Sideways In Crime

by Sideways In Crime v2 lit

  The innkeeper managed not to look too startled; several of the oldsters sitting with their pints along the bench beside the inn’s door gaped at him; a pipe nearly fell out of one wrinkled mouth. A babble of voices rose and died away.

  “Ah, you’ll be here about young Jon Wooton; quick work for you to get here so soon, all the way from Winchester. A bad business, sir, a very bad business.”

  “It usually is, when a man’s murdered,” Rutherston said grimly.

  The interior of the inn’s main room was L-shaped: a long space with tables, a hearth--swept and garnished with pots of flowers now--and a row of windows that looked down on a water-meadow and a stretch of the Rother flowing slowly between willows beyond.

  There was a fair scattering of regulars trickling in for a pint or two--it was after harvest, after all, the high point of a laborer’s year... and pocket. A man in a good country suit was talking business with some obvious farmers in cords in the snug, and there were a scattering of everything from cottagers in smocks to tradesmen and their families.

  The ones that caught his eye obviously weren’t locals: five army troopers and a corporal, hobelars in green-enameled chain-mail shirts and leather breeches and riding-boots, with their open-faced sallet helms propped on tables. The longbows and quivers, sword-belts and bucklers hung on pegs by the door. They all had mugs of beer before them, and they all looked dusty and tired, as if they’d been on road patrol, which they probably had.

  Rutherston walked over to their table as the innkeeper and his staff saw to the baggage and took his hat and half-cloak and his own sword--even on a murder investigation, he wasn’t going to wear a long blade inside the village. The soldiers looked up, polite but not more than that--they were the King-Emperor’s men, after all. Then he reached into his coat-pocket and flipped open the wallet to show his Warrant Card, and handed their squad-leader his letter of authorization from the War Office.

  That brought them to their feet, saluting smartly amidst a scrape of chairs. The troopers were ordinary enough, strong-built youngsters with open countrymen’s faces, distinguished only by one’s startling red roach of hair or another’s freckles and jug ears. The corporal with the chevrons riveted to the short sleeve of his mail shirt was a few years older than his men. He was about six feet-- Rutherston’s own height--but broader, with dark blunt features unusual for an Englishman and curly hair so black it had highlights like a raven’s feathers.

  “Corporal Bramble, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, currently out of Castle Aldershot,” he said in a deep rumbling voice

  The accent was a strong yokel burr but with a slight trace of something different, a yawny-drawly lilt that had a teasing half-familiarity. Then he placed it.

  Ah, I’ve heard something like that from Jamaican sailors in Portsmouth and Bristol, Rutherston thought. Though he’s definitely English born and bred; yeoman-farmer’s son, I’d say.

  He’d half-expected a southern-provinces twang; those looks could be Gibraltarian, but a touch of Caribbean a couple of generations back would account for it just as well.

  The noncom went on: “We were told to expect you. I’m to assume this is aid-to-the-civil-power, sir?”

  “You are, corporal; dull work, probably, I’m afraid. Your commanding officer has been informed I’d commandeer you; it saves time and trouble. I’ll want to talk to you later tonight. You can quarter your men here at the Moor’s Head, and I’ll handle the requisition slips.”

  None of the hobelars looked unhappy about it. They’d be spared fatigues and drills, the food and drink would be free but much better than ration-issue, and the chance of finding a girl interested in the glamour of a uniform rather than hard cash was distinctly better here than near a garrison town like Aldershot.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ve a man at the miller’s house, of course, guarding the place where we found the body. I’ll rotate the duty.”

  “Good work, that, corporal,” Rutherston said, nodding.

  It had saved him an undignified scramble, and he had reasons for not heading straight to the scene of the--possible--crime.

  “Permission to ask a question?” the noncom said.

  The detective nodded, raising a brow.

  “You were army yourself, sir, weren’t you?”

  Rutherston smiled thinly. Good. He has a sharp eye, this one.

  He nodded. “Yes; in the Blues and Royals. Tours in the Principality on the Provoland border, and out of Rabat and Marrakech. It still shows, eh?”

