by Charles Todd
He spent the day calling on jewelers, going first to those his mother or sister had done business with, and then to others as well known in the City.
On Oxford Street he found what he was after.
The older man behind the counter looked at the beads as Rutledge took them out of his pocket and smiled with pleasure, then frowned. “If I may?” he said, taking them from Rutledge and examining them more carefully.
“Are you here to offer these for sale?” he asked after a moment.
“No. I found them and am trying to locate their owner.”
“Ah. An honest man. A pity the clasp is broken, but perhaps that’s why they were lost. I know the owner. I shall be happy to return them to him. If there is a reward, who shall I say found them and brought them in?”
Rutledge said, “Could you tell me his name? I’d prefer to return them myself.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t give out the names of my clients.”
“A pity,” Rutledge replied. “But I haven’t done business with you, and I would rather not leave them. They are safe with me. My name is Douglas. If you speak to the owner, you can tell him he will find me at Scotland Yard.”
The jeweler opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and nodded. “I shall be happy to pass your message on to him.”
Rutledge turned and left the shop. He couldn’t blame the man. But by the same token, he hadn’t wished to give his own name. There was no one called Douglas at the Yard. But he was nearly sure that the jeweler had been about to tell him that the owner of the necklace could also be found at the Yard.
Unsettled, Rutledge went back to his flat for his valise, then left the city, intending to drive back to Avebury. Instead, he found himself traveling north, toward Yorkshire, where Leslie had been sent to look into a murder in a village not far from York itself.
Stopping one night on the road, he reached Denby by two o’clock the next day.
The village market, he discovered, was already in full swing, the streets crowded with people and stalls, and nowhere to leave his motorcar. He threaded his way past a group of men watching a farmer examine a bay mare for sale, then stopped to let a crocodile of schoolchildren cross in front of him. He finally found a spot near the ironmonger’s shop where he could safely stop.
The stalls and tents were busy, and a magician in black evening dress was entertaining a group of admiring young women next to a stall selling hot pork pies.
Rutledge watched the ebb and flow of people for several minutes. And then a middle-aged Constable strolled past, speaking to a stall owner here and nodding to another there.
Moving on, Rutledge looked into the Denby Arms, stopped at a tea shop called The Cozy Corner, and a pub, whose sign, The Golden Boar, had recently been repainted. It was the badge of Richard III, who had been quite popular in Yorkshire.
But there was no sign of Leslie.
“Ye passed him on his way to London,” Hamish said.
That was possible, of course. But Rutledge didn’t think it was likely.
He made another circuit of the stalls, and turned to look when a flurry of movement marked a motorcar making its slow way through the throng of people. Leslie was driving, another man beside him, while a third sat in the rear seat.
He pulled over next to the police station, and the two men got the third out of the rear and led him toward the door. As they paused to open it, Rutledge got a brief glimpse of the third man’s bloody face. Someone had given him a severe beating.
Rutledge stepped quickly out of sight, went back to The Golden Boar, and sat down at a table by the window.
“We’re closed,” the man behind the bar told him.
“I’m waiting for a friend,” Rutledge said.
The barman looked him over and decided not to press him to leave.
It was only a quarter of an hour before opening.
But it was another two hours before Rutledge saw a grim-faced Leslie pass his window. He got up, caught up his hat and coat, pushed his way through the now busy pub, and went out to follow him.
Leslie kept up a brisk pace, passing through the crowded street without paying attention to the market-goers. He didn’t stop until he had reached the quiet of the churchyard, put a hand on the gate, shoving it open, and going through to stand out of the wind in the protection of a large yew.
Rutledge had dropped back, giving him a few minutes before passing through the gate himself. It creaked loudly, and Leslie turned quickly, defensively.
His expression changed to surprise when he saw Rutledge.
“What, did Markham send you to press me to make an arrest?”
“No. I haven’t seen him. What happened to your prisoner?”
“It’s a nasty business here. Two young women have disappeared, and feelings are running high. That was an ex-soldier, looking for work. A stranger. He was set upon and beaten because he roughly fit the description of the man we’re looking for. But he’s what he says he is, and he can prove it.”
“Lucky for him.”
“Yes.” Leslie reached up and with both hands pressed against his eyes said in a muffled voice, “I wish to God he had been my man.” Dropping his hands to his sides again, he added, “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”
“I’d have a look at that magician next to the pie seller. He attracts young women.”
“I’ve had my eye on him. He travels from market day to market day. But there’s not a shred of evidence that would allow me to bring him in. Not yet. Interesting that you saw something there as well.” He frowned. “What are you doing here?”
“Passing through, as a matter of fact. Gibson said you were here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the strand of blue beads. They dangled, dark blue and very pretty, from the fingers of his gloved hand.
Leslie’s eye widened. “Good God. What—are those my wife’s beads? No, they can’t be. Do they belong to one of my victims here? Where did you find them?”
“In Wiltshire. Avebury.”
“What the hell were you doing there?” he asked blankly. “No, don’t tell me there’s been another murder at the stones. The doctor was worried about that.”
