by Charles Todd
The shorter man asked him, “Any identification?”
“We can’t be sure yet.”
They nodded, apparently used to bodies turning up in such surroundings.
In the front room the neighbor backed away, letting them proceed, and in five minutes they had their burden in the ambulance and ready to transport to hospital.
Rutledge climbed quickly into the rear, beside the patient, while Windom argued.
“I’m going with him. Come if you like. Or meet me there,” he said as one of the attendants shut the rear doors, leaving Windom to fume.
The ambulance set out at breakneck speed, taking the rough road in stride, and Rutledge held on for dear life as it turned at the bend and started down the hill. The bell clanged violently. Rutledge could see nothing, but he felt the vehicle slow finally and maneuver into position. The doors opened, and the larger attendant was already reaching for the stretcher’s handles, sliding its burden toward him.
The doctors cut the man’s blankets and clothing away piece by piece, talking as they worked. Windom appeared at some point, but Rutledge was listening to what they were saying, ignoring him.
Dehydration. Fever. Possible pneumonia. Untreated wound. Broken collarbone. Cracked ribs . . .
He could see the pale skin of the man’s chest now, purple in great patches, a swollen lump on the ribs and another, just below the throat. And a shoulder wound, jagged and black with dried blood.
The doctors kept working, sending Sisters for whatever they needed next. And finally, satisfied, one of them turned toward Rutledge, standing nearest the bed.
“He’s had a terrific fall. He should have been brought to Casualty straightaway.”
“The person who found him took him to her house,” Windom said. “We don’t know why.”
Rutledge was already kneeling by the castoff clothing, going through the pockets as he listened. There was no identification. And an empty wallet. But the quality of the shirt and the woolen vest were there to be seen. Where his outer coat, his suit coat, and his boots had gone, there was no way of knowing. But the likelihood was increasing that this might just be Alfred Morrow.
He looked up at the doctors. “Can you tell if this man is blind? Or has his sight?”
“Blind, did you say?” the doctor still working with the patient asked. “Let me see.”
After several tests, he said, “There’s scarring. How much he can see—or can’t—is hard to judge. Shrapnel?”
“Yes.”
“In some cases vision actually improves with time. But that’s on a case-by-case basis, you understand.”
Windom said, unnecessarily, “Morrow is blind.” He stepped forward to look more closely at the now-clean face of the man on the stretcher. “Poor devil. What do you think happened to him?”
The doctor answered. “He might have been robbed. Or he might have lost his way and fallen. You’ll have to ask him. If he survives tonight, I think there’s a good chance he’ll live. But he’s going up to one of the wards as soon as we finish here. We ought to bind those ribs, but he’s having enough difficulties breathing. We’ve set the collarbone as best we can. Appears to be a clean enough break. We’ll give him fluids and something for the fever. But if he develops pneumonia, I’m afraid his chances drop considerably. If he has family close by, they ought to be summoned.”
Windom turned to Rutledge, who said curtly, “Send one of your Constables. I’m staying here.”
“You know the family, it’s your duty—”
“My duty is to see that I’m here if he comes to his senses. You’re wasting time. Send for the parents.”
Matron appeared, handing a chart to one of the Sisters, and she began to prepare the patient for transfer to the wards, wrapping him in warmed blankets and putting a hot water bottle at his feet.
Watching them, Windom said, “Why didn’t she bring him to Casualty?”
“She was probably hoping to be seen as his benefactor. Hard to do here, with staff deciding what’s best for him. She’d have been shunted aside, savior or not. She didn’t expect to be murdered, leaving him alone in that house.”
“No.” Windom rubbed his face with both hands. A tired man with a long night ahead of him. “I’ll leave a Constable. If there’s a change, I want to know. For better or worse.”
“Understood.” A cart had arrived and they were transferring Morrow to it, lifting him with smooth efficiency. Rutledge had a glimpse of the man’s pale face.
Hamish said, startling him, “Does he look like Barrington, d’ye think?”
“Yes. No,” he answered aloud before he could stop himself. And then struggled to explain himself to the staring circle around him. “I hope you’re wrong about the pneumonia.”
Matron said, “It’s the most likely outcome, young man. Now if you’re intending to sit with the patient, follow Sister Stevens.”
And she was gone. Rutledge turned and followed the cart.
It was already late by the time he found himself in the ward, sitting in an uncomfortable chair by Morrow’s bedside. He drifted into a light sleep at two and again at five. But each time he woke with a start, there was no apparent change in Morrow’s condition. By dawn, as the Sisters quietly came and went, someone brought him a cup of tea, strong and hot.
Rutledge was just finishing it when there was a commotion at the ward door, and he recognized Morrow’s father, his face gray with worry, his voice high with stress, bursting into the room, followed by a plain woman in a handsome gray dress coat, her eyes swollen with crying.
One of the Sisters stepped in their way, but giving her their names, they went around her, looking at each bed with frantic intensity.
Rutledge rose, waiting for them to find their son.
Sister Stevens was already coming out from behind her desk, stopping them before they got to his bed, her voice severe as she warned, “There are other patients here. Please calm yourselves.”
