A long shadow ir-8

by Charles Todd

  "Which is apparently the way he wants it."

  "Nothing wrong with that, is there? Why the interest? Did he have a grudge against Hensley?"

  "Possibly. He was ferocious in his defense of Emma Mason's good name and reputation."

  "And a good many people would like to think that Hens- ley knows more about her disappearance than he's willing to say. Yes, I see where you're going."

  "What I'd like to know is how Keating came to know Emma well enough to defend her."

  "You may have it backward, you know-it could be Keating has something against Hensley, and Emma's just the smokescreen to conceal that."

  Hamish said, "Aye, if yon constable recognized him."

  Almost as if Middleton had overheard the voice in Rut- ledge's head, he added, "Wasn't Hensley a policeman in London, before he came here?"

  18

  Rutledge walked up the hill from Holly Street to The Oaks, and this time found Keating in the bar serving a late breakfast to two travelers driving to Lincoln. He listened to the conversation for some time, the man and the woman chatting with Keating about an inn they'd stopped in the night before in Colchester. Finally, their meal finished, they went up to their rooms to finish packing, and Rutledge followed Keating through the door into the kitchen.

  Keating had done the cooking himself. Hillary Tim- mons was still watching over the rector, and Keating had shown himself to be competent in the kitchen. The clutter of pans and dishes on the worktable and the spills on the stove indicated haste, but the remnants of toast, poached eggs, a side dish of bacon, and a plate of sausages were cooked well. He took off his apron and turned to face Rutledge.

  "I have to be there when they come down to pay their reckoning. What do you want?" "How long have you known Constable Hensley?" he asked abruptly. "Since he came here three years ago. Why?" "There's reason to think you knew him in London." "Has he told you as much?" "Someone else suggested it." "Well, 'someone' is wrong." "There was a motorcar here yesterday morning. It left quickly, running up the road to the north. Who was driving?" "How the hell should I know? A man came in to ask directions, and then walked out. I'd never seen him before, and I don't expect to see him again." "What sort of directions?" "He asked if he was on the right road for Stamford. I told him he could reach it from here, but it was more direct if he took the turning at Letherington and got himself over on the main road." Keating had met Rutledge's eyes as he spoke, and there was no way Rutledge could call him on his answer. Not yet. And Hamish was hammering at the back of his mind. "You've let your imagination run away with ye." He remembered his certainty just before he'd seen the motorcar that someone had been standing in an upstairs window watching him. But that certainty had begun to fade. And he felt suddenly angry with himself. The cartridge casings had got to him after all. After Keating had carried the luggage of his guests out to their motorcar, and seen them off, he came back to the kitchen where Rutledge was still standing by the cluttered table. "Not satisfied, are you?" he asked. "Look, I've kept myself to myself, ever since I came here. I have no truck with Dudlington, and Dudlington has none with me. I prefer it that way." "Hillary Timmons works for you. She's from the village." "So she is. She needed the work, and I gave it to her, on the condition that what happens here stays here. And I made it clear that if I learned she'd been gossiping about me or my patrons, she was out on her ear. She makes good money. She's not likely to go against me."

  "She cleans for the rector as well, when she's not here. And perhaps for others."

  "She's got a father who can't work. And there're three younger ones at home. She's the only income they've got."

  "Not much of a life for her, is it?"

  "I pay her a fair wage. That's all I'm responsible for. I can't save the world."

  "No. Why do you like your privacy so much? Dudling- ton's small enough, you might have done better if you'd tried to fit in."

  "I'm not interested in fitting in. Or doing better. My life satisfies me the way it is. And I'll thank you to keep out of it." As Rutledge was walking back to Hensley's house, Hamish said, "Ye're no closer to finding who shot the constable than you were when you came here. It's been time wasted."

  Rutledge swore. It was true, he'd found himself caught up in his own troubles and intrigued by the disappearance of Emma Mason, rather than looking strictly into the attack on Hensley. And yet he could see that the constable, Frith's Wood, and the girl's fate must somehow be tangled together. Find the answer to one, and the others might fall tidily into place.

