A Lonely Death

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge thanked him. “I’ll go and register. But as soon as possible I want to see the statements you’ve collected thus far, and then speak to Dr. Gooding.”

  “It’s best to catch the doctor after his midday meal. One o’clock? Will that suit you?”

  “Yes, I’ll come for you then,” Rutledge answered as they reached his motorcar. Walker turned the crank for him, and he drove on to the hotel. There was space to park in the small yard to the far side, and the woman at the desk smiled when he gave his name.

  “We’ve been expecting you, Mr. Rutledge,” she said, as if he were a valued guest and not a policeman in their midst. He rather thought that Pierce’s name had been used to secure a better choice of room.

  Hamish said as Rutledge climbed the stairs to the second floor, “Ye ken, Mr. Pierce doesna’ want the Hastings police called in for fear they’ll look for his ither son.”

  “Yes, that’s very likely,” Rutledge agreed. “Scotland Yard has no prejudices.”

  The room faced the street rather than the yard, and it was large, airy, and comfortable. Rutledge set his valise in the wardrobe and went to the pitcher of cool water on the stand between the windows, where he washed his hands. As he was reaching for a towel to dry them, he heard a commotion in the street and looked out to see what was happening.

  Constable Walker was speaking to an elderly man crippled by arthritis, leaning heavily on his cane. He looked tired, distraught, and very angry.

  The man was repeating at the top of his lungs, “I want him buried, do you hear? Decently, next to his mother, where he belongs. I don’t care what the police have to say about it, I want my son.”

  Walker tried to placate him, but there was nothing he could say that would satisfy the old man.

  Hamish said, “Roper’s father.”

  Very likely, Rutledge thought. Walker had described him as old and frail.

  Pushing away from the window, Rutledge hurried out of the room and down the stairs. When he reached the street, Walker was still patiently trying to persuade the elder Roper to return to his farm.

  Rutledge walked up to them, introduced himself to Roper, and with a nod to Walker, said, “I’m here from Scotland Yard. In fact I only arrived this morning. If you will give me three days, I’ll see that your son’s body is released to you. But I want to be sure that I know everything I need to know in order to find his murderer. Will you give me those three days?”

  Roper turned to him, his eyes wet with tears. “Three days, you say?”

  “Three days,” Rutledge acknowledged.

  “That’s reasonable.” Roper turned to go, finally satisfied.

  Rutledge stopped him. “Did your son have any enemies, do you know? Someone who was jealous of him, who held a grudge of some sort, or had quarreled with him recently?”

  Roper laughed, a harsh and breathless sound. “Jimmy had his hands full at the farm and caring for me. There was no time for jealousy or grudges or quarrels. Whoever it was should have killed me—I’m past being useful. But no, it was Jimmy was taken. Even the Germans had spared him, except for his damaged leg. I told him when he came home that he could give them the damned leg, it was his hands and his brain the farm needed. He was unhappy, then, moping about for weeks. I had to tell him, didn’t I, that the leg was of no account? And to his credit, he came to his senses and set about making the farm pay again. And we’d have done it too, if he hadn’t been killed! We’d have seen our way clear in another year, turned a profit even. That’s gone with Jimmy, and I’ve put a father’s curse on whoever killed him. I hope he suffers as I’ve suffered, and knows the fires of hell before ever he gets there.” He gripped his cane fiercely, as if he could see himself bringing it down on the head of his son’s murderer. But the outburst had exacted its toll, and Roper’s face was drawn with the effort it had required.

  “How did you get here?” Rutledge asked, taking note of that.

  “I walked. No one would come and tell me what was happening.”

  Walker said, his eyes meeting Rutledge’s over the stooped man’s head, “It’s no little distance to the farm.”

  Rutledge said, “My motorcar is just there, in the hotel yard. Drive him home.”

  “I’ll do that, sir. Thank you.” Walker touched Roper’s arm. “This way, if you please, sir.”

  It was easy to see that Roper was torn between maintaining his dignity and allowing himself to be driven. After a moment, his aching bones made the decision for him. “I’d take that as a favor,” he answered and let Walker lead him to where Rutledge had left his motorcar.

  Rutledge watched him go.

  It was easier for a policeman to consider the victim as another case until he met the family and friends of the deceased and began to learn to see the dead through their eyes. It was always a turning point. And now he had met first Pierce and then Roper.

  It had also served to emphasize the difference in status between the first two victims—farmers both—and Anthony Pierce, the son of a man of position and wealth. What’s more, one was married, two were not. What did those three have in common? The war? But two had served together and one had not. Was it the fact that all three had survived? But according to Walker, so had a number of others. Including his nephew.

  What linked these three men?

  Hamish said, “Yon identity discs in their mouths.”

  6

  Rutledge had eaten his meal and was finishing his tea when Walker came to take him to meet Dr. Gooding.

  The doctor’s surgery was within walking distance, a rambling house that had been divided into two halves, one for his practice and the other for his living quarters.

