by Charles Todd
"He didn't have the same reputation in London?" Rutledge pressed.
"I told you. Not at all. Do you think he'd have been invited to weekends at the best houses if that were the case?"
"Thank you for your help. You can always reach me through Sergeant Gibson at the Yard."
"Yes, yes, of course." He got up and walked with Rutledge to the door. "This is very distressing."
Rutledge paused on the threshold. "Were you invited down to Somerset often?"
"Quarles and his wife seldom entertained after their separation. Over the years, I was probably in that house a dozen times at most, and then only when we had pressing business. I can count on one hand the number of times I dined there."
"Did you know of Mrs. Quarles's relationship with her cousin Charles Archer?"
"Yes, I did. By the time Archer came to live at Hallowfields, Harold and Maybelle were estranged. It made for an uncomfortable weekend there, if you must know. I never understood what the problem was, and Harold never spoke of the situation. One year they were perfectly happy, and the next they were living in different wings of the house. This must have been late 1913, or early 1914. He was angry most of the time, and she was like a block of ice. But I can tell you that after Archer arrived, wounded and in need of care, the house settled into an armed peace, if you can imagine that. I shouldn't be telling you this-it would be the last thing Harold would countenance from me. But he's dead, isn't he? And I shouldn't care for you to think that Mrs. Quarles was in any way involved in this murder."
In spite of his claim that he shouldn't have discussed the issue, there was an almost vindictive relish behind the words, as if Penrith was pleased that Harold's marriage was in trouble. A counterpoint to his own happy one?
Rutledge said, "I shall, of course, need to verify your claim to have been in Scotland."
Penrith seemed taken aback. "My claim? Oh-of course. Routine."
Rutledge thanked him and went out the door, feeling dizzy as he reached the motorcar. But it passed, and he went on to Hurley and Sons, Quarles's solicitors. The street was Georgian brick, and the shingles of solicitors gleamed golden in the morning light as he found a space for his motorcar.
A clerk in the outer office verified that Hurley and Sons had dealt with Mr. Quarles's affairs for many years, and showed Rutledge into the paneled office ofJason Hurley, a white-haired man of sixty. When he realized that his visitor was from Scotland Yard, he immediately suggested that his son Laurence join them. The younger Hurley was indeed his father's son-they shared a prominent chin and heavy, flaring eyebrows that gave them both a permanently startled expression.
Quarles's solicitors were shocked by the news-which Rutledge gave them in full-asking questions about their client's death, showing alarm when Rutledge told them that no one had yet been taken into custody.
"But that's monstrous!" the elder Hurley told him. "I find it hard to believe."
"The inquiry is in its earliest stage," he reminded them. "There's still much to be done. That's why I'm here, to ask who will inherit the bulk of Harold Quarles's estate."
Jason Hurley turned to his son. "Fetch the box for me, will you, Laurence?"
The younger man got up and left the room.
Hurley said, as soon as the door closed, "Was it an affair with a woman, by any chance? Mr. Quarles had many good qualities, but sometimes his-er-passions got the best of him."
"Did they indeed?"
"Occasionally we've been required to mollify the anger of someone who took exception to his pursuit. Mr. Quarles didn't wish his… pecadillos… to come to the ears of his London clientele."
"Who were these women? Where did they live?"
"In Somerset. I sometimes felt that perhaps this wasn't really an unfortunate passion as much as it was a way of striking back at Mrs. Quarles for the separation. You know her circumstances?"
"I've spoken to her," Rutledge answered the solicitor. "She was quite clear about how she felt."
"Yes, well, they had a quarrel the year before the war. I have no idea what it was about, but the result was a decision to live separately after that. Mrs. Quarles undertook the management of her own funds, and except for the house, for their son's benefit, they no longer held any investments in common."
"How did Quarles take the arrival of his wife's cousin soon after their separation?" Rutledge asked, curious now.
