by Charles Todd
But as they left Marlborough behind them, Hamish disagreed. “If he were angry enough, he’d find the strength.”
“His house is closest to the scene. She could have come to Avebury looking for him. She wouldn’t have been a former patient. He didn’t serve in the war. But it’s possible she knew someone who had been his patient.”
“If she hadna’ come by bicycle, it was a verra’ long walk from Marlborough station.”
“Perhaps he met her at the station. Transport generally waited outside. Who would have noticed them together? An older man, welcoming his daughter home again? It’s not likely. But it’s possible. I need to be sure.”
“Aye, but who was she? And why should he ha’ wanted to kill her?”
None of his conversations with Mason had led him to believe the man had killed her. But there was the doctor in Shropshire—Allen—and Rutledge had had no doubts there, either, until he learned that there had been no mention of venereal disease in the report on that victim’s death. Knowing that would have alerted the police to a past that might have led to murder.
It didn’t appear that Leslie had treated Mason as a suspect. He was barely mentioned in the Yard report, and only then in his capacity as a doctor. If only for his own peace of mind, he had to question the man.
That done, he could face what that bit of stiffened ribbon and gray wool meant.
Hamish wasn’t finished. “Ye’ve got nothing to be going on with. Ye said so yoursel’.”
“I know,” Rutledge said as his headlamps picked out the dark road ahead. “But then how do I explain what I found in the cooker?”
“They will say it was the man who broke into the house.”
“That’s true. He won’t be here to defend himself but he’ll take the blame for murder. The inquest will conclude it was murder by person or persons unknown. Just as it had before.”
“Ye canna’ be sure he didna’ kill her. Ye canna’ be certain he didna’ come back to yon house afterward, and burn her hat because he’d no’ remembered it.”
“There’s still the valise. The crescent moon pin. Her purse. Where are they? And why Leslie’s house?”
Hamish said, “It’s no’ where anyone would look for a dead woman’s belongings. It was empty, he couldna’ ha’ known it belonged to a Chief Inspector.”
But Rutledge wasn’t keen on coincidences.
He was making good time in spite of the ruts in the road, and he was halfway to Avebury when another thought struck him.
If he went back to Scotland Yard and reported that it was very likely that Leslie was somehow involved, and he needed to question him, who would Markham believe if Leslie called Rutledge a fool and refused?
When Rutledge knocked at the door of the surgery, Dr. Mason squinted in the bright lamplight.
“Hallo,” he said with a smile. “Have you found her killer? Is that why you’re so late? Come in and I’ll offer you a sherry.”
Rutledge said, “I’m here to review the facts of that young woman’s murder. If I may?” And he made to enter the passage. He hadn’t intended to be abrupt. But seeing the doctor unshaven, his hair tousled from sleep, his nightshirt tucked unevenly into his trousers, he was rapidly having second thoughts. Still, murderers didn’t wear marks on their foreheads, like Caine, to identify their deeds.
Frowning, Mason stepped aside and took him into the chill front room, that looked as if nothing had been changed in it since his wife’s death. It even smelled stale and musty, having been shut off from the rest of the house for so long a time.
Mason didn’t bother to light the fire, but he did light the lamp by the window.
“Now then, what’s this about?” he said, and waited.
Feeling like a fool, Rutledge said, “Had you ever seen that woman before you were called to the ditch where she was found?”
“Never. I’m not so pressed for trade that I go about making my own corpses.”
“I’m serious, Dr. Mason.”
“And so am I, Inspector. Yes, I know, you must do your duty. So must I. I’ve taken an oath to do no harm.”
“And you haven’t heard from any of your patients anything that would lead you to believe she was coming here, to see you or anyone else in Avebury? A doctor, like a priest, hears what a man can’t tell his own family. Could she have been sent by a former patient, someone you knew, and Henderson didn’t?”
“My patients appear to be as bewildered as I am. I would have spoken to Chief Inspector Leslie if I was worried that one of them might be involved in her death. As for former patients, my wife and I kept up acquaintance with some of them for a few years. They were busy with their lives, some have died. In good time, we made new friends here. You know how it is. I think the last time I heard from the past, it was at my wife’s death. A note of condolence.”
“Did your late wife have among her jewelry a pin shaped like a crescent moon? One that might be worn on a coat? Even a hat?”
Surprised, Mason said, “I really don’t know. I never gave her such a thing, but that’s not to say she didn’t own one or inherit one from her family. I can tell you quite truthfully that I never saw her wear it.” He started toward the door. “I’ll take you to her room, if you like, and you can see for yourself.”
It was a genuine offer, and Rutledge, still standing, not having been invited to sit, shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”
Mason stayed where he was. “I don’t mind being questioned, Rutledge, but I do mind being suspected of murdering that poor woman. I’d have helped her in any way I could have done, even if she’d escaped from prison and needed sanctuary. That’s part of my oath as well. It’s never been tested, but I think I would have the courage to lie to the authorities, if I believed it was for the best.”
Rutledge said quietly, “Forgive me. But I would have been remiss in my duty if I hadn’t asked you the same questions I’ve asked your neighbors, just because I’ve enjoyed our conversations.”
