A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge went into the village and found Constable Holcomb, intending to go over the inquest with him and then the return of the body to Crowley.

  “It’s a wonder you found who he was. But you’re no closer to who killed him?”

  “I believe I know who killed Milford. One Joseph Burton, who has since been murdered as well. He was drowned in one of the Aqueduct basins.”

  “Here, I don’t like the sound of that. Who killed him?”

  “I don’t know. Which is why I want to leave the inquest open.”

  “You’re saying that this man Burton might have been killed because he’d been paid to kill Milford?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Why was Milford killed? Do you know that?”

  “Milford was too close to something that mattered to him. Let it go at that.”

  It was clear Holcomb would have preferred more, but Rutledge shook his head. “This has threads that go elsewhere. Milford and Burton aren’t the only two dead. I’d rather not add to that number.”

  The inquest was arranged for a week’s time. There would have to be another one in Trefor for Joseph Burton, and in Oswestry for Mrs. Turnbull. Sufficient to the day.

  Preparing to leave, Rutledge said, “I stopped in to speak to Mrs. MacNabb. She tells me she sometimes employs the services of Thornton’s garage when she needs to travel to Llangollen. What do you know about him?”

  “Thornton? A good man. He learned his trade in the war and has made a decent living since he came home from France. Mrs. MacNabb always asks for Tommy, but I doubt she knows that the other young man who drives for Thornton—Wristen, I think his name is—had a brief affair with her daughter-in-law.”

  “Did he indeed? I understand the daughter-in-law has returned to Liverpool.”

  “And good riddance. There are wives who are sleeping easier since she left. Nothing I could quite prove, but they were certain enough of what was going on.”

  “Keep an eye on Mrs. MacNabb, will you?”

  “That I will do.”

  Rutledge left soon afterward, driving out the Chester road until he came to the long, low building set back from the road that Holcomb had described. It was situated about halfway between Llangollen and Chester, convenient to both. There was a lorry in the muddy yard, two men looking under the bonnet.

  He thought this had once been outbuildings belonging to the farm he could see in the distance. They had been refurbished and served now as a garage and what passed for a cottage connected to it.

  He drove into the yard, got out, and walked over to the lorry. The driver, glancing his way, nodded. But it was the man standing beside him that Rutledge was interested in.

  He was of medium height, carried himself well, and had an attractive smile as he said, “Be with you shortly, sir.”

  Odds were that he’d been a junior officer. There was a cockiness behind the smile, as if he knew its charm. This was surely, Rutledge thought, the other young man who drove for Thornton, the one who had had an affair with Mrs. MacNabb’s daughter-in-law. He was most likely in his late twenties.

  “As a matter of fact, I’ve come to speak to Thornton. Is he in?”

  “Yes, he’s in the shed, looking for a part.”

  “Then I’ll have a word.” He walked toward the shed-cum-garage.

  It was dimly lit but tidy. Across the rear wall, there was a long trestle table, and wooden boxes of varying sizes were set out on it in a row. A man was digging in one of the boxes, searching for something.

  He had heard the footsteps, and said over his shoulder, “I’ve told you, it’s important to keep like to like. How can I find what I need if it’s in the wrong box?”

  When Rutledge didn’t answer, Thornton turned, realized it wasn’t his helper who had come into the shed, and said, straightening up, “I’m sorry, sir. How may I help you?” He was of middle height, like the man working with the lorry driver, but older by eight or ten years. His sandy hair was threaded with gray, his face lined.

  “Sergeant Thornton?”

  Something in Rutledge’s voice touched a chord of memory. Not for the man, but for the rank.

  “I’m no longer in the Army, sir.”

  “Looks as if you’ve done well for yourself here.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Apparently good help is difficult to come by.” He nodded toward the yard.

  Thornton sighed. “He’s mad about motorcars and lorries, like Tommy, but Tommy is seventeen and willing to learn. Still, Wristen drives as if he’d been born at the wheel. A natural skill on the roads round about here. But he’s like so many who came out of the war. There’s an emptiness inside and he doesn’t know how to fill it.”

