A Lonely Death

by Charles Todd

  “Come inside, then.” Jones stepped back from the door. “I’m a bachelor. There’s nothing tidy about the place.”

  It was true. Half-eaten meals littered the tabletop in the long single room, and clothes had been dropped helter-skelter on the floor, the two or three chairs, and the posts of a bed. Rutledge could see the tiny kitchen at the far end opposite the door.

  “I’m out of work at present,” Jones told him, dragging a small battered trunk out from under the high, old-fashioned bed. “My family does what it can to keep me out of the poorhouse, but it’s been a close-run thing.” Unlocking and then lifting the lid, he considered the contents, mostly the uniforms. “Why would you want my discs? I served out my time, there’s been no problem with the Army.” He began to delve into a corner, fingers poking here and there.

  Rutledge said, “There have been several murders in a village where all the men served together. In each case, a disc was found in the dead man’s mouth. The names on the discs appeared to be random—Yorkshire, Cheshire, Wales. We’re trying to find out what connection the discs could have with events in the war.”

  Jones looked up from his search. “You’re saying one of these men had my disc in his mouth? But that’s not possible, I have my discs here. There must be some mistake.”

  “If you have your own discs, then I shall have to agree with you there,” Rutledge responded.

  Jones went back to searching and finally brought out a thin strand of rope, from which two fiberboard discs dangled. “Here they are, then,” he said triumphantly.

  Rutledge took the rope and examined the discs. Both were there, the name on each one worn but still legible. The only difference between the two he held now and the one that had been found in Sussex was a small nick in the edge of the one owned by Jones.

  “You’re right,” he said slowly. “You have both.” After a moment he passed them back to Jones. “Did you ever serve with men from the vicinity of Hastings? Anyone named Theo Hartle, Jim Roper, Anthony Pierce, or William Jeffers?” He deliberately put no rank to the names.

  An army in the field was seldom made up of one homogenous regiment. To bring a regiment up to strength, the army took what it needed from whatever troops were available. And so a company from Hastings might for a time serve with a company from Glasgow, only to see it replaced by a company from Cornwall if it suffered heavy casualties.

  But Jones shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You were a sapper. Did you ever serve under a Lieutenant Daniel Pierce?”

  “Never served with him, but we knew about him. There were stories of his going back into a tunnel to see why a charge hadn’t blown. Or going back after men caught in the tunnel when it collapsed. One such story claimed he broke through into a German countertunnel, and the two men shook hands, then shot each other. I don’t know how much of it was true, but we were always willing to believe the tales. It gave us a glamour, you might say. They claimed he dug a hole down to hell one night, and dined with the devil. There was always something being whispered behind the backs of our officers. It was their opinion such tales encouraged recklessness. It was dangerous duty at the best of times.”

  “What else was whispered about Lieutenant Pierce?”

  “Oh, I dunno. That he was unlucky in love, that sort of thing.” He set the discs back in the trunk, straightened the contents where he’d been digging around, and added over his shoulder, “He wasn’t the only one unlucky in love. I came home to find that the girl I was to marry had eloped with a bo’sun from a frigate. An Englishman at that.”

  Hamish was saying something in the back of his mind, but Rutledge was already posing the question. “How did you know that Pierce was unlucky in love?”

  “One story said the girl he was to marry had died. Another said that she’d chosen another man. Either way, she was lost to him, wasn’t she? And where there’s smoke, there must be fire.” He shoved the trunk back under the bed and got up, dusting off his hands. “Will there be anything else, Inspector?” he asked warily, as if the discs had been a trick to get Rutledge in the door and the truth was to come out now.

  Preoccupied, Rutledge said, “No. Thank you. I’m satisfied that all is as it should be.”

  But when he left, Jones was standing in the doorway, watching him go, as if to make sure Rutledge wasn’t playing some sort of game.

  Rutledge could feel his gaze on the back of his neck and wondered what Jones had done that made the man so suspicious of a policeman’s visit. On the whole, Rutledge thought, his answers had appeared to be truthful.

