The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  Noticing his interest, she said, “They could be sold for a small fortune. But my father would never let them go.”

  Overhead was a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Dropping down from it were three iron circles holding candles. They had been lit once, their wicks were black and drips of wax had run down their sides.

  Tiny as chapels go, and hardly changed since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, the room was spotless, the wooden railing in front of him shiny with polish.

  “We still use the chapel,” Miss Belmont was saying. “And there’s a crypt below.” She gestured to the wooden steps leading down into the body of the chapel. “The next set of stairs are just below us. The first of our family has a tomb there, along with his wife and one son who died very young. He insisted on staying in the house he’d built. Mark is down there as well.”

  “How did you manage to get the coffin in there?” Rutledge asked, gesturing to the door behind them.

  She nodded. “There’s an outer door. It was built into the foundations. Of course it’s not a secret now. But it was well concealed in the past. The rest of the Belmonts are in the village church or churchyard. After the Reformation, it was agreed that the family could continue being buried there. Of course it was Belmont money that kept a roof on the church. It was a very practical solution.”

  “How did you persuade anyone to allow you to take possession of Thorne’s remains?”

  “It was another very practical solution. I think the Rector and the churchwardens were rather relieved to have the problem of what to do with Mark taken out of their hands. He was well liked, you see, he and his family had done so much for the village. It was difficult to say no to burying him there. Still, he was a suicide, and there were objections over letting him lie next to his parents. His sister was very bitter about it and had words with the Rector. But there was little he could do. Blanche, Mark’s widow, was grateful to my father.”

  “Thorne wasn’t Catholic, was he?”

  “No. But my father was very fond of him.” Something in her voice told him what she hadn’t added. That perhaps her father had hoped to have Thorne as a son-in-law. Catholic or not.

  Rutledge didn’t follow up on that. Instead, he said, “You were coming out of St. Mary’s.”

  “Yes, there was a break in the weather, and I’d taken over some music for the organ. I’ve known the man who plays it for ages.”

  He remembered hearing the organ as they were standing in the churchyard.

  “Do you still hold services here, in the chapel?” he asked.

  “We did when I was a little girl. I was baptized here. There was an elderly priest who came once a month, but after his death, we’ve had only the occasional service. Still, my father comes here every morning, to pray. And again at night.”

  “Who presided at Thorne’s service?”

  “A London priest, a friend of my father’s, agreed.”

  “You persuaded him that Thorne was not a suicide? Did you tell him Thorne wasn’t a Catholic?”

  “I told him there was no explanation for what happened in the fog. The inquest decided it had to be suicide because they didn’t know why Mark had gone to the headland. That’s not proof.”

  She turned to leave the balcony, and with a last look at the little chapel, Rutledge followed her. In the passage again, he said, “Why should you care so much about Thorne?”

  “Yes, I thought you’d get around to that. It’s the reason why I didn’t want to tell you where he was. Mark lived on the other side of the village. His father was a solicitor here in the village—only a second son, but he inherited money from an aunt. His family lived here. Mark and his mother and a sister and a brother who would be killed in France during the war. Mark would have served as well, if he’d lived. He was Army bred. He was sent to Harrow and then to Oxford, but I fell in love with him when I was only a girl. I never fell out.”

  “How did he come to know Blanche Richmond?”

  “She was staying with friends in Oxford.” She shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. But Rutledge knew that it did. “I don’t know the whole of it, but apparently she met Mark through them.”

  And Mark never came down from Oxford to the girl who was in love with him.

  But she had him now. In death. He wondered if that was enough.

  When they reached the room where he’d left his coat, she said, “I’d ask you to stay for tea or dinner, but my father is away at the moment. He’s giving a lecture on the Renaissance. He’s something of an expert in the subject.” She smiled wistfully. “He lives in the past, in a way. An ancestor of ours was so angry over the expulsion of James II in the late sixteen hundreds that he went to live in Virginia, in America. Our line didn’t have that sort of courage, and so we stayed on.”

