Todd, Charles (23 page)

But she hadn't gained strength from the man; she'd used his instead.

Rutledge thanked her and left her to the folding of the heavy sheets, her back bent to the labor, her eyes concentrating on keeping the folds sharp and smooth. Sprinkling lavender among the folds, her rough hands gentle, she looked into a stark future and found it frightening.

Rutledge went back to the gatehouse and walked through the wood to the tithe barn, nodding to the constable on duty as he opened the door and went inside.

It was different in the daylight. Empty, a smoky light spilling in from the door, the rafters ghostly shapes over his head. The barn was as long and as tall as he remembered, and he could almost see Harold Quarles above him, the outspread arms, the white-feathered wings.

"It's no' something you forget," Hamish said quietly, but his voice seemed to echo in the vastness.

Rutledge walked the length of the barn and back again.

Why go to the trouble to put Quarles in that abominable harness and lift him to the rafters? To hide the body until someone thought to look for him here, not in Cambury, where he'd gone to dine? To make a mockery of the man who seemed to care so little for the feelings of others? Or to show the world that even Harold Quarles was vulnerable?

If Mrs. Quarles had killed her husband, would she have done this? Not, he thought, if she cared for her son. Murder Quarles, yes, ridding herself of him without the shame of a divorce. Or the truth coming out in a courtroom. But making a spectacle of his death? Rutledge had come to understand her pride, and now he could see that she had nothing to gain by such a step.

Hamish said, "Yon organist might have wanted to make a spectacle o' him."

Rutledge could readily believe that.

Would Inspector Padgett try to cover up Brunswick's guilt? Because the man seemed to know more about the inspector than was good for him. An interesting possibility. Padgett hadn't been eager to interview the man.

Rutledge walked the length of the barn again, trying to feel something here, to sense an angry mood or a cold hatred. But the barn had nothing to say to him. The silence of the past lay heavily around him, smothering the present. Harold Quarles was only a fragment of this great barn's history, and although his end here was appalling, it would be forgotten long before the roof fell in here and the rafters that had held the angel up cracked with age.

A sound behind him made him whirl, but there was nothing to be seen. He stood there, without moving, listening with such intensity that he heard the sound again.

A mouse moved out of the shelter of one of the columns that supported the roof, whiskers twitching as his dark, unfathomable eyes examined the two-legged intruder. He sat up on his hind legs and waited for Rutledge to make the first move. But when the man from London stood his ground without a threatening sound or motion, the mouse ran lightly to the wall of the barn and disappeared into the shadows.

Had he been here when a murderer had brought Harold Quarles into the barn and went to take the apparatus out of its box? What had he seen?

Hamish said, "It was no' a stranger."

And that was the key to this barn. In the mist that night a stranger would have had trouble seeing it at all, if he hadn't known it was here. Rutledge himself hadn't until he was almost on it. And even if the killer had wanted to make certain the body wasn't found straightaway, the cottage was closer than the barn. In here, in the darkness—even with a torch—it would have taken time to pull the ropes and pulleys out of their chest and lay them out, when Quarles could just as well have been stowed behind one of the trestle tables or a section of the stable roof. No matter how much had been written about the Christmas pageant, understanding the mechanism—even if someone knew it was there—was another matter.

Hamish said, "Better to put the body in yon chest."

"Exactly." He'd spoke aloud, and the constable at the door peered in. Rutledge said, "Sorry. Bad habit, talking to myself."

The man grinned and shut the door again.

Whatever Padgett might want him to believe, Rutledge now had evidence of a sort that the murderer must be here, in Cambury.

The journey to London to spike Mickelson's guns had probably been an act of vanity, nothing more.

Rutledge found Padgett in the police station completing his report on the housebreaking. Even before he reached the office, he could hear the ragged tap of typewriter keys and an occasional grunt as something went wrong.

Padgett looked up, his ill temper aggravated by the interruption.

Rutledge said, not waiting for Padgett's good humor to return, "You wouldn't accompany me when I went to see Brunswick. It would have been wise if you had. He believes you had something to do with Harold Quarles's death. He told me to ask you why you hated the man."

Padgett's reaction was explosive. He swore roundly, his face red with anger.

"While you were exchanging confidences, did he tell you that at the time I suspected him of drowning his wife? And I've yet to be satisfied that her death was a suicide. There's no love lost between us."

"He believes she was Quarles's lover, and that the child she might have been carrying at the time of her death wasn't her husband's. Reason enough for murder."

"Well, she wasn't carrying a child at the time of her death. Not according to O'Neil. But she did have a tumor the size of a small cabbage. Brunswick believes the doctor is covering up the truth. They had words just before the funeral. Of course he—Brunswick— wouldn't care to think he'd killed his wife for no reason other than his own jealousy."

"Could she have borne children, if the tumor was safely removed?"

"Probably not. She wasn't drowned at home, mind you, but in one of those streams on Sedgemoor. A dreary place to die. A dreary battlefield in its day, for that matter. She ought to have survived—if she'd changed her mind, she might have saved herself. The stream wasn't all that deep. The only reason I didn't take Brunswick into custody was that simple fact. But I've kept an eye on him since then."

"What was your quarrel with the victim? You might as well tell me," Rutledge said, "it will have to come out sooner or later."

He could see the defiance in Padgett's eyes as he surged to his feet and leaned forward over the desk, his knuckles white as they pressed against the scarred wooden top. "I see no reason to tell you anything. I'm a policeman, for God's sake. Do you think I killed the man? If so, say that to my face, don't go hinting about like a simpering woman."

Rutledge held on to his own temper, knowing he'd provoked the anger turned against him and that the angry man across from him hoped to use it to deflect him from his probing.