“Markham sent me there to take another look into your inquiry. To see if new eyes could find what you hadn’t.”
Leslie stiffened. “I knew he wasn’t happy with the inquest. Neither was I. But he accepted the results.” He regarded Rutledge, as if too much of a gentleman to mention the obvious: how could an Inspector succeed where a Chief Inspector had not.
Rutledge looked up at the church tower where rooks were squabbling. “I rather think he was expecting me to come to the same conclusions. Only in my case there were personal reasons for his wanting that.” His gaze came back to Leslie. “Still, it’s a hopeless inquiry to start with. I don’t think the Chief Superintendent himself could have solved it.”
Leslie’s eyes dropped to the beads. “You say you found these there? I don’t understand.”
“A little girl of four was wearing them. Her brother had discovered them in mud by the causeway. No one knew what they were. Just—beads. I remembered seeing your wife wear something very like these.”
Leslie reached out and took them from Rutledge’s gloved hand, looking at the strand, examining it carefully.
“Yes, these could be hers. I don’t quite know what this is.” He fiddled with the string where Mrs. Johnson had tied the broken ends together. “I was leaving for Avebury, and my wife asked me to take her lapis beads to the jeweler’s shop on my way to the railway station. The clasp needed mending, and I could pick them up when I got back to town. Only when I walked into the shop, I didn’t have them. There was no time to go back to the house, the train was due in twenty minutes. I put them out of my mind, went on to Avebury. To be honest, I hadn’t got around to telling her I couldn’t find them. They must have been in my other clothes, in my valise. I kept hoping they would turn up at home.” He looked up, smiling ruefully at Rutledge. “
If these are hers, you’ve probably saved my marriage. They’re her favorite beads.” The smile faded. “I’ve looked in my motorcar, all over the house—it never occurred to me they might have fallen out in Wiltshire of all places.” His voice trailed off, then he shook his head again. “I’m grateful.”
A silence fell.
Rutledge said, “I’ve read your report on Avebury. So far I can’t put a name to the dead woman. How did you fare, searching for her? No use going over the same ground. Not that I’ve got any better ideas.” He kept his voice light, not pressing.
“I never got very far.” He sighed. “There was nothing to point me toward her past. The Chief Constable put out a description to his counterparts in neighboring counties, asking for help, and that didn’t bring in any leads either. No one recalled her, she hadn’t gone missing, no one was searching for her. A blank, Rutledge. As if she didn’t exist. Meanwhile, Markham was pressing for results, as usual. I called for an inquest, but there was only one verdict it could bring in. I didn’t like it, but I had the feeling that if I stayed in Avebury for another fortnight, and another after that, the verdict wouldn’t change. I was angry about that, but as I was leaving, Dr. Mason told me that if he’d killed once, he’d kill again, and we’d have him then. Cold comfort for his next victim!” He considered Rutledge for a moment, his eyes shadowed by his hat. He was still holding the string of beads in his right hand. “You mentioned something about a personal reason for Markham sending you to Avebury?”
Rutledge said only, “It was because of another inquiry entirely. An unidentified woman was killed and left in an open grave—not hers, it was dug for a man who had just died in that village. I found her killer. For some reason Markham felt that there was a similarity in the deaths and the way the bodies were discovered. He thought I could find answers in Avebury too. If I didn’t, nothing lost.”
Except, of course, Markham’s confidence in him.
“But there’s no connection?”
“Dr. Allen might have killed before, but he couldn’t have been responsible for Avebury. He was in Bath at the time of that murder. Having an affair with a young schoolmistress. We examined his appointment book after we took him into custody. He was supposed to be conferring with a colleague, but the dates coincided with what her cousin could tell us about the victim’s evenings with a new friend she’d met at a concert. The cousin thought it was a woman.”
“Well. I can only wish you better luck than I had. I hope Dr. Mason is wrong about his killing again, but our murderer brought a knife with him to Avebury. He knew he might use it.” He dropped the beads into his greatcoat pocket. “Do you mind if I keep these?”
Rutledge was on the point of objecting. Were they evidence? But he’d seen Mrs. Leslie wearing just such a strand. If he turned them in with his report, Leslie would have to apply for their return. It could take years—and if he, Rutledge, also failed to bring someone to trial, they might never be released.
Hamish was saying, “Yon jeweler recognized them.”
Leslie was adding ruefully, “I’ll give them back, of course, if I’m wrong about them. The jeweler will know. And he can mend the clasp while he’s about it.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
There was another silence.
Then Rutledge thanked him, adding, “I must be on my way. I hope you find your man.” He turned to walk back to his motorcar, leaving Leslie there in the shadows of the yew.
Hamish said, “It was no’ a verra guid idea to come here. Ye accomplished nothing.”
It was too late to second-guess his decision now. And he was beginning to think that Avebury had never held the answer to the victim’s murder. It had been the place, nothing more.
He closed the churchyard gate and turned toward the hum of people in the market square.
Passing a pair of men already the worse for drink, Rutledge threaded his way through the cluster of market-goers waiting for tables in the pub. One of the stall owners was loudly hawking his wares, while several others were taking advantage of the lull to eat boxed lunches they’d brought with them.