  Miss Belmont handed him his hat and coat, and walked with him through the medieval hall and as far as the outer door.

  “Thank you for bringing me home,” she said then.

  “Does Mark have any family still living here in the village?”

  “His father died in the influenza epidemic, although he was never himself again after Mark died. His sister is still here.”

  She gave him directions to the house, and bade him a safe journey back to London.

  The door shut firmly on him, and he walked through the light drizzle to the motorcar and turned the crank.

  Why had Lorraine Belmont told him where Mark Thorne was buried?

  He considered that on his way back to the High Street and still wasn’t sure of the answer.

  Down Church Lane from the Rectory was the large three-story house where Sara Thorne lived. It spoke of money, and might have once been a dower house. Built of a soft rose brick in the Georgian style, it was set back from the road in what must in season be a rather pretty front garden. Getting out of his motorcar, Rutledge noticed the shriveled leaves of rosebushes among the plants, and the dry white sticks of several hydrangeas. The rest were winter dormant. He opened the black wrought-iron gate with its gold-crowned spear tips, walked up the path and knocked at the wooden door. Eventually an older woman in black opened it.

  “My name is Rutledge,” he said pleasantly. “I was just calling on Miss Belmont, and she directed me to Miss Thorne. I’d like to speak to her.”

  “And what’s your business with Miss Thorne?” she asked, staring him down with the air of a trusted watchdog.

  “Personal,” he replied and dared her to question that.

  The woman went away, leaving him standing at the door. When she came back, her manner was far from friendly, but she said, “Miss Thorne will see you.”

  Rutledge followed her down a passage to a comfortable sitting room, where Miss Thorne was waiting.

  She was not what he’d expected. Although there was a resemblance to the photographs he’d seen of her brother, she was older now and time hadn’t been kind to her. The lines slanting from her nose to her mouth were bitter, and her eyes were cold, giving her face a hardness, despite the fact that she was a fairly attractive woman.

  “Miss Belmont sent you?” she asked as the housekeeper announced him.

  “No. Miss Belmont gave me your direction.”

  That surprised her. “I understood—” She stopped. “Why were you looking for me?”

  Rutledge could see that the response he’d been using throughout was not going to serve him here. “I’m an Inspector at Scotland Yard. I was reviewing old cases, and one of them was your brother’s. The inquest—”

  “Brought in a verdict of suicide. Do you have any idea how that affected our lives, my father’s and mine? I was engaged to be married, and my fiancé found an excuse to break it off. Bankruptcy was one thing, suicide quite another. The churchwardens didn’t want my brother in their churchyard. A hundred years ago, he’d have been buried at the crossroads with a stake in his heart.”

  The hurt in her eyes belied her angry reply.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t come to open old wounds. I wanted to kno
w more about his death, and why he would choose to drive to Beachy Head, if he had it in mind to kill himself.”

  For an instant he thought she was about to walk out, refusing to talk to him. And then she decided something in her own mind, and gestured to a chair before sitting down on the far side of the hearth. “I have no idea why you’re interested in a ten-year-old suicide.”

  “I know Beachy Head. I can’t quite understand what the file tells me about what happened there.”

  “And you hope,” she retorted sarcastically, “to remove the stigma of suicide by finding answers now? Will it bring back my fiancé—who, by the way, has already married someone else. Of course he has. They have four children. He spent the war in London, safe from harm, working at the ministry. His wife has connections.” She spat out the last word as if it were a curse. Before Rutledge could say anything, she went on vehemently, “Have you any idea how cruel you are? Or are you simply stupid?”

  Rutledge waited for a count of ten, then replied, “I am charged with a review. I have some questions about the evidence. You may be in a position to answer them. If you prefer not to, that’s your choice.”

