A Lonely Death (35 page)

Rutledge surged to his feet again, catching Summers off balance, and the two men fell hard against a footstone, flailing at an adversary neither of them could see in the thick shadows of the church tower.

For an instant Rutledge had a solid grip on the man’s upper arm, spinning him as they got to their feet, but his boots slipped in the bruised grass, and Summers broke free. He ran, only to fall headlong over something underfoot. Rutledge lunged forward, missed him, and saw him race toward the church porch and the deeper shadows of the apse beyond.

Rutledge gave chase, launched himself at the figure just ahead, and brought Summers down, knocking the wind out of both of them.

Rutledge was the first to recover, but the other man was fast, and breathing hard, he set off again, back the way he had come, toward the west door of the church. He got it open before Rutledge could stop him, and then tried to slam it shut, catching one of Rutledge’s hands as he did.

Setting his teeth, Rutledge pulled at the edge of the door, bracing himself, and when Summers suddenly let the door go, it opened so fast that he was flung against the carved stone arch. He nearly cracked his head against the protruding foot of a saint, but using the wall as a fulcrum, rebounded with such speed that he was inside the entrance to the church before Summers could manage the inner door into the sanctuary. Something brushed his face, and he grunted with shock at a touch so close and so human. Then he realized that it was not a hand but the frayed end of the bell rope. He caught it again somehow, and leapt high on it, coming down with all his weight on it.

High above in the tower, the bell clanged with a deafening discord.

Two short blasts of a whistle—it was the nearest he could come to the signal for needing help. But before he could ring the bell again, Summers was on him, knocking him to one side. Rutledge whirled as he crashed into the wall, expecting Summers to be in front of him now.

He judged it wrong.

The garrote this time brushed his ear and he jerked sideways, knocking against the low table where church information and items for sale were usually kept. It went over in a crash, and Summers yelled in pain as one of the legs unexpectedly clipped him, and he went down.

They were fairly equally matched, although Rutledge had the advantage of height. He felt for the wildly swinging bell rope, caught it, and leapt high a second time. But Summers reached up as he was scrambling to his feet, and seized Rutledge’s ankle, pulling him back. Still, he managed to keep his grip on the rope, and again the bell sounded a harsh note, rocking on its cradle to ring a second and then a third time before Summers could stop him.

Kicking out with his free foot, Rutledge caught Summers in the throat, for he choked on a cough and released his hold.

Letting go of the bell rope, Rutledge dropped to the stone flagging, trying to pick up movement and locate Summers. But he waited a second too long, for something brushed his shoulder, then a fist slammed into the edge of his jaw. Rutledge’s head snapped back, and he saw stars.

The other man was on him then, pinning him half against the wall, half against the door into the sanctuary. Shaking his head to clear it, Rutledge broke the hold, lashing out in his turn, and Summers stumbled backward over something that had fallen from the overturned table, sending it bouncing across the floor, and he went down. It was the break that Rutledge was looking for, and he caught at the fabric of the man’s lapel, held on hard with one hand, and with the other, went for where he guessed the man’s body would be. The blow sank into yielding flesh, and he heard the whoosh of air as Summers fought to breathe again.

Rutledge was on the point of following up his advantage just as the outer church door scraped open and the beam of a torch swept them.

Both combatants froze, then turned as one to stare into the brilliant light as Mr. Ottley said sternly, “This is a house of God. Get out of here now.”

The man in Rutledge’s grasp, using all his strength, broke free, spun the rector into Rutledge’s arms, and was gone.

The rector lost his balance and went down, taking Rutledge to one knee as the torch went skittering across the stone floor like a wild thing, the spinning light blinding both of them. Rutledge heaved Mr. Ottley away and was out the door after Summers, unaware he had not gone far.

This time the garrote didn’t miss. It whipped over Rutledge’s head and drew across his throat so quickly he was helpless to stop it.

And Summers pulled hard, with a force that was backed by anger and an intense will.

Rutledge spun, jerking his revolver from his pocket and raising it in the same motion. The barrel caught Summers with such force across the temple that he went down, the garrote slipping through his hands.

Just then the church door opened and the rector barreled out, torch in hand, shouting Rutledge’s name. The beam caught Rutledge in the eyes, and Ottley stopped short.

“At my feet, damn it,” he snapped, and the torch swept downward.