  Three women were just leaving the surgery as the two men opened the gate and started up the flagstoned walk leading between borders in which flowers were blooming profusely. They noticed the man with Constable Walker straightaway, and Rutledge could all but hear the speculation racing through their minds. He could also imagine their conversation as soon as they were out of earshot.

  Walker said, “The tallest of those women was married to one of the Eastfield Company that marched off together to fight the Kaiser. Mrs. Watson. Her husband was killed in the third week of the fighting after they reached the Front.” He opened the surgery door for Rutledge, and added, “The rest led charmed lives for nearly five months before George Hopkins bought it.”

  “Roper had a bad leg?”

  “Machine gun. He could hardly walk when he came home, but you’d not have known it now. Barely a limp. Pierce lost his to gangrene from a foot wound. He wasn’t fitted with a new limb until last year. It took that long for the stump to heal. Jeffers was shot in the chest but lived.”

  The surgery door led into a cramped waiting room, empty now. Dr. Gooding was coming out of his office and looked up as the two men entered.

  “Good afternoon, Constable,” he said to Walker. “I was just going through to my luncheon. We’re running late today.” He was a man of slender build, with a receding hairline and a strong jaw.

  “This is Inspector Rutledge, sir. From Scotland Yard. He’d like to speak to you about the dead men.”

  Gooding cast a glance at the clock sitting on the mantelpiece but said, “Yes, of course.”

  He took them into his office and gestured to the chairs opposite his desk. Sitting down again, he reached for a sheaf of papers set to one side of the blotter, passing them to Rutledge. “These are my reports on the bodies. Constable Walker has copies.”

  Rutledge glanced through them. “All three men were garroted? And all three had the army discs in their mouths?”

  “Yes, that’s correct. To tell you the truth, I’d never seen a case of garroting before, but of course I had no difficulty in recognizing at once what had been done when I examined Jeffers. My guess is that something like piano wire must have been used. It was strong, strong enough to cut through the flesh of the throat in each case, causing bleeding. I should think a man wielded it. Jeffers was inebriated, but he wou
ld not have been easy to kill. And the same goes for Roper, despite his leg. A woman couldn’t have held on to the garrote, given the struggles of the three men. It was well after dark when they were attacked. And each was in a place where his death wasn’t likely to be witnessed. Jeffers along the road on the outskirts of Eastfield, Roper in his barn, and of course Pierce in the main brewery.”

  “Were they stalked, do you think?”

  Gooding shook his head. “They weren’t prepared. That wire came over their heads, and there was an end to it. If they had believed they were in any danger, they might have got a hand up in time to try to defend themselves. It wouldn’t have changed the outcome, they might have lost a finger, or at least their hands would have been noticeably damaged. And this wasn’t the case.”

  It was a very concise report. But then the doctor’s luncheon was waiting.

  Rutledge said, “Do you know of any particular connection among the victims? Or any trouble they may have had with anyone else in the village?”

  “I’d say Roper and Jeffers knew each other better than either of them knew Anthony Pierce. As boys, all three of them attended our village grammar school together, but when the Pierce brothers were sent away to public school, my guess is that they very likely lost touch. As for trouble, Walker here can answer that better than I could. If you’re asking if they came here, yes, from time to time, but never anything more than childhood ailments and the occasional scrapes and bruises from climbing trees or a rough game of football.”

  “After the war, was there any sort of hard feelings amongst the survivors of their company? Something that happened in France, perhaps, and not finished there?”

  “If there was, they never came to me to patch them up.” He hesitated. “Daniel—Daniel Pierce, that is—may have been the sole exception to that. Two days before he disappeared, I saw him in the street, and there was a bruise on his left cheek. He didn’t mention it and neither did I. It didn’t appear to be anything serious.”

  “I’ve heard he was something of a troublemaker when he was young.” It wasn’t precisely what Pierce had told Rutledge But he was interested in hearing Gooding’s point of view.

  “A troublemaker? That’s a little harsh. Who told you that?” Gooding asked, frowning. “You don’t suspect he has had anything to do with these murders!”

  “How well did he know Roper and Jeffers?”

  “Probably no better than Anthony did. I always had a feeling that his escapades were nothing more than an attempt to impress his brother and the others. The youngest trying to prove his mettle.”

  “What sort of escapades?” Rutledge pressed. He could sense that Walker was uncomfortable now, but he ignored him.

  “He probably thought it was quite a lark, the things he got up to. One summer three or four boys dressed in sheets and moved about the churchyard one moonless night. They gave the sexton’s wife and two young people courting in the church porch one hell of a fright. On Guy Fawkes night, they made their own bonfire—the old mill on the edge of town. It was a shambles anyway, no one lived there. They torched it. Still, it could have caused a general conflagration if the wind had blown the sparks about. There were demands that the ringleaders spend a night in jail. Cooler heads prevailed, and they were marched home under escort.”

  “These hardly seem to be boyish pranks to me.”

  Walker said, “I was here then. They weren’t intending to do harm. On the other hand, the summer before the mill incident, there was a near drowning. The father of the boy in the witch’s chair was asked if he wished to press charges, but his son wouldn’t hear of it. He told me they’d drawn lots to see who would play the witch. They’d been reading about the Reformation in school. And the pond wasn’t deep enough to drown the boy, but they hadn’t accounted for his being tied to a chair and took fright when his head went under.”

