A Fearsome Doubt (27 page)

Rutledge, rising from the table’s edge, conceded the point.

R
UTLEDGE WAS WALKING
down the passage to his room when the maid, her arms full of brooms and mops, a bucket clutched in one hand, smiled at him. “Mr. Rutledge? Mr. Haskins at the desk asked me earlier if I’d seen you. There’s a telephone message for you!”

It was from Chief Superintendent Bowles. When he had been located, his voice came down the line affably. “I’ve had no word on the situation in Marling. No progress to report, eh?”

“So far, there’s nothing new. But the killing has stopped. For the present.”

“The Chief Constable will be grateful for that blessing. But it’s not good enough. There’s bound to be something to point in the murderer’s direction! What does the local man have to say? Dowling.”

“Murder at night on a deserted road leaves very little to be going on with. By the time police reached the scene, morning traffic had already obliterated any tracks or other evidence.”

“Not good enough,” Bowles repeated. There was a pause. “The Chief Constable informs me you’ve dined with the great Raleigh Masters. Rumor says the man’s dying.”

Rumor, Hamish was pointing out, had clearly said a great deal more.

“He seemed lively enough,” Rutledge replied, trodding carefully. “He was reminiscing about Matthew Sunderland. I remember him from the Shaw case.”

“Ah! So that’s why you were looking at the files! Indeed.”

“It was a matter of luck,” Rutledge agreed, “to hear someone of Masters’s caliber discuss the legal implications of a crime. Particularly one I’d worked on.”

Wary, Bowles’s voice changed. “And what did he have to say?”

“He’s of the opinion that Sunderland was one of the most brilliant legal minds of our age.”

“I would have to agree with him. Dining out is all well and good, you know, but you’re there to find a cold-blooded murderer. I’d prefer to see more progress made on that front!”

“Indeed, sir!”

Bowles rang off, and Rutledge hung up the telephone with unusual care.

Hamish said, “He went through your desk. Or someone reported to him.”

“But he isn’t quite sure what brought Mrs. Shaw to the Yard . . .”

“Else, he’s waiting for your heid to be well into the noose—”

R
UTLEDGE WENT TO
call on Mrs. Bartlett and Mrs. Webber. Alone and overworked, the widows looked older than their years.

Hamish said distastefully, “I’d no’ want to be a policeman. I’d no’ want to question the grieving.”

“It’s the only way to find a killer. Sometimes.”

“Oh, aye? And ye’d be happy telling your ain secrets?”

Susan Webber, brushing her auburn hair back from her forehead with one hand, was holding on to the shy little girl burrowing into her mother’s skirts with the other. Peter’s sister . . .

“It was kind of you to let Peter ride in your motorcar,” she said as she led Rutledge into the parlor and turned up the lamp. It smoked, as if it needed trimming. A basket of folded laundry sat on a table in the passage, and there was evidence that cabbage was part of their dinner menu. He could smell it boiling.

“I’m sorry to trouble you,” he said, “but I’m sure you are as eager to have an answer to your husband’s death as we are.”

She said, “What good will it do, then? It won’t bring Peter’s father back, and it won’t make my life any easier. Kenny might as well have died in the war. I’d got used to him being away, after the first year. Then he was back, and he needed more care than these two.”

He looked up to see Peter standing quietly in the doorway.

“Is there anything you can tell me, Mrs. Webber, that might be useful? Did your husband have any enemies—or any friends he didn’t trust?”

“Kenny wasn’t back home long enough to make enemies! And his friends were in the war with him. Or dead. I don’t know why anyone would want to hurt him. Or us. And why would he stop along the road somewhere and drink wine? He never liked wine, it made his stomach raw.”

“He may have learned to like it in France.”

She shrugged. “Kenny learned to like a lot of things in France, didn’t he, that I didn’t know about. The French pox, for one. He was cured. He said. It was Jimsy’s doing, that’s what I was told. Jimsy got him a surprise for his birthday. It was a surprise, right enough.”

“Did you know Ridger well?”

“Him?” Her voice was contemptuous. “He was one of the hop pickers. My mother would have locked me in my room if I’d shown any interest in that direction! One summer when Jimsy was twelve, he helped Kenny’s pa to build a fence, and Kenny’s ma was kindhearted and let him stay to supper many a night. I don’t think Jimsy ever forgot that, and he was always respectful of Kenny. That’s what Kenny said when I railed at him about the whore. That Jimsy knew he was homesick and down, because they was going into the line again the next morning and Kenny had a premonition he’d be killed. But he wasn’t, was he?”

As Rutledge left, Peter followed him out into the front garden, staring longingly at the motorcar at the gate.

