Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 11

by A Matter of Justice

  “In the will is there any mention of the gatehouse at Hallow-fields?”

  Hurley frowned. “The gatehouse? No. There’s no provision for that. I would assume that it remains with the house and grounds. Were you under the impression that someone was to inherit it?”

  Hamish said, “He’s thinking of yon man in the wheelchair.”

  Archer…

  “The gatehouse came up in a conversation, and I wondered if it held any specific importance to Mr. Quarles.”

  Laurence Hurley said, “None that we are aware of.”

  “What do you know of Mr. Quarles’s background?”

  “He came from the north, coal country, I’m told. He arrived in London intending to better himself, and because of his persistence and his abilities, rose to prominence in financial circles. He made no claim to being other than what he was, a plain Yorkshireman who was lucky enough to have had a fine sponsor, Mr. James, the senior partner of the firm when Quarles was taken on.”

  Which meant, Hamish suddenly commented in a lull in Rutledge’s headache, Hurley knew little more than anyone else.

  “How did he burn his hands so badly?”

  “It happened when he was a young man. There was a fire, and he tried to rescue a child. I believe he brought her out alive, though burned as well.”

  “In London?”

  “No, it happened just before he decided to leave the north.”

  “Is there any family to notify?”

  “Sadly, no. His brothers died of black lung, and his mother of a broken heart, he said. It was what kept him out of the mines—her wish that he do more with his life than follow his brothers. He said she was his inspiration, and his salvation. Apparently they were quite close. He spoke sometimes of their poverty and her struggle to free him from what she called the family curse. It was she who saw to it that he received an education, and she sold her wedding ring to provide him with the money to travel to London. He was always sad that she died before he’d saved enough to find and buy back her ring.”

  It was quite Dickensian. The question was, how much of the story was true? Enough certainly for a man like Hurley to believe it. The old lawyer was not one easily taken in. Or else Quarles had been a very fine spinner of tales…

  Rutledge left soon after. The morning sun was so bright it sent a stab of pain through his head, but he had done what he’d come to London to do, and there was nothing for it but to return to Somerset as soon as possible.

  Hamish was set against it, but Rutledge shrugged off his objections. He stopped briefly to eat something at a small tea shop in Kensington, then sped west.

  It was just after he crossed into Somerset, as the throbbing in his head changed to an intermittent dull ache, that he realized Davis Penrith had not asked him how Harold Quarles had died.

  12

  As Rutledge came into Cambury, he pulled to one side of the High Street to allow a van to complete a turn. The sign on its side read CLARK AND SONS, MILLERS, and it had just made a delivery to the bakery. A man in a white apron was already walking back into the shop after seeing it off. Welsh dark and heavyset, he reached into the shop window as he closed the green door, removing a tray of buns.

  Was he the Jones whose daughter had been sent to Cardiff after receiving Harold Quarles’s attentions?

  Very likely. And to judge from the width and power of his shoulders, he could have managed the device in the tithe barn with ease.

  Rutledge went on to the hotel, leaving his motorcar in the yard behind The Unicorn, then walked back to the baker’s shop. A liver and white spaniel was sitting patiently outside the door, his stump of a tail wagging happily as Rutledge spoke to him.

  Jones was behind the counter, talking to an elderly woman as he wrapped her purchase in white paper. His manner was effusive, and he smiled at a small witticism about her dog and its taste for Jones’s wares. Watching her out the door, he sighed, then turned to Rutledge.

  “What might I do for you, sir?”

  Rutledge introduced himself, and Jones nodded.

  “You’re here about Mr. Quarles, not for aniseed cake,” he replied dryly. “Well, if you’re thinking I’m delighted to hear he’s dead, you’re right.” At Rutledge’s expression of surprise, Jones added, “Oh, yes, word arrived with the milk early this morning. Bertie, the dairyman, had heard it at the Home Farm. Great ones for gossip, the staff at the Home Farm. Tell Bertie anything, and he’s better than a town crier for spreading rumors. But this time it isn’t rumor, is it?”

