Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery

by Charles Todd

  After a moment the door opened. A woman stood there, and even against the lamplight that made her appear to be no more than a silhouette, he could see her surprise.

  He wondered fleetingly if his unseen rescuer had just come from her and she had expected—hoped—he’d returned. Or was she expecting another caller? The man in the mist had questioned him. Looking back, Rutledge wondered if he was waylaying someone.

  “Sorry,” he said, smiling. “I’m rather lost. Somehow in the fog, I made a wrong turn. I was on my way to Ely.”

  She blinked, as if his answer was unexpected. “Were you walking in this? I’m astonished you didn’t fall into one of the ditches. Come in, then.”

  As she stood aside to allow him to pass, he said, “My motorcar is somewhere near Wriston Mill.”

  As if that explained everything, she said, “Just as well to leave it where it is. I was about to make a pot of tea. Would you care for some?”

  In the lighted room he could see that she was quite pretty, dark haired and dark eyed. She was studying him as well. Behind her the front room contrived to look both smart and comfortable. A small fire burned on the hearth, and on a rug beside it a white cat lay curled up and asleep.

  “That would be very kind. Yes.”

  He followed her through to the kitchen. It was a pleasant room, warm and friendly, but the windows showed only blankness beyond the panes. He felt suddenly anxious, claustrophobic because he couldn’t see a world outside.

  She was busying herself with the kettle and the tea. “You’re a stranger, aren’t you?”

  “I drove up from Cambridge this morning.”

  “At the university, are you?”

  He wouldn’t have pegged himself as an academic and yet twice now he had been asked if he was. He was briefly amused. No Oxford man cared to be mistaken for a Cambridge man. “No, sorry. I have an engagement in Ely. This afternoon. I expect I shall miss it.”

  She glanced at the windows.

  “It might clear,” she said doubtfully. “But I shouldn’t like to raise your hopes.”

  “Is there anywhere I could stay the night? If this doesn’t lift, it would be foolish to press my luck.”

  “Indeed it would. We’re hardly more than a village. But there’s a small inn where hunters came in season. For the waterfowl. The hunters haven’t been here since the war. I hope the shooting won’t start up again. I don’t like the sound of the guns. And it’s cruel to hunt the birds. There’s been some talk about protecting them. It’s been done in other places.”

  The kettle was beginning to boil. From a shelf she took down two cups and saucers, two spoons, and the sugar bowl, setting them on the table. Then she went through a door next to the large dresser, returning with a small jug of milk. “There.”

  While the tea was steeping, she said, “I’ll take you to the inn. Priscilla will be glad of the money.”

  “If you tell me how to go, I’ll find it myself. You shouldn’t be out in this mist alone.”

  “You’d find it very easy to be turned around. I’m used to it.”

  “You grew up here?” he asked as she lifted the teapot’s lid, stirred the leaves, and let them settle again before pouring.

  “I lived here as a child. My father was the village doctor. We moved away when I was seven or eight. My mother was insistent that we live in a place with better schooling. And so we went to Bury St. Edmunds.”

  “But you came back.”

  She frowned. “Yes, I suppose I did.” It was an odd answer, but he didn’t press.

  They sat across the table from each other, and an awkward pause followed.

  “I don’t know your name, Mr. . . . ?”

  “I’m sorry. Ian Rutledge.” He smiled. “You really shouldn’t invite strangers into your home. It isn’t wise. But I’m grateful you did.”

  She nodded. “Marcella Trowbridge.”

  He inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Tell me about Wriston,” he said. “I know where it is on a map of Cambridgeshire. Besides the inn, what else is there?”

