by Charles Todd
The voice at the other end of the line was sharp with irritation.
“You’re a damned hard man to find, Rutledge.”
It was Haldane.
Rutledge swiftly reorganized what he’d been about to say, and replied, “This is the only telephone in Wolfpit. Sorry. I’m at the inn across the way.”
“Yes, well, I have the information you were after. There’s nothing in the career of Captain Wentworth that might lead to murder. His service record is excellent, and his superior officers thought highly of him.”
Rutledge hadn’t mentioned murder in his call to Haldane, but it must have been clear that murder was at the bottom of this request.
“Thank you. It doesn’t make my task any easier, but I find I’m glad there is nothing untoward.” There were already enough secrets in Wentworth’s life.
“Templeton also has an exemplary service record. He rose quickly to Major because he was an excellent officer and a skilled tactician.”
The man who had dealt only with vegetables and breeds of farm animals had hidden talents.
Rutledge was about to thank Haldane again when he went on, “There is no blemish on his record, of course. But I discovered there was an incident late in 1917 where he was a witness in a court-martial.”
“Was he indeed?” Rutledge felt cold. “What was the charge?”
“Cowardice and desertion.”
Dear God.
Rutledge said, keeping his voice steady with an effort of will that left him shaking, “Who was charged?”
“A young private soldier. When his batman was killed, Major Templeton chose Andrew Watts in his place. Hoping to protect him, I should think. Watts was a new recruit, and rather shy. Often the butt of jokes and taunting. Templeton thought he could make a difference, and took him on. But at the start of a dawn attack, Watts froze, wouldn’t let go of the ladder, holding up others. The Lieutenant in his sector had to knock him down to make him release his grip. And he cowered in the trench while his company went out to fight.”
Rutledge took a deep breath. That wasn’t like Hamish. Hamish had fought with courage and intelligence.
He said, “And the upshot of the court-martial?”
“Sentenced to hang.”
It fell into place. The words Templeton had written to his wife, surely just after the verdict had been sent down, the coiled rope on the chair in the attic. Even the photograph of the young soldier in a drawer in the master bedroom.
“Templeton tried to talk the Lieutenant out of bringing charges, but he was incensed and wouldn’t hear of it. Templeton spoke in Watts’s defense. But it did no good.”
“What was Watts like? Where did he come from?”
“He was a farmer’s son in Hampshire. Bright lad, according to his training reports. He told one of his Sergeants that he was interested in grafting, that’s to say growing a better but weaker plant on sturdier root stock.”
Rutledge knew what grafting was. Had Templeton seen Watts as the son he might have had, and tried to protect him? He’d failed, and Watts had been executed.
“Templeton, to his credit, insisted on being there when the sentence was carried out.”
He had watched the young private die. And possibly had given him the courage to face hanging with some semblance of grace.
The man on the other end of the line added in a slightly different tone of voice, “The Lieutenant was a fool. Men broke. And healed. And did England proud.”
Rutledge drew in a breath before he could stop himself. Had Haldane looked at his records? Was this his way of letting Rutledge know? But there weren’t any records. Only what he’d told Dr. Fleming at the clinic. And Fleming would never allow even someone like Haldane to read them.
He realized, before it was too late, before he gave himself away, that there had been an Andrew Watts in Haldane’s life. And Haldane was remembering. It was the first sign Rutledge had ever seen that the man was human.
“Yes” was all he could manage to say. And then he thanked Haldane.
There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line, and then Haldane asked, “I’d like to know. Is Templeton the victim? Or a suspect?”
“Victim. Someone shot both men. Wentworth and Templeton.”
“Well, it can’t be this lad’s death that led to murder. Wentworth was at sea at the time.”
“No. I am grateful for your help.”
“Any time, Rutledge.”
The connection was cut.
Rutledge stood there, still holding the receiver in his hand. And then he gently put it back.
He was no longer in the mood to sift through lines of ledger entries.
Walking back into the little office, he turned down the lamp, shut the door behind him, and went back to The Swan.
He was halfway across the street when he realized that he should have asked Haldane if Harvey Mitchell, the Surrey solicitor, had been involved in that court-martial.
It would have to wait.
He didn’t sleep well, and Hamish kept up a running battle in his mind, making it nearly impossible to close his eyes.
He could understand Templeton. He himself had fought one long, terrible night to persuade Hamish to change his mind before the next attack. Alternately talking to him across the flickering glow of a candle stub and trying to persuade him that his refusal to lead his men back across No Man’s Land would not save them or Hamish himself. But the young Scot had had enough of death, of watching men die. He should have been sent back, but Rutledge had tried until the last possible moment to save him.
He knew how Templeton must have felt.
Only he, Rutledge, hadn’t just watched Hamish die. He had delivered the coup de grâce with his own revolver.
There was a fog hovering over Wolfpit in the morning. The bare tops of trees were ghostly in the soft light, and the tall spire of St. Mary’s had disappeared completely. Condensate ran down the dining room windows like tears.
Rutledge asked for a pot of tea and drank it without milk or sugar, to clear his head.
