Charles Todd_Ian Rutledge 11

by A Matter of Justice

  “You can’t be sure of that,” Padgett objected.

  Rutledge gave him no answer. He was already in a debate with Hamish over the subject, Hamish strongly supporting the need to find out more about Quarles’s past while his own pressing concern at the moment was the bookseller.

  Padgett said, “Well, I’ll leave you to your wild goose chase. I’ll be at the station, if you want me.”

  Hamish was saying now, “What about yon lass? Ye canna’ leave her much longer.”

  “Let her sleep. Then we’ll see what to do about her. I’ll have to tell her father. And that should answer a lot of questions.”

  He walked on to the doctor’s surgery, found that Dr. O’Neil was busy with another patient, and asked his nurse if he could speak to Stephenson without disturbing the doctor.

  She was willing to allow him to see the patient, she said, if he promised not to upset the man. “We’ve got five people in the waiting room, and I don’t want a scene.”

  “Has Stephenson been upsetting the household?”

  “Not precisely, but his state of mind is delicate. I was asking him just this morning if there was anyone we might send for, a cousin or something, to help him through his distress, and he began to howl. I can’t describe it as a cry, and the doctor’s wife came running to see what was the matter.”

  Small wonder that O’Neil had sent for the rector.

  Rutledge gave her his word and hoped that he could keep it as he was led back to the room where Stephenson was sitting on the edge of his bed, his face buried in his hands.

  He looked up as Rutledge came through the door, then dropped his head again, saying, “What is it you want? Can’t you leave me alone?”

  “I’m worried about you,” Rutledge said easily. “I think there’s something on your mind that you can’t let go. Is it the fact that Quarles is out of reach now, and there’s no one else to hate? Except yourself?”

  His words must have struck a chord. Stephenson lifted his head again, his eyes showing alarm. “What have you found out? What do you know?”

  “Very little. You mourn for your son. You hated Harold Quarles. There has to be a link somewhere. And if you hate yourself, it was because you feel you let your son down in some way, when he needed you most.”

  Stephenson began to cry in spite of himself. “Yes, yes, I should have put him on the first ship out of England, and let him go somewhere—anywhere—safe. But I didn’t. He was so young, and I wanted to keep him with me. He was so like his mother, so gentle and sweet-natured. I couldn’t let him go—and so I killed him.”

  Alarmed, Rutledge said, “When?”

  “Damn you, not literally. I’d never have laid a finger on him.”

  “Then how is Quarles involved? I’m tired of playing solve the riddle.”

  Stephenson, burdened by his shame, buried his face in his hands again, unable to look anyone in the eye.

  Rutledge, considering what Stephenson had just told him, asked, “Was your son called up in the draft and afraid to go to war?” It was hazarding a guess, but he was surprised at the reaction.

  Stephenson rose to his feet to defend his son, gathering himself together to shout Rutledge down. He could see it coming.

  And so he added, “Or was the coward you?”

  Stephenson gasped, his features changing from pure blazing anger to such self-loathing that Rutledge had to look away.

  But he thought Stephenson was lying when he said, “Yes, it was I. I couldn’t bear to see him brutalized by the army, shoved into the battle lines, told to kill or be killed. I couldn’t live with that.”

  It was the boy who’d been afraid, who had wanted to take ship. And the father who was determined to keep him in England. The boy, not the man.

  “What could you do about it?”

  “I went to the only person I could think of important enough to help me. I went to Harold Quarles—I’d grown up in Cambury, my mother was still living here—and I begged him to find a way to get my son out of the army. I told Quarles what would happen if I let him go, and I promised him anything, that I would do anything he asked, however difficult it was, if he would go to the Army and tell them not to send Tommy across to France.”

  “And what did Harold Quarles promise you?”

