Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (18 page)

The last two on his list had no alibi and no apparent reason to do murder. Still, he put a question mark by their names.

Conferring with McBride later, he learned that one of them was “too shiftless” to be troubled by revenge, and the other was courting a girl at one of the farms.

The next day Rutledge set out for Soham and spent the morning looking up the ex-soldiers that Constable Peckham had included in his list.

The cooper was on there, but Rutledge had already spoken to him. One by one he tracked down the others, and one by one he cleared them.

Until he came to the rat catcher.

The man lived down by one of the small streams that still crisscrossed the area. His house, if it could be called that, was hardly more than a hut, a single room that served for sleeping and eating. A narrow cot in one corner was his bed, a table in the middle of the room must be where he ate his meals, and he cooked over a small open fire just outside the door where boards had been nailed together to form a rough lean-to that kept out the rain. A tan and white terrier lay sleeping by the door, his muzzle on his paws.

The man was tall and rangy, with long fair hair and a scruffy beard. His eyes were a light gray and never wavered from Rutledge’s face as he gave his name and why he had come.

“A policeman,” Jeremiah Brenner said, looking him up and down. Then he added, “I haven’t been to Ely since the war.”

“Then you’ve nothing to hide,” Rutledge said. “What did you do during the war?”

“I don’t remember.” His gaze turned to the wall, and Rutledge realized that there was a large rat in the cage sitting on a shelf. “He’s tame. I call him Isaac. I found him when he was no larger than my thumb, pink and blind. So I kept him. He doesn’t judge me, I don’t judge him.”

There was something about the man that put Rutledge off. He wasn’t sure whether it was the light eyes that seemed as cold as icy water, or if it was the rat.

“Do you make a good living as rat catcher?”

“Does it look like it? But my father was rat catcher before me. And it’s all I’m fit for now. I drink too much.”

And yet Rutledge was sure the man was cold sober just now.

“I drink to forget,” Brenner went on, as if he’d heard the next question in Rutledge’s mind. The cool eyes came back to Rutledge’s face.

“What do you want to forget?”

“Ah, that would be telling. Is there anything else?”

“Did you know Herbert Swift?”

“I know who he is—was.”

“And Mr. Burrows?”

“I’ve caught rats in one of his barns. Twice the size of the barn cat, they were.”

“Did you know the man who was shot in Ely?”

Brenner smiled. “I knew of him. Only I wasn’t the one who shot him.”

“Then who do you think did?”

“Even if I knew I wouldn’t tell you. Whoever it was, he must have had his reasons. Some of us didn’t like our officers.”

And that was all he could learn from Jeremiah Brenner. He put a question mark by the name. But if there was a rifle in the bare hut, Rutledge wasn’t sure where it could have been concealed. Still, the rat catcher answered to no one, and he could have found half a hundred places to keep the rifle safe.

Rutledge drove next to Isleham. The day was hot now, the air heavy. He left his motorcar in the shade cast by the trees in St. Andrew’s churchyard, and walked to each of the addresses on his list.

The first three names were easily eliminated. One had actually come to Wriston to hear Swift, “to make up my mind, once and for all,” he’d added. What’s more he had been seen to give Swift a hand when the man stepped up on the base of the market cross, just before he’d begun his speech.

The other two had perfectly good alibis, one working behind the bar at the local pub, and the other playing cards with the brother of the Isleham constable. They had been together most of the evening.

Numbers four and five had no alibi, but one had served in Egypt, well away from France where Captain Hutchinson had spent his war, and the other had been a conscientious objector and had served as an orderly in a hospital in Devon.

Their names received a question mark, but after the interview he was inclined to think they were in the clear. And Hamish agreed.

The sixth name lived just below the church in a house set back from the road. Rutledge’s first impression was that Lieutenant Thornton must be one of the more prosperous denizens of Isleham. There was a garden on either side of the steps, and the path leading up to them branched there to go toward a small folly, like a round Greek temple that must serve as a garden house. It reminded him vaguely of the Temple of the Winds he’d seen in a book on Athens. And one of the two small wings on either side of the house was mainly glass, a conservatory, he thought.