That mollified the doctor to a degree, but he still said, “I insist that you look at my late wife’s jewelry. I shouldn’t care to be treated differently.”
And so Rutledge followed him, carrying the lamp, up the steep, narrow staircase, counting fourteen steps without a landing.
Mason turned to his left, and came to a door just down the passage. He took a deep breath, then opened it, standing aside to allow Rutledge to enter. “Her jewelry has always been kept in the top drawer of her dressing table.”
Rutledge crossed the room, set the lamp down on the dressing table, and opened the drawer. There were three boxes inside. He opened them one after the other, and saw a string of lovely pearls, pearl earrings to match, and a pearl ring in the first one. Gifts, he thought, from her parents when she came of age.
In the second were several rings, a long gold necklace that might be worn with an evening gown, another of jet beads, and three bracelets. The last box held only Mrs. Mason’s engagement ring and wedding ring, set in the satin bed made for them by the jeweler who had sold them to a young doctor who was about to propose.
“We have no children. I let her wear them in her coffin, but I couldn’t bear to bury them with her. I wanted to look at them sometimes, and remember the evening I proposed to her.”
Rutledge closed the box and put it back in the drawer, then quietly shut the drawer. “You’ve made your point,” he said without emphasis. “Honor satisfied.”
He took up the lamp again, and walked to the door, then down the stairs to the front room, without looking to see if Mason followed.
But Mason shut the door behind him as he came after Rutledge and said, “Now you owe me the courtesy of telling me what this was about.”
“She was very likely wearing a hat that matched her coat. I found someone who remembered a woman with black hair and a hat with a crescent pin. You are the nearest house to the scene of that murder. You could have killed her and no one the wiser. You would know how to use a knife to best advantage, and you could hav
e burned the clothes splattered with her blood. There’s no one in the house who would notice if you never wore your red jumper or your blue shirt after that night. You might have discovered afterward that she’d left her hat behind, and burned it too. But decided not to burn the pin. It might have value, it might even have been a gift from you. And in Henderson’s absence you made a point of helping the police.”
“Remind me never to play chess with you. You have a devious mind.”
“No. A policeman’s mind, always suspicious.”
Mason crossed the room to a tray with a decanter and several glasses. He inspected them for dust, then sniffed the sherry. “It seems all right.” He poured two glasses, and handed one to Rutledge. “I saw in the beginning that you were different from the Chief Inspector. He did his duty. Fully and carefully, mind you. But his heart wasn’t in it. I thought it might be something personal. An illness in the family, or the like. I’m a doctor, I’ve seen many men and women struggle to keep their feelings from showing when given the worst possible news. But there were no answers here in Avebury. He knew that, and still he didn’t stint. He left here with that murder unsolved.”
“That’s a very good description of the Chief Inspector. What did you see in me?”
Mason sipped his sherry and nodded. “It’s still good. You have a fine mind, and you are tenacious. It’s more than duty with you, isn’t it? A passion, I expect. Or perhaps there’s something driving you. You see in the victim someone who must be spoken for. Whatever the cost. I wonder why.”
“I don’t know why,” Rutledge said. It was the truth. He didn’t. But he’d taken up police work because someone had to speak for the dead. “My father was a solicitor,” he said after a moment. “He did what he could for people who came to him.”
“Yes, well. The answer may come to you one day.”
“Did you kill her?” he bluntly asked the doctor.
“Of course not.”
Rutledge finished his sherry. “Then go back to your bed. I need to find mine.”
Mason took their empty glasses and put them back on the tray. “I’ll see they’re washed later. We might want them again.”
At the door, he stopped before opening it and letting in the cold night air. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Best to sleep on it.”
He didn’t seem to notice that Rutledge hadn’t answered him.
Instead Rutledge said, “Know anyone in Avebury who owns a fine set of lapis beads?”
“Lapis?” Mason shook his head. “I don’t believe I do. Now my wife could have answered that. She could tell you who wore what to, say, evensong or a wedding, describing the gown and the jewelry that set it off. She had an eye for that sort of thing.”
But there were no beads . . . He’d given them back to Leslie.
He drove to the inn but stood there for a moment, listening to the silence of the night.
Once when he and Mason had dined at the inn, the woman who was serving them had asked if he was making any progress finding out who had killed the strange woman. He’d smiled and told her it was early days yet. But that hadn’t satisfied her.
“It makes me anxious, walking home at night. The dark comes down early this time of year, and I’d never been afraid of it before. Now I’m torn between asking someone to walk with me and wondering if I do, whether I’m inviting a murderer to protect me.”
When she’d walked away, Mason had said, “I agree. It’s an odd place, especially at night. I’m not afraid of the dark—God knows, in my profession, I’m out at all hours, and a pretty thing it would be to fear shadows. Nor am I afraid of the circle. But they loom, those great monoliths. You can’t escape them. And if you’ve any imagination at all, you wonder at the skill that put them here. The mystery is why.”
“It’s the same mystery with the dead woman. Why here?” Rutledge had finished his meal and shook his head when the woman waiting tables offered him more tea.
