No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (15 page)

He asked his own question instead of answering hers. “Do you think Trevose is concerned with whether they are guilty or not?”

If he had struck her, she couldn’t have looked more shocked. After a moment she said in a husky voice, “Are you saying that my daughter and her friends are paying for his brother’s life?”

“You may be better able to answer that than I am. I can’t read Trevose’s heart any more than I can read your daughter’s.”

“It’s a long time to nurture a grudge.” It was said almost in hope, as if she wanted very badly to believe it.

Rutledge disliked having to disabuse her of the hope, but she needed to hear the truth. “He and his brother quarreled before the boy left. It was never made up. It may be that for Trevose, his own guilt is driving him to find someone else to blame for his brother leaving.”

“Ah. That explains so much.” There was despair in her eyes as she turned away.

He gave her time to compose herself, and then brought out the small square of cloth. “Do you recognize this fabric?”

She examined it closely. He found himself wondering if she was trying to decide how to answer him.

“I don’t,” she said after a moment. Then she looked up and held his gaze. “Is it important, is that why you are asking me?”

“I doubt it,” he said, deliberately making light of it. “But a policeman must consider even the smallest detail that comes his way. Otherwise, how is he to know what’s important and what isn’t?” He put the bit of cloth back in his pocket. Then he added, “I’ve known smaller things to clear a person.”

She blinked, and he realized that she thought he’d been offering her a chance to clear her daughter’s name, and somehow she had failed.

He said, “No, it wasn’t a test. Only a query. It changes nothing.”

The door opened and Elaine came in.

“Why are they shouting in the library?” she asked uneasily. “I could hear them as I came down the stairs.” She glanced over her shoulder, her face suddenly pale. “We’re being taken to gaol, aren’t we? Harry’s dead, and it’s too late to ask
him
what happened. But why does that farmer want us to be hanged?”

Mrs. Grenville caught her breath, her eyes pleading with Rutledge.

He shook his head slightly, warning her to say nothing more.

For an instant he thought she was going to ignore it, her sense of responsibility getting the better of her good judgment.

10

R
ecovering her self-possession with an effort, Mrs. Grenville managed a smile. “Kate’s father has just arrived,” she said. “I expect he’s angry that more progress hasn’t been made in clearing all of you. I shouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”

Elaine returned the smile. “Then I won’t.” To Rutledge, she said, “You sent for me, Inspector?”

With a nod to Rutledge, Mrs. Grenville went out the door and closed it behind her.

“It’s a tangle, isn’t it?” he said pleasantly to Elaine. “We need facts—and sometimes there are no facts to be found. Or if there are, they point in different directions, until we’re all in a muddle.”

He was thinking that he wasn’t more than five or six years older than Elaine St. Ives. And yet he felt old enough to be her father or an uncle. He could sympathize with her bewilderment. She had had only to sit still and balance the rowboat while the others fought to save—or kill—Saunders. Was she strong enough emotionally to lie for the others, if they had decided to drown Saunders? To keep their secret even in the face of trial and possible conviction? He couldn’t be sure. Sometimes fragile people were made of steel, where their own interests were concerned.

“It’s like a nightmare. I wish it would end,” she said, with feeling.

He didn’t want to begin with what had brought him here. And so he said, “I find it hard to believe that someone who could barely swim had a larger craft that he took as far as Fowey, or that he ran about in its dinghy. He wasn’t dressed for swimming that Saturday, was he?”

“I expect he was meeting friends. He grew up on the Camel. As we all did. He and my brother were always out on the water in the summer.” She smiled, remembering. “That was before the war. I don’t think it worried Harry that he wasn’t a strong swimmer. He was so used to boats, you see.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he never learned.”

“He was quite strong, a good horseman, a very fine tennis player. That sort of thing. But he told George that in the water he always sank like a stone. He had no buoyancy. My brother claimed he had no faith in the water. That he didn’t expect it to hold him up. He was a thrasher. Fighting the water instead of going with it.”

Which he found intriguing. “Then he couldn’t have made it ashore, if you and the others hadn’t been there?”

“Possibly. Although I doubt it. He must already have been unsettled by the boat sinking as it did. That even shocked me. He wouldn’t have been able to let the water take him, and use it to reach the shore or hang on to something until he reached the village landing. The water was cold, mind you. That wouldn’t help.”

“You know a good deal about it,” he said.

“My brother taught me to swim when I was four. We live not far from the water, he was always around it, and I think he was afraid I’d try to follow him one day and drown. We never told our parents. My mother would have been horrified.”

Rutledge smiled. “I expect she would have been.” But that brother, he thought, had been wise beyond his years. As a rule, girls seldom learned to swim.

“Why did you go upstream, instead of down?”

“Mr. Grenville didn’t want us to go farther than my parents’ house or the village landing. These were places we knew well. The harbor at Padstow wasn’t suitable, he said. And beyond there of course was the Doom Bar.”

