A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  “Yes. I’ve never been here before.” He launched into the story he’d told the shopkeeper, about the friend he was meeting. “Have you seen him about, by any chance? I don’t want to miss him, after coming all this way.”

  The man shook his head. “Doubt he’s been over here.”

  “Are you sure? I’d like to find him.”

  “If he was on one of the passing boats, I’d not have noticed him.”

  “Why? Would he have been inside, not sitting in the bow?”

  “Not inside, if she carried cargo.”

  “Surely you must know most of the men at the tiller. And those leading the horses. They must come and go through here often enough.”

  The man dropped his gaze to the rope again, moving it slowly but steadily through his fingers. “Not always. Mostly I know the narrowboats.”

  It was a close community of men who made their living on or from the waterway. Rutledge could see that they weren’t likely to give a stranger any more information than was necessary. Nor did he think they would be likely to help an English policeman, if he’d shown his identification instead.

  But he said, as he looked back toward the crossing, “That’s a dangerous place. Ever have accidents there?”

  The man lifted his head again, his dark eyes giving nothing away as he regarded Rutledge. “The horses and the lads know their business.”

  “I’m sure they do. But one misstep, one foot tangled in the tow rope, one instant of losing one’s concentration—I can see it happening.”

  “But then you aren’t a boatman,” he retorted and went back to his rope, closing the conversation.

  Rutledge walked on, watching the horses pulling the narrowboats toward him. They walked steadily, at a pace, the tow rope not always taut where each boat’s momentum eased the effort to pull it. The boatmen, standing in the stern, watching the bow down the spine of their boats, sometimes shouted to each other or to someone they saw on shore. But for the most part they concentrated on their craft as they pulled into the basin and half a dozen people came out to greet them.

  There were three men and a boy of perhaps fifteen leading the horses, moving close by their bridles, and Rutledge saw that the horses did indeed wear blinders.

  As the boats eased to a stop, the tow ropes slacking off and dipping into the water, the horses were led forward and allowed to drink.

  He walked toward them, and when he reached the elder of the three men, he said, “Thirsty work, I take it.”

  The man looked up. “Man and beast.”

  “Worked the narrowboats long, have you?”

  “I have.”

  “What about the man at the tiller?”

  “My son. We take turns.”

  The lead boat was a dark green, with yellow trim. There were curtains at the windows, and he could see that the other two boats had them as well. There would be no way to know what the boat was carrying. Or who was aboard. Rutledge noticed two flower pots on a low shelf in the bow of the boat where a boy led the horse. A sign that a family lived aboard? And then a curtain in the boat bringing up the rear twitched, and a child’s face appeared in the window for an instant, then disappeared.

  “Do you think he’d allow me to travel back across the Aqueduct with him? I left my motorcar over there.”

  “You can ask.”

  Rutledge walked on and did, offering a pound note as he asked his favor.

  The younger man took it, glanced to see that his father wasn’t watching, and pocketed it quickly. “In the bow. Don’t stand. I need to see.”

  But it was nearly a quarter of an hour before they moved out of the basin and toward the Aqueduct.

  The boat came close enough that Rutledge could step on board, then moved into the stream toward the crossing as the horse took up the strain, the older man talking quietly to the animal. And the boat glided silently toward the waterway.

  The horse was out in front, stepping onto the path, and the boat moved with it, the man at the tiller guiding it smoothly into place, still the first boat in line.

  Neither the horse nor the man leading it seemed to notice the drop so perilously close as the boat seemed to fill the waterway and move quietly along, the sound of hooves the only distraction. Rutledge rose slightly to look down into the valley from the safety of the bow. The view was quite impressive. But he couldn’t pick out the spot where Roddy had found the body.

  Sitting again, he watched the horse putting its feet down with the assurance that the path was there, and the man moving beside it, glancing back along the line of the boat toward the tiller a time or two, then studying Rutledge when he thought he wasn’t being seen.