“That’s no mystery at all. The design was to throw you—the policeman, whoever was sent to investigate—off the scent. As it has done, very well indeed.”
But looking out into the darkness, Rutledge thought, There’s more to it than that. He needed a place to bring her. And the stone circle wasn’t new to him, he must have been here before. He must have known that hooded stone was there, and somehow it felt like the right place. Even at the risk of being found out.
What in God’s name had this place meant to a killer?
A village this small couldn’t go on hiding a secret so shameful. Not after two Scotland Yard Inspectors had come here and looked for answers. These people weren’t hardened criminals. Someone would have broken down finally and confessed whatever it was he or she knew.
Hamish said, “Chief Inspector Leslie has a house not many miles from here.”
And Rutledge answered silently, Yes. Then why had he taken the train from London to Marlborough, when he came down for the inquiry, rather than drive? He always drove. Even to Dartmouth, down on the coast. Unless of course he met her train in Marlborough, on his way back from Dartmouth, and feared that someone might remember the motorcar—and his passenger? That has to be considered.
It was very late, and he was bone tired. Anything began to seem logical when the mind was hungry for sleep.
With a last look at the stones, like ghosts in the distance, he turned and walked quietly into the inn, regretting that he’d treated Mason so shabbily when he couldn’t even entertain the possibility that Leslie had been a killer.
“Because,” Hamish said, his deep voice seeming to follow Rutledge up the stairs, “he’s a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector. He’s trained to look for proof. Who better to conceal it?”
Rutledge stopped, his hand on the handle to his room, Hamish’s words seeming to echo in his mind.
Why hadn’t there been a photograph of the victim in the Yard file? What had become of it?
He found it hard to believe that it had simply got lost.
Drifting in and out of sleep, Rutledge thought about France.
So many things still came back to the war.
There were women available to men given leave in Paris and Calais and Rouen. Women of the streets, women who plied their trade wherever they could. And there had been refugees desperate to survive, who were willing to sell their bodies for food and shelter.
Many of the officers avoided them because disease was often rampant among those women. Others preferred the women of good family who became “aunties” and looked after their British soldiers as carefully as the women at home in England. Sending them packages, writing to them, waiting for their next leave. Far from home and loved ones, lonely, often frightened by what they must return to, men found respite wherever they could. And a good many wounded were sent to Rouen and then to Paris to recover.
Could Leslie have met her that way? And now that the war was over, had she somehow decided to find him again? Had that been her mistake?
She’d had a child.
Had she come here, hoping to find the father? It would explain a good deal.
And yet Rutledge found it hard to believe that Leslie would have walked away from her at war’s end, without making some provision for the mother of his child. He wasn’t that sort of man.
The blankets and coverlet were sliding off the bed, and he reached for them, pulling them back over his shoulders as he tried to shut off the thoughts tumbling over each other.
Mrs. Leslie hadn’t borne any children. He might have loved that child more than the mother. What had become of it? Why had she left it behind? Affairs that might be forgiven in time of war would be viewed differently now, two years later. Especially if the child had died, the bond between a man and his mistress broken.
It was going on four before at last he fell asleep, but even his dreams were tangled, and he woke up at first light feeling as if he’d had no rest at all.
The next morning he made the rounds of villages close by Avebury, but no one had seen any indigent soldier
s asking for work.
As one Constable put it, “This weather, they tend to stay close to the cities. No farm work to be had, and very little hiring at all.”
Another told him, “If he took anything worth selling at that break-in in Stokesbury, he’d be looking for somewhere to sell it. He wouldn’t be hanging about here, for fear a Constable might take it into his head to clap him in gaol and then find what he’d taken on him.”
Both made very good sense, and by the time he returned to Avebury, Rutledge was of the opinion that the vagrant didn’t exist.
He encountered Mrs. Marshall, the Rector’s wife, as he walked down toward the doctor’s surgery, and she paused to ask if he’d been coming to return the photograph.
“I’m sorry, not yet. But I assure you, I’ve taken very good care of it.”
She wasn’t best pleased with his answer, saying only, “Kindly see that you do.” She was about to walk on when Rutledge remembered something.
“I’m told the victim was wearing a very pretty scarf when she was found. And you kept it, for further identification. Can you describe it for me?”
She bristled a little, as if half expecting that he intended to take that as well.
“It’s a rather fine scarf. French silk, I think. Cream, with dark blue fleurs-de-lis embroidered on it. I’m hoping that it will mean something to someone.”
“Thank you.” He touched his hat as she nodded and then walked on.
He watched her go on her way.
Had the man Katherine sought in England given it to her?
Or was he, Rutledge, grasping at straws?
Experience told him he was not.
He changed his mind about stopping at the surgery, not ready to lose the train of thought that seemed to haunt him. At the next turning by the corner of the church, he felt as if he could put a name to every house in Avebury. Walking on, he passed the church, remembering how he’d stood beneath the windows and examined Katherine’s photograph. Ahead were the walls of the manor house gardens, and beyond that the front of the house. Looking at them, he made a decision, crossing the road to the church, finding the sexton trimming a tree limb that was brushing against the walls.