  “What regiment?”

  “Lately a Lieutenant in His Majesty’s Forces, sir. Wiltshire.”

  “Good men.”

  “They were, sir. Some of the best.” He glanced again toward the yard. “Nicely kept motor, yours. How can I help you, sir?”

  “It’s information I need, Sergeant.” He took out his identification. “When were you demobbed?”

  “Me, sir? Not until March of 1919.”

  “Were you in a convalescent home in early ’17?”

  “No, sir. Had a blighty ticket late in ’16, and was sent back to the Front just after Boxing Day. Healed, they said, but I was far from it. Still. I survived.”

  There was no bitterness in the words.

  “Have you ever taken your wife to a hotel called The Broadstairs in Llangollen? In particular, in January 1917?”

  “On a Sergeant’s pay? Not very likely! Begging your pardon, sir, but I’d like to know what this is about.”

  “I’m looking into a murder. And I came across a Captain Alfred Thornton who stayed in that hotel early in 1917.”

  “’Twasn’t me, sir. And I’m willing to swear to it under oath. Not to say that there isn’t another Alfred Thornton somewhere.”

  “I believe you. Did you ever encounter a Sergeant Milford? In the Bantams?”

  “Milford? No, sir. I’ve met Bantams, of course, but that name doesn’t pop up.”

  “He was killed not far from here. They found his body in the River Dee, just outside the village where your driver Tommy lives. He’d come here from Shrewsbury, looking for someone.”

  “I’d heard something about that. But there wasn’t a name, as I remember.”

  “No. Not then. He never came here asking to be driven somewhere?” It wasn’t likely. As Hamish was telling Rutledge. Trying to ignore the voice, he took the photograph of Milford from his pocket.

  Thornton carried it over to the door for a better look, then shook his head. “No, sir. I’ve never seen him before. If he hired a motorcar, it wasn’t one of mine.”

  He’d have made a good policeman, Rutledge thought. Steady, objective, not easily rattled.

  Thornton was saying, “I don’t much care for this business, sir. Using my name. It’s my reputation at stake. If I could help you, I would.”

  “Mind if I speak to Wristen?”

  “No, sir. He’s all yours. And if he did use my name, I’ve no more use for him.”

  Rutledge went to speak to the younger man, well aware that Thornton was watching from the interior of the shed.

  Brash as he was, when faced with Scotland Yard, Wristen shook his head. “I was never in northern England until the Sergeant asked me to drive for him. Besides, in early 1917, I was not likely to be thinking about holidays. I may be many things Sergeant Thornton doesn’t care for. I’m not a fool. I know that well enough. But I like working for him, you know. It keeps me straight.” He looked away from Rutledge. “I should have died out there. In France. Twice a bullet had my name on it. How I lived, I don’t really know. I feel sometimes that I’m on borrowed time. That I’m not really meant to be here, that someone got it wrong, and one of these days, they’ll get it right, and I’ll be gone.”

  “Have you told him that? Thornton?”

  “God, no. He’s Army,
through and through, even though he’s taken off his uniform. How do you make him realize that you want to do as much living as you can, while you can? He’d tell me how lucky I am to have survived the trenches with all my limbs intact. He’d got missing toes—trench foot—but he’s learned to walk well enough without them. He wouldn’t understand.”

  Rutledge believed him. But he showed Wristen the photograph of Sam Milford and asked if he’d ever seen the man.

  Wristen hadn’t. That appeared to be the truth.

  Rutledge thanked him, nodded in the direction of the shed, and started back toward his motorcar. He’d turned the crank and was getting into the driver’s seat when he heard a shout, and Thornton was walking rapidly toward him, his hand up in an effort to catch Rutledge before he could drive off.

  The limp was pronounced as he hurried, more so as his left foot tired. By the time he’d reached the motorcar, he put out his hand to hold on to the frame.

