by Charles Todd
Hamish growled, “Yon Inspector wouldna’ care whether it was Walsh or this woman he hanged. Ye ken, it doesna’ matter as long as it isna’ someone from Osterley.”
Drifting into sleep, Rutledge heard himself answer. “Virginia Sedgwick wasn’t from Osterley, either. . . .”
CHAPTER 19
RUTLEDGE AWOKE FROM A DEEP SLEEP to the sound of thunder. The guns, he thought, as he tried to shake off the dullness that weighed so heavily on his body, like a mattress, muffling and distorting the noise. They’ve started firing again—
He could hear one of the Sergeants calling his name, and cleared his throat to answer, but couldn’t.
And then sleep fell away and he realized there was a pounding on his door, and the voice calling him wasn’t one he knew.
Rising swiftly, he went to open the door and found a young constable standing there, blood on his cheek and shoulder, his face white. Rutledge struggled to recall his name. Franklin—
“Inspector Blevins asks, sir, if you’ll come straightaway.”
Rutledge opened the door wider. “Yes, all right. Tell me what’s happened.” He crossed to the chair by the window and began to dress, adding a sweater under his coat.
The constable was saying, “All hell’s broke loose, sir!” His voice was still high-pitched from shock, but steady enough. “That man Walsh has escaped—he struck me over the head and was gone before I could do anything. When I got my senses back, I ran to wake up Inspector Blevins, and on the way back to the station, we saw Mr. Sims, coming from the vicarage. There was someone trying to break into the house. It had to be Walsh, sir!”
Rutledge found his shoes and stockings, pulling them on hastily, then ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “All right, let’s be on our way.”
Hamish was saying, “I canna’ believe he’d run. It’s sure proof against him!”
May Trent, in a dressing gown, her hair in a dark plait over one shoulder, was at her door as he strode into the passage. The words found their way into the jumble of thoughts in his mind: She’s damned attractive—
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is there something amiss?”
The constable started to answer her, but Rutledge said, “No, it’s a problem at the station. I’ve been sent for. Go back to sleep, there’s nothing to worry about.”
There was doubt in her face, but she nodded and went back into her room, shutting the door. As he turned toward the stairs, he heard the click! of the lock behind him. Just as well, he told himself. But Walsh had no reason to come here. . . .
They let themselves out quietly, and Mrs. Barnett, in dressing gown and slippers, shut and locked the door behind them.
As the two men walked fast up Water Street to the station, Rutledge said, “You were on duty, then?”
“Yes. Walsh was asleep when I checked at midnight, snoring like the wrath of God. He always does—you can hardly hear yourself think!”
“And?”
“Close on to two o’clock, I heard him making an odd sound. As if he was choking. I went back to the cell, wary because Inspector Blevins had warned me he might try something. But there he was, hanging from the top bars, choking his life out, kicking like a mad horse. I opened the door, to get him down from there, but he was tangled in a shirt, and I had to struggle to make any headway. Then his fist came down on my face as I managed to lower him, and I hit the back of my head on the door. That’s all I can tell you.”
“And he made a run for it. All right, what else?”
“For the life of me I don’t understand why he didn’t kill me! He could have done, easily enough, and there’d be nobody to raise the alarm. As it was, it took me all of a minute to shake off the blow, I was that dazed, and half sick. But I got to my feet and went after him, running out of the station and looking in both directions. I couldn’t think he would go to the quay; there’s nowhere to escape there. I went up Water Street and looked up and down the main road. I couldn’t see anything, or hear anything. I went on to Inspector Blevins’s house. It took him nearly five minutes to come down and open the door, and then he was accusing me of rousing the children with my clamor!”
Excitement had loosened the young constable’s tongue, and he was finding it hard to conceal his reaction to Blevins’s rebuke when he’d been trying to carry out his duty. Stumbling on the cobbles, he caught Rutledge’s arm to steady himself.
“You should see the doctor,” Rutledge told him as they walked through the open door of the station. All the lights were lit, and another constable was waiting for the two men.
