A long shadow ir-8

by Charles Todd

  "There can't be that many loaded revolvers lying about in Hertford!" Rutledge persisted. "Does your Mrs. Mass- ingham have one?"

  Smith was on the defensive now. "Her husband was a cavalry officer. He kept his weapons locked away. To my knowledge, she hasn't touched them since he was killed in the Boer War. She said as much."

  "Which means," Hamish responded in the back of Rut- ledge's mind, "that she wouldna' know if one was missing."

  And Smith, in awe of the Massinghams, most certainly wouldn't have questioned her word.

  "I'd like to see this Tommy Crowell for myself." Rut- ledge folded his serviette and nodded to the woman who had served their meal. She turned to bring him the reckoning. "Where does he live? Or have you taken him into custody?"

  "Now?" Smith asked, gulping the last of his tea. "There's no need-"

  "But there is," Rutledge told him, already scanning the charges. "I'm leaving for London early tomorrow. No, don't bother, I've taken care of it."

  Smith almost ran at his heels on their way to the door. "The boy can't pay for the damages to your windscreen," he said, huffing with the effort. "I've already spoken with his mother. There's no money-"

  "I'm not interested in money," Rutledge answered as he reached his motorcar in the yard behind The Three Feathers. "Where is he now? Have you charged him?"

  "I wasn't intending-I was going to hold him overnight to put the fear of God into him, in the hope he'd show me where he tossed that revolver. But his mother begged me-"

  "Then take me to where they live!"

  Smith cranked the motorcar for Rutledge and then climbed into the passenger's seat. "A mile from the Massingham estate, there's a lane that turns down to the east. Follow that another mile or so, and I'll tell you where to stop."

  Rutledge drove out of Hertford, back the way he'd come, and found the lane with no difficulty. It was rutted, and the motorcar bounced unpleasantly for some distance before the row of cottages came into view, smoke from their chimneys wreathing the roofs in the cold night air.

  Smith indicated the third house on the left, and Rutledge came to a halt. "Let me speak to the mother. You'll terrify her, Scotland Yard invading her sitting room."

  He got out and knocked at the door. A worn woman of perhaps forty answered, and then stared in alarm over his shoulder at the tall man behind Smith, dressed in a London- made coat and hat. "You're not going back on your word?" she began accusingly. "I promised I'd keep him to home."

  "There's nothing to worry you, Mrs. Crowell. I'd just like to speak with Tommy for a bit. This is Mr. Rutledge. It was his car that was damaged, but he hasn't come about repayment."

  They stepped under the low lintel and into a small, cluttered room. It was apparent that Mrs. Crowell took in laundry. There were baskets of neatly folded clothes and bed linens set in every available space, and the odors of hot irons and strong soap permeated the house.

  Apprehensive, her eyes on Rutledge, she called Tommy from his room under the eaves. He came clattering down the steps, a big, rawboned child of about sixteen, his face changing from open curiosity to frowning uncertainty as he saw his mother's guests.

  Stopping short, he looked from his mother to Inspector Smith, his expression shifting with every thought that passed through his head.

  Before Smith could speak, Rutledge stepped forward and held out his hand. "Hallo, Tommy. My name's Rut- ledge. I'm from London. You're quite a good shot, you know. Hit the windscreen dead center!"

  Tommy Crowell burst into shy smiles at the praise as he shook Rutledge's hand. "Thank you, sir. I've had a good deal of practice."

  "Ever thought about the Army?" Men hardly more than a year or so older than Tommy had served under him, as Hamish was reminding him.

  Mrs. Crowell began to protest, but Rutledge sent her a warning glance.

  "The Army?" Tommy hesitated. "Ma wouldn't allow it."

  "What do you prefer, when you're hunting? Shotgun? Revolver?"

  A wariness crossed the boy's face. Rutledge noted it, and added, "I'm a better shot with a revolver myself." And as the words came out of his mouth, he saw himself standing over the body of Corporal Hamish MacLeod, and drawing his service revolver to deliver the coup de grace, looking down into the pain-ridden eyes begging for release. The cottage room suddenly seemed small, airless, sending an instant of panic through him.