  It wasn’t his inquiry, and he let it go.

  Hamish, in the back of his mind, said as the motorcar turned around and Rutledge headed for England, “He was verra’ careful of yon trunk. He brought back souvenirs he shouldna’ have had.”

  And Jones wouldn’t have been the first to do that.

  Coming through Gloucester, Rutledge realized he would pass not twenty miles from where Rosemary Hume lived. She had told him to go away, but that was in the heat of anger and heartbreak over her husband’s death. He debated, and then decided to stop and speak to her. She could have changed her mind, and he owed it to Max, he thought, to do what he could.

  When he reached Chaswell, the first person he recognized was Max’s cousin Reginald, sitting in a motorcar outside a greengrocer’s.

  He pulled alongside and Reginald looked up, greeting him with the warmth of a man doomed to boredom for a good half hour more.

  “Inspector. What brings you back to Chaswell? You’re the last person I expected to see this afternoon.”

  “I’ve been to Wales to interview a witness. I’m on my way back to London and thence to Sussex. How is Rosemary?”

  “She’s taken it hard—but you know that. She hasn’t forgiven poor Max. And nothing I can say will change her mind. So I’ve given up trying. I’m surprised she wants me here. But she does. And in time that should help the healing.” He made a deprecating gesture. “Or possibly she’s afraid the journey back to Scotland will kill me, and she doesn’t want my death on her hands.”

  Rutledge smiled, ignoring a lorry driver sounding his horn as he edged past the two motorcars half blocking the road. “Anything I can do?”

  “No. Just—stay in touch.” His gaze went to the shop door as two women emerged, baskets in their hands, chatting together. Then he turned back to Rutledge. “I haven’t got much longer. I know that, and so does Rosemary. I expect that’s why she hasn’t sent me away.” He paused, staring down the road, as if he knew where it was leading. He didn’t look at Rutledge as he asked, “Will you come and see me, if I send for you? For Max’s sake?”

  Rutledge thought he knew what Reginald was saying, that with Max gone, he felt the need of someone to be there at the end. For it was not a death he could ask Rosemary to watch.

  “I give you my word I’ll try.”

  Reginald nodded. “It’s no more than I expected. Thank you, Ian.” It was the only time he’d used Rutledge’s given name.

  And then Rosemary Hume stepped out of the shop, and looked up to see Rutledge speaking to her houseguest. For an instant he thought she was about to turn away. Instead she gave him a cool greeting, and Rutledge asked how she was coping.

  “I’ve had time to understand what happened to us, to Max and me,” she said. “If he didn’t care enough to go on living, if he couldn’t face me with the truth of his feelings, then our marriage was over.” She held out one hand, stripping off its glove. Her finger was bare of rings. “I intend to take him at his word, and go on with my own life as I see fit.” But as she turned to pass the basket filled with her purchases to Reginald, Rutledge caught the reflection of unshed tears in her eyes. Recovering, she said, “I thought you had pressing Yard business in Sussex.”

  “It’s what took me to Wales. I’m returning to Sussex now.” He hesitated. “Rosemary—”

  “Ian, no! Don’t make excuses for him.” She turned to Reginald, but before he could step out o
f the motorcar to turn the crank, Rutledge forestalled him.

  “I’ll see to it.”

  He did, and moved to one side. With a nod, she drove away.

  Hamish said, “Ye canna’ talk to her. No’ until she’s at peace.”

  “Yes,” Rutledge answered, returning to his own vehicle. “That’s true. At least Reginald has stayed with her. In the end, that may help her more than anything I could do or say.”

  He didn’t stop in London. The three days were up at sundown. He paused in Hampshire and tried to put a telephone call through to the brewery, but there was no answer. He realized that Tyrell Pierce’s office must already be closed. And there was no way now to reach Constable Walker, to tell him to keep the six men under lock and key until he could arrive in Eastfield sometime in the early hours of the morning.