But Mrs. Morrow ducked around her, and it was all Rutledge could do to stop her from flinging herself on her son’s body.
Keeping his voice low, he said harshly, “He has broken ribs. Do you want to kill him?”
She drooped in his grip, her eyes staring up at him. And then some of the shock began to dissipate, and she blinked before standing on her feet again. But as soon as he released her, she caught up one of her son’s hands and was holding it to her face and speaking childish terms of endearment to the man lying on the pillows. Morrow himself took his son’s other hand, and gripped it as if he would never let it go.
Over their heads, Rutledge’s gaze met Sister Stevens’s, and she grimaced.
He could see, too well, how they had suffocated their son with their love, and why Alfred had fled to Sandwich when it was more than he could tolerate.
But that didn’t explain what had happened to him. Or why. The tart had saved his life, but she wasn’t here to question about how she’d found Morrow and what he might have said as she took him to her house. And they were no further along. Except that he had been found.
Rutledge stepped past the parents, still murmuring to their unconscious son, and said to Sister Stevens, “You see how it is. Can you prevent them from taking him home, if he survives and is released? If he did something foolish, out there in the dark, this may be the reason why.”
Her gaze on the bed, she said, “It’s the reaction to shock. I’ve seen it before. They must touch him, reassure themselves. But if he doesn’t go home, where will he go?”
He’d already decided. To Melinda. Until he could find out why this man had nearly died. “I’ll give you the name and address of a family friend.” He made a point not to add whose family. “She’s sensible, she has staff, he’ll be well looked after until he can decide for himself what it is he wants to do. Send a Sister with him, if you like. It’s a large house.”
“That’s rather high-handed, don’t you think?”
“Is it? The police aren’t sure whether this was murder, accident, or
suicide. You saw his wounds. What caused them?”
“Yes, there’s that. All right. I’ll do what I can, but Matron will decide.”
She stood there a minute longer, watching the Morrows, then with a nod to Rutledge went back to her desk.
He’d expected Jonathan Strange to appear by midmorning. But by the time the last of the luncheon trays were taken away, he still hadn’t come. Windom came twice, to see if there was any change in Morrow’s condition, and finally posted a new Constable in the passage, with orders to summon him.
Rutledge left very briefly to find a hotel, then shave and change his clothes, but Morrow continued to lie there, pale and feverish, without regaining his senses. Matron had come by midafternoon to persuade the Morrows that they should find a hotel and rest.
“We’ve a long watch ahead,” she told them. “You’ll need to be strong for it.”
In the end, they left, but grudgingly. Rutledge retrieved his chair and sat down for another long night ahead.
By 3:00 a.m., it was clear that Morrow had reached a crisis as his temperature soared, then dropped in a cold sweat that soaked the bedding. The doctor was summoned, and Matron stayed with him while they worked to save their patient.
At first light, on a cold and dreary January morning, it was clear that Alfred Morrow would live. Rutledge fell across his own bed an hour later and slept until teatime.
In the end Rutledge got his way.
Bundled in blankets and swathed in half a dozen more, Morrow was helped into Rutledge’s motorcar three days later and they set out for Melinda Crawford’s house. The man’s mother wept openly, and his father stood grimly by her side, having been told that Morrow was in police custody until it could be determined who had attacked him and why.
Windom, Rutledge thought as he drove away, was glad to be rid of a problem.
Awake, so weak he couldn’t feed himself, Morrow had tried to answer their questions. But he remembered nothing of the night he had sailed from Sandwich to Dover. Nothing of being taken to and abandoned in the house of the late Jenny Harold, herself a murder victim. And Jonathan Strange still hadn’t come to the hospital . . .
Morrow had asked for him once. And had been told he had left Dover for London.
Melinda Crawford had her guest conveyed to a large and airy room on the first floor, and a nurse was waiting to attend to him.
That done, Melinda cornered Rutledge in her study and asked him several pointed questions.
“I don’t know why he’s important,” Rutledge told her. “Or if he actually is. But I’m going to find out.”
“Are you certain,” she asked gently, “that he’s the key to Barrington?”
“He must be. Why else would the Strange family befriend him?”
She refrained from telling him that this could be wishful thinking, saying only, “Because he’s a nice young man? I’ve set up patrols around the house. No one can reach him where he is.”
“I don’t believe they’ll try. But better safe than sorry.”
“I’ve instructed his nurse that anything he says must be written down, and I intend to sit with him as well. You on the other hand left your valise in your motorcar. I saw it there.”
“I must go to London. For a day. Two at most.”
“Be careful.”
“I don’t think anyone has decided I ought to be dead,” he said, smiling at her.
She regarded him for a moment with that straight look that worried him so often, as if she could see beyond the mask he wore for her. “Young Morrow didn’t see his death coming.”
She persuaded him to stay the night, but that was all she could do. And he left in the morning.
Rutledge drove directly to the Barrington house in London. Although he pounded on the front door and again on the servants’ door, there was no answer.
Livingston had, apparently, left.
Rutledge left London heading toward Melton Rush and the Barrington house on the edge of the Cotswolds.
