The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  Dedication

  For Jimmy Joe, cousin, friend, keeper of my childhood’s earliest memories . . .

  With much love and a porch swing on Lee Street.

  And for Buffy and Biddle, beloved of beloveds. Such a warm and cherished part of my life for so many precious years.

  Empty chairs and empty tables . . .

  A little kiss on your forehead, Biddie?

  And for Nikko and Luna, who were my wonderful text doggies, brightening my day. You were much loved, and so cherished. God rest ye too.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Charles Todd

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  Ascot Racecourse, England

  June 1910

  Ascot this year was very different from Ascots of the past. Yes, the horses were running, Society was present in force, and the preeminent racing program of the Season was as fashionable as ever. But Edward VII had died, and England was in mourning. Ascot was in mourning. This year the elegant gowns, the sweeping glory of women’s hats, the lace parasols were entirely black.

  Alan Barrington, standing near the Royal Box, looked down at the melancholy sea of silk and lace moving gracefully along the rails, waiting for the first race to begin, and considered it rather macabre. Edward of all people would have preferred the flamboyant color and excitement he loved. The men looked like so many walking crows, and the women like witches who had discovered smart shops.

  He knew it was bitterness that made him see the scene before him as a mockery of his own grief. Not for Edward, of course. While he’d known the King rather well, he hadn’t loved the man or the monarch. His mourning was for a friend, dead before his time. And one of those walking crows below had killed him as surely as if he’d put a hand on Mark’s back and pushed him over the cliff’s edge. Instead, he’d deliberately ruined Mark Thorne, driving him to killing himself as the only way out of an untenable situation.

  And then the bastard had married Mark’s widow.

  Barrington lifted his field glasses, and the figures strutting about below him suddenly came closer, clearer, and he scanned the crowd for one face in particular.

  And there he was. With Blanche on his arm.

  Swearing to himself, Barrington lowered the glasses. Revenge was a dish best served cold. Or so the old adage ran. As far as he was concerned, it was most satisfying when it was served hot. Instead it had taken him two years to be sure of what he’d suspected. Not proof enough for a hanging, perhaps, but enough to justify what he intended to do with that knowledge.

  Ignoring friends who spoke to him as he passed, Barrington made his way through the throng and was gone. But not far. Somewhere in the grassy area where the motorcars and horse-drawn carriages waited patiently for the day’s events to end was the one he sought.

  2

  January 1921

  There was a well-dressed man running down the middle of the road as Rutledge rounded a bend and slowed for the village he could see just ahead.

  The man stopped at the sound of his motorcar, and flagged him down.

  Closer to, Rutledge could see that he was red-faced, distraught, and not hiding it very well.

  Pulling up beside him, Rutledge said, “Something wrong?”

  “God, yes. Thank you for stopping.” He fought for breath. “There’s a man on the church roof. He has a shotgun, and he’s threatening to shoot Constable Biggins if he comes a step closer. I’ve been ordered to find the doctor. In the event someone’s hurt. I can’t reach my own motorcar. He’ll see me, whoever he is. Will you take me to the Miller farm and then bring the doctor back here?”

  “I’m Scotland Yard. Inspector Rutledge. I might be more helpful on the scene. You can fetch the doctor yourself.”

  The man’s face brightened. “Scotland Yard? Yes, for God’s sake, do something. He’s got the Vicar’s daughter up there with him. She’s only fourteen. She’s my niece.”

  “Who is he? The man holding her hostage?”

  “I don’t know. I’m told he was walking down the road this morning, calm as you like. And then he changed suddenly. I heard a good bit of shouting and started toward the greengrocer’s to see what it was about. Halfway there, he ran past me. I don’t know how he came to have the shotgun. He wasn’t carrying it earlier.”

  “Then he found it somewhere.” Rutledge pulled the motorcar to the side of the road and got down. “How did your niece become involved?”

  “I’ve no idea. I carried on to the greengrocer’s, thinking he might have tried to rob the shop, but he hadn’t. Instead he’d encountered someone just outside and was quarreling with him—” He broke off and turned quickly as they heard the shotgun fire. “Oh, dear God—”

  “Go on, find that doctor!” Rutledge set out at a run. There were cottages on either side of him, some of them set back in gardens, most of them opening directly on the road, and ahead he could see the first of the shops. But it didn’t run straight, the road, curving instead around a long pond that appeared to be part of a medieval village green. And still he couldn’t see the church. Swearing, thinking too late that he ought to have asked how to find it, there it was just where the road turned back on itself again beyond the tall brick house on his left.

  The tower faced the road, but there was no sign of the man with the shotgun or the girl on the roof below it. But he could see a small group of people in the churchyard staring upward.

  Hamish spoke. “He’s out of sight, hidden by yon tower.”

  Rutledge was busy looking for a way to reach the church without being seen by the onlookers. The last thing he wanted was to give the shooter an excuse to fire again.

