The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  “It’ll only encourage him,” Mrs. Lane agreed. “But I thought you ought to know—”

  Francesca left her tea untasted. “This is more serious. I shall have to speak to Mr. Stevens, before this goes any further.”

  “I’d not want to get Mrs. Horner in trouble—”

  “She won’t enter into it, I promise you.”

  “And there’s tomorrow—” Mrs. Lane interjected, as if trying to keep Francesca occupied. “I’ve not liked to ask you what we’re to be serving to the funeral guests.”

  Dear God, Francesca thought, appalled. “I hadn’t considered—”

  “I’ll be baking most of the day. But if you could bring back that large box from my kitchen, after you speak to Rector—I was intending to ask Bill to fetch it this morning. After the storm last night, his joints are aching something fierce.”

  “Yes, I’ll see to it. Perhaps Mrs. Horner can help out tomorrow—”

  Times had changed—where once River’s End and other such houses in the Valley had boasted large staffs inside and out, few were left to do the ordinary work of big households, much less the extra preparations required for guests, parties, or important events like weddings and funerals. Now everyone’s staff had shrunk to those too old for war or for the factories, and the towns were crying out for anyone to fill the vacancies left by men called up. Village girls had always been glad to earn money by helping out when needed, but they too had vanished, some of them patriotic and eager to serve, others drawn by the better pay. All over England, able-bodied men were a rarity almost as soon as the call had come, but it wasn’t long before the young women followed them to London or Manchester—to all the larger cities—where the excitement—and the work—could be found. Now the Valley was reduced to asking favors of those who remained, everyone doubling up to lend a hand where it was needed, refusing to complain, offering with a wry shrug, “There’s a war on, you know.” The new French expression, “C’est la guerre,” had become the watchword in London. As if that excused the increasing hardships. The elderly minded children, helped where they could in the fields or small shops, and cooked meals for the women doing heavy labor in their husband’s or brother’s place.

  “I’ve already asked Mr. Stevens if he could spare her. He offered the Rectory instead of River’s End, if you’d prefer it that way. But it’s not fitting, is it, Miss? Mr. Hatton wouldn’t have cared to be so shamefully neglectful of his friends.”

  “I daresay there won’t be many friends who are able to travel this far,” Francesca replied. “But all the same we must see that the meal is done properly. Whether two people or twenty or two hundred come to the service.”

  Francesca drove herself into the village, and found the rector in his study, considering what he was to say tomorrow about a parishioner twice his age and whose life he knew only briefly and at its very end. William Stevens welcomed Francesca with the air of a man badly in need of rescue.

  “I’ve come about Mr. Leighton,” she said. “I’m told he’s asking questions about his mother, claiming she must be buried here in Devon. He’s already been to see me, haranguing me for answers. I’m beginning to think the man’s obsessed.”

  “He didn’t put it quite that way. But yes, Leighton’s looking for information. And there’s none to give him. I’ve searched the parish records rather carefully, and nothing comes to light. In fact, I hadn’t expected it would. He’s probably dying, you know. Leighton. And people who are dying are often . . . single-minded.”

  Even Mrs. Lane had said as much.

  “Dying? Did he tell you that?”

  “No. But there’s a sense of urgency about him, a darkness that seems to drive him. As if he knows his time is short. And there are brief spells where he almost blacks out. As though the pain had grown unbearable. I’ve noticed too he can’t sit in one place for very long—that seems to distress him the most.” Stevens smiled wryly. “I’ve had some little experience myself with the wounded and hospitals, as you know. I’ve come to recognize the symptoms of fatalism.”

  “Well,” she retorted in exasperation, “accusing strangers of foully murdering his mother is stretching obsession beyond belief!”

  “Who has been accused— Murder? Francesca, what are you talking about?” The rector’s face was severe with concern.

  Francesca bit her lip. She had let her tongue run away from her, let anger get the better of judgment. “He swears Grandfather abducted and killed his mother, then buried the body where it couldn’t be found. I can’t think why he’s so convinced of that, but he is.”