  “Shops and houses, of course. An old market cross. Cromwell took a dislike to it and destroyed the top. I’m told there’s a very nice drawing in Christ Church in Cambridge showing how it once looked. One of the early abbots at Ely kept a journal, it seems, recording his travels. We owe him a great debt, because he described the village. It was hardly even that then. Our church was only a pilgrimage chapel in Saxon times, but as Wriston grew, so did it. There’s a Green Man on one of the ceiling bosses. A very old one. As a child I used to stare up at it, certain that it was staring back at me, watching to see if I was behaving.” She smiled whimsically, remembering. “The abbot must have been taken with it as well, because he mentioned it in his journal along with one of the gargoyles. The windmill, on the other hand, has been here since the reign of James the First, although it’s been rebuilt many times. It’s one of the few that haven’t been replaced by steam, because it’s really all but redundant. Drainage elsewhere stole Wriston’s thunder, as it were. But in heavy storms, we’re still grateful for it.”

  She realized all at once that she had given him more information than perhaps his question had intended. Shrugging a little, she added, “Otherwise it’s rather a small, unprepossessing village.”

  He noticed that she had said nothing about Wriston’s latest and less reputable claim to fame. The murder. He hadn’t intended to come here until he’d spoken to the Ely police. But here he was and he should make the most of his opportunity.

  “And that’s the entire history of Wriston?”

  She was still all at once. “I’m afraid I don’t quite—I don’t understand your question.”

  He let it go. She had taken him in and been kind. “I was wondering if Cromwell had done other damage to the town, perhaps in the church itself.”

  She visibly relaxed. “There’s the usual story, that he stabled his horses in the nave. He was willing to run roughshod over the beliefs of others. In school I always found him a less than sympathetic character. That didn’t sit well with my history mistress, who rather admired him.” Making a face, she added, “It was whispered that the body in Westminster Abbey in London wasn’t his. That it was hidden here in Cambridgeshire from the wrath of the Royalists.”

  Rutledge remembered the tale—that on his Restoration, Charles II had had Cromwell’s body taken from its resting place in the Abbey and hanged, then beheaded, the head left to rot on a pike.

  “Tell me. Was this the mill keeper’s cottage?”

  “That’s on the far side of the mill. I’m not surprised you didn’t see it. It burned down before the war and was never rebuilt. If you’d tripped over the foundations, you could have been seriously hurt. My father bought this cottage for my grandmother after she was widowed. She went away for a time, then decided not to return to Bury. Instead she lived here for many years, and then left it to me.”

  Finishing his tea, he looked up at the windows. There was a difference in the light now, although the fog hadn’t thickened as far as he could tell. “It will be dark soon. Perhaps you should tell me how to find that inn.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  She rose and led the way to the front of the house and the door. Rutledge had left his hat in the motorcar along with his valise. But it would be impossible to retrieve either of them until this weather broke.

  Miss Trowbridge reached for a shawl on the back of a chair and spread it around her shoulders. “Stay close. Stray and I shan’t be able to find you.”

  “Yes, all right.”

  As she came to the gate, she said over her shoulder, “This could go on for days. It has, sometimes.”

  “I’ll say my prayers tonight.”

  She laughed. It was an odd sound in the mist, as if there were an echo.

  They turned to their left and walked along the road. He could se
e her, but not very clearly. There was nothing but the soft cotton wool that touched his face with clammy fingers. If anything, he thought, it appeared to be getting chillier.

  Miss Trowbridge stopped. “You’d better take my hand. The road bends just here.”

  He clasped her soft fingers in his, and they set off again. For all he knew, he thought wryly, she could have been leading him down the road to hell. And then she dropped his hand.

  “Here. Do you see the steps?”

  And he did. Just. He wondered if she’d been counting off strides, as the man earlier must have done, to bring him safely here.

  “I’ll wait until you’ve gone inside,” she said. “But I should think Priscilla—Miss Bartram—will be at home.”

  He climbed the steps, but before he lifted the door knocker, he said, “Will you be all right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He let the knocker fall.

  A woman a few years older than Miss Trowbridge came to the door. “We’re closed,” she said.

  Miss Trowbridge’s disembodied voice said, “Priscilla? This is Mr. Rutledge. He’s lost his way in the mist. Can you give him a room for the night?”

  “Marcella?”