  “It does, inspector.”

  “And you’re not from this shire, are you, corporal? A bit further north and east, I’d say.”

  “My dad’s place is just north of Woburn, sir; Jamaica Farm, it’s called, after Granddad. Near Wavendon, if you know Buckinghamshire.”

  “I do,” he said.

  Better and better, he thought

  That area was northerly and a little wild, though not quite on the frontier of settlement any more; that ran just south of Nottingham these days.

  But still close to the Wild Lands, and still a smuggler’s paradise, up the Ouse from the Wash.

  The Moor’s Head wasn’t large, but it had all the modern conveniences you’d expect so close to Winchester and right next to a good trout-and-salmon stream; running water in the bathroom on the first floor brought up by a hydraulic ram from the river, flush toilets, and a big copper boiler that supplied plentiful hot water. The maid had unpacked his bags, all but a small locked case set on the table, and the sitting room had a pleasant view of the Rother; the detective found his two rooms to be very comfortable in a country-inn fashion. Both smelled of clean linen and dried-lavender sachets, and the alcohol lanterns were bright enough for reading, even to one accustomed to the capital’s incandescent-mantle gaslights.

  Rutherston wallowed gratefully in a tub of the hot water--at thirty-two, sitting all day in a coach was no longer perfectly comfortable--and set out his boots and traveling suit to be taken and dealt with. He took a moment to write a letter as well; Janice was in her eighth month and naturally hadn’t wanted him to leave town just then.

  Then he dressed and came down to an excellent dinner: grilled trout right out of the river, a pie of veal and ham and truffles, sprouts, raudkal, salad, chips, followed by a fruit tart with cream. There was a glass of a perfectly acceptable local Cabernet Franc to go with it.

  Bramble’s troopers were plowing their way through much the same, with a roast chicken each added. It reminded Rutherston of the sort of appetite you had when you were twenty years old and spending ten hours a day in the saddle or marching on your own feet under seventy pounds of armor and gear. Instead of his more recent fate, having a city’s pavements under his boots, or worse still, an office chair beneath his backside while he filled out endless reports.

  Most of the patrons were quiet, talking with their heads together, but the soldiers were merry enough; it wasn’t their village, after all. He even caught a snatch of song from them:

  “For forty shillings on the drum

  Who’ll ‘list and volunteer to come?

  And stand and face the foe today:

  It’s over the hills and far away...”

  When he’d finished his own meal, he signed Corporal Bramble over.

  “Sit, man. I’m an officer in the police now, not the Blues.”

  “Inspector.”

  The big soldier sat, and Rutherston raised his hand for the barmaid--a statuesque blonde a decade younger than himself, with a forty-inch bust displayed to advantage by her low-cut blouse and a pouting lower lip that might have been promising under other circumstances, along with the lack of a wedding-band.

  But you do have one on now, Ingmar, at long last. Keep it in mind. Janice can’t see you but God can.

  He’d spent a long time as a footloose and fancy-free bachelor, and shedding the habits came a little hard sometimes despite a happy marriage; they crept back while you weren’t looking, especially away from home.

  �
��Now,” he said, opening his notebook. “Let’s get the details. Your report was informative, but short.”

  “You won’t be questioning anyone else tonight, sir?” Bramble asked.

  Rutherston nodded. “Why am I sitting on my arse waiting for the villains to scarper, you mean?” he said, and smiled at the look of blank innocence the noncom put on. “What I’m doing, corporal, is letting them get good and nervous. Winchester has seventy thousand people, but here in Eddsford there are six-hundred-fifty-odd and they all know each other. If anyone runs, they identify themselves for me. If they don’t, they’ll probably make other mistakes.”

  “Hmmm, the guilty flee where nei man pursueth, eh, sir? My dad’s a deacon in our parish,” he added in an aside. “You’re letting them come ripe, as it were.”

  “Quite. Tell me what you’ve seen and heard. Then tell me what you think of it.”

  The barmaid returned with their mugs. She smiled at the policeman as she put them down, then turned the full wattage on Bramble when it didn’t bring any result. He grinned back at her reflexively-- he was, after all, still several years short of thirty himself--and then cleared his throat and returned to business.

