by Charles Todd
“You haven’t told me what was taken?”
“That was odd. The Chief Inspector looked in his wardrobe, thinking the man might be after warmer clothes. Instead, he seems to have taken another packet of biscuits, some bits and bobs of jewelry, a man’s gloves. Odd choice, but Leslie told me they’d bring in enough to have a decent meal, perhaps a night somewhere.”
“No silver candlesticks? That sort of thing?”
Benning shook his head. “Questions might be asked, if he had anything too valuable.”
“Clever man. Did Leslie believe this break-in had any bearing on the Avebury murder?”
“If he thought so, he never said. In my opinion, if whoever broke in that night was here in Stokesbury, he couldn’t have been doing murder in Avebury. Besides, where did he meet the woman who was killed there?”
“What if she was there, in the Leslie house, with him, and they had a falling-out? That would account for the bits of jewelry.” The dead woman—Katherine—had been too well dressed for a common thief, but he wanted to hear Benning’s answer.
The Constable considered that for a moment, then shook his head. “There’s still the distance to Avebury. And Leslie was of the opinion only one person had been in the house.”
“Well, then,” Rutledge said, rising. “If it has nothing to do with my inquiry, I’ll be on my way.” He had asked enough questions, he didn’t want to rouse Benning’s suspicions. And then, as if an afterthought, he said, “You mentioned that Leslie came by train to Marlborough. If he isn’t met, how would he travel the rest of the way to Stokesbury?”
“At the Marlborough railway station, there’s generally someone for hire.” He rose as well, preparing to see Rutledge off.
Rutledge showed Benning the photograph of the dead woman, but he shook his head. “So that’s what she looked like. I’d heard she was young. She was never here in Stokesbury. I’d have noticed her.”
Walking on to the door of the small police station, Rutledge thanked the Constable and went out to his motorcar. But once he was completely away from the village, he pulled to the side of the road and considered the next step.
He had to stay well clear of Mrs. Shelby. She had convinced herself she had seen the housebreaker. Would she actually recognize him? He couldn’t take the risk. But he also needed to get inside the Leslie house, without the Constable finding out. If an ex-soldier could manage it, so could he. Benning had said the window where the alleged thief had got in was well out of sight.
He looked at his watch in the reflected light of the headlamps. He had a little time before moonrise. Putting out the headlamps, he switched off the motor, and listened to the silence around him. In the far distance a dog barked, then was quiet again. He leaned his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes. He’d learned to sleep standing up in the trenches—men on the line snatched whatever rest they could, depending on the sentries to keep them safe from sudden attack.
There were no sentries here, but he let himself drift for a time, then straightened in his seat and looked again at his watch, this time with the torch from under his seat.
It should be safe enough now. Benning would have finished his rounds and gone to his bed. And he could leave the motorcar here, away from anyone walking a dog or restless in the night.
Stokesbury was small, with the main road cutting through it from east to west, and spokes, hardly more than narrow lanes, radiating out from the center of the village. Meadow Street, where the Leslie house stood, was the only one that didn’t end in fields, instead looping around to come back to the main road as Primrose Lane. Hardly a place to leave his motorcar for all to see.
It would mean a walk, from here, and he would have to wear his Wellingtons to keep his boots dry when he was in the house. Setting out, he could see just how dark the village was, no lights showing in any direction. Soon he could pick out the church tower, silhouetted against a cloudy sky, and a scattering of trees. A cat followed him part of the distance, striding beside him until it found its home, disappearing around to the back of the last house on Courtney Street.
He kept to the shadows, taking his time, making certain that all the houses were dark before he passed them. And there ahead was the Leslie house. He slipped around to the rear, staying close to the walls. In what little light there was, he could see the cellar doors, slanted from the rear wall to the ground, a patch of white against the blackness.