  “No. And you’ll understand that I need to know where you were on Saturday evening. Let’s say between ten o’clock and two in the morning.”

  Jones smiled. “In the bosom of my family. But I didn’t kill him, you know. There was a time when I’d have done it gladly, save for the hanging. I’ve a wife and six children depending on me for their comfort, and even Harold Quarles dead at my hands wasn’t worth dying myself. But I say more power to whoever it was. It was time his ways caught up with him.”

  “I understand he paid more attention to your daughter than was proper.”

  Jones’s laughter boomed around the empty shop, but it wasn’t amused laughter. “You might call it ‘more attention than proper.’ I called it outright revolting. A child her age? Filling Gwyneth’s head with tales of London, telling her about the theater and the shops and seeing the King morning, noon, and night, to the point she could think of nothing else but going there. She was barely sixteen and easily persuaded into anything but working here in the shop, up to her elbows in flour and dough in the wee hours while the ovens heat up, taking those heavy loaves out again, filling the trays with cakes and buns before we opened at seven. It’s not easy, but it’s what kept food on my table as a boy and food on hers now. She was my choice to take over when I can no longer keep it going, but after Quarles had unsettled her, she’d no wish to stay in Cambury. I don’t see her now, my own daughter, but once in three months’ time. I can’t leave here, and I can’t bring her back, and she’s the apple of my eye. But she isn’t the same child she once was. He cost her her innocence, you might say.”

  It wasn’t unusual for a girl Gwyneth’s age to change her mind every few months about what she wished to do with her life. It was a time for dreaming and pretending that something wonderful might happen. Quarles had precipitated her growing up in a way that Jones was not prepared to accept.

  Reason enough to kill the man.

  But Jones seemed to read his mind, and he said before Rutledge could pose the next question, “I would have done it there and then, not wait, if I was to kill him. I could have put my hands around his neck and watched him die in front of me. I was that angry. If you’re a father, you understand that. If you’re not, you’ll have to take my word for it. Rector helped me see sense. I’m chapel, not Church of England, but he made me think of my family and where I’d be if I let my feelings carry me into foolishness.”

  The words rang true. Still, Jones had had time to think about what he’d say to the police when someone came to question him. Since early morning, in fact.

  Jones was adding, “My wife was here as soon as she’d heard. I didn’t tell her, it was going to come out soon enough anyway. She asked me straight out if I’d done this. And I told her no. But I could see doubt in her eyes. Thinking I might have gone out after she went to sleep. I didn’t.”

  In his face was the hurt that his wife’s suspicion, her need to come to him at once for assurance, had brought in its wake. Which to Rutledge indicated just how much hate this man must have harbored.

  “Did you know that Quarles was in Cambury this past weekend?”

  “Not at first. Then I saw him with Mr. Masters on their way to the ironmonger’s shop. That was Saturday morning.”

  “We’d like you to make a statement, Mr. Jones. Will you come to the police station after you close the shop and tell Constable Daniels what you’ve just told me?”

  “I’ll do it. And put my hand on the Bible to swear to it.”r />
  The door of the shop opened, and two women came in.

  “If there’s nothing more, I’ll ask you to leave now,” Jones said quietly. “It won’t do my custom any good for me to be seen talking with the police. Now that the news is traveling.”

  Rutledge nodded and went out while the women were still debating over lemon tarts and a dark tea bun with raisins in it.

  He walked along the High Street, listening to Hamish in his head until he reached the police station. Constable Horton was there, reading a manual on the use of the typewriter.

  He looked up as Rutledge came in, smiling sheepishly. “I hear him swearing in his office. I wondered what the fuss was all about. Looks easy enough to me, once you know where your fingers belong.” Setting the manual aside, he added, his eyes carefully avoiding the red and swollen abrasion on the Londoner’s forehead, “The inspector isn’t here, sir, if it’s him you’re after.”