  They reached the far side, glided on into the basin there, and Rutledge was put ashore. He thanked the man at the tiller with a wave, and walked on to where he’d left his motorcar.

  If the dead man had come here, no one was about to admit to seeing him. The police had already been here to ask questions, and a stranger coming after them wasn’t very likely to be taken into anyone’s confidence.

  As Rutledge bent to turn the crank, Hamish said, “Ye ken, if he came at night, who was to see?”

  “I’d not care to cross on that towpath in the dark.”

  “Aye, it would depend on how much he wanted to reach the far side.”

  But what was he looking for that couldn’t wait until the morning? And how had he got here in the first place? The police hadn’t found a motorcar. Train service was sporadic. Had he walked? From where?

  Remembering the child’s face at the window, Rutledge realized that a dozen men, alive or dead, might be behind those pretty lace curtains. Who would know—or guess? And if one was tossed over the bow on the opposite side of the narrowboat from the towpath, it wouldn’t disturb the horse making its careful way across.

  How easy was it to leave the horse to find its own way? Or to leave the tiller untended?

  But the channel of water over the Aqueduct was barely wider than the boat. There was no place for it to go, once it started across. Lash the tiller, and it would stay on course. The boat’s length would assure that.

  It would be nearly impossible to track every narrowboat that had crossed the Aqueduct in the past ten days, much less interview their owners. Not until the police were in possession of sufficient information to make an interview worthwhile.

  Rutledge got behind the wheel of the motorcar, then sat there for a moment or two, thinking. Finally he turned his back on the Aqueduct, his mind made up.

  The Bantam Battalions had had their beginning in Birkenhead, on the Cheshire coast, early in the war. The average height of men in England was five feet six inches. The Army had set as its regulation height anyone above five feet four, then dropped that to five three. But men shorter than that had clamored to join as well, and General Kitchener had listened, allowing the Bantam Battalions to recruit men between five feet and five three. The initial advertisements had brought in not dozens but hundreds of shorter men eager to serve their country. One had reportedly offered to fight any six men of regulation height, to prove his mettle. The first battalion’s officers were of regulation height, and that had been true throughout the war, until the Bantams had been assimilated into other regiments toward the end. More than a few had gone into the new tanks, where space was cramped even for them.

  Rutledge had known one of the Bantam officers in France. Word was, Alasdair Dale had retired to Chester at war’s end, to return to his former occupation, that of solicitor.

  It had also been rumored that Alasdair was planning to write a history of the Bantams. To set the record straight. Whether he’d got round to it or not, he’d had the best working knowledge of the Battalions of anyone Rutledge could think of. If the gossip was right, he’d written most of the wills of the first recruits. Wills had been required by the Army, and most men took that philosophically, but a few had seen it as stepping on their graves. Rutledge had had his own drawn up in the months after his parents’ death, making provision for
his younger sister, Frances. But the Army had insisted on a more current one, as several years had passed.

  The city of Chester was not that far from the Telford Aqueduct, only a few hours’ drive. Once a Roman garrison, it had preserved the walls the legions had built, rebuilding and restoring them well into the Middle Ages. Behind them, Charles I had tried to hold the city during the Civil War. And they were still standing, the city’s pride. Set on the same River Dee where the body had been found, only closer to the sea, Chester had a long history of trade and industry, but its real glory was the tall, elegant black-and-white Tudor houses that graced street after street.

  Driving into the city through one of the gates, Rutledge glanced at some of the houses. In the late afternoon sun, the glazing reflected the light, and the white plaster with its dark hatchwork of beams seemed to have defied the centuries.

  He wasn’t certain just where Alasdair’s chambers were, but he finally found them not far from the Cathedral. Set into the dark green door, the heavy brass knocker was shaped like a gloved fist, but there was lacy fringe to the cuff. Rutledge remembered as he lifted it that a gloved fist was on the family’s coat of arms.