He said, “There’s one other matter I need clarified before moving on. Tell me a little more about the young woman who came to services at St. Marina’s last summer.”

The question took her by surprise. “What young woman? The vicar’s cousin?”

“Yes. You were never introduced, but could you describe her for me?”

“I’ll try. She was quite pretty—lovely dark hair and a nice smile. Her clothes were rather conservative but beautifully made. You can always tell, can’t you? A soft voice, cultured. Rather shy and uncomfortable in crowds of people. I thought perhaps she might be from London, that we might have acquaintances in common. But Mr. Toup told me her father was a vicar in Norfolk, near the North Sea coast, and she acts as his housekeeper most of the year.”

“A suitable wife for Harry Saunders, do you think?”

She smiled wryly. “Harry might feel she was. But his father might feel quite differently. Even bankers are ambitious for their sons. Unless of course she was an heiress.”

He returned the smile.

“Where does she stay in Rock when she comes to Cornwall?”

“I have no idea. You must ask Mr. Toup.” She tilted her head, curious. “Why are you so interested in this young woman? It isn’t just because of Victoria and Harry, is it?”

A very perceptive question.

“I don’t know,” he told her in all honesty. “Anything to do with Harry Saunders interests me until I have discovered how he died.” Another thought occurred to him. “Who transported this young woman across the river? I haven’t been told that the vicar has a boat. Was it Harry, do you think?”

“There’s a ferry,” she said doubtfully. “That’s how most people go back and forth. Although Harry might well have offered his services. I did wonder why she chose to stay across the river.”

He could feel Hamish stirring suddenly in the back of his mind. Hamish had worked it out already, and Rutledge needed time to think.

Thanking Miss St. Ives, he walked with her to the door. As he shut it behind her, he stood there with his hand on the knob, his mind racing.

What if Toup had lied to him? What if this mystery woman lived not in Rock but in those cottages for hire between Padstow and Prideaux Place? Was this how Harry had met her? He kept his boat there.

But that would mean that the man in the third cottage had lied as well. A young married couple and a pair of spinsters . . .

Saunders was a banker’s son. He could afford to bribe the landlord.

It would be fairly unusual for a young single woman to live alone in an isolated cottage let for the summer. And Toup had said he couldn’t allow her to live at the vicarage without a chaperone, indicating that she was indeed traveling alone.

But if she did live by herself in the cottage above where Saunders beached the dinghy, and she appeared on his arm at Sunday services, a stranger who kept to herself, speculation would be rampant, her connection with the vicar notwithstanding. Was Toup aware of where she was staying? Or had he been lied to as well?

Rutledge could see, all at once, why Victoria Grenville would have been angry with the banker’s son for flirting with
her,
while he was involved with this stranger. Using his flirtation as a cover for an affair. A Grenville would not have found that either amusing or even endurable.

It didn’t sound like the Harry Saunders everyone had described to him, but Rutledge could see how appearances might be one thing, reality another.

Even the saints sometimes had feet of clay . . .

But would Victoria Grenville be angry enough—would she feel she had been embarrassed enough by Saunders—that when the opportunity came her way, she might drop an oar on his head?

He found it hard to believe.

But had that been what she had been counting on, before Trevose appeared on the scene? That no one would think Victoria Grenville was capable of murder?

Her mother had been the cause, however inadvertently, in one man’s death. Was
she
involved in another’s?

Rutledge realized that he was still standing there, his hand on the doorknob.

He stepped out into the passage, just as Kate was walking toward the library door.

Moving swiftly, searching the passage to make sure they were alone, he caught her arm and laid his finger on his lips, to warn her not to speak.

“Have you been summoned to the library?” he asked softly.

She nodded.

“Whatever happens, don’t let your father take you to London. It will mean an order for your immediate arrest and that of the others as well. You’re safer by far here than in a prison cell.”

“They won’t let us go. Not now that Harry’s dead,” she answered him. “I knew that as soon as I heard the news. Poor man.” She hesitated. “Ian. It will be all right, won’t it? In the end?”

He released her arm, stepping back. He couldn’t lie to her. “I’m doing my best. Let’s pray it’s enough.”

H
e had only just reached the drawing room door when there was a general exodus from the library. He could hear Major Gordon greeting his daughter as St. Ives and Grenville left the room, with Pendennis in tow. He turned and waited, preparing himself for the verdict.

Grenville was grim. Pendennis looked defeated. St. Ives was still quite angry.

“Stubborn fool,” he heard St. Ives say under his breath.

It had ended in a draw, Rutledge thought. But in favor of the accused.

Grenville stopped. “I’ve to inform you, Inspector, that I feel it is for the best for these young women to remain in my charge. I recognize that the circumstances now are different, that this is a murder investigation. But I do not feel that there is anything to be gained by incarcerating them. I can appreciate the despair the Saunderses are feeling, but I would be failing in my duty as magistrate if I agree to their imprisonment for the sake of appearances.”