The middle-aged woman who answered his knock wore the uniform of a housekeeper. He gave her only his name, asking to see Lieutenant Thornton.

“I’ll see if he’s receiving visitors, sir. A moment, please.”

He waited several minutes for her to return.

“Mr. Thornton will see you now,” she said. “This way, if you please.”

He followed her into a central hall and down a passage that led to a very masculine sitting room, framed maps on the wall and a large globe on a stand in one corner.

Thornton was standing by the cold hearth. A tall slender man with fair hair and blue eyes, he greeted Rutledge pleasantly and offered him a chair.

“Is this about the Memorial Fund?” he asked. “I’ve been intending to send in my contribution. I’m sorry someone had to come all this way on my account.”

“I’m from Scotland Yard, sir. I’m here in connection with the murders of two men, Captain Hutchinson in Ely and Mr. Swift in Wriston.”

Thornton frowned. “Yes, a tragic business. I’ll help in any way I can, but I don’t precisely know how I can be of service.”

“Had you ever met the Captain? While you were serving with the Army during the war? Or perhaps afterward, in London.”

“I may have met him somewhere in France. If I did, I don’t recall it. But I never served under him, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t often go to regimental functions and the like.” He smiled grimly. “My rank is a battlefield commission. I joined as a private soldier and was promoted more or less against my will.”

Rutledge gestured to the room they were in, indicating the house in general. “You could have trained as an officer.”

“I didn’t want the responsibility for the lives of others. Rather selfish of me, perhaps. I killed Germans when I had to, but sending other men out to die on my orders was something I couldn’t face. Were you in the war? Yes. Then you’ll know what I mean.”

Rutledge did. All too well.

With Hamish rumbling in the back of his mind, he answered, “No one did that by choice. Only by necessity.”

“Very true. Still, I was happy to serve under someone else.”

“I understand Captain Hutchinson was in Burwell for a funeral several months before traveling to Ely for a wedding. A Major Clayton’s services.”

“I knew the Major, of course. I served under him. But I make it a point not to attend funerals. There have been too many. Men are still dying, although the war is nearly two years over. I didn’t know the Major’s sister very well—I’m sure my absence wasn’t noticed.”

“And Mr. Swift?”

“I’ve heard him speak, of course. But I’m not interested in politics. I do my duty, I vote. I don’t mean that. Still, I haven’t seen this better world we were told we were fighting for. If you want the truth, it’s something I try to avoid thinking about. The future.” It was his turn to gesture to the room at large. “I stay in the past, where it’s safely, unemotionally over.” A wry smile accompanied the remark. “I can do nothing to change the past and I have no responsibility for it.”

“If you were in the ranks, you were given a rifle. What became of it?”

“
My
rifle? I daresay I had more than one whilst in France. The last one I turned in with the greatest relief when I was given my commission. That was in the last days of the war. I don’t think I shot anyone after that. I tried not to. There were rumors of Armistice. It was all about to end, and I couldn’t see any reason to kill another man whose only hope was to live a little longer and then possibly go home.” He shrugged. “Not that they didn’t do their best to kill us.”

“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to see these two men dead? Or who shot at Mr. Burrows the day before yesterday, narrowly missing him?”

“Burrows? The farmer? My God,” Thornton said blankly. “As for the other two, I don’t know enough about the matter to do more than hazard a guess. And that would be someone who hasn’t finished his war. For whatever reason. Rather frightening to think about. I have my own nightmares, God knows.” His eyes were suddenly different, his features twisting with pain. “Mostly about the machine guns. I can’t hide from them, and I know I’m going to die. The doctors told me this might pass. So far . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish. Getting up, he walked to the window and stared out at nothing until he could turn to face Rutledge again.

“Is there anything else?” he asked. “I’d rather not talk about the war any longer.”

“Are you married? Do you have a family?”

