by Charles Todd
“My name is Rutledge. I’ve come several times to speak to you, but your father refused to let me in.”
“I watched you pulling upriver. You know how to handle those oars.”
“Long practice. Was it your father’s doing or yours that prevented me from seeing you?”
“You don’t sound Cornish. And so you must be the man from London he was so angry with.”
“Scotland Yard.”
The man nodded. “I thought as much.”
“I understand you were out walking early on the morning the vicar went to call on the elder Mrs. Terlew. Her daughter-in-law told me that she’d seen you pass by.”
He regarded Rutledge for a moment, then said, “I wasn’t walking in that direction.”
“There are witnesses.”
“Witnesses be damned. It’s not true. Is this what you’ve come for? I thought you wanted to ask about Saunders. And my sister.”
St. Ives hadn’t moved. Not even to shift his weight from one foot to the other. The stance of a man who had troubles with balance?
“What can you tell me, then?”
“My sister has never hurt anyone in her life. She’s hardly likely to kill someone she knew, like Saunders.”
“How well did she know him?”
“Not the way you’re suggesting. We grew up in this house, she and I. Of course we knew Harry Saunders. For that matter, what reason would any of them have for harming the man? It’s beyond belief.” He was angry now.
“Yet there’s a witness—another witness—claiming he saw the attempt to kill Saunders. First by shoving him overboard, and then using one of the oars to strike him in the head.”
“Trevose,” he said, his mouth turning down. “Why should you believe him, against the word of my sister? Or for that matter, the word of Miss Grenville? He was wrong about the dinghy, wasn’t he? He said it wasn’t there. And yet the divers found it just where it should have been.”
“Four witnesses against one? Good odds, except for the fact that they happen to be the accused. It’s expected that they would want me to believe their version of events.”
“You’re a fool, then,” St. Ives said contemptuously. “And not a very good judge of character.”
“Perhaps that’s true. Could I trust you to tell me the truth if I asked if the rowboat came up as far as this house, on the Saturday in question?”
“No reason to lie about that. Yes. I was on the terrace.”
“They called and waved. You didn’t respond.”
“Who else would it have been?” he snapped. “Sitting there?”
“Your father. A friend.”
Goaded, he said, “If you want the truth, I was desperate to be out there on the water as well. But the doctor refuses to let me. I don’t have the strength to swim if something went wrong.” It went against the grain, Rutledge could tell, to have to make that admission.
“Can I have your word that Saunders wasn’t in the Grenville boat at that time?”
“He was not.”
Rutledge found he believed him. And it corroborated what he already knew.
“Why do you walk at night? Even your father wasn’t aware of it, but a few people have seen you. Pendennis, for instance, and Mrs. Daniels. They aren’t all liars, are they?”
“Look at me. If you looked like this, would you stroll into the village at midday?”
“Inspector Carstairs in Padstow has even seen you walking in that direction.”
“He must be joking. I can’t possibly make it that far.”
“Have you seen anyone else walking late in the night?”
“I didn’t look for them. I wasn’t interested in having company.”
“Surely your father has told you about Mr. Toup. How badly he’s been hurt. I was hoping you might have seen someone else on the path that morning. That you could help us find the man who did it.”
“I haven’t seen Toup in months. Nor he me. He was told not to come to the house. I didn’t need spiritual guidance. God forsook me a long time ago.”
Hamish spoke suddenly, jarring Rutledge.
“He’s denied having seen yon vicar. But he hasna’ asked why you would think he wanted to harm the man.”
It was true. Nor had he responded to the question about seeing someone else on the track.
“Looking at the facts of your sister’s case,” Rutledge said, “they point to the possibility that she and Miss Gordon and Miss Langley had no real reason—that we’ve discovered so far—to want to kill Saunders. And there’s no doubt it was Miss Grenville who refused to help drag him into the boat—”
He thought for an instant that George St. Ives was going to swing at him, leaving him with no option but to drop the man in his tracks. The anger that had been seething under the surface had very nearly boiled over into action. But St. Ives had caught himself in time.
“She’s no murderer,” he said savagely. “Damn you, if you’re half the policeman you’re supposed to be, coming down here from London to find out the truth, you’d know that.” He reached down for his sticks and nearly fell. Recovering through sheer willpower, he caught them up and turned his back on Rutledge, hobbling swiftly toward the path that led up to the terrace.
It was a shambling walk, unsteady and uneven. But Rutledge had seen the anger in the man and felt the frustration he had fought down. There was enough of both that he could have lost whatever control he’d had and attacked. But his opponent this time was not a frail clergyman, it was an able-bodied policeman with the advantage of height and reach. And St. Ives had recognized that.
Yet in spite of the anger in the man, it didn’t explain why he might have wanted to kill the vicar. The only thing that George St. Ives had betrayed in their conversation was the fact that he was in love with Victoria Grenville. Hopeless though it might be. The only reason he’d been willing to talk at all was to learn what evidence the police had and how they viewed it. As if the secondhand accounts given to him by his father hadn’t satisfied him. He’d wanted to see for himself what danger his sister and above all Victoria Grenville stood in.
