Watchers of Time ir-5

by Charles Todd

  “The mare? What mare?”

  “Honey. She isn’t here. There’s no sign of her.”

  “At a guess she’s halfway home by now!”

  They started down in the wake of the cart. Rutledge said, “I’m surprised Walsh hadn’t made better time than this. I’d have put him farther west by first light.” He rubbed his hand along his chin, feeling the roughness of his beard against the skin of his fingers.

  In the quiet morning air, the clump of their boots on the muddy hillside and the harsh breathing of men and horses was a counterpoint to the creaking of the cart’s wheels echoing across the valley.

  Blevins was still finding it hard to manage what he regarded as failure. “She cast her shoe, and it slowed him. What difference does it make?” he continued impatiently. “I’m not in the mood to speculate on the late Matthew Walsh’s last hours. I’m cold and tired, I’ve not had my breakfast, and he’s dead. It’s finished. I’ll write my report and officially close the case, and that’s the end of it.” He stared hard at Rutledge. “Unless you’ve got a more likely suspect to hand me, from all those questions you’ve been badgering people with. Oh, yes, it’s my town, I hear what’s been said! Right now, to tell you the truth, I feel like stringing up the bloody corpse! A live one would be a hell of a lot more to my liking!”

  May Trent’s name came unbidden into Rutledge’s mind.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE LONG ORDEAL WASN’T OVER FOR Rutledge.

  Someone had telephoned the Osterley Hotel and left a message for the man from London. A farmer’s dairyman had come across Priscilla Connaught in her wrecked car, weeping hysterically, on a road a little east from where Matthew Walsh had been found dead.

  Rutledge had forgotten her-she had left her house in a rush, looking for Walsh, and he had forgotten her.

  The sleepless night showed in the dark circles under Mrs. Barnett’s eyes, and in the faded color of her face. He couldn’t ask more of her. Instead he said, “Will you go up to Miss Trent’s room, and ask if she’d mind accompanying me when I fetch Miss Connaught and her car? I think it best to have a woman with me.”

  Mrs. Barnett raised her eyebrows in surprise. “But she left last night shortly after you did. Miss Trent. I thought you knew!”

  “She hasn’t come back?”

  “No. I’d locked the outer door, you see. Until a quarter of an hour ago. Of course I’d have heard the bell, she’d have no other way of getting in. And I’ve been awake since the telephone rang.”

  “Never mind, then. Er-do you think I could have a cup of tea before I leave?” He couldn’t worry about May Trent now…

  She looked at him, must have seen the weariness eating into the bones of his face. “Must you go out again? Surely Miss Connaught is better off where she is, while they’re still searching!”

  “Blevins has called it off. The search. Walsh was found.”

  “Well, that’s a great relief, isn’t it? It means we’re all safe. I’ve just put the kettle on. And I think there’s some cold bacon and a little cheese, if you want me to make up a sandwich.”

  “Please!”

  As Rutledge climbed the stairs, Hamish said, “The woman’s right. Sleep for an hour-there isna’ any need for haste.”

  He answered, “She gave someone my name-the farmer or the dairyman-and sent him out to find a telephone. I should have stopped her rather than drive half the night on a fool’s quest. In a way, whatever has happened is my fault.”

  When he opened the door of his room it seemed to open its arms to him, welcoming and silent and still dark, with the shades drawn. But he ignored the temptation of the waiting bed and walked across the carpet to run his fingers again over the bristles of his chin. He felt grimy, unkempt. Shaving and a clean shirt would help.

  The face staring back at him from his mirror as he worked up a lather in his mug and applied the brush to his cheeks and throat was gaunt, with the dark growth of beard lending it a sinister look. Hamish reminded him that he could pass more easily as a murderer than the dead Walsh.

  Rutledge could still see the big hands lying limp, without force, on the grass, and the flaccid muscles that had once given the impression of great power to the Strong Man’s shoulders. In his mind’s eye, as he shaved, he reexamined the wound. An irony-a horseshoe spelling the end of the road for an escaping murderer.

