A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

Rutledge had a long drive ahead, most of it in the dark.

  And Hamish was waiting.

  Ten miles from Chester, Rutledge had to pull over to the side of the road.

  He was tired, and in the dark the war had come back.

  His men had been taken out of the line, exhausted, most of the original company dead or wounded, new men arriving and dying with frightful regularity. There was blood everywhere, bits of bodies stirred up in the mud and urine and dead rats—a hand appearing without an arm, a boot with a foot still in it, heads—sights men had learned to ignore, to keep their sanity and face the enemy. It had taken a heavy toll.

  Rutledge endured the onslaught of memory, and in time, it began to fade. He couldn’t have said how long it lasted, although his watch told him he’d sat there on the verge for over an hour.

  Rubbing his face and eyes, he got out and turned the crank. Then realized as he got back behind the wheel that he was very low on petrol.

  He just managed to reach a garage, but had to wake the owner, who had already retired. It was necessary to show his identification, but in the end, he got what he needed.

  It was already dawn when he found a small hotel and took a room for a few hours’ sleep before he could present himself at Alasdair Dale’s chambers. He dared not risk resting any longer. News traveled fast, bad news faster. A different clerk, coming out to ask if Rutledge had an appointment, said, “Mr. Dale was called away on a matter of some urgency late last evening, sir. He left a message asking me to see to his diary and make necessary changes where possible. I wasn’t aware that he was expecting someone this morning. If you’ll give me your name, I shall be happy to arrange a more convenient time for you.”

  Had Dora Radley contacted him, told him that Rutledge was looking for him?

  Rutledge produced a smile. “I’m an old friend. From the war. I won’t be in Chester for very long. When do you expect Alasdair to return? He promised me dinner. Don’t tell me he’s already forgot?”

  The clerk gave him a formal smile in return. It told him nothing. “I’m afraid I can’t say until Mr. Dale lets me know his schedule. I’m so sorry, sir.”

  “There’s another matter. I came in on the train, and I need transportation while I’m in town. It’s possible that I’ll need to travel to Liverpool. Does Alasdair use a driver? If he’s away, the man might be willing to drive for me.”

  “I believe on occasion he’s asked another firm of solicitors to find a driver for clients who are in town for a few days. They might be willing to help you as well. Shall I give you their direction, sir?”

  Rutledge was tempted. But he wasn’t ready to push his luck. “Never mind, Alasdair himself might be back before Liverpool. You didn’t say where it was he went?”

  “He himself didn’t say, sir.”

  “Has he been in and out of late? I’ve written to him, and he didn’t answer. Not like him to avoid me.”

  “He has a wide and busy practice, sir. Very much in demand.”

  It was useless. He thanked the man and left, before he was asked again for his name.

  But where had Dale gone? Was he away on legitimate legal business? Or had Dora Radley contacted him as soon as Rutledge was out her door? A telegram? A telephone message?

  Hamish said, “It’s possible. Women trust him.”

  And that made Rutledge uneasy. It was a side of Alasdair that he’d never seen, in France. Dale had been a good soldier, a good officer. Even a good friend. But how a man dealt with other men was not always an indication of how he behaved toward women. As Betty Turnbull might have discovered, to her sorrow. But there was the fact that Dale had always been a very likeable man. People were often drawn to him.

  He couldn’t sit in Chester waiting for Dale to return. Nor could he afford to go haring off in the wrong direction in the hope of finding him.

  He went into a small stationer’s shop in one of the back streets, and found that they carried ledgers. He bought three, had them wrapped in plain paper, and then took them to a hotel just outside the city.

  Asking for the manager, he explained that it was necessary to send ledgers to his solicitor, who was presently away from Chester.

  “I don’t have time to deal with this myself. I’d like someone to take the package to the address shown, and ask them to post the ledgers to Mr. Dale straightaway. There’s a firm I wish to purchase, but I need Mr. Dale to have a look at these and tell me if I’m right about its future potential. I only have a matter of days to make my decision. I can’t wait for him to return.”