He could think about Templeton and Andrew Watts more dispassionately this morning, and Hamish had already been at him over the possibility that Watts’s family had been exacting a little private revenge. But unless they had mistaken Wentworth for Templeton, it was a rather far-fetched possibility.
Surely whoever this killer was, if he had gone to such lengths to draw out his victims, he would also have made it a point to see them on the street somewhere, so that he could recognize them when he was ready to question them.
Still, he understood now how Templeton’s war had changed him.
Finishing his tea, he pulled on his coat and went out into the street. The fog was cool and damp against his face, and sounds were disembodied, confusing. He heard the clock in St. Mary’s sound the hour, but it seemed to float over his head, surrounding him with no clear definition of the church’s location.
Knocking at the door of the solicitor’s firm, he expected the clerk to tell him that Blake was still away. Instead Danby nodded to him and informed him that Blake was in and just finishing some business with another client.
Hiding his impatience, Rutledge sat in Reception until an older woman, smiling and obviously relieved, came through the inner door, chatting with the clerk about trusts. When he had shown her out and closed the door behind her, he turned to Rutledge and offered to show him back to Blake’s inner sanctum. But Rutledge said, “Thank you. I believe I know the way.”
Blake was finishing signing some papers, and he looked up as Rutledge came through his door.
“Two minutes,” he said with a wave of his pen, and Rutledge sat down, staring the rhino in its glass eyes. It was an enormous head. The desk had had to be moved forward several inches so that Blake could pass under the heavy jaw to reach his chair. Rutledge had never cared for such trophies, preferring the living animal in the wild to stuffed proof of nothing more than good aim.
Blake signed the last sheet, slid the pape
rs into a folder, and set it aside for his clerk to file later.
“It was hell,” he said without preamble. “I’d told Mrs. Gentry that I would be coming, because I didn’t want to break such news over the telephone. And she thought it was something to do with the will, that Templeton had found someone he wanted to marry. We talked at cross-purposes for all of a minute before I could make it clear that Frederick Templeton was dead, and she was his heir. As it happens, her husband isn’t well—lumbago—and she was afraid that she would be expected to move into the house here in Wolfpit. That was sorted out, and then she began to cry. I can most certainly understand why Frederick Templeton married the elder sister.”
Rutledge said mildly, “The lot of the solicitor and the policeman.”
“Yes, well, you didn’t have to spend the night, so that you could explain the will all over again.” He capped the fountain pen and set it in the dish at the edge of the blotter. “I hope you’ve come to tell me some good news. Although Danby didn’t mention any arrests when I came in this morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about the court-martial of Andrew Watts?”
Blake’s eyebrows flew up. “Who told you about that?”
“What matters is, it wasn’t you.”
“All right, I didn’t think it was pertinent to your inquiry. It upset Frederick and we quarreled about it several times. He wanted to try to clear Watts’s name, or else do something for the family. I told him it was unwise.”
“He cared about Watts.”
“I think he saw himself in the man. That same love of the land. But Watts wasn’t his son, and someone should have seen to it that he was treated as a conscientious objector long before he ever reached the trenches. He wasn’t fit to be a soldier. You know that was true in some cases. Before he enlisted, I don’t think he’d ever traveled more than five miles from where he was born, and when he did, they gave him a rifle, taught him how to shoot it and drive a bayonet into a straw man. Then they shipped him to France. Once he got there, he didn’t want to let the side down. But in the end, he broke. Good men did.”
“His father could have found out who served on the court and tracked them down.”
“That doesn’t explain why Wentworth was killed. What’s more, Frederick did his damnedest to stop the court-martial, and when that didn’t work, he tried to have the sentence commuted on humanitarian grounds.”
“All the same, I should have been the one to decide whether Watts was important or not.”
“Well,” Blake said, his voice bleak, “you know now. Does it change anything?”
“I don’t know. I won’t know until I’m closer to finding the killer. The question is, what else have you decided it wasn’t necessary for me to learn?”
“That’s it. That’s all. I give you my word.”
“Do you know if a man called Harvey Mitchell was sitting on that court-martial?”
“I was never given the other names. I think Frederick was too ashamed of them to want to name them.”
Rutledge reached into his pocket and brought out the two small carvings of the wolves.
“Hello,” Blake said, holding out his hand for them. “These are quite nice. How did you come by them?”
“That one,” Rutledge said, pointing, “the one that isn’t as well polished, was in a muddy rut just where Wentworth was stopped. The other one I found on Templeton’s drive, not far from his body.”
“The devil you say! But what on earth were they doing there?”
“That’s what I’d like to know. The killer’s calling card? An effort to throw us off the track? I can’t believe it’s coincidence.”
“No,” Blake said slowly, turning them on his palm. “Do you think it means the killer is here, in Wolfpit?”
“That’s possible. Do you know anyone who carves as a pastime? No? Or they might have some significance to Wentworth and Templeton. Something they would recognize or might have seen before.”
Blake gave them back to him, and he dropped them into his pocket again.