  Stephenson’s face twisted in grief. “He wouldn’t even hear me out. He refused to help. I tried to tell him that they have all sorts of units. Quartermaster, signals, radio, enlistments—none of them having to do with actual fighting—and I told him Tommy could do those. He was cold, unyielding, and told me that he would not speak to the Army for me or anyone else. And so Tommy went to be trained as a soldier, and he was shipped to France, and on his first day at the Front, he waited until the trench had emptied and bent over his rife and pulled the trigger. The letter from his commanding officer called him a coward and said that he had disgraced the company. All I could think of was that he was dead, and that surely there had been some way for a man as powerful and well thought of as Harold Quarles to stop him from going abroad.”

  He was silent in his grief now, and that was all the more telling as he stared into a past he couldn’t change. Rutledge rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “I wanted to kill his commanding officer, then I realized those were only words, they didn’t matter. It was Quarles who was to blame, and I wanted to make him suffer as I had done. I came here to haunt him, I wanted him to think about Tommy every time he passed the shop or saw me on the street, and remember his own child. I made a point to find out when he was returning to Cambury, and I put myself in his way as often as I could. And when I had wrought up my determination, I was going to kill him. But like my son, I couldn’t find the courage to do anything. Like my son, I couldn’t bring myself to kill, and yet I wanted it as I’d never wanted anything before or since, save to keep Tommy alive.”

  Stephenson saw himself as failing Tommy twice, Rutledge realized. In not saving him in the first place and then in not being able to avenge him in the second. And as long as Harold Quarles was alive, the opportunity to kill him still existed. Once Quarles was dead, it was too late for vengeance. And so the bookseller had punished himself by putting that rope around his neck. It wasn’t so much a fear of the police that had driven him; it was the knowledge that when he was questioned, his shame would be exposed to the whole world. Tommy the coward, son of a coward.

  But the story was out now.

  As if Stephenson realized that, he lay back on his cot, his arm over his face, and his face to the wall.

  Rutledge said, “Thank you for telling me. Whatever you feel about Harold Quarles, the fact remains that we must find out who killed him. It’s a question of justice. As for his failure to help you and your failure to help your son, there are times when no one can help and a man’s life has to take its course. Tommy wasn’t the only one in that battle who was afraid. Most of us in the trenches were terrified. It would have been unnatural not to be.”

  Stephenson said, “He was the only one who didn’t go over the top that morning. He was the only one who used his weapon against himself rather than the enemy. He let all the world see his fear and judge him for it. I think of that often, how awful his last hours—minutes—must have been, with no one to tell him he was loved and must live. I wasn’t there, I wasn’t there.”

  The final failure, in the father’s eyes.

  “Nor was God,” Rutledge said, and sat with the grieving man for another quarter of an hour, until he was calmer.

  16

  Rutledge went back to the O’Hara cottage and tapped lightly on the door. He had the distinct feeling that every window overlooking where he stood was filled with people waiting to see how he was received.

  Miss O’Hara answered his knock, her finger to her lips. “She’s asleep. I can only hope her mother is resting as well. What are we to do? Have you spoken to her father?”

  “Not yet.” He followed her into the pretty room he had hardly had time to notice that morning. There were comfor
table needlepoint cushions everywhere, a row of small framed photographs on the mantel, and surprisingly, a pair of revolvers mounted on a polished board. As he glanced at them, she said, “My father’s.”

  There was defiance in the words, as if Rutledge might think she had no right to them.

  Certainly they were incongruous in this very feminine setting, but he had no intention of rattling her pride.

  She offered him tea, but he declined, adding, “You’ve been up most of the night, I think. Sit down. We’ll have to work this out between us. The rest of the family, Gwyneth included, will be too emotional to choose what’s best.”

  “What is best?” she countered.

  Rutledge took a deep breath. “I don’t believe Gwyneth could have killed the man. I don’t think her mother, much as she hated what Quarles had done to her family, would have carried the murder to such extremes—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted with a little shiver. “I’ve heard the tale of the Christmas angel. It’s barbaric. Mrs. Jones might well have killed him, but not that. I agree.”