  "Fiona…" Rutledge could hear the name as clearly as he had that night on the Somme, as the improvised firing squad stood there watching.

  A hand touched his arm, and Rutledge nearly leapt out of his skin.

  It was Smith, and for an instant he couldn't remember where he was, or why.

  "I'm sorry?" he said, swallowing hard. He'd missed the boy's answer.

  Tommy said, repeating his answer nervously, "I've never fired a real weapon." He turned to his mother, and she nodded. "I'm better at this." He reached on a shelf by the mantel and took down a slingshot. It was strong and well made. And someone had carved and stained it to look like horn. He held it out with a mixture of pride and anxiety. "You won't take it, will you? Ma won't let me use it anymore, but I like to look at it."

  Rutledge examined it, turning it in his hands, asking, "And you shot out my windscreen with this?"

  Tommy nodded. "I must have done. It's what I was shooting."

  But Rutledge had dug a bullet out of the frame of his motorcar where it had buried itself after narrowly missing him. "Then where's the revolver?"

  He shook his head in confusion. "I don't know, sir, truly I don't. I must have lost it!"

  Smith started to speak, but Rutledge was there before him. "Did you lose it in the pasture? Where the horse was grazing? Were you lying by the hedgerow, and dropped it after firing at my car? Where the road bends," Rutledge added, as Tommy seemed unable to grasp the exact location.

  "That's the Upper Pasture, where the road bends." The boy's face changed. "Inspector Smith didn't say it was the Upper Pasture-I-he said where the horses are, and that's the home paddock. I don't go to the Upper Pasture, not anymore." The vehemence in his voice was unmistakable, and his face had paled, making him look even younger than his years.

  "Why? Because of what you'd done there?"

  "No, sir, no-I don't like the dead soldier there. I'm afraid of him."

  Rutledge had quartered every foot of that ground, and there had been no dead soldier. Nor even the makings of a grave.

  But it was clear that Tommy had seen someone there. Or something. In spite of Rutledge's efforts, he got no other information from the Crowell boy. Whatever had caused his terror had emptied his mind of details, and he shook his head over and over again, saying, "I don't-I don't know."

  In the end, Rutledge handed back the slingshot and said, "That's a nice piece of workmanship, and I think your mother ought to allow you to have it again." With Smith at his heels, blustering, Rutledge went out to the motorcar and cranked it himself. The night had turned cold, with frost, surely, by morning. Pulling on his gloves, he got behind the wheel.

  Smith was still protesting.

  Rutledge said, "I don't believe he ever touched a revolver. Whatever you ask him, he agrees with. 'Where is the revolver?' 'I don't know where it is, sir.' That's the literal truth-he doesn't. Because he never had it. You've asked him a direct question and he gives you the best answer he knows how. But whatever-whoever-was in that Upper Pasture must have done the firing."

  "A dead soldier? That I knew nothing about? You didn't buy that cock-and-bull tale, did you?"

  But then, Hamish was saying, Smith knew nothing about the.303 casings.

  "Not even a suicide?"

  Smith answered, "Look, if the boy is lying about the revolver, he's lying about the dead man as well. It's a matter of self-preservation. He doesn't remember what he did with the weapon, and so he gives you a corpse instead. You're a policeman, and corpses are what you deal with. Even Tommy Crowell understands that."

  "He doesn't lie. Simple people seldom do. He told you he didn't know
where the revolver is, and he doesn't. If he saw a dead man in that pasture, he described him in terms he could understand."

  He recalled Tommy's exact description. "He was dead, buried. I saw him and I didn't like it. And I ran."

  "Buried, as in a churchyard?"

  "No, not in a churchyard. There were no flowers, and no tombstone. Still, he was lying there, buried."

  "I can hardly scour Hertfordshire for a dead soldier! It's a waste of my time and the time of my men."

  "No. Whoever was in that pasture couldn't have been a local man."

  "You can't be sure of that."

  Rutledge glanced at him, saw the angry face etched by the motorcar's headlamps, and answered him carefully. "It's your patch. You know it best. If you find out anything, you know where to reach me in London."

