by Charles Todd
When he woke, he knew what it was he had to do. Dressing, he went down to find tea and breakfast waiting for him, although it was nearly six o’clock in the evening. He ate it to please Miss Bartram, who was eager to learn why that nice Mr. Thornton was in custody. Gossips were already busy.
He avoided the question and ten minutes later was walking up to Miss Trowbridge’s cottage.
The rain had stopped, a watery sun was out, and there were standing pools in the ruts of the High Street. Most of her garden was beaten down by the force of the wind, and there were petals scattered along the walk, bruised and wet.
She came to the door, acknowledged him with a nod, and then as an afterthought, invited him inside.
Clarissa stood up in her bed by the hearth, stretched, and came to inspect his shoes and trousers.
“You’ve been away,” Marcella Trowbridge said, gesturing to a chair.
“To London. I find that you can help me with something that has been puzzling me.”
“I can?” she asked, surprised and then wary. She’d been about to sit down, then thought better of it.
“You told me once about the windmill keeper. That he was a Scot.”
“Angus?”
“What was his surname?”
“Do you know, I never heard it. He was always—Angus.”
“Where was he from? What part of Scotland?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? I told you, he must be dead by now.”
“Let me tell you a story. When Herbert Swift was in Glasgow, he took on a young girl to keep house for him. When the war ended and he was returning to Wriston, she chose not to come to Cambridgeshire with him. She was old enough then to know her own mind, you see, and she wished to go to London. The only training she had was in service. And so Swift found her a position that he believed to be safe. But it wasn’t. Months later, she left one night late, bag and baggage, without the wages due her. And she disappeared. Her grandfather tried to find her. But there was no trace. It’s likely that she’s dead. The police concluded she was. Still, she’s the only connection I’ve found between Swift and Captain Hutchinson. For it was his house she left that night.”
“Dear God. You don’t believe Angus—but he had no granddaughter. No daughter. He never married.”
“Was he in the Boer War?”
“I—yes, I believe so. Does it matter?”
“When he left here, did he return to Scotland?”
“I have no idea. I’d known him all my life. But he didn’t tell me where he was going. That’s odd, isn’t it? I just never thought of it in that way until now.”
“Your grandmother lived here before leaving the cottage to you in her will. Did she know anything about his past?”
“I can’t think she would. She liked him, of course. As did I. He was an interesting man. But except to speak to him, I doubt she knew him any better than I did.”
But a child couldn’t have judged what an older woman knew and felt unsuitable for young ears. All the same, it couldn’t have been shameful, or she would never have let the child meet the man, much less become friends with him.
Where to go from here?
“And you’ve heard nothing from him since he left here?”
“Nothing. Except once, when I’d just come home from visiting friends in Bury. I found Clarissa in a basket on my doorstep. She was tiny, with a blue ribbon around her neck. There was no card, no message. I asked Priscilla and the constable and everyone I could think of, but no one seemed to know anything about her. It wasn’t long after Angus had left. And I wondered if perhaps he’d brought her to me. She’s been such great company.”
Rutledge thanked her, rising to leave. She asked, “Will you be looking for Angus? Because you think he’s got something to do with these murders?”
“I have to be thorough, Miss Trowbridge.”
“I refuse to believe any such thing. Still—if you should find Angus, will you ask him? About Clarissa?”
“Yes, I promise.”
When he reached the police station the next morning, Rutledge found Thornton fuming and pacing his cell.
“Let me out of here before I go mad. I’d confess to killing Caesar if I thought it would buy my freedom.”
Rutledge had once been shut into a cell. He remembered the claustrophobia it had brought on.
Rutledge smiled grimly. “I’m going to look at Swift’s house. There was nothing of interest there earlier, but we know rather more now than we did then.”
“Let me go with you. He was a classical scholar. As I am. There might be something you’ve overlooked.”
“Or something you can destroy.”
“Damn it, man, I kept my word. All the way to London and back.”
“So you did. All right, I’ll take you with me.”
Rutledge had got the key from McBride, who had all but insisted that he come as well. But Rutledge was not ready to tell the constable or anyone else what he was searching for.
The rooms were still, musty. Thornton searched through the bookcase, an occasional comment escaping him as he found a particular volume. Rutledge concentrated on the desk. But there was no correspondence from the grandfather of Catriona Beaton. Frustrated, he went through the drawers a second time, then went to search the bedside table. Swift must have read before he went to sleep, for there were several books perched precariously between the lamp and a small carriage clock.
Rutledge had thumbed through them before and found nothing. In the drawer of that table was a well-worn Bible, and Rutledge took it out, leafing through the pages a second time. He was about to put it back where he’d found it when he spotted a small handbill in the back of the drawer.
It advertised the shoemaker in Soham. He was about to put it in the drawer once more when he saw that something had been scrawled in pencil on a blank space on the back, and he held it up to the light to read it. The words had faded, almost to the point that they were illegible.
You’re no better than he is. So be it.
