Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (10 page)

Chapter 7

N
ow that he was in the village in his official capacity, Rutledge’s first duty was to call on the constable.

He’d arrived at Wriston by a roundabout way, crisscrossing the Fens to explore several nearby villages, and there was not much to choose between them save for size. Isleham was smaller, Soham a little larger, and Burwell, the largest, a bustling town with a fine church. And the fields that ran for acre after acre in their long narrow beds for the most part held the same variety of market crops—oats, peas, and barley.

It was late in the afternoon when he walked into the police station, across from the duck pond. Constable McBride was at his desk, reading an Ely newspaper.

He was a burly man with thinning brown hair, and he looked up at Rutledge with some surprise, recognizing him at once as the stranger he’d chivvied along only yesterday for excessive curiosity about the site of Swift’s murder.

“Back again, are you, sir? Anything I can help you with, then?”

But there was a guardedness in the offer.

Rutledge handed him his identification, and McBride studied it for longer than necessary, and then, getting to his feet, he said in a slightly aggrieved voice, “I’m sorry, sir, but you didn’t tell me who you were.”

“I hadn’t yet reported to Inspector Warren in Ely. I’d been caught out in that mist the previous night, got thoroughly lost, and when I realized that I was in Wriston, I wanted to take a preliminary look at that cross.”

“Yes, I see.” But it was clear he didn’t. “Is there anything new, sir? From Ely?” He held up the newspaper still in his hand, then set it aside. “There’s nothing in here. And the last report I’d had from Inspector Warren was three days ago. Even that was not what you might call informative.”

“What does the Ely paper have to say about the murders?”

“Precious little. A nine days’ wonder, as it were. It’s no longer on the first page.” Gesturing to the chair on the other side of the desk, he sat down. “How can I help you, sir?”

“Tell me what happened here in Wriston.”

“Surely Inspector Warren has already done that.”

“I’d like your point of view. You live here.”

McBride gave him a concise report. It differed very little from what Rutledge already knew. “We searched and we found nothing. Not even a cartridge casing. The shot must have been a difficult one. Night, flickering torchlight. I’d not have tried it, I can tell you that. I mean to say, what if he’d missed?”

But whoever it was had had no problem making his shot count.

“The question is, what ties these two deaths together? There has to be a very good reason. For one thing, they were killed within days of each other, and only a matter of miles apart. For another, they were fairly prominent men. This wasn’t a grudge killing between neighbors, because they weren’t in any sense neighbors.”

McBride shook his head. “I’ve spent hours thinking about that, sir. I can’t see how they could have known each other. Perhaps someone only believed they did.”

Which, Rutledge thought, was a very perceptive comment.

“The war. Is there a connection there?”

“I can’t think how that could be. The Swifts have been farmers here for generations. Our Mr. Swift spent most of his war in Glasgow, serving with the Navy as a civilian. Still, he liked Scotland, it seems. He wrote the Rector to say that when he could, he’d take long walks. He thought it cleared his head. He was still mourning his wife.”

“Did Swift have enemies?”

“We haven’t found any. If you want my opinion, whoever did this isn’t a Wriston man, and that means the quarrel, if there was one, didn’t have its roots here. Mr. Swift wasn’t one to visit Ely or Soham or Burwell often, but he went there if it was a matter of business. I’d say look at his clients or
their
enemies. A quiet man, and well liked. He’d have won, you know. Hands down. I daresay his killing could even have been political, although that’s a stretch, in my view.”

“What about his opponent?”

“I doubt he could be bothered. What he liked best, if truth be told, were the free beers his supporters bought for him down at The Wake.”

“What was Mr. Swift talking about the night he was killed?”

“He was hardly into what he’d planned to say. It had to do with the war ending, but the legacy of the war was still with us. I doubt anyone would argue with that.”

“His private life, then.”

McBride smiled. “As to that, his wife ruled the roost until she died in childbirth. It nearly killed him as well. I don’t believe he’d have gone on, if the war hadn’t changed things. Scotland was good for him, taking him away from here.”

“Someone wanted him dead.”