Rutledge showed him how the crank was turned, and let him peer into the driver’s seat at the gauges on the panel. When Peter hopped down to the road again, Rutledge got behind the wheel.

Peter said, “One night I saw my pa come home in a motorcar. He’d been working out on one of the farms. I was at the window watching for him. He said he liked riding in it and would do it again, if he got the chance.”

“When did you see this motorcar? Do you remember?”

The child smiled shyly up at him. “One night. I don’t know when.”

“Can you tell me about the driver?”

Peter shook his head. He wasn’t interested in anything but the vehicle.

“Did you see your father in this motorcar again?”

The fair head shook again. “It was the only time he came home early.”

“Did your mother see the motorcar?”

“No. She’d gone to sit with Mrs. Goode, who has a baby.”

As Rutledge pulled away, Peter said, running along beside the motorcar, “I think it was a woman. Older than my mother. Old . . .”

M
RS.
B
ARTLETT, SITTING
by her kitchen fire, looked up at Rutledge with swollen eyes. The handkerchief in her hand was crumpled, sodden. “I miss him most at night, you know. Because he’d come home, then, and I’d not be alone anymore.” The tiny kitchen, scrubbed clean, had an emptiness about it, as if Mrs. Bartlett had given up on cooking. “When Harry worked somewhere and stayed the night, I never could sleep the way I should.”

“When you heard he was dead, did you suspect anyone? Did you think of anyone who might want to harm him?”

She looked up at Rutledge with complete bewilderment. “No. It was a murderer. It wasn’t someone we knew.”

Rutledge changed his tactics. “Mrs. Bartlett. I’m trying to find something that connects the three victims. Their service in the war, for one. And the fact that they lived here in Marling. Can you think of anything else?”

She considered the question. “It doesn’t make sense that anyone would want to hurt Harry. He was a good man. They were
all
good men, and it was cruel when they’d already suffered so much!” And then, unwittingly, she quoted Nell Shaw. “I don’t know what I’m to do without him. I don’t know how I’m to get on!”

“Did your husband know someone called Jimsy Ridger?”

“How should I know?”

As she broke down completely, Rutledge asked if there was someone he could bring to her. She shook her head.

And so he made her a cup of fresh tea, and she drank it gratefully. He wondered if she had eaten all day. As she settled into a calmer state, he took his leave.

Where were the women of the church tonight, when she needed their comfort? At home with their own families, and unaware . . .

25

T
HE NEXT MORNING HE FOUND
H
AUSER SHAVED, DRESSED,
and waiting for him. The wound looked dry and as if it had begun to heal. Changing the dressing, Rutledge said, “It’s nearly time to make a decision about you.”

“Mrs. Mayhew. Is she all right?”

“She’s in good hands.”

Hauser nodded. “I’m happy to hear it.” But he didn’t sound happy.

He ate a good part of the food Rutledge had brought with an appetite. “A farmer’s breakfast,” he commented, finishing the last of the bread and bacon. “Very good. So. Have you found the man who knifed me? It won’t have proved an easy thing to do! He was a coward; he’ll hide himself well.”

“Not yet.” Rutledge toyed with a bit of eggshell, drawing imaginary lines on the table.

Hauser said, “Come now! You are a good policeman, are you not?” There was humor in the man’s face. But not in his cold eyes.

“I don’t know,” Rutledge said, getting up from his chair to rinse out the Thermos and set it on the drainboard by the sink. “I’ve learned that when a man wants something very badly—as you say you want this cup—he will measure the cost carefully. And if it comes down to it, he’ll willingly pay whatever price is demanded. The important thing is to understand the consequences. You were in the war. You know better than most what it’s like to face death. I think you’d go to the hangman with few regrets—except perhaps for your children.”

Startled, Hauser had the grace to flush. “It would be very easy to hate you,” he said after a moment.

“No. We were out there. In the trenches.” Rutledge heard a rough edge to his voice. “On different sides, but we were out there. That’s a soldier’s bond.”

Hauser got up and walked to the window. “I’ll have to move on, you know. People will see where your car has been. They’ll be suspicious.” He sighed. “It’s going to be damned inconvenient.”

“His Majesty’s Government won’t house you as well,” Rutledge agreed.

Hauser said in a different voice. “You know I never killed them. You won’t hang me for the sake of your career.”

Rutledge collected the Thermos and walked to the door. “Tomorrow. After that, it won’t be in my hands, anyway.”

He left, wondering if he were making a mistake. Hauser could walk away now. Is that what he wanted, deep in his own soul?

In Marling, he found a note waiting from Melinda Crawford. It read simply,
I think you’d better come.

