Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (26 page)

Had the man who was charged with the upkeep of the mill tripped over a lantern in a drunken state—or set a fire to burn out the ghosts that haunted him?

Rutledge could understand how that might happen.

It wasn’t his inquiry, it had nothing to do with this one. It was the mill that actually drew him here again, and the memory of Miss Trowbridge standing near it, looking up at the sky. There had been more than stargazing on her mind that evening. He wondered what it was.

Something twisted around his legs, and he looked down to see Clarissa winding herself back and forth, leaving a thick coat of white hairs on his trousers. When she lifted her head to beg for stroking, he could see that one eye was pale green, the other a pale blue. A striking combination. Mewing, she waited, and he reached down to touch her head, setting off a loud purring that made him smile.

“She likes you.”

He turned to see Marcella Trowbridge standing at her gate, a shopping basket over her arm.

“I’m fond of animals,” he replied.

“Sometimes they’re kinder than people.” As if she suddenly regretted the remark, she smiled and added, “They don’t disagree with you or dislike you because you’re grumpy in the morning or prefer your tea without milk.”

Rutledge said, “Tell me about the man who used to live here.”

“I liked him. He was kind to a lonely child. He’d sit with me on the steps and tell me stories or make things for me out of wood or string. My father had never had time to do that, and I never knew his father. My grandfather had died when he was still fairly young. My grandmother liked Angus too, and she was a very good judge of character. Mother would have been shocked if I’d told her I was entertained by the man who looked after the windmill. I sometimes wondered why Angus chose to live here when he could have lived in Scotland with his own people. But perhaps there had been a falling-out. I was far more romantically inclined, preferring to believe he’d lost the only woman he loved and had exiled himself forever. Too much Sir Walter Scott, I expect. But perhaps it was she who haunted him. Something did.”

Her face colored suddenly, and she broke off. After a moment she asked, “Why do I tell you such things?”

He thought he knew the answer to that. She was very much alone in the world. And loneliness brought with it longing. Or emptiness.

Was that why Mary Hutchinson had taken her own life?

Chapter 15

W
alking back from the windmill, Rutledge continued on to the police station, in search of McBride.

“Burrows is at home. A chastened man. I think he’ll let his daughter attend to that wound now.”

“Blood poisoning. He could have died.” McBride stood up and stretched.

“Tell me what you know about this man Thornton. In Isleham.”

“Not much, sir. Just that he’s kept to himself since the war. People hardly ever see him out and about.”

And yet he’d been in Ely today.

“He told me he barely knew Swift. And I’ve learned since then that they knew each other rather well, before the war.”

“I doubt that makes him a murderer. People change in six years. And Swift wasn’t in the Army, he never went to France. They wouldn’t have much in common now, would they?”

“Probably not. Was Thornton ever engaged to be married?”

“I haven’t heard anything about it. Not to a local girl, at any rate.”

Alice Worth had the key to that question. And she refused to give up the answer.

“I’m driving back to Burwell. I want to speak to several people there. And then I’ll speak to Swift’s brother again. It may be late when I return.”

“I’ll pass the word to Miss Bartram.”

Rutledge changed his mind and went first to call on Swift’s brother, finding him just walking in from the fields.

The man grinned and said, “You came the right way round this time.”

“I did,” Rutledge said, answering the smile. “I need to ask a few more questions about your brother.”

“Come in, then. I think there’s lemonade on offer.”

Rutledge accepted the invitation and sat with Swift in the kitchen, sipping the cool drink.

“Nothing like it on a warm day. But the lemons are hard to come by. And dear at any price. What is it you want to know?”

“Did your brother go often to Newmarket?”

“Newmarket? A few times with a friend from Ely.”

“Did he see a man called Thornton there? From Isleham.”

“God help me, I’d forgot about Thornton. They shared a love of ancient history, and my brother relished their arguments. I use the word loosely. Showing off was closer to the mark.”

“Did they visit each other in Wriston or Isleham?”

“My guess is, they never did. And it was about that same time that Herbert met his wife-to-be. After that, he lost interest in horses and Greek history and everything else, spending most of his free time running up to Ely to call on her.”

“What about someone called Thaddeus Whiting?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard him mention that name.”

“Mary Whiting?”

“There was a girl—Mary? Margaret? I can’t be sure what she was called—who caught Thornton’s eye. He met her in Newmarket, and that evening talked about nothing else, even refusing to take umbrage at something my brother brought up about Rome. Herbert came home gleeful, claiming that he’d found Thornton’s Achilles’ heel. That was before he’d met
his
wife, and he thought it amusing. Funny you should remind me of that.” He stared off into the distance. “I do fairly well, as a rule. The farm keeps me busy, there’s no time to mourn. And then something like this comes along and I can see my brother’s face as plainly as I see yours.” He cleared his throat. “We were all young then. I’d been married a year myself. They called me the Old Man. I was all of twenty-eight. We didn’t know what was to come, did we?”