“You do realize,” Rutledge said, “to be perfectly clear about it, the police have not been able to question the victim. We have never been able to ask him what he believed actually happened there in the boat. It would have been very useful, if we could have done so. It is now a matter of the word of the farmer, Trevose, and the word of your daughters.”

Grenville’s face darkened. “Are you telling me that you want to see the accused taken away to gaol?”

“No, I am not. I am telling you that as their gaoler, you must remember that you are just that, and not a father. Or in loco parentis for Gordon, Langley, and St. Ives. You must see that they are kept close. For their own safety as well as a matter of duty.”

Grenville stared at Rutledge. He was not accustomed to being told where his duty lay. Certainly not by a policeman. And then he seemed to realize that Pendennis was still standing there with them, all ears. That undoubtedly the constable would report this conversation to the grieving parents of the dead man.

He cleared his throat, as if that action also cleared his head, and then responded with dignity. “I do understand, Inspector. I will not show favoritism, I will not allow them privileges that are not permitted by their circumstances, and I will stand surety for their appearance if called upon to answer these charges in court.”

“Then I rely on your good faith. Constable?”

Pendennis nodded. “I have no choice but to do the same.”

Grenville glanced at St. Ives, then turned to walk Pendennis and Rutledge to the door, the good host. Or as near to that as he could muster. St. Ives remained where he was.

Grenville saw them out punctiliously.

Pendennis, turning toward his bicycle, glanced at the closed door. He said, for Rutledge’s ears only, “I’m not happy about this. What am I to tell Mr. and Mrs. Saunders? Their son is
dead
.”

“There’s rope in the boot,” Rutledge said. “We’ll lash your bicycle to the motorcar and I’ll drive you back to the village. We’ll talk about it on the way.”

“I’d prefer to ride on my own, sir. If you please.”

“Then you’ll stop at the gate. We can talk there.”

He cranked the motorcar and followed Pendennis down the drive, wondering as he did if the constable would wait for him there.

He did. Rutledge left the motor running to signify that he had no intention of holding up the constable for very long. The time for argument had, in fact, long since past. He got down, walked to where the constable was standing, and said, “You disagree with Grenville’s decision.” It was a statement, not a question.

“I do, sir. Harry Saunders is dead. There must be an inquest, binding those four young women over for trial. It’s not right that they aren’t in Bodmin Gaol.”

“I have not forgot. Grenville will see to scheduling the inquest. But I also remember that these same four women, even in a state of distress, still claimed that what happened out there on the water was an accident. However it might have looked to Trevose on the riverbank. And Trevose has also claimed that Saunders was in the Grenville rowing boat at the start of this business, and had been shoved overboard and held under the water to drown. Since then we’ve discovered the dinghy at the bottom of the river. Just as the four accused told us. What else is incorrect in his statement? Until the inquest decides, we will treat the young women with respect.”

“If they were anyone else, they would be in custody while you investigated the truth of the accusation. Sir,” Pendennis said stubbornly.

“When was the last time you were in Bodmin Gaol? Would you care to see your own daughter sent there?”

“I have no daughter, sir!”

“Yes, Constable,” Rutledge responded patiently. “I was speaking in general terms. Any young woman of your acquaintance, then. A sister. A friend.”

Pendennis hesitated.

“Bodmin was considered a proper place to keep the Crown Jewels safe during the war. Surely that recommends it?” Rutledge asked.

“But Harry Saunders—do you seriously believe, sir, that they will be found not guilty? That they have spoken the truth, and Trevose is lying?”

Rutledge could almost hear his thoughts—that Inspector Barrington wouldn’t have handled the situation in this manner. That Barrington wasn’t acquainted with one of the accused. Or was that his own conscience speaking?

“I shall want to know more about who put those holes in the bottom of Harry Saunders’s boat before I parcel out guilt or innocence. Did you mention that problem to Grenville?”

Constable Pendennis drew himself up stiffly. “I don’t gossip. Sir. And you asked me not to say anything.”

“Good man. Whoever interfered with the dinghy knew what he or she was doing. Holes placed carefully so that it would take on water slowly, well into midriver and far from help. Until I’m satisfied on that point, I can’t in good conscience close this inquiry. If the four women are guilty of causing Saunders’s death, then part of the responsibility surely belongs to whoever put him in peril in the first place.” Rutledge looked up as a cart came rattling by, the man holding the reins staring with interest at two policemen standing at the gates of Padstow Place. He waited, watching it until it had gone around the next bend in the road. “Can you understand why I am reluctant to listen to Saunders calling for their blood, reluctant to hurry them off to Wadebridge or Bodmin, until I know who else wanted Harry Saunders to die in the river that day? You can see these holes for yourself, if you wish.”