"He had very little to say about it. He'd already informed us that we would handle the legal aspects of the separation, and there was really nothing more to add. Certainly, Mr. Archer was on the Continent when the marriage fell apart, for whatever reason. He couldn't be called to account for that, whatever his later relationship with Mrs. Quarles might be."
"Was it before or after Mr. Archer came to live at Hallowfields that Mr. Quarles's-er-pursuits began?"
"To my knowledge, well afterward. Which is why I drew the conclusions I have. As far as the separation went, Mr. Quarles was scrupulous in his handling of it."
"Aye," Hamish interjected, "he could show his vindictiveness then."
An interesting point, and Rutledge was on the brink of following it up when the solicitor's son returned with the box.
Hurley opened it and looked at the packets inside before choosing one. "This is Mr. Quarles's last will and testament." He unfolded it and scanned the document. "Just as I thought, the only bequest to Mrs. Quarles is a life interest in the house in which she now resides- the estate called Hallowfields. The remainder of his estate is held in trust until Marcus's twenty-fifth birthday. A wise decision, as it is a rather large sum, and Marcus is presently at Rugby."
"Nothing unusual in that arrangement," Laurence Hurley put in. "Considering their marital circumstances."
"Yes, I agree. What about his firm? Did he leave instructions for its future? Does anyone gain there?" Rutledge asked.
"There is provision for junior partners to buy out his share. A very fair and equitable settlement, in my opinion. When he made out his will, Mr. Quarles told me that he couldn't see his son following in his footsteps. He felt Marcus would be better suited to the law if he wished to follow a profession. He held that money could ruin a young man if not earned by his own labor, even though his son will be well set up financially."
"Can you think of anyone who might have clashed with Mr. Quarles, over business affairs or personal behavior? Enough to hate him and want to ridicule him in death?"
Laurence Hurley said, "By indicating that he was no angel? Or that he pretended to be an angel? I don't quite see the point, other than to hide his body for as long as possible. His murderer would have had to know about that apparatus, wouldn't he? That smacks of someone local."
Jason Hurley frowned at his son's comments. "To be honest with you, I can't conceive of anyone. No one in London, certainly. He was respected here."
Rutledge asked, "If he was-unhappy-about his wife's situation, how did Mr. Quarles react to what he might have viewed as his partner's defection? Was there retaliation?"
"Even when he and Davis Penrith dissolved their partnership, it appeared to be amicable. Although I couldn't help but think that Mr. Penrith would have been better off financially if he'd continued in the firm. Not that he hasn't done well on his own, you understand, but the firm is an old one and has been quite profitable over the years. It would have been to his advantage to stay on."
"I understand from Mr. Penrith that he wished to spend more time with his family than the partnership allowed."
"Ah, that would explain it, of course. Mr. Quarles was most certainly a man who relished his work and devoted himself to it. I sometimes wondered if that had initiated the rift with his wife. His clients loved him for his eye to detail, but it required hours of personal attention."
"Was there anyone else who might have crossed Mr. Quarles? Who later might have felt that there were reprisals?"
Both father and son were shocked. They insisted that with the exception of his matrimonial troubles, Mr. Quarles had never exhibited
a vengeful nature.
"And marriage," Laurence Hurley added, "has its own pitfalls. I daresay he could accept the breakup, perhaps in the hope that it would heal in time. When Mr. Archer joined the household, hope vanished. Mr. Quarles wouldn't be the first man to suffer jealousy and look for comfort where he could."
Hamish said, "Ye ken, he's speaking of his ain marriage…"
There was nothing more the senior Mr. Hurley could add. Quarles had left no letters to be opened after his death, and no other bequests that, in Hurley's terms, "could raise eyebrows."
"Except of course the large bequest to a servant, one Betty Richards," Laurence Hurley reminded his father.
"Indeed. Mr. Quarles himself explained that she had been faithful and deserved to be financially secure when he was dead. I haven't met her, but I understand there was no personal reason for his thoughtful- ness, except the fact that she was already in her forties and as time passed would find it hard to seek other service. He was often a kind man."