“This business is getting on my nerves,” Blake said irritably. “I wish you could end it. When are you holding the inquests?”
“There’s little enough information to do more than conclude person or persons unknown.”
“That’s true.” Blake sighed. “Danby was saying that people are worried. They’re keeping their children close and staying in of an evening themselves. Well, I can see why. They know damned little, just that there have been two murders, with the police at a standstill. You can’t blame them.”
It sounded like Inspector Reed stirring up trouble, Rutledge thought. Ignoring the comment, instead he said, “I can see from the ledgers that Wentworth often filled special orders for people, books they particularly wanted and couldn’t find locally.”
“Yes, I’ve gone to him several times myself. I don’t get to London very often, and there are books on law that I’d like to have, references mostly. The world my father and grandfather knew is changing, and I need to change with it. I don’t want to be labeled a country solicitor while my clients turn to larger firms elsewhere.”
“What did he order for Templeton?”
“Books on irrigation and farming. As you’d expect. Although—” He hesitated. “It’s probably not important. But there was a book that Frederick ordered late last summer. It was an older work, I have no idea where Stephen found it. A book on apple varieties, all the old ones from France and from abbey orchards here. It was quite lovely, actually. Stephen showed it to me. Folio, beautifully re-bound in cordovan leather at some point, and with the most marvelous drawings, all in quite amazing color. The trunk, the stems, the leaves, the blossoms, and then the fruit, carefully done. And wonderful old names, in medieval English or French. Pearmain was one, and Calville something or other. I really don’t remember now. The point is, it came in with the post, and Stephen opened the wrappings to be sure it was what Templeton wanted. I’d dropped by, and he showed it to me. We locked up and we went to Stowmarket to dinner with friends. The next morning, the latch on the rear door of the bookshop had been broken, and the odd thing was, nothing was stolen except for that book on apples.”
“Did he call in the police?”
“Yes, of course. But the book was never found, nor was the person who had broken in. Stephen finally managed to find another copy of the book. They aren’t easy to come by—only a handful or so still exist, and those are in private collections. He was quite lucky, actually, but this one wasn’t as beautifully bound. A pity. And there was some damage around the edges. Templeton was pleased, needless to say. Of course he hadn’t seen the first one. Stephen suggested he could have his re-bound, to preserve it better. I don’t know whether Templeton looked into that or not.”
How could a book on apples lead to murder? But here at least was a connection where earlier he’d had none.
“You’re certain you don’t recall where Wentworth found the book?”
“Sorry. Probably from some library up for sale. Happened often enough after the war. Heirs dead, death taxes, estates broken up.”
“You say it had been re-bound?
“Yes. Tooled leather.”
Still, it made no sense.
He thanked Blake, and went from the solicitor’s office to the bookshop.
He had a date now, and he began searching in the pages of the ledger that covered the month of August. But it was in early November that he found the first entry. It was not particularly helpful.
Stephen Wentworth had sent letters to several purveyors of rare books, asking if they could tell him who might own a copy for sale. One of them had written to say that he thought he could put his hands on a copy, and the upshot of that was a private sale, with the rare-book dealer acting as intermediary. Because Templeton had deep pockets, he hadn’t quibbled over the price, and the book on medieval varieties of apple was bought for him.
When it was stolen, Wentworth had absorbed the loss himself, and after some trouble man
aged to find another edition in poorer condition but with all the pages intact. He made note of that in the margin of the accounts ledger, and offered the book to Templeton.
The matter was closed. The person who had stolen the original book was never caught. In early December, Wentworth had noted that the police in London had come to the conclusion that another collector had got wind of the purchase and had stolen the book. Rutledge was fairly certain Wentworth had chosen not to work with the local constabulary, for fear news of the theft would reach Templeton’s ears.
He’d added that the police suspected that an employee of the book dealer had tipped off the collector, but there was no way of proving it. That had occurred in two of the smaller auction houses, and both prosecutions had ended in no conviction.
Rutledge went to the file in which Wentworth had kept his book orders and eventually found the name of the rare-book dealer in London who often handled Wentworth’s special requests.
Using the bookshop telephone, he put through a call to the dealer, and after some persuasion, arranged a meeting with the man.
This meant driving back to London. Reluctant, Rutledge considered asking the Yard to send someone round to the dealer’s shop, then realized that he must see to this himself.
But first there was Wolfpit to protect.
He drove to Stowmarket and found Inspector Reed in the police station.
“What brings you to call on us?” he asked sarcastically as Rutledge was ushered in by the Sergeant on duty. “Don’t tell me you’ve realized you aren’t the man for this inquiry?”
Rutledge sat down without being asked.
“Did Constable Penny request extra Constables for a few days?”
“Yes. I haven’t decided whether I can spare them or not.”
He stood up again. “Then I’ll put my request through to the Chief Constable.” He turned to go.
“All right, then. You can have Constable Talley and Constable Neal. But only for a few days. You’ll be leaving me shorthanded as it is.”
“Not for long. I’ve got my motorcar outside. Give them instructions to report to Constable Penny. I’ll take them back with me.”