A long shadow ir-8

by Charles Todd

  "That's an illusion. For one thing, there's the weather this time of year. The wind howling across those wide fields doesn't invite you to stop on the street and pass the time of day for a quarter of an hour. And the men are mostly stockmen, up at dawn and home after the livestock has been fed and bedded for the night. Many of them come home for their midday meal, which means their wives spend a good part of their day in their kitchens. They do their marketing in the morning, and this time of year, it's dark by the time the children come in from Letherington, where they're schooled now. We had a schoolmaster before the war, but he enlisted as soon as Belgium was invaded. He hasn't been replaced."

  "Did Constable Hensley have trouble keeping the peace? His records are sparse, and it's hard to judge if that's because the village is relatively quiet, or because he was behind in his paperwork."

  "We've had our share of trouble, I won't deny that. On the other hand, people often don't bother to lock their doors. Human beings are human beings, which translates into the fact that you don't know what they're capable of until they're pressed. Still, we seldom have the sort of crimes you'd find in London. Arson, rape, breaking and entering, theft of property. It doesn't mean that we're better than Londoners, just that we know one another very well, and the man who steals my horse can hardly ride it down Church Street without half the householders recognizing it on the spot." He smiled. "But don't be fooled. Everyone knows your business as soon as you set foot in Dudlington. Gossip is our pastime, and you'll do no better than Constable Hensley at ferreting it out." The smile broadened. "I shan't be surprised to see a flurry of patients this afternoon with all manner of minor complaints. Every one of them expecting me to tell them what I made of this man from London."

  "Then what does gossip have to say about someone nearly killing Hensley with a bow and arrow?"

  The smile vanished. "Ah. That I haven't been privy to. I wish I were."

  "Then tell me about Frith's Wood, where Hensley was found."

  "It's not a place people frequent." Middleton sighed. "Case in point. No one has ever cut firewood there, they don't wander there on a quiet summer's evening, and they will walk out of their way to avoid having to pass in its shadow. My late wife told me she'd never played there as a child, which tells you something. There's an old legend about a massacre there in the dim dark past, and such superstitions tend to strengthen with time. Consequently, the wood is avoided."

  "Have you ever walked in the wood yourself?"

  "Never. Except for once about three years ago. Not because I'm superstitious, but it would upset people. Why meddle?"

  "Tell me about finding Hensley."

  "It was nearly teatime. I was sitting in my chair in the parlor, napping, when Ted Baylor came to my door. His dog heard something in the direction of the wood and began barking. Baylor wasn't inclined to investigate, but after he'd seen to his livestock, he decided he'd better discover what the dog was on about, before it got dark. When Baylor let him out of the yard, the dog made straight for the wood, disappeared into it, and barked again. Baylor was of two minds about what to do, but he finally went in after the dog, and there was Hensley lying on the ground, cold as a fish. Ted thought he was dead, and told me as much. But it was shock and the cold air, and I managed to bring him around once I got him here and warmed again."

  "And you broke the shaft of the arrow?"

  "There wasn't any choice in the matter. I couldn't very well leave it sticking out of his back. I asked Ted Baylor and Bob Johnson to hold it steady while I cut it with my knife. I thought the tip would come out without doing more harm, but it was lodged in the rib, and I don't have the facilities here for major surgery."

  "Do you still have the shaft?"

  Middleton pointed to a basket on a table under the window. "It's in there. Nothing distinctive about it. Just an arrow fletched with blue and yellow feathers."

  Rutledge crossed the room to examine it. Middleton was right, the shaft was wood, and not homemade. The feathers appeared to be a little bedraggled, but from age or use, he couldn't say. Their condition hadn't stopped the arrow from flying true-or again, perhaps it had, if the bowman had intended a killing shot.

  Hamish said, "It's no' possible to tell if this was a woman or a man. Or how far fra' the target the archer was standing. If yon arrow was aimed at the constable's back, the archer didna' care whether his victim lived or died."

