She was ahead of him. “You’d search without a warrant?”
He said, “You don’t want the answer to that. It makes you an accessory.”
She looked at him. “You’re risking your reputation.”
“Yes. I won’t do any damage, I won’t take away anything. What I want to see is what sort of flooring she has in her cellar. I could go in at night, when she’s asleep, but there are times when she walks about the house. I shouldn’t like to frighten her.”
“What possible excuse could I have for asking a stranger to dine with me?”
“That you knew—or thought you knew—her family. Harkness is the name.”
“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”
He was disappointed but said, “That’s all right. I understand.”
That night, when the street was dark and all the lights were out in most of the houses on Whitby Lane, Rutledge, dressed in a black sweater and black trousers, walked boldly to the door of the Ellison house and tried the lock.
It was open. He slipped into the entrance and listened.
From somewhere in the house he could hear snoring, a steady, rhythmic sound that indicated a deep sleep. Hard of hearing Mrs. Ellison might be, but sudden sounds in the night penetrated dreams.
He moved silently toward the kitchen, finding his way with his torch, his fingers shielding most of the light.
The kitchen was tidy, a kettle ready for morning, a cup and saucer set out on the table next to the floral tea caddy and the sugar bowl.
Looking at the doors leading off the kitchen, he decided that one was a pantry, another the door to the back garden, and the third possibly the back stairs. He tried them each in turn and found a fourth door near the back entry.
That proved to be a rough staircase into the cellar.
He went down carefully, as Hamish warned him to be wary.
“This isna’ the way to find an answer,” the soft Scots voice whispered.
“Cain won’t listen if there isn’t a very good chance I’m right.”
“Aye, but how will ye tell him ye’re right?”
Rutledge ignored him. He’d reached the bottom of the stairs and cast his light about the cellar. It looked like a hundred others, the door to the yard slanting over the head of a short flight of stairs, a collection of scuttles and gardening implements scattered here and there, a barrow, and all the oddments of a house lived in for many years. A shelf held preserves and jams and tins of fruit, another held jam kettles and strainers, and other kitchenware not frequently used. A third held a collection of chipped dinner plates, bowls, cups and saucers in at least two patterns. Old boots stood in a box by the outer door, and on hooks above them, he saw a man’s trousers, a worn coat, and an old hat. Three umbrellas lay on a ledge nearby. Overhead in the rafters were bunches of herbs set to dry. From the look of them, they hadn’t been used in many years, for something had been at them. As he touched one of the bunches of lavender, it crumbled between his fingers.
The floor under his feet was earthen, packed hard over the decades, certainly not loose enough for a woman to dig graves in.
“A wild-goose chase,” Hamish said, urging him to go.
Where else but the cellar could Mrs. Ellison have buried the bodies of two women?
“Mind, it’s already been searched by the constable.”
“No. According to his notes, Hensley took her word that she’d already searched the house. Who was going to call that into question? Why would anyone even consider the possibility that Mrs. Ellison had murdered her own grandchild? She took a calculated risk, and won.”
What’s more, the back garden was overlooked by the windows of her neighbors, and she would have drawn attention to herself if she’d gone out to dig in her flower beds late in the night.
His torch went methodically from left to right, floor to rafters, without a break in the walls or floor to indicate past activity of any sort.
Taking two steps across the floor, careful not to leave the marks of his shoes in the dust, he turned to throw his light behind the stairs, and there he saw a large wooden cupboard up against the wall, its double doors barred with a short length of plank nailed across them. In front of it was an old bull’s-eye target of straw with a faded canvas covering. The kind that was used in practicing at the butts with a bow and arrow.
The light stopped there as Rutledge absorbed what he was looking at. He thought, measuring the cupboard with his eye, that he could easily fit any two women he’d met in Dudlington inside those doors, providing they weren’t unusually tall or heavy.
He walked around the staircase and put his free hand on the wooden bar. It was solidly nailed in, and he would need a crowbar to pry it off.
“It’s no’ proof,” Hamish was saying.
Rutledge leaned forward to sniff at the tiny crack where the doors on either side met.
A musty odor met his nostrils, leavened with herbs. Rosemary, he thought, for one. And thyme. What else? Lavender, yes, that was it.
A blanket chest? Or a coffin for Beatrice Ellison and Emma Mason?
He made his way back up the stairs, walking carefully on the outside of the treads to keep the creaking of old wood at a minimum. Once in the kitchen he shut the door behind him, and took out a handkerchief to wipe the soles of his feet, so as not to leave dusty tracks on the kitchen’s floor.
He had reached the dining room on his way to the front door when he realized that the snoring had stopped.
He froze where he was, flicked off his torch, and listened.
At the top of the stairs a light bloomed and faded, as if someone had walked across the head of the stairs with a lamp in hand.
Rutledge stayed where he was, breathing as shallowly as he dared.
A door opened, shut.
He thought he could move then and was halfway through the parlor when a voice called.
“Who’s there?”
