A Lonely Death

by Charles Todd

  “Mr. Anthony had gone there to see to a broken gauge, because I found my tools had been moved when finally I went up the stairs to have a look at it again myself.”

  Which indicated, Rutledge thought, that Pierce had been killed on his way out of the brewery rather than on his way in. No one had been lying in wait for him, but it was likely that someone had followed him there and, finding the door unlocked, stepped inside.

  He went out after finishing the statements and walked first to the place on the Hastings Road where the van driver had come upon the body of William Jeffers.

  There was nothing to be seen here, but Rutledge had no trouble finding the spot from the description given by the driver.

  Standing there on the quiet stretch of road, Rutledge looked around. There was a farmhouse some hundred yards away, but Walker—very thorough in his thinking—had interviewed the family living there. Unfortunately their bedroom windows were on the far side of the farmhouse, and they had not seen or heard anything. Except for tending to a child with a fever who had cried at half past three in the morning, they had slept soundly.

  There were shrubs along the side of the road that marched toward the farmhouse lane, and pastures on the far side. The Jeffers house was beyond these, tall, spare, and jutting from the fields like a sore tooth.

  “A perfect place for an ambush,” Hamish remarked as Rutledge scanned the surrounding landscape.

  Next he went to the Roper farm, walking down the lane past the house and to the barn where the murder had taken place. There was no one about, although clothes hung on the line, drying in the warm afternoon sun, and so Rutledge went inside the barn. There were bloodstains on the floor where Jimmy Roper had died, but any footprints that might have been there at the time of the murder had long since been lost as first the maid and then the elder Roper had walked round the body, and then the constable himself, followed by the doctor, not to mention whoever had led away the cow that had been in the now empty stall.

  His next stop was the brewery, but before going there Rutledge paused at the hotel to ask where the nearest telephone was to be found.

  He was told there was only one telephone in Eastfield, and that was in the office of Tyrell Pierce.

  Making his way there again, Rutledge stopped briefly at the door that led into the two-story building where the great wooden kettles were housed, and opened it. The stairs were not ten feet from the door, leading upward into the richly scented heart of the building. Someone had conscientiously swabbed up Anthony Pierce’s blood, but the location was marked by the very clean spot on the floorboards where abrasives had been necessary to reach deep into the stained wood.

  Standing outside again, Rutledge considered the three murder scenes. All they had in common was their solitude at the time of the killings. But someone had followed each man to his death, and that meant someone had been in Eastfield on each occasion—whether he had been noticed by anyone or not.

  Hamish said, “Aye, but he canna’ materialize out of thin air. Where does he keep himsel’ when he’s no’ prowling about in the dark?”

  It would lead someone to believe that the killer lived in Eastfield . . .

  Rutledge left the thought there and walked briskly toward the door leading to the brewery’s office.

  It was a busy room, bright and cluttered with paperwork, with some half dozen clerks dealing with orders for Arrow beers or placing orders for everything from hops to bottle labels, and there was no privacy at all.

  The senior clerk, a man named Starret, led him to the telephone on his desk, then stepped away to let Rutledge use it.

  He put through a call to London, and after a time was connected to the Yard. It was another five minutes before Sergeant Gibson was found.

  “Yes, sir?” he answered warily.

  “I’d like to find out what became of the following men after the war, and I’d like to know if there was anything particular in their records that might have an impact on the murders here in Sussex. Did their paths cross that of the Eastfield Company or of any individual in that company?”

  He had written the three names, their ranks and regiments, in his notebook, taken from the discs that Dr. Gooding had retrieved during his examinations.

  Gibson repeated them, and then said, “It will be a day or two. Shall I ring you at this number when I’ve learned anything?”

  Rutledge told Gibson how to reach him, and then was on the point of hanging up when Gibson said, “There’s been a complaint to the Chief Constable in regard to the Yard taking over this case.”

  “Indeed?” Rutledge asked in surprise.