  "He lay there in the wood for several hours. No one came back to finish what the arrow had begun," Rutledge agreed, unaware that he was answering Hamish aloud.

  Middleton said, "It's not likely someone went to the wood to practice at the butts. For one thing the trees are too close together, and for another, it's just not done. Not here in Dudlington, at any rate. Unless you were an outsider and didn't know the history of the place. Of course, if you were looking to murder Hensley, I suppose that was a prime place to do it. Superstition or no superstition. But that makes no sense. You could slip into his house and cut his throat while he slept, if that's what you were after, and not take a chance on being seen walking into Frith's Wood. Or risk finding out that the tales of haunting are true."

  "What became of Hensley's bicycle? He claims he was riding it on the main road, before he was attacked."

  "I don't suppose anyone thought to look for it. I for one believed he'd been on foot. There was no sign of it near his body, I can tell you that."

  "Did Hensley offer any explanation about why he'd ventured into the wood in the first place?"

  "He didn't have to. I could imagine the reason for myself. We've always wondered if Emma Mason was buried there. And I think he's spent the last three years searching for her grave."

  9

  Who is Emma Mason?" Rutledge asked. There had W been no file for a missing woman, or a murder, in Hensley's parlor.

  "She was a local girl. Seventeen at the time she vanished. We searched the countryside for miles around. No one had seen her leave, and no one knew what had become of her. Her grandmother was distraught-she would have led the search parties herself, if she'd been up to it."

  "Foul play, then?"

  "We couldn't think of anyone who might have harmed her. And we couldn't come up with a sound reason why she should leave. Abruptly, without a stitch of clothing missing or even a toothbrush with her."

  "Then why suspect she was buried in the wood?"

  "It was the only place," Middleton answered with sadness, "that someone could have disposed of a body without being seen by half the village looking out its back windows. A logical place, so to speak. But we covered every inch of the wood, and there was nothing to indicate that the ground had been disturbed. I doubt if anyone could have dug a grave there, anyway, with so many roots. Still-the search had to be made, if we were going to be thorough." Following the directions Middleton had given him, Rut- ledge left his motorcar at the church and walked across the fields from there. He had gone no more than a few hundred yards when he realized how open the land was under a bowl of gray winter sky. The grass was brown, there were no trees except along the stream, and all the way to the horizon, nothing broke the emptiness.

  He felt suddenly vulnerable.

  If someone had followed him to Kent and to Hertford- why not here?

  The grass crunched under his feet, and the wind had a bite to it. He could see the wood now. Bare branches stood out darkly against the slate color of the clouds, like fingers reaching upward. It was a larger wood than he'd expected, and denser. Impossible to see beyond the trees to the next field, the trunks and undergrowth weaving a thicket.

  Behind him he could see the week's wash blowing on lines in the backs of houses, the slate roofs dark under the gray clouds overhead, and the tall, thin spire of the church soaring into the sky like a lonely sentinel.

  A dog barked from a house on the far side of the church, near a small barn. Ted Baylor's dog?

  By the time he had reached the wood, Rutledge was aware that Hamish was tense and lurking in the back of his mind.r />
  He stepped into the line of trees, sensing the eyes of villagers watching from behind their lace curtains. He had a feeling that if a Saxon warrior met him at the edge of the wood and lopped off his head with a long blade, no one would be surprised.

  Hamish said, "It's no' a very good idea to tempt the dead."

  "No. Not while walking over them."

  Walking was difficult, dead or no. Fallen boughs and rotted trunks were traps for unwary feet under the mat of wet leaves. He stumbled once and caught himself with a hand on the nearest tree. There was a small area where the leaves had been churned by a multitude of feet. Hensley, then, and his saviors.

  Looking around, Rutledge wondered how anyone had managed to get the badly wounded constable out of the wood, tight as tolerances were. Somehow they had got it done.