  “Yessir.” Bramble’s face went blank as he replayed memories in his mind’s eye. “My men and I ‘ave been on standard road patrol along the South Downs; we vary the route unpredictable-like.”

  Rutherston nodded as he took a sip of the cool, nutty-bitter ale; it didn’t do to make things easy for a would-be Dick Turpin. Open lawlessness like that wasn’t likely around here anymore, but it honed field-craft and helped hold edge-dulling boredom at bay. He took his gunmetal cigarette-case out of his jacket and flipped it open, offering it across the table.

  “No thank you, sir. Never got the habit.”

  Rutherston lit one himself. They were rum-flavored Embiricos cigarillos from Barbados, and he found the rich smooth taste soothed and helped him concentrate. The old-timers said tobacco was bad for you, but then living was ultimately always fatal and they seemed to have been a bunch of damned old women back then anyway.

  “Go on,” he said, and opened his notebook to begin jotting down the points.

  “We were passing the Mill here on our way back to base--”

  “This was early this morning?”

  “Yessir, about eight hundred hours. We’d been out since midnight, not seen nothing more dangerous than a badger or a barn owl, the usual. A woman--the old miller’s widow, name of Kristin Wooton--ran out and grabbed me stirrup; there was a man behind her, a wringin’ of his hands. She screamed out that her son Jon was dying, and we should get him help. Well, I sent young Jones--that’s him, sir, the one with the ears like a bat--back into the village for the District Nurse, then went in to see what I could do.”

  Corporal Bramble looked hard enough to drive horseshoe-nails with his knuckles, but his strong-boned face was uneasy as he went on.

  “The man was dying, right enough. Never seen anything like it, sir, and I’ve seen men die before... been stationed over most of the Empire these last ten years. It was like he was rotting, sir; hair comin’ out in clumps, sores all over his hide. Bleeding from everywhere too, eyes, nose, gums--even his arsehole, begging your pardon, inspector.”

  “I’ve heard the word before, corporal.”

  A broad white smile, and the man drained half his mug as if trying to wash away a bad taste. His voice was impersonal as he went on:

  “Looked like poison to me, sir, and his mother was swearing that he’d been fine the day before, or maybe just a bit peaked. So I sent McAllister--he’s the one with the hair like a new penny--over north to the line of rail, they’ve a semaphore station. Just about then the poor unfortunate bugger did die, and Major Grimsson sent back that I was to hold in place until someone arrived, so I had the body put in keeping, the man’s room sealed and a guard put on it. And then I waited until you got here. Which was quick work on your part, sir.”

  Rutherston looked down at his notes, tapping the pen on the metal coil at the top of the pad. “It does sound like possible foul play,” he said thoughtfully. “The first in this parish since 2012... and that was a drunken swain using a hay-knife when he caught his ladylove where she shouldn’t have been.”

  “I don’t have any great acquaintance here in Eddsford, sir, but I’ve heard little good of Jon Wooton. Nothing specific... but reading between the lines, like.” A pause for another pull at the beer. “Still, you’d ‘ave to hate a man right hard to do that to him.”

  Rutherston nodded and finished his beer. “See that your men get a good night’s rest,” he said.

  Meaning, this isn’t a weekend pass so see that they go to bed sober; but there’s nei need to say that aloud.

  Bramble nodded in turn, obviously following his meaning effortlessly. He’d never met the corporal before but he knew the type, a reliable long-service non-commissioned man, steady as a rock in any situation he understood.

  What’s uncertain is how much imagination he has, but offhand I think he has plenty, just doesn’t show it much.

  “Tomorrow we’ll start doing the rounds,” he said aloud.

  Bramble hesitated. “If you don’t mind my asking, sir, why do you need me and the lads?”

  Rutherston closed the notebook. “I very well may not,” he said. “On the other hand, if there’s something nastier than a simple impulse killing... or someone may run, in which case I’d rather have help quicker on their feet than the usual part-time village Special Constable.”

