A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  She had stopped for petrol—as he himself had had to do—and had found a small hotel beyond the Swallow Falls outside Betws y Coed for the night. He had nearly missed that, catching up to her unawares, and spent a cold night in the motorcar, back in the village, to let her get ahead once more.

  If she knew she was being followed, she appeared not to care. But he rather thought the Sunbeam’s own noise masked his.

  By late afternoon on the second day, they were close to the quarry, and he hung well back. If she was as clever as he thought, she’d find a place along the last stretch of road and lie in wait for anyone who was behind her. It was a Thursday—another week had passed since Milford had fallen to his death.

  And Rutledge was no closer to finding his killer . . .

  Nibbling at the back of his mind was Chief Inspector Markham’s silence. By this time in most inquiries, he was asking for a report, urging Rutledge to find answers, arguing that the simplest solutions were often the right solutions. It was how Markham saw duty.

  Doubling back on himself, he left his motorcar below the quarry as before, this time hidden behind a deserted cottage, inside a barn with a roof that had half fallen in. There was barely enough room for the Rolls to pass. Then he walked back to the quarry.

  Instead of approaching the quarry office by way of the road, he began to look for access over the vast spread of rubble slate.

  It was slippery work, but he was dressed for it, and his gloved hands took the brunt of sharp corners and edges. Working his way as if he were climbing a cliff face, he chose his path as carefully as he could.

  The first hurdle was the hardest, he thought, as he came out on a lorry road that led far into the quarry site. Below him, barely ten feet away, dizzying depths opened up, and he realized just how deep the quarry was—deeper than the Aqueduct was tall. Looking up, he could see right across the gaping space, to abandoned caverns open to the elements, where the miners had had to leave one face and open up another over the years. It was rather, he thought, what the surface of the moon looked like, barren and inhospitable. Then he noticed men working on the far side of the gap, loading a lorry. They were tiny.

  He was standing on a rough track, one side ending in more deserted caverns and the other, the left, appearing to head back toward the pithead. He walked without haste, hoping not to attract attention. He found a place where he could lie atop a heap of rubble and use his field glasses, but it was unstable and he almost came to grief trying to climb down again. Forty yards on there was another pile that appeared to be more stable, and he moved on to that.

  From there he could just see a line of buildings in the distance.

  The glasses brought them into sharp focus, and he began to observe the people moving about the cleared area in front of them.

  There must be, he thought, one shift presently down in the pit. And various working parties on the surface appeared to deal with the vast amount of rubble that could still be salvaged. Others were loading slate in pallets onto a lorry.

  A woman came out of one of the shops, bringing something to a dog lying in a patch of watery sun, and he turned toward her.

  She was not as tall as the average height of a man—five feet six. Possibly five feet two or three? He judged her in relation to the lorry and the other figures in the yard. Dark hair curled out from the edges of a silk kerchief, and she wore a heavy coat, cut like a man’s, and buttoned to the throat. Trousers instead of a skirt, as if that made getting around easier. Her stride was easy, long. But he didn’t recognize it.

  She turned to say something over her shoulder, and then another woman came out, and the dog went to her, wagging its tail in welcome.

  The second woman bent to fondle his ears, all the while speaking to the first woman.

  She was taller, five feet five? And slim, wearing trousers crammed into high boots, a blue scarf at her neck. Fair hair was done up in a knot at the back of her head, and a dark green coat was draped over her shoulders, as if she’d only stepped out for a brief word to the dog. When she walked on to speak to the lorry driver hailing her, he recognized that stride. Susan Milford or not, this was the woman from the Crowley road and from Shrewsbury.

  She was just turning back toward the building when Rutledge heard a grinding of gears and a rumble.

  While he’d been staring through the glasses, intent on what was happening below, one of the lorries from deep inside the quarry had started back toward the main buildings, and it was nearly on him.

  He scrambled down from his perch, nearly lost his footing, and swore as his ankle took the brunt of his misstep. He was only just able to get down behind a large slab of blue slate as the lorry came up the slight rise just behind him. The heavy tires passed within inches of the slab, crunching into broken bits of slate that formed the road and spewing them out behind. He could just see the driver, eyes straight ahead, taking his time. There was a several-hundred-foot drop almost at his elbow as the road narrowed.

  And then he was past the pinch point, and moving a little faster.

  Exhaling with relief, Rutledge let him move well out of sight before he himself stirred.

  With his glasses, he managed to follow the truck’s approach to the main building. The second woman had gone back inside, leaving her companion to deal with it.

  Scanning the open yard, he searched it from one end to the other, then swung the glasses back again, nearer the buildings this time, set out of the path of the huge lorries with their heavy loads.

  And there it was, the motorcycle. Or the front wheel, to be exact, barely visible from his vantage point, but he recognized it at once. A Sunbeam.

  It was warm on the slates, even the pale sun adding a little to that warmth, out of the wind that was eddying little dust clouds in the wake of the lorry.

  The woman didn’t appear again until the lorry had been checked and sent on its way, down the long drive to the main road, out of his range of sight. Then she stepped out with two cups in her hand, passing one to her friend. They appeared to be on good terms, talking quietly. This then was very likely the woman Susan Milford had trusted.

