A Long Shadow (26 page)

Put his hands on that money, Rutledge thought, and he might have some leverage with Hensley to pry out the truth.

"Aye, but it's no' a part of your duty."

Just how much did Bowles know? Or care?

Grace Letteridge was saying, "Inspector?"

He came back from his thoughts. "I'm sorry—"

"I can't believe it was an accident. What happened last night. But why should someone want to kill Constable Hensley, and then when you come here, want to kill you as well?"

It was an echo of what he'd heard Mrs. Melford say.

He answered, "I don't believe the attacks are related."

"What else could they be? In a village this size?"

But he couldn't tell her about the cartridge casings.

Meredith Channing was waiting for him when he came home. She had set her umbrella by the door, and it was dripping a puddle of water across the floorboards when he stepped over the threshold.

"Ah. You've been away most of the day. I wondered how you were managing."

"Well enough."

She nodded. "So I can see. Sit down. You look very tired. It can't be easy, concealing the pain for hours. Even from yourself."

"You must have been a terrifyingly good nurse, if you could read your patient's mind."

"Some of them couldn't speak, you know. After a while one got used to making a fairly good guess about their needs."

"Why did you come here?" He'd asked it before and couldn't stop himself from asking it again.

"I don't know, to tell you the truth. What I felt with that shell casing on the table in my house was not particularly pleasant. And so I sent it back to you. But the darkness was still there, as if it had left a—shadow behind. I could see it there, feel it even in the night. If it disturbed
me
so intensely, I was concerned about how it must have troubled you."

"Did you know anyone by the name of Edgerton, in London?"

"Edgerton. Wasn't there a cricket player by that name, before the war?"

"A tennis player, I think," Rutledge said, watching her face, but she showed no reaction to his fabrication.

"Well, then. What about him?"

"He died of burns after a fire."

"How horrible!" She stared at him. "Was he a friend?"

"I never met him."

"Then why do you think I may've?" She frowned. "Are you feeling feverish?"

Hensley was feverish, and that was a cause for anxiety. "I'm trying to learn how a man named Edgerton tied into this business with the constable."

"Your tennis player?"

He smiled at her. "Indeed. Never mind. I expect he died while you were in France. There's no reason you should remember him."

"No. We were quite cut off from everything but the fighting. We seldom had time to think about anything else. Sorry."

"There's another name I'm curious about. Sandridge." Either she was a very good liar or this name also failed to mean anything to her. Shaking her head, she said, "No. Not familiar at all."

So much for that, he thought. He couldn't fathom her. As well as he read most people, she was an enigma. Behind the charming facade, behind the gracious manner and the warm, mesmerizing voice, what was she?

"I thought perhaps we might call on the rector," she was saying. "If you are up to walking so far. He must be lonely."

He went with her, though his preference, if asked, was to stay by the fire and let the ache in his ankle fade a little.

They reached the rectory in time to see a woman coming down the walk, and Rutledge recognized her as the postmistress, Mrs. Arundel.

She nodded to him, tipping back her umbrella to say, "I'm glad to see you suffered no lasting harm. From the look of Grace Letteridge's garden wall, you ought to be on crutches."

They knocked on the front door, and Hillary Timmons answered it, looking harried. "Good day, sir. They've all come to bring himself something—a pot of jam, a treat from the bake shop, a little broth. I'm fair run off my feet, trying to keep up."

"We've brought nothing," Mrs. Channing said soothingly. "Why don't I sit with him for an hour or so, and allow you to rest."

Hillary Timmons teetered on the thin edge of duty, and then capitulated.

"Just an hour, if you wouldn't mind," she said.

"Then have yourself a nap, and I'll stay with Mr. Tow-son. I'm even capable of making him tea."

"He's had tea twice already. First with Mrs. Freebold, and then with Mrs. Arundel." She sighed. "I've never seen such a man for a little bite of something sweet, as he puts it."

"Yes, well, then, we shan't be having tea. Go on, I'll show myself up to his room." And with that, Mrs. Channing started up the stairs.

Rutledge was on the point of following her when she said, "No. You'll be bored to tears, Inspector. But you might see if you can find a Dickens novel in Mr. Towson's study. I'll read to him, if he cares for a little distraction." Rutledge discovered
Bleak House
sandwiched between a book of sermons and one of O. A. Manning's volumes of poetry. He took the novel up to the rector's bedroom, where Towson and Mrs. Channing were deep in a conversation that stopped as he came down the passage.

"I'm well enough, Inspector," he answered Rutledge's greeting. "But I'm told you've had an accident of your own. A stolen lorry! Who'd have thought it here in Dudlington? I'm happy to see Dr. Middleton didn't clap you in your bed and leave you to die of boredom."

"With only a bruise here and there?" Rutledge responded lightly.

"What I can't understand for the life of me is why someone should steal the lorry in the first place, and then abandon it not a quarter of a mile away. Mrs. Freebold was telling me that there was a dark-haired man with thin lips and narrowed eyes driving it."

"He wore a hat," Rutledge said. "Pulled down low. I couldn't see more than that."

"Ah. Well, that explains why Mrs. Arundel heard he was a large man with an evil expression." He smiled.

"I doubt if anyone got a good look at him. He left the lorry where no one was likely to see him walk away. Either from windows at The Oaks or from the houses on Holly Street." Mrs. Channing looked at Rutledge with a questioning glance. But the rector was in full cry, now.

"Are you trying to tell me he was someone here in Dudlington?"

"I don't know," Rutledge answered. "What do your callers have to say on that subject?"