  Now he could see the board identifying the brick house as the Vicarage for St. Matthew’s Church. Letting himself in at the gate, he circled the house and found a smaller back gate with a path that led to the church porch. Voices came to him as he got closer—and someone shouting. Constable Biggins, trying to reason with the man above? The exchange didn’t sound promising.

  Rutledge was halfway to the porch when he heard the shotgun again. This time someone cried out.

  He nearly stumbled over a footstone as he looked up, trying to pinpoint just where the man was. But he and the girl were invisible still.

  Rutledge took his time opening the porch door, but the ancient hinges shrieked in protest anyway, and he got himself through as small a crack as possible. Hurrying across the silent nave, his footsteps hollow on the flagstones, he made his way toward the tower. A graceful arch led into a small entry where he faced a second door, this one the massive—and firmly shut—iron-bound wooden one at the west front.

  But to his left a narrower wooden door stood open, and he stopped to take off his heavy outer coat and leave it on the small table where leaflets and church notices were neatly spread out. Then he eased himself to the threshold where he could look upward. In a tight spiral, stone steps fanned up into the tower, but he couldn’t see beyond them. A rope for the bell dangled past him, the last dozen feet thickly braided with red and white threads. He began to climb, taking his time. And keeping close to the inner wall even though the steps were narrowest there.

  Twenty-five feet up, th
e stone steps came to an end at a wooden platform, and from there a wooden ladder went upward into shadows. Taking a deep breath, he gripped the sides and looked up. A dim light showed at the top, where the clock face and a single large bell loomed.

  He began to climb again. Every fourteen rungs, a narrow wooden platform ran around the walls, and on that he had to make his way around to the next ladder, leading upward in the opposite direction.

  How in hell had the man got the girl to climb this? Had she been more afraid of the shotgun than the steps? He couldn’t blame her.

  Hamish was silent.

  Another narrow platform, and the ladder switched back in the opposite direction again. Zigzagging into shadows over his head where yet another ladder waited.

  Below him there was a shaft of nothingness now, and in the dimness he could barely make out the first platform at the head of the stone steps. As a rule, heights didn’t worry him, but the ladders were old, the rungs worn. Setting his teeth, he climbed on, wishing he’d worn his driving gloves as the cold numbed his fingers.

  When he reached the shelf where the large bronze bell hung at his side, he had to stretch his arm out to keep the rope from swinging toward the clapper. The last thing he needed was even the softest strike alerting the man or the girl that someone was in the tower at their back. Up here the wind was strong, and the cold cut through his coat.

  There was no doorway out to the roof, only a hatch that stood open. Edging around toward it on the platform by the clock mechanism, he kept a sharp eye out for the man and the girl. But they were still out of his line of sight. Reaching the hatch, he knelt and peered out. The pale winter’s sunlight lit the scene all too clearly.

  A man of middle height and slim build was standing near the edge of the roof, the girl on her knees beside him, head down, almost stiff with cold and terror. What little Rutledge could see of her face was drained of all color and wet with tears. Carefully examining the man, he noted the cheap suit of clothes, the poorly cut hair, the scuffed shoes.

  Prison. He’d been in prison, and was only just now released. And he’d walked some distance since then.

  From below came the ragged voice of the Constable, hoarse from shouting.

  “Come down and talk to me. I’ll help you find them. But I swear to you they don’t live here. I don’t believe they ever did.”

  “Where else would they be? I tell you, you’re lying. And if you don’t bring them to me before the clock strikes two, I’ll kill her. And you. And myself.”

  Out of patience, the Constable called, “And what will that gain you, but a grave in the churchyard? I tell you, we can find them. Let me at least try, man. You don’t want them to learn you murdered that girl—you don’t want your family to carry that burden.”

  The man wiped away angry tears. “They wouldn’t have left me. I don’t believe you. She wrote to me, she was going to stay with her mother, she said. She was going to wait.” He reached down and pulled the girl up by her arm. She sagged in his grip and he jerked her to her feet. “I’ll push her over, I will.” She almost lost her balance, almost went over the edge, and a cry went up from the watchers below. But the man reached out and caught her in time, then shoved her down on her knees again. As Rutledge watched, he touched her bare head gently in a gesture at odds with his threats, as if to reassure her. In a low voice, he said sharply, “I told you, if you helped me, I’d let you go safely. You nearly fell, and it was your own doing, not mine.”

  Straightening up, he swung the shotgun around to bear on the owner of the voice below.

  Rutledge quietly edged his way through the hatch and onto the roof, missing what the Constable was saying in reply.

  Before the girl spotted him and made the man do something foolish, Rutledge spoke.

  He’d already assessed the pair, captor and captive, and decided that the only way to get the girl safely down was to defuse the situation as best he could. And that meant reducing the tension he’d felt the moment he’d reached the bell and could hear the voices from below.

  “All right. I’ve come to help you find them,” he said in an ordinary tone of voice. “If that’s what you really want.”

