A Lonely Death

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A Lonely Death Page 20

by Charles Todd


  “He was nearly killed.”

  “Like those other men?” She stared at him, horrified.

  “No. Someone fractured his skull.”

  “He’s a policeman,” she said, as if that made it all the worse, that authority itself had been flouted and threatened with chaos. “I didn’t care for him, but still and all—” She looked over her shoulder, as if there was someone following them. “We’re all that afraid of going out at night. Hardly anyone stops by the pub, they say.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. Tell me about your brother’s life.”

  “He was a bouncing baby. That’s what Mum always said. Full of vinegar from the start.” She smiled, tears welling in her eyes. “But he was never in any trouble. Just mischief, that sort of thing. I didn’t like it when he was teasing me about my freckles. But he meant no harm.” She shook her head.

  “Teasing can hurt,” he said.

  “It did sometimes,” she admitted. “He called them my spots, and told Mum to wash my face in buttermilk. And he tried it once, but they didn’t go away. ‘You’ve got spots,’ he’d say, and sometimes I’d cry. Mum said he was just being a boy. They went away when I was older, my freckles, I mean, and I was glad of it.”

  Boys will be boys . . .

  Where else had he heard that? Was it Constable Walker who had said it?

  Rutledge stopped, turning to face her. “Did he tease anyone else? Or were you his favorite target, because you were his sister?”

  “Oh, they were always teasing one another,” she said. “It could be cruel, sometimes, you know. But they didn’t mean it to be. It’s just that children see things that adults try to pretend don’t exist. Jimmy Roper’s ears stuck out when he was small, and they told him he looked like a jug. And Mary, Will’s sister, stuttered. They’d mimic her something fierce, which only made it worse. This was in the school yard, when the schoolmistress wasn’t in hearing. Or on the way home, sometimes. Miss Tate helped her overcome her stutter, but it must have been hard to do. And there was another boy, I forget his name. But they tormented him too, when no one was about. We never told. We didn’t dare, although I said to Theo more than once that it was unkind.” She shaded her eyes to look up into Rutledge’s face. “Boys don’t always think, do they? That words can hurt?”

  “And the other boys—Jimmy Roper, Will Jeffers, even Anthony Pierce—went along with tormenting other children?”

  “Anthony didn’t like it, but he was too afraid to speak up. He was a little younger, and not as big then as the other boys. Could we turn back now? I really shouldn’t have walked this far.”

  They had reached the churchyard. Rutledge said as they reversed their direction, “You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Winslow. If you think of anything else, will you leave word for me at the police station?”

  “Yes. I will.”

  She walked back into her house and closed the door on the narrow world that encompassed her life now. He thought how pity, mistaken for love, could ruin lives. It was what he hadn’t wanted from Jean.

  Which reminded him of Meredith Channing, but he shut his mind to that memory and went to find the constable.

  Walker was glad to see him. “Speaking no ill of a man unable to speak for himself,” he said after greeting Rutledge and asking if he was taking over the inquiry, “but Inspector Mickelson was not pleasant to work with. I can’t think why the Yard would replace you.”

  “Mrs. Farrell-Smith complained of my conduct. She also believes I tried to murder Inspector Mickelson.”

  Walker smiled. “How would she think that? You weren’t in Eastfield that night.”

  Had Walker said as much to Hubbard? Rutledge wondered.

  “She claims she saw someone in a motorcar meet Mickelson by the churchyard and then take him up. If she’s right, then that someone owns a motorcar very much like mine.”

  “Now that’s odd,” Walker said, the smile vanished. “As I remember, that’s what Daniel Pierce drives. Only it’s dark green. I didn’t know he’d come back to this part of the world.”

  “It’s not an unusual motorcar,” Rutledge pointed out. “But I rather think Mrs. Farrell-Smith is afraid it did belong to Pierce.”

  “I didn’t think she knew him.”

  “How well do you remember Daniel as a child? Was he bullied by the older boys? Or was he spared because he was Pierce’s son?”