Reluctantly he drove to her house on the Sussex border. He wasn’t in the mood to be questioned about Hauser. Shanta opened the door to him, saying quietly, “You are to go upstairs.”

He followed the direction of her eyes, walking up the stairs and turning to the left. In the back of the house, Melinda Crawford had made for herself a comfortable sitting room that overlooked the gardens. She was waiting for him there, standing by the window.

As he opened the door, she turned.

“Ian.”

“What has happened?” he asked, relieved to see that she herself looked well enough except for the deep concern on her face.

“Elizabeth. She left this morning, without telling me. When Shanta went in to bring her her morning tea, the bed was empty. We waited for a time, thinking she might have gone for a walk. But there’s a horse gone from my stables as well, and my groom tells me that it must have been taken sometime close to dawn.”

Rutledge swore under his breath. “Did she tell you? About the German?”

“Yes. I think she’s afraid you’re going to hang him. Foolish girl! But there you are.” Mrs. Crawford examined him critically. “You look terrible. You did yesterday, but I put it down to this business with Elizabeth. It isn’t, is it?”

“I’m tired, that’s all. I’ve been bicycling over the countryside and then dealing with her German.”

She rang the small bell at her side, and Shanta came in almost at once with a tray, glasses, and decanters. Mrs. Crawford poured a whisky for him and passed it to him. “Drink that, my dear. Tea built an empire—we need something stiffer to see us through Elizabeth’s histrionics. She had the feeling you knew this man. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“From the war.”

He nodded.

“She thought there might have been some ill feeling between you.”

“Not . . . ill feeling.” Rutledge fell back on the old cliché. “He was the enemy.”

Melinda Crawford considered him for a moment, and he felt like a schoolboy squirming under the gaze of a stern schoolmaster. “What happened to you in France, Ian? You were on the Somme, were you not?”

Rutledge could see his hand trembling as he lifted the glass. He set it down again and said, “Trench warfare.”

She smoothed the fabric of her skirt, as if she knew he didn’t want to meet her eyes. “When I was in India, I watched people die. Sometimes peacefully—sometimes quite horribly. Not just in the Mutiny, you know. It was a poor country, and people simply died. Along the road, in the courtyard of a mosque, in the shelter of a banyan tree. I have seen the Taj Mahal, one of the most elegantly beautiful shrines in the world. I’ve lain in a blind in the middle of a night to watch a tiger walk softly down to the river and drink. But I had nightmares for years about the butchery at Cawnpore, where the women and children were massacred in the Bibighar. I heard my elders describe how some of the murderers were blown from cannon rather than hanged. Do you think you can shock me?”

He said, boxed into a corner and trying to shift the conversation, “Did you offer to drive one of the Marling victims home one night? Did you take him up in your motorcar?”

“Yes. I saw him limping down the road and instructed my driver to stop. Hadley was horrified, but I didn’t care. Compassion takes many forms.”

“You should have told me!”

“Why? I didn’t murder him. I only saved him from a long walk home.”

Rutledge said, “All the same—” And then, he answered her question in the only way he knew how. “I can’t tell you about the war. Please don’t ask me to tell you about it.”

“Does this German know what you won’t tell me?”

“Only a very small part of it—” He reached again for the whisky, and nearly spilled it.
“For God’s sake, don’t ask me!”

“Then there is nothing that this man can tell Elizabeth that would harm you? Or that she could use against you?”

“No—nothing.” It wasn’t completely true, but he could think of no one who could profit from the knowledge that Gunter Hauser possessed.

“Then you are free to do whatever is required, to take him into custody if that becomes necessary, and there will be no repercussions?”

He could feel himself beginning to breathe again, the tightness in his chest no longer bands biting into the flesh. “I can’t believe—” he began, and then realized that he didn’t know Elizabeth any longer.

“I think she must have gone to find him—and Elizabeth isn’t stupid, she can put facts together exceedingly well. She must have some idea where to look.”

He hadn’t considered that. “She thought he was living in a hotel in Rochester. It was a lie; he’d been living in the kitchen of an empty manor house on the Marling road. The Morton house—”

“And you took him back there. I find myself wondering why.”

“I took him back there because I needed information. I don’t know if that was right or wrong. Still, it was a personal decision, not a professional one.”

“Yes. I see that. Did you owe him your life, Ian?”

“Not precisely. But I nearly got him killed after the war had ended.”

“My dear, I can’t imagine that you would have taken the man anywhere but gaol if you truly believed he was a murderer.”

“I don’t know,” he said with honesty. “I can’t be sure.”

“As far as I can see—and I have known you much of your life—your judgment is no more impaired than mine. Whatever transpired in France, you must never let it conquer you. Do you understand me?”

