No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (9 page)

7

H
arry Saunders died without regaining consciousness at a little after seven that evening.

Word was brought to Constable Pendennis, who in his turn came at once to the inn to pass the news on to Rutledge.

“Are you certain of your news, Constable? It was from a trustworthy source?”

“Yes, sir, it was one of the doctor’s nurses. It’s murder, now,” he said. “I shall have to ask Mr. Grenville if he will bring Miss Grenville and her friends in to be charged. There’s no room in the police station here for them. Only one cell, and no matron. I shall have to send them to Padstow or Wadebridge.”

“I’d rather have them remain where they are,” Rutledge told him. They were in the parlor of the inn, speaking quietly so that no one in the bar in the next room could hear them. “I will need to speak to them, and there’s evidence still to be examined.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but now that young Saunders is dead, people will expect it. Murder changes the complexion of the inquiry.”

“It does. And I will take them into custody myself when the time comes.”

“I can’t spare anyone to stand guard at the house.”

“I think Mr. Grenville’s word will be sufficient. What did you learn from the house-to-house canvass? Did anyone see Saunders out in his boat that same afternoon? Or have a better view of the river and what was going on?”

“The constables from Padstow couldn’t find anyone who had seen anything. I find that very queer. All those windows overlooking the mole and the river? But no one has come forward.”

How many people’s livelihoods, he wondered, depended in some way on the Grenville estate or family? Or was it a simple matter of not wanting to be brought in to testify? The bank was important in the life of the village now, and people might not wish to stand up in court and give evidence at all.

“I’ll drive to the Place and tell them the news. And make certain that Grenville understands his responsibilities.”

“They have the money to spirit their daughters away to the south of France or even America. The Grenvilles and the St. Iveses. The others as well, to be sure.”

“You’re chasing shadows, Constable. And if these were your daughters, would you wish them in a cell anywhere?”

He had the grace to look away, reconciling his need to see things properly done and the fact that if the evidence was wrong, he would make the Grenvilles and the St. Iveses very angry with him.

“Very well, sir. If you insist.”

“I’ll take full blame, Constable.”

He set out five minutes later to Padstow Place.

The family had just sat down to dinner.

Grenville came out to speak to him, saying, “Can’t it wait until we’ve finished our meal?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. I’ve just received word from Padstow. Harry Saunders has died of his head injury. This means that the charge of attempted murder has now been changed to one of murder.”

Grenville stared at him. “Are you sure, man?”

“Word was brought by one of Dr. Carrick’s nurses.”

Grenville turned to look toward the dining room, then swung back to face Rutledge.

“If you are here to take my daughter and my guests in to a cell, I will tell you as Chief Magistrate that I will not allow it.”

“For the time being, I’ve persuaded the constable to leave them where they are. The weather is clearing; tomorrow I should be able to find Saunders’s boat. Until I have that, I can postpone any official action. If it’s not there, then we’re back to the question of whether or not Saunders was in your rowboat, what he was doing there, and how he came to be in the water.”

“Good God,” Grenville said again, absently rubbing his chin with one finger as he tried to think. “Thank you. And I believe it would be best to say nothing to my wife or the young ladies. Not tonight. The news will keep until tomorrow. Let them rest.” He looked up at the lamp that lit the entry and the stairs, an ornate but small chandelier. “I’ve lost my only son. I am sorry for Saunders and his wife. I know what that grief is like.”

“Is Major Gordon still here?”

“He’s on his way to London. God, I shall have to send a telegram to him, and to Langley. Have you told St. Ives?”

“That’s where I’m going when I leave here.”

“He’ll find it as difficult to accept as I do. There’s George, you see. Well. I must return to the dining room and keep this to myself as best I can. Good evening.”

Rutledge left and drove on until he found the gates to the St. Ives house. It was not the size of Padstow Place, but even in the cloudy darkness, Rutledge could see that it was nearly as old as the Grenvilles’.

On the ornate gates, standing wide, was the image of a Cornish chough, the large glossy black bird with the down-curving red beak and red legs. It was depicted in soaring flight, with its long wings and short tail caught beautifully, and red enamel had been applied to the black of the iron plate to show the legs and beak.