  What were the lines he’d found so fascinating as a boy? Something about for want of a shoe, a horse was lost-for want of a horse, a rider was lost-and it went on in that vein until a battle was lost.. ..

  Certainly for Blevins, the battle had been lost.

  Ten minutes to shave, wash up, and change, and then Rutledge was calling to Mrs. Barnett as he crossed the lobby.

  She was just coming through the kitchen doorway, carrying a thermos of tea, a basket of sandwiches, and two cups. She said, “Don’t break the cups, will you? I need them back.”

  “I’ll be careful. Why did Miss Trent leave? Orders were for everyone to stay indoors until Walsh was caught.”

  Suddenly anxious, Mrs. Barnett asked, “You did say you’d found him, didn’t you? I’m afraid I’m beyond thinking just now.”

  “We found him. He’s dead.” It was terse, and he hadn’t meant for the words to sound that way.

  “Dead-”

  “Why did Miss Trent leave?” he repeated.

  “She was rather worried about Peter Henderson-all that searching, people moving about-and if he didn’t know why, it’d be upsetting. I expect Peter could take care of himself; he’s quite at home in the night. I mean, from the War and all that. I’ve seen him wandering about at all hours, just-wandering. Sometimes he stands on the quay and stares up at the hotel. Not in a threatening way, you understand. I think the light comforts him somehow. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked him to come in out of the rain, but he always shook his head and thanked me and walked on. I leave him alone, now. I’m sure he’d hear the search parties long before they saw him!”

  Or hear Walsh, blundering through the dark?

  Hamish reminded him, “Ye wondered, once, where he slept at night.

  …”

  So he had. Rutledge thanked her and went out into the brisk wind that had arisen, thinking he ought to have brought his coat. But he didn’t have the energy to go back for it. Hamish warned him that he was in no shape to drive, either, and Rutledge said curtly, “I don’t have much choice!”

  “You willna’ die. I’ll no’ let you die. Still-what if you kill someone else?”

  It was not a pleasant thought.

  He carried with him the directions that Mrs. Barnett had taken down from the man telephoning the hotel on behalf of Priscilla Connaught. The most direct route would have sent him back through Hurley, where Walsh had been found, but he chose instead to turn left out of Water Street and head east, then south and west again. He found himself wondering if this had-roughly-been the path Walsh had followed, too. It would explain to some degree why the man hadn’t got as far as Rutledge had expected. And on such an erratic course, it would have taken luck, a phenomenal amount of luck, for Priscilla Connaught to have caught up with him…

  Hamish said, “It wouldna’ do any harm to stop and see if the mare’s at the barn.”

  Rutledge thought, “Let Blevins attend to it,” but as he neared the cottage he slowed and turned into the drive, bumping down the ruts to the barn.

  The instinct that had served him so well in the past had been erratic since the War, as if deserting him and then finding him again. He tried not to turn his back on it when it stirred and woke.

  A dog barked furiously at him, the yellow dog he’d seen the night before. It ran out of the barn, stiff-legged, its upper lip curled back from teeth that seemed to gleam in the pale light.

  Rutledge stopped the motorcar some twenty feet from the barn, set the brake, and opened his door.

  Hamish said something, but he ignored it.

  Speaking to the animal quietly, his voice firm and ordinary,
Rutledge said, “Good dog-good dog. There’s a good dog. Come here. That’s it, easy, my friend, no one means you any harm.” Matching his movements to the cadence of his speech, he got out to stand beside the car, slowly sinking to his haunches.

  “Here, now, there’s a good dog. I won’t harm your master. Is he at home?”

  Fierce and staccato at first, the barking changed to a loud and lengthy statement of duty, the black nose rising into the air, and the tail no longer rigid but dipping in the middle. In another thirty seconds, the dog came forward, nose outstretched, eyes wary, the bark more for show than for attack. Soon Rutledge was rubbing the rough head and tweaking the ears as he dug his fingers into the thick fur behind them. Tongue lolling, the dog would have licked Rutledge’s face if he hadn’t moved in the nick of time. Laughing, he stood and said, “All right, then, show me the barn. Will you do that?”