He stopped again, hidden beside the tall case clock against the parlor wall. He wasn’t sure whether she had actually heard him moving about or sensed his presence.
Hamish scolded, “If she comes down wi’ the lamp, there’s no hope. She’ll see you! And it will no’ look verra’ good in London.”
Rutledge thought, She’ll hear him.
But after a moment the lamplight faded again, and there was silence in the house.
He stood there by the clock for a good half an hour, unwilling to move in the event she was waiting at the top of the steps where she could see the door.
After a while, satisfied that she had gone back to sleep again, he moved silently to the front door and opened it, stepped outside, and closed it.
For the first time he was able to take a deep breath. It seemed to seep into every corner of his body, reviving it.
Moving swiftly but quietly, he went down the steps and into the street. There was no one in sight. He scanned each direction, his eyes taking in the windows overlooking him as he listened for any sound or footsteps. But not even a dog had barked as he stood there.
He was halfway to the door of Hensley’s house when something made him look up at the windows of Emma Mason’s bedroom.
He remembered then what Mary Ellison had said when he caught her by the church two nights ago.
“You aren’t the only one to watch from windows.”
He could just barely see her there, in the darkened room, staring down at him, the white oval of her face set above the black of her dressing gown.
And he was speared by moonlight, in the unshadowed middle of the street, his torch in his hand, his face upturned toward her, and guilt probably written there in his expression of surprise.
For an instant their eyes held.
And then Rutledge strode briskly into Hensley’s house and shut the door behind him.
32
He asked Inspector Cain for a search warrant.
And just as Rutledge had expected, he was met with a reluctance that bordered on intransigence.
“
You said yourself she denied any knowledge of that toothpick. It’s only Miss Letteridge’s word against Mrs. Ellison’s, and it could be said that Miss Letteridge was feeling vindictive, for reasons of her own.”
“You’ll find your evidence when you make the search.”
“You can’t be sure of it. Look, I must live here long after you’ve returned to London. If we’re wrong, if your search turns up no evidence whatsoever that this woman is a murderess, then what? And I honestly find it hard to believe—”
“—that a Harkness could poison someone,” Rutledge finished for him, interrupting. “Bloodlines don’t prove with certainty that she’s innocent.”
“But can you be absolutely positive those bones are Ellison’s remains? Not just someone walking on the road who fell ill, got to the wood, and died.”
“And buried himself afterward?”
“Time covered his remains, not a human agency. You’ve got to admit that that’s possible. Look, you came here to deal with the attack on Constable Hensley. There was nothing in your brief about Emma Mason. Nor her mother, nor her grandfather. Who shot Hensley?”
“Mrs. Ellison. She’s admitted that her granddaughter was interested in bows and arrows. She had the means.”
“I’ve met Mrs. Ellison socially. Frankly, I can’t quite see her wandering in Frith’s Wood with the intention of killing anyone. Besides, how could she have walked boldly toward the wood with a bow in her hand?”
“She could have left it there for use if Hensley got too close. And she felt the time had come.”
“Premeditation.”
“Yes.”
“No one goes to that wood, Rutledge, if they can help it.”
“Do you think Mrs. Ellison is superstitious?”
Cain shook his head. “We’re not getting anywhere. Bring me proof, Rutledge, beyond hearsay and suspicion. I must have something I can actually hold in my hand, as it were.”
Rutledge left, his anger barely controlled. But he knew that Cain was right.
He drove back to Dudlington with Hamish making his presence known through an undercurrent of disapproval.
“She kens what you know. You canna’ change that. And if she’s been sae clever all these years—”
“She’s not likely to give herself away now.”
He concentrated on the road, watching the fields speed by his motorcar, thinking about Dudlington, and how blind the village had been to what was happening. Cain couldn’t overlook Mrs. Ellison’s connection with a once-prominent family, and neither could Mrs. Ellison’s neighbors.
He arrived to find chaos.
Smoke was billowing out the door of Hensley’s house, a dark plume that was acrid and choking. He could hear the coughing as the men worked to smother the blaze with water and blankets and buckets of sand from somewhere.
Hamish was urgently reminding him of papers that were at risk in the cupboard behind Hensley’s desk.
Rutledge plunged through the door to see what the damage was. The fire hadn’t reached the office, but it appeared that a live coal from the hearth had exploded onto the carpet in the sitting room, and the flames had run up the sides of a chair before someone had stepped into the office and smelled smoke.
Or had the coal had help moving from hearth to carpet?
There was no time to wonder. Rutledge inserted himself into the chain as those pumping water from the sink passed buckets down the line and others clattered down the steps with more bedclothes and linens to help smother the blaze.
Rutledge saw Keating stop and pick up papers being trampled underfoot in the office and set them out of the way. They had fallen from the desk and had been scattered by the multitude of feet hurrying through.
The greengrocer was there, the baker and his helpers as well, and someone from one of the houses on the other side, as well as a half dozen men he didn’t recognize.
The burning carpet was now a smoldering, blackened ruin, and half the chair was gone. The wood of the floor had been heavily scorched. Ten minutes more, he thought, and the drapes would have caught as well.