  Hamish said, "Aye, but yon constable's an outsider. He wouldna' ha' felt the same about a Saxon wood. Wouldna' have feared it."

  "Yet he knew, very well, that the villagers avoided it. And I don't think Hensley would have set foot in it either, if he hadn't had a damned good reason. That reason has to be something to do with Emma Mason. It fits too well. But it was personal, not a part of his duty. Otherwise there'd have been a file. And it's not likely that we'll have the truth out of him anytime soon."

  "Why was he shot and left? It would ha' been easy to finish him, if that was the intent."

  Rutledge had reached the house and was stepping in the door. He said aloud, "I think we may find it was a warning."

  "What was a warning?" Inspector Cain stood up from the chair behind Hensley's desk. "Don't tell me you've started talking to yourself! A bad sign, man!"

  Rutledge could feel his face warming uncomfortably. "Bad habit indeed. What brings you here?"

  "I found this last night, when I was going through some of my predecessor's files. I thought you might be interested."

  He held out a folder, and Rutledge opened it as they sat down.

  It was a query sent to Inspector Abbot about a missing woman. Her name was Beatrice Ellison Mason, and the letter had come from London.

  Rutledge could see, reading the first sheet of paper, that a Mrs. Greer had let a room to Beatrice Mason for several years and was now asking the Northamptonshire police to find her and inform her that she was in arrears for six months' rent. The period in question was March to late August 1904, and the letter was dated July 1906.

  It ended, "For I am a poor woman and in need of that money for a new roof. I'd be obliged if you would tell Mrs. Mason I can wait no longer."

  "Mrs. Greer ought to have spoken to a solicitor, but it appears she couldn't afford one," Cain said. "That's why she wrote to Abbot."

  "This letter may also explain why Mrs. Mason brought Emma to Mrs. Ellison for safekeeping. When her husband died, she must have been destitute. So much for the famous artist living in Paris."

  "Yes, well, that's another interesting bit. Read on."

  Rutledge turned the page. Abbot, Cain's predecessor, had noted in an awkward scrawl, Spoke to Mrs. Ellison. She says her daughter is studying on the Continent, and she herself will see to this outstanding debt with an apology for the oversight.

  Cain, watching him, said, "Which she apparently did. Pay the debt, I mean. There's no other correspondence on the subject. And by the time Emma went missing, the local police, Abbot in particular, had either forgotten this file or felt that it had no bearing on the girl's whereabouts. After all, her mother hadn't lived at that address since 1904. Ancient history, in fact."

  "Still, he should have looked into it."

  Cain was defensive. "He may have asked Mrs. Ellison about it, of course. As I've told you, his strong suit wasn't keeping records. But stepping into his shoes, I've discovered how good Abbot was at dealing with people."

  It could be said of many policemen in villages and small towns, and was probably the secret of their success as an unarmed force. The opposite side of the coin was that some of them grew set in their ways and bloody-minded.

  Rutledge mended his fences. "I'm sure you're right." But he made a mental note to have a word with Mrs. Ellison.

  "I don't know what bearing this has on anything. But it rather puts paid to the idea that Emma is alive and well, living with her mother in London, doesn't it?" Cain
prepared to stand up, gathering his bad leg under him. "I'd not like to think that my constable had anything to do with her disappearance."

  "What's become of your sergeant and the motorcar?"

  "He's gone round to speak to the rector. I'm not sure I like the sound of that fall. My sergeant says Towson is crippled up with rheumatism and oughtn't to be clambering about in attics or cellars either, for that matter. Mrs. Melford brought me a cup of tea, that's how I learned the news."

  "He was lucky," Rutledge said, repeating his earlier words to Dr. Middleton. "The question is, was the fall an accident or not?"

  "Good God!" Cain said, staring. "You're not telling me we're about to have a rash of unexplained attacks on people."