  "If it's not a local man," Smith said, pursuing the issue doggedly, "it was no accidental shooting, was it? He knew where he was aiming." When Rutledge said nothing, he fell silent, thinking it through. Where the rutted lane met the main road and the motorcar's tires fought for a grip in the icy mud as Rutledge turned, Smith went on. "You have an enemy out there, then. I'd not care to be in your shoes." He turned his head to look behind Rutledge, as if searching out Hamish. "I'll thank you to take your troubles out of Hertfordshire as soon as you can. We don't need them."

  7

  Bowles was pacing his office by the time Rutledge had received his summons and knocked at the door. "Where the hell have you been?" the Chief Superintendent demanded angrily. "I sent for you a good half hour ago! And what's happened to your face?" "I've just got in from Hertford, sir-" "I don't give a dance in hell where you've come from. You're leaving for Northamptonshire straightaway. There's trouble in a place called Dudlington in the north of the county. A constable has been shot with a bow and arrow, for God's sake!" "A bow-" Rutledge began, surprised, but Bowles cut him off. "He'll live, no thanks to the bastard who did it, leaving him in the weather to die of his wound. It was intentional, this shooting, we're certain of that. And I want whoever it is brought to justice now. Do you understand me? Hens- ley's one of my men, or was, when I was an inspector in Westminster. He went north over my objections, and look where it's landed him."

  Bowles's face was red and blotched with fury. He shoved a file of papers at Rutledge.

  "Well, don't stand there, man! I want you to interview Hensley tonight, if those fool doctors will let you, and get to the bottom of this business. They've got him in hospital in Northampton, and the local man says he's just out of surgery."

  It was useless to plead fatigue or other pressing business. Bowles was not a man who cared about anything but getting his own way. And blustering anger was a well- tested method of keeping his subordinates from arguing with him.

  Rutledge took the file and left.

  Down the passage he ran into Sergeant Gibson in conversation with the man sweeping the floor.

  Gibson turned away to speak to Rutledge and said dourly, "If you want the truth of the matter, Hensley left under a cloud. I never did know the ins and outs of it. A personal matter. He managed to keep it from Old Bowels' ears, I'm told. The Chief Superintendent thought he was the perfect copper. Threw him up to us any number of times."

  Rutledge said dryly, "Then there'll be no end of suspects for this attempt at murder."

  Gibson caught himself before he grinned. Instead he retorted, "How the mighty are sometimes brought low." And with that he was off down the passage, leaving Rutledge standing there. Dudlington was a tiny village of stone-built houses topped with gray slate roofs and a single, slender-towered church, huddled together in the midst of open fields, as if for warmth or comfort. The rich brown of plowed acres and the yellow green of winter pasture lay like a blanket around them, but the houses turned their backs to the land, as if ignoring it, and the barns were a low afterthought, tucked here and there, as if no one had known what to do with them. It lay north of the county town, but Rutledge's first call was in Northampton.

  He found his way to the hospital there, only to be turned away because Hensley was still recovering from his surgery.

  Rutledge spent what was left of the night in a hotel recommended by an orderly and returned early in the morning.

  Over the objections of Matron, he stepped into the ward to see if Hensley was awake.

  The constable was in the men's surgical ward, halfway down the row and on the left, watching through half-closed lids as a nursing sister bathed his neighbor in the next bed. There were some six or seven other patients in the long room, two of them snoring heavily, and the others lying quietly, as if in too much pain to move.

  Hensley looked up as Rutledge stopped by his bed. "You a doctor, then?" he asked hoarsely. "I was told they were giving me something for the pain."

  He was pale, his barrel chest swathed in bandages, his thinning dark hair combed and parted, as if he'd already been tidied by the plump sister who now turned to Rutledge.

  "It's not visiting hours for another forty minutes," she told him crisply. "I'll have to ask you to leave!"

  "I'm here on police business, Sister," Rutledge said, bringing a chair from another bedside to place it next to Hensley's.

  She tried to stare him down and failed. "You won't tire my patient, then. Or I must ask Matron to throw you out."