He felt the doors, found they would take his weight, and climbed up toward the window above them. The latch hadn’t been repaired. Leslie must not have had time to attend to it. But Rutledge ran his fingertips over the cellar doors and discovered a small patch of splinters.
The window latch had been broken from the outside.
He got the window open with a minimum of fuss, changed from his Wellingtons to his dry boots, and found it was easy enough to raise the window and fling a leg over the sill. A few seconds later he was standing in the pantry, remembering the smashed pitcher. But there was nothing on the shelf beneath the window—it was completely bare.
The house was cold, dark, and silent around him as he made his way out of the pantry into the kitchen. If there had been biscuit crumbs on the table in there, they were gone now.
His torch, masked by a handkerchief, offered just enough light to move from room to room. White sheets, ghostly in the darkness, marked furnishings covered over for the winter months, but he could see the paintings hanging on the wall in the dining room, books on shelves in the sitting room, and a pretty chandelier in the parlor.
He found his way up the stairs. The Leslies shared a bedroom, but smaller rooms on either side had been converted into dressing rooms. He saw the jewelry box on the dressing table in Mrs. Leslie’s room, and carefully opened it. But there was no half-moon pin there, just a few pieces of inexpensive jewelry, the kind that a woman might leave here to wear if an occasion arose. And he’d seen her wear the lapis beads in London.
Satisfied, he looked in her wardrobe for a gray hat or a purse that might have belonged to the dead woman. What better place to conceal it? Yet not expecting to find it or the valise. He even opened the drawers in the tall chest across from the window, making sure his torch couldn’t be seen by Mrs. Shelby.
To be thorough, he looked as well in Leslie’s dressing room, but there was nothing out of place. Nothing that shouldn’t be there.
He moved on to the guest rooms, then found the stairs to the attic. There was nothing here but pieces of heavy Victorian furnishings that must have belonged to the Nelsons and a few trunks of linens that appeared to be nearly as old.
Finally satisfied, he came back to the kitchen, and the light of his torch swept past the cooker against the wall.
He paused. If anything had been burned here, it would surely be in the cooker.
He crossed to it, opened the box where the fire was set, and shone his torch inside. Ashes, gray and moving slightly as he leaned forward to look more carefully. The light, flickering over the ashes, found something dark in the far corner.
Careful of his cuffs and the sleeves of his greatcoat, he reached for it. His fingers just barely closed over it, and then, moving slowly, he drew it out of the box.
The torch light was too faint to examine what he’d found, but he dropped it into another handkerchief, put it into his pocket, and closed the cooker door.
Swearing, he realized his fingers were covered in ash, and he tried to clean them off on the handkerchief over the torch. He dared not track that about. Then he looked carefully at the floor, to see if any ash had floated down there.
It was clean. Rising, he made his way back to the pantry, stepped out into the night, and pulled the window down from the outside. That took skill and time, but he managed it. Then at the last second, it slipped from his fingers and closed with a thump! Rutledge froze.
A dog began barking, and he could hear its claws scraping at the garden wall. He couldn’t see it, but he judged it was in the next house but one. He slipp
ed to the far side of the cellar doors, crouching there, head down, letting his hat shield his face.
After several minutes, a door opened, a man shouted at the dog, but it didn’t stop barking.
“What is it, then? What do you see?” the man demanded. And after a moment, he yelled, “Who’s there? Come out, I see you.”
But he couldn’t, if Rutledge couldn’t see him. He stayed where he was.
“All right, come inside, Sandy. That’ll be enough,” the annoyed male voice said finally. “You’re after shadows, that’s all.”
The dog stopped, a door slammed, and the night was silent once more.
Still, Rutledge waited. A good ten minutes, by his estimation. In the event the owner, remembering a recent breaking in at the Leslie house, decided to dress and investigate.
Finally he managed to replace his dry boots with his Wellingtons, and then listened again for any sounds.
Satisfied, he edged his way through patchy shadows to the black rectangle near the bottom of the garden that must be a shed.
