Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (16 page)

“I won’t be kept prisoner in my own home. By God, I won’t.”

But it was half bluster, Rutledge thought. Burrows had been thoroughly frightened, and there was no mistaking the stiffness in his body as he sat in the chair. Or his uncertainty about the future. Having looked Death in the eye, so to speak, he was not likely to do something foolish.

And then Burrows said, “I’ll keep the shotgun to hand, and if he comes nosing around this house, I’ll shoot first and ask later.”

“Just be sure,” Rutledge warned, “that you’re firing at the right man. You don’t want to make any mistakes. Or you’ll be up for murder yourself.” He rose. “I need to report what happened to Inspector Warren in Ely. Will you describe that man again?”

“I never really saw him. Just that wormlike body and a face as cold as death. As if he could look down at my corpse without feeling anything except—satisfaction.”

Miss Burrows turned away, biting her lip to hold back tears.

“Which of your enemies will feel satisfaction at your death?” Rutledge asked.

“Good God, I don’t know any who would shoot me down in the road. There’s competition in this business. A better yield, finding a stronger seed. That sort of thing, but not murder. I’d done nothing a man might want to kill me for.”

When they had left and Rutledge was driving with care through the ruts and holes of the road leading up to the farmhouse, McBride said, “What do you make of Burrows, then?”

“He couldn’t have shot himself. And I don’t think the daughter could have shot him. Besides, she was frightened for him.”

“He knew Swift.”

“Yes,” Rutledge said slowly, trying to ignore Hamish in the back of his mind. “But so did everyone in Wriston. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind. Show me where this ambush happened.”

McBride gave him directions, so that they came up on the bridge just as Burrows had done. Rutledge stopped the motorcar well short of the spot and got out. He could see droppings on the road some fifty yards back. Testing the light wind, he realized that it was blowing toward the bridge, which meant that the horse probably hadn’t caught the scent of the man who was waiting. Farther along, the turf on the right side of the road was torn, where the horse was startled, and started dancing, fighting the bit, before taking off in fright.

Rutledge stood there, looking down toward the bridge.

It was a clear shot, the man’s head well above his mount’s, and the distance was good, the wind hardly a factor, the pace steady as the horse trotted home.

He asked McBride to stand in his place while he walked down and over the hump of the bridge.

The late season grass was matted where someone had been lying there waiting. In some places it was already beginning to spring back. He couldn’t judge the height or the shape of whoever had lain there. But there was enough evidence to verify what Burrows had claimed.

Rutledge scanned the area, looking for anything the killer had left behind—a cigarette stub, a cartridge casing, anything that would be useful. But the man had left no trace other than the bent blades in a patch of grass.

He stretched out full length, to see what the killer had seen.

From this position, it would have been easy to watch Burrows coming from at least a mile away, even if the sound of hooves hadn’t alerted the killer to his approach. And yet the height of the old bridge concealed the waiting man until he had lifted himself long enough to aim and fire.

Rutledge rose slightly, raising an imaginary rifle, then bringing it to bear on McBride.

It was an easy shot. Easier than peering over the edge of the parapet at Ely Cathedral, easier than shooting at Swift through the wavering torchlight and wafting smoke. Why then had the killer missed?

Hamish said, “The horse. As soon as he moved, yon horse would see him.”

It was very likely. Even a slight shift by the horse could have made the difference between life and death. The other two victims had either been standing or walking slowly.

And that was a miscalculation on the part of the killer, if he’d known nothing about horses.

The question now was, had Burrows been the target? If so, how had the killer tracked him to this particular place? Had he seen him in Burwell earlier?

Or had the man with the rifle missed at the last minute when he realized that Burrows was not the rider he was expecting?

Finally, would any target have done? Was this a third attempt to murder? Or just a tactic to muddle the issue?

Rutledge got to his feet and walked back to McBride, who jogged forward in his turn to have a look at the far side of the bridge.

Driving on to Wriston, Rutledge said, “I’m intrigued with Burrows’s description of what he’d seen. I want to go back and speak to Mrs. Percy. And then I’ll continue on to Ely. Get me that list of men who were in France. I’ll need that when I get back.”