"In the will is there any mention of the gatehouse at Hallowfields?"
Hurley frowned. "The gatehouse? No. There's no provision for that. I would assume that it remains with the house and grounds. Were you under the impression that someone was to inherit it?"
Hamish said, "He's thinking of yon man in the wheelchair."
Archer…
"The gatehouse came up in a conversation, and I wondered if it held any specific importance to Mr. Quarles."
Laurence Hurley said, "None that we are aware of."
"What do you know of Mr. Quarles's background?"
"He came from the north, coal country, I'm told. He arrived in London intending to better himself, and because of his persistence and his abilities, rose to prominence in financial circles. He made no claim to being other than what he was, a plain Yorkshireman who was lucky enough to have had a fine sponsor, Mr. James, the senior partner of the firm when Quarles was taken on."
Which meant, Hamish suddenly commented in a lull in Rutledge's headache, Hurley knew little more than anyone else.
"How did he burn his hands so badly?" "It happened when he was a young man. There was a fire, and he tried to rescue a child. I believe he brought her out alive, though burned as well."
"In London?"
"No, it happened just before he decided to leave the north."
"Is there any family to notify?"
"Sadly, no. His brothers died of black lung, and his mother of a broken heart, he said. It was what kept him out of the mines-her wish that he do more with his life than follow his brothers. He said she was his inspiration, and his salvation. Apparently they were quite close. He spoke sometimes of their poverty and her struggle to free him from what she called the family curse. It was she who saw to it that he received an education, and she sold her wedding ring to provide him with the money to travel to London. He was always sad that she died before he'd saved enough to find and buy back her ring."
It was quite Dickensian. The question was, how much of the story was true? Enough certainly for a man like Hurley to believe it. The old lawyer was not one easily taken in. Or else Quarles had been a very fine spinner of tales…
Rutledge left soon after. The morning sun was so bright it sent a stab of pain through his head, but he had done what he'd come to London to do, and there was nothing for it but to return to Somerset as soon as possible.
Hamish was set against it, but Rutledge shrugged off his objections. He stopped briefly to eat something at a small tea shop in Kensington, then sped west.
It was just after he crossed into Somerset, as the throbbing in his head changed to an intermittent dull ache, that he realized Davis Pen- rith had not asked him how Harold Quarles had died.
12
As Rutledge came into Cambury, he pulled to one side of the High Street to allow a van to complete a turn. The sign on its side read CLARK AND SONS, MILLERS, and it had just made a delivery to the bakery. A man in a white apron was already walking back into the shop after seeing it off. Welsh dark and heavyset, he reached into the shop window as he closed the green door, removing a tray of buns.
Was he the Jones whose daughter had been sent to Cardiff after receiving Harold Quarles's attentions?
Very likely. And to judge from the width and power of his shoulders, he could have managed the device in the tithe barn with ease.
Rutledge went on to the hotel, leaving his motorcar in the yard behind The Unicorn, then walked back to the baker's shop. A liver and white spaniel was sitting patiently outside the door, his stump of a tail wagging happily as Rutledge spoke to him.
Jones was behind the counter, talking to an elderly woman as he wrapped her purchase in white paper. His manner was effusive, and he smiled at a small witticism about her dog and its taste for Jones's wares. Watching her out the door, he sighed, then turned to Rutledge.
"What might I do for you, sir?"
Rutledge introduced himself, and Jones nodded.
"You're here about Mr. Quarles, not for aniseed cake," he replied dryly. "Well, if you're thinking I'm delighted to hear he's dead, you're right." At Rutledge's expression of surprise, Jones added, "Oh, yes, word arrived with the milk early this morning. Bertie, the dairyman, had heard it at the Home Farm. Great ones for gossip, the staff at the Home Farm. Tell Bertie anything, and he's better than a town crier for spreading rumors. But this time it isn't rumor, is it?"
