by Charles Todd
“It makes sense,” Blevins said, nodding.
“And when he lifted the off hind, the horse didn’t care for it, backed away, and when Walsh bent to try again, kicked him in the head with the shod hoof.”
“How do you read that?”
“The grass is trampled a bit, just below where he fell, sir. See, it’s bruised and the ground is torn in one place. As if he might have been trying to make the horse stand still for him. Everywhere else you look, there’s no sign of that.”
Blevins went over to look at the grass. “Are you certain the doctor didn’t do this? Or you, even.”
Tanner’s face was earnest. “No, sir, the doctor came in from the head. He said it was a heavy blow, caught Walsh just right, crushing the bone at the temple and killing him outright. An inch lower, and he’d have had a cracked jaw but lived to tell about it. An inch higher, and he’d have suffered a severe concussion.” He was clearly quoting the doctor. “The wound itself supports the possibility of it being the shoe.” He half turned, looking around them. “There’s really no other clear explanation.”
“Yes. I suppose that’s true.” Blevins’s voice was flat. He wasn’t interested in how Walsh had died. He felt cheated and was already trying to come to terms with that.
“The doctor says when he has the man in his surgery, he’ll be able to tell if there’re any grass bits in the wound, but he’d be surprised if his first opinion changes,” Tanner finished diffidently. He had grown used to the corpse, guarding it. But the Inspector from Osterley seemed to be dazed, like a grieving relative.
Blevins got heavily to his feet, as if he’d aged ten years in the last ten hours. Looking around him at the empty hillsides and the long twist of the lane below, smoke rising from the farmhouse where a man in boots was hitching two horses to a long cart, he was silent.
“I hadn’t counted on it ending like this,” he said.
“There’s no other way it could have happened,” Tanner answered, as if Blevins had challenged his account. “If the horse wasn’t his, it might have taken exception to Walsh’s handling. Especially if he was angry about the shoe, and rough.”
Rutledge walked back to the body.
It made sense. He sat on his heels and studied Walsh’s face. The expression was one of faint surprise, as if he had died even as he saw the blow coming. But was the shape of the wound right?
Hamish said, “It’s deep. The rim of the shoe must ha’ caught him. I canna’ think what else would have struck such a blow. But it’s tae bluidy to be sure.”
“She’d have lashed out blindly, and put some force behind it. Catching him before he could leap away.” Behind him, he could hear Tanner and Blevins talking quietly. “He isn’t the first or the last to die this way. And he was close to giving us the slip. Still—if he’d stayed on this route, with luck I’d have crossed his path somewhere near East Sherham.”
Hamish said, “Ye ken, horses pulled Walsh’s cart. He’d have known how to handle the mare. He saddled her and got her out of the barn without fuss.”
Below the hill, the farmer was bringing the cart through the gate, to fetch the body.
Rutledge put out his hand and roughly measured the wound without touching it. As the sun’s light began to brighten the clouds, he could see a blade of grass in the bloody edge. The doctor was here—what, a good half an hour earlier? While it was still dark enough to make such small details nearly invisible. . . .
He got to his feet as Blevins came to stand once more at Walsh’s head.
“I’ve let him down. Father James,” the Inspector said with a heavy sigh. “I swore I’d find out who killed him. And I did! This was an easy way for the bastard to die!”
Rutledge’s motorcar arrived, pulling up at the gate just as the farm cart reached the trees. Blevins went to meet the farmer, calling, “Leave the cart there. Better to carry him across to it than to muck up the ground.”
“I’ll just lower the tail, then.” The farmer, red-faced from years in the wind, took out a handkerchief and wiped his glasses. “Doctor says he was kicked by a horse. The dead man. Not one of mine. They never left their stalls last night.”
“No. Not yours.” Blevins answered curtly.
The other constable was climbing toward them now, the smooth movements of a countryman in his stride.
With the farmer holding the horses’ heads to steady the cart, the four men lifted Walsh, grunting under his weight. The body shifted awkwardly in their grip, mocking them in death as it had in life. They tried to move in step over the uneven ground, until one of the constables slipped, barely regaining his balance in time to prevent pulling the others down with him. It was as if Walsh were still struggling to stay free, fighting their efforts, and they were breathing hard by the time they got him to the wagon.
Heaving the corpse into its bed, they misjudged the weight again, and the head brushed along the wooden bottom, leaving a smear of drying blood.
Blevins swore. “You’ll do the doctor’s work for him, if you damage that wound!”
Then they stood back, as if by unspoken command, and stared mutely at Walsh. It was an unexpected ending to the night, the adrenaline that had energized them through the long hours of searching beginning to fade and leaving them with an odd sort of feeling—of having lost, not won. Keyed to action, there was nothing to do now but go home.
The dead man’s eyes seemed to gaze at the side of the cart as if distracted by the rough pattern. The horses stirred uneasily, troubled by the smell of blood and sweat and death. One stamped its hoof, and the harness jingled.
Rutledge thought of the corpses he had seen in France, loaded like cords of wood onto wagons, stiff in the cold air that did nothing to stop the heavy odor of maggot-infested wounds and rotting flesh from choking the men handling the dead. There was no honor in death, whatever the poets claimed.
O. A. Manning, the poet who had never seen the Western Front, had said it best: “The bodies lie like lumber, / Obscene, without grace, / Like a house uninhabited and not yet ready / For ghosts . . .”
As the sun reached over the hill behind them, Rutledge could see the wound more clearly now.
It reminded him of something, and he was too weary to bring it to the fore of his mind. Something he’d seen, as a young policeman—
Hamish said, “What? Think, man!”
But it had escaped him. . . . It didn’t matter. And he was too tired to care.
At his elbow, Blevins was saying to Rutledge as the farmer raised the tailgate and turned his horses, “You’ll be wanting to start back for London, I daresay.”
“What? Yes, I suppose so.” Rutledge looked back at the trees, as the cart began its rumbling descent down the hill, the farmer talking to his team as if they were old friends. There was no reason to stay. . . .
“Easy as you go, Nell. There’s no haste, lass—”
Rutledge turned to Blevins and said, “Where’s the mare?”
“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 sus
pect 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 yel
low 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.