A Fearsome Doubt

by Charles Todd

  “Suicide, then?” Machine-gun fire and shrapnel tore at a limb, making it nearly impossible to save. Rutledge had seen the aid stations with the bloody remains piled high under a tarpaulin, waiting for disposal.

  “It’s not likely, for two very good reasons: Each was the sole support of his family, and his pension ended if he died. I don’t think any man in his right mind would leave his family destitute, if he could still feed them and clothe them. However bad the pain got.”

  Hamish quietly agreed.

  Rutledge was thinking instead of Raleigh Masters, who resented his lost foot with a bitter passion. And yet he clung to his life as if only to make those around him suffer through the blight of his own.

  He wondered if there was a similarity, if these victims had also made life wretched for those around them. That might explain one murder. Not three.

  Dowling was saying, “Moreover, I’ve spoken with each of the widows. They absolutely refuse to consider suicide.”

  But wives and widows—witness Nell Shaw!—were often the last to accept the desertion of their husbands, even in death.

  “And there’s one other small detail here. These men had been drinking wine before they died. But no one seems to know where it came from, this wine. Not from home, certainly; there was none in any of the three houses. And no one recalls seeing any of the three men in a public house the nights of their deaths.”

  “What time of night did they die?”

  “It was after eleven, certainly. That’s the latest time we’ve been able to establish. The bodies weren’t discovered until close on to morning, when the light was improving. I’ve sent my men round to talk to everyone who might have been on those roads after dark. They all swore there wasn’t a body lying there when they passed.”

  But dusk came early in November. . . . A dark bundle in the high grass at the side of the road might not be visible.

  Hamish said, “How many would stop to ask if a drunk needed help? And the next day, how many of those would admit they’d passed by without stopping?”

  It was an interesting point.

  “Why were the victims out on the road at that hour? Eleven o’clock or later?” Rutledge asked Dowling. “If they hadn’t been visiting a pub, where had they been?”

  “For the most part they were looking for work, picking up whatever they could find. All three often went from village to village, accepting lifts when one was offered, walking if they had to. Taylor had been mending a fence, Webber repaired furniture, and Bartlett—who’d been a glazier before the war—had gone to sit by a friend’s bedside. The man had been gassed at Ypres, and was dying. Lungs burned out. As a rule, the three victims stayed the night where they were, if there was work. Sleeping in a barn or outbuilding, whatever they could manage. Which also explains why there was no hue and cry when they didn’t come home.”

  Rutledge said thoughtfully, “And all three killed at night . . .”

  Hamish said, “What did they see, that they shouldn’t have seen?”

  Which was a reasonable key to unexpected murder: These men had stumbled on something they shouldn’t have. Still, death had come on three different nights, and on three different roads. Kent was hardly a hotbed of crime, where something evil lurked at the crossroads, waiting for dark. Smuggling had once been a cottage industry along the coast, but that was long past.

  Dowling tossed his papers aside. “We’ve combined our efforts, Inspector Grimes in Seelyham, and Inspector Cawly in Helford, and I. Keeping an eye out for strangers hanging about, questioning everyone who’d seen the victims the day before they were killed, making a master list of everyone who admits to being on the roads each of the three nights. And we’ve come up with what we could have told ourselves before the killings began: The victims knew each other, they were poor, they were wounded in France. But half the ex-soldiers in Kent fit that description, and if that’s what the murderer is after, he’s got an endless supply of choices. Why these three, and so close to Marling? I can tell you that Grimes and Cawly will be happy to drop this business into your lap, Inspector, but I’m a stubborn man and don’t give up easily.”

  BEFORE LEAVING THE hotel, Rutledge had arranged for a room. His glimpse of Elizabeth Mayhew’s face as she stood in the rain on the High Street had made him uncomfortable about staying with her for a few days, although she would have been the first to urge him. Or would she?

  She had asked him to help clear out Richard’s clothes. In preparation for what?