  “Does this boy still live here in Eastfield?”

  “Oh, no, sir,” Walker answered. “He hasn’t for these past fifteen years. His father was a bookkeeper at the furniture maker’s, and as I remember, he found another position in Staffordshire, closer to his late wife’s family.”

  Which brought him full circle to Daniel.

  “Did Daniel serve with the rest of the Eastfield Company?”

  “Like his brother, he qualified as an officer, and he chose to join the sappers.”

  Remembering what Walker had told him about Daniel’s taste for adventure, that made perfect sense to Rutledge. It had been dangerous work, tunneling under German lines to lay charges. The miners were often buried alive when the powder went off prematurely or the tunnel supports failed, or they were killed going back inside to find out why the tunnel hadn’t blown on schedule.

  “Anything else you can tell me about the three men?” Rutledge asked.

  “Jeffers was very drunk. He wasn’t an habitual drinker, mind you. It was just his habit to mark the anniversary of his war wound by going to the pub and taking on as much beer as he could hold. He told me once how close he’d come to dying, and he couldn’t quite put the fear of that behind him.”

  “Then all three of the dead men had been wounded in France.”

  “Yes, I’ve received copies of their medical records. Nothing suspicious there, if that’s what you’re asking me. I suspect the anniversary was not as important to the killer as the opportunity to catch Jeffers alone on a dark road.”

  Rutledge turned to Walker. “Did you ask at the pub, was there a stranger there that night? Or anyone who showed undue interest in Jeffers?”

  “Only the regulars, as it happened. And everyone knew it was Jeffers’s night to remember. They generally left him to it.”

  Dr. Gooding pointedly glanced at the clock again, and Rutledge thanked him for his time.

  He left Walker at the police station after picking up copies of the statements the constable had taken prior to his arrival, and went back to the hotel to read them.

  As he walked into Reception, the man behind the desk said, “Mr. Rutledge? You have a visitor, sir.”

  Surprised, Rutledge asked who it was.

  But the clerk said only, “He’s waiting in the room beyond the stairs.”

  Rutledge thanked him and went on to the door of the room used sometimes as a parlor for hotel guests or as a dining room for small private groups.

  The man standing there, looking out a side window toward a small garden, turned as he heard Rutledge come in. He was tall and thin, with a long face and brown hair flecked with gray.

  “Inspector Rutledge?” he asked, his eyes scanning Rutledge with intent interest. “I’m Inspector Norman, from Hastings.”

  They shook hands, and then Rutledge got to the point. “I’ve been sent here in your place. I hope you have no objections.”

  “Not really, although I’m not happy to have a murderer loose so close to Hastings. I hope your appearance on the scene doesn’t drive him to greener pastures.”

  Rutledge smiled. “Indeed. Know anything about Eastfield that would be useful to an outsider coming in?”

  “Only that it’s never been a problem. The usual village troubles—a fight now and again, petty theft, neighbors upset over real or imagined trespass, domestic quarrels where someone is hurt. A lorry accident or two over the years. They’re mostly peaceful, and Walker is a good man. He keeps his patch quiet. Still, all three men were in the war. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s your connection.”

  “There was an entire company from Eastfield. But Anthony Pierce wasn’t one of them.”

  “No, I’d heard he asked not to be given charge of men he knew. Very wise of him, in my opinion. Harder to keep order and discipline if you grew up with your men.”

  “Or sometimes easier,” Rutledge commented.

  “There’s that as well,” Norman answered. “Still, it doesn’t mean that this trouble didn’t stem from the war. I expect Anthony Pierce kept an eye out for the Eastfield men. If there was something to hide, he’d have known it. Or someone thought
he did. Otherwise, why put an ordinary soldier’s identity disc in an officer’s mouth?”

  Which was a very good point.

  Norman prepared to take his leave. “Just keep this bottled up in Eastfield,” he said. “And if there’s anything I can do, let me know.”

  With a nod, he walked past Rutledge and was gone.

  Rutledge found himself thinking that Norman had wasted no time in coming here to look over the competition. He hadn’t been in Eastfield more than a few hours. It occurred to him to wonder who had alerted Inspector Norman to his arrival.

  Hamish said unexpectedly, “Someone who doesna’ like yon Mr. Pierce’s intervention.”

  Rutledge spent the next hour reading through the statements he’d been given, and they were all consistent with what he’d learned during the morning. Apparently no one had left the pub within half an hour of the time Jeffers walked out of it to his death. And no one in the Roper household had heard anything that would have indicated that someone had been prowling around the barn the night Roper was killed. The old dog on the floor by the bedside of the dead man’s father had slept as soundly as his master, his hearing diminished by age.

  “Going deaf as a post,” the woman who cleaned and cooked for the two men had told Walker. “Both of them.” But she herself had heard nothing.

  As for the foreman who had discovered Anthony Pierce’s body the next morning, he had written that he’d found the outer door shut and hadn’t seen Pierce until he had come in and turned toward the stairs.