  “A Mrs. Farrell-Smith, sir.”

  He remembered the name. She was the woman Anthony Pierce had been seeing recently. But why would she complain to the Chief Constable? He asked Gibson that, careful to phrase his question in a fashion that half a dozen listening ears couldn’t interpret and gossip about.

  “I can’t say, sir. Except that she appears to feel it was unnecessarily complicating matters.”

  Rutledge thanked him and hung up.

  He thanked the clerk as well, and went out the way he’d come in. There was a private staircase to Pierce’s office as well as a door leading into it from the clerks’ room, and for a moment Rutledge debated speaking to Pierce. He changed his mind and went out into the street.

  Constable Walker was surprised when Rutledge walked into the police station and asked directions to Mrs. Farrell-Smith’s house.

  “I didn’t interview her—” he began in apology, but Rutledge cut him short

  “She might know something that Anthony Pierce didn’t tell his father. It’s a long shot, but worth exploring.”

  “Shall I go with you, sir?” Walker asked, half rising from his chair.

  “No. I don’t want this to appear to be an official visit. Merely a matter of being thorough.”

  “I see,” Walker said, but Rutledge thought he didn’t.

  The Misses Tate Latin School was at the head of Spencer Street. Two houses had been connected by an addition that closed the gap between them, apparently by someone who knew what he was about, because the results were pleasing, rather than haphazard. A central door had been let into the addition, but Walker had said that Mrs. Farrell-Smith had chosen to live in the smaller house to one side of the school, and that she could usually be found there at this hour of the day.

  He went up the pair of steps leading to the walk and the door, and was let in by a young girl in a school uniform, her hair hanging down her back and held away from her face by a blue ribbon. She was quite pretty, and meticulously polite, asking him to wait in the hall while she inquired if Mrs. Farrell-Smith would receive him.

  She disappeared through a door to the left of the staircase and returned with a smile, asking him to come in. He had wondered if Mrs. Farrell-Smith would speak to him, given her complaint to the Chief Constable.

  The girl announced him, then went away, closing the door softly behind her.

  The room had been turned into a private office, with bookshelves and chairs set in front of a lovely old desk of well-polished walnut. At the moment, it was cluttered with papers and folders, some of them held in place by a large, chipped glass paperweight, as if she had been recording marks or sorting files before the start of a new term.

  The woman behind it rose as he came in. She was tall for a woman, and far prettier than she allowed herself to be. Her hair, pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, was fair and determined to wave in spite of attempts to keep it straight and tidy. Her eyes were a very dark blue, and her nose was straight above firm lips. He put her age at thirty.

  “Inspector Rutledge,” she said in acknowledgment of his presence, then waited for him to speak.

  “I’ve come to ask you a few questions about Anthony Pierce,” he said, and she seemed to find that surprising, because her eyebrows flew up in spite of her self-control.

  “Please, be seated,” she replied, and when he had taken one of the two chairs
before the desk, she said, “What sort of questions?”

  “I expect there were things he wouldn’t have discussed with his father. But I was told he’d grown fond of you, and I thought perhaps he might have said something to you that could help the police find his killer.”

  “I don’t think Anthony confided in me anything he couldn’t have told his father.” After a pause, when he didn’t speak, she went on, as if unwilling to allow the silence to go on too long. “Are you saying he had secrets?”

  “That’s what I’ve come to ask.”

  “You believe that he knew where to find his brother. If he did, he never told me.”

  Rutledge was surprised in his turn. “Daniel?”

  “Yes, Daniel. His father is too stubborn to try, but I expect he’d like to know where his other son is.”

  “I take it you don’t care for Daniel.”

  “Not particularly. He’s the sort of person who leaves responsibility to others. I believe in responsibility and self-discipline. I try to make certain that my students understand that these are virtues to cultivate. They will lead happier lives if they do.”

  It was an interesting perspective on duty.

  Hamish interjected, “Aye, but is it the reason she’s so set against yon brother?”