  It was none of his business, he reminded himself, and yet it had left an oddly unpleasant taste in his mouth, as if he had been excluded from what had always felt like a family circle.

  Hamish said, “You were nearly sure at breakfast that she was on the point of speaking her mind.”

  “And she stopped herself. I’d like to know why. It would have been—easier, coming from her.”

  Instead, it was as if the relationship had changed in unexpected ways.

  Taking along the young constable—now silent and shy—who had been dressed down by Sergeant Burke, Rutledge set out to visit the places where each body had been found.

  “Put yourself in the murderer’s shoes,” Rutledge suggested to the young man as they drove past the square and out of Marling on the way to Seelyham. “How well would you need to know this part of Kent, in order to find a quiet place for a killing?”

  Constable Weaver brightened, as if no one had asked his opinion before. “I’d say ours are fairly well-traveled roads,” he answered after a moment’s thought. “Anyone coming down them in the direction of Marling would see the empty stretches. You’d only have to keep in mind where.”

  Which meant, Hamish pointed out, that the possibilities were wide open.

  “Were the three dead men heavy drinkers?”

  “They’d not say no to a pint, sir, if someone was buying. They didn’t have the money for much else.”

  “They hadn’t developed a taste for wine, in France?”

  “There’s a story about that, now you mention it. Some of the Marling men took shelter during a storm in a burned-out French farmhouse. It had a wine cellar, and the men helped themselves. They were sick as dogs for two days, after drinking the lot.” Weaver chuckled. “Tommy Bilson brought home the silver cream jug he found there under a mattress. And it shined up something wonderful. I told him I ought to arrest him for stealing it.” He suddenly remembered who sat beside him in the motorcar and cast an anxious glance in Rutledge’s direction.

  It was as old as warfare, this propensity to appropriate souvenirs. Rutledge had seen countless small acquisitions while boxing up possessions of the men he’d lost. There had been no way to discover where these objects had come from, much less who might have owned them once. For the most part he’d closed his eyes to them and sent them home. One of the most touching had been silver buttons, for a bride who would never wear them to the altar. . . .

  Weaver pointed just ahead, where a line of trees marched along a winding stretch of road, giving some protection from the sun or rain. Rutledge pulled the motorcar to the verge. The constable was saying, “Seelyham’s not more than three miles in that direction. Inspector Grimes was called to have a look at what a farmer had found, and he sent for us.”

  They got out to stand by the trunk of an ash tree. Its thickness offered an ideal place for a man to rest if he was drunk or tired. Shadowed by tall grass and the branches overhead, it was also an ideal spot where a body might be disposed of.

  There were no cottages or farms within sight just here, no windows overlooking the road, but a hundred yards or so in the direction of Marling an overgrown drive wound between leaning stone pillars to a house protected from view by trees and a thick shrubbery. Only its roof and several chimneys were visible over the treetops. Too far away to hear anything, too far to see the road. Still . . .

  “Who lives there?” Rutledge asked, pointing out the gates.

  “Nobody now. The family died, and the lawyers are trying to find the
heirs. Gone to New Zealand for a fresh start, or so I’m told.”

  “Tell me about this first victim. What was his name? Taylor?”

  “That’s right. Will Taylor. He worked in the hop gardens before the war. But there’s not much call for a one-legged man in that line. He’d found a job in Seelyham, putting up a fence that had blown down with the last storm. Good with his hands, and married, with two children.”

  “Did you know him?” Rutledge asked. Weaver had missed the war by a matter of months, too young to serve, but probably eager.

  “He was my brother’s age—Simon was lost off Gallipoli, when his ship went down,” Weaver replied somberly. “And I know Taylor’s wife, as well. Alice was in school with my sister. Too young to marry, but her mother signed the papers.”

  “The sort of man who’d find himself mixed up with something he ought to leave alone?” Rutledge asked, looking up and down the quiet road.

  “I never knew Will to be dishonest. He used to complain about the hop pickers from the East End. Light-fingered and always after the girls, he’d say.”

  Hop picking was labor-intensive. Help was brought in during the autumn to take in the crop, and sometimes the same workers were called on to do the haying first. They were often the dregs of London’s East End, willing enough to work for wages, and sometimes representing the third and fourth generation hired out to pick. It was good income with winter coming on, a little something laid aside for the coalman or a sick child or gin to warm the inside of a man when the cold winds blew. A goodly number of the pickers came from the Maidstone area, bringing with them their dogs and their children, both of which ran underfoot like chickens.

  Weaver stared down at the broken stalks of last summer’s wildflowers. “I don’t see Will Taylor mixed up in anything sinister. He was bent on feeding his family. Took losing his leg hard, an active sort who liked working out in the air. But he was trying to manage somehow.”

  Rutledge said, “Did his wife have anything to tell you?”

  “I questioned Alice myself,” Weaver responded. “But she didn’t know much. He was staying over in Seelyham to finish the fence, saying he’d come home when it was done. She didn’t expect him for another day or two. Sergeant Burke went on to Seelyham and asked about Taylor’s work. The fence was done properly, and a day early. Taylor was told he could wait until the morning, but was eager to get home, and set out after his dinner.”

  “Was Taylor carrying his pay?”

  “Yes, sir, and it was still there, in his pocket. You’d think, wouldn’t you, sir, that a thief wouldn’t fail to find that!”

  THE SECOND VICTIM had been found on the road from Helford. It ran into the Seelyham road at an angle, just outside Marling. Lying in a ditch by the side of fields, he was almost invisible until the sun rose high enough to pierce the shadows.

  Beyond where Weaver stood with Rutledge, the hop gardens spread out toward a distant farm, tucked into a fold of land. Their frames and their green vines gone for the winter, the gardens looked bare and fallow. An oast house, one of the most recognizable features of the Kent landscape, reared its head like a decapitated windmill close by a stand of trees, its white walls streaked and wet from the rain. Inside it was an oast, the drying kiln that was an essential part of the processing of hops.

  “Tell me about this man—Webber?” Rutledge encouraged Weaver as they got out in the rain and stood by the spot. “What sort was he?”

  “Most everyone in Marling knew who he was. Not the sort you’d find carousing of a Saturday night. He’d had a strict upbringing, and his mother was Temperance-mad. A carpenter by trade. Made tables and chests and the like, as his father had done before him. He was in Helford, recaning chairs. The caning Webber did was known all over. No breaks and no missed steps.”

  “Was there money in his pocket?”

  “Yes, sir, we found two pounds.”

  Hamish commented, “A clever man, now, he’d ha’ taken the money and put it in the puir box. To confound the police.”

  Rutledge responded aloud without thinking. “Both of them married: Taylor and Webber. Not likely to be unfaithful, would you say?”

  Weaver answered him. “They weren’t likely, no, sir. Past an age for wild oats, and that. There’s no jealous husband looking for revenge.”

  THE THIRD BODY had been found close by the crossroads where Rutledge thought he’d seen a face in his headlamps. He felt an odd frisson of cold down his spine as he got out of the motorcar, as if there were traces of something unnatural here still, a scent or lingering shadow.

  Hamish, ordinarily quick to point out foolishness, was a Highlander, who understood moods.

  But the corpse was a local man, not a straying doppelgänger. Harry Bartlett had gone to visit a friend who was ill—and ended by dying before him.

  “Bartlett wasn’t what you’d call a staunch churchgoer,” Weaver was saying. “He had a reputation as a hell-raiser before the war, and was the first in Marling to sign up. Told everyone he was tired of bashing local heads, and thought he’d try a few Germans. He was a good soldier, from all reports. That lot often are. But he got hung up on the wire one night that last spring of the war and when they brought him in, he was near to bleeding to death.”

  Hamish was asking a question. Rutledge said, “Did these three men serve in the same unit?”

  Weaver blinked. “Yes, sir, I expect they did. The Kent men stayed together. Looked out for each other.”

  Officers had found that men who knew each other fought better side by side. They often died side by side, when a shell went up in their faces.

  Rutledge walked along the road for some distance, then turned and walked back. “All right then, the war. Find out all you can about where they served, and who their friends were.”

  “Sir? I can’t see how that might help. The war’s been over for a while now.”

  “It hadn’t ended for them, had it?”

  After a last look around, Rutledge turned back to the motorcar. They drove back to Marling as dusk was falling, and the road seemed long, lonely.

  Hamish commented, “A man with crutches would accept a ride.”

  “So he would,” Rutledge silently agreed. “But why should he be saved from a painful walk—and then be killed?”

  Still, it was something to consider. What had these three men had in common, besides lost limbs? According to Weaver, not much beyond their working-class backgrounds and their service in the war. Bartlett’s wife, Peggy, was a girl he’d married since coming home, and there were no children.

  Dowling had been right. There was hardly any evidence to build on. What had brought these men face to face with a killer? Greed? A secret that was dangerous to know? A killer wouldn’t offer a man a glass of wine and then fill him with laudanum, unless he first wanted to learn something from his victim. . . . Where had they drunk together?

  Rutledge, listening to Hamish in the back of his mind, wondered how many more would join this unholy clutch of dead men, before the police found any answers.

  THE RAIN FELL with depressing steadiness, cold and coloring everything a bleak gray. Even the church at the top of High Street seemed dark and dreary, its ragstone facade streaked with damp, and the dead flower stalks among the churchyard stones a sign of desertion rather than loving memorials. What did you grow in the churchyard in winter besides ivy and hellebore? Rutledge wondered as he drove back to the hotel. Too late for Michaelmas daisies and too early for pansies.

  He washed up and unpacked his luggage, then came down to the dining room—to find Melinda Crawford ensconced at the best table. She looked up as he came into the paneled room and smiled broadly.

  “Either I’m in my dotage, or you’ve answered a maiden’s prayers.”

  He laughed and came to join her. “What brings you to Marling?”

  “I could ask the same of you, but I’ve already guessed that in your case it’s murder. In mine it might well be. I’ve been left at the altar, in a manner of speaking.”
>
  “By whom?” he asked, surprised.

  “I was invited to dine with the Masterses, but Bella says that Raleigh is in the foulest of moods and the cook is threatening to give notice, and poor Bella’s at her wit’s end. So I left. Fortunately I remembered that the hotel here has quite good food, and I thought I might perhaps ask Elizabeth to join me.”

  “And have you?” He couldn’t alter the wary note in his voice.

  “She wasn’t at home, either.” Mrs. Crawford sighed. “The one thing I hate about getting old is one’s shrinking circle of friends. But here you are, quite a delightful surprise, and I’m going to enjoy my evening with a handsome young man rather than a crabby old one.”

  “Has Masters taken a turn for the worse?”

  “I doubt his body has, but his temper most certainly did. I could hear him roaring from the front hall. If the man hadn’t been such a brilliant barrister and the most charming of people, I’d say he was paying for past sins. Still, I have both my limbs, and I can’t imagine what it must be like not to.”

  “No reason to take his temper out on his wife.”

  “Bella’s not as cowardly as you might think. In fact, she may in the end prove to be stronger than Raleigh. If she doesn’t poison him first. I think tonight I’d have had a go at it.”

  Rutledge felt his spirits rising. Melinda Crawford was a charming woman, possessed of wit and insight and a very clear view of human nature. At the moment, she was the perfect antidote to his depression.

  The meal was excellent, and the conversation exhilarating, leaving Hamish out as if shutting the door. The Scot was still making up his mind about Mrs. Crawford.

  “In another time,” Rutledge heard him muttering, “she’d ha’ been burned at the stake for witchcraft.”

  Amused, Rutledge had silently answered, “Or been the mistress of Kings.”

  They talked about the war, and about India, where she’d spent her childhood, and about Kent.