For some reason, Swift had shoved it out of sight rather than toss it into the dustbin or the fire.
Rutledge called, “Thornton. Do you know of a shoemaker in Soham? Someone by the name of Morton?”
“Only that he’s no longer in business. He must be all of seventy.”
“Who has taken over his shop?”
“I don’t think anyone has.”
“Then let’s have a look.”
They had reached the motorcar after returning the key to McBride when a motorcycle came roaring down the street, stopping in front of the police station. He handed McBride a message as they watched, and McBride hailed them.
“For you, Inspector. From Inspector Warren.”
“It can wait. I’m driving to Soham.”
“Sir.” McBride stood watching as they drove away.
“You could have asked him, you know. About the shoemaker.”
“I’d rather see for myself.”
When they arrived in Soham, Thornton directed Rutledge to the shoemaker’s shop. It was on the outskirts, not far from the cooper, Ruskin. The sign above the door was faded, and peering in the single dusty window, Rutledge could see bundles of reeds stacked in a corner or lying spread across the floor to dry. Certainly not the tools of a shoemaker.
“He’s the hurdle maker,” Thornton said in surprise. “Try in the back of the shop.”
They walked around to the rear of the shop, where they could see stacks of hurdles in the open shed. Wooden frames where reeds or withies had been woven to form a barrier for a gate or a garden or a pen for animals. Rutledge remembered hearing Priscilla Bartram describing such a one in the prow of the flat fowling boat her father and grandfather had used.
No one was there. A bicycle stood propped against the back wall of the shop. That was the only sign of life.
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“He cuts the osiers and the reeds and the withies in the spring, prepares them, and then makes the hurdles as needed. People come and buy what they want.”
“Then where is he today?”
Thornton said with some surprise, “It’s Sunday. The shop would be closed.”
“So it is. Where does he live, this hurdle maker?” He remembered something McBride had said about the hurdle maker. What was it?
He couldn’t bring it back.
“I have no idea. I leave such matters to the man who keeps my gardens.”
“Ruskin’s shop is just up the street. The cooper. He may know.” He’d hardly said the words when he remembered. It hadn’t been McBride, it had been Ruskin, giving an account of the night he’d been drunk enough to run riot with the side ax. It had been the hurdle maker he’d been chasing, unaware of what he was doing.
But Ruskin’s shop was closed as well. He lived with his wife somewhere else. That too Rutledge remembered. They walked on, leaving the motorcar, looking for someone to question. This was a street of craftsmen. The cooper, the hurdle maker on this side, there the brick maker, and then just beyond, the wheelwright. A cabinetmaker had his shop where the lane met the street, and Rutledge could smell aged wood as he passed. It wasn’t until they had reached the street that they met a young couple walking out together.
“Hallo,” Rutledge said, smiling. “I’m trying to locate the hurdle maker. Or failing that, Mr. Ruskin. Can you tell me where to find them?”
They directed him to the cottage where Ruskin lived with his wife, and there Ruskin told them how to find the hurdle maker.
“Do you know his name?” Rutledge asked.
“He’s generally called Lovat. He came here about the time the shoemaker died. The family let him have the shop for less than what it was worth. It ’ud been closed for several years as it was. No one else wanted it. The carriage trade seldom comes as far as the lane these days.”
“Where can I find him?”
“There’s a stream on the far side of Soham, where he finds his materials. Sometimes he makes baskets with the reeds. The greengrocer sells them for him.”
Rutledge finally found the place Ruskin had described. The hut as he’d called it was actually a small house set by the water’s edge, half hidden by a stand of reeds and other tall grasses. It was sturdier than it first appeared.
Turning to Thornton, he said, “Wait here.”
Thornton was about to argue, but Rutledge said, “I want to speak to him alone.”
He walked around the house to find the man he was after sitting cross-legged on a square of canvas, weaving the circle that would become the bottom of a basket. He looked up, greeted Rutledge, and returned to his work.
Rutledge studied him. Tall, slender, but very strong, his short cropped hair an iron gray. His hands, long-fingered and deft, worked with the reeds with the skill of long practice.
“Mr. Lovat?”
The man nodded.
“My name is Rutledge. Scotland Yard. I’ve come to ask you about your granddaughter.”
Lovat looked up, his gaze alert and focused on Rutledge’s face. His eyes were a startling blue.
“My granddaughter?”
His voice was as strong as his body, and Rutledge could hear only the very slightest trace of the Highlands there. Was he being careful, or had time lessened his accent?
“She went missing some time ago. Nearly a year, in fact. While she was a maid in a house in London.”
“I was never married,” the man said. He set the work aside, letting his hands dangle as his wrists rested on his knees.
“Perhaps not. But you had a child, nevertheless. A daughter. And she in turn had a daughter. Her name was Catriona Beaton.”
“If you’ve come to tell me you’ve found this girl, I’ll be glad to hear of it. But my name is Lovat.”