  Bramble nodded and grinned. “The one here, name of Edward Mukeriji... runs the tobacconists and sweet-shop, sir, and he was fair stuttering. I see your point.”

  “And while this may not be your village, you might see things that I don’t.”

  “Ah,” Bramble said. “That’s a point too, sir.”

  The words were uninformative, but Rutherston felt that he’d passed some test.

  St. Swithun’s School For Girls was not far from Eddsford, having been moved out of town when it started up again in the resettlement; a few young ladies in the dark-blue frocks with pleated skirts and white blouses of that revered institution were walking through the village, overseen by a nun in a gray habit.

  “Dullafullt,” one of them said to a friend, rolling her eyes.

  Rutherston had to admit that to a youngster Eddsford might indeed seem a little boring, particularly if you’d been stuck there by your parents during the holidays when the other boarders went home. That had happened to him several times, though Winchester College was admittedly much closer to the heart of things.

  I’d quite like Eddsford myself if I weren’t here to investigate a murder, he thought, taking a deep breath of the cool morning air; it was still fresh at eight o’clock, but he thought it would be another warm day. It reminds me of home.

  Corporal Bramble stood inconspicuously by his elbow as he used the brass knocker on the door of the clinic, or as inconspicuously as a sixteen-stone man in armor with a longbow and quiver over his shoulder could.

  The clinic was just down the lane from the village green; Eddsford wasn’t quite large enough to rate a doctor of its own, though one came by weekly from Petersfield, and could be fetched at need. There was a polished plate by the door, also brass, that read: District Nurse Delia Medford, SRN, and a modern bicycle with a rather heavy tubular frame and solid-rubber wheels in a stand by the entryway. Roses bloomed in a trellis along one wall, and there were colorful impatiens in the window boxes.

  Delia Medford opened the door and responded with a dryly courteous nod to the detective’s slight bow. She was a tallish, slender woman in her thirties with blue eyes and brown hair drawn back in a bun and a no-nonsense expression, and a stethoscope tucked into the breast pocket of her jacket. There was another with her enough alike to be her older sister.

  “Detective Inspector Ingmar Rutherston, ladies,” he said, removing his hat and showing his Warrant Card. “Corporal Bramble here is assisting me.”

  The sol
dier tucked his helmet under one arm and rumbled “Ma’am,” twice.

  The nurse gave Rutherston’s hand a quick firm shake. “My sister, Mrs. Alice Purkiss,” she said, after she’d introduced herself.

  The widow Purkiss was a decade older and otherwise very like her sibling, apart from the fact that she wore a conservative knee-length skirt rather than cord riding breeches; the other main difference was her shoes, which weren’t graced with thick rubber soles.

  “I was Jon Wooton’s teacher at our little school, Inspector Rutherston,” she said. “We thought it would save you time and effort if I came along first thing. I’m retired from teaching now, but I’m still postmistress and run the Eddsford reading room and lending-library.”

  Ah, excellent, Rutherston thought.

  He wanted to put off seeing the Wootons until he’d gotten a feel for how the rest of the village regarded them; and these two probably knew everyone’s family history since the resettlement, just for starters. Doubtless they were pillars of half a dozen Church organizations and ran the local Whig election committee with an iron hand as well.

  Like most such, the office had a waiting room with chairs, a table, and ancient copies of several magazines--The Illustrated Winchester News, the Church Times, the British Agriculturalist, and rather surprisingly the Boy’s and Girl’s Own Paper.

  There was also the inevitable Bible, a tall antique clock ticking in one corner and hanging pictures of King-Emperor Charles IV, Queen Thora, the Pope, and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Winchester. A consulting room gave off it and there were several storage areas in the back; presumably Delia Medford lived over the shop, judging from the selection of Wellingtons, umbrellas, and mackintoshes at the bottom of the hall stairs, and the tabby-cat looking down curiously from the top.

  The body was in one of the storerooms, a tile-floored one with two roll-out compartments for cadavers against the wall, and an ingenious icebox-like arrangement for keeping them cold.

  “Sir James sends me down ice when I need it,” she explained, as she pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves.