The Murder Stone

by Charles Todd

  “Bad feeling—in what way?” Francesca asked, suddenly wary.

  “I don’t quite know,” Miss Trotter replied, considering. “I’m afraid he’ll die out there, cold and hungry—afraid and alone. It would be rather horrible, in my opinion. But maybe not to him. Death sometimes comes as a friend. . . .”

  Francesca, not wanting to think about the man’s dying, quickly changed the subject.

  The next morning, as the Army deployed through the Valley, Francesca sat by her window again, resting her leg on a chair and waiting.

  Leighton came again in the afternoon, with no news.

  Again he didn’t repeat his avowal of love—nor did he ask if she had decided to marry him. It was as if the proposal had never happened. She was beginning to think he might have regretted his impulsiveness.

  Yet she found comfort in his presence. A male voice again in the house, male footsteps down the passage. And he seemed to be in no hurry to go.

  She had spent the greater part of the morning, after Miss Trotter’s departure, knitting a scarf for the soldiers, and it was already half finished. The verger’s wife had sent the yarn to her by way of Mrs. Lane, promising more soon. Weary of knitting, she had read a little, and always she kept an eye to the ridge beyond the gardens for signs of the soldiers out hunting.

  Now they sat without speaking, as they had done in the evenings during the journey to Essex. The afternoon cast long shadows down the hill, and then faded behind a bank of clouds. When Leighton got up to leave, Francesca wanted more than anything to ask him to stay another hour—perhaps two. But he had promised to walk Mrs. Lane down the hill.

  It rained later, a cold and unforgiving rain.

  As darkness fell, Francesca waited for Miss Trotter and listened for sounds of anyone approaching the house on other business. Would the shooter come here seeking sanctuary? And what would she do, if he turned out to be Harry or Simon or Robin? Would she try to hide him somewhere in the house? Or would she send him back to hospital—a traitor to him and not a savior?

  Odd, she thought, how personal this dilemma of the shooter had become, once the suggestion that he might be a man from the Valley had taken root. Like Mrs. Passmore, was she so desperate for someone of her own blood to come back again? Would she have felt as much compassion for a man whose identity and face she didn’t know? She hoped the answer would be yes.

  Outside on the hills, the Army was being thorough, she thought. Both she and Mrs. Passmore would have an answer to their question soon.

  Miss Trotter brought the news that Mrs. Passmore had taken to her bed, and Dr. Nealy had been sent for.

  “Nervous collapse.” She nodded wisely. “A pity. She’s pinned all her hopes on the sergeant failing. And now the Army has said the shooter must be gone away, to elude them as he has for two days. There was talk of the search moving on to Exmoor.”

  The next morning, filled with foreboding and unable to sit knitting in her room, Francesca sent for Bill and the motorcar.

  They drove south of Exeter and down to the watery world where the River Exe broadened into an estuary and reached the sea.

  Budleigh Salterton was a residential seaside town with a pebbly beach and no reputation for bathing, but from the top of the cliffs, the view was magnificent.

  Bill, slowing to look at it, said, “Reminds me of growing up in Cornwall. You could always smell the sea. And hear it, too, if the wind was right.”

  The elderly Mr. Chatham had built himself a cottage as near the cliff path as he could manage, and his hobby of bird-watching was evident from the drawings and prints of birds filling the small, stuffy room that served as parlor and study. Francesca, ducking under the lintel and watching where she set her crutches among the books cluttering the floor, greeted her host with a tired smile. The journey had been exhausting and cold.

  Mr. Chatham at once offered his condolences and added, “I wasn’t up to traveling to the Valley for the services, I’m afraid, but I have said my prayers for the peace of your grandfather’s soul.”

  He picked up an array of unframed prints and moved them to the table, offering Francesca the chair nearest the warmth of the fire.

  “The cousins are gone as well,” she told him. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Your grandfather wrote to me about young Harry. I’d stopped reading the newspapers by that time, you know. I’m too old to see the end of this war, and I can’t bear to carry the weight of it any longer. But there are my birds, and they give me a little happiness.”

  At length, when Francesca had warmed herself by the fire and accepted a cup of tea, Chatham smiled at her and said, “I’m saddened to find you on crutches!”

  She told him about her accident, and when he had commiserated, she moved on to what had brought her to Exmouth. “I’ve come about a Francis Hatton that I never knew. Not the grandfather, the man.”

  Chatham’s face had changed as she spoke, and he bent to retrieve a volume that had fallen to the floor from a stack beside his chair. As if rescuing it—or buying time for himself to think.

  “What in particular worries you?” he asked slowly.

  “A house in Essex,” she said, listing them on her fingers. “A man named Walsham. A home for orphans in Somerset. The murder of my aunt and uncle. A child named Elizabeth Andrews . . . who my cousins really were.”

  Chatham sighed. “I argued with Francis Hatton more times than I can remember. I told him that sins would one day come home to roost! But I always prayed that I was wrong.”

  “Why did he die with so many secrets on his conscience?” Francesca asked, her voice strained. “Why couldn’t he have warned me?”

  “I daresay he wanted your good opinion, at the end. People do, you know. You were the last child. You loved him. He valued that.”

  The rector had told her much the same thing. It seemed to be a clerical stock-in-trade.

  “I can understand your concern about your cousins,” he went on soberly. “If by that you mean that Francis Hatton never explained to them how their parents died. They were already living at River’s End when I came to the Valley to take up my duties at St. Mary Magdalene. Still, I begged Hatton to tell the boys the truth, before they heard it somewhere else. But he said they were happy, and they weren’t old enough, experienced enough, to cope with a tragedy of that magnitude.”

  “You didn’t know them before the Valley? Or their parents?”

  “Sadly, no. Your grandfather told me the story, of course. That your aunt had killed her husband and herself. He said the sins of the father had been paid for, and perhaps it was true.”

  “It must have cost him a great deal of money to hide the truth.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sure it did. The inquest brought a verdict of death by person or persons unknown, I’m sure to spare the family any further grief. Still—”

  “When my father died, what did my grandfather do?”

  “I was appalled when he took matters into his own hands. His response was that the law couldn’t touch the men who had ruined Edward. I warned him that vengeance was the prerogative of the Lord. He replied that the mills of the gods grind too slowly, and he didn’t have time to wait on them.” Chatham took a deep breath. “And so your grandfather got his revenge. I never knew who it was he blamed.”

  “Walsham was his name.”

  “Oh. I’m afraid Edward had an unfortunate taste for cards. Your grandmother’s side of the family was rather reckless by nature. There have been other instances, other examples of Hatton’s insistence on settling matters his own way. People came, sometimes, to the Valley.” His face seemed to have aged. “And sometimes to me.”

  Francesca said, “They have come to me. Since his death.”

  But he didn’t answer her. Instead, as if to be fair to the dead, he continued, “Elizabeth Andrews, now. She was one of his good deeds. I don’t think a child of her temperament would have survived long without a loving home. I applauded him for that.”

  “And Victoria Leig
hton?” Francesca had intentionally left that question until the last.

  She saw the shock in his eyes before he could hide it. “How did you learn about her!”

  “Someone—came. To ask if my grandfather had left behind a letter for the Leighton family.”

  “Dear God! He—never revealed what had become of her. Her husband wrote twice asking me to use my influence. It came to nothing.”

  Beyond the windows Francesca could hear the gulls calling and the sound of the sea. It was a mournful backdrop to her mounting fear.

  “Then you’re telling me that he knew—that he may have been responsible—”

  “Oh, yes, I could see that in his face. The guilt. He wasn’t the same for months after her disappearance. A man walking in his skin without feeling it or knowing what he did. It was terrifying, I didn’t know what to say to him, how to reach him. Nothing in my experience as a priest had prepared me for it. It was as if his soul had been ripped from him.”

