A Fearsome Doubt (19 page)

Rutledge found himself thinking that people like the Mayhews and the Hamiltons, and indeed the Masterses, with their declining income and rising prices, would be hard-pressed to keep their homes as once their ancestors had. But the new money, the war money, would manage quite well. The man from Leeds, for one.

“Has anyone actually met this man?” Brereton asked, looking around the table.

After a moment of silence, Elizabeth said tentatively, “I think I may’ve.”

Everyone turned to stare at her, and she went pink. “It was quite by accident and very brief,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’d gone to Helford at the end of last month to meet someone taking the train down from London. And a man was asking the stationmaster about transportation to Marling. He had a rather loud voice, although he was dressed well enough—” She broke off, shrugging. “I didn’t see his face.”

Rutledge, his attention caught, listened to Elizabeth Mayhew but said nothing.

Hamish murmured, “Ye ken, no one would think to ask the likes of Mrs. Mayhew about strangers . . .”

Raleigh Masters, ignoring the small glass containing his medicine that stood beside his plate, was finishing his fourth glass of wine instead.

The glitter in his eyes was the only thing that betrayed him. He sat like a toad, waiting. Hamish, alert to Rutledge’s own watchfulness, growled, “’Ware!”

As Elizabeth paused, glancing around the table uncertainly as if she’d gone too far, Bella opened her mouth to speak and then closed it sharply.

Raleigh said, “We are an odd lot, we English. We judge a man by his voice. And the price of his clothes. God help us, if we are born brilliant but poor, and have nothing to indicate the quality of our minds.”

Elizabeth said, haltingly, “I didn’t mean—”

“No, of course you didn’t,” Melinda Crawford interposed bracingly. “Raleigh is simply reflecting on our propensity to judge from outward appearances. A barrister would certainly not fall into
that
pit.”

She was, Rutledge realized, drawing fire on herself.

Masters said, rather nastily, “He won’t last long if he does. All the same, there is something to be said for a man’s upbringing. It generally tells in the end. As the old saw would have it, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

“I shouldn’t care to try,” Mrs. Crawford retorted.

“You would tell me, then, that your friendships are all of a sort that reflects well on your judgment of people?”

“I never choose my friends because they reflect well on me. I choose them because they’re interesting. I consider boredom far more soul-crushing than the Seven Deadly Sins. And so I have made a point throughout my life never to be bored. It has, I think, kept me young.”

But Masters apparently wasn’t to be deflected from whatever was on his mind. Rutledge, watching him, was reminded of a prosecutor waiting to pounce. It was, he thought, a natural mannerism in a man who had spent his life judging others.

Masters’s eyes swept down the table to his wife’s face. “And I, I think, shall never grow old. We learn to put up with distasteful things, at the end.”

“Raleigh, it’s hardly the
end—
” Bella protested, her voice anguished.

As if he didn’t believe her, Masters swept on. “I know whereof I speak, my dear. Otherwise, I shouldn’t be reduced to entertaining a
policeman
at my table. People are not overly fond of watching death creep up on themselves or others. But perhaps Mr. Rutledge is accustomed to it.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by the sharp intake of breath from Bella Masters. Her face was pale with embarrassment. Rutledge could feel himself reddening at the insult.

Hamish said starkly, “You canna’ quarrel with him.”

But before Rutledge could speak, Melinda Crawford was there ahead of him.

“Raleigh,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument, “illness is not an excuse for bad manners. You will apologize to all of us for your rudeness!”

He glared at her. She returned the stare with the authority of a woman who has spent a lifetime learning her own worth.

Rutledge thought,
She faced down the Mutineers in India. Masters has forgotten that.

After a moment Raleigh said, “Why should I apologize, I ask you? He comes to dine in the guise of a guest, but who knows what actually brings him here? Policemen don’t have social lives. Or if they do, I’ve never heard of it. And behind my back he asks questions of a derogatory nature about a man whose boots he is not fit to lick! Matthew Sunderland was my friend and my mentor—”

Rutledge turned to look at Bella Masters. Guilt was written clearly in her appalled expression.

