Todd, Charles (34 page)

Rutledge decided to walk to Brunswick's house. The morning was fair. The streets were filled with people doing their marketing, and a farmer was bringing in half a dozen pigs, their pink backs bouncing down the middle of the street as motorcars and lorries pulled to one side.

Brunswick didn't answer his door, and Rutledge walked on to the church, thinking that the organist might have gone to practice for the Sunday morning services. In fact, as he crossed the churchyard, he could hear music pouring out the open door. He stepped inside.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that there were two women kneeling by the front of the church, arranging flowers in tall vases, and somewhere the rector, Mr. Heller, was deep in conversation with a young man, their voices carrying but not their words.

The church was larger inside than it appeared to be outside, with a wagon roof and no columns. As Rutledge passed by, Heller caught his eye and nodded but continued with his conversation. Brunswick, in the organ loft, paused between hymns, but was playing again by the time Rutledge had climbed the stairs and come to stand by him.

"I'm busy," Brunswick said over the crash of the music.

Rutledge's posture was that of a man content to wait through the next five hours if necessary.

After a time, Rutledge said, "My mother was a pianist, quite a fine one in fact. Your interpretation of that last piece was very different from hers."

With an abrupt gesture of annoyance, Brunswick lifted his fingers and feet, letting the pipes fall silent. Everyone in the church looked up, the two women and the two men, as if after the music, the sudden stillness was deafening.

"If you've come to take me into custody, get on with it. Otherwise you're breaking my concentration."

"Do you wish to talk to me here, where everyone can hear, or elsewhere?"

Brunswick got to his feet, stretching his shoulders. "We can walk in the churchyard."

They went down to the door and into the sunlight, warmer outside after the chill trapped within the stone walls of the church.

"The talk of Cambury is that Mr. Jones is your man. Why should you need to speak to me?"

As they walked among the gravestones, Rutledge said, "I've often wondered if a guilty man ever spares a thought for the poor bastard who is sacrificed in his stead. If you were the killer, would you speak up to set Jones free?"

"I don't see that this is something I need to consider. Unless of course you aren't confident of your ability to judge who is guilty and who isn't," Brunswick countered.

Rutledge laughed. "Meanwhile," he went on, "I've learned a great deal more about your relationship with your wife. It appears not to have been a very happy one. At least for her."

"I thought you'd come to Cambury to find out who killed Quarles, not to chastise someone who has already said everything that can be said to himself. I wasn't a very good husband."

"If you killed one," Rutledge put it to him, "the chances are very good that you killed the other. Or conversely, if you were wrong about one of them, then the odds are you were also wrong about the other."

"Prove that I killed either one."

Rutledge was silent for ten yards or more. "I don't think your quarrel with the dead man has anything to do with jealousy. I believed you at first, and you must have believed it yourself in a way. It can't explain all the evidence I'm looking at, and I'm beginning to believe there's more to this than meets the eye. You abused your wife because you were already angry. You accused Quarles because you knew your wife was vulnerable to kindness after your own behavior, and her shocking death made you want to blame
her,
not yourself. I think you're relying on the general public's view of Harold Quarles, to call him a monster and excuse yourself from blaming him for all your ills because that's easier than facing the truth. I think it's time you took a long look in your mirror."

There was an inadvertent movement beside him.

"The police must look at hard fact. What we feel, what we think doesn't matter. There appears to be enough fact lying about. And Inspector Padgett would like nothing better than to connect one death with the other. If your conscience is clear over your wife's suicide, then so be it. It's my responsibility to determine what part you played—if any—in Harold Quarles's murder. But once that is done, Padgett will search for connections, and see them where there may be nothing at all."

"All right, I wanted him dead. I make no secret of that. Look at it any way you care to. Why is my own affair."

Touché,
Rutledge thought to himself. "What you wanted isn't at issue. You can't be hanged for that. What counts is whether you lifted your hand with a weapon in it, and struck Harold Quarles on the back of his head."

Brunswick turned to look at Rutledge, his face unreadable. "I would have watched him die. I would have wanted him to see whose hand it was. And I'd have probably throttled him, not struck him." Rutledge said, "It doesn't always work out that way. When the chance arises, sometimes the choice of weapon depends on where you are and why you aren't prepared."

"I've told you I was in my bed. Either take me into custody or leave me alone. I'm not giving you the satisfaction of a confession of my sins so that you can sort them out and pick the one that will hang me." Rutledge said pensively, "I think Quarles pitied your wife. It's one of the few decent things we've learned about him, that he tried to get her to proper medical care."

Brunswick wheeled to face him, his voice savage, his eyes narrowed with his anger. "You know nothing about my wife. And you know damned little about Harold Quarles. Well, I've made a study of the man. Where did he come from? Do you know? I went to Newcastle to see for myself. There's a Quarles family plot, right enough, but it's long since been moved to a proper churchyard some twenty miles away. The village where they lived is so black with coal dust it's almost invisible, roofs fallen in, windows gone. The mine's closed, the main shaft damaged beyond repair. The owners got as much coal as they could out of it and the miners they employed, and simply abandoned both. The sons followed Quarles's father into the mines and died young, lung rot and accidents. The father was already dead by that time. The mother was dead by 1903. Nobody remembers Harold. Isn't that strange? It's as if he never existed. But one old crone who'd lived in the derelict village told me she thought perhaps there was another boy who ran away to join the army and never came home again. So who is our Harold Quarles, I ask you? And if he doesn't exist, how can anyone kill him?" Rutledge took a step back, the vehemence of Brunswick's attack unexpected.

Hamish, busy at the edges of Rutledge's mind, was a distraction as he tried to assimilate what Brunswick had told him.

