by Charles Todd
“Man’s in no case to talk. Deep depression, according to the doctor. Just sits there, staring at the floor, face drained of emotion. Stands to reason,” he said again, as if he used the expression often. “Wife died twice, didn’t she? Once when he was told she’d been killed by the Zeppelins and now by his own hand. Shock. That’s what it is. I daresay any of us would feel much the same. Not that it explains or excuses, of course. But you can see how it would happen.”
Shock. It was something Rutledge understood very well In a different voice he asked, “What weapon did he use?”
“Now that’s an interesting question. Blunt force to batter her face in, which means anything from a heavy stone to a tool of some sort. We examined the tools Mowbray had with him. Hammers, screwdrivers, a pair of saws, a level, that sort of thing. No blood or hair on any of them. Which says to me he got rid of whatever it was. I’d guess it’s where he left the other corpses.”
“And the wounds? Where were they?”
“In the face, mostly. Repeated blows, eight or ten, the doctor says. But there’re marks on her neck too. As if he’d caught up with her, running, and grabbed her by the throat, pulled her down, and then went for the face. That’s often what you find where jealousy is the motive—make her so hideous even in death that the rival can’t bear to look at her anymore. Doctor says the force used was savage, as if driven by terrible anger or fear.”
“And no blood on Mowbray or his clothing?”
“No. But then he could have cleaned himself up, couldn’t he? Changed shirts even. There’s no way of telling how many he’d brought with him. We found one other work shirt in his satchel, and a white one for Sunday. He might have had more.”
Rutledge closed the file. “I’d like to see Mowbray, if f may.”
Hildebrand got to his feet. “Much good it’ll do you!” he said willingly enough. “Let me fetch the key on the way.”
They went along the same dark hallway to the end, where the key was kept in a small cupboard. Then Hildebrand turned to another door just to his left and unlocked it. The iron key made a scraping sound that jangled the nerves. As the door swung open, Hildebrand said, “Someone to see you, Mowbray. Scotland Yard. On your feet, man!”
The man on the cot, lying on top of the gray blanket, slowly swung his feet to the floor and stared up at his visitors. His face was empty, and he made no effort to do more than sit, as if doing even so much had drained him of life and hope.
Rutledge picked up the chair on the far side of the narrow cell and brought it over nearer the cot. The room was wider than it was long, and there was no window. The air was stale, seeming to hover in visible layers around them as he sat down. In the back of his mind Hamish was pointing that out, over and over again. After a moment Rutledge said, “Mr. Mowbray?”
The man shifted his feet a little and nodded.
“Did you kill the woman who was found in the field? The woman dressed in pink?” Rutledge kept his voice low, quiet, no hint of accusation in it, only curiosity.
“She was my wife, I’d never harm her,” he said gruffly after a time.
“The cabby has said you threatened to kill her—” Hildebrand began from the doorway, but Rutledge waved him into silence.
“You were angry with her, weren’t you? For deceiving you, for putting you through such anguish. When you believed you’d come home and buried her with the children? And then—suddenly—she was alive, and so were they, and the first emotion you felt was anger. A great, fierce anger.”
“It was the shock—and the train wouldn’t stop—I was beside myself—I said things I didn’t mean. I’d never harm her.”
“Not even for taking your children and going to live with another man?”
Mowbray sat with his head held by the palms of his hands on either side of his temples. “I’d want to kill him” he said huskily, “for getting around her. Making her do it. I’d blame him, not her.”
“His solicitor’s just left,” Hildebrand put in again. “told him what to say. You’ve heard more from him already than I have! It’s—”
But Rutledge ignored him, cutting across the flow of words as if they hadn’t been spoken. “Where did you leave the children? Can you take us to them? Let us help them?” He waited for an answer, then added gently, “You’d not want the foxes or dogs to find them first.”