One legend had it that as King Arthur died, he was transformed into a Cornish chough, and his spirit still watched over England.

On the gateposts were brass placards, one to each side, giving the name Chough Hall in English to the right, and presumably in Cornish to the left.

The house rose three stories above the drive, crenellated at the roofline, and spread out into two smaller wings on either side. The drive stopped at a set of three steps that led up to a broad terrace lined with stone urns, and the iron-studded wooden door was set deep in arched stonework.

He lifted a brass knocker in the shape of the St. Ives coat of arms, and waited several minutes before someone answered the door.

It was a manservant, dressed in black. “The family is not receiving this evening,” he said.

“I’m from Scotland Yard. Please tell Mr. St. Ives that I’m here.”

The man went away, and soon afterward St. Ives himself came to the door.

“Rutledge? Grenville told me he’d spoken to you. I was coming myself to speak to you today, but the weather stopped me.”

St. Ives was older than Grenville by some years. A heavyset man, a head shorter than Rutledge, and balding.

“Come in, then. I was in my study.”

Rutledge followed him into the interior, lit by only one lamp and filled with shadows.

“We keep early hours without Elaine here,” St. Ives was saying. “My son just went up.”

There was a fire on the hearth of the comfortable room, bookshelves lining two walls, a desk to one side, and leather chairs ranged around the hearth. There was paneling where there were no shelves, and several paintings hung in those spaces. Rutledge could see the resemblance to what appeared to be ancestral portraits going back to the 1700s, judging from the style of clothes.

“Sit down. Whisky? It’s a raw night.”

“Thank you, sir, but no.”

“Bad news? Well, spit it out, man. We’ve been no stranger to it of late.”

“Harry Saunders died earlier this evening.”

St. Ives sat down hastily, as if the air had been let out of him. “I have been prepared for that. At least I thought I was. But it’s a shock to hear it, all the same. Have you told Grenville?”

“I’ve just come from there.”

“How did my daughter take such news?”

“The family was at dinner. Grenville thought it best to wait until tomorrow.”

“Yes, well, he’s right there. Elaine wouldn’t sleep a wink, worrying about what’s to happen next.” He sprang to his feet again as he realized what Rutledge’s call must mean. “Here! You’re not taking them back to that damned cell, are you?”

“Not yet. But you must realize that it will happen sooner rather than later. Unless someone else comes forward to give us a different account from the one Trevose has given. Constable Pendennis has had men canvassing the village houses with windows overlooking the river. No one has admitted to seeing anything.”

“Fools,” he said succinctly. “But then we’re used to the river being there. We don’t sit and stare at it by the hour. We have better things to do. I’ve seen visitors do that, and it’s all very well if you’re on holiday. But listen to me. Elaine is not fit to sit in a prison cell for months on end. She wasn’t always of such a nervous disposition. When Stephen was killed, I thought we’d lose her as well. Then her mother died of that damned Spanish flu, and her brother came home an invalid. She’s seen how fragile life can be, and it’s changed her. She cries over a dead mouse, for God’s sake. What will happen to her in a prison, where the roughest of inmates will prey on her?” He looked at Rutledge. “I won’t allow it. You must understand me on this, Rutledge.”

“I find it hard to believe that your daughter was a party to any attempt to kill Saunders—but she has been accused of the crime, and that will have to be dealt with.”

“We’ll see about that,” St. Ives retorted grimly. “If I have to apply to the King himself, I’ll protect her. He has a family, he will appreciate a father’s fears.”

Rutledge said nothing. The King would have no authority here. Still, he remembered when, as a newly minted constable, he’d heard the older men talk about the conditions under which the suffragettes had lived in prison, and their treatment. It had been punitive, designed to deter them from some of their more dramatic behavior. But prison was still harsh, and the other inmates would make life wretched for women like Miss St. Ives, gently reared and unprepared for what she would find there.