  When the Bank of England note accompanied the request, the manager was happy to attend to the matter. “And what name shall I attach to this message, sir?”

  “Gibson. I’m from the Firebricks Works at Ruabon. The Trefors gave me the name of their man. I am hoping he can help me.”

  He had no way of knowing who the Trefor House solicitor might be. But he wasn’t entirely sure that Alasdair’s clerks would know either. If they erred on the side of caution, his scheme would work.

  When the transaction was completed, Rutledge thanked the manager and left. From a doorway down the street, he watched the man, package under his arm, find a cab to take him into Chester.

  The post office was not that far from Dale’s chambers.

  Rutledge was there twenty minutes later, but it was another quarter of an hour before he saw the clerk striding toward the post office, the same package under his arm.

  Shortly thereafter, he came out again, without it.

  Rutledge waited until he was out of sight, then went inside.

  It took some persuasion, but he got what he was after.

  The package was addressed to Alasdair Dale, Esquire, in care of a hotel in Ludlow, Shropshire.

  But was Dale in Ludlow? An innocent man with nothing to do with murder?

  Or was it a clever bit of misdirection that would allow him to travel wherever it was that he intended to go, with no one the wiser, including his own clerks?

  Where the hell was he now? And what was he planning to do?

  Rutledge went to the Cathedral, where it was quiet and he could think, pacing in the cloisters with only his own footsteps to keep him company.

  A cold wind had come up, but he ignored it, deep in thought.

  He had no idea where Susan Milford might be. Or what her part in all that happened had been. He had to leave her out of the equation for the moment. Instead he had to weigh where the greater risk lay.

  Dora? Or Ruth? Both of whom had connections to Alasdair Dale.

  Dora knew now about the police interest in him, and she also moved in some of the same circles as he did, because her husband had been a solicitor. But Dora was not the sort to gossip. She might warn Dale of Rutledge’s interest, but she wouldn’t tell the world.

  On the other hand, Ruth had gone through emotional turmoil for weeks now, since her husband’s death. If she believed that Rutledge was wrong, that Dale was not guilty of that, she would go on protecting him. But if Rutledge had raised doubts in her mind, if he had given her even an inkling of her own guilt in all that had happened, she might take it into her head to do something rash. Could Dale trust her to protect him, or did he know her well enough to guess the damage she could do?

  So far there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Dale. Only to interview him.

  Would he be foolish enough to try and silence either one of the women?

  But if Ruth, distraught over her husband’s death and the loss of her child, should take her own life, no one would be shocked.

  And the blame, if any, would attach to him, Rutledge, for taking her to Shrewsbury and trying to shame her into confessing the name of her assailant in Oswestry.

  Surely Dora Radley was safe. For the moment.

  But Ruth wasn’t.

  And Dale had had a head start.

  18

  Rutledge left the cloisters and walked back to his motorcar, stopping only long enough to purchase sandwiches and refill his Thermos.

/>   He was a very good driver. The roads were a different story, and once into Shropshire, the way they twisted and turned and sometimes doubled back on themselves made it nearly impossible to make good time. Nor was it safe, tired as he was.

  Coming on an overturned lorry lying across a sharp curve in the road some miles outside Chester delayed him even more. He had to stop and sort out the tangle. But for a wonder the driver was alive, if badly shaken and suffering cuts on his face and shoulders.

  Two other vehicles were on the scene, and he sent one to find the nearest doctor and Constable, while he positioned the other vehicle to keep its headlamps on the wreckage to prevent someone else from plowing into it, as they too had nearly done.

  When the Constable arrived, Rutledge turned the accident over to him, and set out again.

  Hamish said, “It could ha’ been you, on yon curve. Slow down.”

  “There’s no time.”

  “If ye’re right, it canna’ happen too quickly. No’ if he wants the world to believe in suicide.”