  He tried next to telephone Inspector Norman in Hastings, in the hope that he could get word to Eastfield. But Inspector Norman was out on another case, he was told, and Rutledge would have to wait for his return.

  He attempted to explain the situation, but the man on the other end of the line said firmly, “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to speak to the inspector.”

  Swearing to himself, Rutledge grimly set out again, making the best time he could.

  He hoped that Walker would have the good sense to wait. But with each mile he was more and more convinced that the objections of the incarcerated men would prevail, and Walker would let them go. After all, he had to live in Eastfield, long after Rutledge had returned to London.

  And there was nothing to be done about it but to pray that the waiting killer failed to find one of his targets alone and vulnerable.

  10

  It was closer to five in the morning when Rutledge drove into Eastfield and drew to a halt outside the police station.

  He had had to stop for an hour’s rest somewhere in the New Forest, pulling to the side of the road in an effort to rest his eyes. The night sounds around him were soothing, and he had slept instead. For a wonder Hamish was quiet. He had been busy ever since Rutledge had left Chaswell, taking advantage as he so often did of the stress that was already filling Rutledge’s mind.

  It was becoming increasingly apparent that something more than an event in the war lay behind these murders. For one thing, there was the face that Hartle couldn’t place, a face that worried him, on the day he was killed. Who was it he’d seen, and had he not only tried to find that man again, but encountered him in the dark on the headland? And why the headland? For another, the connection between those identity discs and the murders was less clear than it had first appeared.

  And there was Daniel Pierce as well, whose name kept cropping up.

  Were these pointers toward the truth, or was he still missing something that would bring the disparate pieces of the puzzle together?

  But even Hamish was silenced by sleep, brief though it was—no more than twenty minutes, but twenty precious minutes if a man’s life was hanging in the balance. The day had broken now. Whatever was going to happen had already happened.

  He sat for a moment in the motorcar, fighting his fatigue and staring at the closed and silent police station.

  It was one of the hazards of police work, making the wrong judgment. He had done his best to protect the six potential victims of this killer, rather than taking the chance that the murderer wouldn’t strike again while he was away. But at the same time, he’d accepted a risk of a different sort—by denying the killer his opportunity, he could have changed whatever plan there was to these murders and caused it to take on different, possibly more personal overtones. He wasn’t interested in finding out whether he could outwit the murderer or not. He was only intent on stopping him.

  He got out of the motorcar and stretched, his muscles tight and cramped from the drive from Wales. And then he walked to the door of the police station and put out his hand to lift the latch.

  The door was firmly locked.

  He stood there for a moment, his tired mind trying to grasp what that meant. A police station was always open. If the constable wasn’t there, he left a message on the desk telling whoever needed him where he could be found.

  Foreboding gripped him. He knocked firmly, using his knuckles. And there was no answer.

  He had no idea where Walker was. At home? At the scene of another death? And there was no one about at this hour, the street quiet and shuttered.

  And then Rutledge remembered Mrs. Sanders, who had seen the lorry driver come through Hastings and then return again for the police after he’d spotted the first body on the road. Rutledge had read her statement.

  He turned and looked across the way. Where was she? Not in the shops—or even above them. Then he saw the tall, narrow house wedged between a milliner’s and an apothecary’s. It looked to be one of the oldest buildings in Eastfield, brick and timber, the upper story leaning slightly to one side, as if the foundation had begun to subside when the newer apothecary’s had been built.

  Crossing the street, he walked up to the front of the house and looked up at the double windows of the first floor.

  One window was open to the slight morning breeze, the lacy white curtain billowing into the dark room behind, and Hamish said, “ ’Ware!”

  Rutledge peered intently at the window and then realized that behind the panel of white curtain was a tiny, wizened face, looking to be as old as the house itself.

  He called to the woman staring down at him, pitching his voice so that it carried to her but didn’t rouse neighbors on either side.