"Padgett. I'll speak to the Chief Constable if I have to. And don't push your luck with me. My temper can be as short as yours."

" 'Ware," Hamish warned Rutledge. "He's likely to come across yon desk and throttle ye."

But at mention of the Chief Constable, Padgett got himself under control with a visible effort.

"Leave the Chief Constable out of this!"

"Then talk to me."

"I'm not a suspect. I don't have to give you my private life to paw over."

Rutledge was on the point of taking Inspector Padgett into custody and letting him think his position over in one of his own cells.

But Hamish warned, "Ye ken, it will only set him against you more. There's shame here, and it willna' come out, whatever ye threaten." Rutledge took a deep breath. "Padgett. You found the body. There's no other witness. You could have hauled Quarles up to the beams yourself, as a fitting revenge for whatever he did to you. It doesn't look good."

Padgett started for the door, intending to push Rutledge aside. "If that's what you want to believe—"

"It's what the killer's barrister will claim, to throw doubt on the evidence we collect for trial. And then whatever you're hiding becomes a matter of public record forever after. I shouldn't have to tell you this. Think about it, man!"

Padgett stopped in midstride.

"Look, set your feelings about Quarles aside and consider the case clearly. If it were Mrs. Quarles—or Jones, the baker—or even Brunswick who had found the man's body by the side of the road, and you knew the history of their relationship with the victim, that person would be suspect almost at once. An unexpected confrontation, a temper lost, an opportunity taken. You'd have no choice but to investigate the circumstances."

"I'm an honest man, a good policeman." Padgett's voice was tight, his face still flushed with his fury.

"No doubt both of these are true. Do they put you above suspicion? You may not be guilty—but you must be cleared, any question of doubt put aside so that you don't cast a shadow over the inquiry."

"Are you going to take me off the case? I don't see how we can work together now."

"I'm not removing you. But you must give me your word you didn't kill Quarles."

"What good is my word, if I'm a murderer? Do you think I'd stop at perjuring myself to escape the hangman?"

"Your word as a policeman."

It was the right thing to say. Padgett's ruffled feathers relaxed, and he swore, "As God is my witness, then. I give you my word as a policeman."

Hamish said to Rutledge, "Aye, all well and good, but he didna' swear to stop interfering."

"I was looking for the truth, not trust," Rutledge answered him grimly.

They went on to Dr. O’Neil’s surgery, to interview Stephenson.

The doctor greeted them, and if he saw any stiffness in their manner, he said nothing about it. Taking them to the narrow examination room where he'd put the bookseller, he added, "He's recovering well enough. Physically, if not emotionally. But that's not unexpected, given the circumstances. Be brief, if you want to question him."

"Before we go in," Rutledge said, "can you tell me if Michael Brunswick's wife was diagnosed with a tumor? Or was she pregnant at the time of her death?"

O'Neil sighed. "Brunswick has convinced himself that I lied to him. I didn't. If he killed Quarles, he'll be coming for me next. He's one of those men who can picture his wife in another man's arms if she so much as smiles at a poor devil in the post office or the greengrocer's. The fact is, I believed it to be ovarian from the start, because she'd had no symptoms until the tumor was well advanced. And I told her as much, warning her to prepare herself. I did prescribe tests, to confirm my diagnosis. Her mother had died of the same condition. Sadly, she knew what to expect. And if by some miracle of surgery she survived the cancer, there would be no children."

"How did you do the tests?" From what Rutledge had seen of the small surgery, he was certain Dr. O'Neil didn't have the facilities for them here.

"I sent her to Bath, to a specialist there. Quarles lent her his motorcar and his chauffeur. She was in her last week of employment at Hallowfields the day she came to me, and when she told Quarles she was glad she was nearly finished, because it appeared that she was ill, he arranged to send her. It was a kind gesture. But Mrs. Brunswick made me promise to say nothing to her husband about that—she said he would disapprove."

Rutledge thought, It could have been that Brunswick found out— But that wasn't the murder he'd come to Cambury to solve.

"Why the interest in Mrs. Brunswick?" O'Neil asked, clearly busy putting two and two together.

"It could offer a reason for her husband to kill Quarles," Padgett answered, following Rutledge's thinking. "Early days, no stone unturned, and all that."

"I've finished with Quarles, by the bye. And he did eat dinner the night he was killed."

"Then let his wife bury him," Padgett said. "The sooner the better."

O'Neil looked at Rutledge for confirmation, and he nodded.

The doctor opened the door to Stephenson's room. The man looked up, sighed wearily, and visibly braced himself for what was to come.

Rutledge said, "I'm happy to see you feeling a little better."

"There's better and better," Stephenson said without spirit.

"Why kill yourself, if you've done nothing wrong?" Rutledge asked. "It's a waste of life."

"My reasons seemed to be sound enough at the time—"

He broke off and turned his face toward the wall, tears welling in his eyes.

"Do we clap you in gaol as soon as Dr. O'Neil here gives us leave?"

Padgett demanded irritably. "You as much as confessed that you wanted to kill Harold Quarles. Did you or didn't you? You can't have it both ways."

"But he can," Rutledge put in quietly. "If he paid someone to do what he couldn't face himself."

"That would be betrayal. I wouldn't stoop to that. By rights," he went on, "an eye for an eye, I should have killed
his
son. I couldn't do that, either."

"If you didn't kill Quarles, why were you so certain we were about to take you into custody for this murder? Certain enough to kill yourself before we could." He added in a level voice, no hint of curiosity or prying, merely trying to clarify, "Just what did Quarles have to do with
your
son?"