Mowbray raised his head, and the pain-filled eyes made Rutledge swear under his breath as he met them. “I don’t know,” the man said wretchedly. “I don’t know where they are. Tricia was always afraid of the dark. I’d not leave her alone out in the dark! But I can’t remember—they tell me I killed her, and my Bertie, but I can’t remember! Night and day—that’s all I can see in my mind. The children. It’s driving me mad!”
Rutledge got up from his chair. He’d seen men break, God knew he of all people could recognize the signs! There were no answers to be had now from Mowbray. The haunting images he’d seen—or been told he’d seen—had been seared deep into his brain, and separating them from reality would be nearly impossible.
Hamish, in the back of his own mind, was dredging up memories that were also safer concealed in the shadows, and he fought them grimly.
Mowbray was watching him like a beaten dog, and Rutledge turned to go, not trusting his voice, unable to offer any comfort. Mowbray’s eyes followed him. Then the two men were out the door, leaving their prisoner to the silence and his conscience. Rutledge said nothing as the key rasped again in the lock and Hildebrand turned to put it back in its cupboard, but he could still feel the sense of suffocation, of hopelessness and horror and fear they’d left behind them.
“You could pity the poor sod—if you hadn’t seen what he’d done.” Hildebrand was waiting with polite impatience for Rutledge to precede him down the passage to his office.
“Put a suicide watch on him,” Rutledge said finally. “I want a constable with him, night and day. Never out of sight for an instant.”
“I’m short of men—we’re seaching for the others—”
“Do it! If he kills himself before you find those bodies, they may never turn up.” Rutledge walked away, leaving Hildebrand fuming behind him, wanting to argue. He didn’t care. He’d stayed as long as he could stand it in this dark and grim place.
“I can’t work miracles, I tell you!” Hildebrand was saying.
Rutledge, still struggling against the strong presence in his mind as Hamish harshly pointed out that Mowbray didn’t have such luxury of choice—could never again hope to walk out into the air and sun—silently reminded the bitter voice that Mowbray was very likely the murderer of children and had chosen his destruction himself. “I’ll hold you personally responsible if that man dies,” he went on as the inspector caught up to him.
Hildebrand answered through clenched teeth, “that one’s not likely to miss the hangman, if I can help it. Right, then! You’ll have your watch.”
3
Rutledge found a room at the Swan Hotel, on the second floor overlooking the main street. He set his suitcase down by the tall wardrobe and went to open the windows. A gust of hot air seemed to roll in, then with the help of the open door behind him, the stirring draft began to relieve a little of the afternoon’s heat.
He stood there by the windows, watching the traffic in the street below. The last of the farm carts had gone, but between the trees at the upper end of the street and the old market cross at the lower end he could count some half a dozen carriages still waiting. Two cars were standing just opposite the hotel, and another one was driving away, the echo of its motor rising from the house fronts as it climbed the hill.
He felt depressed. Hamish, silent for some time now, had nothing to say, leaving Rutledge with the heaviness of his thoughts and the sense of guilt for doing nothing to help Mowbray. Instead he’d made certain that the man lived to be hanged. From one suffocation to another …
Mowbray was a tragedy. A man who was not, by nature, a killer. Who may have killed out of surprise and shoc
k and instant, overwhelming fury. Which probably didn’t matter very much to the young mother who had just died at his hands! It would very likely be kinder to everyone if Mowbray carried out his own sentence of execution. But the law forbade suicide, and it was the duty of the police to prevent it. And let the poor bastard suffer from the knowledge of what he’d done until His Majesty’s hangman legally put him out of his misery.
Sighing with the uselessness of it all, Rutledge turned to unpack. There was a tap at the door and the chambermaid came in bearing a tray. “I thought you’d like some tea, sir. It’s too late to have it in the parlor, but there were still cakes and half a dozen sandwiches in the kitchen.” She smiled shyly.
“Thank you—” He hesitated, and she supplied the name for him as she set the tray on a table and whisked off the napkin that covered dainty egg and cucumber sandwiches and a plate of iced cakes. There was also what looked like two fresh pasties. Apparently tea at the Swan was hardy fare.