He knew instantly that Elizabeth had spoken to her at his request—and she had passed the query on to her husband.

He replied, “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. I’ve never spoken derogatorily about Matthew Sunderland. I have expressed an interest in one of his cases. One in which I myself was involved.”

“Odd, don’t you think?” Masters inquired of the table at large. “Generally when a policeman has a question concerning a trial, he goes to his superiors. This means, I fear, that Mr. Rutledge is afraid he had not prepared his case well enough and wants the reassurance that he is right in his assumption of guilt!”

It was too damned close to the truth, and for an instant Rutledge found himself thinking that Chief Superintendent Bowles had been in touch with Raleigh Masters. But that was not very likely.

Hamish was roaring in his ears, telling him that Masters had seen through him and he had nowhere to turn.

But Rutledge responded with courtesy, “As you were not a party to the trial, sir, I’m afraid I must rely on the opinion of others.”

Before his host could frame a retort, Mrs. Crawford was on her feet. “
Raleigh!
You are not only rude, you are very drunk.” She turned to the maid standing stricken behind Mrs. Masters’s chair. “Will you summon my driver, please? I am leaving. Bella, I must tell you that I will not dine with you again until your husband has apologized to me and everyone present.”

Bella, her voice trembling, said, “Mrs. Crawford—Melinda—”

But her husband’s voice cut across hers. He was standing now also. Something in Mrs. Crawford’s face had finally penetrated the alcoholic haze and touched him.

Or else he had fired all the salvos he’d intended.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I beg forgiveness for my behavior. If you will excuse me, I shall retire. Mr. Rutledge, you have been a gracious and pleasant guest in my home. I don’t know what possessed me to attack you, but you must put it down to my intemperance.”

Raleigh bowed, retrieved his cane, and walked steadily from the room, closing the door softly behind him. Rutledge had the feeling that he was very nearly sober. . . .

Bella was almost in tears. “I don’t know what to say—” she began.

Melinda Crawford replied briskly, “It’s better if you say nothing. There is never any defense for rudeness.” She signaled to the maid. “I think we’re ready for our tea, if you please. And I believe the gentlemen will join us in the sitting room tonight.”

She nodded to Elizabeth and Brereton, then said to Rutledge, “You behaved with generosity. My father would have commended you for keeping your temper. But I will tell you that the man who insulted you is not the man I have known for some years. Now, we shall put this behind us and have our tea!”

With a sweep of her skirts, she ushered the still-trembling Bella toward her own sitting room, with Elizabeth at her heels. Brereton said, following them with Rutledge, “It’s true. He
isn’t
the same man. But that hardly changes anything—”

Rutledge, still seething with anger, smiled and said, “I
am
a policeman, you know. It must be the first opportunity he has had to break bread with one. And it marks a dramatic change in his circumstances.”

“All the same—” Brereton began, and then went on, “I would have believed Raleigh Masters was guilty of murder before I would have believed what has become of him.”

He stumbled, catching his foot on the edge of the carpet in the hall, and swore. The loss of his eyesight, Rutledge realized, must be worse than Brereton admitted, even to himself.

They drank their tea dutifully, and kept the conversation bright and reasonably unforced. When a proper length of time had passed to do so gracefully, the guests took their leave and left.

Rutledge’s last glimpse of Bella Masters’s face as she closed the door herself on her departing guests caught the mask of civility slipping and a black despair behind it.

E
LIZABETH SAID, AS
they reached the road to Marling, “I was never so appalled in my life! Raleigh has been unbearable—but never insulting.”

“Don’t think about it,” Rutledge told her. “He will have to make amends to his wife, now. She’ll be hard pressed to find any dinner guest willing to put up with his temper.”

“I don’t think it’s temper,” Elizabeth responded, considering it. “It’s something else. I don’t know . . . death creeping up.”

“Enough to make any man despair,” Rutledge agreed.

But Hamish was saying from the rear seat,
“I willna’ believe it. It’s no’ death. Nor the wasting. Something else.”