  “I need the direction of the Jones house. I just spoke to Mr. Jones in the bakery. I’d like to talk to his wife next.”

  “Inspector Padgett thought you’d gone up to London.”

  “So I have,” Rutledge answered, and left it at that.

  Horton explained how to find the Jones house, and Rutledge thanked him, leaving on the heels of it.

  The Jones family had a rambling home at the bottom of James Street, apparently adding on with the birth of each child. There was no front garden, but the window boxes were rampant with color, and the white curtains behind them were stiff with starch.

  Rutledge tapped on the door, and after a moment a woman answered it, a sleepy child on her hip.

  She had been crying, her eyes red-rimmed.

  Rutledge introduced himself, showing her his identification. She hesitated before inviting him into the house, as if trying to come up with an excuse to send him away. In the end she realized she had no choice.

  The parlor, with its horsehair furniture and broad mantelpiece, was spotlessly clean. Mrs. Jones settled the child on her lap, and asked quietly, “What brings you here, Mr. Rutledge?”

  Her Welsh accent was stronger than her husband’s. Her hands, red from Monday’s washing, brushed a wisp of dark hair back from her face, and she seemed to brace herself for his answer.

  “You’ve heard that Mr. Quarles was killed over the weekend?”

  “The news came with the milk. I was sorry to hear of it.”

  But he thought she wasn’t. She couldn’t spare any thought or emotion for Harold Quarles, when she could see her whole world crumbing into despair if her husband was the murderer.

  “I’ve spoken to your husband. I need only to verify what he told me, that he spent Saturday evening with you and the children.”

  Her eyes flickered. “He did that. It’s the only time we have as a family, to tell the truth.”

  “And he didn’t go out after you’d gone up to bed?”

  “That he didn’t. The next youngest, Bridgett, had a little fever, and we were worried about her.”

  Her hands shook as she smoothed the dress of the little girl in her lap. “We’ve six girls,” she said, then immediately regretted speaking.

  “I understand that the oldest daughter is living in Cardiff.”

  She was reluctant to answer, as if not certain what her husband might have said. “Gwyneth’s with my mother. A real help to her, she is, and there’s no denying it.”

  “I also understand that it was Harold Quarles’s fault that your daughter had to be sent away.”

  “The whole town knows of it,” she answered, on the verge of tears. “We can’t go anywhere without some busybody asking after her, as if she was recovering from the plague. That tone of voice, pitying, you see, but with a hint of hunger about it, hoping we had had bad news. A baby on the way.”

  “I’m sure it has been difficult for you—”

  “And if you’re thinking that Hugh had anything to do with what happened to that devil,” she said fiercely, “you’d be wrong.” The child in her lap stirred with her intensity, an intensity in defense of the husband she herself doubted, protecting her family if she must perjure her soul.

  How many wives had done the same, time out of mind? Yet would Mrs. Quarles have protected her husband this fiercely? he wondered. But Hamish reminded him that there was a son, Marcus.

  “How can you be so certain?” Rutledge asked Mrs. Jones. “He must have felt like any father would feel, that the man ought to be horsewhipped.”

  “He wanted to use his fists on him, true enough, but there was us to think about. Too high a price, he said. And it wasn’t as if the devil had touched Gwyneth, only talking to her in such a way that she believed he would take her away to London. It was foolishness, but her head was turned, wasn’t it? And she’s so pretty, it makes your heart ache to think what can happen to one so young—” She stopped, something in her face, an anguish that she tried to stifle, alerting him.

  To think what can happen… not what could have happened.

  But before he could question the difference in tenses, she began to cry, a silent weeping that was all the more wrenching to watch, tears rolling down her face, and her arms encircling the sleeping child as if to keep her safe from all harm. He had to look away from the grief in her eyes.

