by Charles Todd
If the Constable found answers there, it would be a very good piece of luck indeed. Rutledge knew better than to count on it.
Replies from neighboring villages began to arrive later. None of them reported having any information about a missing woman. And that supported Rutledge’s budding theory that the dead woman had been left here precisely because she was far away from anyone who might know her.
Constable Leigh soon returned from speaking to the owners of the nearby farms and the men working for them, and he had come up empty-handed. “Not that I expected much help in that direction, sir. No visitors, not this time of year, and with the windows closed tight against the cold, they didn’t hear anything that was useful. The dogs keep to the barn most nights. Still, you never know until you ask.”
Rutledge remembered the difficulties Chief Inspector Leslie had had finding the killer of the woman in Avebury. He had a feeling his inquiry might turn out the same way, a murderer eluding him. Was there by any chance a connection? The same killer moving across England? He didn’t know enough about the Avebury murder to be certain. The problem was, how had the killer known about the open grave at Tern Bridge? Unless he was one of the expected mourners?
Rutledge said to Constable Leigh, “You told me the grave was prepared for a Mr. Simmons?”
“That’s right, sir. Fifty-three, a widower with a daughter in Shrewsbury. But she’s been here for the past fortnight, ever since he took ill. If you’re thinking she might be the woman in the grave.”
“Any other relatives expected for the funeral?”
“Two cousins in their seventies, and a friend of Miss Simmons. She’s staying over to help with the clearing out of the house. They’re accounted for, sir.”
“The undertaker. Where is he from?”
“The next village. Norham. It’s twice the size of ours, and better situated for the firm to serve other villages. Quite reputable, they are, sir.”
“The sexton. What’s known about him?”
“He’s lived here all his life. I’ve heard nothing against him. In his late thirties, I’d say. He’s not much for the ladies. Lost his wife some eight years ago. She ran off with the man who came to dig a new well at the Rectory. Gossip claimed she’d ended up in London, and no better than she ought to be.”
“Could she have come home? The prodigal wife?”
Leigh stared at him.
“If she did, and the sexton wanted no part of her, what better place to leave her body than the freshly dug grave.”
Shaking his head, the Constable said, “I’d never have thought about her. But the dead woman is too young. Joan was younger than he was, there’s that. But she left here eight years ago. And she didn’t dress as modestly.”
“Perhaps she reminded him of his wife, and he killed her for that.”
Constable Leigh was skeptical, but he accompanied Rutledge to the church.
They found the sexton removing the dead greenery left there from the funeral that was never held. He looked up as he heard the south porch door scraping open across the stone flagging.
Courtney Miller was in his late thirties, a broad-shouldered man with fair hair so bleached by the sun that it was almost white. His eyes were a startling blue in a face roughened by weather. It was as if they stared out from behind a mask.
“Good afternoon,” he said, straightening up, his arms full of dry greenery. “Looking for Rector? He’s at the Taylor farm. Mrs. Taylor had a boy at four in the morning. Eight pound, according to the midwife.”
“The doctor didn’t attend her?” Rutledge asked.
“I’ve heard it said she didn’t care too much for his modern ways. Old Sally, now, has been midwife for as long as I can remember, and there are women who swear by her.”
“I understand you were married,” Rutledge commented. “Any chance that the woman in the grave is your wife, returning to Shropshire because she’s had enough of London?”
Miller had been looking directly at Rutledge, apparently untroubled until his wife was mentioned. His gaze went to Leigh, accusing.
“He had no right to draw her name into this business. But no, it’s not Joan, and even if she did turn up here one day, I’m not likely to be taking a knife to her.” He faced Rutledge now. “When she first left me, yes, I was boiling mad. I don’t know what I might have done back then. But it’s been seven—no, eight years, and I’ve got over her now. It was a mistake to marry her in the first place, and that’s a fact.”
Leigh said, “Sorry, Court. But the Inspector did ask.”