“You’re to stay here, Harry, and wait,” he said to Franklin. “If you’ll come with me, sir, I’m to take you to the vicarage.”
“Give me two minutes,” Rutledge said, and he walked back to the cell. Looking in, he could see that by standing on his toes, Walsh could have reached high above his own head to an exposed pipe coming out of one wall and crossing to the other side, wrapping his twisted shirt around it like a rope, and giving every appearance of a man hanging there.
After all, as Hamish was pointing out, the man was used to entertaining crowds. He would have put on a good show.
Long enough, at least, to lure the gullible young constable into the room.
Hamish said, “Blevins will have his hide!”
Rutledge silently agreed. He turned on his heel and followed the second constable—Taylor, was that his name?— out to the street.
By the time they had reached the vicarage, they could already see that all the lights had been turned on, giving it a strangely festive air, as if Sims was about to hold a party there.
The front door stood wide, and Rutledge could hear the station Sergeant moving about in the bushes near it, his torch flicking first this way and that. They found Sims and Blevins sitting in the study, like two wary bulldogs distrustful of each other.
Blevins said, “What took you so long?” His voice was querulous, tired.
Sims seemed to be happier to see Rutledge. He nodded, and then looked over his shoulder out the black window, as if he could probe the darkness in the tree-shadowed garden.
“I stopped by the station. To see how Walsh had played his trick. Quite clever.”
“Clever, hell. A child of six could have seen through it!” Blevins swore. “No, that’s not fair to Franklin. What matters, when you come down to it, is that the man’s got away.”
“There was a prowler here?” Rutledge asked the Vicar.
“I thought there was,” Sims said uneasily. “I awoke with a start to hear something downstairs. A banging. I thought it was a summons to a deathbed. I found my slippers and came down as quickly as I could. But there was no one at the door. I called out, to see if whoever it was had given up and was walking away. And I could have sworn I heard laughter—distant laughter!” He shivered involuntarily. “I stepped into the sitting room and picked up a poker by the hearth there, and went out to see if rowdy youngsters were having fun at my expense. But there was nothing. No one.” His voice changed on the last words, as if still unsure that there had been no one on the grounds. “I decided to fetch Blevins, here, to see if there was anything amiss in the church. It’s too large and dark to search on my own.”
Hamish said, “It wasna’ youngsters he feared—”
Rutledge said, “Do you often have problems with vandalism?”
“We’re more likely to find boys scaring themselves to death in the churchyard, daring each other to raise spirits. But before I could reach Blevins’s house, I ran into him on the road.”
Rutledge turned to the Inspector. “Do you think it was Walsh? Here at the vicarage?”
“I don’t know. He might have thought he could find something to sell, to get himself out of Norfolk as fast as possible. It appeared that one of the shed doors has been opened. He could have looked there for tools to strike off his chains.”
“That’s far more likely,” Rutledge agreed. “Did you search the church?”
“Not yet. Do you have an
other torch, Vicar?”
“Yes—there’s one in the kitchen.” He went to fetch it.
“Brave man,” Rutledge commented, “to tackle these grounds alone, and in the middle of the night!”
“He was terrified for his life, if you ask me,” Blevins said sourly. “I would have been, the surviving clergyman in the village.”
“Sims hadn’t been told about the escape. And Walsh would have no reason to kill Sims.”
“So you say. Who knows what he’s capable of?”
Sims returned with the torch, and Rutledge followed Blevins out of the vicarage, down the drive, and up the hill to the church. They walked in silence, their path just visible in the light of the half moon, but it was sinking fast.
The churchyard was empty, the white stones ghostly in the pale light, their shapes stark against the dark shadows of hummocky grass.
“If there was anyone here, he’s gone now,” Blevins said softly.
They walked on toward the north porch door. It screeched like the imps of hell as Blevins pushed it open, and he swore from the start it gave him.