  Rutledge said only, “How long have you been in charge of the school?”

  “Since before the war,” she answered, without giving a date. And then she added reluctantly, “It was after my husband died that I came here.”

  “You must have been very young to take over a school. It would have been a grave undertaking at any age.”

  She lifted her chin, as if in denial. “I didn’t have any choice. And I have made every effort to live up to what my family established. I don’t think I’ve given them any reason to regret their decision to entrust this school to my keeping.”

  He changed the subject. “Did your husband know Daniel Pierce?” It had been a general question, looking for an explanation for her dislike of the younger Pierce. But much to his surprise, it had struck home.

  “I don’t see that that’s any of your business,” she replied curtly.

  “Which tells me that he did. Was it before you married him? Or after?”

  “He was an older boy at the school where both Anthony and Daniel were sent.”

  “Then you didn’t know them.”

  “No.” Crisp and unconditional.

  Rutledge considered her for a moment. She had married a man with a hyphenated name. As a schoolboy would he have despised the upstart—but well-to-do—Pierce brothers? Trade and old money often clashed. Or perhaps there had been very little old money. And the widowed Mrs. Farrell-Smith was now headmistress at a small school in a Sussex village where there was almost nothing that could be termed Society. It would explain why she was willing to accept Anthony Pierce’s attentions. Trade or not, there was a comfortable life in store for the brewery heir’s wife.

  Again, he changed the direction of the conversation. “Did Anthony Pierce have any enemies? From the war, most particularly.”

  “Why the war years?” she asked, her mind nearly as quick as his to spot anomaly. “Did something happen there that might have had to do with his death?”

  In his mind’s eye he could see again the identity discs found in the mouths of the dead men. “We have some reason to believe it could have a connection. Yes.”

  “If there was anything untoward that happened in France, Anthony never confided in me. I don’t believe he would have, if you want the truth. He knew I didn’t care for unpleasantness.” She must have realized how selfish that sounded and added in spite of herself, “We had a number of students over those four years who marched away to war and never came back. There’s a list of their names on a board in the school parlor, for all to see and remember. Anthony knew how much this had saddened me.”

  He thought her self-control remarkable for a woman who had just lost a man she cared for. For that matter, her eyes showed no signs of crying herself to sleep, even though it was only two days ago that Pierce’s body had been discovered.

  And as if she had read his thought, tears welled in her eyes. “If there’s nothing more, Inspector? I find this a very painful subject.”

  Hamish said, “She’s afraid yon brother killed him.”

  It would explain her very first question to him: not about Anthony’s death but in regard to Daniel’s whereabouts.

  But he left it there. “If anything occurs to you, Mrs. Farrell-Smith, will you speak to Constable Walker? He’ll see that the message reaches me.”

  “Yes, of course.” Her voice was husky. “You can find your own way out, I think?”

  He thanked her and rose to leave.

  The image he took away from the interview that stayed with him as he walked back to the hotel was of her face as he glanced back at her just before closing the door.

  Desolation was writ large there. But for herself, he thought, not for the dead.

  The long day was drawing to a close when Rutledge went back to the police station, intending to return the sheaf of statements.

  Walker was standing by a window, looking out at the last shafts of light that touched the rooftops on the opposite side of the street, and he turned to greet Rutledge as the man from London stepped through the door.

  “Any progress?” he asked.

  “Not much that’s helpful. Tomorrow, I’d like to speak to some of the other men from Eastfield’s contingent. Can you arrange it?”

  “That’s easily done,” Walker said, but his mind was clearly on something else.

  “What is it?” Rutledge asked, suddenly alert. “What’s happened?”

  “That’s just it. Nothing has happened. So far. But tonight’s the third night after Pierce was murdered. I’m wondering if that will change, once darkness falls.”