  “He told me only that she had ties to the Valley—Francis Hatton? But that’s absurd!”

  “Yes, I told Mr. Leighton as much. He called on me again yesterday morning and all but accused me of hiding the Family Secret and refusing to divulge what I know.”

  “That’s even more absurd. If your grandfather had committed six murders, he’d hardly have unburdened himself to you! It’s to me he’d have turned, his priest and confessor, as he lay dying. And I can tell you he did nothing of the sort!”

  “But how am I to refute it, pray? And what if Leighton badgers the funeral guests tomorrow? ‘Did you know my mother? Do you think she was murdered by the man we’re burying here today—’ ” She caught herself and sat down unsteadily, as if the air had gone out of her. It was an appalling thought.

  Stevens asked, “You haven’t slept well, have you?”

  “Does it show so clearly? No. But that’s not the point—”

  “I think it is. Ordinarily you’d have the good sense not to heed what a man you know nothing about has told you. I believe Leighton to be sincere, but even I can’t be certain he’s telling the truth! Two very different matters! The problem is, you see, you’re vulnerable now. And alone.”

  And how had this stranger learned so much about the Hattons. . . .

  “My grandfather did keep secrets,” Francesca confessed, forced into honesty by Stevens’s open concern. “I’m only just learning some of them! It’s not a matter of good sense—not any longer. The seeds of doubt have been planted, you see, and I’m starting to question everything I thought I knew about Francis Hatton! By any chance, did my grandfather confide in you? You visited often before I came home and in those last weeks before the end. Did he tell you things he never told me?” she pleaded. “I’m so in the dark!”

  “How can I know the answer to that? I will say that what was uppermost in his mind—as you’d expect—was the loss of his grandsons. He was struggling to comprehend it—he sometimes railed against God, calling Him merciless. ‘First both of my sons,’ he would say, ‘and now my five boys. I would have offered my sons up like Isaac, but not my boys.’ I told him that that was madness. That he’d loved his sons just as much as he had loved his grandsons. His other concern, naturally, was keeping you safe when he wasn’t there to cherish you. ‘Who will guard my girl?’ he must have asked me a dozen times. The Valley will look after her, I replied, but that didn’t appear to satisfy him. In his view no one could take his place.”

  “How did he answer you? About his sons?”

  “His answer was unexpected . . .” The rector paused, as if debating how to finish the account. Finally he added, “He said that his sons had disappointed him. For what that’s worth.”

  In disgrace . . .

  “What had they done to disappoint him? Besides dying before their time?”

  “He didn’t explain what he meant. He changed the subject after that.”

  Unsatisfied, Francesca considered asking Stevens if Francis Hatton had told him about the properties in Somerset or Essex. If he had spoken of the Murder Stone. But something made her hold her tongue.

  “I can understand his railing,” she answered after a moment. “I sometimes railed myself. It seemed so unfair, to take them all. Even Harry.”

  “Harry is only one of many. You have no idea how the youth of England has been squandered,” Stevens said bitterly. “You can’t imagine the slaughter.
” He shook his head in denial. “Battles used to be set pieces—a few hours—three days—and then both sides withdrew to lick their wounds. The killing might have been horrific, but it was finite. Trench warfare is different. The Battle for the Somme—we were trying to relieve the pressure on the French, you see. But somehow the Germans guessed what we were about. And here it is, October, four months later, and the butchery continues. We’re dug in on one side of No Man’s Land, and they’re dug in on the other, and it’s a war of attrition. How many of you can we kill before you’ve killed all of us? There’s no respite, no space to stop and think and survive. And no one was prepared for that! Certainly not the Army General Staff!” He stared into space at something she couldn’t see, something ugly that seemed to fill the room with his doubts. “My faith was tested in ways I’d never dreamed of—how does anyone tell a mere boy that it’s his duty to climb out of the trenches and race across that barren hellscape until he’s cut down—?”