“He didna’ ask you how long you’d be staying here,” Hamish commented.
No, Rutledge answered silently. Usually he would have done.
They would have adjourned to The Golden Boar, and talked or dined together.
Giving Leslie the benefit of the doubt, Rutledge added, “It’s a measure of his worry about what’s happening here.”
The magician was still there, talking to a pretty young woman wearing a dark blue coat. She was looking up at him with a shy smile. He was dark, attractive, and far more sophisticated than his audience. Rutledge crossed the street, walked up to the man and woman, and asked where he could find the post office. The magician looked blank, but the woman politely pointed in the direction he should go. Rutledge thanked her and went on his way.
But when he looked back before stepping into the post office, she had also walked on, the spell the man had cast broken. The magician was standing there, staring after her as he blew on his hands. Then he walked off, disappearing behind a line of makeshift stalls.
Satisfied, Rutledge went on to where he’d left his motorcar. He wasn’t convinced that the magician was the killer Leslie was hunting, but the man was Trouble. There was something decidedly off about him, and the way young women looked at him was what also made Leslie’s killer successful, that Pied Piper charm.
Not his inquiry, of course.
He drove out of Denby and turned south. He kept seeing Leslie drop the lapis beads into his pocket.
It could have happened the way Leslie had said. He told himself that several times.
The necklace falling out of his pocket as he was bent over, scanning for evidence. Or perhaps he reached for his gloves, having forgotten the beads were there, and the broken clasp caught somehow and they were pulled out.
Leslie was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard.
Then why had he, Rutledge, driven this long way to Yorkshire?
He concentrated on the road ahead, ignoring Hamish in the back of his mind.
Once he found the dead woman’s name, he would ask her family if she had owned lapis beads. But on the whole he still believed they weren’t hers. The killer would have made a point to take any distinctive jewelry she might have been wearing. It could have led to identifying her, and while struggling to manage the bicycle alone, he could well have lost them. And yet the man in the London shop had recognized them, after all.
“Ye ken,” Hamish said, “it doesna’ matter. You’ve just given evidence away. Ye had better hope it was Mrs. Leslie’s beads.”
8
Driving south from York with every intention of going on to Wiltshire, Rutledge changed his mind again. He had put off what he had known for some time he would eventually have to do. But he had no other choice now.
It went against the grain to ask this particular man for his help.
He could of course go on to Wiltshire and drive around the county showing the photograph of the dead woman to every Constable he could find. Make work, not progress. Before very long, Markham would be asking for a report, and there would be nothing to give him.
He reached London very early in the morning and stopped at his flat long enough to shave and change. And then at nine o’clock he drove the short distance to Chelsea.
Haldane lived in a house not far from the one Meredith Channing had occupied when Rutledge had first met her. Several streets over, but close enough to evoke memories.
Rutledge had met Haldane while interviewing residents of the street after a motorcar crash that had ended in a death. The initial investigation had rapidly expanded into a full-scale murder inquiry.
Haldane was an enigma. Then and now.
His credentials claimed he was in the Foot Police, the division that was in charge of Army discipline and crimes. But that was surely nothing more than a cover. For what, Rutledge hadn’t discovered, but he’d have wagered his life it was Milit
ary Intelligence. The man’s quiet manner and quick mind would have been wasted on finding other ranks away without leave or wanted for starting a fight in a pub. What’s more, his contacts went beyond anything the Yard could draw on.
He disliked being beholden to this man, but sometimes his resources were the only certain way of gaining information that Sergeant Gibson couldn’t uncover.
The man who acted as servant to Haldane—and kept the door—informed Rutledge that he was in. Ten minutes later, Haldane walked into the study where Rutledge had been waiting.
Haldane nodded. “Good morning.”
“Good morning. I have a photograph I should like to have you look at for me.”
Rutledge handed him the envelope. Haldane considered Rutledge for a moment, then he took out what it held.
He looked at the photograph intently. “She’s dead.”
“Yes. She was when she was discovered. No identification, nothing to tell us who she was or where she’d come from.”
“May I keep this?”
“I promised the Rector it would be returned to him. In the event her family comes looking for her. A final identification of the dead woman.”
Haldane looked up. “They won’t be coming.”
“What? Do you know her?” Even Haldane couldn’t be that good.
He shook his head. “She’s European, I think. Possibly Armenian. How she got to England I don’t know. Or why she should wish to come here. Still. Who in Europe would know to look for her here? Perhaps that’s what made her choose this country. Or perhaps she knew someone who could protect her. The Continent is awash with displaced persons. Refugees from the war, from political upheavals. People looking to settle old scores. Some of them are in danger, others are looking for peace. Some are even dangerous.” Haldane hesitated. “A long way to travel to meet Death. Where was she found? London?”
“Avebury.”
For the first time since Rutledge had known him, Haldane registered surprise.
“Avebury?” he repeated, looking again at the photograph.
“She was found in the ditch surrounding the megaliths. But she’d been killed by one of the stones. The one that resembles a hooded figure.”