Hamish said, “At least yon Strong Man canna’ slip away fra’ ye!”
“Walsh? Are you here?” the Inspector called. “The church is surrounded, man, you haven’t a chance of getting out of here! Might as well surrender now, and save yourself a rough time of it if you try to run!”
Blevins’s voice echoed in the stillness, bouncing from the rafters and around the stone walls, giving it a strangely unnatural sound.
There was no answer.
“Walsh? You didn’t hurt the constable. You can go back quietly to the station, and nothing will happen to you. Do you hear me? But if we have to winkle you out of this church, and you do any damage here, I’ll have your hide for garters. Big as you are, I’m not afraid of you!”
Nothing but his own words came back at him.
The moonlight seeping through the stained glass of the windows cast awkward patterns around the pews, gray here, black there, and the shape of a poppyhead outlined against a pane.
Rutledge thought, He’ll be impossible to find before daylight, if he’s here.
Blevins turned on the torch, blinding them and spoiling their night vision. Flashing it around the stone floor, across the backs of the pews, toward the choir screen in sweeps that raked the great nave with crossbars of light, he covered as much of the darkness as possible.
Rutledge said, “He has the advantage now. We’ll have to guard the doors until morning.”
“No, I intend to finish this now. You go toward the tower. I’ll move toward the choir.” He turned among the pews, his heels scraping on the stone flags. A man determined to get what he wanted.
Rutledge went on toward the tower, letting his eyes readjust to the darkness, using the great window there as his mark. Hamish, whose hearing had always been keen on night watches, said, “There isna’ anyone here—”
Blevins blundered into something. He grunted heavily and then called, “I’m all right.”
Rutledge made his way along one wall, reached the tower, and started into the opening.
His foot caught something on the floor, and the rattle of chain startled him. Leaping back out of reach, he knelt and began to sweep the floor with his hands. Nothing. Neither flesh nor cold iron. He moved six inches forward and repeated his sweep.
His fingers touched iron this time, and fumbled across thick links of chain.
“Blevins,” he called, not raising his voice. “I’ve found something. Bring your torch.”
Blevins turned and came toward Rutledge, the silvery light shining on his face.
“Down here, man!” Rutledge snarled. “Not into my eyes!”
The torch reached Rutledge’s knees and moved ahead.
On the stone floor lay a chisel, a great hammer, and the chains that had been around Walsh’s wrists and ankles.
But there was no sign of Blevins’s prisoner.
CHAPTER 20
RUTLEDGE DROVE EAST ON THE MAIN road out of Osterley, a ruddy-faced, yawning farmer beside him in the motorcar.
In the rear seat, Hamish stirred uneasily, and Rutledge felt every shift and movement as if it were real.
Blevins had acted swiftly, sending constables and any able-bodied man they could rouse to knock on doors, recruiting more men as the search for the Strong Man widened.
One party went out into the marshes to look for missing boats. The greengrocer and the barman at The Pelican accompanied Dr. Stephenson in his motorcar driving out on the western road toward Wells Next The Sea and Hunstanton.
Six men set out on the road toward East Sherham, while others fanned out through Osterley, looking behind fences, opening the doors of sheds, waking householders to ask if they’d heard anything, seen anyone. Bobbing lanterns marked their progress through the darkness like a great Chinese dragon, and wives watched from windows, shushing children who were unsettled by the night’s noises.
The road east toward Cley was the least likely direction to search, but it had to be covered. There was nothing here but the North Sea and a dead end—a man on the run would quickly find himself in a box, with nowhere to turn but south. Still, several roads that led down toward Norwich branched off from the Cley Road, and these were Rutledge’s goals.
The farmer, a man of few words, roused himself to remark, “ ’Course he might be clever enough to come this way, on purpose to throw the hunt off.”