Rutledge watched St. Ives almost to the terrace, to make certain he got there, then turned and launched the boat again.
He looked down at his wet stockings and trouser legs, and then ruefully shook his head. He hadn’t gained as much as he’d hoped for by coming here. And while he was inclined to believe St. Ives when he said he hadn’t been on the Half Acre Farm track the morning the vicar was beaten, if that was true, who had Mrs. Terlew seen?
Hamish said, “Have ye no’ considered the possibility that he attacked the vicar to draw suspicion away from the four lasses?”
“It won’t wash. For one thing, it wasn’t a methodical beating, it was a furious one. For another, he must know that since he failed to kill the vicar, as soon as Toup regains his senses, he’ll point St. Ives out. If St. Ives did try to kill the vicar, there was another reason for it.”
But Hamish persisted, like a niggling doubt in Rutledge’s mind.
“Unless he saw Victoria Grenville damage yon dinghy. And he believes the vicar also saw her out on the road that night. He walks in the dark, he couldha’ followed her.”
It was five or more miles to the cottage. A very long walk for Victoria Grenville. And an even longer one for a man whose legs were so damaged. But she could have done it. And St. Ives needn’t have followed her all the way. He could have watched her go and come back, and then put two and two together much later.
Then why wait so long to silence the vicar?
Perhaps no one had considered Inspector Barrington a threat. He’d been ill, he died, the statements had disappeared, and there was an end to it. But Scotland Yard had sent someone else to Cornwall, and Rutledge was a very different man.
Jealousy was a powerful emotion. But again it hadn�
��t seemed likely to Rutledge that Victoria Grenville had cared so deeply for Harry Saunders. What did lie between them, then? If it wasn’t jealousy, what was it?
As for George St. Ives, love was nearly as powerful. He would perjure himself for Victoria’s sake. Why not kill for her? He’d been in the war . . .
But even knowing this, Rutledge could still find no way to save Kate, or Sara Langley or Elaine St. Ives. It was still very likely that if one was convicted, the other three would be as well.
What was the key? The one small fact or motive that would put him on the right track?
After changing out of his wet clothes, Rutledge looked in on the vicar. No improvement in his condition, Mrs. Daniels assured him, although the poor lamb was restless still.
Rutledge thanked her, then went on to search Toup’s study.
There was nothing in the desk or any other part of the room to put Saunders, Victoria Grenville, and the vicar in the same picture. The vicar’s accounts, his diary—plainly just that, a list of his daily comings and goings—and his correspondence yielded nothing more than the usual activities of an Anglican vicar. Rutledge found no secrets in the man’s bedroom upstairs. That was more monastic than the rest of the house, a spartan room with only the necessities of a simple man and his calling. A crucifix; a Bible on a tall stand, smaller than the one on the desk in the study; his clothing tidily hung in the armoire or folded neatly in the drawers of the single tall chest.
Rutledge went so far as to search the pockets of his coats.
There was a scrap of paper in one with an address in London. In Mayfair.
There was no way to judge how long it had been there. Or if it had any significance at all. A friend? A fellow priest? A relative?
Satisfied that he had done all he could, Rutledge made certain that he had put everything back just as he’d found it, and left the bedroom.
He was on his way down the stairs when Daniels appeared and jerked his head toward the door.
Rutledge followed the big man outside.
Daniels stood for a moment looking down toward the village streets, as if trying to find the words—or trying to set himself apart from what he was about to say.
“She doesn’t sleep well,” he began after a moment. “Not when she’s on duty, so to speak. It’s possible she was drowsing off again, and thought she heard it.”
“Heard what?” Rutledge prompted.
“Someone trying to get in the door there.” He gestured over his shoulder to the house door. “And then he tried a window. But he never knocked, which someone would have done if there was an urgent need for Vicar. For that matter, most people know what happened. They wouldn’t have come seeking him.”
“Yes, I agree. What did you hear?”
“That’s just it. I never heard a thing. But she was worried enough to go round making sure all the locks were closed. That’s what woke me. To please her, not because I had much faith in what she was telling me, I went outside to have a look round. And I didn’t see anything to worry me.” He looked up at Rutledge then. “Still. I thought it best to tell you.”
“You did the right thing,” Rutledge agreed. “I’ll take it that she did hear something—if only to make certain we don’t let down our guard out of complacency.”
“Aye, that’s true enough.” Daniels paused again. “When I was a lad there was some who said the vicarage was haunted. I never got head nor tail of that. Mama wouldn’t talk about it. And she was a maid in the house.”
“What was the story? There must have been a reason for people to believe it.”
“A vicar three before this un lost three babes to diphtheria. The well had gone bad. His wife went mad with grief, wandering the rooms looking for them. Vicar had to have her put away, for fear she’d harm herself. They brought her back after some years, but she was never the same. She would sit in a rocker in her room and rock back and forth, back and forth. She said it made her easy, but some thought she was rocking one of the babes. It was sad. One of my cousins told me the story.”