  “He’ll have thought it out. A mine shaft at Little Bog. A fall down the stairs. The rafters are high enough in the pub for her to use a rope. An overdose of laudanum to help her sleep. There are ways. He’s killed before. Another death won’t sit heavily on his conscience.”

  “Yon woman might. She’s the mither of his daughter.”

  “If he cared about Tildy at all, it might make a difference.”

  “But if it was Dora who told him aboot the lass, he couldna’ ha’ taken her. She was already missing.”

  He nearly missed a turning, as Hamish shouted, “’Ware!”

  As he fought the wheel in time, he realized that Hamish was right.

  That brought him back to Susan.

  And the child she claimed she’d had with her in Beddgwian. The child that had disappeared in the night.

  What part had that played in all that had happened? If Dale didn’t have Tildy—if Susan did—why would it matter if Sam Milford tracked him down as the child’s father?

  Why would Sam Milford have to die?

  He drove on, steadily, as fast as he dared on the straighter stretches, slowing when he had to.

  It was late as he crossed the bridges in Shrewsbury and sped past the stark outline of the Abbey, on his way to Crowley.

  The night was overcast farther south, and with only his headlamps to guide him, he was grateful that the road was familiar. He concentrated on the uneven ruts and ragged verges, his teeth clenched.

  It was Hamish who saw the glow first.

  “There’s light ahead,” he said quietly. “It’s no’ a guid sign.”

  Rutledge slowed, wrenching his eyes from the road to look beyond the next turning.

  There was an unusual brightness reflected in the dark clouds, a brightness that shouldn’t be there. Fire. But he couldn’t judge just how far ahead it was.

  He sped up, used it as a beacon, and then watched it begin to dim rather than brighten as he grew nearer.

  Fire, he thought. It has to be a fire. But that can’t be the pub. Surely not.

  Of all the ways he’d considered that Ruth Milford might commit suicide, burning down the pub around her hadn’t occurred to him. But it was something that Alasdair Dale might think was fitting. She had wanted to save it, to stay as long as she could for her father’s sake. Even when she knew it was only a matter of time before it would come to an end, whether she closed it or not. Her death and its destruction, freeing the Blakes to leave the village, was believable.

  They would never receive their share of any sale, but the question must always have been, who would wish to invest in a dying pub, a dying village, and a dying lead mine?

  The glow too was dying.

  And then he was on it. Not the pub. Nor a lorry in trouble on the lonely road.

  He stopped the motorcar well short, got out, and raced toward the dying flames, flickering over the wreckage of a Sunbeam motorcycle and sidecar.

  Shielding his face from the heat, he tried to see if there was a body in the burning, twisted metal. There was a coat sleeve, partly ash now, hanging over the edge of the sidecar. But no charred bones showing.

  Had the machine come to grief on the road? If so, where was the rider?

  But as he looked at the tangle, he realized that the motorcycle had been struck by something, pushed off the road, and into the ditch in which it lay.

  He ran to his motorcar and took out his torch, ran back, and began to circle what was left of the Sunbeam, searching for any signs that the rider had been able to crawl away.

  The verge had been scorched and blackened by the fire at its height, but beyond that, the tall winter vegetation hadn’t been touched.

  Widening his circle slowly but surely, he wished for daylight to search for any marks in the dry jumble of grass and briars and scrub growth that ran just here along the road. The torch cast shadows that tricked him again and again into thinking he’d found signs, only to realize that these were winter-matted patches instead.

  Swearing, he stopped and cast the light ahead of him.

  He couldn’t be certain it was Susan Milford’s machine, he’d been wrong before, but here, so close to the turning for Little Bog, who else could it belong to? Still, he’d made that mistake once before.

  Had someone come along and found the rider unconscious, and taken him or her to find a doctor? Leaving the wreckage to burn itself out?

  Reluctant to give up his search, he moved on, then widened his circle again.