“Who is that?” Mr. Ottley asked, peering at the slack, unconscious face. “I’ve never seen him before!” There was astonishment and relief in his voice.

“At a guess, one Thomas Summers.”

The rector moved closer, frowning. “Are you sure? That doesn’t look like the Summers lad.”

“You haven’t seen him in fifteen years. He’s changed. He’s a man now, not a boy.”

Ottley pointed to the blood on the side of the unconscious man’s face. “Did you kill him?”

“No. But he’ll have one hell of a headache when he comes to his senses,” Rutledge said with some satisfaction, shoving his revolver back into his pocket.

His tone brought the flashlight upward, so that Ottley could study his face, but it stopped at Rutledge’s throat.
“What in God’s name—”

“The garrote. He tried to kill me.”

Ottley was about to say more when they heard shouting from the direction of the Hastings Road and Norman came charging into the churchyard. “What the hell is happening?”

As he reached the small tableau picked out by Ottley’s torch, he added, “We heard the bell, but from where Petty stood, he could see a light in the school. He was certain someone was moving around in that room. Finally I went inside myself. We found a candle lit and a piece of paper on a string, hanging over it. When the candle flickered, the paper moved. We came here—” Norman ran out of words, staring from Rutledge to the rector, and finally noticing the third man lying in the shadows at Rutledge’s feet.

“He left the school before we got there,” Rutledge said. “He’s been following Tuttle. From Eastfield to Hastings and back to Eastfield, I should think. I got in his way.”

Norman stepped across to take the torch from the rector’s hand and shine it down at Summers.

“Hold it steady,” Rutledge said, and stooped to go through Summers’s pockets.

There was no identification in any of them. Only, in a breast pocket, a single identity disc intended for his next victim’s mouth.

Rutledge looked at it, saw the name, and said nothing. He passed it on to Norman, who brought the torch up to see it more clearly. “Well. We needn’t ask if you’re this man. Bertie Grimes, corporal, the Yorkshire Rifles.”

As he handed it back to Rutledge he saw what was around his neck.

“What the hell did he do to you?” Constable Walker asked, stepping forward for a closer look.

Rutledge unwound the garrote and passed it to Inspector Norman. “The murder weapon.”

“Yes, that’s the garrote,” Walker was saying as he took it. “But what’s that around your throat?”

Rutledge reached up and touched the flanged band that encircled his throat. It was what he and the ironmonger’s assistant had spent most of the afternoon devising: the only thing he could think of to protect against a garrote. “A gorget. Of a sort. It’s meant to be similar to the armor a knight wore around his neck and shoulders to protect them. The ironmonger will have to cut it off. And the sooner the better. Meanwhile, we ought to take Summers to Dr. Gooding. In the event I hit him harder than I meant to.”

But as they trooped toward Dr. Gooding’s, carrying Summers on a table the rector brought from the church, the man came round, dazed and at first hardly coherent. And then finally aware of where he was, he started to struggle, only to be forced down by the ungentle hands of the constables carrying him. Subsiding, he lay there with one arm flung over his eyes.

Gooding, roused from sleep, pronounced Summers well enough to be taken to Hastings and charged with multiple counts of murder. Rutledge looked at the men surrounding the patient and said, “Norman, if you’ll contact Dover police, and ask that a former sergeant named Bell bring the witness he has in his keeping to Hastings at his earliest convenience, we’ll have one more piece of our case settled.”

“Who is Bell? And what’s the name of the witness?” Norman asked. “This
is
Summers, isn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s Summers. Bell will explain. Will you give me five minutes alone with the prisoner?”

After a moment they did as they had been asked, but it was clear that Inspector Norman was not best pleased.

When they had shut the door behind them, Rutledge said to Summers, “Is your wife still alive? It won’t save you from hanging if you tell me. But there is someone very much interested in her condition.”

Summers was staring at him, his eyes intent. “Why should I help the police?”

“Do you hate her as much as you hated the others?”

“I didn’t hate her at all. I needed her money,” he said coldly.

“You can’t inherit any of it, if you’ve killed her. If she’s still alive and you haven’t treated her too badly, she might be induced to pay for your defense.”

“Not bloody likely,” he said harshly. “I killed her confounded little dog. As good as.”

Which told Rutledge that Mrs. Summers was still alive. Where?

“I’ll give you until nine o’clock in the morning to think that over and tell me where she is.”