  “If they did bully him, it never came to my ears. I do remember a time or two when Daniel came home from school bloodied, and his father was angry with Anthony for not protecting him. Anthony told his father that Daniel had deliberately started the fight.”

  Daniel as the aggressor didn’t make sense. Rutledge said, “Did Pierce come to you?”

  “I was young and green. I talked to Daniel, but he was stubborn even then. I got nowhere. But I told his father I thought he’d learned his lesson.”

  “I want you to bring in two or three of the men we incarcerated. I’ll talk to them, see what they can tell me.”

  “Now?”

  “Before dark. I’ll see that they reach home safely afterward.”

  He left Walker and went to the hotel, where he was given a room. He asked if Inspector Mickelson’s room was on the same floor, and the young woman behind the desk said, “He’s—he was—in number seventeen. Constable Petty and then a man named Hubbard were here, asking about it.”

  “I’d expected as much,” he said, smiling. He took his key and went up the stairs two at a time. It didn’t take him long to discover that his key also fit number seventeen, after a little jiggling. He opened the door and stepped inside.

  The bedclothes were turned down, but the bed hadn’t been slept in. Mickelson’s clothes were hung tidily in the wardrobe, and his razor, toothbrush, and soap were on the washstand. The towels on the side rack appeared to be fresh, untouched.

  Where had Mickelson gone between his evening meal and that appointment at the rectory gates?

  Rutledge opened the desk drawer. There was stationery inside, and a few sheets had been used to jot down notes. Rutledge read through them.

  For the most part they consisted of brief references to what he, Rutledge, had done while in Eastfield: R to Pierce, R to rectory, R to F-S, K to R, as Mickelson retraced his predecessor’s steps.

  In London, Chief Inspector Hubbard had mentioned that Mickelson’s method had been to revisit Rutledge’s progress—or lack thereof—and draw new conclusions.

  Under the list he’d already scanned there was a question mark, and then the comment, Kenton says Hopkins is obsessed. Lives alone, no witnesses to his comings or goings. Motive strong enough? Talk to him again.

  And a later notation: Gave his permission to search premises. Not surprising, no garrote. Denies making discs. But good with tools. Could have stamped them out after hours, when other employees had left.

  On a separate sheet were listed the names of the murder victims, and below that, another of potential victims—all of them the men Rutledge had kept in gaol while he was trying to locate the ex-soldiers whose names had been imprinted on the identity discs shoved into their mouths after death.

  Near the bottom of the page was a larger question mark, drawn in heavy strokes.

  Doesn’t feel right, Mickelson has scrawled just below it. What if I’m wrong and the killing begins again after we’ve all gone away?

  The final line was ambiguous.

  Why Hastings? Ask R.

  Rutledge set the sheets back inside the drawer and closed it.

  Did the second sheet represent uncertainty on Mickelson’s part before or after he’d arrested Carl Hopskins? They weren’t numbered.

  Why Hastings? Ask R.

  Standing there, looking down at the street below, Rutledge considered that R.

  He found it hard to believe that Mickelson would have contacted him about Hastings. Who, then, was the R? The rector?

  Opening the door a crack, he listened, but the passage was quiet, and he stepped out of the room, shutting
the door again. Glancing at his watch, he could see that he just had time to call on the rector before dinner.

  But the rector wasn’t at home, and his housekeeper, an elderly woman with a plain face, informed Rutledge that he was with the elder Roper, the second victim’s father.

  “He’s been feeling rather down, since Jimmy’s death. Rector takes a book and goes to sit with him from time to time. Poor soul!”

  “Can you tell me if Inspector Mickelson called here at the rectory two nights ago? It may have been rather late.”

  “He’s the one they just found in Hastings,” she said, and shook her head. “I don’t know what the world’s coming to. Has he died, then?”

  “He’s still unconscious. Was he here, do you know?”

  “I leave after setting out Rector’s dinner,” she said. “Unless he’s ill. I live with my sister, and we sew of an evening. So I wouldn’t know who comes to call later than seven.”