  “Which leaves us with Gwyneth’s father, and whether or not he knew about the letter from her grandmother.”

  “Does it really matter? The child’s complained to him enough. He might have decided to bring her home the only way he could.”

  “Coincidence?” Rutledge shook his head. “I don’t know. It will not be easy talking to him. But I don’t think Mrs. Jones will be able to cope when he comes home this evening. It will spill out somehow—a child asking why Mummy cried all day, a neighbor wanting to know why she was here in your house at such an ungodly hour—and she will break down and tell him the truth.”

  “She’s stronger than you realize. But his suspicions will be aroused.”

  There was a short silence. He said, “You told me you knew something about murder. And about being hunted.”

  “That I did. It’s why I’m in England, the last place on earth I’d like to be. I was caught in the middle of the Easter Rebellion in 1917. I did what I had to do, to save myself and my family. And after that I had to leave. Do you want to take me up for that?” He could feel her anger and resentment.

  “It’s not my jurisdiction,” he answered mildly. “If it has no bearing on Quarles’s death, then I have no business interfering.”

  “Thank you for being so damned condescending,” she flared, her voice rising a little before she could control it.

  “Condescending?” He smiled, and it touched his eyes. “Hardly. It’s you who is still sensitive. I’m merely putting your mind at ease.”

  She had the grace to laugh lightly. “You were in the trenches, I think. You know what war is like. Well, it was war in Dublin. And elsewhere. We were under siege, and we were afraid of what would happen if we lost. What sort of retribution there would be for us and, more urgently, our families. I went to the fighting to bring my father’s body back, and I had to kill someone to do it. I don’t regret it, he doesn’t invade my dreams, and I’d do it again if I had to.”

  She would have been an easy target, with that flame red hair. It had been a brave thing to do to go after her father, and it could have ended horribly. Right or wrong, his cause or not, Rutledge could respect her courage.

  Returning to what had brought him here, Rutledge said, “May I leave Gwyneth in your care for a little longer? I’ll be gone for some time. Don’t let her leave, for any reason.”

  “No, I’ve kept the door locked until l look to see who’s knocking. I’ve said my prayers for that family. I hope God is listening.”

  As he rose to leave, Miss O’Hara said, “She won’t go back to her grandmother’s. I can tell you that. She was wretched, and the old woman used her unmercifully. The tyranny of the weak. And then she had the unmitigated gall to tell the poor lass that she was the devil’s get whenever Gwyneth failed to please her.”

  “I don’t think the family knew.”

  “They must have. But they closed their eyes because there was no other way to keep her out of the man’s clutches. Quarles had much on his soul when he went to God, and the names of Gwyneth and her family are engraved on it.”

  Rutledge went out the door and waited until he’d heard the click of the key locking it before turning toward the Jones’s house.

  Hamish was saying, “Ye ken, you were taken in.”

  “By what?”

  “That one, the Irish lass. Ye absolved her of the killing withoot a single proof that what she said was true.”

  “It’s not my jurisdiction,” he said, a second time.

  “Oh, aye? She’s done you a guid turn and bought your silence.”

  “It doesn’t matter right now. The girl does.”

  “She admits to a murder,” Hamish admonished him. “What’s to say that the second killing wasna’ easier? And the lass has a temper. When he spoke on the street, she gave him short shrift. But who is to say what happened next between them?”

  It was true.

  “But it will have to wait,” Rutledge said. “Hugh Jones must be sorted out first. Before he learns that Gwyneth is back in Cambury.”

  Hamish said, still not satisfied, “She holds on to a guid deal o’ anger, that lass. She would ha’ put him in the rig to be a lesson, even if only for her ain pleasure. Yon murderer felt the same anger. It’s no’ a thing most of the village could ha’ done.”

  “I don’t see Stephenson dragging Quarles to the tithe barn and manhandling him into that cage. But then it might explain his strong sense of guilt.”