“Very sad, but our ghost, if he was there last night, is all too real. You have only to look at the vicar’s injuries to know that.”
Daniels nodded. “Well. I should be getting back. She’s turning Vicar on his side every two hours to prevent fluids settling on his lungs. Time to do it once more.” He turned and walked up the steps, disappearing inside.
Rutledge watched as the door closed behind Daniels, listening for the sound of the bolt, and he heard it slide home.
He found, ghosts or not, he believed Mrs. Daniels. She was a levelheaded woman who took her work seriously, and he couldn’t imagine her being routed from a patient’s bedside by any spirit.
He walked around the house, looking for signs of someone’s presence, but found nothing, not even Daniels’s footprints until he reached the door to the kitchen garden.
He was about to turn away when Hamish spoke, pointing out several drops of candle wax on the step in front of the door.
“If I was set on breaking in,” he went on, “I’d bring a stub of a candle to gie me light while I tried to open yon lock. It wouldna’ do to break the glass and reach inside. Too noisy, and it’ud leave a trace.”
Rutledge knelt to look more closely at the lock. Hamish was right, the only onlookers here were the tombstones in the churchyard.
But he couldn’t be sure someone had meddled with it. Still . . . Rising, he dusted off the knee of his trousers and went back to his motorcar in the drive.
Daniels had been awakened by his wife’s movements as she looked at each lock, surely including this one. With the household stirring, whoever it was would have gone away.
But if the attempt was real, if the candle wax was fresh, then whoever it was would try again.
A stranger in the village, even at night, would surely attract attention. But George St. Ives was known to walk then, and villagers were used to his presence, seeing no need to report it.
Rutledge spoke to Pendennis, warning him to be on his guard.
The constable, apparently taking the warning with a grain of salt, said, “It’s a terrible risk. Coming into the village like that. And the wind was up last night for a bit, with a shower. It could have been the wind Mrs. Daniels heard.”
“It could,” Rutledge responded. “But if whoever it was came down through the churchyard instead of up from the village, there’s no one to see him but the dead.”
Pendennis went to stand in the square, looking up at the church and the vicarage. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze on the rough land beyond the churchyard, sour land that no one had ever plowed to his knowledge. Furze and broom dotted it, with a half dozen wind-twisted trees. “It’s the long way around. But he’d take it, wouldn’t he, to stay out of our way.” He walked with Rutledge to the motorcar. “I’ll keep a watch.”
Rutledge drove on to the telegraph office in the railway station in Padstow and sent the address he’d found in the vicar’s pocket to Sergeant Gibson in London.
He was just stepping out of the station doorway when he thought he saw a familiar figure rounding the next corner.
Frank Dunbar, the householder he’d spoken to out where Saunders had kept his boat?
Nearly sure of it, he seized his chance and went on to the cottages on the outskirts.
The man in the third cottage didn’t answer Rutledge’s knock. And it had that empty feeling that houses often have when no one is at home.
Rutledge turned and went to the cottage where Dunbar had claimed the two spinsters stayed over the past summer. He found that the lock yielded easily to persuasion, and he stepped inside.
The rooms were decorated in simple chintzes and inexpensive carpeting, both chosen to give the appearance of a cozy holiday cottage. Shades of rose and pale blue and cream and a soft yellow enlivened the otherwise plain furnishings, and
the overall sense was of comfort. Views from the windows more than made up for any lack of elegance, and he stood for a moment looking out at the headland on the far shore of the estuary. There appeared to be a ruin on the seaward side, and he could pick out people walking along the strand below. The deceptive silting that was the Doom Bar, the sandbar that obstructed the harbor, was invisible as the tide ran out.
There was nothing personal left anywhere. If there had been family photographs or small treasures or even books, they had been taken away by the women who had let the cottage. The drawers and shelves and even the crevices between the seat cushions and the frame were empty. Someone had come in and given the rooms a thorough cleaning and draped dust sheets over the upholstered furniture. The mattresses in the two bedrooms had been rolled up for airing, and the doors to the cabinets left open as well.
The only conclusion he could draw about the former occupants was that they had not been demanding in their needs, and they had felt at home in these surroundings. Hardly the sort a siren would let, a woman who would find it amusing to steal the heart of a banker’s son while spending the summer in the wilds of Cornwall, flaunting her conquest in a village church, and then walk away, leaving his heart broken.
And yet when he opened the armoire in the larger bedroom and peered inside, the delicate scent of an expensive perfume wafted up to him. The sort of perfume his sister, young and single, might choose to wear, floral with a hint of spice. Not one elderly spinsters, as Dunbar had described them, would be likely to use. He went back to the armoire in the smaller bedroom and looked inside a second time. But he could smell only the cedar of the wood and a slight mustiness.
A slim bit of evidence—that one person and not two had taken this cottage. Hardly admissible in court.
Smiling at the thought, Rutledge looked out to be sure it was safe to leave unobserved, and then closed the door, relocking it.
Going around to the dustbins in the back, he looked inside the barrels, but they were empty. Must have been since September, for there was an inch of rainwater in the bottom. They smelled of long use.