It was late when he arrived, but he stopped in front of the closed gates and sounded the horn on his motorcar until someone came down from the house.
“Scotland Yard to see Mr. Livingston,” he said, and his tone of voice brooked no argument.
The man hesitated, then came forward to open the gates, and without stopping, Rutledge drove through, directly toward the house.
He was admitted, and Livingston was told that he was waiting.
After several minutes, the steward opened the door of the study where Rutledge had been taken, and said as he shut it behind him, “This was a rather urgent summons. Couldn’t it have waited until morning? I’d just gone up.”
“You were in Dover recently. What was your business there?”
“Dover?” he asked. “I was actually near Canterbury. Barrington owns hop fields and oast houses in Kent. Two of the oast houses had wind damage after a storm. I went down to have a look.”
“How did you travel to Canterbury?”
“By train. From London.”
“Can anyone confirm where you were? How long you were there? And how you traveled?”
“Confirm? The man who manages the estate can tell you I was there. As to the trains, I had no idea I’d need to prove I took them. I turned in my ticket, as I was expected to do.”
“I have a witness who says you left the train at Rochester.”
Livingston turned away, moving to the hearth and taking up the poker in an attempt to stir the ashes into flame. The room was chill. It also allowed him time to recover from his surprise.
“Then he’d be wrong,” Livingston said, straightening up and hanging the poker in its proper place.
“You drove back to London with Barrington’s solicitor, Jonathan Strange, in his motorcar, and went directly to the Barrington house there.”
“Are you having me followed?” Livingston demanded, color rising in his face.
“I should have done.”
“What the hell for?”
“As a person of interest in the disappearance of Alan Barrington.”
“I had nothing to do with his disappearance.”
“Did you think when you saw Alfred Morrow disembark from the Belle, that he was Barrington?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who the devil is Alfred Morrow?”
Hamish spoke then. “He’s telling the truth.”
Which meant that Strange, for reasons of his own, hadn’t talked to Livingston about Morrow . . .
Rutledge stood there in the chilly room, studying the man before him.
If Livingston hadn’t attacked Morrow in Dover—who had?
He found a telephone in the next sizable town and rang Melinda Crawford.
“Ian, my dear,” she said, when she came to the telephone.
“Has Morrow spoken?”
“A little. Nothing about what had happened to him. He didn’t quite know where he was—he was terribly weak when he arrived, and of course he couldn’t see his surroundings. It’s not surprising that he’s confused. He thought he was in Sandwich, and called for Billingsley. I told him what we’d agreed upon. That Mr. and Mrs. Billingsley couldn’t be asked to take over his care at this stage, and so a nurse has been brought in. I was there to spell her as needed. Then he commented that his room smelled different. More of lavender and less of the furniture polish Mrs. Billingsley prefers. I had to think quickly, Ian, and I answered that we’d moved him to a larger room so that his nurse could have a more comfortable chair and a small desk, and that I preferred lavender to polish.”
In spite of himself, Rutledge laughed. “What did he say?”
“I was not to tell Mrs. Billingsley that he preferred lavender as well. The question is, how long will he believe me?”
“Long enough for me to find out why he was set upon.”
He drove on, pushing hard to reach the road that led to Ascot racecourse before dawn. If he still had the resources of the Yard, he could have sent someone to find out if Livingston h
ad indeed come to look at the damage to the oast houses. But that would have to wait.
Nearer four in the morning, he had to pull to the verge of the road and sleep for two hours. But he made it to his destination by seven, and found a room in a small hotel in Windsor, down a side street from the bulk of the castle. There he shaved and changed, had breakfast, and set out again for the site of the accident that had killed Blanche Fletcher-Munro.
19
The precise location of the crash was impossible to find. The trees that had been damaged had long since been cut down for firewood, and the road itself was straight for some distance. Although Rutledge drove slowly down it twice, he was no wiser than he’d been on his first try.
But the farm was still there when he went to look. He debated going directly to the house, then decided that at this time of day, most of the men would be working, even at this season.
And he was right. When he found his way to the farm lane, and bumped down it for a quarter of a mile, he saw the barn just ahead of him. A cart full of warm ordure steamed in the cold damp air as Rutledge pulled into the yard, and he saw two men busy mucking out the stalls. The one wheeling a barrow saw him first and called to someone inside. After a moment, a tall, graying man stepped out of the shadows, a pitchfork in one hand. He frowned as he saw the motorcar, handed the pitchfork to one of his companions, and walked forward, meeting Rutledge halfway.
He was too old to have been the son.
Rutledge persevered.
“Good morning. My name is Rutledge, I’m from Scotland Yard. There was a man who owned this farm ten years ago, and I’m told he died just before the war. I’m looking for his son.”
“Looking for him? Could I ask why?”
“His father came upon a crash on the road nearby, where a woman was killed. We’re looking into the inquiry again. I’d like to ask him what he remembers about that day.”
The man glanced over his shoulder. “Tommy, see to the rest, will you? I’ll be back.” Turning to Rutledge, he added, “The house is just that way. We can talk there.”
“And you are?”