  "Hardly a rash of them. Yet. Time will tell. But I might add that the attics of the rectory look out on Frith's Wood. It's one of the few places that do, short of climbing the church tower."

  "You can climb that tower, you know," Cain informed him. "There's a rickety stair up to the bell, above the clock face. I haven't the foggiest notion what can be seen from there, but at a guess, it would be the best viewpoint of any."

  "How did you come to know that?" Unspoken between them was the reference to Cain's war injury.

  But Cain grinned. "Two boys went up there on a lark when the Armistice was declared in 1918. They rang the bells, and half Dudlington believed we'd been attacked by Germans, or worse. My sergeant told me about it. Hensley summoned him to come and read them the riot act."

  Rutledge laughed. But he made a second mental note to look at that stair for himself.

  When Cain had gone, Rutledge collected his torch and Hensley's field glasses, then walked to St. Luke's. The door was unlocked. A heavy, twisted ring of iron, reminiscent of the Sanctuary Rings of the medieval period, when clinging to one protected a man from arrest, was newer than the church, as if added to give the building a feeling of age.

  He stood there for a moment, looking up at the soaring spire. There were several square stages forming the sturdy footing of the tower, each level diminishing in size as it rose upward to the housing of the bell. The spire itself, reaching upward from there in a graceful inverted cone, had tiny windows counter set on opposite sides, two facing north and south, two facing east and west.

  Hamish said, "I wouldna' care to climb that high."

  "Then stay here."

  The tower door led to another one carved of heavy dark wood, and beyond that lay the sanctuary. The nave was high-ceilinged but flat. Someone had painted trompe l'oeil ovals there, three of them, in Renaissance style, with scenes of angels and saints floating on clouds. And in the center panel, Christ was seated in glory, one hand reaching high into the painted sky. The aisle columns were Doric with carved capitals, and they appeared to uphold, without effort, this deceptively vast expanse above them.

  The pulpit was tall and heavily carved. Rutledge thought it might have come from an earlier building that had been replaced.

  There were long windows, some with simple stained glass, and a brass rail around the communion table. The chancel was rather plain, with an old painted wood crucifix behind the altar.

  No tombs here, the church wasn't old enough for Crusader knights and Elizabethan ladies. There were only a few monuments. He did find a nice memorial tablet to a man who had served in the Sudan with Gordon. His name-it was Harkness-rank, dates, and his regimental insignia had been inlaid in the stone in brass. Rutledge wondered if he'd been the last of the family's male line, leaving to a distant cousin, Mary Ellison, pride in continuing the female line.

  He returned to the tower room and saw the narrow stairs to one side that disappeared through a square hole in the ceiling. The steps were stone for the first flight, in keeping with the construction of the church, but as he started to climb, he could see very quickly that the next flight was wood, without backs to the risers. Not a very pleasant prospect.

  He reached the next stage of the tower and could just see the bell rope disappearing into the darkness high above his head. He looked down past his feet, where it hung like a mesmerized snake suspended in midair with nowhere to go. Only, he thought, there was no visible head or tail. He grasped the sides of the narrow stairs firmly and went up another flight, hand over hand to steady himself. And he refrained from looking down, for the stairs were fixed to the outside walls and a well of darkness was opening up in the empty center. Overhead, shining his torch straight up, he could see the great bronze bell.

  Another flight, and the space was filled with the mouth of the bell, the clapper swaying lightly in the movement of cold air through the shuttered openings on four sides.

  "Yon draft must come from the Cairngorms," Hamish said, startling Rutledge.

  His foot missed the next step and he swore as his body began to swing out over the bottomless space yawning beside him. But his handhold on the rough side rails was strong enough to pull him back again to safety. There was a distinctly hollow pit in the middle of his stomach until he felt his dangling foot settle once more on the solid strip of wood.

  A dozen more steps, and he was at the head of the bell, where massive beams held it in place at the top of the tower.