Summers gingerly touched the side of his head. A red welt marked where Rutledge’s revolver had struck him. “You needn’t have hit me so damned hard.”

There was almost a whining note in his voice.

“Your fault for trying to garrote me,” Rutledge said unfeelingly. “Why didn’t you stop the killing when you could? Why not let Hopkins take the blame? Did your revenge matter so much that it was worth hanging for?”

“At first it was vengeance. I’d thought about it long enough. I decided it was time to show I had the backbone to do it. When they died, they were as alone as I was all my childhood. A lonely death in return for a lonely life.” Summers’s face changed, something in it that gave Rutledge pause. At length he said, as if it was unfathomable to him, “Then I found I liked planning and stalking and killing my victims. It brought the war back again. I hadn’t realized it then, but it was probably the happiest time of my life. I felt so
alive
.” He considered Rutledge. “You were in the war, at a guess. Do you know what I’m talking about? Did you feel it?”

There was an eagerness in his voice, a need to hear that others had been caught up as well.

Rutledge remembered the trenches, the stench of war, the broken bodies of the living, the torn, bloated corpses of the dead. The nightmare of trying to survive against all odds, and watching those under his command decimated day after day.

“No,” he said. “I never did. And I thank God.”

Turning on his heel, he left the room, telling Norman that the suspect was all his.

“What did you talk about?” Norman demanded. “I want to know.”

“About the war,” Rutledge said, and walked out of Dr. Gooding’s surgery.

25

T
hey brought the little dog into Inspector Norman’s office the next morning. He had already sent for Summers, who was sitting in a chair, stubbornly silent now.

Bell dropped the lead as Rutledge opened the door, and Muffin ran in, stopped short, cast a glance at Summers, and then rapidly swung around the room, frantically searching for the one person who wasn’t there. Summers stared at him as if he’d seen a ghost, but as the dog came full circle, he stopped in front of the man’s chair and began barking, surging forward and then back again, head down, neck outstretched and taut.

Bell, watching, said, “My God.”

“Get him away from me!” Summers demanded, drawing his feet under the chair, out of reach. “The bloody dog
bites
.”

Rutledge spoke over the ferocious display of anger as Muffin all but attacked Summers, teeth bared, ears back.

“Where is she? Or I’ll lock him in the cell with you.”

“Damn it, call him off.”

But Rutledge stood there, grimly watching as Muffin leapt closer, challenging the man in the chair.

Desperate, Summers kicked out, and Muffin got his ankle, holding on with the tenacity of his terrier ancestors. Summers screamed, stood up and tried to shake the dog off, but it was impossible. Bell, just behind Rutledge, started to step forward, but Rutledge put out an arm to stop him.

Summers cried, “All right, for God’s sake, I’ll tell you. Get him away from me—she’s in the Convent of the Claires. South of Paris. I swear it. Please—”

Meredith Channing had said something about convents.

“Why is she there?” Rutledge asked, holding up his hand to stop Bell.

“I told them she suffered hallucinations after a head injury,” he said rapidly. “That what she remembers is confused, erratic. There was never a pet dog, we were never in Sussex—they pitied me.”

Bell hurried forward and caught the dog by its collar, his voice firm, pulling Muffin back. It took some doing, and Summers’s ankle was bloody by the time Bell had separated them. Summers reached down and gripped it, swearing.

Bell turned reproachfully to Rutledge. “That was not right.”

“It was the only way,” Rutledge answered harshly. “He killed with impunity. He’d have left her there. She was no further use to him. Nor was her money, now.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the room while Bell soothed the dog and carried him down the passage to the motorcar that had brought him from Dover.

Norman left Summers slumped in his chair and followed Rutledge. “You’re a cold bastard when you want to be. And you’ve put Mickelson’s nose out of joint, bringing the suspect in. He’s to be released tomorrow—Mickelson—and sent to London to finish healing. He refuses to clear you, you know. He claims he’s uncertain. But we’ve found Summers’s motorcar. It’s very like yours. Mrs. Farrell-Smith was right on that score. I don’t think you’ll have much trouble over that business.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rutledge said, refusing to admit to Norman or anyone else that it did.

Norman said after a moment, “I’m curious. When did you bring your service revolver to Eastfield?”

Rutledge said, “I took it to France with me. Force of habit.” With that, he walked away, leaving Norman to stare after him.