“Peg, if you please, sir.”
“Thank you, Peg.”
She curtsied, then turned for the door. He stopped her, asking, “Do many of the passengers from the noon train stop here at the hotel?”
“No, sir, not often. Mostly they live around here, in the town or one of the villages with no station. We have more guests on market day. Today, that was. Or when there’s an inquest. Sometimes for a funeral, if the deceased was well known.” She grimaced. “I saw that man, sir. Mr. Mowbray. When he came to ask if his wife and the children were staying here. Upset he was, nearly snapping my head off when I told him Mr. Snelling—that’s the manager—was on the telephone and couldn’t come out to speak to him just then.”
“Did you see Mowbray’s wife and the children?”
“No, sir, they never came here. Constable Jeffries showed me the photograph, but the only children in that day for luncheon were Mr. Staley’s, and I’ve known them since they was born! Now Mrs. Hindes said she believed she saw Mrs. Mowbray at the station, when she was there to pick up her niece from London. But Miss Harriet’s never comfortable on a train, and Mrs. Hindes was that worried about the girl being sick before they reached home, she never really paid much heed to the other passengers.” Peg grinned. “Miss Harriet is always being sick. It’s her revenge for having to stay two weeks with her auntie.”
Rutledge smiled, and Peg recollected her place. “If there’s nothing else sir?” She left, closing the door softly behind her.
He ate the pasties and two of the cakes, drank his tea while it was hot, then wished he hadn’t. Leaving his coat over the back of his chair, he opened the door again for whatever air was stirring and finished unpacking, his mind on the dead woman.
Singleton Magna was not where she lived. Everyone in such a small town, including Hildebrand, would have known her instantly if this had been her home. And she didn’t live close by, or by this time someone would have recognized her photograph or the children in it. Or come looking for her.
The question then was, had she and the man with her left the train because they’d seen Bert Mowbray there in one of the cars, staring at them in shocked surprise, and in a panic decided to make a run for it? Or had the family been on its way to a place beyond Singleton Magna? If so, how had they planned to travel that distance after leaving the train?
Could they have been completely oblivious of the man watching them?
Because sometimes you felt eyes on you, when there was some strong emotion behind the stare. Had she sensed them, as the guilty often did? And what had she told the man with her? “There’s my husband! The one thinks I’m dead!” Or had she told lies? Anything to make him trust her?
Come to that, how much did the man himself know? Enough to make him accept the need for haste and putting distance between themselves and Mowbray? Or was he as much a victim of her scheming as Mowbray himself?
What if, somewhere along the road, the truth had sunk in and he’d decided that running wasn’t the answer. And instead chosen to confront the man from this woman’s past? Or—decided to leave her to face the consequences of her folly alone.
Interesting conjectures, but only that—conjectures. They’d know when the other bodies were found.…
Rutledge spent what was left of the afternoon coordinating a widening search. Making telephone calls to towns along the railway in both directions, asking local police for assistance in locating any passengers on Mowbray’s train who might have information about the woman and her children. He persuaded police in the busy holiday towns along the coast to do the same, though they were not sanguine about finding any needles in the haystack of people on their doorstep. They had already passed around the circular Hildebrand had sent them. It hadn’t brought any response.
He called in more searchers from the nearest towns and outlying villages, telling constables and sergeants and inspectors that any men they could spare would be greatly appreciated. A thinly veiled order, couched in the politest terms. Then he and Hildebrand looked at a rough map of Singleton Magna and its environs, already quartered with lines showing where the search had scoured the landscape. Next Rutledge read reports from earlier parties, all of them ending with the same last line: “Nothing to report.”
Hamish, reflecting his tiredness, pointed out that it was useless to go back over the same ground again and again, but Rutledge knew the value of many pairs of eyes. What one had missed, another might see. It was harder to convince Hildebrand of that.
“I can’t grasp how a man in his state of mind could be so clever,” he said again, tossing his pencil back on the cluttered desk. “It’s not likely he knew more about this territory than we do. Stands to reason! And yet we’re fair flummoxed! I can’t understand how we’ve missed them.”