  After a moment Rutledge said, “What’s wrong, Mrs. Jones? Shall I bring someone to you—your husband—”

  “Oh, no, please don’t let him see me like this!” She tried to wipe her eyes with the dress the little girl was wearing, but the tears wouldn’t stop. It was as if he’d opened floodgates, and there was no way to put them right again.

  Hamish said, “It’s no’ yon dead man she’s crying for.”

  And not Hugh Jones, either.

  What’s more, her husband hadn’t appeared to be upset.

  “What’s happened? What is it your husband doesn’t know?”

  He crossed the room and took the child from her arms, and went down the passage to the kitchen where a crib stood under the windows looking out over the back garden. The child sighed as he lowered her to the mattress, and she put her thumb in her mouth.

  Rutledge went back to the parlor and sat down next to Mrs. Jones, offering her his handkerchief.

  “I couldn’t tell him,” she said, sobbing. “I didn’t know how.” Her fingers fumbled in the pocket of her apron and drew out a sheet of paper.

  He saw that it was from a letter.

  The scrawled writing was tear stained and nearly indecipherable, but he managed to read the pertinent sentences.

  —she must have waited until I was asleep, and left then, in the middle of the night, with only the clothes on her back, and I’m at my wits’ end what to do or where to look—ungrateful child after all I’ve done—

  Gwyneth, it appeared, had run away from her grandmother’s house.

  And if any man had an excuse for murder, Hugh Jones did now.

  “Are you certain he doesn’t know?” Rutledge asked, folding the letter and putting it back into Mrs. Jones’s hand.

  “I can’t think how he could—but he loves Gwyneth, she’s our first-born and he’s been set on her since she first saw the light of day. He may have felt it in his bones, that she was in trouble. I’ve been so frightened, with nowhere to turn—for three days it’s nearly eaten me alive, and then Bertie this morning spilling out the news as if he knew—knew she had run away and was certain Hugh must know as well.”

  Had the girl come to that gatehouse to look for Harold Quarles, and somehow the baker had discovered that she was there?

  But Mrs. Jones was right—how could he have learned she had left Cardiff?

  Yet she herself had answered her own question—He may have felt it in his bones, that she was in trouble—

  True enough, but surely not to the extent of going to the Hallow-fields gatehouse to see.

  Hunter had reported that he’d heard voices quarreling, just before Quarles turned the corner.

  Had Jones confronted Quarles, demanding to know whe
re his daughter was? Then followed him home to Hallowfields, to see for himself if she was hiding in the gatehouse? And when he couldn’t find her, he lost his temper.

  It was possible. All too possible. Rutledge could understand Mrs. Jones’s fears. But that would have meant he knew…it kept coming back to that.

  Unless Jones had found the letter where she’d hidden it from him. One of Gwyneth’s sisters might have told him that the post had brought with it a letter that made Mama cry.

  Hamish said, “It’s no’ likely. Still—”

  Rutledge comforted Mrs. Jones as best he could, then went to make tea for her. The child was still sleeping, face flushed a little with the morning heat of the kitchen, and silky dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks, her dark hair curling about her neck. She would be a beauty, he thought, when she was grown. Like her sister?

  But now there was no Harold Quarles to tempt her. She was safe.

  He found cups in the Welsh dresser, and before he could carry the tea back to the parlor, Mrs. Jones had come to stand in the door, shame written on her face.

  “I am that sorry to put you to such trouble,” she began, but Rutledge cut her short.

  “Drink this, if you will,” he said, setting the cup on the table and pulling out a chair for her to sit down.

  “But the cat’s out of the bag,” she said wretchedly. “Now Hugh will know, and everyone else. And what am I to do about Gwynie? I can’t go to Cardiff, and I can’t send Hugh, and she’s been gone for days—” Her face changed, her eyes suddenly haunted. “Do you think she wrote to him, Mr. Quarles, when she ran off? I’d not have thought it of her, but I haven’t seen that much of her since we sent her away. I might not know what’s in her heart now.”

  A mother’s nightmare staring her in the face.