  “But why?” she pressed. “Did he love her so deeply? What had he done to her? Why had he taken her from her family? There has to be a reason behind even the most heinous crime! Are you certain you weren’t mistaken?”

  “It was there in his face, I tell you!”

  “But the police never charged him—”

  “There was—gossip—when Mrs. Leighton disappeared,” Chatham told her with reluctance. “Nasty rumors. I heard them—many people must have. It was even suggested that her father, Alasdair MacPherson, had spread them. I can’t tell you whether that’s true or not. I do know Mr. MacPherson did everything in his power to point a finger of blame at your grandfather. The police interviewed Mr. Hatton on several different occasions. Nothing came of their investigations. Certainly it was all most unpleasant. Mr. Hatton was stoic. I wish I could say the same for myself.” He got up to take away the tea tray, a signal that the conversation was over.

  She stopped him before he could disappear into the tiny kitchen, shutting her out. “If there was murder on his soul, why didn’t my grandfather say something at the end—to me—to his solicitor—to the rector—to redeem himself?”

  “Most likely the stroke prevented him from resolving the past.”

  “He could have confessed to you or Mr. Stevens. For absolution. Without fear of judgment or the police.”

  “A man like Francis Hatton wouldn’t. He always argued that it was the weak who need absolution, not the strong.”

  “You were rector when I was brought to the Valley. Do you remember?”

  “Oh, quite clearly. Your grandfather went to Southampton to fetch you, and came back with you in his arms. A frightened little thing, all eyes and dressed in a pretty burgundy coat with a collar of dainty white feathers. A lovely child!”

  “Are you quite sure he brought me from Southampton—and not from Somerset?”

  “He told me you had come from Canada. I saw no reason to doubt him.” His eyes watched hers.

  “I’m—on the point of becoming engaged to Victoria Leighton’s son.”

  He was thunderstruck.

  “You don’t know what you are doing! Of all the sins that lay at Francis Hatton’s door, Victoria Leighton was surely the worst. And if you marry her son, it would be—a travesty. I beg you—!”

  “Why? Neither Richard nor I are guilty of anything—why should we be punished for the past?”

  “Her family would have destroyed Francis Hatton if it had been in their power. And it’s as likely that I’d sail to the moon as it is that a Leighton would fall in love with Francis Hatton’s granddaughter. For your own soul’s sake, walk away from this man!”

  He set the tea tray aside and said, “You must leave now, Miss Hatton. I’m an old man; my heart is not what it was. I mustn’t allow myself to become so upset.”

  “But you must help me,” Francesca replied. “You’ve known me from childhood! What are you keeping from me?”

  He all but turned on her. “If you came to me for advice, I have given it. But you don’t know what you are doing if you meddle in this wretched business!”

  Shaken, Francesca asked Bill to take her home.

  As he helped her into the motorcar, the coachman said, “Miss Francesca—are you all right?”

  “It was a more difficult journey than I’d expected. I’m—just very tired.”

  “It was good to see the old rector so well,” Bill said over his shoulder. “He never judged any soul. That’s a rare thing in a man of the cloth.”

  And yet Chatham had judged Francis Hatton, she thought. As well as Victoria Leighton. What had these two done to be cast outside the pale?

  She didn’t know what to believe—but his words rang in her ears.

  “It’s as likely that I’d sail to the moon as it is that a Leighton would fall in love with Francis Hatton’s granddaughter.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Francesca’s leg ached, keeping her awake. Miss Trotter was curled up in the boudoir chair, sleeping peacefully.

  Just as her body badgered her, Francesca’s mind gave her no peace.

  What had Mr. Chatham been afraid to tell her? What else did he know about the affairs of the Leightons and the Hattons? There was something behind his aversion to the woman that she couldn’t put a name to.

  And if Mr. Chatham had been shocked at the thought of a Leighton marrying a Hatton, what would Alasdair MacPherson have to say?

  She turned restlessly, trying to find a comfortable position.