Men were moving outside into cleaner air, and water sloshed under their feet and was tracked through the office.
Keating was still there, rapidly sorting papers, as if looking for something. Rutledge had put away most of the concealed papers he’d discovered, and the rest were the routine reports Hensley hadn’t got around to filing. He turned away as Keating stepped outside and, without waiting for thanks, walked on up the hill to The Oaks.
Someone brought a bucket of hot tea, sweet and leavened with milk, and it was poured into mugs. Sweaty faces, covered in grime, grinned in reaction and relief. One man even called to Rutledge to ask if he’d ever worked with a fire brigade before. Then Rutledge remembered that the house wasn’t Hensley’s, only let from the greengrocer. The willing hands had come to help one of their own.
Still, he thanked them, walking among them and talking with each man.
Ted Baylor was there, saying, gruffly, “It’s the least I could do,” as if his presence was repayment for the safe return of his cow.
The air was still heavy with smoke, and the house would have to air before he could sleep in it that night.
Looking up once, toward the house across the way, he could see Mrs. Ellison standing back from the window but watching what was going on.
“You aren’t the only one to watch from windows,” she’d said. But had she had anything to do with the fire?
He left the men to their tea and went across to knock at her door.
To his surprise she came to answer it.
“Did you see who went in, before the fire was discovered?” And then he added, “It’s not my house, or Hensley’s. It belongs to Freebold.”
“Why should I help you?”
“Because you’re a Harkness, and must set a good example.”
Her eyes were cold as glass. “You have enemies,” she said. “And I wish them well!”
With that she closed the door in his face.
Mrs. Channing had come down from The Oaks and was helping Dr. Middleton bandage hands and offer a soothing cream for singed faces. When she’d finished, she came to stand by Rutledge, out of reach of the lingering wisps of smoke still coming from the house.
“Was it an accident—set on purpose?” she asked in a low voice.
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t have done much harm, unless I’d been in bed and asleep.”
It was then he remembered the figure in his room in the middle of the night.
How could a village this size turn a blind eye to a stranger coming and going, without gossip flying?
He looked at the men still standing about, talking. The excitement had died, and ordinary conversations had sprung up among them.
They wore heavy corduroy trousers, sturdy boots, a tweed jacket or one of heavy canvas, and hats that they pulled down over their faces to fight the harsh wind blowing across the fields.
Turn their backs, he thought, and they were more or less indistinguishable, save for variations in height and breadth from man to man.
As a rule, people here weren’t likely to stand at their small windows with nothing to do but watch the passing scene. On the other hand, the inspector from London glimpsed knocking at a neighbor’s door would command a second glance. The familiar sight of a stockman striding past, hunched against the cold, would not. He could come and go at will, without attracting attention.
Even Harry Ellison had kept a set of work clothes by the outside cellar door.
It was similar to ex-soldiers in the cities, all of them so much alike, so many of them out of work or trying to fit into a world that had changed while they were away, that people looked away from them. Invisible.
“A dead soldier…”
He’d seen them in Kent and again in Hertford, and never given them a thought. But here, it would have been different. Disguise meant to fit in, and not stand out.
It explained why his tormentor was never seen, hi
s appearances were never marked. He was invisible because he was not out of the ordinary.
When people had finally gone about their business, Rutledge went inside and spent an hour wiping up the wet floor where the scorched remnants of carpet had been cleared away to the dustbin. Then he finished cutting out the worst of the charred horsehair in the side of the wing chair. It helped, a little, to disperse the heavy odor of fire.
Hamish noted, “A fine way to cover up the smell of death.”
Rutledge wondered if Mrs. Ellison had thought of that.
Afterward he walked to the rectory and found Towson sitting at his study desk, trying to write with his left hand and very frustrated.
“Pshaw!” he said as Rutledge tapped lightly at the open door. “I shall have to deliver my sermons from memory. This scrawl is hardly legible.”
“No one will mind. You should have half a hundred committed to memory by now.”
Towson grinned as he set his pen in the dish. “One of the great things about age is that what happened twenty years ago is more easily recalled than what happened twenty days ago.” His grin faded. “You smell strongly of smoke. Has there been another fire? Has someone been injured?”
“There was a small blaze at Constable Hensley’s house. A spark from the fire fell on the carpet. No harm done, except to the carpet.”
“Poor man, he’s suffered enough. I shouldn’t like to think of him coming home to more adversity. What can we do? I’m sure we can manage to find him a new carpet somehow.”
“He’s developed a fever. The hospital staff is worried about infection.”
Towson clucked his tongue. “I ought to go to Northampton and spend some time with him. Do you think you could see your way to driving me there?”
“I think Mrs. Channing might be happy to drive you.” Rutledge paused. “What do you remember about the day you fell down the stairs?”
“It’s still a trifle hazy, I’m afraid. Bits and pieces are coming back to me. There was something about money—I was happy about it. But I can’t think what it was!”
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