  Stevens caught himself, made a deprecating gesture that was half resignation and half apology. “But that’s my particular obsession. We were saying about your grandfather—” He tried to smile, and failed.

  But he couldn’t hide the pain. Francesca wanted to comfort him—and knew that that was the last thing he could endure just now.

  “My grandfather—yes. What was he like as a man?” she pleaded, trying to define her own enigma. To her he was Grandfather, the rock of her world. She’d never before questioned—she couldn’t see him through the eyes of other people.

  “He was one of the most forceful men I have ever met. Whatever decisions he made, he stood by them. He was intelligent, compassionate, and sometimes unyielding—even cruel. I have to tell you that as well.”

  “How do you mean—unyielding?”

  “He had an Old Testament view of life. Retribution, an eye for an eye. Where I would have tried to find the charity to forgive, he would say, ‘They brought it on themselves. Now they must learn to live with it. That’s their punishment.’ And serenely walk away while I tangled myself in knots over the thorny question of duty and responsibility.” Stevens made a wry face. “But it’s in my nature to want to find a way out of a dilemma, to uplift and comfort.”

  “Give me an example,” she pressed.

  He shook his head. “I can’t think of one that doesn’t involve parish business. Of course that’s where I dealt most often with Mr. Hatton. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up—”

  “But do you think—was there something mean—vicious—in him?”

  “Good Lord—!” Stevens began earnestly. “No, not that kind of cruelty! I promise you!” He was embarrassed, and added with a wry grin, “I was trying to say that your grandfather saw good and evil rather starkly. Black and white. Without the compassion I’d been taught in Seminary. I found myself wondering what kind of experiences in his own life had taught him such—bitterness.”

  But Francesca wasn’t content.

  “Do you think my grandfather was truthful? That you could trust what he told you?”

  “You’re letting this soul-searching eat away at you! And that’s Leighton’s doing, of course. The man ought to be horsewhipped for it!” He was angry. “Do you think you could be so far wrong about a man you’d loved all your life? Do you really believe you could be such a poor judge of his character?”

  “You haven’t answered me. Was he truthful?”

  “He said to me once, ‘You believe now that absolute truth is a virtue. When you’re my age, you’ll understand that it isn’t.’ But in a way I did know what he was trying to tell me—I’d written letters home to the parents and wives of dead soldiers, I’d held the hands of the dying and offered them more grace than they deserved. Sometimes truth has to be put in context. Harking back to what we talked about earlier, if Francis Hatton kept secrets from you, he must have had a very good reason for doing so. And you must give him the benefit of the doubt there. You must trust to his wisdom and his good judgment.”

  “All right, I’ll hold on to that. Thank you!”

  “Not at all—”

  Mrs. Horner stuck her head around the study door. “Mr. Leighton to see you, sir. I told him Miss Hatton was with you, but he insisted his business couldn’t wait.”

  Leighton came striding into the room on the heels of the announcement. His nod to Francesca was the briefest acknowledgment of her presence. Then he said to the rector, “I’ve just been speaking to an old woman who lives on the edge of the stream, in that hovel that passes as a cottage.”

  “That’s Miss Trotter, I think—”

  “Her mother worked for the Hattons. That’s why I sought her out. She told me that some twenty years or more ago a body was found in the river. The dead woman was given decent burial in the churchyard. Francis Hatton paid the sexton to dig the grave and the rector of that day—Chatham, I think Miss Trotter said he was called—to speak a few words, although the question was whether the woman was a suicide or the victim of a storm.”

  “Before my time, of course,” Stevens agreed. “But I recall seeing a reference to that death last evening as I was searching the church records for you. She was a serving girl who had run away from home.”

  “Who decided that she was a servant girl?”

  “The records don’t tell us that sort of thing. Someone must have recognized her—the name given was Daisy Barton, occupation, servant.”