  A clerk answered the summons, leading Rutledge through the narrow entry into a room that spoke quietly of old money. He gave his name, and the clerk disappeared through a door, returning shortly. “Mr. Dale will see you, sir. This way, if you please.”

  Down a passage lined with paintings of waterbirds, Alasdair was waiting by the door to his office. He was nearly as tall as Rutledge, only a few years older, with sandy hair and blue eyes. As Rutledge started toward him, he said, “Well, I never thought you’d make it to Chester, but here you are. Don’t tell me there’s a murder in the city that I haven’t been told of?”

  They shook hands as Rutledge replied, “Not here, but not that far away. I need your expertise.”

  “The law? Or do I know the victim—or the murderer?”

  They moved into the paneled room, and Alasdair was gesturing toward one of the leather chairs across from his desk.

  “Actually, I need to know something about the Bantams.”

  “Do you indeed?” Interested, Dale leaned back in his chair. “What’s this in aid of?”

  Rutledge described the dead man he’d seen in Wales.

  “You do know, that description could fit half a regiment? As for the tattoo, I daresay there must be half as many men again who got such a one. If not when they enlisted, at least before they shipped out. Have you considered your man might be in the Navy, not the Bantams?”

  “You’re depressingly unhelpful. Did you ever write that history?”

  Dale grinned. “Good God, man, we’re talking about the stories of thirty-odd thousand soldiers! But I’ve got a box room full of notes. I found collecting information was much more my thing than sitting down and collating it. My friends tell me to hire someone to write the book. But somehow I don’t think it would be the same.” The grin faded. “I knew those men. They were damned good soldiers. They deserve a history far better than anything I might write.”

  “You’re too close to it. Five years from now you might see it differently.”

  “I hope that’s true. But I shan’t hold my breath.” He picked up a pen from the blotter, toyed with it for a moment, then set it down again. “I’ve had trouble fitting back into my old life. It didn’t help that I lost my wife in the middle of the war. I can’t settle, somehow. Even my work doesn’t satisfy me the way it did in 1914. Don’t misunderstand me. God knows I don’t miss the war. I do miss the comradeship. We counted on one another, it was a brotherhood born of necessity. Nothing like anything I’d known at university before the war. And I haven’t found it since.” He cleared his throat. “Too many of us died. They haunt me. The friends who didn’t make it.”

  He couldn’t meet Rutledge’s gaze, looking instead at a painting of a swan landing on a lake fringed with reeds and grasses. It hung on the wall to his left.

  Rutledge said carefully, “I think they haunt most of us. None of us expected to survive. What we did had nothing to do with who deserved to live. It was a lottery, and some of us won. God alone knows why.”

  Dale took a deep breath, as if to steady himself. Then he said in a different tone of voice, “Back to this dead man of yours. Any good reason to think he was Welsh? Other than the fact he was found there?”

  “Not so far. The only other bit of evidence is that his shirt came from a tailor. There’s a handmade label in the collar. The shirt is a fairly decent grade of cloth, but the label indicates a smaller, possibly local firm. Anything strike you about the name Banner?” Taking out his notebook, he passed it to Dale, open to the page where he’d drawn the design.

  “Someone has ambitions, looking to come up in the world. I don’t recognize it—not an establishment I’m likely to know. But I’d advise you to speak to a few tailors here in Chester. One of them might be familiar with it.”

  “Yes, I was considering that. Meanwhile—how popular was that Bantam tattoo?”

  “At a guess? Thousands of men got it. A matter of pride. You are welcome to go through my notes. But you already know that the first two battalions were local men, then the idea spread, and we had men as far away as Nottingham. Fairly soon, other towns all over England were following in our footsteps, raising companies. Still, if this man was killed in Wales, he could well be from Cheshire. Or any of the neighboring counties. Less likely to be from Glasgow, say, or Suffolk. That’s still a fair number of men to track down.”

