by Charles Todd
He lay there, white as his shirt, groaning in pain. Middleton sent the men about their business, with instructions to put the table back together before they left, and drew a chair up to the bedside.
After a moment he said to Rutledge, "That arm's fractured. Now I can feel the bones scraping together. But it isn't compound, and I can brace it. That knot on his head"—he parted the white hair to point out a large lump—"may mean he's concussed, worst luck. I'll have to ask someone to sit with him. And I'm still worried about that hip. It will keep him in bed for a bit. Why it didn't break is a mystery. Unless that arm took the brunt of his fall."
"Very likely," Rutledge agreed.
Hamish was busy asking who would want to kill the rector and supplying his own answers to the question. Rutledge ignored him until a word caught his attention.
"The attic windows. Ye ken, they look out toward yon wood."
"Can you spare me a moment?" Rutledge asked. "I'd like to have a look at those stairs again."
"First help me get him out of those trousers, while we can. It will take the two of us."
They removed the rector's black shoes and stockings, and then gently persuaded his trousers to peel away without lifting his body more than was necessary.
Middleton got him under the blankets, wrapped him well against shock, and then began to unbutton Towson's shirt.
Rutledge was surprised at how light the man was. Towson had seemed very vibrant and active, despite his rheumatism.
"Aye, and the fall should ha' kilt him," Hamish reminded Rutledge again.
Free at length to go back to the stairs, Rutledge examined them. The edges of the risers were worn, and the steps were steep, narrow, and not well lighted. It would be easy for a man to come down too quickly and fall.
He went on to the top of the steps and saw that the attic was fairly empty, some luggage, a trunk, and a few oddments of furniture hardly filling the vast space. Two rooms had been built in here for servants, one to the east and one to the west. They had windows, as did the central room. Rutledge pushed aside the iron bedsteads under the casements and stood there, looking out.
To the west he could see the long sweep of pasture, the line of the stream, and in the far, far distance, the tower of another church, barely visible.
"The next village," Hamish pointed out.
The east window looked out on the barns at the Baylor farm. He could see them clearly, and the kitchen door, the windows on this side of the house, and the chimney.
But from the central room the windows, a pair of them, looked out toward Frith's Wood. Only the treetops were visible, and the bend of the main road as it turned toward Letherington. And he could see the fields beyond the wood, rolling down to it.
If there was movement in the wood—a man in a dark coat, for instance—he thought perhaps he could follow it to some extent. It would have to be tested, to be sure, but it was certainly a possibility.
Hamish made the connection nearly as quickly as he had.
"If yon wood is sae clearly visible from here, I expect it can be seen from the house next door. Did you see that yon upper floor is a bit higher still?"
Rutledge went back to the east servant's room and looked again. Hamish had been right. The Baylor house, while not precisely turned toward the wood, must have windows that looked out on it, just as the rectory did.
It was an interesting point. But whether it would prove useful was another matter.
The question now was who had come to the stairs and called to the rector?
Rutledge sat with Towson for another hour, spelling Dr. Middleton, who had gone to his surgery for splints.
The rector did wake up for a brief period, amazed to find himself in his bed and hurting all through his body, as he put it.
Rutledge said, "Don't you recall falling down the attic stairs?"
Towson frowned. "Was I in the attic? I seldom go there."
"Today you were. And someone called to you, telling you that you were needed directly."
Towson lifted his good hand to his forehead, as if to find the memory there somewhere, within reach.
But whatever he had told Middleton in the first few moments after the doctor had arrived, he had no recollection of it now.
17
After Dr. Middleton had found someone to sit with Towson—Grace Letteridge, as it happened—Rutledge was free to return to Hensley's house, and he walked into the parlor office feeling depressed.
Hamish said, "You ken, it's likely he'll remember when he's slept."
But Dr. Middleton had not been very sanguine.
"Well, who knows? It was a shock, that fall, and he lay there afterward, unable to call for help. It would have been trying for a younger man."
"Still, he told you when you got there what had happened."
"Yes, well, I was salvation arriving on a white steed. Hillary is a sweet girl, but she's not reliable in an emergency. I was, and he must have held on, hoping for someone sensible enough to talk to. Then he could let it go." Middleton had offered Rutledge a sherry, dug out of Towson's private store in the study, before he left the rectory. "God knows I need it, and you might as well have the benefit of it too."
Rutledge didn't argue. And it was good sherry, at that. "Why should someone call to him, tell him to make haste—and then walk away when he fell? It makes no sense," Middleton asked, sitting down in the best chair and stretching his feet out before him. "Unless of course he'd had some sort of seizure and only imagined he'd been called. That's possible too, you know."
But Rutledge, striding up Church Street, couldn't afford to ignore the alternatives. No policeman would.
Rutledge, taking the chair behind Hensley's desk, found himself thinking aloud out of long habit. "Two incidents of this magnitude in one village in a matter of a single week. The question is, Are they connected? Or only a coincidence?"
Hamish said, "Mysel', I'd ask why sae close together." And that was a point to be considered. Why had this quiet little village suddenly erupted into violence?