Rutledge tended to agree with him, and returned to the possibility that Chief Superintendent Bowles knew Masters—it wasn’t unlikely—and had dropped a hint of some sort. But that didn’t make sense, either.

Elizabeth was finishing a remark that he’d missed, ending with “—I shall have to invite Bella to tea. Without Raleigh. To let her know I’m not blaming her for her husband’s behavior. She’s never quite known how to cope with his moods, you know, but she adores him. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do for him.”

He was reminded of what Margaret Shaw had said about marriage—that it seldom works out the way it ought to. “What is the medicine he takes in that glass? Laudanum?”

“I suspect it is. For pain initially, of course, but it helps with his—moods.”

Or created them?

Elizabeth sighed. “Why do so many people hurt each other?”

He had no answer to that question. And in the silence that followed he remembered the conversation about the house in Marling that had been sold to a wealthy merchant. “Tell me about the man you saw. At the train station in Helford.”

“There’s really nothing more to tell. He was exceedingly well dressed; you could almost smell expensive tailors. But his voice was overloud, and it grated. New money. That was my first thought.”

“Describe him physically.”

“I’m not sure I can. It was a nasty evening, and he was wearing a heavy coat and a hat. My guess is that he was fair.” She looked across at him. “Tallish, I’d say, but not as tall as you. A bit on the heavy side, perhaps, but with the coat it was difficult to tell. He came rushing into the waiting room, spoke to the stationmaster, and then went out again. I’d been standing inside, out of the weather, but Richard’s motorcar was waiting by the gate. He must have seen it! And so I turned away, for fear he might ask if I was driving in the direction of Marling.” She smiled ruefully. “He seemed to be the sort who might be
—encroaching.
”

It was inbred in an Englishman’s nature, this dread that someone casually met might brashly overstep the unwritten rules of acceptable behavior. It was, perhaps, at the root of Raleigh Masters’s abhorrence of a policeman in his house. . . .

A visit to the stationmaster then, tomorrow morning, to follow up on this man Elizabeth Mayhew had seen.

They had reached Elizabeth’s house and she was thanking him for driving her. He saw her to her door, and then turned to go.

She called, “Ian.”

He turned again. “Yes?”

But whatever it was she was planning to say, she changed her mind. It was visible in her face, however much she tried to hide it. “Perhaps we can have lunch one day. While you’re here.” Brightly spoken.

“I’d like that,” he said. And watched the door close quietly before walking back to his motorcar.

T
HE LOBBY OF
The Plough was empty when he came through, a night lamp burning by the desk and another by the stairs. But when he opened the door to his room, he found a sheet of paper slipped under it. One of the staff had taken a telephone message for him.

It was from Sergeant Gibson.
In regard to the person you’d inquired about. He made it home from France and then ended up in the river. There’s a grave to prove it in Maidstone.

So much for tracking down Jimsy Ridger, Rutledge thought, as he shut his door and began to take off his coat. Yet someone was combing the countryside trying to run the man to earth. Someone without Sergeant Gibson’s resources—someone who hadn’t discovered the Maidstone grave.

But why was this same person killing men?

“You canna’ know it’s the same man doing the killing,” Hamish reminded him.

“That’s true,” Rutledge said, answering aloud from old habit when he was alone. The voice seemed so real then that he could almost hear it echoing around the walls.

H
ELFORD WAS A
small village, with a tall spired church and a churchyard set behind a low stone wall that boasted the remains of wildflowers in the crevices, a pretty sight in the spring. The main street wound down a hill, houses and shops spread on either side of it, before curving away in the direction of Marling. The railway station sat on the northern outskirts, as if added as an afterthought. Which it had been, Helford itself predating the train by some four hundred or more years. Hop gardens and farms encircled the town, picturesque in the brightening morning light. Several very nice old houses faced the main street, one of them pedimented and the other boasting an elegant bay window. There had been money here, and an air of gentility lingered. The Tudor gatehouse of a sizeable manor house lay at the bottom of the hill, tall and graceful, with a battlemented facade and an assortment of shields announcing the proud heritage of the family within. Its aged stone church lay just up the hill, green lawns and half-buried tombstones visible beyond its wall.