When he tried the door, he was surprised to find that it was unlocked. But he had to open it by inches, for the hinges were rusty. Once it was wide enough, he covered the torch with a handkerchief again and shone it around the interior.
And there was a tandem bicycle against the far wall.
Crossing a floor cluttered with an assortment of farm implements, watering pails, and even a small iron summer bench, he could see that a narrow path had been made to the bicycle. And it appeared to be in excellent condition. He pushed the pedals, watching their quiet, smooth movement. Then he knelt on the dry earthen floor beside it and pointed his torch toward the tires.
They were caked with earth and bits of dried weeds. But when had it last been used?
Hamish spoke, startling him. “Yon murderer would ha’ been a fool to bring it back.”
Which begged the question that it had been used to travel to Avebury. Surely it would simply have been abandoned as soon as the killer was safely away from the scene. A tandem would have attracted attention late at night, with only one person pedaling it.
And he dared not be caught with it. Better to have it discovered and traced back to the rightful owner, casting suspicion on him.
Rutledge rose to his feet.
Even in his early days as a London Constable, Rutledge had never encountered a thief who returned what he’d taken.
He didn’t want to believe that Leslie himself might have slipped into the house, borrowed his own bicycle, and returned it to the shed after he’d finished with it.
But where was his victim all this while? Where had she been waiting? And how had he explained himself when he collected her?
How could he convince a respectable woman to ride a tandem bicycle cross-country to a prehistoric site in the middle of the night? If he’d brought her from London there were any number of desolate stretches along that road where she could be killed and left for anyone to find. Surely that would have been more sensible.
What if he was completely wrong about the tandem? What if the killer and his victim had come only as far as the ancient avenue by motorcar, leaving it there to walk together between the double rows of stone until they reached the circle, as the builders themselves must have done? He had only to walk back there, drive off, and disappear.
That would clear Leslie and even an ex-soldier looking for an empty house where he might find a little food.
Nights were still long this time of year.
But how had the victim reached here? Had her killer brought her all the way from London? Or for that matter, from Bristol or Bath or Swansea in Wales?
“Aye,” Hamish said. “Ye canna ask yon victim to creep in and oot of a house ye own. It doesna’ stand up.”
Then how was it done? Rutledge wanted to ask him, even as he knew Hamish was right.
Making certain there was no one in the garden waiting to surprise him, he left the shed and took great care to shut the doors, stamping down any grass he might have displaced opening them. Then with a last look around, he started back the way he’d come.
He had just reached the corner of the house when something touched his face, and his heart leaped. But it was only a spider’s web, invisible in the darkness. Brushing it away, he got himself down Meadow Street, to the field, and finally to his motorcar.
Using his torch now without covering it, he took out his other handkerchief and looked at what it contained.
The small charred remnant of stiff black ribbon lay in his palm.
And at the very edge of it was a bit of gray cloth.
He stared at it.
Someone had tried to burn what might well have been a woman’s dark gray hat.
11
Rutledge drove directly to Marlborough, found the railway station, and went in search of the stationmaster.
“Good evening,” he said as the man looked up from the newspaper he was reading. “Scotland Yard, Inspector Rutledge.”
The stationmaster hastily put his newspaper aside and asked, “Is there some sort of trouble?” His hair was nearly white, his hands gnarled. Rutledge thought he had stayed at his post during the war, and had been kept on afterward because there was no one to take his place.
“The Yard is tracking a killer, and it’s possible he—or she—got down from the London train when it stopped in Marlborough.” Taking out the photograph, he showed it to the man. “Have you seen this woman? Alone or with another person, perhaps? We can’t be certain of that.” He gave the date. “Time has passed, I realize that, but perhaps you have a good memory for faces.”
“Murder?” He took off his glasses and leaned forward to peer at the photograph Rutledge was holding. Shaking his head, he said, “I can’t say that I remember her.” He looked again. “Is she dead?”