Unless Hensley had found something in that bloody wood. But if he had, he'd held his tongue even in hospital. Why? Had it been self-incriminating? That was possible.
But even if the rector had fallen through his own carelessness, Hensley hadn't shot that arrow into his own back. Which still brought in a third party into the picture.
If Keating had come to the house in his absence, Rutledge found no sign of it. He debated going back to the inn, but it would be a wild-goose chase. Keating was no Josh Morgan, of The Three Horses, glad to stand and gossip with his custom. Short of searching the building, there would be no way of flushing him out if he didn't want to be found.
Had Keating played any role in what was happening in Dudlington? He appeared to hold himself aloof from the other inhabitants, except for Hillary Timmons's services as a barmaid and cleaning woman. And there he'd chosen well—Miss Timmons was a mouse terrified of lions, and he could probably count on her to keep her mouth shut.
What were the man's secrets? Most people had one or two.
Hamish said, "Aye, and you've kept yours. But would ye keep it here, where there's no' sae much else to do but gossip?"
There had been a few times dealing with perceptive people when he'd feared his would slip out. They had stood on the brink of discovery, and yet he'd managed somehow to forestall them. Set apart from the village as he was, the owner of The Oaks just might succeed as well.
Hamish warned, "You mustna' have anything to do with yon woman in London. She worked wi' casualties in France. She'd ha' seen and heard more than most."
And Mrs. Channing had remembered him very clearly.
He couldn't picture her hiding in hedgerows to shoot at him.
"It needna' be her, but someone she put up to it," Hamish reminded him.
Circle upon circles.
As for Keating, it would probably prove to be more useful to confront him while he was working in the pub, with his patrons looking on. He woul
dn't find it as easy to walk away then.
For the present—for the present, it might be useful to speak to Hensley again. He ought to be out of the woods, and therefore awake for longer periods.
Traffic was heavier than he'd expected on the road south to Northampton, and Rutledge found himself walking into the hospital just as dinner was being served. He thought of his own on the sideboard at Mrs. Melford's.
He was once more cornered by the plump sister, who disapproved of interrupting a patient's meal, and he said, "Shall I have Chief Inspector Kelmore to speak to Matron?"
It was a threat that worked. He went down the line of beds, some of them empty now, others filled with what appeared to be new cases. Hensley was sitting awkwardly propped against half a dozen pillows, and he was trying to feed himself with his left hand. From the state of the towel under his chin, it wasn't going well.
He looked up at Rutledge, a sour expression passing across his face. It had more color now, but there were still lines of pain around his mouth.
"What is it now? Sir?" he asked.
Rutledge took the man's knife and fork and cut up his meat into manageable bits, then drew up a chair.
"There are more questions than answers in Dudlington. Inspector Cain can't help me, and the man you replaced, Constable Markham, has retired to Sussex. It's your turn."
"What questions?" Hensley asked warily, trying to appear unconcerned and failing.
Rutledge found himself thinking that a man in bed, with his dinner down his front, has no dignity. He said, "Mr. Towson, the rector, fell down his attic stairs today. Someone had come to the door and called to him to come at once—and then went away. He couldn't have missed the sound of Towson tumbling down the steps or crying out in pain. Yet he went away."
"Towson's dead?" Hensley demanded, appalled. His fork had stopped halfway to his lips. "Good God!"
Rutledge left it. Instead he said, "I think it's time you told me what took you to Frith's Wood, the day you were shot."
"As God's my witness, I didn't go there. I was on the road on my way to Letherington, and that's the last I remember." The words had become rote now.
"That you were on the road is true enough—I've found your bicycle where you left it, behind the pasture wall."
"I didn't leave it anywhere. Whoever shot me and dragged me to the wood, he put it there."
"Hensley. You were lucky to live. Towson was lucky to survive his fall. How many more people are going to be hurt, so that you can deny being in Frith's Wood? I looked for myself. From the attic windows at the rectory, there's the best view of the wood, short of climbing the church steeple."
"Towson survived?" Hensley was quick, his mind already leaping ahead. "Why are you here, then? Why not ask him who it was called to him on the steps?"
"If you weren't tied to this bed," Rutledge retorted shortly, "I'd have suspected you."
"Me?"
"Only someone in that attic could have seen you walk of your own accord into that blasted wood."
Hensley stared at him, a stubborn set to his chin. "Well, they'd be lying. I never went there."
Changing direction, Rutledge asked, "Tell me about the fire at Barstow's offices in the City."
Hensley nearly choked on his tea.
"What's that in aid of? You can ask Old Bowels, I had nothing to do with Barstow."
"There's someone who tells a different story. That you looked the other way the night of the fire."
"Then they'd be a liar!" He swore, nearly upsetting his tray. "Sister!" he shouted.
But she was busy at the other end of the ward and didn't turn.
"Tell me what became of Emma Mason. And why you watched her with your field glasses while she was in her bedroom."
His fingers kneaded the piece of bread in his hand. "You can't prove it," Hensley told him belligerently.
"She was what, seventeen, at the time."