A
fortnight later, when Rutledge had given his testimony at the inquest and returned to London, he asked Chief Inspector Cummins to meet him for lunch at a quiet restaurant where they could talk.

Cummins came in, sat down, and greeted Rutledge cheerfully. “I’m glad to see you survived. It must have been touch and go, according to my sources.”

For an instant Rutledge thought that Cummins was referring to that moment in the wasteland of the Somme, when he’d considered his future and decided against dying there. And then he understood. The reference was to Eastfield. “It was a close-run thing—whether I’d be hanged for murder or would bring in the real killer.”

“Why did he target Mickelson?”

“Apparently he’d seen Inspector Mickelson standing in the churchyard by his mother’s grave. He was afraid Mickelson was looking into his family’s past. It wasn’t true, of course, but it nearly got Mickelson killed, all the same. By the time he’d retrieved his motorcar and stopped Mickelson by the rectory gates, there was no opportunity to garrote him, and so he used a spanner.”

“I hear Mickelson is being bloody-minded about clearing you of any role in his attack.”

“He’s had an epiphany. So I’ve been told. The KC trying Summers—Julian Haliburton—has informed Mickelson that the Crown takes a dim view of muddying the evidence. Inspector Mickelson’s statement has officially exonerated me of all blame.” Rutledge didn’t add that it would be some time before his arrest on a charge of attempting to murder a fellow policeman had faded from the collective memory of the Yard. That anyone believed him capable of such an act still stung.

Cummins chuckled. “Yes, Haliburton is a stickler for accuracy.” His amusement faded. “You understand that you won’t be promoted to fill my shoes? Bloody stupid of Bowles, but there it is.”

“I hadn’t expected it,” Rutledge said. And yet he knew that he would have liked to follow a man like Cummins.

“On a more interesting subject than the Chief Superintendent, I haven’t thanked you for your help with the Stonehenge murder. This is more information than I’d ever hoped to find.”

“There’s something more,” Rutledge replied. “I think I know the name of the murder victim.”

Cummins was aghast. “I don’t believe it. How in hell’s name did you ever get to that?”

“We’d wondered why the knife was left in Hastings. It occurred to me that there must be another connection. At least a name to be going forward with. And what’s the most popular name in Hastings?”

“Robinson? Turner? Johnson?”

“William the Conqueror. The first of the Norman kings of England. There’s an Inspector Norman there, as well. While I was there giving evidence at the inquest, I asked one of his constables if there was anyone in the Inspector’s family who had gone missing in 1905. At first Petty thought I was trying to cause trouble with the police in Hastings, but then he told me that there were several families named Norman in that part of Sussex. And one of them, a William Norman, was lost in Peru in 1906. He was a schoolmaster who was eager to find another lost city of the Incas. As it happened, an American, Hiram Bingham, actually did find a lost city. Machu Picchu. This William Norman sailed for Peru on the twenty-second of June, 1905. The family was told he’d reached Peru safely, had gone into the jungle, and was never heard from again. He was declared dead seven years later.”

“To reach Peru, he’d have had to take passage on a ship going out there. Did he?”

“Yes. Apparently he did. Someone did.”

“Well, then, he isn’t our William Norman, is he?”

Rutledge signaled the waiter to bring their menu. “The report said that the captain of the S.S.
Navigator
had described Norman as the worst sailor in Christendom. He never left his cabin throughout the voyage, he was as green as anyone the captain had ever seen, and when he stepped off the ship, his legs would barely hold him upright. But he insisted that he was all right.”

“A great disguise, seasickness,” Cummins said dryly.

“You forget, the ship’s captain had never seen Norman. He was nothing more than a name on the manifest, and the few glimpses anyone had had of him.”

“Hmmm. Who then took his place? The killer?”

Rutledge said, “I expect we’ll never know. But if it was the killer, then he’s dead.” He paused. “He was a schoolmaster in a prestigious public school in Dorset. Norman. Not so very far from Stonehenge.”

“What was his field?”

“History.”

“Was his journey to Peru carefully planned or spur of the moment?”

“It was apparently arranged some months before his departure.”

Cummins shook his head.

“Where did the schoolmaster who planned the Druids’ trip to Stonehenge teach?”

“You’ve seen the file. At a public school in Dorset.”

“Coincidence?”

“He was cleared. He couldn’t have killed the man nor roped him to that bloody stone. He was within sight of his fellow Druids at all times.”