  The clock was hung on the outer side of the window arch facing toward the village.

  And over his head, a single ladder disappeared into the spire. Shining his light up into the darkness, he could see the wooden skeleton of the tower, the framework on which it had been built, like an octagon that narrowed more with each foot of height. How old was that ladder? It might still hold a boy's weight, but what about a man's?

  Rutledge thought, I don't need to climb farther But he knew he did. Coming down was something else, and he wasn't prepared to think about that yet.

  The ladder was steadier than he'd expected, and with a sigh of relief, he started up it.

  When he came to the first window, he realized that it looked toward the village, while its brother on the far side overlooked the fields.

  But the next pair of windows, facing north and south, gave him a bird's-eye view of Frith's Wood, and he could see more detail from here than he'd anticipated. With his arms wrapped tightly about the side rails of the ladder, he brought up the field glasses. Through them, he could have roughly followed movement across the breadth of the wood, and even down into the thickets of undergrowth. Especially at this time of year, when the trees were bare and even the briars and weeds mere stalks and thorny strands. It was interesting to see just how closely he could bring it in. Far better than from the rectory attic, surely.

  Who would have the courage to come here, just on the off chance of seeing where Hensley had gone?

  Letting the glasses hang from their leather strap around his neck, he began to back down the ladder. It was just light enough to see where he was going without the aid of his torch, but the tolerances were much tighter at this height, and he was beginning to feel the pressure of claustrophobia sealing him in. A nail sticking out farther than most of its neighbors plucked at his coat, yanking at him. It was easy enough to free himself, but the sense of losing his balance was strong.

  Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he went down the ladder another few rungs.

  God, but it was dangerous! And just behind him, making it impossible to look down, was Hamish He continued his descent and finally arrived at the lower pair of windows. He stopped for a moment to look at the village, a toy city for a child. Like seeing it from an airplane, he thought, picking out the narrow canyons that were the streets, and the chimney pots of houses he recognized. The nearer ones showed him their back gardens, where sheds held tools and other gear, and lines for drying clothes ran helter-skelter across the space available, to give them as much length as possible.

  A child's bicycle lay against the back steps in one, and in another a man was just visible bringing up a giant cabbage from the coal cellar where it had been stored. A wagon moved into view, leaving one of the shops. The rectory's slate roof was mossy, and he could see into the rector's bedroom,
glimpsing the foot of the bed and the edge of a door through the open drapes.

  He was staring at the Baylor house, beyond the rectory, when he saw that someone was at a window on the top floor, apparently staring directly back at him.

  It was a shock, because inside this tight cocoon of wood, he'd felt invisible. The question was, could the figure at the window actually see him, or was he only gazing out at the church?

  Rutledge brought up the field glasses, but it was impossible to pick out details through the windowpane. A dark, irregular shape, but certainly human. He'd have missed it altogether if the figure hadn't moved and drawn his attention. And yet he seemed to feel the intensity of the watcher's scrutiny.

  Curiosity, or something more sinister?

  On the other side of the coin, the sun had just come out from behind the clouds, reaching through the narrow opening beside him and touching the ladder on which he stood, highlighting his right shoulder. He was pinned there, vulnerable, with the long descent blocked by Hamish just below him. Caught like a bird in a sack.

  But that was nonsense. Any threat to him would come from outside Dudlington, not from a house whose owner he knew.

  He tried to shake off the sense of urgency pressing him now and concentrated instead on the placement of each foot, feeling his way downward. There was a sense of relief when he finally reached the mouth of the bell and the real stairs. However rudimentary they had seemed before, they felt sturdier and safer than that abominable ladder. He reached out to touch the bell for a moment, his hand against the icy cold metal. And from this angle, he noticed for the first time the mechanism that connected the bell to the clock.

  "Hark!" Hamish warned, from somewhere below him, and he saw the gears begin to move.

  The clock was about to strike, and he was standing there beside the bell.