Rutledge said easily, “Don’t blame the Constable. He’s right, I was asking questions about all the villagers, and that perforce included you. A man with the opportunity—you knew about the grave—and you found the body.”
“Anyone could have told you it wasn’t Joan.”
“People change. If no one was expecting her to come back to Shropshire, it’s possible no one recognized her.”
“I would’ve,” Miller replied curtly. “Don’t you think that would have been the first thing I noticed?”
“Do you remember her birthdate?”
“’Course I do,” he said. “She’d be thirty-five this May. The seventeenth.”
Rutledge had put the dead woman’s age at around twenty-eight or -nine.
“Does the dead woman look anything like your wife? Could she have been mistaken in the dark for Joan? Someone who might not want her to come back to Tern Bridge?”
Something in the sexton’s face changed. “What do you mean? Not want her back? You’re not saying my mother mistook her for Joan?” He shook his head. “No, I won’t believe that. Mum hated her, that’s true enough. But she wouldn’t go killing a stranger she saw in the dark. What was that woman doing wandering about, anyway? It doesn’t make sense. Where did she come from? How did she get here? That’s the question you ought to be asking.”
He had a very good point. But Rutledge quietly reserved judgment about Miller’s mother.
He said, “Thank you, Mr. Miller. You do understand we had to ask?”
“If my mother had killed Joan,” the sexton retorted harshly, “I’d have taken care of her myself.”
So much for the man who claimed to have put aside his feelings for his straying wife.
They left him there, still holding the drying greenery, one branch spread across the flagstones at his feet.
“He’s a deep one,” Constable Leigh was saying, once they were out of earshot. “I sometimes wondered if he’d killed Joan rather than let her go. But there was never any proof. And London’s a big town to be looking for one person.”
“If she’s there, the Yard will find her.”
Rutledge was just bending down to turn the crank when he saw a man in a dark coat walking up the steps of the Rectory.
“Rector,” Constable Leigh said quietly.
With the Constable at his heels, Rutledge cut across the churchyard in time to reach the side door of the tall, narrow brick house just beyond a second gate in the low wall. They followed the path around to the main door and knocked.
The Rector himself answered it, saying with a smile, “Mariah, is—oh, I’m sorry, I was expecting Mrs. Brooks. Constable. And this must be the man from Scotland Yard.” He held out his hand. “Ralph Ellis.”
“Ian Rutledge.”
“Come in, come in.” He opened the door wider, and stood aside to allow them to enter, then led them to the front room. A small man with an absent air, graying hair, and gray eyes, he had a barely perceptible limp.
It was like so many other Vicarage or Rectory parlors Rutledge had seen: dark furnishings, a hearth that was cold at this hour of the day, and an air of seldom being used. A flourishing aspidistra in a china pot sat on a table in the window, its luxuriant green leaves spreading across the table’s top, nearly covering it. It was a plant that, along with ferns, had been popular in Victorian homes and solariums.
Ellis looked around, then said, “Hmmm. We’d be more comfortable in my st
udy, I think. I hadn’t realized how frigid it is in here. Scott would feel right at home, eh? No need to explore the South Pole.” He ushered them toward the passage again, and walked on down to another door, opening it and crossing to the cluttered desk. A roaring fire had made the room stuffy, almost stifling. He gestured to the chairs in front of the desk.
Rutledge took off his coat and put it with his hat on a table by the door before sitting down. After a moment Constable Leigh followed suit as Ellis apologized.
“I’ve forgot my manners. I was up all night with the proud father of a newborn, who insisted on wetting his son’s head until first light. I got him to bed at dawn, then fell asleep in a chair myself. The midwife found me there, snoring so loudly I was keeping the new mother awake.” He grinned. “I doubt it was that bad, Sally has a tendency to overdramatize, but she was right, I ought to have been in my own bed. And I walked in to find a note from my wife. She’s visiting the sick this morning. I haven’t even had my tea.”