"She was no innocent lily, I can tell you that," Hensley snapped, glaring at Rutledge now. "Half the village thinks her a saint. The others won't open their mouths because Mrs. Ellison rules the roost. But just ask Constable Markham, he'll tell you he saw our pure Miss Emma rolling in the grass behind the church with Miss Letteridge's fiancé. And she wasn't seventeen then."
It was Rutledge's turn to stare at Hensley.
Hamish said, "He's telling the truth."
It was all too apparent that Hamish was right. Hensley's eyes were blazing with fury, and there was no uneasy prevarication in the words he'd spat at the man from London. "It does you no good to blacken her character."
"Blacken it? Hardly that. Reveal it, more like."
"Was she promiscuous?"
"She wasn't having any of me or anyone else. But there was no doubt that Constable Markham was right. It explained why Miss Letteridge left for London, just afterward."
"And the man? Who is he?"
"That's not your business. Besides, he's buried in the churchyard. That's why Miss Letteridge came back."
On their way out of Northampton on the road north, Hamish said, "I willna' believe she murdered the girl." Rutledge, avoiding a milk wagon and gearing up to pass a lorry, said, "Grace Letteridge? At least it gives her a motive."
"Then why did she no' rid herself of the girl before leaving for London?"
Hamish was right, he thought. Jealousy was a hot-blooded crime, impetuous and filled with anger.
"Her hands may have been tied then. She might have been afraid to touch Emma, for fear the man would guess she'd been responsible, and reject her a second time. But when he was killed, she was free to come home and balance the scales. Anger and blame are a part of grieving." Hamish wasn't convinced. "Ye ken, she could ha' traveled to London to make it right wi' him before he went to France."
And she'd gone as soon as her father died. Her father might not have approved of her following any man on such a slim hope.
But then there would have been no need to kill Emma.
Unless of course Grace Letteridge had waited in London until the man got leave, only to discover he was marking time until Emma was of age and free to marry where she pleased. It would have been an appalling blow, especially if he'd died soon after their meeting, leaving her with an empty future.
If either case was true, then Grace Letteridge, for all her dramatic pronouncement, had no reason for taking a bow and arrow to shoot Hensley. She knew the truth.
"Or was covering up her own crime," Rutledge said aloud as the busy city road became industrial and then open countryside. "Especially if he was pressing too hard on her heels by searching the wood. Why wouldn't he admit to that?"
He knew, better than most, how jealousy could eat at the soul. He'd seen it in more than one murder inquiry, and he'd felt it himself when Jean walked away from him to marry a diplomat on his way to take up a station in Canada. She had vanished from his life as surely as if she'd evaporated into thin air.
"She wouldna' stoop to murder," Hamish said again in defense of Grace Letteridge. "She'd ha' walked away and no' looked back."
And Hensley appeared to have had problems of his own with jealousy of Emma Mason's alleged attentions to another man.
Rutledge stopped at The Oaks as he came to the fork that led to Dudlington. The inn was dark, and there were no motorcars in front of it. He went to the door, intending to knock, and then thought better of it.
Keating could look out any window to see who was at his door. And when he recognized Rutledge standing there, he wouldn't bother to come down.
Rutledge wasn't about to give him that satisfaction.
He didn't sleep well that night, and by the time the clock had struck two from the church tower, he got up and went to the window.
Dudlington lay quiet in a shower of moonlight that touched the cold roofs with silvered shadow. The streets were empty, and the houses were dark.
But even as he watched, a light appeared in Emma Mason's bedchamber, and he reached without thinking for the field glasses.
T
he room seemed to bloom before his eyes, and he could see someone's shadow cast by lamplight against the far wall. It was hard to tell who had walked into the room. The lamp was nearer the door than the windows, and only the shadow was visible from where Rutledge stood.
"The grandmother," Hamish said.
"She doesn't hear well. It could be anyone slipping into the house after finding the door unlocked."
The lamp burned for a quarter of an hour, and then went out. Rutledge was on the stairs in almost the same instant, going down them fast on his way to Hensley's office. There he had a clear view of anyone who might come out the Ellison door. But though he watched for nearly ten minutes, the door remained tight shut.
Hamish said quietly, "There's the kitchen door."
"I'm not going to be caught by the neighbors prowling in a woman's back garden at this hour. And if he slipped out through the rear of the house, he's had a long head start." He waited another ten, and then quietly went out Hensley's front door and crossed the street.
Turning the knob as silently as possible, he gave the door a little push.
It opened easily into the dark and empty hall.
Early the next morning, he crossed the street and tapped lightly on Mrs. Ellison's door, then knocked more firmly.
She came to answer it after several minutes. Dressed, her hair neatly brushed and in place.
"I thought I'd heard someone." She was abrupt, unwelcoming.
"I'm sorry to disturb you," he said, ignoring her coldness. "I saw a light in your house when I came in last night.
"I felt I ought to see for myself that all was well."
"Thank you." She was about to shut her door in his face.
"You do know that the rector fell yesterday."
Her eyebrows went up. "No. I hadn't heard."
"He was fortunate. He broke his arm," he told her, watching her face. "It could just as well have been his back."
"Indeed."
Her refusal to be dependent on anyone or anything was evident.