B
ut Mrs. Percy wasn’t moved by Burrows’s close call or his description of the killer.

“I never saw anything,” she told Rutledge a second time. “When I gave my statement to Constable McBride, I’d been blinded by the torches and all that smoke. And there’s an end to it.”

“It isn’t the end. You signed your statement. By doing so, you were swearing to the truth of it. Is the memory of what was in that window too frightening to think about now?”

“How can I be afraid of something I didn’t see?” she countered.

“If you won’t describe it, will you try to draw it?” Rutledge took out his notebook and held it out to her. “I’d like to show it to Mr. Burrows.”

But she refused to take it, and finally he withdrew the notebook.

“I didn’t see anything to draw. There was only a man with a rifle in his hands.”

He didn’t think she’d seen a rifle. He wasn’t sure she would even have recognized the difference between it and a shotgun. Not in the few seconds she’d had to take in what she was looking at. According to McBride, there had been no mention of a weapon in her original statement.

But she’d been questioned. Not only by the police but just as surely by her neighbors, curious about her monster.

And in the end, she had recanted.
A man with a rifle in his hands
.

What was acceptable to the world. What would never again make her a laughingstock.

“A pity. We might have confirmed what you’d seen, on the basis of what Mr. Burrows has reported. It would have vindicated you.”

Something flickered in her eyes. “That’s as may be. It was daylight when
he
saw what he saw. There’s a difference.”

He thanked her and left. He was just bending down to the crank when he noticed that in the house next to hers a curtain twitched.

Mrs. Percy’s neighbor would be over as soon as he had turned out of the lane, out of sight, to find out what the police had wanted. And the news of Burrows’s wounding would spread like wildfire.

It couldn’t be helped. He’d had no choice but to tell Mrs. Percy she wasn’t alone in seeing something incomprehensible, hoping that the fact that the killer had struck again would encourage her to talk to him. Putting together her evidence with Ruskin’s and Burrows’s, he might just have something more definitive than
monster
.

Rutledge stopped to tell McBride that he’d got nowhere and would be driving on to Ely.

McBride shook his head. “Stubborn woman. But the main question now has to be where does this man go when he’s not using that rifle? Cambridge? Peterborough? King’s Lynn? Even Inspector Warren doesn’t have enough men to look everywhere.”

“Nor can we take a chance that there’s another target out there who might not be as lucky as Burrows.”

“Do you think he’ll try to come back for Mr. Burrows? Just wounding him might not be enough.”

“God knows. But I think Burrows will stay close to his house for a while. Which is probably his best protection just now.”

“But not in the long haul.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “True. He could bide his time, whoever he is, and try when we’ve given up. Or brought him in.”

“A soldier. A solicitor. A farmer. It makes no sense.”

When Rutledge reached Ely and reported to Inspector Warren, he heard the same comment.
It makes no sense.

“If he’s satisfied,” Rutledge pointed out, “he can disappear as easily as he appeared. If he isn’t, Burrows won’t be his last target. We don’t have time to worry about motive or connections. We’ve got to find him.”

“Will he come back for Burrows, do you think?” It was the same question that McBride had asked, but this time it was from a different perspective. “Do you think we could use that possibility to trap him?”

“God knows. It depends on why he shot at him. How deep his feelings went. What worries me is that he missed. It was a clear shot, an easy shot. Was it the shifting of the horse? Or was he having qualms of conscience?”

“My money is on the horse. He’s shown no signs of a conscience so far, interrupting that wedding and then killing Swift in front of women and children.”

“I’ve asked McBride to send out word that I’d like a list of all the ex-soldiers in each village. Can you draw up one for Ely?”

“It will take time, we’ll have to go door to door. It’s the only way to be sure we have all the names. Do you think it’s one of them?”