Rutledge pressed, but that was all that Swift could remember. And then only because of his brother’s reaction.

As he was leaving, he asked Swift if he was still worried about being a victim himself.

Shrugging, he said, “There’s the farm. I don’t have time to worry. But I keep a sharp eye out, all the same.”

Driving on to Burwell, he sought out Mrs. Harris, telling her a little of what he’d learned in London.

“I can’t think why Alice couldn’t have helped the police. But she was Mary’s only friend, and I expect she still feels strongly about what happened to her.”

“And she said nothing to you about the man Mary had met, who he was, where he came from?”

“I don’t think it mattered to her,” Mrs. Harris said slowly. “He didn’t come to Mary’s rescue. No white horse, no shining armor. He left her to her fate.”

“Perhaps he didn’t know. Or perhaps she sent him away and asked him not to spoil her happiness.”

“If he didn’t know then, in the end I think he did. Alice wrote to him, I’m sure of it. She told me she was going to. I tried to talk her out of it, and she didn’t mention it again. But I know her, you see. She wrote that letter and she sent it. She felt that strongly about what happened.” She lifted her hand in a rueful gesture. “I always wondered what he made of her letter, if he was in France somewhere, fighting the Germans. Helpless to do anything. If he wanted to kill that man Hutchinson, why didn’t he do it then? Men were dying every day.”

“It’s possible their paths never crossed.”

“Well, there’s that, I suppose.”

“If you could persuade her to change her mind, I’d be grateful.”

“That would be the same as sending him to the hangman. I’ll have to think about that. I don’t feel as fiercely about this matter as Alice does, but I’d hate to think my actions condemned anyone.”

“It’s possible he’s killed two people.”

“Yes, that’s true. But why should he have shot Herbert Swift?”

And that was unanswerable. An opportunity to cast doubt on why Captain Hutchinson had to die? It always came back to that question.

Hamish said, “There could be two men. One who wanted Swift dead and the ither who wanted yon Captain dead.”

That was possible. An unassailable alibi for one murder would tend to make the police think that that person was in the clear. But it was highly unlikely. How had the two men met and decided on murder? Why would they trust each other? And why should the owner of the Lee-Enfield need a partner when he could make his own kill so cleverly? It was the second victim that brought Scotland Yard into the picture—an unnecessary risk for Hutchinson’s murderer, who had gone scot-free.

There had to be more than a love affair gone wrong to make someone kill twice and then wound a third victim. Unless the point was to confound the police. A cold-blooded decision.

He thanked Mrs. Harris and drove back to Wriston as quickly as possible, walking into the police station to ask Constable McBride for the key to Herbert Swift’s house.

McBride said, “Everything was in order there. Inspector Warren was with me when I searched.”

“I’m sure that’s true. All the same, I’d like to look at some of his cases.”

Reluctantly Constable McBride got to his feet, taking a key from the drawer of his desk. “It’s beyond the second green. The Swift house.”

They walked there in silence. McBride unlocked the door and stood aside.

The house smelled damp and musty, the faintest odor of cigarette smoke lingering in the air as well.

Swift had taken over a smaller house next to his, opened up a passage between them, and used that as his chambers. As they went down the passage, it creaked a little. And then they were in the cottage. The front room had become a waiting room, what would have been a bedroom had become an office, and the room in back was where his clerk must have worked.

“He had a clerk,” Rutledge said. “What’s become of him?”

“He went home to Norfolk,” McBride said simply. “When we locked up here. These files will have to be turned over to someone to sort out.”

Rutledge spent an hour going through past cases that Swift had handled. For the most part they were conveyances, wills, property settlements, and so on. Swift had been involved in three criminal cases. One was trespass, where two cousins had argued over an inheritance and the elder of the two had come looking for the younger, intending to teach him a lesson. Another was a drunken brawl ending in bodily harm, and the third was housebreaking, by what appeared to be a Traveler. They had been tried in Ely, and two of them had ended in guilty pleas. Only the two cousins had insisted on trial before they were satisfied. But there was nothing in any file to make Swift a target for revenge.

After a thorough search of the office, they went back to the main house.

If Swift had been guarding any secrets, they hadn’t found them.

The sun was setting when they locked the door and walked down the green toward the police station. Once again the sky was radiant, ablaze with color from the softest lavender to a flaming red.

“I’ve never quite got used to the sunsets,” McBride said into the silence. “I’ve only to step out of an evening, and there it is, surely different each time I look up. I was talking to a man who loved the mountains, and I asked him if he ever felt cut off, like. With no horizon, just more mountains shutting out the view. But it didn’t appear to bother him.”