  “I’m looking for Constable Walker.”

  “Come in,” Mrs. Sanders called after a moment. “I never lock my door.”

  He turned and lifted the latch. The door swung open easily, and he stepped into a narrow dark passage. To one side, stairs climbed to the first floor. To the other, shut doors led into two rooms, and then a third door closed off the passage at the far end.

  He took the stairs two at a time, and rounded the railing toward the open door of the room that overlooked the street.

  A chair stood by the window, and in it sat the woman he’d glimpsed from below, cushioned and pillowed and covered with a quilted comforter.

  She turned her head to smile at him, the wrinkles in her face smoothing across her withered cheeks. But the eyes in that face were neither clouded nor dim. They were the color of pansies, almost a purple they were so dark a blue. Her well-brushed white hair, drawn back into a smooth braid that lay over one shoulder, looked like a pale halo in the shadow of the curtain.

  “Come in, young man. You must be the policeman from London. I’ve seen you come and go from the station with Constable Walker.”

  “Yes, I’m Inspector Rutledge. Mrs. Sanders?”

  “Indeed I am. There’s a chair behind you. Do sit down.”

  He sat. “I’m trying to find the constable. Unaccountably, the station is locked.”

  “So it is. He came out shortly after midnight and walked away. I think he locked the door as a precaution.”

  “A precaution?”

  “He was afraid those who were inside would try to leave.”

  Rutledge felt a surge of sheer relief. “He’s kept the six men locked up inside?”

  “Oh, yes, but it wasn’t an easy task. I could hear the yelling last night. My guess is, that’s why Constable Walker left. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes or my ears. Only my limbs have given out.”

  “I believe you. Do you sit at that window every night?”

  “And every day, except when I take my meals. I’m nosey, you see. And I have the world spread out before me here. I don’t need much sleep. I doze when I feel like it, and the rest of the time, I watch. It can be quite entertaining. Eventually the whole town passes beneath my window or across the street from me.”

  “You gave Constable Walker a statement regarding the lorry driver—” He had been about to say, the driver who found the first body, but broke off.

  “Don’t be shy, young man. There have
been four murders in this town, if you count poor Theo Hartle. I have a woman who comes and cleans for me, and another who brings my evening meal. We gossip.”

  He was sure they did.

  “Have you seen anything else from your window? Strangers who come to Eastfield in the night but who aren’t to be found during the day?”

  “There was a man, before the killings began—perhaps a week before. It was dark when he came walking up the Hastings Road. I couldn’t see him clearly enough to identify him. He was moving without haste, like a sightseer taking in the view. I thought it was odd, even so, but I decided he was looking for work and trying to determine whether he stood a better chance here or in Hastings. I expect he chose Hastings, because I never saw him again.”

  He said, taking a chance, “Did you know Daniel Pierce well enough to say with any certainty that the man wasn’t Pierce?”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Danny Pierce? Do you think he’s come home? Or considered it?”

  “I don’t know. You must tell me.”

  She gave that some thought. “I can’t see Danny slinking through Eastfield in the dark. He’d come striding in. There are those who would be happy to see him, if he did.”

  “Then who else could that man have been?”

  “If I come up with a name, I’ll tell you,” she promised. “Meanwhile, there’s Constable Walker standing by your motorcar, wondering where you might have got to.”

  Rutledge rose and glanced out the window. And he had a perfectly clear view of the constable, framed as neatly as a photograph for Mrs. Sanders’s pleasure.

  He thanked her and left, closing the house door behind him. As he started across the street, Constable Walker called testily, “I wondered where you went. I was about to try the hotel.” He waited until Rutledge had reached him and added, “What did you learn about those discs? I hope it was worthwhile. I’ve had to put up with enough abuse while you were away.”

  “The Yorkshire corporal had never had discs. The Welsh sapper found that his were still in his trunk, where he expected them to be. There was no time to move on to Cheshire, but I’m beginning to think we need to take a closer look at those discs we have.”