  “I see your point. The problem is, our friend out there has the advantage. He has a better knowledge of where and when to strike, because he’s obviously laid his plans well. Otherwise you and Inspector Norman would have caught him without my help. All you can expect to do is get in his way and force him to alter those plans. That means patrolling not the village itself but back gardens, barnyards, the brewery precincts, the lanes, anywhere a man might be outside alone. Meanwhile, I’d ask everyone to stay in after dark.”

  “I don’t know if he’ll alter his plans, or just wait until we’ve passed by,” Walker said, clearly still worried. “It depends, doesn’t it, on what’s driving the man?”

  “Yes, I grant you that. Garroting is a very physical way to kill. More so even than a knife. Whoever it is may not be able to stop, now that he’s started. Unless he only intended to kill those three men. No one else.”

  “There’s that,” Walker answered, considering the matter. “Although for the life of me I can’t see how they’re connected.”

  “It may only be in the murderer’s mind,” Rutledge said.

  Walker turned to him in surprise. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  “It’s possible that whoever it is uses a garrote because the face of the victim isn’t important,” Rutledge said.

  But that would indicate random killings.

  7

  In the morning, Inspector Norman in Hastings sent a man to Eastfield with the message. He was held up first by the heavy rain and then having to wait for Walker.

  Constable Petty, standing in the window of the police station, finally saw his fellow constable coming down the street. Walker, just returning from another round of the village, in an effort to reassure himself that indeed nothing had happened in the night, came through the doorway, nodded, and began to strip off his rain gear.

  “A cup of tea, Petty?”

  “Much as I could use one, I don’t think there’s time,” the man replied, and he said what he’d been told to say, refusing to answer any of Walker’s questions.

  Walker, growling in frustration, pulled on his gear again and set out for the hotel.


  When he began his rounds the night before, he had had no way of knowing that Rutledge, awake at two and again at three o’clock, had also gone quietly out of the hotel and with only Hamish for company, had also walked through the darkness, pausing now and again to listen to the night sounds around him. It was amazing, he thought as he moved through the silent streets, that a habitation with so little history to scar it could seem so ominous in the broken moonlight. If there had been rape and pillage and fire and sword here at some time in the distant past, it had not left its mark. Except perhaps during those hours between midnight and dawn.

  Hamish observed, “Where there are people, there’s death.”

  And it was true. Hopelessness, starvation, plague, disease among the animals, all of these brought death as surely as armies.

  As his footsteps echoed on the hard-packed surface of the road then vanished in the soft earth of the churchyard, Rutledge had wondered if he were being watched. He had no feeling on that score, but he considered what he would do in a murderer’s shoes. Would he choose one of the taller buildings along the main street, with a wide sweep of views in either direction? The church tower, tall enough to allow an overview of the village and the surrounding farms? Or the shadows of a dense stand of lilac he’d noticed where the road curved just beyond the brewery buildings on its way out of Eastfield? How had the murderer found his victims, if he hadn’t followed them or watched them walk by themselves in a direction in which he could expect to find his killing ground?

  Hamish said into the silence, “Ye ken how Donald MacRae found the snipers?”

  Rutledge did remember. They had been plagued for nearly a week by a well-hidden sniper, and no one had caught the muzzle flash, because he chose a time when the British line was too busy. Private MacRae had been detailed to watch for it, and instead, he had scavenged old hay from the horse lines and a few ragged planks from a repaired section of trench wall. That night he had piled the bits and pieces just outside the trench. It sat there for two days, the Germans across No Man’s Land at first amusing themselves by firing into the debris, testing their skills. And then they ignored it. On the third night, MacRae had poked the tip of a rifle under the edge of the hay, barely visible. And early the next morning he had jiggled a helmet on a bayonet just behind the planking, for all the world like a man sighting down the barrel of his weapon. MacRae had set two spotters to watch as the German sniper took his shot at what he believed to be his opposite number, giving himself away in the process. It had been too tempting, and it had been his last. They had caught two other snipers with the same trick, over the span of six months or so.