“No, possibly not. But perhaps someone knew about his adventure to Stonehenge and thought it a very good idea to take an inconvenient body there.”

“But what about Wheeler? He was identified.”

“You know how uncertain identifications can be. At a guess, the Edinburgh police were happy to see the end of Wheeler. I’ve done some research. There was a Wheeler from Orkney killed at Gallipoli. He’d immigrated to Australia from Belfast in 1904.”

“Did he, by God!”

“Where is your schoolmaster, now? Do you know?”

Cummins made a wry face. “Dead of cholera in India. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Rutledge, but it doesn’t solve crimes.”

He himself had said much the same, one day in Eastfield.

Cummins took up his menu. Without opening it, he said, “I was so sure about Wheeler. Even so, we could find no motive to explain why he’d been killed. And without the identity of the victim, we were still stymied as to motive. It was a vicious circle. That’s what bothered me all these years. In spite of the loopholes in your arguments, I expect you’ve come closer to finding answers than I ever did.”

“How do you suppose someone discovered your grandfather’s name was Charles Henry?”

Cummins gave it some thought. “There was a solicitor connected with the case. His name was Charles Henry. I remember remarking to someone that my grandfather’s name was Charles Henry. Charles Henry Cummins.”

“Who overheard you?”

“Oh, I know who was there at the time. Our Druid leader, the schoolmaster.” He smiled. “Before you leap to conclusions, that Charles Henry—the solicitor—was up in years. In fact, he died soon after the inquest. He was probably dying at the time and no one realized it. Weak heart.” He set aside his menu and raised his glass. “I always knew you were a very good policeman, Ian. Bowles is a fool, damn his eyes.”

The waiter was hovering, and Cummins looked up at him. “Yes, yes, all right. How is the fish here?”

When Rutledge returned to his flat at the end of the day, he found a letter waiting. It was from Rosemary Hume, and it was brief.

It’s time, Ian. Can you come?

He left a message for the Yard, and set out straightaway for Chaswell. When he got there, it was late, but Rosemary was waiting up for him. Even as he walked through the house door, he could hear Reginald’s forced breathing. Rosemary took him directly up the staircase to the room her husband’s cousin had been given.

“He asked to see you alone,” she said as she turned back toward the stairs.

Reginald was in a chair, leaning forward, struggling for breath. He greeted Rutledge with a weary smile and a nod.

“I’m sorry to see you in such straits,” he said, sitting down by the invalid chair. “Is there anything I can do?”

A paroxysm of coughing nearly doubled Reginald in two, and afterward he lay back against his pillows, drained. But he lifted a hand and pointed to his desk. It was a tall affair with bookshelves above, and then the drop-down front that formed the writing surface. Rutledge walked across the room, opened the desk. It was all but empty, and he turned to Reginald.

“Left.”

There were cubbyholes on either side of a small central alcove, and Rutledge looked in the left one. He saw an envelope pushed deep into the narrow space and hardly visible. He pulled it out. Maxwell Hume’s name was scrawled across it in a firm hand, and then, more recently, that had been crossed out and his own name had been written above Maxwell’s. From the state of the envelope, Rutledge realized that Reginald must have written this some years earlier, for the original ink was already fading. “This?”

Reginald nodded.

Rutledge went back to sit by him. “Shall I open it now?”

Reginald said briefly, “Later.”

And so they sat together for the rest of the night, mostly in companionable silence, although at times Rutledge talked quietly about their lives, about the war, and about Max.

Shortly after dawn, Reginald put out a clawlike hand and gripped Rutledge’s arm with surprising strength. Rutledge gave him his own hand, and waited.

“Forgive me.” The words were hardly more than a whisper.

He said, “You’re forgiven. With all my heart.”

“Truly?”

“As God is my witness.”

After a time, the room fell quiet, the struggle to breathe finished. Rutledge held the thin hand for a while longer, and then laid it gently in his friend’s lap and closed Reginald’s eyes. He took the letter, then remembering, put it in his pocket where Rosemary wouldn’t see it.

And he went down the stairs to where Rosemary, her eyes red with crying, was drinking tea. She passed a clean cup to Rutledge, and he poured his own. It was lukewarm, but he drank it for her sake.

A little later she said, “I finally slept. And then I awoke with a start. I didn’t know where I was. It was then I heard the silence.”