  He examined the ground for some distance on either side of the site where he presumed Hensley had been found. But there were not enough signs to indicate whether the man had been dragged to the scene or fell there. It would surely have been as difficult getting him here as it had been to extricate him. Rutledge realized he needed a good deal more light to be certain. But on the whole, as Hamish was saying, it appeared that Hensley had been in the wood and on his feet when he was shot. Whether he had intentionally lied about that or honestly couldn't remember any of the events before the arrow struck him, it was hard to say.

  Some distance away, in the soft earth by the bole of a tree, Rutledge found a deep indentation that indicated someone had been standing here. But whether it was the man with the bow and arrow, or Hensley himself, it was impossible to tell.

  With Hensley down, Hamish was reminding him, there had been no one to do an investigation of the ground in his place. The doctor had been busy with his patient, and his helpers had been in a hurry to get out of the wood as quickly as possible. If they'd searched at all, it was cursorily.

  Rutledge moved on, studying the earth underfoot intently before taking each step. But the clues were small and hard to see. A stalk bent here, a leaf dislodged there, a twig broken where someone had brushed by it. There was no way to know who had disturbed any of them, Hensley or his attacker. The odd thing was, he hadn't started a rabbit or seen a bird flitting from tree to tree, twittering with curiosity. The wood was empty and quiet. And that was ominous in itself… How difficult would it be to dig down into the composted soil, to make a grave? Would that have been Hens- ley's fate if he'd died straightaway? Even a killer might have qualms about burying a man still alive. Rutledge shuddered at the thought. It could probably be done, this digging. But it would have left scars on the ground for all the world to see. That is, if the world bothered to come and look here. Rutledge made his way deeper into the trees, taking his time. The farther he went, the dimmer the light, as if it had been sucked away from the heart of the wood. What's more, it was hard to see behind or ahead, and that alone would make a man feelHe stopped short, listening. But there was no one moving behind him, though he would have sworn he heard footsteps there. Who would be bold enough to walk into Frith's Wood after him? Hamish said, "I canna' say I like it in here. We'd best be gone." But Rutledge continued straight ahead, hoping to come out of the wood on the far side. Instead he had gone in a half circle and wound up where he'd come in. I've got a better sense of direction than that, he told himself. Yet it would have been easy enough to get off track as he avoided thickets and trunks grown too close together.

  He stopped to listen again, but the footfalls he'd believed he had heard were silent. In a way, that was more chilling than knowing they were still behind him.

  It would take ten men and the better part of a day to cover all the wood as carefully as he'd done in his own circle, and he wasn't sure he could find ten men in Dudlington who would be willing.

  Frith's Wood was an excellent place for an ambush. On his way back to Hensley's house, Rutledge saw a stooped man puttering in the small garden of what must be the rectory, set as it was almost in the precincts of the church. He turned that direction and came to lean on the low wall that separated the churchyard from the rectory grounds as he called out, "Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. May I come in and speak with you?"

  The man looked up and waved. "Come around to the gate-just there."

  Rutledge did as he was told and found his way around the side of the house to where the man waited, leaning on his pitchfork.

  "I'm Frederick Towson, rector of St. Luke's," he said, taking off one of his gardening gloves to offer his hand. "Or has someone already told you as much?"

  "No. I've only just met a handful of people here."

  "I saw you walking toward the wood. Looking for clues, are you? Come in, and we'll have some tea to warm our bones." Towson smiled. "Yours may not be as old as mine, but this cold isn't particular."

  Rutledge followed him into the tall, narrow stone house, surely far too big for one man to manage on his own. There must be a woman who came in to clean. He made a mental note to find out who it was.

  "I try to do a little work in the gardens each day, to keep my hand in, but the truth is, my thumbs are brown, not green. If anything grows at all, it's through the kindness of my neighbors. They come to offer advice, and I listen." He opened the kitchen door and pulled off his muddy boots before stepping inside. Rutledge stopped long enough to use the iron scraper, shaped like a sleeping cat crouched by the door.

  The kitchen was a warm, cozy room painted a pleasing shade of blue. The furnishings were old but well polished, and there were blue-and-white-patterned curtains at the windows, matching the cloth on the table.