“If they didn’t do the shooting, they could have brought back a rifle as a souvenir for themselves or someone else. Or know who did. Meanwhile, I’ve spoken to Swift’s brother. He seems to think he’s a likely target as well. I must say, isolated as the farm is, he could easily be picked off from a distance. The question is, how to protect a population as scattered as it is here in the Fen country. You can’t watch them all. On another matter: What do you know about Hutchinson’s sister? Did you inform her of her brother’s death, or did Fallowfield?”

“Fallowfield asked if he could tell her. I thought it best. He also identified the body and saw to it that the remains were taken to London as soon as they were released, accompanied by a man of the cloth, someone related to the new Mrs. Fallowfield. He felt responsible. After all the man had come to Ely for his wedding.”

“Burrows swears he had no connection with the other two men. That could mean that whatever links them is in the mind of the killer. Not something we can easily track down.” Hamish was saying something. Hearing him, Rutledge asked, “Do you have ghosts, phantoms, or other specters in the Fens here?”

Surprised by the question, Warren laughed. “Do you think our killer is a phantom?”

“No. But if he can appear and disappear at will, perhaps he keeps himself out of sight in some place people are afraid—or unlikely—to go.”

“We have a great hound—Black Shuck—who is a sign that something is about to happen. A harbinger, so to speak. I don’t know anyone who has seen him in the last few years, but I was told that he was spotted near Isleham the day before we declared war on Germany. It was never confirmed. Excitement was running high then, and people were ready to believe in any omen.”

“Is this Black Shuck like Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles?”

“Oh, yes, the story. Our black dog hasn’t been known to harm anyone. On the contrary, he’s a warning. Then there’s the black mill at Wriston. People have always thought it was haunted. A man was killed there a century or more ago, hung up on one of the arms. An accident most likely—no one was ever taken up for the crime. Several of the old mills have stories attached to them. And one of the old lagoons had a legend about something that lived in the water. That’s gone, along with the lagoon. Not much help, I’m afraid.”

It wasn’t.

Rutledge went back to the telephone he’d used before—in the passage to Reception at a hotel—and this time he found Sergeant Gibson at the Yard.

“There’s not much to tell,” Gibson said. “I spoke to the Captain’s sister. She was upset, said no one could possibly hate her brother, and told me that it must have been a madman that shot him.”

“What’s their background?”

“Hutchinson and his sister were orphaned young and shifted from relative to relative until he went to Sandhurst. He was a young Lieutenant when he met and married a woman who had money of her own and a house in London, where they went to live. There was some story she’d been engaged to another man, but I couldn’t confirm that. Hutchinson had his first taste of war with the Expeditionary Force that went over in those early days, trying to stop the German advance. He was wounded at Mons but not sent home. His wife lost the child she was carrying, and her death was put down to despair. The short of it was, she didn’t want to live. The sister—she lived with him and his wife—says it was a very happy marriage, but another source claims the wife was unhappy.”

“No foul play suspected in the wife’s death? If he married her for her money, he could have killed her for it as well.”

“It appears he was in France at the time.”

“What about the jilted lover?”

“Never heard of again. I’d guess he decided he was well out of a bad bargain. The sister couldn’t even remember his name. She said it was never official, their engagement, just something understood from childhood.”

“Did Hutchinson’s wife have any relatives who might have felt she was married for her money and then neglected?”

“None the sister knew of. There was an uncle who was her guardian, but he’s long since dead. I did speak to the Rector at Mrs. Hutchinson’s church. St. Timothy’s, in Warwick, where she’s buried. He was inclined to agree with the official cause of death. I did learn that a maid disappeared from the London house not long ago, but she wasn’t there when Mrs. Hutchinson was alive.”

“What became of her? Did you ask Miss Hutchinson about her?”

“I was told there was probably a man involved. The girl had come highly recommended, and she did her work well, they had no complaints of her. But she was young, unused to the city. Then one day she seemed very unhappy and just walked out. Miss Hutchinson called in the police after she failed to return by the end of the week, but they had no luck finding her. She wouldn’t be the first to wind up in the river. Miss Hutchinson says she was young enough to believe promises made to her by a man, only to find herself deceived.”