A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  Would she go there again? Test that same loyalty once more?

  The young woman at the hotel had been protective, even though her mother had believed their neighbor belonged in care.

  It was worth a try.

  Slate was to the north what coal had been to the south of the country.

  Rutledge spent the rest of that day driving from one quarry to another. They were massive operations, heavy beds of slate stretching right through the earth, and there were deep caverns underground where it had been removed around the miners until only slender pillars held the roof high above their heads. It came in colors, the Welsh slate, from almost black it was so dark to blue and red and even gray. Some of the men who’d worked at the face had dug the deep tunnels under German lines in France, and crammed them with gunpowder. He’d worked with them, laying the fuses that set them off. They were a breed apart, like the coal miners of the south.

  He knew how to talk to them.

  And late in the afternoon he came to what he was seeking, the place where Susan Milford had worked and made friends.

  He discovered that in a roundabout way, leaving his motorcar on the main road and walking in.

  Halfway to the buildings at the mine itself, he found a short, thickset man of about twenty-three breaking up some of the heavy blue slate into thinner slabs.

  He kept working as Rutledge approached, and when the stranger stopped just feet from where he was bending over, looking for the right place to split a slab, he snapped, “Chips fly. You’d best be on your way to the top.”

  “By any chance, do you know a Tom Morgan, who was on the Somme ’16?”

  “No Morgans here.” He split the slab perfectly.

  “Pity. He and I set a fuse together. He was a good man. I’d hoped he’d made it.”

  The workman turned to stare at him. “I helped dig another tunnel.” And he gave the coordinates. “Something went wrong. It didn’t go on time. And a good thing. We broke through, and it would have got us.”

  Rutledge didn’t think the man was short enough to have been a Bantam. Five feet five? At least that.

  He was turning back to the slabs. “They’ll be coming for this lot in an hour. I can’t stop. Or I’ll lose this pay.” He gave Rutledge a curt explanation. It was, it seemed, his punishment for not making it to the foreman’s hut in time to earn a day’s pay. Instead they’d set him to fill a smaller order, and he was still angry about it.

  “Give me five minutes of your time, and I’ll pay you what they’d have paid you for a full day on the job.”

  The man squinted at him in the sunlight. “Why would you do that?”

  “I’ve got my reasons. I work for a solicitor in Shrewsbury. He’s lost one of his clients. He’d like to know she’s safe. That’s all. He’s too old to make the journey himself. For my sins, he sent me. I don’t know her. Just a name. Susan.”

  “My sister knows her. Wild Susan, she calls her.”

  “Sounds like Mr. Hastings’s client.”

  “She’s not here now. But they’re airing the bedding. In the event she comes.”

  “Where will she be staying?”

  “With my sister. She took over as manager when my father was crippled in a fall.” He nodded back down the road that Rutledge had climbed. “There’s a house in the village.”

  Rutledge said, “I’ll thank you not to mention my visit or Mr. Hastings. He’s got her best interests in this matter. He’ll leave her where she is as long as she’s safe. Learned his lesson last time she was here.” It was a risk telling the younger man this much. Susan could slip away again, if she heard. She would know—whether Hastings had assistants or not.

  He’d just handed the man a folded note when over their heads a gruff voice called, “Here? What’s this? What does he want?” he added to the younger man.

  “Stopped for directions.” He was already splitting another slab, his back to Rutledge.

  “Where are you heading?” he shouted at Rutledge.

  “Snowdon.”

  “You’re off your road.” And he proceeded to shout directions. There was menace in his voice, and he shifted the tool in his hand to back up the warning. But Rutledge already had what he wanted. The last thing he needed was to have either man tell Susan Milford about his visit.

  Rutledge, looking up at the man where he straddled a long ridge, said neutrally, “Thank you.” And he was already on his way back down the road rising between huge piles of broken slate.

  He didn’t turn to see. But he knew the newcomer was watching him every step of the way.

  When he thought Rutledge was out of earshot, he called to the younger man. “What did he want?”

  “He said. Directions.”

  Rutledge made a point not to slow as he carried on as if driving to Snowdon, in the event other eyes were curious about his presence here. But he thought he could just see a house where the bedding had been stuffed out the open window to air. Waiting for Susan Milford to arrive?

  12

  It was a long drive back to Shropshire and thence to Crowley.

  Twice he was nearly bogged down in the thick mud of back roads as the fair weather broke and rain followed him most of the way, overtaking him in sweeping sheets. He had hoped to cross over into England but finally had to call it a night still miles from the border. Unable to sleep for the rain beating down on the motorcar roof just over his head, he was on the road again by four. The rain had slowed to a patter, and he made better time.

  It was well before dawn when Rutledge found a way around Oswestry, where an alert Constable might notice his motorcar passing through the dark and empty streets and report that to Inspector Preston.

  Passing through Shrewsbury, he encountered fog by the river, and he pressed on, although he had intended to look in on Dora Radley.

  Crowley was no more than ten minutes away when he noticed someone walking along the edge of the road in the distance. Before he’d caught up with whoever it was, the figure on foot had turned down the road that led to the smaller of the two lead mines, the one that had been closed for some years.