  He thanked her and left, walking through the churchyard as the sun’s heat dissipated. Looking up at the church tower, and the weather vane swinging slightly west in the light breeze, it occurred to him that the rectory housekeeper often knew more about events in a village than anyone else—sometimes including the rector himself.

  Retracing his steps, he knocked again. When the housekeeper answered a second time, Rutledge said, “I wonder if you could help me, since Mr. Ottley isn’t here. Have you lived in Eastfield most of your life?”

  “All my life,” she told him complacently, “save when Mr. Newcomb and I went to Cornwall on our wedding trip.”

  She invited him inside, leading him to the parlor and offering him a chair with the simplicity of someone accustomed to receiving the rector’s visitors and making them comfortable until he returned. But when it came to sitting with him, she was clearly ill at ease, perching on the edge of her own chair.

  “How well did you know the murder victims? I wonder if you could tell me what they were like as schoolboys. Were they often in trouble, or were they generally good youngsters?”

  “Not troublesome, precisely,” she answered, considering the matter. “Lively, I’d say. Thoughtless, sometimes, as when they set fire to the old mill. The fire could have spread, you see, but it didn’t. Except for Mr. Anthony, his brother Daniel, and Theo Hartle, they were farmers’ sons, and eager to be outside, not shut up learning history and Latin and the like. Not that some of them weren’t good students. The elder Miss Tate told me once that Jimmy Roper could have made something of himself if he hadn’t been the only son and expected to inherit the farm. Theo was very good at numbers, and if he hadn’t had such a gift for working with wood, I think Mr. Kenton would have made him bookkeeper.”

  Here finally was the information that Mrs. Farrell-Smith could—should—have found for him in the school records.

  “I’ve heard,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that there was some problem with young Daniel Pierce.”

  “He got his nose bloodied a time or two,” she said, nodding. “But he was a sweet boy, nevertheless. He just never wanted to be a brewer. That was Mr. Anthony’s life, he was always underfoot there. The foreman’s wife told me once that Mr. Anthony wanted to go hop picking, to learn more about them.” She smiled at the memory. “His mother put a stop to that. ‘When you’re older,’ she told him.”

  “Were the brothers on good terms with each other?”

  “They got on well enough together. They were just different. Mr. Daniel was always adventuresome, and Mr. Anthony more bookish. In 1910 when there was all this talk about going out to Africa to grow coffee, I told Mr. Newcomb it was a shame Mr. Daniel wasn’t old enough to give it a try, but he said if the boy didn’t care for the brewery, then he wouldn’t be one for growing the coffee beans.”

  Rutledge brought her back to the subject at hand. “Who bloodied Mr. Daniel’s nose, if it wasn’t his brother?”

  “It was the other boys, if you ask me. They’d band together sometimes and tease Mr. Anthony or Mr. Daniel about their clothes or their accent or their manners. Mr. Anthony would ignore them, but Mr. Daniel was not one to turn the other cheek. I remember Rector had a word with him about that.”

  “Was there much teasing or taunting, do you think? If they turned on the Pierce brothers, who did the other boys harass? People tell me boys will be boys, but sometimes it’s cruelty, well beyond the bounds of teasing.”

  “Yes, sometimes it did get out of hand. I remember that poor Summers lad. He was overweight to begin with, and afraid of his shadow. Not good at sports, his face all blotched, clothes never together properly. Mr. Newcomb worked on the wormwood at the school one September, and he told me the boy was the butt of all manner of jokes and pranks and never stood up for himself. Mr. Newcomb wanted to say something to the elder Miss Tate, but it wasn’t his place. Mr. Newcomb did speak to Constable Walker, when Mr. Daniel got into trouble about fighting, defending him, like, but nothing came of it.”

  Rutledge had heard some part of this story before. From Mrs. Winslow? Yes, as she talked about her brother Theo tormenting her about her freckles. He asked, “What became of the Summers boy? Does he still live in Eastfield?”