“Sadly no. I thought I was engaged once. And then the war came along. I don’t think there’s anyone now who would wish to share this life. How do you explain to a woman who hasn’t been to war what it was like, and why you have changed so much?”

Rutledge had no answer to give him. He’d carried his love for Jean throughout the war as a promise of happiness when it was finished. And instead he’d had to find the courage to set her free, rather than tie her to the shambles he had become. To add to his pain, he could see how relieved she had been, how happy to walk away and not have to deal with what she didn’t understand and didn’t want to face. Very soon thereafter, she’d married someone else.

And there was Meredith Channing, who had also left him to find the man she was married to, and whom by her own admission, she hadn’t loved.

The room around him seemed to close in, and he made his escape before he could say or do anything that Thornton could recognize.
Shell shock
. Disgrace and cowardice and lack of moral fiber . . .

Outside he walked on to the churchyard, tree-shaded and quiet, avoiding the memorial to the war dead. It struck him that this island of tranquility was only a matter of miles from the hustle and bustle of Newmarket, the center of horse racing.

Someone was coming in through the lych-gate, carrying a pot of flowering plants and a small trowel, walking toward a fresh grave he could just see near the apse. Avoiding the woman, he turned and went into the church.

It was lit by the small but elegant clerestory illuminating the dark framework of the magnificent hammer-beam roof. He stood there and stared up at it, letting the conversation with Thornton fade. The emotions the man had roused were always too near the surface, like exposed nerves, sensitive to the touch, even to the air. No matter how many times he might tell himself he had begun to heal, he could see that Thornton had not, and it was a reflection of his own guilt.

And then, concerned that the woman planting the flowers might well come into the church to say a prayer for the dead—remembering how the Rector in Wriston had come upon him unexpectedly—he hastily turned to leave.

Taking with him, unwittingly, the thought that there had been no Green Man here, only angels decorating the ceiling above his head.

I
t was tempting to go to the rambling old Red Lion pub for a drink, but Rutledge had other calls to make.

Finishing those, he walked around the village a little, looked at the old priory that had become a barn, and then made his way back to the motorcar. And still Hamish was there in his mind, refusing to go, reminding him again and again of his encounter with Thornton.

Giving up, he drove back to Wriston. Had it been a mistake to interview the ex-soldiers? But where else was he to turn for answers, if not to men who had handled rifles, knew them intimately, and could probably still shoot as well with them as they had in the trenches.

Priscilla Bartram was on the lookout for him, and met him at the door, for all the world like a wife awaiting her husband’s return from the fields or the shops. Her life was a lonely one, and he could understand that his presence was at once comforting and comfortable. But there was nowhere else in the village to stay.

She offered him a drink, but he was no longer interested in a whisky. Instead he told her he would work in his room, writing up the day’s report for Inspector Warren in Ely.

“You’ll be down later for dinner? I found a nice bit of beef at the butcher’s.”

“In an hour, then.” He smiled and went up the stairs.

But not to work. He stood by the window for a time, then sat down at the desk to take out the stationery there, imprinted with the same scene that was on the iron sign outside.

He wrote a note to his sister, Frances, telling her where he was—she had not been in London when he left—and adding that it would probably be a longer inquiry than he’d expected. He asked her to collect his mail and then could think of nothing else to say.

In the end, he balled the note up and tossed it aside.

Thinking better of leaving it for Miss Bartram to find, he collected it from the floor and put it in his luggage instead.

It was while he was putting his valise back in the armoire that he had the thought.

And Miss Trowbridge had unwittingly given it to him.

The Green Man.

A face, often smiling without real humor, in a circlet of leaves, as if the man were poking his head out of them to see what was happening around him. Sometimes the leaves grew from his head or his face, half concealing it, like a man’s hair and beard. A pagan symbol, yet popular in churches or in the names of pubs in a few places he’d been. Something so commonplace and conventional that he’d missed the significance.

And now, suddenly, it had triggered what must have been in the back of his mind from the start, but locked away in his other memories of the war.