“She was the victim.”
The stationmaster stared at Rutledge. “Was she, now?”
He tried a different approach. “Who is usually waiting for the London train in the hope of a fare? Someone with a motorcar—or a carriage? He might be able to help me.”
The man’s face brightened. He knew the answer now. “That would be Mr. Barlow. An elderly gentleman. He died of pneumonia two weeks ago. Caught a chill in a heavy rain, and it went to his chest. A pity. I could count on him being there, if anyone asked.”
A pity indeed.
“I’ve a friend who comes to Marlborough by train and sometimes hires a driver. Chief Inspector Leslie, who has a house in Stokesbury. Do you know if he’s been here recently?”
“Mr. Leslie. I think he came through some time back. There was a Constable waiting to collect him.”
“Several days before that.”
The stationmaster shook his head. “I can’t say that I remember seeing him.” He peered once more at the photograph. “There was a fire on the train just as the passengers were disembarking. Might have been then. Some fool dropped a cigarette on a newspaper under his seat. No harm done, but there was smoke in the carriage and a passenger fainted, thinking she was about to be burned to death. Took me the better part of half an hour to bring her round. There was several people who got down, but I was too occupied to notice them. Three women, and a man? I expect that’s right.”
“Can you be sure about the date?” Rutledge persisted.
“It was a clear night—no one had umbrellas up.” He picked up his glasses. “I did count the tickets, and there was the correct number. Four. They’d left them on the bench by the gate.”
“Did you report the fire? Would there be a record of it?”
The man looked away, more than a little sheepish. “I didn’t report it. I should have, yes, but no harm done, and there would be mountains of paperwork to see to.”
As a witness in a murder trial, this man would be useless when questioned by the defense. Rutledge counted to ten, then asked, “Was one of the women alone?”
“I expect one was. But then I was hurrying into the carriage, you see.” He set his glasses
down, picked them up again, uncomfortable with so many questions.
“And the Chief Inspector didn’t come to collect her?”
“No, he wasn’t on the train. I’d remember him.”
“The woman who had hysterics. Who was she?”
“I’d never seen her before. She kept telling me she mustn’t get down in Marlborough, because her daughter would be waiting for her at her destination, and she mustn’t keep her waiting.”
“Did any of the people who got down that night have a return ticket?”
“I’m fairly sure no one did.”
He thought of another way to get at an answer. “Did Mr. Barlow have a fare the night of the fire in the carriage?”
“I expect he did.” He closed his eyes as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was a rare night when he didn’t.”
“Do you know any of the passengers that night by name?”
“No, sir. Not that night.”
“Did Chief Inspector Leslie ever question you about the train from London?”
“No, sir. I can’t think why he should have done.”
Rutledge gave up. The man’s memory was like a sieve. And so he put away the photograph, thanked the man, and left the station.
He swore as he turned the crank. Even if he could show that the dead woman had been on the train, there was no way to prove it without Mr. Barlow’s testimony. Speculation was not proof.
Before he got behind the wheel, he scanned the street in front of the station. There were no waiting cabbies nor a driver hoping for a fare. Not surprising. The board had told him that the next London train wasn’t due until late tomorrow afternoon.
The fire in the carriage. An accident, as the stationmaster had said, or intended as a distraction? But he couldn’t quite see Katherine, as he was coming to think of her, covering her departure from the train.
He was back to the ex-soldier.
The church clock reminded him that it was late. But he still had one more call to make.
The only person he really hadn’t interviewed as a potential suspect was Dr. Mason, and that was because he wasn’t sure the man could physically have committed the crime. Someone his age would have been at a distinct disadvantage trying to stab a healthy young woman. Surely she’d have fought, screamed. He couldn’t have smothered her cries and still wielded the knife so efficiently. The chances were, he’d have been scratched and bloody by the time anyone came running. Could he physically have dragged her body the distance to the ditch?