  Hamish said, “You ken, if you tamed him, someone else could have. Walsh.”

  “Yes. That’s what I wanted to find out.” He moved casually toward the barn, the yellow dog prancing at his heels, licking his hand in an invitation to play. But Rutledge was intent on his own business.

  He paused as he reached the barn door, and then stepped inside. The dog followed happily, and Rutledge turned toward the stalls.

  In the dim light of the barn, there was only one head raised to stare back at him with ear-twitching interest. The doors of the empty stalls stood wide.

  Randal had not come home. And neither had the mare that he’d gone to find.

  Satisfied, Rutledge prepared to leave, and the dog, sensing a lessening of tension, brought an old rag to him, offering it with a sloppy grin. Rutledge took it from the wet mouth and tossed it toward a bale of hay that stood beside a harrow.

  The rag hit the back of the harrow, and something fell with a clatter, dislodged by the pull of the cloth. The dog went after his new toy, but looked back at Rutledge with an air that all but said, “It’s out of reach-not fair.”

  Rutledge crossed to the harrow and leaned forward to retrieve the rag. It was entangled with something, and he brought both objects up together, tossing the balled rag toward the barn door before setting a hammer on the hay.

  The dog raced off.

  And a memory suddenly clicked. Rutledge stood still.

  He was a young policeman again, walking into a house where a shirtless middle-aged man was in tears, begging him over and over to believe that he’d meant no harm-no harm. But in the kitchen at the back of the house lay the much younger wife, a bowl of eggs shattered on the floor around her, the shells broken and the whites as slippery as glass. From the muddy earth on her boots, she’d just collected the eggs from the hens in the back garden.

  Her temple had been crushed by a carpenter’s hammer, a single blow with the weight of the husband’s heavy shoulders behind it. The weapon lay on the floor where he had dropped it, bright blood on its head. He had, he said, been using it to mend the cellar stairs.

  Rutledge couldn’t recall now what the pair had quarreled about. Only that he’d felt like picking up the hammer and using it himself on the man. He’d been young, idealistic still, unused to murder. The man was on his knees by the quiet body of his wife, begging her to get up, to clean up the mess on the floor. To pull down her skirts before the policeman, and Rutledge had felt the upsurge of a fearsome anger.

  And the wound-the wound was a bloody gouge on the temple. Not like-and yet somehow very like-the bloody hole in Walsh’s temple.

  Why had he associated the two cases?

  Because he was tired enough for his mind to play tricks…

  The dog came back with the rag, tail waggling, asking for another toss. But Rutledge was lost in the past, his eyes turned inward, his fingers moving involuntarily over the head of the hammer as he tried to bring back the images in his mind, to observe them more clearly. What was it that had stirred his memory? Not the shape of the woundNot the kitchen floor, where the broken egg yolks ran into the thicker stickiness of the blood… Nor the man whimpering at his side.

  He took the wet rag and threw it once more, and realized that it had left a smear of saliva across his fingers. He looked down at them as Hamish said something, and was on the point of wiping them on the loose hay when he stopped.

  Rutledge stared at the tool in his hand, another thought rising among the confused images that exhaustion was fusing, like drug-induced dreams in hospital, into a semblance of reality.

  The mare hadn’t been at the scene when the doctor arrived-he wouldn’t have been able to examine her shoe for signs of blood and hair. And by the time she was found, any useful traces on the shoe would have been worn away. A pity. It would have been clearer evidence in the chain of events Blevins had to sort out. Indeed, someone ought to wait here until the mare was brought in.

  He himself should be on his way to Priscilla Connaught…

  His mind fragmented by multiple lines of thought, Rutledge tried to find coherence. And the fatigue riding him refused to let him.

  How many hammers were there in Osterley-in a twenty-mile radius of Osterley?

  It didn’t matter. The bodies of the dead often told their own stories of how they died. But not always why. It was the why that mattered now.

  He realized what Hamish had just said to him. “… a needle in a haystack…”

  Rutledge turned and walked toward the stalls that had held three Norfolk Grays only last night, thinking that the hammer had been in the barrow with its brothers only last night. He’d seen them there when he’d gone through the barn with the farmer Hadley and Tom Randal.