Constable Leigh asked after the baby, and then Ellis said, “But you aren’t here about the child. It’s that poor soul in Simmons’s grave.” He leaned back in his own chair, and it creaked a little. “I wish I could help you there. But my bedroom is on the far side of the house, and I neither heard nor saw anything Tuesday night. The first I knew of anything wrong was the shout from the sexton. I’d just gone into the church, to be sure everything was as it should be for the funeral service. I came out the door, saw him pointing toward the grave, realized that he’d pulled some of the boards away, and wondered if someone’s cat or dog had managed to fall in. You can’t imagine my shock when I reached the grave and realized that it was a person—a woman.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen some terrible things in my lifetime, Inspector. But nothing to compare with that poor woman’s body, lying there. All I could think of was that she must be unbearably cold. And then of course, I realized that she was beyond feeling anything more on this earth. I knelt by the grave and prayed for the comfort of her soul.”
“You’ve never seen her before?”
“No. At least, I can’t remember ever having seen her. I’ve been in the church for twenty-three years. That’s a good many faces, to recall all of them.”
“Do you remember the sexton’s wife, Joan Miller?”
“No, it couldn’t have been her. I am confident that I would have recognized her. Surely you aren’t saying that Miller had anything to do with that young woman?”
“I must consider everyone in Tern Bridge.”
“I expect that’s so, myself included, but I refuse to believe Miller could be guilty of murder.”
“There were just the two of you, there by the grave?”
“Yes. I told Miller I’d stay with her while he went to find Constable Leigh, but he insisted that I go. He had to clear away the remaining boards, so that Allen—Dr. Allen—could reach her. I brought them back, and we’d just got her up out of the grave when Mrs. Branson walked by. Allen, thank heavens, had thought to bring a blanket to cover the body.”
Rutledge looked from the Rector to Constable Leigh. “There was no mention of a Mrs. Branson in the reports.”
“Well, no,” Constable Leigh said apologetically. “She’s at least eighty, and with time on her hands, she minds everyone’s business but her own.” He glanced at the Rector for confirmation.
“Yes, I did my best to stop her from coming too close to the grave, but she’s a willful soul, Inspector, and it’s hard to distract her when her mind’s made up. She could just see the face, the blanket had fallen away from it, and Mrs. Branson asked if the woman was dead. The Constable stepped forward and told her this might be a crime scene, then the doctor stopped his examination and finally talked Mrs. Branson into leaving. He warned her to say nothing, and to the best of my knowledge, she kept her promise not to mention what she’d seen. When she’d well and truly gone away, we got on with it. As soon as the doctor told us he was finished, we wrapped the body in the doctor’s blanket, and carried her to his motorcar, standing by the gate. Constable got in with him and they drove the short distance to his surgery.”
“Did you look around you, or see anything unusual?”
“To be quite honest, I didn’t think about that until the Constable and the doctor had left. But there was nothing out of place that I could see.” He shook his head. “I am used to deathbeds, Inspector. But not murder in my own churchyard.”
“Do you have any idea why someone would leave a body there?”
“Well, assuming she wasn’t one of our flock, I’d guess that her killer wanted to be sure she couldn’t be connected in any way with him. Or her. Although I’m not sure a woman could have carried her that far from the road. I did ask the doctor about the stab wounds. He told me that she hadn’t suffered. That the first wound would have killed her quickly, and the others were delivered just to make certain she was dead. But the attack wasn’t vicious—wild. Just deadly. That had been something that was worrying me, Inspector. I didn’t want to think of her surviving the attack, to die alone in that grave, unable to call for help.”
“I understand.” Rutledge rose. “No one in your parish had mentioned earlier that he or she might be expecting a guest? A friend or a relative.”
“They tell me most things, one way or another. But I’ve heard nothing about that. I am sorry there isn’t more I could do to help. I’ve been as shocked as Leigh, here.”