  "No, I won't tire him." Rutledge sat down, dropping his hat on the foot of the bed. "How are you feeling?" he asked Hensley. It was a rhetorical question, asked as a courtesy.

  "Bloody awful," Hensley complained in a strained voice. The roughly handsome features were drawn, giving them a sharper edge. He made an effort to collect himself. "I'm told the doctors here saved my life. I can't say. I don't remember much about what happened. Who are you? Not a local man…"

  "The name's Rutledge. I've come from London to look into this business."

  "Was it Old Bowels who sent you?" Hensley asked, showing more interest. "He always did look after his own." Not waiting for Rutledge to answer, he shifted uncomfortably. "It's these damned bandages-they stick and pull at the stitches, and there's no help for it. Bad enough what they did to remove the point of the arrow. Aches like the very devil! Between that and the catgut, I've not had a minute's peace since I came out of the ether and found myself in this bed." He shot a black look in the direction of the sister, but she ignored him.

  "You say you remember very little of what's happened. Do you remember where you were when the arrow struck you?"

  Even as Rutledge spoke, his mind conjured up an image of the windscreen shattering, and he pushed it back into the shadows.

  Hensley looked away. "I'm told they found me at the southern edge of Frith's Wood. I can't say if that's true or not. If it was, I didn't get there under my own power."

  "Would this wood normally be a part of your regular rounds? Close enough, for example, for you to see or hear something that attracted your attention? Even if now you can't remember going that far?"

  Hensley answered him with more intensity than the question merited. "The last thing I remember was riding my bicycle along the road to Letherington, well to the east of the wood! How could I see or hear anything from there? I draw a blank on the rest of it. They tell me I came to my senses as they were lifting the stretcher into Mr. Staley's wagon. If I did, I couldn't tell you what was said to me."

  "Do you have any idea who might have shot you? Would someone practice archery in the wood, or hunt rabbits there?"

  "Not in Frith's Wood, they wouldn't. People avoid it." He stirred again, trying to find a little comfort. "At any rate, the trees are too close for true archery or much of anything else."

  "Is there anyone in Dudlington who bears you a grudge?"

  Something flitted across Hensley's face, a shadow of guilt, Rutledge thought.

  "I don't have any notion what happened, much less why," he answered just as a patient three beds away began to cough heavily. The sister hurried to his side, and Hensley watched her prop the man higher on his pillows. "No one goe
s to that wood. Not if they've got any sense. Least of all me. I can't think why anyone might drag me there. Unless it was to hide what he'd done."

  "He's no' a light man to be hauled about," Hamish said, stirring, his voice no more than a thread in Rutledge's mind. "No' in the middle of the day, when people are about."

  "What's wrong with this wood?" Rutledge asked. "Why do people avoid it?"

  "It's haunted by the dead. So it's said."

  "What dead?"

  Hensley shut his eyes, as if keeping them open was an effort. "It's not a police matter. Saxon dead, a long time ago. The story is there was a massacre, raiders herding everyone from the village into the wood and slaughtering them. You haven't been there, you don't know what it's like. Strange. That's all I can say."

  "Who found you?" Rutledge asked.

  "I don't know. I asked Dr. Middleton that, and he said I wasn't to talk." He shifted again. "They did tell me I lay there bleeding for more than two hours. I was that cold, they thought I was already dead. That was afterward, on the journey down to Northampton. I can recall a little of that."

  "Anyone on your patch who uses a bow?"

  He moved his hand slightly, indicating he didn't know. "Sister," he called as the nurse eased the coughing patient and started down the ward with her basin of bathwater. "Is it time yet?"

  "I'll tell you when it's time," she said. "Mr. Rutledge, I believe you've asked enough questions."

  Hensley turned his head restlessly. "Bloody woman," he said under his breath. "I'm the one here in the bed, not her. How does she know how I feel?"

  "How often do you go to Letherington? Could someone have expected to find you on the road there at a particular time of day?"

  "I go to Letherington when I need to meet with Inspector Cain. Or report to him. There's no pattern to it." He hesitated. "I thought I heard crows above the fields, making a bloody racket. I stopped my bicycle and stood there, looking around. That's the last I remember."