  But he hadn’t been searching for hammers, only for Walsh The luminous brown eyes of the remaining horse met his and as Rutledge neared the stall, the animal blew softly, interested in the mixed smell of dog and motorcar that he carried with him. The yellow dog walked patiently at his heels, panting and grinning, a willing conspirator if Rutledge took it into his head to steal this last mount.

  Rutledge approached the horse with care, concentrating on speaking quietly, reassuringly, before reaching out to the nose stretched toward him. “Where are your stable-mates? Hmmm? And what’s keeping your master-”

  Hamish said something, fast and unintelligible.

  There was heaving movement in the shadows at his shoulder, hardly visible, more a sudden blend of sounds and shapes so startlingly close that there was no defense against it. Rutledge ducked, prepared for a wild attack.

  A second gray horse, awakened by a voice next to where she’d been dozing head down in her stall, swung it high and stretched forward to nuzzle him.

  The mare.

  She was home.

  Once his breathing had settled back into the range of speech, Rutledge stepped into the stall, calling her name softly as he ran his hand down her neck and then along her flank, before moving toward her hindquarters. The mare quivered, her coat rippling with the movement of the nerves under it, but she stood still. He kept one hand on her back and bent to lift the heavy hoof on the near side. In the poor light of the barn, he couldn’t see well enough to examine it.

  Turning her head to stare at him, she let him work with her without protest. He put down that hoof, and then moved to lift the other.

  For an instant he thought she was going to kick out, and he could see himself caught in the head just as Walsh had been, his back too near the stall’s high side wall to let him escape the blow. But she simply moved a step forward, as if to give him more room.

  The shoe was missing.

  He put down the heavy hoof, keeping his hand gently on the mare’s rump. Her coat was rough with the lather of sweat, briars and leaves tangled in the thick hair. She had been ridden very hard, and she was tired…

  He lifted the hoof again. She turned her head, the great brown eyes watching him.

  But she did not kick. She was safe in her own stall now, and not likely to object, in her present state. He let the hoof down, and moved around toward the big head.

  “Clever
girl, to find your own way home.” He slapped the neck just below the ears twitching with interest as if wondering what it was he wanted.

  Hamish said, “Left to hersel’, it’s no’ a great surprise.”

  Where was Randal?

  Had he come back yet? There was no sign of the gelding. This time Rutledge moved on to the last stall to peer inside. It stood empty.

  Randal was still searching for his lost mare.

  Rutledge laid the hammer by the harrow, where he’d found it, and walked out of the barn. He could hear ravens calling in the woods, and somewhere the sharp whistle of a pheasant.

  Priscilla Connaught was waiting. He had to go.

  It was almost a surprise when he heard Hamish’s voice saying, “The woman willna’ go away. Stay until yon farmer comes back.”

  Rutledge thought, “I’ll finish what I’ve begun.” But in Hurley, the doctor would be ready to examine Walsh’s body. Hamish was right. He ought to be there, too. No matter what he did, he was off track-last night, this morning-and there seemed to be nothing he could do about it.

  Besides, it was Blevins’s case. The Inspector would have to be present.

  He absently fondled the dog’s ears. Walsh was dead. Whatever Hamish thought, one had always to remember the living.

  CHAPTER 23

  THE FARMHOUSE WHERE PRISCILLA CONNAUGHT HAD been taken after wrecking her motorcar was set, like so many others, back from the road down a winding lane that led up a slight rise and then into the farmyard. It was muddy, the warm smell of manure coming from a cart by the far wall where the milking shed had been cleaned. The cows themselves, some dozen of them, were already plodding steadily out to pasture, following a routine so well established in their lives that they needed no human direction.

  A walk of paving stones led across to the house, and one branch of it disappeared through a hedge around to the front. Rutledge left his car by a stack of bricks covered with a tarpaulin and picked his way across the yard to the walk. There was a door at this end of it, what he assumed to be the kitchen door into the yard. It opened before he got there.