Rutledge left him at the police station and walked on toward The Dutchman Inn.

A boy rolling a hoop came running down the street and nearly collided with Rutledge. Laughing, he ran on, the hoop bouncing and wobbling over the ruts in the road.

Hamish was asking, “Did ye no’ think of leaving the farmer out of it?”

“Because he was wounded, when the man with the rifle could very easily have killed him?”

“Aye, it doesna’ make sense.”

“Unless his conscience troubled him.”

“Aye, but would it? It’s possible, ye ken, that he was intended to mislead.”

“But the killer came back.”

“Aye, someone did.”

The presence of the dog had been a deterrent, because it meant that no one could steal up close enough to the house to see the man inside. And so there was nothing to show what the intentions of the intruder were. Still—he knew he’d missed . . .

Thornton had shown no signs of having been wounded by Burrows’s shot. He didn’t limp. There were no obvious bandages. Surely if he’d bled enough to leave traces on the ground, he’d have still been showing the effects of his injury.

“There’s still Swift,” Hamish was saying. “He claims he wasna’ fashed with his brother o’er the inheriting of the farm. Ye have only his word.”

“He was nervous when first I arrived at his door.”

“Aye, he said he was afraid he might be next. But it’s possible he was afraid of Scotland Yard.”

“Why shoot Hutchinson first? If he’d been found out, Swift would still be alive.”

“Aye.”

He’d reached the inn, and for a moment considered walking on as far as the mill. There would be an even better view of the sunset from the little bridge.

On impulse, he did just that. He was watching the sun dip into the horizon when he was distracted by Hamish.

Frowning, he tried to see what was there in the middle distance. A man? Standing there for the same reason Rutledge had come to the bridge?

But the figure was in the middle of nowhere. What was he doing there? Where had he come from—where was he going?

Remembering the lights in the fields and the man he himself had encountered in the mist, Rutledge gauged the distance. Too far to run, but with his motorcar . . .

He turned quickly and ran in the opposite direction, toward the inn.

Turning the crank at speed, he nearly got caught by the backlash. Swearing under his breath, he got in and drove out of the village as far as the bridge.

The sun had gone down but the afterglow was dulling toward dark. He peered into the distance. The figure he’d seen was still there.

Turning in that direction, he headed straight for the figure.

And then it was gone. Rutledge blinked, peering out the windscreen. Whoever it was couldn’t disappear into thin air.

Had the man seen the motorcar coming and chose to get off the road? But where to?

Down one of the embankments? Rutledge flicked on his headlamps.

If he was wearing dark clothing, he’d be the devil to find against the black soil.

Arriving where he thought the figure might have been standing, he pulled over and stopped. Reaching for his torch, he began to search the fields on either side of him.

Where the devil was he?

Rutledge walked some twenty paces forward, casting the torch beam to either side. Then he walked back to the motorcar and kept going for another twenty paces or more.

Nothing.

How had he vanished? Where had he gone?

He moved the motorcar forward twenty yards, and tried again.

His torch skimmed the black, peaty soil, the browning stalks of what must be barley, and then he crossed to the far side of the road.

Frustrated, Rutledge spent half an hour hunting for whoever it was. He came up empty-handed.

Finally returning to the motorcar and carefully reversing on the narrow road, he went back the way he’d come. And as he drove toward Wriston, he had the oddest feeling that somewhere in the darkness out there to either side of his headlamps, the man he’d seen was watching him go, and laughing.

O
ver dinner he asked Priscilla Bartram who might be out late, walking on the road.

“Hard to say. One of the farm tenants coming back from the fields? He’d know his way. Or a Traveler, up to no good. Even a tradesman, caught out after making a delivery.”

But what tradesman walked? What goods could he carry, without so much as a barrow or bicycle?

He must have appeared to be skeptical, for Miss Bartram glanced at her kitchen windows, where the curtains had been drawn against the night.

“You don’t think it could be the killer, do you?” She crossed to the door into the kitchen garden and tested the latch. “One can’t be too careful. I’ve been thinking of getting a little dog. For company. I hear Mr. Taylor’s bitch has had a litter.”

And for protection?

How long had she lived alone in this house, without feeling the need for a dog?

A moth, drawn by the light, in spite of the curtains, threw itself at the glass, and she nearly dropped the spoon in her hand, turning toward the window. Then, feeling a little embarrassed, she said, “I shan’t forgive whoever it is who did these murders. He’s taken away my peace of mind.”

“I don’t think you have anything to fear.”

“He walked into the ironmonger’s house, didn’t he? How did he know they weren’t at home? What if Mrs. Ross had been lying down with a headache, and her husband had left her there while he went out to the rally? What then?”