  “Yes, I discovered him wandering about lost. I brought him to you.” Nothing was said about offering Rutledge tea. He took note of that.

  “A good thing. What brought you out in this?”

  “I was looking for my cat,” she said. “Clarissa. And found Mr. Rutledge instead.”

  “Well, then. Come inside, Mr. Rutledge. Marcella, are you coming too?”

  “Thank you, no, Priscilla. Clarissa is probably waiting for me by the gate.”

  Rutledge was ushered inside, the door closed behind him.

  “Will she be all right?” he asked, still concerned for Miss Trowbridge.

  “Oh, yes. She’ll find her way.” She led him down a dimly lit passage to a sitting room. “Do you know Marcella well?”

  “In fact, not at all.” He took his lead from Miss Trowbridge’s comments about the cat. “She rescued me. I nearly walked into Wriston Mill.”

  Miss Bartram crossed the room to turn up the lamp. He saw that she was wearing a man’s trousers and shirt, but her short hair was becomingly cut, framing her face. He thought she must be in her early thirties.

  She looked him up and down. “Where are you from, Mr. Rutledge?”

  “I was on my way from Cambridge to Ely,” he explained once more.

  “Indeed. You’re well off the right track.” She gestured to the hearth and several comfortable chairs set in front of it. “You see the sitting room. Now, if you’ll come with me?” Leading the way upstairs and down a short passage, she said, “This room has been aired. I’ll put you here.” Holding the door for him, she waited for him to enter.

  The room was smaller than he’d hoped, seeming even smaller with the white world outside the windows. The bed boasted a blue coverlet that matched the curtains.

  There were two chairs and a table that could serve as a desk, a washstand and basin, and an armoire, crowding together around the walls.

  From the shelf above the bed, a pair of stuffed waterfowl in a glass case stared back at him as she stepped in and lit the lamp. Their glass eyes reflected the flare of her match and then the increasing light as the wick caught, giving them a haunted look. Rutledge found himself thinking that if he’d had his hat with him, he could have flung it over the mallards.

  “No luggage, then?”

  “It’s in the motorcar.”

  “It will be there tomorrow. No one will touch it,” she said complacently. “Now, will you be wanting a light supper?”

  “Yes. That would be very kind.”

  “Then come along downstairs when you’ve settled in.”

  She left him then, and he went to wash his hands. He gave her five more minutes and then, not turning out the lamp, he took her at her word.

  Looking into the sitting room once more, he realized she’d lit a second lamp and that other waterfowl were set here and there, some on shelves enclosed by glass, smaller ones in bell jars, and others in what appeared to be specially designed glass cases.

  Each display had a small brass plate giving the name of the bird. COOT. BITTERN. SEDGEBIRD. A kite and a hawk. RUFF. SPOONBILL. AVOCET. REEVE. Even a snipe. There was also a rather unusual copper-colored butterfly perched on a bare twig. He gave up reading the labels. To his eye the specimens seemed tired, their feathers lackluster.

  For her usual guests, they might be an advertisement of what to expect when they took their guns out. Or what had been there in the distant past, perhaps in her father’s or grandfather’s day. He remembered what Marcella Trowbridge had said about hunting. Seeing this display, he had to agree with her.

  Down the passage he found the kitchen. Priscilla was just taking a meat pie from her oven. He wondered if she’d intended it for her own dinner, then realized that there was another just behind it. The table had already been set, and he could see that he would be dining here.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, looking up in time to see his glance at the table. “It’s a lot of extra work, opening up the dining room. With only myself here, I have no need of it.”

  “This is fine,” he assured her. “Thank you, Miss Bartram.”

  “Everyone calls me Priscilla. I haven’t used Miss Bartram in ten years. Now. Sit down and I’ll just dish up.”

  Rutledge took one of the chairs, saw that the tea was steeping, and was about to get up and move it to the table.

  “No, just sit there, if you will. Better than getting underfoot.”

  Besides the pie there was cabbage and parsnips, with an excellent chutney.