  “Odd that Miss Trotter didn’t know that, as she was living here at the time. She swears no one recognized the girl. I’d like to see the grave, if you will tell me where to look.”

  “Mr. Leighton, I can understand your desire and your impatience. But Miss Hatton was here before you, and there’s the matter of her grandfather’s funeral tomorrow. If you will come again in an hour—”

  You could see, Francesca thought, that Leighton didn’t relish the rector’s polite refusal to answer him on the instant. That urgency again . . . She felt herself enjoying his discomfiture. And at the same time felt a twinge of guilt. A grudging understanding. She had never seen her own parents’ graves, and sometimes wondered what it was like in Toronto in the winter . . . if anyone brought flowers for them in the summer.

  Richard Leighton was no different than she, surely, in wanting closure.

  But not at the sacrifice of Francis Hatton’s good name!

  “I can follow directions, if you will give them,” Leighton was saying.

  “No.” It was firm. “I am occupied at the moment with other matters. You must wait until I am free to help you.”

  Leighton turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, but on the threshold he staggered, clutching at the sides of the door for support.

  Stevens, with a smothered oath unbecoming to a priest, was across the room and at his side, his bad foot forgotten. But Leighton brushed him off. “It’s nothing!” he snarled on an indrawn breath. “I missed my step—the carpet—”

  It was a naked lie, but Stevens let him save face. “Yes, of course.”

  The door closed behind Leighton, and Stevens limped back to the desk, smiling ruefully at Francesca. “I’m sorry—”

  The peace she’d achieved moments earlier was shattered. Anger had swallowed her again, and she fought to keep her temper.

  “He’ll go to any lengths, won’t he, to show my grandfather killed that woman! I’ll be hearing from his solicitors next!”

  “I think he sincerely believes—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted grudgingly, “he probably does. I don’t know whether it was his father or his grandfather who cultivated it, but he’s utterly single-minded! That makes him dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Stevens repeated in bewilderment. “Hardly that!”

  “It isn’t your grandfather being accused of something unspeakable, like murder, when he can no longer tell his side of the story! Don’t you see? It’s only a matter of time before the whole story spills out, and the Valley learns why that man is here! And after he’s gone, I’ll have to look e
veryone in the face, wondering how much of this wild tale they believe. Can’t you find a way to get rid of Richard Leighton before tomorrow? So he won’t attend the funeral? Send him on a wild-goose chase to Exeter? Or back to London.”

  “I’d have to lie—”

  “No, you’d only have to speak the truth—that murder hasn’t been done here in the Exe Valley in half a century.”

  As she said the words, Francesca found herself thinking, “Even if Grandfather killed Victoria Leighton, it wasn’t here. He’d never have done such a thing here where we were living. But there was always Somerset—or Essex—”

  You believe now that absolute truth is a virtue . . . There were many ways of lying. What kind of man had her grandfather become, far away from River’s End?

  CHAPTER 7

  The house, when Francesca returned, smelled of pastry and yeast and roasting pork. The funeral baked meats, she thought, remembering Hamlet. All I need is the ghost of my grandfather come to warn me.

  Instead, had he sent Richard Leighton? She shook away the thought.

  After delivering the sought-after box from Mrs. Lane’s pantry, she went upstairs and took off her hat and coat, still dissatisfied with the way her interview with the rector had ended.

  In spite of everything, she decided, Stevens was more than a little sympathetic toward Richard Leighton. A fellow soldier, a fellow sufferer. The comradeship of war, Peter had once called it, she remembered. Fear and courage and death made men brothers in ways that had nothing to do with birth.

  She, on the other hand, didn’t trust the man at all.

  “Please God nothing happens tomorrow—!” she said aloud into the silence of her room. “I couldn’t bear it!”

  She went down the passage, looking at the shut doors that closed off her cousins’ rooms, and the door at the far end which led to her grandfather’s suite.

  “I’ve hardly had time to grieve,” she said to him, as if he were still there and could hear her. “Or to say good-bye.”