"That he must have held a grudge against the firm doing the work at the Lawrence house. He must have had the fright of his life when he learned later that the man he nearly ran down in the lane was a policeman from Scotland Yard. Serves him right too."

Rutledge found Mrs. Arundel in her little cage at the rear of the baker's shop. She smiled at him and said, "Is there a letter you wish to mail to London, Inspector? I'll see that it goes first thing in the morning."

He showed her the map of Dudlington that Grace Letteridge had helped him fill out. "Is this a fairly accurate list of residents?" he asked.

She examined it carefully. "Yes. Yes, it is. You're very thorough, Inspector."

"And there's no one else living in Dudlington besides the names given here?"

"Of course you haven't listed the children, or any of the servants. And Mrs. Wainwright is a widow, Mr. Neville has never married—"

"Thank you." He took back his list and folded it again. He could feel Mrs. Simpson's eyes boring into the back of his head as she strained to hear the conversation.

He found Mrs. Melford at home, busy with a stew for his dinner, and he showed her the list as well.

"That's correct, Inspector," she told him, handing it back. "I wonder you need the names of everyone in Dudlington. Surely we aren't all under suspicion."

"Not at all," he assured her. "But it helps me form a better picture of the village."

She said, "Then if that's all, I must get back to my dinner. Your dinner."

And he left it at that.

Hamish said, "It didna' work, yon map."

"In a way it did." Rutledge sat at Hensley's desk and ticked off the houses he already knew. "Ellison, there. Letteridge. Lawrence. Simpson. Freebold. Hensley here. The rectory. Baylor. And of course Keating at The Oaks. There's no Sandridge here. I hadn't expected it to be that easy."

He put the map away and stood looking round the room. "If I were hiding something, where would I choose? It has to be safe from prying eyes sitting here waiting for Hensley to come back to his office. Or even a determined search by someone intent on finding where Hensley kept files or money. Where?"

Still favoring his ankle, Rutledge began a thorough search, starting at the top of the house and working his way down. It was hampered by the dark day, when lamplight let shadows fall in corners and made it difficult to judge if a board was askew or only appeared that way in poor light.

Hamish reminded him that the house still belonged to the Freebolds, and it wasn't likely that Hensley would choose a secret place they might already know existed.

Room after room, Rutledge examined every possible place where something could be hidden. The bedrooms, the bath, the stairs, the sitting room and dining room, the kitchen, the cellar where the coal bin filled one corner and old bits and pieces filled another. Digging through that, he came across a sled, a broken drying rack for clothes, a chair with a missing leg, a box of dishes with chipped edges and only one cup, a stack of old newspapers for starting fires, a carton of tools, and a doorknob that had been tossed in by itself.

"Ye're wasting time," Hamish told him. "There's naething to be found."

But he refused to give up.

He came back to the lone doorknob and stared at it thoughtfully. It looked to be a more recent vintage than the rest of the bric-a-brac.

And then he began to pull the litter out of the corner, working fast and stacking each item in the center of the earthen floor.

When he'd pulled an old trunk filled with clothing half a century old out of his way, he could just feel, rather than see, the rough edges of a door.

There was a hole that looked more like a knot in the wood than an actual cavity, but he thrust the doorknob inside. There must have been a matching knob on the other side, because he was able, gently, to pull the door open just far enough to bring it the rest of the way with his fingers.

The knob on the far side had been nailed in place, giving it stability. And as the door opened to the point that he could see in, he realized this cabinet was shelved as if once used for jams or preserves.

It was empty now except for a dark leather satchel and a collection of papers.

He was just about to draw them out, when he heard a voice over his head.

Swearing, he left the door where it was and hurried up the stairs as fast as his complaining ankle permitted.

Mrs. Channing was standing in the parlor office, calling his name.

"I've forgotten you!" he said contritely. "I should have come back before this."

"No, I expected to make my own way to the inn. But what have you been doing? Is that a cobweb in your hair?" He realized that there was even coal dust on one sleeve and a smudge across the back of his hand. "Searching," he said, telling the truth. "I'd hoped that Hensley kept his more important files somewhere less accessible than this room."

"And were you successful?" she asked, no inflection in her voice.

"I was debating whether to shift a large pile of coal when you called me away. As far as I can tell, that's the only task I have left."

"Yes, well, I'll not keep you. But if I were you, I'd be careful, digging about in cellars with those cuts and scrapes on your hands. They're still open wounds, and easily infected."

"I hadn't thought of that. I'll just find my coat and see you to the inn."

"Nonsense. I'm perfectly capable of walking that far alone."

He waited until he was certain she was gone, sitting in the dark parlor for a quarter of an hour. Only then did he go back down the cellar stairs with his torch and look into the closet.

The satchel contained money, far less than he'd expected. And the papers were an odd assortment. One of them was a letter to the young woman who had been searching for the man, Sandridge.

It was straightforward, just as Hensley had told him, denying that there was anyone in Dudlington by that name, and suggesting that she had got the wrong Dudlington.

The only interesting thing about the reply was that it had been written on official stationery, giving it the stamp of authority.

The others were a collection of interviews in the days following the disappearance of Emma Mason.

Rutledge took them to his bedroom, and in the course of the evening, read through them.

The first documented Mrs. Ellison's frantic summons one morning, reporting her granddaughter gone in the night.

The constable's notes were brief.

"She was very upset. Called Miss Mason to her breakfast, and when there was no answer, went up to room to wake her granddaughter. She was not there, and no indication of hasty departure. No letter left behind. Grandmother then searched rest of house, no sign of Miss Mason. I immediately organized a search party, calling in every available man. Spoke to everyone in village, house by house. Covered fields two miles in every direction, also barns and sheds ..."