  Rutledge frowned. There was something about the way the figure moved that made him slow down as he approached the same turning. A shorter stride, the way the shoulders were carried.

  Although the walker was wearing trousers, he was nearly sure it was a woman. Not a man.

  Where had she come from—and where was she going this early on a quiet morning? This was a desolate stretch of road. He hadn’t seen another vehicle since Church Stretton. And the turning led nowhere but to a deserted village.

  He pulled to the verge just out of sight of the turning, so that if she looked back she wouldn’t readily see his motorcar. He didn’t wish to frighten her. But she had had no knapsack with her, and in spite of the trousers, she hadn’t looked to be the usual walker, and it was the wrong season for walking.

  After several minutes he got out.

  The cold rain from Wales was hardly more than a damp, drifting mist now, but unpleasant still, enough to keep most people indoors by the fire unless they had pressing business outside.

  Leaving the motorcar where it was, Rutledge took his torch from the boot and changed into his Wellingtons. Then he started down the overgrown lane in a ground-covering jog. He caught sight of her twice, still heading toward the mine. She never looked back. If he’d had any doubt before, he was certain now it was a woman.

  He had a rough idea of what lay ahead. He could already see the pointing finger of the chimney marking the pithead, and before very long he could pick out the stone mine buildings and then cottage roofs.

  It never ceased to amaze him that nature could take over so quickly. Many feet had over two centuries trod any grass into beaten earth, but vines and briars and saplings had already begun to take over the man-made structures with their broken, empty windows and fallen walls, and all the equipment worth salvaging from the pithead had long since been sold or carried off. Bats had taken up residence in the tunnel
and shafts, and crows fought for whatever they could find. He could hear them now, fussing at the unexpected visitor.

  The Romans had mined lead, and later it had roofed medieval castles and churches and great houses. It came into its own with gunpowder and lead for bullets. But here at Little Bog, the lead had finally vanished after fits and starts. And the miners had moved on to The Bog and Snailbeach, if they could find work there.

  He stood in the shadow of the building where gunpowder had been stored and watched the crows lifting off and challenging the woman as she moved on. And then the crows settled.

  Where was she? And had she seen him?

  The crows hadn’t.

  The front of the powder barn was open, part of it falling into ruin where the main door had been. He slipped inside, to wait.

  And stopped short.

  The dry end of the powder barn, protected still by a mostly intact roof and three very solid walls, had become a campsite.

  There was bedding on a straw pallet against the rear wall of the rectangular building, and in front of that, a stone circle that contained ashes of a fire. Someone had lived here, cooked here. Was living here and cooking here.

  He took out his torch and began a sweep with the light, noting the bundle that might be cooking gear, and nearby was a wooden box that might well hold a larder. There was no latrine, but in the woods where the crows had been fussing might well be facilities. And the village must have had a well, although in the opening near him, there was a pail collecting rainwater, and he could hear the drip-drip from a broken beam overhead as it fell from that height into the bucket. In the dampness he could just detect a faint trace of the black powder that had once been stored here for blasting.

  The question was, had it all been taken away?

  He had only stepped into the opening, and he looked down. His boots had left a wet imprint. Backing carefully away, he saw other prints, smaller ones.

  He’d been right about the woman.

  But who was she and why was she living like this, when there were rooms in The Pit and The Pony?

  He didn’t like it. Flicking off his torch, he carefully made his way from the powder barn toward the nearest cottage and from there moved to a point where he could watch the powder barn from a distance.

  But she never came.

  There were any number of buildings here, including a small chapel or church, the mine operator’s house, a hall for the men to gather, a tiny general store. All in a state of disrepair. When had this particular mine failed? He remembered something about 1884, but wasn’t sure of the date. Thirty-some years of slowly disintegrating.

  A mouse scuttled past his feet, scurrying for shelter down a hole by the wall.

  What had brought the woman here now, living alone in a place surely haunted by whatever lived off the land—foxes and stoats and badgers?

  Two hours passed without sighting her, and the crows were quiet, he could just see them in one of the trees at the edge of the clearing.

  Very carefully, with skills learned on the battlefield, he extricated himself, breaking off any possibility of contact.

  But when he got back to his own motorcar, he quartered the surrounding mile. And there, well hidden by a tree that had come down in some long-ago storm, was a 1914 Sunbeam motorcycle complete with sidecar, shielded by khaki canvas that looked as if it had come from the Army—half a tent? On top of that were laid handfuls of winter grass and vines and other easily come-by bits that helped conceal it from a casual passerby.

  Hamish startled him. “Ye ken, ye could tek away a wee child in yon sidecar. And who would see?”

  “Possibly. We can’t be sure.”

  “A motorcycle doesna’ have to stay on the roads. It can go cross-country, weil oot o’ sight.”

  Rutledge wanted to believe him. But there was no proof.

  “Susan Milford was in Wales. She may still be there, preparing to arrive at the quarry any day now.”

  “Expected to arrive, aye,” Hamish argued. “And a’ eyes are there, waiting for her. The question is, what does she want sae near to Crowley?”