  Another worry clawing at the back of her mind was the fact that there had been no news from the Army’s search. The shooter, if he was still in the hills above the Valley, had so far been cunning enough to elude his pursuers. For that matter, even she had heard their heavy boots crashing through the undergrowth like cattle on the move, and surely the shooter could follow their progress, too.

  Francesca turned again, this time pummeling her pillows into shape.

  Miss Trotter’s thin voice breaking the silence startled her.

  “Miss Francesca, are you asleep?”

  “No. Yes.”

  In the fire’s fading light, Francesca could just see Miss Trotter’s face, an oval embedded in the shroud of shawls and quilts that mummified her.

  After a time, Miss Trotter went on. “I heard from Mrs. Lane that you’d visited Mr. Chatham today.”

  “He lives in a cottage overlooking the sea. He seems quite happy there.”

  “He always did like the water. I’ve never seen the sea. Someone told me once it was noisy.”

  “It can be. When the waves are crashing ashore and the gulls are calling. Sometimes it can be soft and rather soothing. Early dawn. Or late in the night before the tide turns.”

  “I was born in the Valley. I’ll die here.”

  Francesca said, “Mr. Leighton has told me he’d like to marry me. Should I believe him?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s the truth.”

  “Yes. Well, I don’t know myself,” Francesca answered forlornly.

  The silence lengthened again.

  And then somewhere in the Valley a shot echoed through the night, sharp and clear.

  Francesca had thrown off the bedclothes before she remembered that her crutches would take her through the house and no further. “Oh, damn!” she swore at her helplessness.

  But Miss Trotter said, “I wouldn’t worry if I were you. They’re edgy, the soldiers. Most of them come from cities, you see. They don’t like walking through the shadows at night, and jump at the rustle of a mouse in the leaves. It was safer at The Spotted Calf of an evening, and then off to their tents afterward. The sergeant, he’s out to show he’s efficient and so he’s got them hunting at night now. His men don’t like him very much.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Oh, well, there’s talk about. And I listen. People forget I’m there.”

  “What do they say about Richard Leighton, in the village?”

  “They’ve reserved judgment. We don’t warm to strangers, as a rule.
That Mrs. Passmore, she’s got the sympathy of the village, if it’s true the shooter is her son. It would be such a tragedy.”

  “It’s a tragedy whoever he is,” Francesca answered, thinking of Harry. There was nothing she could do tonight. Even with two good legs. Walking out in the dark into a line of nervous men would only get her shot as well.

  Miss Trotter was breathing deeply again, slipping into sleep as easily as a child. But Francesca lay awake, listening to the night sounds.

  In the morning Mrs. Lane brought the news that one of the soldiers on the hill had shot himself in the foot during the night, tripping over a trailing vine he hadn’t seen until too late. The sergeant was fit to be tied. Mrs. Passmore was feeling only a little better but had eaten her breakfast. As for the shooter, no one knew where the man might be.

  But Mr. Leighton, she added, had asked her to tell Francesca he would be coming to call at ten, if that was all right with her.

  “He was walking back over the bridge when I came up the hill this morning. He said he’d found it hard to sleep. He could hear Mrs. Passmore weeping in the room next but one to his.”

  Leighton arrived as promised, his face drawn with fatigue.

  “I went early this morning to the rocks where the man has been hiding.” As she was about to protest, he held up his hand. “No, the Army had come down to the village, and I wasn’t followed. There’s no one there, no sign of anyone there. He cleared away his tracks, the snares, the ashes from the fire, everything that would have signaled his presence. It’s my opinion he’s moved on.”

  Francesca smiled in relief. “I heard the shot last night! I thought—but Mrs. Lane tells me it was one of the soldiers.”

  “Silly fool. A London man, with no experience.” He sat down as if his back ached.

  She said, “Thank you for telling me. I wish there was some way I could reassure Mrs. Passmore. But it could do more harm than good.”

  “It’s my belief the Army will pull out today or tomorrow. No harm done. That will comfort her. But you must realize this shooter could kill someone before he’s caught. That will be on our heads, if we conceal information about him—or where he can be found.”