  "Sit down. I'll just put on the kettle."

  Rutledge tried to judge the man's age, and decided he was perhaps sixty, although his hands were knotted and crippled by rheumatism. Those knuckles, he thought, must give Towson a good deal of pain at night.

  But the rector was quick and economical in his movements, and he had the wood-burning cookstove fired up in no time. From a cupboard he took out bread and butter, setting them before Rutledge with a pot of jam.

  "I'm fond of a little something with my tea," he explained, reaching for the bowl of sugar and then disappearing into the pantry to find milk.

  The tea was steeping when he finally settled down across from Rutledge and sighed. "I've heard no news of Hensley. Is he recovering-or dead?"

  "Recovering. But in a good deal of pain. You can see the wood from your upper windows, surely. Did you notice him walking that way three days ago? Was there anyone with him? Apparently he can't remember where he was just before he was shot. I'm trying to fill in the gaps."

  "I can see Frith's Wood only from the attic windows, I'm afraid-because of the church cutting into the view. And I was in my study, working on my sermon. You'd think I knew how to write one by now, but it comes hard. I expect I've said everything I have it in me to say." He smiled wryly. "No, the first I knew of the incident, one of my neighbors came to tell me. By that time, Hensley was on his way to Northampton. Even Middleton, good as he is, couldn't handle a wound of that nature." He nodded as Rutledge got up to fill their cups. "Thank you, Inspector. Ah, this is what I need, inner warmth."

  "You and Dr. Middleton are of an age," Rutledge said. "What is Dudlington to do when you are gone?"

  "I expect someone will fill our shoes. Nature doesn't much care for a vacuum, you know."

  "Tell me about Hensley. Has he been a good man to have here in Dudlington? Is he likely to grow old here as you've done?"

  "I expect he might, or so I'd have said last week. I can't think how someone came to shoot him with an arrow. Very uncivilized thing to do."

  Rutledge hid his smile. "Did most of the people get along well with him? He comes from London, after all, and knew very little about living in a village this size. He might have had difficulty understanding the differences. That could have made enemies for him."

  Towson was busy buttering slices of bread. "We don't have all that much crime here. I daresay he kept out of everyone's way, most of the
time. He told me once he was rather glad of the respite."

  "Tell me about Emma Mason."

  The knife stopped in midair. Towson stared at Rutledge. "You move quickly, young man. How did you come to hear that name?"

  "It doesn't matter. What does matter, though, is the lack of a file in Hensley's records documenting her disappearance. A case of that magnitude? He must have interviewed people, traced her movements. There should have been something put to paper."

  "I expect Inspector Cain, in Letherington, kept all that. Emma was-still is, for all I know-a young girl on the brink of womanhood. Charming and intelligent and well liked. You can see for yourself how small Dudlington is, and of course everyone knew Emma and had watched her grow up."

  "Do her parents still live here?"

  "Her father fell ill and died of a tumor in his bowels when she was a child. Her mother brought her home to Mary Ellison-Emma's grandmother-and left her there to grow up. Then she went away and never came back again, as far as I've been told. Mary was devoted to the child, and I don't think she's been quite the same since Emma disappeared."

  "Why would Emma go away without telling anyone?"

  "That's the mystery. Emma was-it didn't make sense that she'd do such a heartless thing. There wasn't a cruel bone in her."

  "And nothing had been troubling her before her disappearance? A young man? Her schooling? Living with her grandmother?"

  "If it did, none of us knew it. She seemed-sunny, never down." He finished his slice of bread and began to butter another. "I will say one thing about Emma. Men- er-noticed her. She was quite lovely, dark hair, dark eyes, slender and shapely. I myself could see that she was an attractive child. It may be that someone else saw her a little differently-as perhaps more mature than she was. Perhaps she didn't know how to cope with that kind of attention. A village like ours seldom breeds such beauty, you know. It could have been a temptation to some. Still, that's not an excuse to run away."