  He thought she was very likely one of the people he’d intended to speak to, when he’d come here earlier. Before he’d been warned off.

  He waited again, watchful.

  And then he heard a voice shouting roughly somewhere behind his position. Turning quickly, he dislodged some loose scree and nearly lost his field glasses. Gripping them, he looked down past the toes of his boots and saw a man coming fast up the slope below him.

  He’d been seen, and there was nothing for it but to let events take their course. He wasn’t sure-footed enough up here to risk a fall or a broken ankle. And he knew he couldn’t outrun the man, who moved with the grace of a mountain goat, at home up here on the heights of the quarry.

  Getting himself down to the road, he stood there as the red-faced man came pounding up and slid to a stop.

  “Who the—bloody hell—are you?” he was demanding, bending forward in a menacing stance.

  Rutledge said, “Scotland Yard.” And as he did, he realized that the man had a pry bar in one large fist, gripping it like a weapon. “Put that down,” he ordered then. “Here’s my identification.”

  He reached carefully into a pocket, pulling it out and holding it up in front of the angry man. A foreman? Or just another worker here? He couldn’t be sure.

  But the man wasn’t interested. Still holding the pry bar ready to strike, he said, “Who let you in here? What are you after?”

  “I’m a policeman,” Rutledge repeated, his own voice hard and cold.

  “We’ll see what Theresa has to say.” He lifted the bar threateningly, and added, “Go on. You were so eager to spy, let’s give you a closer look.”

  Rutledge realized that the man clearly wasn’t protecting the quarry, as he’d first thought, but the women he’d been watching.

  Without a word, he turned and started along the road.

  There was still tha
t precipitously sharp drop to his right, and he moved quickly, trying to keep the same distance between his head and the man behind him. It would be short work to send him over the edge and worry later about the consequences.

  They moved in tandem, walking steadily. And at length they came down the last curving slope, finally into the yard.

  It was empty now, save for the dog, which, hackles up, came head-down toward Rutledge, growling. The trucks had gone.

  He’d always had a way with animals, and he spoke to the dog, but it was taking its lead from the angry man with the weapon.

  “Tessie?” He was shouting toward the main building. “Out here, if you please.”

  And the door finally opened. Tessie stood on the threshold.

  “Who is he?” she demanded, her voice anxious. “Where did you find him?”

  He told her, giving a location number. “Watching the yard with them glasses,” he added for good measure. “Says he’s a copper.”

  “Good afternoon,” Rutledge spoke, then, keeping still while the dog circled him, “My name is Rutledge. I’m from London, Scotland Yard. My identification?” He turned his hand so that she could see it.

  She said, staring hard at him, “You were here before. The foreman told me. Asking directions, you said then.”

  “Yes. I didn’t know where to look before. I did today.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I need to speak to Susan Milford.”

  “No one by that name here. I’m the only woman on this site.”

  “Then why is her Sunbeam here? In the quarry yard?” he asked in a reasonable tone of voice. “She was wearing a blue scarf around her throat.”

  Tessie looked just beyond him, at the man with the pry bar. “He’s seen her, Eddie,” she said.

  “What shall I do with him?”

  “Let me speak to her,” Rutledge interjected. “The last thing you want is Scotland Yard coming up here and tearing this quarry apart looking for me. And if she’s listening—” He raised his voice. “Susan? You’ll have been told about me by Mr. Hastings. In Shrewsbury. You’ll know it isn’t safe to meddle with the police. All I need is an hour of your time. And then I’ll leave.”

  “You’ll leave if and when I say you do,” Eddie said, moving a little, the pry bar still a weapon in his hand.

  Someone appeared in the doorway behind Tessie, a shadowy shape in the dim interior. He thought he was being looked over.

  The figure moved, and Tessie stepped aside, to let the woman in the blue scarf come to the threshold.

  She wasn’t traditionally pretty. But the force of her personality was there in her face, and he realized that she was quite attractive, like her half brother. There was strength in the line of her jaw, too, and her blue gaze was direct, and as clear of madness as anyone he’d met in the last two weeks.

  “No’ mad, but no’ rational,” Hamish was saying in his head.

  But she was rational. Driven, tormented, but rational.

  She was considering him now, looking at him speculatively, deciding what should be done about him. He could read it in her gaze. There was no anger in her face, no dislike of him or fear of what he’d come there to do. Just a weighing up of choices, the way a woman might decide which hat to wear or a man which cigar to buy.

  As if he as a person was not the central issue. Something else was. And he had no idea what that might be.

  And he knew with a sudden chill down his backbone that she could order him killed, and both Tessie and Eddie would do as she asked.

  Why? What had she told them that they would be willing to hang for her?

  Searching for a way to reach her, he said, “I’m trying to find a missing child. I think you had her for a while, then lost her as well. I don’t know where she is. I was hoping you might. She belongs with her mother. Will you help me find her?”

  She heard every word, and then she nodded, and he thought with some relief that he had convinced her.