He saw them out, and watched them walk down the short path from the door to the street.
As they reached the motorcar and got in, Constable Leigh asked, “You’re not really thinking it might be Joan Miller that’s dead? I can’t believe that she’d dare show her face around here, after walking off the way she did. And her reputation was not spotless before she went. The village women would shun her. Besides, that woman in the doctor’s surgery is more respectable than Joan ever was.”
“Her return would depend on just how desperate she was. But then you never take into account that women such as Joan might come to their senses, change their ways, and in the end come home like the prodigal daughter. It does happen.”
“Leopards don’t change their spots,” Leigh said stubbornly.
Rutledge smiled grimly. “I might not believe that Joan Miller had come back, but I can’t help but wonder if someone could have thought she had. The question is, how did the woman get here? She didn’t fall out of the sky onto the High Street.”
“Her clothes aren’t those of a woman in dire straits.”
“Which supports my theory that she had changed her ways.”
“We don’t know how she came by them. A church jumble sale? Someone who took pity on her?”
But Rutledge refused to argue any further. And Leigh finally took the hint.
Back on the High Street once more, the Constable said, “Mind, if I were to kill someone, I wouldn’t leave the body where it might be found, and the finger pointed at me. I’d take her to another village, and let them wonder who she was.”
“That’s something to look into. I do wish Tern Bridge ran to a telephone.”
“Sorry, sir. But I don’t know who we’d call if we had one.”
He left Leigh at the police station and drove on to the inn.
Getting out, Rutledge was just bending over to look at the right rear tire when someone behind him spoke. “Young man? Are you the policeman from London?”
Straightening up, he saw a woman in a stylish hat, a floral print scarf at the throat of her dark coat, and an anxious expression on her lined face.
“Inspector Rutledge, yes. How can I help you?”
“Helen Branson. I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to speak to you, Mr. Rutledge.”
“Shall we go into The Dun Cow?” he asked. “Out of the wind?” This must be the woman from the churchyard, and he found it hard to believe that her sharp green eyes missed anything.
But she shook her head at the invitation. “I have a feeling I knew that young woman.”
“Is she from Tern Bridge?” he asked. “Or possibly lived here at some point?”
“No, of course not. I know everyone in this village. After all, I’ve lived here seventy of my eighty-one years,” she said tartly.
“Then do you know where she might have come from?”
“That’s just it. I can’t put my finger on where I saw her before. But her face is familiar.”
“Can you give me a name?” he asked, holding on to his patience. “I would be very grateful.”
“I don’t know her name. I just feel I know her face.”
“Have you told the Constable that you might know her?”
“I haven’t. I was afraid it might be dangerous for me to tell anyone.”
“And why should you be afraid?”
“She was murdered. I don’t want her killer to come looking for me.”
“You’ve told me.”
“You’re Scotland Yard. I expect you to protect me.” She reached up a gloved hand and drew the scarf a little closer against the cold wind. “There are daffodils blooming in the southeast corner of my house. You’d think they had more sense than to come out this early.”
“May I drive you home, Mrs. Branson?”
“Thank you, no. Walking is how I pass the time. Although I do wish it was a little warmer today. It was, on Saturday last, you know. Quite unexpectedly warm.” She looked around. “I shouldn’t even be seen talking to you, Inspector.” And she turned quickly and walked on.
“Do ye believe her?” Hamish asked as Rutledge watched her move on down the street.
It’s possible she’s just confused. With the best of intentions, wanting to help, he silently answered.
As he turned toward the inn door, he saw the barman standing there in the pub doorway, smoking a cigarette and watching Mrs. Branson as well. He put out the cigarette and went back inside when he realized that Rutledge had seen him there.
3
Rutledge found a telephone in a larger village some ten miles from Tern Bridge, saving him the drive to Shrewsbury. He put through a call to the Yard, and asked for Sergeant Gibson.