  “Ye ken, ye havena’ delved into yon dead man’s past. Is it to put yon inspector’s nose oot of joint that ye cling to this village? Just as ye went in sich a great hurry to London, to spike the guns of the ither inspector?”

  “That’s nonsense!” Rutledge snapped, and then realized he’d spoken aloud.

  He wasn’t aware that during his conversation with Hamish he’d been standing outside the Jones house. Going up to the door, he hoped it would be Mrs. Jones who answered, not one of the children. But she was quick, before he’d knocked, as if she’d been watching for him to come. She could see the O’Hara house from the south window of her parlor.

  The little girl wasn’t on her hip today, and she glanced over her shoulder as she opened the door, as if to be sure there was no one about.

  “Do come in,” she said softly, and as soon as they were shut into the little parlor, she went on. “How is she? I was that worried—she was in such a state when I opened the door. God alone knows she took an awful risk, all alone on those roads! I knew she was unhappy…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “She’s sleeping. It’s what she needs. But she won’t go back to Cardiff. You do see that, don’t you? The next time she may not be as lucky.”

  “Well, she won’t have to now, will she—” And she broke off, her hand to her mouth, as if to stop the words, but it was too late.

  “With Quarles dead?”

  “He was an awful man. I can’t wish him alive again. And I want my girl home to stay. Her gran’s getting on. She wasn’t always such a terror. But what choice was there, I ask you!”

  Her eyes were pleading with him to tell her that everything would be all right, that this nightmare would resolve itself without trouble for anyone she loved. But he couldn’t, and after a moment, she looked away, sadness pulling her face down. “What are we to do about Gwyneth? She must come home. I want her here, not at a stranger’s house.”

  “Mrs. Jones, I must ask you again. Can you be absolutely certain that no one in the house told your husband about the letter from Wales?”

  “I don’t see how anyone could have done. The post came when only the baby was here, and she wouldn’t know. And I kept it safe in my apron pocket, where no one would look.”

  But he could read the uncertainty in her face now. The fear that she hadn’t done enough.

  “Would you have killed Harold Quarles to keep your daughter safe?” he asked bluntly. “I have to know.”

&nbs
p; She looked at him then. “If it was to be Gwynnie or him, I’d choose Gwynnie. But what about the rest of them, what are they to do without me, if I’m gone? Besides, I’ve heard what was done to him. Much as I wanted him away from Gwynnie, I couldn’t have brought myself to touch him…”

  On the whole, Rutledge thought that was true. She wasn’t the sort of woman to take pleasure in her vengeance. It would be enough for the man to be dead, out of her daughter’s troubled life.

  “I must go now and tell your husband. Will you do nothing until I’ve seen him?”

  “When he comes home tonight, what will he say? That’s what frightens me. He’ll know I kept secrets. As well, he’ll be angry with me for keeping Gwynnie from him.”

  “I can’t promise you he won’t be angry.”

  “You think he’s done this thing.”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Jones. And that’s the truth.”

  “He could have pulled him up on that rig. He’s done it before for the Christmas angel…”

  He was shocked that she would admit it. At first he wondered if she was trying to shield herself, the mother, the protector of her children. And then he realized that she was thinking aloud, that she had forgotten he was there in the agonizing drain of her own worry.

  He said good-bye, and she nodded absently, her mind so wrapped up in the question of whether the man she’d married and given six daughters to was capable of murder, that he wasn’t sure she knew when he left.

  The walk to the bakery was silent. Hamish had finished what he wanted to say. But Rutledge’s thoughts were heavy. If he took Jones into custody, who would keep the bakery open? Not his wife. And not the girl, despite her training up to fill his shoes. What would become of this family?

  It was the duty of a policeman to be objective. He’d told Padgett that. And yet sometimes it was impossible to ignore the different personal tragedies that murder brought in its wake. Few of those touched by violent death walked away unscathed.