  Miss Thorne stared at him, the shock evident in her face. He wasn’t sure what she’d expected from him after her outburst, but he thought she had wanted to see guilt, not pity, and certainly not objectivity.

  Taking a long shuddering breath, she said, “Why didn’t he think of me before he walked off that cliff?”

  “Why didn’t he think about his wife, back in London and left to face all the rumors and the condemnation?”

  “She found comfort soon enough.”

  “Is that what you resent? Or is it that you didn’t much care for her, even before your brother’s death?”

  “I saw through her. Still, I was never quite sure why she chose Mark. There were others, you know. With more money than he possessed.”

  “Perhaps money wasn’t what she wanted.”

  Surveying him, Miss Thorne said, “You are very different from Inspector Johnson. He interviewed me, you know. Wanting to know if Mark had hinted at taking his own life. I don’t think he wanted the inquest to find suicide.”

  Johnson had said much the same to him . . .

  “Why, do you think?”

  “He was under Blanche’s spell like the rest of them. He said something to me. I never could put it out of my mind. If you know of anything that could help Mrs. Thorne understand what he did . . . I was Mark’s sister. I’d known him all his life. She’d known him only a handful of years. We were hurting too, Papa and I, and George. But Mark was always my favorite brother.”

  “Then you might know why he chose Beachy Head.”

  To his surprise, she answered him. “We went there once as children. To see the lighthouse in the sea. Mama was alive then, and we had a lovely picnic on higher ground, sitting in the sun and watching the waves come in. They were placid, the sound soothing. I fell asleep on my father’s lap, and Mark went with Mama to look for birds’ eggs. Of courage they didn’t find any, it was only an excuse, but as they walked close by the cliffs, an updraft caught my mother’s hat and sent it sailing, and she had to chase it. We were all laughing. And on the way home we stopped for tea, and there were iced cakes for a treat.”

  There was a softness in her voice as she looked back at the memory. “We talked about going back, but we never did. You can’t recapture those moments, can you, Inspector?”

  “Then it was a happy place for your brother?”

  “Yes, but he managed to spoil it for us by dying there.” The bitterness was back. “My father had wanted him to join him in the firm—he was a solicitor—but Mark chose banking, and was quite successful, young as he was.”

  “How did he lose his money?”

  “That was her fault. Blanche’s. She had money of her own, but he wanted to spoil her, and so he looked for any way to double what he had. Impatient. Foolish in the extreme. I never knew just what scheme it was, but he lost everything. My father told him to come home and join the firm, give up the London house and retrench. But Mark wouldn’t hear of it. Blanche, a country solicitor’s wife? Impossible! He should have listened to Papa. Blanche as a penniless suicide’s wife was far worse.”

  “I know almost nothing about your brother. Nothing at all about the child you grew up with.”

  “I was younger, and I looked up to him, I thought he was absolutely wonderful. And he was. All the girls at my school adored him. But he had a fatal flaw. My father never saw it, but I did. Because he was always popular and everyone praised everything he ever did, he never had to develop character. And when the world no longer lifted him on its shoulders and called him wonderful, he didn’t know how to cope with adversity.” She turned away abruptly, looking up on the mantelpiece at the pair of Staffordshire pottery spaniels sitting there, staring back at her with their painted eyes.

  “Then you do believe he killed himself.”

  “No. Yes. He could have done, because there was no going back to his pretty world. I don’t know. He wasn’t thinking of us, I do know that. Or it wouldn’t have been Beachy Head. He’d have shot himself while cleaning his gun, and it could have been put down as an accident. Even if a few people suspected the truth, the world at large would have accepted that.”

  “Did he have enemies? Someone who might have wished him dead? Fellow investors, perhaps?”

  Her gaze came back to him, such a hungry look in her expression he was startled.

  “I hadn’t thought—murder? Oh, dear God.” She simply sat there, vulnerable and uncertain. “Mark?”

  “I’m not suggesting that as an alternative to the choice of suicide. There’s nothing in the files to indicate that he had enemies.”