  Rutledge took a deep breath, then started back toward his own motorcar.

  Hamish said derisively, “Who else could she be? Ye can tak’ her in for questioning. But ye willna’ do it.”

  “There’s nothing for her here. Her brother is dead. The child is still unaccounted for. It doesn’t make sense that she would come to Shropshire.”

  “Unless she’s come for a reason. Ruth is still alive. And you’ve come back. There was no place for ye to go but here. No’ after the quarry.”

  Rutledge said nothing.

  “Ye know more than you ought. About Milford, about yon Turnbull woman, about Joseph Burton,” Hamish persisted.

  “I don’t think shooting policemen is on her docket.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  Rutledge turned the crank, then got into the motorcar, driving down the main road toward Crowley.

  “Tonight,” he said to Hamish. “We’ll see what we find tonight.”

  The flare of hope in Ruth Milford’s face as he walked through the pub’s door was like a lash. He’d brought her news of her husband’s death—and couldn’t find her child.

  “I’m sorry,” Rutledge said quickly. “I have no news for you. Good or bad.”

  Fighting back tears, she said, “I tried not to hope.”

  She came around from behind the bar and said, “There’s food left from lunch. I was just going to have a sandwich.”

  She brought plates for two, and sat down opposite him. “Is Sam coming home soon?”

  “I haven’t been to the river. I’ve been searching for his sister.”

  “What does she have to do with anything?” she asked in surprise.

  “It’s what the police do,” he said. “Search for any possible connection with the family. Or anyone who can add anything to one’s store of information. Looking for a pattern to emerge.”

  “Well, I can tell you that Sam wasn’t certain she was still alive.”

  “Why?”

  “He hadn’t heard from her during the war. Not even a postcard. Nor had I. Not that I’d expected to, mind you. And there was nothing when he came home, not even a note to tell him she was glad he survived the war. I didn’t meet her until our wedding—for Sam’s sake I tried to be polite, but I didn’t particularly care for her. Nor she me, for that matter. I could tell.”

  “I’m told she’s mad as a hatter.” He waited for her reply.

  Frowning, Ruth said, “I wouldn’t call her mad. She’s twisted in some way that I don’t understand. And I never felt that she wanted Sam to be happy, to get on with his life. Still, he felt responsible for her after their father died. I couldn’t understand why, given how she behaved toward him. But Sam wasn’t one to walk away. That was one of the things I loved about him.”

  “Would she try to hurt you or your husband?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “For instance, would she—let’s take the pub. Would she try to burn it down, so that you couldn’t live here any longer? Or knowing how much you loved Tildy, would she wish to take her away? Leaving you to grieve and suffer?”

  Ruth stared at him in alarm. “Surely—you can’t be serious?”

  Rutledge said, “I’m sorry, I must ask. It’s—routine.”

  “I don’t even want to think about—that’s horrible.”

  “The solicitor. Hastings. Would he protect her?”

  “I’m sure he worries about her. He’s rather Victorian in some ways, isn’t he? Polite and kind and always happy to help. I wouldn’t be surprised if she made his life wretched too, just because she could.”

  He nearly choked on his sandwich at her description of the man. Then he remembered the woman in the fur stole that Hastings had escorted to the door, the epitome of courtesy.

  He said, “He’s your solicitor now. You might wish to find a younger man, more in step with the present.” It wasn’t his place to give her
advice, but nor could he tell her that Hastings was Machiavellian. Even if she would believe him.

  He pushed his plate away, and brought up the subject that he’d avoided before. They were alone in the pub, there was no one to overhear.

  “Mrs. Milford. It’s painful, I’m sure, but I must ask you about Tildy’s real father.”

  Color flared in her face, and she started to rise, but he said, “No, you must listen to me. What do you know about this man? His name? Where he lives? I have to pursue the possibility that he discovered you had a daughter, and he decided to come for her.”

  “He never knew—I never told him. Why should I? After—after what had happened.” She was speaking rapidly now, trying to evade talking about the past.

  “You could have rid yourself of the child, and no one the wiser.”

  “Why? It wasn’t Tildy’s fault, was it? I love—loved—her as much as I would have done if she had been Sam’s and mine. More, because she was the innocent victim here.”

  “But she wasn’t Sam’s. She had a father.”

  “No! By law she is Sam’s child. He never repudiated her!” She was angry now.

  “Because he was the man he was. And he loved her as much as you did. That’s to his credit. But let’s consider the other issue here. That somehow the man who attacked you discovered Tildy’s existence, and decided he must have her. He took you by force. What was to stop him from taking Tildy from you by force as well? Surely you must have considered that possibility? When she went missing?” He used the word deliberately, not the euphemism lost.

  “I tell you, he never knew she existed! I saw to that. I made certain that Tildy wasn’t ever to know. I did everything in my power to protect her—” She broke off, afraid that in her fury she was about to say too much. Taking a deep breath, she added in a shaking voice, “I did what had to be done.”

  And for a split second, as she said that, he found himself wondering if somehow she had made absolutely and finally certain of Tildy’s safety by doing away with the man who had fathered her.