  Too late he realized that it was a signal, and he couldn’t duck the pry bar coming toward him. All he could do was lean away from the blow, hoping to take a little of the force from it before it hit him.

  And then he felt the cold metal strike, a white light of pain, and then blackness.

  He never knew that he hit the ground. There was only the blackness everywhere.

  14

  When he came to his senses, he wasn’t sure where he was—or why. Only that one leg was cramping badly and his head ached as if an axe had been embedded in his skull. He could feel the weight of it, the blade pressing against the backs of his eyes.

  It was several minutes before he could open them. When he did, the light was blinding. He shut them again. And as he did he became aware of the murmurs all around him, sounds he couldn’t place. Soft whispers, as if there were people everywhere, trying not to disturb him.

  There was a rhythm to their voices.

  Frowning, he tried to make sense of it all. Were they singing? He couldn’t hear words over the thundering in his head.

  Making an effort that sent a shooting pain through his cramped leg, he tried to raise himself, then stopped almost in the same breath as he remembered the sheer drop to his right, down into the depths of the quarry, and how easy it would be to slide over the edge.

  He opened his eyes again, squinting this time and able to raise a hand to shield them from the light, blinking against the force of it. His vision cleared a little.

  He wasn’t in the quarry. He was in the rear seat of his own motorcar.

  Oh dear God in heaven, he breathed in sudden terror. Hamish—

  The rear seat had been his realm since 1919, when he, Rutledge, had taken the motorcar out of the locked mews behind his parents’ house—Frances’s house, his parents had left it to his sister.

  Frantic, ignoring the pain that seemed to be everywhere, he scrambled to find the door’s handle and shove it wide, nearly tumbling out in moving silver—

  Water. Shimmering, blinding water everywhere. Catching himself even as he was about to tumble in, holding himself rigidly on the edge of the rear seat by a sheer effort of will, he stared out at the moving water.

  The tide was coming in. And his motorcar was axle deep already, as the water whispered around him and eddied and stirred and tried to rid itself of this obstruction in its midst.

  Where in God’s name was he?

  It didn’t matter. He had to get out of there before the water was deep enough to reach the motor.

  Gripping the back of the front seat, he somehow found the strength to swing himself into the front of the motorcar, his head brushing against the underneath of the top. Pausing just long enough to catch his breath, he looked up. The top was in place, but the slanting rays of the rising sun were lighting everything with a brilliance that made his eyes ache.

  He got himself into the passenger’s seat, moved across to his own.

  He must get out and turn the crank. Now. Now.

  Water filled his shoes and soaked the legs of his trousers. He held on to the frame, made it to the front of the vehicle, and shoved the crank into place. The motor, for a blessing, turned over, and he got back to his open door as fast as he could.

  Looking around for points of reference, he realized he was on a long flat beach where the morning tide was coming in far too rapidly for his liking. And his tires had settled into the soft sand beneath them. But the powerful motor took hold, and the car rocked as it started forward.

  He nursed it, adding power as he moved toward the stretch of dry land above the tide line, gray with the debris left behind by last night’s tide.

  Slowly, slowly he gained ground, and then his tires bit into harder packed sand, and he was out of the water, moving beyond its reach.

  He stopped there to let his head ease a little. When he put up his hands to cradle it, he felt the encrusted blood on one side, and memory came flooding back.

  Eddie, the damned fool, had hit him with the pry bar, and they had put him
in his motorcar and driven him here. To the sea.

  Here, where?

  Porthmadog? Where the slate trains had always brought their wares to be shipped to England and even Germany, where slate had seen a huge market up until the war. But more to the point, this was a route that the quarrymen knew. It was a place they could reach even in the dark.

  His other senses were starting to work, the cramped leg trying to reassert itself, tightening even as he made an effort to straighten it, his head throbbing with every movement.

  What was that he smelled? Above the salt of the sea, the dead fish odor of the tide line? It was somehow familiar . . .

  Whisky. His clothes and his body had been dowsed with whisky. And anyone finding the motorcar and the half-coherent man inside would assume that he’d made it this far under his own power and was sleeping off his drunken spree, unaware that he’d stopped where the sea was about to come in.

  It had been cleverly done.

  He could hear someone’s boots crunching in the sand, coming closer.

  He looked up. It was the local Constable, trudging out to see what the reported motorcar was doing in the water of the little bay.

  Rutledge braced himself.

  “Good morning, Constable,” he said. His throat was as dry as the sand beneath his tires now.

  “Morning to you, sir.” He was close enough now—Rutledge watched as the odor of stale whisky reached him on the sea breeze. “Had a happy night, did we now?”

  “Not particularly,” Rutledge said, and reached for his identification.

  It wasn’t there.

  Swearing under his breath, he added, “I’ve come to Wales on police business. I was questioning a suspect when someone hit me, hard. And I awoke to find myself here.”

  “Indeed, sir. And you’ll have some identification to be showing me now.”

  “I don’t have it. It was taken by whoever put me here.”

  “Yes, sir, and was that your own whisky you’ve been consuming meanwhile?” He came closer, staring into the rear seat. “Ah, and there I see the bottle itself.”