  “Sorry. Thought you might wish to know. There’s a motorcar service in Chester. You might speak to them.” He grimaced. “Our competition, now, but I worked for them for a year before I could afford to go out on my own. And I’d all but forgot—Henry asked me when he hired me if I was any relation to a client of theirs by the name of Thornton. Of course, I didn’t know him.”

  Rutledge thanked him, and drove on into Chester. He found the motorcar service near the railway station, in a converted shop.

  The owner, a man by the name of Henry, listened without much interest but was willing to show him their log of service.

  And there, in January of 1917, was a listing that made sense.

  A motorcar had picked up a Mrs. Milford at the Chester railway station and driven her to Llangollen. To The Denbigh Hotel. A third party had paid in cash for the journey and return. The name given was A. Thornton.

  Mrs. Milford had made two other journeys to Llangollen and returned. Each time she had traveled alone, but on the second and third journeys her destination had been changed to The Broadstairs Hotel. The payment each time was in cash from A. Thornton.

  It was all he could find. But Rutledge now had another link between Ruth Milford and Llangollen. And the train to Shrewsbury ran to Chester as well. It would have been easy enough to make the journey.

  When he asked Henry who the driver had been, he was told that the man had died in the influenza epidemic of 1919.

  Then Henry said, “As I remember, Mr. Thornton’s solicitor made the arrangements. They often do, when a client comes in by train. See here? BBT. That would be Baldwin, Baldwin, and Tate. Most likely George Baldwin, a junior partner. He did a good deal of business with us.”

  But when Rutledge called on Baldwin, Baldwin, and Tate, he was told by the firm’s clerk that George had retired in 1920 and moved to Carlisle to be closer to his daughter.

  “Did he have a client by the name of Alfred Thornton? I’m trying to locate him.”

  The clerk’s eyebrows flew up. “Thornton? Are you certain of that name? Yes? Then someone must be having a little fun at your expense. That’s the name we use for various purposes. If someone is insistent on seeing one of the partners, we tell him the partner is in conference with Mr. Thornton. Or if there is something we need to do and don’t wish to use the name of the firm, we use ‘Mr. Thornton.’” He coughed slightly. “Er. A convenience, one might say.”

  “Then who might have used that name to hire a motorcar to travel to Llangollen in 1917?”

  “I have no idea, sir. In that case it would have been a private matter.”

  “Was George Baldwin in the Army during the war?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir. He was nearly sixty.”

  Rutledge pulled out of Chester twenty minutes later. It was some forty miles to Shrewsbury, but he had no doubt that he could make it.

  He was not five miles from Shrewsbury when he glimpsed a Sunbeam motorcycle with a sidecar just ahead of him on the road, half-hidden between two lorries. He wouldn’t have seen it at all, if the headlamps of the second lorry hadn’t caught it.

  He couldn’t see the driver, only a shape with helmet and goggles.

  Abandoning his own plans, he began to track the Sunbeam.

  He lost it in the streets of the town, its very mobility against him as it sped in and out of what little traffic there was, and expected to find it in the yard at the Prince Rupert. But it wasn’t there, and he began to search for it.

  Hamish said, “It’s nae use, it didna’ stop here.”

  But Rutledge refused to give up. And then he spotted it, standing outside a pub that was already closed for the night. He stopped, got down, and went over to it for a closer look.

  He knew almost at once that this wasn’t the same Sunbeam he’d seen covered in army tents and brush just outside Little Bog. But he was beginning to open up the sidecar’s covering when a man rushed out of the pub and shouted, “Here, what do you think you’re doing, mate?”

  He reached for his identification and held it up. “Scotland Yard. I’m looking for a Sunbeam that was connected to a crime. How long have you had this one?”

  “Bought it secondhand when I was demobbed. What crime?”

  Rutledge looked up. “Murder.”

  “Here, mate, I’m not involved in any murder—”

  “It’s Inspector. Not mate.”