  He had reached the road that ran toward Little Bog when he saw it.

  Someone had fallen heavily, boots skidding across the ruts. It appeared to be fresh.

  Kneeling, he brought the torch closer. There was a dark patch just there—

  Pulling off his driving gloves, he touched the patch, and then holding the torch up, shone it on his fingers.

  Blood? It was so mixed with the disturbed earth that even with the torch, he couldn’t be sure.

  He started forward, then changed his mind and went trotting back for his motorcar, driving to where the track to the mine turned in.

  Once there, he left it running, walked on with his headlamps and his torch to pick out his way.

  Twice more he found where it appeared that someone had fallen. What’s more, there was half a boot print. A woman’s. He was convinced now that somehow Susan Milford had survived the crash and was trying to get to a place she knew. But had she made it to the mine?

  He was afraid to drive on, uncertain whether she lay somewhere out of sight along the road, and in the dark he would pass her without seeing her.

  Once she wandered off the road, and he lost her track. Casting about, he found where she had made her way back to it, and carried on. Her dogged persistence won his admiration as he followed her. He couldn’t tell how badly she was hurt, whether she had been burned or was thrown clear. The blood worried him.

  In the east a faint streak of brightness low on the horizon promised a gray and cloudy sunrise. But where he was, it was still dark.

  Looking up, he could just make out the silhouettes of the Long Mynd in one direction and the Stiperstones to his left, black shapes against the horizon.

  It was slow work. The next time he examined his surroundings, he realized that he was near the trees where she had hidden the Sunbeam under canvas and brush. He took the time to make his way there and search meticulously, but he saw no signs that she had got this far. There was no shelter here now.

  He found one more place where she had tripped or had struggled with dizziness or felt faint. She had fallen heavily this time, and she had lain there for a space to gather the strength to go on, for now the traces of blood on his fingers were wet. He had seen wounded men on the battlefield do that—wait for the pain and the dizziness to subside before getting to their feet again—and under cover of fire from his own trenches had gone out himself to bring some of them in.

  By the time he’d reached the outskirts of the Little Bog v
illage ruins, he realized that in the dark, it would take him hours to search all of the cottages and mine buildings. In the dark it would be dangerous work. His motorcar was now some fifty yards behind him, and he debated what to do about it. In the end, he moved it into what was left of a shed, out of sight, but close by if he needed it in an emergency.

  Then he began with the powder barn.

  It was empty. No hearth now, no ring for a fire, the earthen floor showing only his own footsteps. Or so he thought.

  In a damp patch just outside, where rainwater had puddled and then begun to dry, he found half an imprint of a man’s boot. Old—or recent?

  By now the day had broken and the pale light of a cloudy dawn showed it clearly. It wasn’t his. But it was close to his size.

  Had someone else followed her? He’d have had to be persistent, to come this far.

  Was he still here? Or had he found what he was after, and then gone away?

  Moving carefully now, Rutledge went methodically through any ruined cottage that provided a bit of shelter. It began to rain, a light mist at first, then a more drenching rain. He didn’t stop, his hat and the shoulders of his coat taking the brunt of it.

  He searched the mine buildings, and then went into the wood just behind the stack.

  And it was there he found her.

  His first thought as he saw the toe of a laced boot, slim as the foot inside it, was that she had been buried where she lay.

  He couldn’t see her face. She was hidden under the trunk of a fallen tree, and the soft spongy soil around her had been scattered over the ground, masking her from view.

  He stopped. There was no movement, nothing to indicate that she was alive.

  Starting forward quietly, he knelt by the tree trunk, reached out and fumbled for an arm or hand to search for a pulse.

  She erupted from under the tree, striking out at his face and shoulders. His hat went flying, and he was nearly knocked over.

  Ignoring her flying fists, he got to his feet, reached out, and caught her shoulders, slowly pinning her arms even as she tried to kick out at his exposed shins.