“Understanding is one thing—living up to that standard is another,” he said wryly.

Melinda Crawford said, “I recognize courage when I see it, Ian. Now, what are we to do about Elizabeth, before she makes an utter fool of herself?” She took his glass and added to it.

He was able to lift the whisky to his lips this time. And the warmth seemed to spread through the icy grip of tension.

“I’ll have to go back to Marling—”

“And I shall go with you. If I’m there, we can probably salvage her reputation.”

They left ten minutes later.

W
HEN
R
UTLEDGE REACHED
the Mortons’ drive, he already knew what he would find in the manor house kitchen.

In the event, he was wrong.

Elizabeth Mayhew sat at the table where Rutledge had left Hauser only a matter of hours ago. She faced him with a shaky calmness.

“He’s not here,” she said. “I told him to go back to Germany, while he could. I told him that for Richard’s sake, I couldn’t marry a German. But I promised I’d find that cup for him. Somehow. My penance, if you like.”

“You shouldn’t have interfered!”

“Because you believe he’s a murderer? I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t care. I want him out of England. Out of my life. Out of my mind.”

“For God’s sake, there are three men
dead—
” Rutledge began, the stress of the morning leaving him short-tempered.

“Then find out who killed them.” She got to her feet. “I told him to take the horse as far as the Helford railway station. I’d send someone later to fetch it.”

The outer door had opened and Mrs. Crawford stepped in, distastefully regarding the signs of occupation in the kitchen—the tins of food, the bedding on the floor, the water pitcher next to jam jars, and a whisky decanter on the table.

“You should have told him to come to me, Elizabeth. I’d have taken him in and kept him until this business has been sorted out,” she said. “You’ve put Ian—and yourself—into an extremely difficult position! You aren’t in love with this man, you know. You’ve fallen into an infatuation. You haven’t known him long enough to destroy other people’s lives on his account. Now I suggest we all leave this place as quickly as possible. I’ll understand, Elizabeth, if you would rather not return to my house.”

She lifted her skirts to walk gracefully out of the kitchen, leaving the two of them standing face to face.

Hamish was saying, “I’d search the house, if I were you.”

But Rutledge was aware of the emptiness around him, of the sense of someone having walked out of a room just before one walks into it. Hauser was no longer here. . . .

R
UTLEDGE DROVE
E
LIZABETH
Mayhew in to Marling, and left her at the door to her house. It was clear that she didn’t want his company or anyone else’s at the moment. When he walked out to the motorcar again, Melinda Crawford told him, “We’ve missed our lunch. If you ask me to dine at the hotel with you, I won’t say no. I shouldn’t worry about Elizabeth if I were you. She’s feeling quite self-righteous at the moment, but it won’t last.”

As they drove past the Cavalier on his plinth, Mrs. Crawford gestured in the statue’s direction. “My husband’s family,” she said. “He was quite a hero, defending Charles the First to the death. It was seen as a brave thing, at the time. But the family lost its title and its lands under Cromwell, and never recovered.”

When they arrived at the hotel, Rutledge offered to order a room for her, to rest.

“Nonsense. I’m not as fragile as I look, my dear.”

“I’d like to speak to Inspector Dowling before we go to the dining room. Do you mind waiting? It’s a matter of unfinished business.”

“I understand. I’ll sit comfortably in the lounge and beg a glass of sherry from the clerk.”

Feeling as if he’d been ground in the mill of the gods, Rutledge walked on to the police station, to find a grinning Inspector Dowling sitting behind his desk like the Cheshire cat.

“Your theoretical victim walked in half an hour ago and gave himself up.”

Stunned, Rutledge said, “Why on earth—” and stopped himself short.

“He said he was innocent of murder, and wanted his name cleared. He said he was attacked on the road north of Marling by someone who mistook him for the killer. From the look of the knife wound in his chest, someone was very nervous indeed!”

“I’d like to see him.”

“He’s in Dr. Pugh’s surgery at the moment, with Sergeant Burke in attendance.” The grin disappeared. “What do you know about this business?”

Hamish hissed, “Walk softly!”

“Hardly more than I’ve told you. As for why I didn’t bring him in, the first reaction of everyone in the county would have been, We have our murderer. He’s a very fair candidate. The newspapers will be full of righteous condemnation.”

Dowling sighed. “Yes. And you were right, reputations will fall over this. But now he’s given himself up, and what am I to do with the fool?”

“God knows. Keep him here for a few days, let him help you with your inquiries.”

“Is it true that Jimsy Ridger is dead?”

“So I’m told.”

“Then,” said Dowling, “if I can’t charge this German, and Ridger is dead, we’ve got no case at all. We’re back where we started from when the Yard sent you to Marling.”