  “Well, Inspector, I’m not mixed up in murder.”

  “Know anyone else who has one of these machines?”

  “No. The only reason I have one is the price of a motorcar.”

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Westmorland.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  In the event, he could. Fumbling through a pack in the sidecar, he pulled out a sheet of paper. “See for yourself.”

  He had been in a clinic there for weeks. The doctors had taken out a shard of artillery shell from his knee, and he’d had to learn to walk again. “And bloody painful it was.”

  “Where are you traveling to?”

  “Dorset. My family’s there. A mate owns the pub here, I’m staying the night.”

  The accent fit. Rutledge let him go.

  “A wild goose chase,” Hamish told him as he got back into the motorcar. “Ye’re obsessed with yon woman.”

  “It could have been her. He drove with abandon, just as she does.”

  “Oh, aye?”

  Too tired to care, Rutledge tried to ignore the voice.

  It was quite late when Rutledge finally reached Crowley. He left the motorcar in plain sight in the yard, and let himself into the inn, going up to the room he’d taken before.

  Blocking the door with the back of the only chair in the room, to avoid any surprises, he went to bed.

  For miles he’d seen nothing but foxes and stoats and hedgehogs on the road, not a single motorcar or lorry or farm cart.

  The hours he’d had to be alert unrolled in his head as he lay wide awake on the bed, and for once even Hamish was quiet.

  When he did drift into a troubled sleep, he was following two women, but when he got nearer, one face changed into another, Ruth Milford becoming Susan before changing back into herself, taunting him.

  It was a measure, he thought when he woke from the dream with a start, of his failure to find any answers.

  16

  The aroma of baking bread brought him out of a restless sleep.

  He rose, bathed and shaved, found a clean shirt, and then went down to breakfast.

  Will gave him a long look, but served him with a reserved politeness.

  But it was Ruth who came storming in and said coldly, “I hope you have something to tell us.”

  “Of a kind. The inquest into your husband’s death has been set, and the body will be released for burial.”

  “Inquest? Then you know who killed Sam?”

  He couldn’t quite read her expression. Whether she was pleased—or alarmed. The post at the bar shadowed her face again.

  “I have two suspects. I expect to narrow that to o
ne.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “When does Will leave?”

  “After washing up the breakfast things. It’s easier to take our meals here, instead of cooking at home.”

  “Then perhaps we could talk elsewhere. I’d rather not be overheard.”

  She hesitated. “Anything you wish to ask me about Sam, I can tell you now. Here. There are no secrets.”

  “There are,” he said. “And if you wish to discuss those here, we can begin straightaway.”

  She looked out the front windows, taking in the view, as if there were answers to be found there.

  “Oh, very well. My house.”

  She turned on her heel and left. He had brought his coat down with him, and he went after her, careful not to close the space between them. By the time they had reached the Milford house and were sitting in the cold front room, she was visibly anxious.

  Before he could begin, she broached the subject herself. “It’s what happened in Oswestry, isn’t? I can’t tell you any more than I have. You aren’t a woman, you don’t understand what I’ve been through.”

  He realized that she had lived with her story for so long now that she more than half believed it herself. And that must have helped enormously with the guilt she carried with her.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, his voice neutral, “I’d like to begin with the moment your train arrived in Chester, January of 1917. When you were put into a motorcar hired to take you to Llangollen, and The Denbigh Hotel there. Where was Captain Thornton waiting for you? Shrewsbury? Chester? Llangollen?”

  Her gasp was audible, and then the color drained from her face. But she kept her gaze on his and said, “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Inspector.”

  He had carefully watched her eyes as he told her what he’d learned. He had seen her shocked reaction, the struggle to conceal it. She hadn’t expected him to uncover a secret she had protected for years.

  “It wasn’t the first time you’d met him. You aren’t that sort of woman. How did the affair begin?”

  She retreated into tears. “What are you accusing me of? I don’t understand any of this—” She rose, pointing to the door. “You will leave now, if you please.”