“It’s true, but try as I will, I can find nothing in his life to explain that. Unless . . .” McBride’s gaze stared into the past, somewhere behind Rutledge’s left shoulder.

Rutledge felt an instant burst of panic, then caught himself. No one could see Hamish where he kept watch at Rutledge’s back, as he had done so often in the trenches.

“There was something before the war. Mr. Swift was serving as a witness in a trial in Ely. There was a man sent to prison for putting another man in hospital with a skull fracture and broken ribs. It was claimed the victim was thrown down a flight of stairs. The man swore it wasn’t true, that the victim, after an argument, turned to have the last word, lost his balance, and fell. But the jury thought otherwise.” McBride lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “That man might’ve held a grudge against Swift, because he gave evidence against him, but I can’t see how Captain Hutchinson fits into it.”

“Do you remember the man’s name?”

“That I don’t. The only reason I remember the trial at all is that my wife’s brother was bailiff at the time.”

“Then I’ll ask him if he recalls the trial.”

“Dead on Passchendaele Ridge,” McBride answered somberly. “More’s the pity. A good man.”

“Turn it another way. Who has such a rifle?”

“There’s the catch,” McBride agreed. “They aren’t lying beneath every bush, are they? The question is, did he keep it back when he left France, or was it one used to train troops?”

It was time to mention Mrs. Percy.

“I’ve been told that at least one of the onlookers described our man.”

McBride pushed aside his newspaper. “Mrs. Percy. I don’t know who spoke to you about her. But I’d discount what she said, if I were you, sir.”

“Why? She saw
something
. It wasn’t what you expected from a witness, perhaps. But it was information we have to investigate.”

“Sir, I can’t see how we can explore what she described. She’s an elderly woman whose eyesight is not the best. I mean to say—a monster.”

“The question is, was she the only one who looked up just as the shot was fired? There may be other witnesses who don’t want to come forward. We need to find them.”

“There’s nothing in the statements we collected that show information has been withheld.”

“I’d like to question her, all the same.”

“She’s still that upset, sir, I doubt she’ll make any sense.”

“Then I’ll go alone. She might speak more freely. Tell me where to find her.”

Mrs. Percy lived in the last cottage on the lane called Windmill Row.

There was no windmill now. Instead the fields began not twenty feet beyond her door, and a bulwark of earth separated them from the end of her lane. He could just see the darker green of late season crops growing several feet below the level of the higher ground on which her house sat.

She was snapping beans in the kitchen when Rutledge tapped at her open door. “Come,” she called, and he stepped inside, following the sound of her voice. She was a small woman, gray hair pinned up on her head, blue-veined hands working with the beans in a large earthenware bowl. He didn’t think she even looked down at them, her fingers busy on their own.

“Who are you?” she demanded, peering at the tall stranger who’d just appeared in her kitchen. “I was expecting the butcher’s boy.”

“My name is Rutledge, Mrs. Percy. London has sent me to Wriston to find out what I can about the death of Mr. Swift. I understand you were by the market cross that evening, when he was shot.”

“I was. It was a warm evening, no clouds, and I felt like walking up to the cross to see what the shouting and those torches were all about. When I got there, the smoke made my eyes water. I pushed my way around behind Mr. Swift, where it was a little better, and just then he started to speak. I’d hardly got settled when he dropped like a stone.” She shuddered, her hands pausing in their work. “I wish I’d never gone up. I wish I’d decided to do my mending instead.” Her fingers found their rhythm again.

“Had anyone else moved around behind Mr. Swift, to get away from the smoke?”

“Paul Ruskin was there—he’s the cooper from Soham. I knew his father. But most everyone wanted to be out in front, of course.”

Another name. So much for McBride’s pessimism.

“Anyone else?” Across from where he was sitting, a pair of worn wooden stilts were standing in the corner, and on a shelf just above them, a pair of wooden skates for use on ice. A hundred years or more ago, men had walked the fields on stilts, and they’d been quite good at it, striding out boldly and swinging across ditches, fording streams.

Mrs. Percy considered his question, then shook her head. “No, I think it was just Paul and me. Mr. Ruskin and me.”