Driving slowly, his headlamps scouring the road ahead while the farmer watched the verges, Rutledge could feel nothing—no sense of a fugitive hiding in the edges of the marsh or ducking behind trees and garden gates. He’d mastered that instinct during the War, where German snipers were skilled at picking off the unwary, and machine gunners hidden in cleverly disguised trenches and shell holes and uprooted trees waited for the onslaught of troops, holding fire until the unsuspecting were well within range. Hamish, behind him, seemed to keep watch as well, softly noting a high growth of shrub or a clump of wind-twisted trees that provided a likely covert for the human fox they were hunting.
The one factor on their side, Rutledge found himself thinking, was that Walsh was too big to hide himself in smaller and harder-to-see coverts. But in the dark, out in the marshes with their sluices and dikes, shadows could play deadly tricks. . . .
The farmer cleared his throat. “Ain’t likely, is it, that we’re going to find him in the dark? It’ud take an army searching in daylight—”
He broke off as a dog turned out of a field and trotted down the road, caught brilliantly in the headlamps. “That’s old Tom Randal’s dog—blessed beast got out again. I never saw such a one for wandering off every chance that comes. You’d think he’d be grateful for a good home!”
They were nearly past the dog when the farmer sat up and added, “On second thoughts, mayhap we should look in on Randal. Can you turn this thing around?”
Rutledge saw a drive ahead next to a high wall. He reversed into it and went back down the dark, empty road, the way he’d come. The dog had already disappeared into a patch of thick reeds and grasses.
“Just there!” the farmer finally said, pointing to a turning. A small cottage was set back from the road on the inland side, half lost among trees and a wild tangle of shrubbery. “Not much now, but once it was a pretty enough place. My wife treasured the plant cuttings Mrs. Randal offered her. She’s gone now, Mrs. Randal, some six or seven years back. Tom’s let her gardens run to seed.”
Rutledge drew up in the rutted, overgrown drive. The house was dark, hunching in on itself, vines running up the porch and struggling to hide the windows on the first floor.
Hamish said, “If ye believed in witches—”
Rutledge smothered a chuckle. The house needed only a cauldron smoking in the yard.
They walked to the door and with his fist the farmer pounded on the panels as hard as he could. “Deaf as a post,” he explained. “When he wants to be. My wife always claimed he’d rather be left alone.”
After a time, someone threw up the sash of the window just above the porch. It squealed with a shriek like a night bird’s. As Rutledge winced, a gray head appeared in the opening and called down, “Who’s there?”
“It’s Sam Hadley, Tom. We need to talk to you. Come down to the door.”
“It’s past midnight,” Randal growled. “Go home to bed!”
Rutledge called, “It’s a police matter, Mr. Randal. Please come down.”
“Police?” There was a pause and then mumbled curses. The window went down with a bang, and after a long wait, the door opened.
The tall, thin man in a heavy robe tied at the waist like a sack peered out at them. He turned to Hadley and said, “That’s not Blevins!” It was accusing, as if he’d been lied to. “Nor one of his constables!”
“Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard in London, Mr. Randal. A man suspected of murder escaped from custody tonight in Osterley, a man named Walsh. We’re searching for him.”
Randal watched his lips closely as he spoke, then looked up at his eyes. “Walsh. That the one killed the priest?”
“He could be dangerous. He’s larger than most, with wide shoulders and noticeable strength.” He went on to describe the fugitive. This time, as Randal listened, he forgot to watch Rutledge’s lips.
“Nobody’s been here. I’d have known—”
“That yellow dog of yours is out in the fields,” Hadley said. “I saw him myself. We thought we ought to come and find out if you’re all right.” He had pitched his voice between a shout and a yell.
“Dog’s out, you say?” Randal frowned. “I penned him up before I went to bed! We’d better have a look at the outbuildings, then. Wait here.” He closed the door, and came back shortly with heavy shoes on his feet and a heavy staff in his hands, solid oak and thick enough to kill a man. “That a torch you have, Hadley?”
Hadley flicked it on and they made their way toward the back of the house, where a barn and several sheds showed signs of age, but were in better condition than the front garden. Randal, Rutledge thought, had his priorities right.