"No. And you'll understand that I need to know where you were on Saturday evening. Let's say between ten o'clock and two in the morning."
Jones smiled. "In the bosom of my family. But I didn't kill him, you know. There was a time when I'd have done it gladly, save for the hanging. I've a wife and six children depending on me for their comfort, and even Harold Quarles dead at my hands wasn't worth dying myself. But I say more power to whoever it was. It was time his ways caught up with him."
"I understand he paid more attention to your daughter than was proper."
Jones's laughter boomed around the empty shop, but it wasn't amused laughter. "You might call it 'more attention than proper.' I called it outright revolting. A child her age? Filling Gwyneth's head with tales of London, telling her about the theater and the shops and seeing the King morning, noon, and night, to the point she could think of nothing else but going there. She was barely sixteen and easily persuaded into anything but working here in the shop, up to her elbows in flour and dough in the wee hours while the ovens heat up, taking those heavy loaves out again, filling the trays with cakes and buns before we opened at seven. It's not easy, but it's what kept food on my table as a boy and food on hers now. She was my choice to take over when I can no longer keep it going, but after Quarles had unsettled her, she'd no wish to stay in Cambury. I don't see her now, my own daughter, but once in three months' time. I can't leave here, and I can't bring her back, and she's the apple of my eye. But she isn't the same child she once was. He cost her her innocence, you might say."
It wasn't unusual for a girl Gwyneth's age to change her mind every few months about what she wished to do with her life. It was a time for dreaming and pretending that something wonderful might happen. Quarles had precipitated her growing up in a way that Jones was not prepared to accept.
Reason enough to kill the man.
But Jones seemed to read his mind, and he said before Rutledge could pose the next question, "I would have done it there and then, not wait, if I was to kill him. I could have put my hands around his neck and watched him die in front of me. I was that angry. If you're a father, you understand that. If you're not, you'll have to take my word for it. Rector helped me see sense. I'm chapel, not Church of England, but he made me think of my family and where I'd be if I let my feelings carry me into foolishness."
The words rang true. Still, Jones had had time to think about what he'd say to the police when someone came to question him. Since early morning, in fact.
Jones was adding, "My wife was here as soon as she'd heard. I didn't tell her, it was going to come out soo
n enough anyway. She asked me straight out if I'd done this. And I told her no. But I could see doubt in her eyes. Thinking I might have gone out after she went to sleep. I didn't."
In his face was the hurt that his wife's suspicion, her need to come to him at once for assurance, had brought in its wake. Which to Rut- ledge indicated just how much hate this man must have harbored.
"Did you know that Quarles was in Cambury this past weekend?"
"Not at first. Then I saw him with Mr. Masters on their way to the ironmonger's shop. That was Saturday morning."
"We'd like you to make a statement, Mr. Jones. Will you come to the police station after you close the shop and tell Constable Daniels what you've just told me?"
"I'll do it. And put my hand on the Bible to swear to it."
The door of the shop opened, and two women came in.
"If there's nothing more, I'll ask you to leave now," Jones said quietly. "It won't do my custom any good for me to be seen talking with the police. Now that the news is traveling."
Rutledge nodded and went out while the women were still debating over lemon tarts and a dark tea bun with raisins in it.
He walked along the High Street, listening to Hamish in his head until he reached the police station. Constable Horton was there, reading a manual on the use of the typewriter.
He looked up as Rutledge came in, smiling sheepishly. "I hear him swearing in his office. I wondered what the fuss was all about. Looks easy enough to me, once you know where your fingers belong." Setting the manual aside, he added, his eyes carefully avoiding the red and swollen abrasion on the Londoner's forehead, "The inspector isn't here, sir, if it's him you're after."
"I need the direction of the Jones house. I just spoke to Mr. Jones in the bakery. I'd like to talk to his wife next."
"Inspector Padgett thought you'd gone up to London."
"So I have," Rutledge answered, and left it at that.
Horton explained how to find the Jones house, and Rutledge thanked him, leaving on the heels of it.