy songs as he walked down the street.”

  “Pierce seems to believe his son changed.”

  “Yes, well, a father would, wouldn’t he? But I’ve made inquiries from time to time—on my own, sir, not officially. And there’s been no word of him in the towns where I know the police. So perhaps he has.”

  “Why should you search for him?” Rutledge asked, his curiosity aroused.

  Walker flushed, the question catching him unprepared. After a moment he said, “I’ve always had a soft spot for young Daniel, sir. I was not my father’s favorite child either.”

  And yet Rutledge had gathered the impression that Daniel was his father’s favorite. Something in the timbre of his voice had betrayed the elder Pierce. “Still, the question that has to be asked is, was he jealous enough of his brother that in the end, he would kill two innocent men in order to cover his tracks when he killed Anthony Pierce?”

  Walker sighed. “I don’t think Daniel was the sort to want to be tied to a brewery for the rest of his life. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d made a career of the Army. I remember how excited he was just before the war about Shackleton’s journey to the Antarctic, and how pleased he was that the King encouraged Shackleton to go on with his plans even after war was declared.” Changing the subject without appearing to, he pointed toward an ornate four-story building ahead. “That’s The Fisherman’s Arms Hotel. A little grand to call it that, but it’s comfortable. They’re keeping a room for you. I took the liberty of asking them, after I was told the Yard was sending someone to Eastfield.”