It was time to ask the question that had brought him here. There was no way to soften it, to draw her out. But he tried.

“Scotland Yard was very pleased to learn there was a witness to the shooting, someone who could describe Mr. Swift’s killer.”

Mrs. Percy lips thinned to a tight line. “Well, they’re wrong,” she said after a moment, when he didn’t press.

He listened to her fingers snapping the crisp flesh of the beans.

“Have they made light of what you told them? The constable and then Inspector Warren?” he asked gently.

“I didn’t see anything. I told you. The smoke was making my eyes water. All I saw was smoke.”

The damage was done. Rutledge couldn’t shift her. And that he laid at the door of those who had questioned her in the beginning. A monster was not evidence. And in their own desperation, they had hounded her to make sense of the senseless. Now she was refusing to acknowledge her own statement, denying she had seen anything after all.

She rose, the beans half filling the bowl, the sack that had held them empty now.

“I have to cook my dinner,” she said, dismissing him. “There’s the door.”

Rutledge swore to himself. He needed her testimony, he needed to watch her face as she described the monster she’d seen. But he would have to come back—as often as necessary until she relented.

Meanwhile, there was still the man in Soham.

Thanking her, he turned and found his way back to the door where he’d come in.

T
he question, he thought as he made his way back to the market cross to stare up at the dormer window once more, was how much he could discount the monster as part of her shock or as part of her eyes watering. He squinted, distorting the window as much as he could, but the circumstances were very different here on this sunny day.

And it was possible that someone else besides Ruskin had had a similar vantage point, but what had been done to Mrs. Percy would have been a warning that the truth would be rejected out of hand. And so any hope of locating those witnesses—if they actually existed—was small.

He drove on to Soham, finding the High Street and the square, then asked a man crossing it toward the shops how to find the cooper.

The man nodded. “Out that way to Fox Lane. You can’t miss it.”

And he didn’t. The front of the shop was open, and the scent of fresh-cut wood filled the air. He found Ruskin in the yard, gathering staves together one by one in a raising hoop, frowning as he worked. Perhaps in his late thirties, he had graying hair and a strong face. He looked up, nodded to Rutledge, and without stopping what he was doing, he asked, “Help you, sir?”

“I’m looking for Paul Ruskin.”

He straightened. Behind him in the shed was a shelf with the tools of his trade, and beyond them against the far wall was a row of his finished goods. Butter churns, coal scuttles, a firkin and a bucket, dwarfed by a pair of hogsheads.

“You’ve found him, then.”

“I’ve come from Ely. My name is Rutledge. Scotland Yard sent me to help Inspector Warren find the man who killed Captain Hutchinson and Mr. Swift. I understand you were in Wriston the evening Swift was shot.”

Ruskin set the staves aside and considered Rutledge. “Who told you I was there?”

And Rutledge realized that this man hadn’t been questioned by the police. That somehow in the chaos, he’d left Wriston before McBride could collect all his witnesses. If Mrs. Percy hadn’t recognized him, he’d have been in the clear.

Rutledge sat down on a finished barrelhead. “Someone saw you and reported it to me. Why? Did you have anything to hide?”

“No.” But there was a wariness in the man’s voice. When Rutledge said nothing, he added, “I saw no purpose in hanging about. The man was dead, and I’d had aught to do with it.”

“Sensible of you,” Rutledge said affably. “What brought you to Wriston?”

“I’d delivered a half-dozen barrels for one of the farmers. Burrows, his name is. I stopped off at The Wake after delivering them. There was talk that Swift was planning to speak. He came in just after that, walking around, having a word with everyone. And I decided to hear what he had to say. It’ud been a long day for me, but I wasn’t ready to go home. My wife and I’d had words that morning, and I didn’t want to open up the quarrel again.”

“So you followed the torchbearers and the others to the market cross?”

“I did. But I’m not a Wriston man. I didn’t care to draw attention to myself, like. Not that I didn’t have every right to be there, you understand, more a question of not wishing to push in.”

It was something Rutledge had heard many times before. A village only five miles away could be as foreign to its neighbors as if it were fifty or five hundred miles distant. This was a Wriston rally.