  “I made it myself,” she said as he tasted it, and he told her it was very good.

  She began to ask questions about his encounter with Miss Trowbridge, and he could see that she was a gossip by nature, reinforced by what must be a rather lonely life.

  “If it hadn’t been for her cat, I’d have still been lost in this mist. Or worse,” he replied. “I don’t know how she found her way here.”

  “We’re used to it, I expect.” Finding that topic a dead end, Priscilla asked if the news of their late disturbance here in Wriston had reached as far as Cambridge.

  “The papers carried the account. A Mr. Swift killed as he was starting to address his constituents.”

  “Well, hardly an address,” she said. “He’s standing for office, and he was making his opening remarks when the shot rang out. But he was already falling, disappearing out of sight, and the cry went up that he’d been hit. Then Mrs. Percy exclaimed that she’d seen a monster. There was general pandemonium after that. The constable—we’ve only got the one—had run toward Mr. Swift, and by the time he looked around to where she was pointing, there was nothing to be seen. You’d have thought the shot fired itself. And try as he would, he couldn’t discover anything more. This, mind you, following on the heels of that poor man killed in Ely not even a fortnight ago. They’ve made no headway in finding his killer, either.”

  “Were you in the square when Mr. Swift was shot?”

  “I was. Most of us went for the entertainment, you see. There’s not much else to do of an evening, and the torches were coming down the road from The Wake Inn. Like a parade, you might say. Then Mr. Swift was stepping up on the stump of the old market cross, and the crowd quieted down to hear him speak. He’s—he was—a much better orator than the Liberal candidate. We expected to be well entertained. And just like that he was falling, cut off in the middle of a word. The noise seemed to come from everywhere at once, giving me the shock of my life. The butcher, Mr. Banner, was standing beside me, and he ducked, and so did the owner of the pub, as if expecting more shots. I don’t think I could have moved if my life had depended on it. Mrs. Percy began screeching at the top of her l
ungs. I thought she’d gone into strong hysterics. After a bit she calmed down a little and I heard her claiming that it was a monster, up there at the ironmonger’s window. What’s more, the constable and afterward that Inspector from Ely, Warren is his name, tried but they couldn’t shake her account. We don’t run to hobgoblins here in the Fen country. I ask you!”

  Rutledge smiled. Her vehemence told him otherwise. “Whatever she saw, it must have frightened her. Where was she standing, in relation to where Mr. Swift was speaking? Did you see her?”

  “Not before she cried out. She was a little behind him, on the far side of the cross. She had her hands over her face. I thought she was shocked by his death—she was close enough to see what happened to him firsthand. Someone told me later his blood was on her apron.”

  Enough to shock anyone, he thought. It also meant that while looking up at the speaker, she must also have been looking almost directly at the killer. Had movement caught her eye just as the shot was fired? Most certainly not in time to warn Swift, but in time to absorb the fact that a monster had been there, looking down at his handiwork. While everyone else faced the speaker, watching him break off and begin to collapse, what had she actually seen?

  The question was, who else had been in that same position and why hadn’t he or she come forward? Were they afraid to be made a laughingstock? Apparently Mrs. Percy was not . . .

  “How well does Mrs. Percy see?” he asked

  “Well enough to be a gossip. She must wear spectacles for close work.”

  “Then what manner of monster?” Rutledge asked. “How did she describe what she believes she saw?”

  “Now that goes to the heart of the matter. What she believes. All she would say was, there was a monster’s face looking out at her from the ironmonger’s dormer window. Bold as brass. Then it vanished. But by the time everything was sorted out, and Constable McBride went up the stairs to the dormer room, there was no sign anyone had ever been there.”

  “Did Mr. Swift have any enemies? Anyone who might want to see him dead?”

  “There’s the other candidate, of course, but I’m not convinced that any of that lot would have thought of shooting Mr. Swift. They’re more likely to set upon him as he walked home afterward. Cowards, all of them.”