  The man whirled, almost lost his own balance, and turned the shotgun on Rutledge. For an instant there was alarm in his face, and Rutledge tensed, ready to throw himself to one side on the sloping roof. And then the man seemed to take in what he was saying.

  “Who are you? Her father? You don’t look old enough.” It was a furious growl. Beside him the girl stared up at him, such hope in her face that Rutledge swore under his breath.

  “No. I find people. It’s what I do. They sent for me. Fortunately I wasn’t too far from here, and I made good time.”

  It was the man’s turn to stare. He was tired and haggard and cold up here on the windy roof. Just a suit of clothes, no coat, no hat. But he was not buying what Rutledge was saying. “Who are you?” he demanded again.

  “My name is Rutledge,” he went on in the same light vein. “You need a cup of tea, and so do I. I can explain then. You can keep that gun, and if you don’t like what I have to say, you can use it. On me, but not on the girl. Agreed?”

  The calm certainty in the deep voice was something the man hadn’t expected. He didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “You can at least tell me your name,” Rutledge went on. “I’ve told you mine.”

  “I don’t know any Rutledge,” the man answered harshly.

  “You probably don’t. My family lives in London. I don’t believe we have any cousins in this part of England.”

  It was so matter-of-fact that the man’s dark brows rose.

  “Look, I’m as cold as you are. Do you want my help? I’ve climbed all this way, when I ought to be about my own business. But I owed someone a favor. I can’t stand around all day while you make up your mind. Yes or no?”

  He’d made a point not to look in the direction of the girl. Now he did, and said, “She’s frightened out of her wits. Why did you choose her as your shield? Wasn’t there anyone else? In your place, I’d have tried for someone a little older. Less likely to do something foolish and get both of you hurt. She might have taken you over with her just now. And you’d have died without knowing what happened to your family.”

  The man was all but gaping at him. Collecting himself with an effort, he said, “What’s happened to them? If you know so much.”

  “That’s what you need to find out. With my help. Look, I’m going back to wait for you in the church. Just me, not the Constable down there. It’s cold in the nave as well, but at least it’s out of the wind. You have an hour. If you don’t want to find your family, that’s your affair. I won’t wait longer than that.”

  The Constable was shouting, asking if the girl was all right. He couldn’t see what was happening on the roof and was beginning to panic. Rutledge willed him not to lose his head.

  Turning slowly, carefully, Rutledge went to the hatch and began to crawl back inside. He could feel the man’s eyes on him, knew how vulnerable he actually was, on his knees, his back turned. But he didn’t falter, all his attention on the man behind him.

  He’d just got himself out of range when the man called, “Rutledge?”

  “What do you want? I told you, I’m going back down to the nave.”

  “Did you mean what you said? Will you swear to it?”

  “I don’t give my word lightly. But yes, I’ll help you.”

  There was a long silence. Rutledge stayed where he was.

  “Then take the girl with you. When you’re at the bottom, I’ll follow.”

  “I didn’t bring her up here,” Rutledge said. “I didn’t frighten her out of her wits. How am I going to get her down?”

  The girl spoke for the first time, her voice trembling, pleading. “Can I go with him?”

  Another silence.

  Then, “Go on.”

  Rutledge could hear her scrambling toward the hatch on all fours, and he was there at the opening to h
elp her inside. The watchers below must have seen or heard something, because the Constable shouted, “What the hell is going on?”

  No one answered him.

  Rutledge got the girl through the hatch, steadied her, then smiled. He pointed to the ladder. “Can you make it?”

  She was still shaking. “I don’t know. Will you—could you go first?”

  He didn’t want to leave her. But he nodded, and made his way back to the ladder where it came up behind the clock face. Starting down, he smiled encouragingly, then concentrated on where he was putting his own feet.

  He was halfway down the first ladder before she moved, and then, clutching at the wall, she did as he had done, then managed to swing herself over the abyss below and onto the ladder. She was sobbing with fear, her hands gripping the sides of the ladder with white knuckles.

  Rutledge took his time, making certain that the girl was all right at each stage before moving on to the next. He could hear her crying to herself as she felt her way backward down each of the levels. When he reached the platform at the top of the stone steps, he stopped.

  He thought he saw the man in the shadows cast by the bell high above. Just as he turned his attention away from her, the girl tripped on the trailing edge of her blue muffler and stifled a cry as she caught herself and froze where she was.

  “I can’t,” she whispered, through her tears. “I can’t go any farther.”

  “Yes, you can,” he told her briskly. “You’ve almost reached the easiest stage. Remember? The stone steps. Pull up that muffler—that’s it. Now, come the rest of the way to me. Or wait there for him to catch up with you.”

  She didn’t need a second warning. With an effort she made it to where he stood.

  “Good girl. Now go on, stay to the outside of those steps, and watch your feet. You’ll be fine. You’re nearly there. Trust me on that. When you have reached the nave, go out to the Constable and let him see that you’re all right. And tell him that I’ll be bringing that man out to him, when I have him down as well.”