“I don’t know that it’s cleverness,” Rutledge said thoughtfully. “A small child can be buried in a field. Tucked under a hedge or loose stones by a wall. Stuffed in the hollow of a tree. He might have felt compelled to bury them, whether he remembers it or not. It’s the man whose body should have turned up by this time.”
“I’ve climbed up church bell towers,” Hildebrand told him defensively, “taken pitchforks to haystacks, walked the railway tracks for five miles in both directions, even looked down wells and run sticks up chimneys.”
“Very resourceful of you,” Rutledge applauded, sensing ruffled feathers. “What we need now, I think, is to try to follow in his footsteps. It might be helpful to send men back to every person Mowbray encountered, then use the time they saw him as a map to chart his movements. That could give us a better idea of where he might have gone when no one was looking.”
Grudgingly Hildebrand agreed. “If those extra men come in, I’ll see to it. I’ve looked into what gaps I discovered. But I suppose it won’t do any harm to go over those two days again.”
He stared consideringly at Rutledge. Quiet enough, and competent, he had to give him that. One to check every detail, which was frustrating, knowing how thorough he’d been on his own. Still, that wasn’t unreasonable, it was the sort of thing he himself would expect, in Rutledge’s shoes. Hadn’t arrived demanding an office and a sergeant either, setting himself up as God Almighty, wreaking havoc in another man’s patch. But somehow distant, not the sort you’d ask to join you for a pint at the end of the day. And there was an intensity about him, underneath it all. Hildebrand found himself wondering if the Londoner was still recovering from war wounds. That thinness and the tired, haunted eyes …
None of which was worrying to the local man in charge. It was more a matter of pride that drove him.
Rutledge didn’t appear to be a meddler, but you could never be sure. There’d been rumors about what he’d done in Cornwall. Simple enough case to begin with—and look how that’d been turned inside out! Well, Scotland Yard would learn soon enough that Singleton Magna knew what it was about.
Best course of action, then, was to say yes to everything and quietly do as you thought best. And hope to hell London was kept well occupied sorting out j
urisdictional squabbles.
Hamish, without fuss, said, “Watch your back, man!”
Rutledge nodded. But whether in answer to Hildebrand or his own thoughts it was hard to tell.
When a frail thread of cool air ushered in the evening, Rutledge went down to his motorcar and drove out of Singleton Magna on the road that led to the farmer’s field where the body of Mrs. Mowbray had been found. The sun slanted low in the west, turning trees and steeples and rooftops to a golden brightness that seemed timeless and serene.
The place was comparatively easy to find—a field of grain that ran gently down a hillside toward the road and then continued for some forty feet across it. Beyond the lower field, a pattern of mixed dark green led on toward a clump of trees along a small stream, and beyond that he could just see the tall church tower of Singleton Magna, apparently not so far away as the crow went, but possibly four miles by the high road.
To the west of where he pulled over and got out of his motorcar, he noticed a Y in the road and a weathered signpost, its arms pointing toward more villages out of sight over the slight rise.
As a place to commit murder, he thought, standing there in the golden light, this was as isolated a spot as any.
And by the same token, as isolated as it was—how had Mowbray and his victim come to meet here? Or had they come here together from some other place?
“Ye’ll not be getting answers from yon puir sod in the gaol,” Hamish reminded him. “He’s a witless man.”
Which was a very good point, Rutledge thought.
This case, so obviously clear-cut and so near to being closed, was going to sink or survive in the courtroom on the basis of cold, hard fact. Weapon. Opportunity. Motive. And the how and when and where of the act.
“Aye,” Hamish replied, “broken men conjure up sympathy. Unless they’re branded cowards …”
Rutledge winced and turned his back on the motorcar, looking up at the field. Why here? he asked himself. Because she had gotten away from Mowbray, as someone had suggested? And it was here that he’d caught up with her again? Simple happenstance?