  “Oh, heavens no. His father was a clerk at Kenton Chairs, and he was made a better offer by a firm elsewhere. Lincolnshire? Staffordshire? I can’t remember just where, but he packed up and left. There was just the two of them, a boy and a girl. Their mother died when they was very young. She’s buried in the churchyard here.”

  Walker—speaking about the near-drowning of a boy—had said the family moved away.

  “Do you remember the child’s first name?”

  “I believe it was Tommy. Tommy Summers. I haven’t thought about him in years. I hope things worked out better for him, wherever he went.”

  Yet sometimes a child was marked, and other children sensed it, like wolves turning on the weakest member of the pack. It was a poor analogy, perhaps, but it served.

  “I wonder if Inspector Mickelson came here to ask Mr. Ottley about the Summers boy?”

  “Where would he hear about him?” Mrs. Newcomb countered. “I daresay half the people in Eastfield have forgot about him by this time. I had, myself.”

  But Tommy Summers may not have forgot Eastfield or the wretched years he’d spent here.

  They talked for ten minutes or so longer, but Mrs. Newcomb had very little to add to what she’d already told him or he’d learned elsewhere. And so he took his leave.

  Walking back down the rectory drive, Rutledge asked himself if Tommy Summers, a grown man now, could be slowly wreaking revenge on his erstwhile playmates. But then what about Carl Hopkins?

  16

  Rutledge encountered Constable Petty on the High Street as he was walking back to the hotel.

  Petty stopped, saying, “I was about to report to Inspector Norman.”

  “Did you take anything from Inspector Mickelson’s room when you searched it earlier today?”

  “No, sir, I did not. I made an inventory of his personal belongings. Inspector Norman was waiting for instructions from Scotland Yard regarding their disposition.”

  “Is Mickelson in hospital in Hastings?”

  “I was told he had been transferred to Chichester. There’s a man there who knows a good deal about head injuries. It wasn’t considered wise to try to move him to London.”

  “No, I understand. I want a daily report on his condition. If you’re here to keep an eye on things for Inspector Norman, then you might as well serve me too.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand. You’re Hastings police. But I’ll have that report each day. I think you’ll find that Inspector Norman will raise no objections.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Chief Inspector Hubbard leave?”

  “He found someone from the hotel willing to take him to the station. Or so I was told.”

  “How did you get here, Petty?”

  “Bicycle, sir.”

  “There’
s something else you can do. Keep an eye out for motorcars similar to mine, but the color scheme may not be the same. I’d like to know where they’re going and who is driving them. If there’s one in Hastings Old Town that doesn’t belong there, I want to hear about that as well.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Rutledge nodded and walked on.

  Petty had only one loyalty. But Rutledge needed his eyes.

  He brought back to mind the man he’d seen at The White Swans. Most likely Daniel Pierce, not Tommy Summers. The descriptions differed.

  Hamish said, “Aye, but ye canna’ judge how the Summers lad looks now.”

  And that was an important point.

  As agreed, Constable Walker had collected his nephew, Billy Tuttle, Hector Marshall, and Alex Bullock, and they were waiting for Rutledge in the Eastfield police station.

  They sat on the bench, stony faced, as if expecting Rutledge to lock them up again, already resisting what he was about to say.

  But there was new information since he had summoned them, and so he asked, “Do you recall a village child called Summers? He and his sister attended school with you.”

  They stared at him.

  “His father moved north when the boy was about ten, I should think—not all that many years ago. Tommy Summers.”

  Tuttle turned to Bullock. “I don’t think there was a Summers lad, do you?” Looking back to Rutledge, he added, “He must have been younger. Or older, even.”

  Marshall said, “Summers. There was a girl by that name. My sister’s age. Long blond plaits down her back.”

  “Was she the Summers girl? I thought she was dark.”

  They argued amongst themselves, but the upshot was, they had no recollection of Tommy Summers at all.

  Rutledge said, “You tried once to drown him as a witch.”

  Something stirred in Marshall’s eyes, but he shook his head.

  Tuttle shrugged. Bullock looked at the far wall, as if expecting more to follow, and this was somehow a trick to lull them. They were more interested in the present than the past.

 

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