  “What about the narrowboats? Do they have a reputation for trouble? If I were a boatman and looking for a place to rid myself of a body, the Aqueduct would be my first choice.”

  “I’d say they’re no more likely to be killers than any other occupation. On the other hand, there’s one thing in your favor, Ian—there’s never been an overall English canal system. They’ve always been local enterprises. Bits and pieces, wherever it was possible to link rivers with waterways and make it easier to carry loads of goods, instead of hauling them overland. If this man’s killer is a narrowboat man, then it’s likely that he met his victim close to that particular canal. Which brings us back to the possibility that your body is Welsh. Or your killer may be. As a rule, boatmen put down roots where they worked.”

  Which fit all too well with the reception he’d encountered at the Aqueduct. Rutledge grimaced. “You make it sound hopeless.”

  “I’m being realistic. Now, if you could give me a name, I could probably find your man in my notes. Any time between now and Whitsunday, if you nagged me.”

  “Meanwhile, a murderer goes free.”

  Dale shrugged. “I know. I do have photographs of various companies of Bantams. It was a popular thing to take one, and after the war I found many of the photographers and begged copies. I’ll gladly let you search through them.”

  “His face was too badly damaged. I could make a guess at the shape of the nose and the chin, but that’s about it.”

  “When you have more, come back. I’ll do what I can to give you a name.”

  Leaving his motorcar where it was, Rutledge sought out the city’s tailor shops. The more upscale clerks shook their heads and denied any knowledge of anyone by the name of Banner. But on a back street not far from Ye Old Boot pub, he was more successful.

  The older man who came to help him looked at the sketch Rutledge had made and frowned. “I don’t know if Banner is still in business,” he said. “He came here as an assistant in 1904, and learned the trade. Some years later, when there was an opening in a shop closer to home, he took it. I was sorry to lose him, to tell the truth. But his parents were getting on, and he was worried about them. I might still have his direction.” He looked around the shop as if expecting it to materialize out of the air, then went to a small room in the back where he kept his files.

  As he opened a drawer stuffed full of letters and began to sort through them, Rutledge groaned inwardly, thinking it would take most of the day to fi
nd anything.

  But haphazard as the man’s system might appear to anyone else, he quickly found the packet of letters he was looking for, took them out, and began to thumb through them. Near the end, he pulled one out.

  “Yes, here it is. Banner. He took over when the owner retired and added his name to the sign. Llangollen.” He looked up. “That’s in Wales. Do you know it?”

  Rutledge had in fact passed through it. And it sat on the River Dee not far from the village where Roddy had caught the body with his fishhook. “Yes.”

  He showed Rutledge the letterhead. It read BANNER and beneath it was the direction: 113 High Street.

  Rutledge thanked him for his help and promised to give Banner the man’s regards, then left the shop.

  He drove back the way he’d come, through flat farm country that spread out before him, fallow fields already plowed and waiting to be sown. After crossing the border into Wales, the land began to roll more as Rutledge neared Llangollen.

  It was a prosperous but hilly town, and after he’d found a place to leave his motorcar, he walked uphill toward the center. He found 113 with no difficulty, and looked at the window on the street. There was a tasteful display of shirts and ties, an array of shoes, and several bolts of cloth. Stepping through the door, he saw that Banner must have prospered, because one side of the shop held haberdashery goods, while the other was clearly for tailoring.

  A young assistant came out to greet him, and Rutledge asked to speak to the owner. He was led to an office no larger than the one in Chester, filled to the ceiling with files and bits of cloth in every color and of every quality.

  Banner was seated at the desk in the center of the room but made to rise as his assistant spoke to him.

  He was fair, with a ruddy complexion and light blue eyes. As he rose, Rutledge realized that he had a club foot. He came forward, limping but smiling, and asked, “Good afternoon. How may I help you, sir?”

  Rutledge glanced toward the assistant, and Banner said quietly, “I think you might have a look at that new bolt of tweed. I’m not sure it’s up to our standards.”