“I’ll go to see her in the morning,” St. Ives was saying. “She’ll be sick with worry. It might even be possible to persuade the others to clear her name.
Damn the man,
” he added vehemently, and Rutledge wasn’t certain whether he was referring to Saunders or Trevose.

“They can’t clear her name. To say that Miss St. Ives had taken no part in the drowning will condemn them. What we need is fresh evidence, a new witness to come forward.”

“I’ll offer a substantial reward. That ought to bring the most reluctant witness out of hiding.”

“Along with every poor fisherman or farmer eager to claim it, even if it requires them to perjure themselves. What’s more, you can’t be sure you’ll be given the information you’re searching for. It could make matters worse.”

St. Ives swore. “I don’t like this feeling of helplessness, Rutledge. It doesn’t suit me, damn it.”

“Nor does it suit me. But I’m bound to follow the law.” He rose to take his leave. “Grenville will send telegrams to Langley and Major Gordon with the news of Saunders’s death. It would be advisable for all of you to keep your heads. Otherwise you will do more harm than good threatening to take matters into your own hands.”

“Easy for you to say,” St. Ives answered shortly. And then he took a deep breath. “Damn it, Rutledge, I know you are doing your best here, but surely there’s a way around this?”

“Much will depend,” he said, “on how Saunders’s parents take the death of their only child.”

“Well, putting my only daughter in prison won’t bring their son back.”

“Did you know Harry Saunders?”

“I’ve seen him in the bank—he’s been learning the trade—and in the village. I doubt I’ve exchanged a dozen words with him. Nice enough lad, as far as I could tell. Polite and all that. What he was doing out on the river that day still bewilders me. Foolish enough of Victoria to go boating.”

He walked with Rutledge as far as the outer door, and said in parting, “Look, give me a few days to sort this business out. There must be something my lawyers can do. God knows that barrister charges enough.”

“I’ll do what I can, but I must remind you that the best hope your daughter has is the truth.”

“She is not a liar,” St. Ives said angrily. “She has no reason to lie.”

“I haven’t suggested she is. But she may feel some loyalty to her friends.”

“We’ll see about that,” St. Ives snapped. “Good night to you, sir.”

And the door swung shut almost on Rutledge’s heels.

He had done what he could, he told himself, cranking the motorcar and then turning down the dark, twisting drive.

I
t was not a good night. Rutledge awoke twice, to sit straight up in bed, staring out through the windows at a darkness that was so pervasive in the countryside. No streetlamps, very few evening parties or concerts, everyone in bed by nine, ten at the latest.

The first time he’d had a tangled dream involving Olivia Marlowe, Kate Gordon, and her cousin Jean. He had been in the water, knowing that he only had enough strength left to bring one in to shore. And they were pleading with him as he struggled to find a way to save them all. The burden of decision had had nothing to do with the fact that Olivia Marlowe and Jean had been dead for several months. There in the swift running channel of the Camel, they were very much alive, eyes large and pleading in pale faces, hands frantically reaching for him. And in desperation he’d forced himself to wake up, to end the nightmare before it became unbearable.

He thought afterward that the second dream had been brought on by the tension of the first. For this time Hamish was there, lying just above him as the earth inexorably pulled them down into the suffocating darkness. The shell had deafened him, he couldn’t hear anything or see anything, but he could feel the fabric of a man’s tunic pressed against his face, and the weight of the man’s body pressing him even deeper into the earth. He had tried to push it away, to escape from the burden above him, even as he knew it was hopeless. A small pocket of air between him and the body was all that was keeping him alive, and when that was gone, he would be dead too. He couldn’t resign himself to dying that way, using all his strength, realizing he was using all that remained of his air as well. In real life, he had lost consciousness just seconds before he’d been found, but in this particular dream, somehow he could see the face of the corpse, black as it was in that crater, and he nearly flung himself out of bed to escape it.

His chest heaving, he tried to steady his heartbeat, and then he put his head into his hands and stifled the screams that were still echoing in his ears.

It was some time before he realized that he hadn’t screamed, for no one came pounding on the door, no one called out to him to ask what was wrong. And yet the cries were so vivid in his mind that his ears rang for several minutes.