If Penrith hadn't returned home after he joined the army—and now it appeared that Quarles might have done the same thing—was that where they'd first met? And forged a friendship that took them from lowly beginnings to a very successful partnership? In war men were thrown together in circumstances that brought them closer than brothers, cutting across class lines, age, and experience. In their case, the Boer War?

He and Hamish were examples of that: men who might have passed each other on a London street without a second glance, but in the context of the trenches they had seen each other as comrades in the battle to survive. They had learned from each other, trusted each other, and protected their men in a common bond that in fact hadn't ended with death.

Rutledge said to Brunswick, "It's all well and good to make a study of the man's life. But that still leaves us with his death. There's no one left in the north who cares if he lived or died. You've just pointed that out. So we're back to Cambury."

"You aren't listening, are you? Did it ever occur to you that Harold Quarles is a mystery because he's got something to hide? There are almost no traces of him, anywhere you look. He has a wife and a son, and I'll wager you they know less about him than I do. He was a liar, he was secretive, he used people for his own ends. What made him that way? That's what I wanted to know. He owed me for what happened to my wife, and he didn't care."

Rutledge remembered what Heller, the rector, had said to him. He repeated it now. "It's not our place to judge. The police can only deal with laws that are broken. If he has never broken a law, then we can do nothing."

Brunswick put a hand to his forehead, as if it ached. "I've always tried to live my life as a moral man. And where has it taken me? Into the jaws of despair. If you want to hang someone, hang me and be done with it. Let Harold Quarles, whoever he may be, claim one last victim."

He turned on his heel and walked back toward the church.

As Brunswick went in through the church door, squaring his shoulders as if shaking off their conversation, Rutledge thought, Stephenson couldn't bring himself to act. In his eyes, it was an appalling failure. This man is ridden by different demons.

Hamish said, "Aye. He doesna' know what he wants."

"On the contrary. I think he may have a taste for martyrdom, and hasn't discovered it yet. Dreamers often do."

"He didna' kill his wife."

"I'm beginning to believe he didn't. But that's neither here nor there. Why was he so obsessed with Harold Quarles's past? To excuse his murder by claiming the man was evil to start with?"

The rector was coming across the churchyard toward him, a frown on his face.

"What did you say to Michael? He's sitting there in front of the organ, not touching the keys."

Rutledge said, "It's my responsibility to speak to anyone who might have had a reason to kill Quarles."

"But Michael hasn't killed anyone, has he? It's only because he admits how he felt about the man that you believe he might have. Inspector Padgett has convinced you that Michael murdered his wife, and therefore he wanted to kill Quarles as well. But many of us don't see it that way. It was a tragedy, and he was out of his mind with grief and distress when she died. He didn't understand her suicide. It was a betrayal to him, an admission of guilt. It was the only reason he could think of for her to leave him, you see. That someone had turned her away from him."

"Apparently he didn't behave very well toward her when she was alive."

"Yes, it could be true, though I never saw evidence of it. I do know they weren't very happy together long before Hazel went to work for Quarles. So you see, if he'd intended to take matters into his own hands and kill Harold Quarles, he'd have done it then and there, in that confused and bitter state of mind. And he didn't. That's to his credit, don't you see?"

"If he didn't intend to kill him, why has Brunswick spent a good deal of his spare time of late looking into Quarles's past? What good is it?"

Heller was surprised. "Has he been doing such a thing? He's never said anything about it to me. What is he looking for, for heaven's sake?"

"I don't know. I don't know that he himself understands what he's after."

"Yes, well, that may be true." Curiosity got the better of him. "Has he found something?"

"Very little. I don't think Quarles wanted his history to be found. Well enough to boast about its simplicity, but not to have the truth about it brought into the open. The poor are not necessarily saints. And sinners do have some goodness in them. Isn't that what the church teaches?"

Heller took a deep breath. "Back to Michael. Do give him the benefit of the doubt. There's much healing left to do."

"I'll bear that in mind," Rutledge answered mildly. He turned to walk back toward the church, and Heller followed him. "We aren't going to solve this dilemma, Mr. Heller, until we have our killer. And to that end, I must go on questioning people, however unpleasant it must be."

Heller said nothing, keeping pace beside him, his mind elsewhere. As they parted at the corner of the churchyard, he broke his silence. "I will pray for you to be granted wisdom, Inspector."

"It might be more beneficial to your flock if you prayed for wisdom for Inspector Padgett as well."

Heller smiled. "I already do that, my boy." He glanced upward, where a flight of rooks came to perch on the pinnacles of the church tower. After a moment he said, "I've been told that Mrs. Quarles is home again, with her son. They're to collect her husband's body and take it north for burial. I did wonder why Mrs. Quarles hadn't asked me to preside over a brief service here, before her husband was taken north. But that's her decision to make, of course."

"Perhaps here in Cambury, you know him better than Mrs. Quarles wishes."

Heller sighed. "I can tell you how it will be. Once Mr. Quarles has left the village, it will be as if he never was. We'll not talk about his irritating qualities, because of course he's dead. There will be a family bequest to the church, and we'll name something after him, and forget him. It's a poor epitaph for a man who was so forceful in life."

"Did you know that Quarles's partner, Davis Penrith, was the son of a curate?"

"Actually I believe Mr. Quarles brought that up once in a conversation. He seemed to find it amusing."

"Because it wasn't the truth, or because Penrith didn't live up to his father's calling?"

"I have no idea. But Mr. Quarles did say that he didn't have to fear his partner, because the man would never turn against him. Or to be more precise, he said the one person he'd never feared was his partner, because Penrith would never have the courage to turn against him."