“I think not. You were in the Lovat Scouts at one time. But your name is MacLaren. Angus MacLaren. If I found you, I was to tell you that Marcella Trowbridge is grateful for the cat you left at her door.”
The man smiled. “I won’t take credit for what someone else has done.”
“I have only to take you in custody and we will soon discover whether you are a Lovat or a MacLaren. It might be more satisfactory to answer my questions now.”
“I’ve nothing to say to you.”
“Where do you keep the rifle? And the mask? And the straw disguise you used to shoot a farmer by the name of Burrows?”
Lovat gestured to his house. “You may search, if you like. I’m a poor man. It won’t take you long.”
“I’m sure that’s true.” He studied the man’s face. It had aged well, the features still firm, the jawline taut. He’d been handsome in his youth. He was handsome still.
Hamish said, “Ye’ve been verra’ blind.”
“You say you’ve never married?”
“That’s true.”
“But a man can have a child out of wedlock. Who was the mother?”
He saw the flick of anger touch Lovat’s eyes. Instantly it was gone.
Priscilla Bartram and Marcella Trowbridge were too young. Swift’s housekeeper, Susan, wasn’t old enough. Who else, then? Burrows’s daughter? The wrong age again. Mrs. Percy might know. But there wasn’t time to consult her. Leave this man here and he could vanish before the police arrived to arrest him. He had nothing to hold him here.
But was he MacLaren? And was Catriona Beaton his granddaughter? There could be other secrets he didn’t want the world to know.
Where did the truth lie? If this man had continued to live in Cambridgeshire, something must have held him here.
Rutledge pictured the windmill in his mind, the house that had burned to the foundations. The Trowbridge cottage close by. The Bower House.
A bower.
A retreat. A hideaway.
From what?
And then he had it. The sophisticated woman who had preferred that lonely cottage near the windmill when she might have lived a very different life in Bury. The woman who had willed it to her granddaughter, not her son.
Had she had a lover—and another child?
He remembered something Miss Trowbridge had said. About her father being the village doctor who bought this cottage for her grandmother when she was a young widow. But had he? Was it her own money? Her grandmother had very likely married well, possibly even an arranged marriage in her day, rather than a love match. Her husband had died, and for some reason she’d not wanted to go on living in Bury. Had she already met Angus MacLaren? Or was that after she came to Wriston to live? She had let her granddaughter make friends with the man . . . Marcella had liked him. Unaware that he must have been her grandmother’s lover for many years.
How had she concealed a pregnancy? She could have gone away for a time, and then left the child to grow up in Scotland with MacLaren’s family. She might even have visited in the summer. No one would question her wish to travel.
And after her death, Angus had stayed by Marcella as long as he could. Beside the cottage he’d known well. Until his grief for her grandmother became more than he could bear, when he’d burned down the windmill cottage and its secrets and gone away. To Scotland? But he’d been drawn back. And he’d left Clarissa to keep Marcella company. It could be checked later, all these details.
Rutledge said aloud, “Marcella couldn’t be your child. There was another one, one that Mrs. Trowbridge couldn’t claim. One who must have been raised in Scotland with cousins. Catriona was that child’s daughter. And you killed two men for not taking proper care of her.”
The man who called himself Lovat lunged to his feet.
“I’ll see you dead if you drag her name into this business.”
“You’ll have to stand trial. There’s blood on your hands, MacLaren. The truth will have to come out. W
hether you like it or not.”
“I learned to kill in the Scouts. You don’t forget how to do that.”
“No. You were very clever. If I hadn’t discovered something you’d written, hidden in a drawer in Herbert Swift’s house, I’d never have found you.”
“They never found her. Catriona. I don’t think they really looked, although they claimed they had, claimed they’d found her body in a wood. One more serving girl. But she shouldn’t have been a servant. She was educated, she had prospects. Still, she was mad to go to London. After all, she had an English heritage. And that was the simplest way.”
“Why did she leave the Hutchinson household? Was it Hutchinson who drove her away?”
“He drove his own wife to suicide. A servant girl would be easier.”
“I can see killing Hutchinson. But Swift?”
“He did nothing. When Catriona went missing, he did nothing. I wrote to ask what had become of her. I asked him to act for me. As a solicitor. He told me I should find someone in London.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to the police. But everything pointed to her leaving of her own accord. I knew better, and still they wouldn’t listen. They told me the case was closed. I investigated on my own, but there was no trace of her. No cabbie who had helped her with her valises. No porter at the railway station who had helped her on a train. I knew then she was dead. That he must have lured her away and killed her.”
But Hutchinson hadn’t been in London when Catriona had left the house. And he hadn’t been home when his wife killed herself.
A scrap of conversation came back to him.
What had Miss Hutchinson said?
I’m well aware of the pitfalls and dangers of being a woman without protection. We lived in lodgings, we were dependent on his officer’s pay. We were shunned by people who now respect us. I wore gowns I’d refurbished myself because I couldn’t afford new ones. If I survived, I believe she was clever enough and determined enough to survive as well.