  “Not even my father considered murder. It never occurred to me that Blanche might have killed him, because he’d lost all his money.”

  It was his turn to be shocked, and he did his best to conceal it.

  “She was in London. There are witnesses. She wasn’t there at Beachy Head. Couldn’t have been.”

  “There were men who would have gladly done her bidding.” She shook her head. “Is it murder to drive someone to suicide? To make them so wretched, so ashamed, that living with that is more than they can possibly endure? Think about it. She didn’t mourn very long, did she? She married wealth and position, and people invited her to dinner parties again, Mark forgotten in her new life.”

  Before he could comment on that, she leaned forward earnestly. “It hadn’t crossed my mind before. But now— What if the point of that motorcar crash was to rid herself of Harold Fletcher-Munro? She hadn’t counted on dying instead.”

  “Someone had tampered with the motorcar.”

  “Yes, yes, but that’s not the question, is it? Perhaps what was intended was for him to be driving alone? Only it didn’t happen that way. Blanche was in the motorcar too.”

  “The inquest found Alan Barrington guilty of her death.”

  “Ironic, that. After he’d done whatever it was for her. I can’t imagine her getting her gloves dirty, much less knowing what one must do to tamper with a motorcar. I don’t think I’ve ever seen what was under the bonnet. The vehicle was just there, when I needed it, and someone always drove it for me. Alan Barrington must have been her accomplice.”

  She rose, preparing to see him out. “It seems after all, Inspector, that I was right in deciding to speak to you. Come back when you have proof to show me that Mark was murdered. If there is anything I can do to help you, you have only to ask.”

  Miss Thorne went to the hearth and pulled a bell rope. The housekeeper was outside the door, Rutledge’s coat and hat in her hands. It was she and not Miss Thorne who saw him out. Mark’s sister was still there by the hearth, her hand on one of the little Staffordshire spaniels, but her mind going over their conversation, a little smile hovering at her mouth. It was the image he carried with him.

  8

  Rutledge drove back to London, busy with what he’d learned, tr
ying to ignore Hamish’s comments from the rear seat.

  The portrait that Miss Thorne had painted of Blanche Thorne was vastly different from the young woman Jane Warden had known.

  Which of the portrayals was true?

  Hamish said, “She kept yon torn photograph hidden in her desk.”

  Rutledge said in argument, “If she preferred Barrington, why didn’t she marry him instead of Thorne?”

  “Perhaps she only thought she was in love with Thorne? She was verra’ young.”

  Seventeen? It was possible. And when he lost everything, she realized her mistake.

  But then she’d married Fletcher-Munro, not Barrington.

  Because Barrington hadn’t asked her? Then why in hell’s name would he kill Fletcher-Munro for her?

  Blanche was very attractive, if not precisely beautiful. Barrington needed an heir.

  Hamish was saying, “You willna’ ken the truth until you find him and ask him.”

  Rutledge knew he was right. He’d already spent too much time looking at Blanche and at Mark Thorne, instead of concentrating on following Barrington’s trail. And yet, what he’d learned was important.

  If Barrington had returned to England through Holyhead, and he’d come to stand by Blanche’s grave, where had he been between those two sightings? And where was he now? What had brought him back to England?

  He’d used the name Clive Maitland in the clinic at Dalemain House. What name was Barrington using now?

  Was he at his house in Melton Rush? Was that why the man with the shotgun had been so intent on keeping the press away?

  It would have been a terrible risk. Staff and villagers might keep his secret, but with that many people involved, news of his presence was bound to come out.

  Where to look next?

  It would be too late when he reached London to call on the solicitor, Strange. But that was the place to begin.

  Rutledge was there at nine on the dot. The clerk had arrived at eight thirty, and had allowed Rutledge to wait in Reception until Strange appeared at nine thirty. By that time Rutledge was impatient at the delay.