Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (22 page)

Clouds were still scudding across the sky, and the frogs had begun a chorus in the flooded fields and the ditches. In one place the embankment had been breached, and water covered the road. He tested the depth and changed his mind about driving through it in the dark. Reversing, he went back to the last crossroads, and found the turning for Isleham.

He was nearly there when close by the priory barn he saw a man out walking, keeping to the shadows.

Rutledge slowed, and watched for a moment. There was something furtive about the man’s movements, and he was carrying something in his left hand.

Hamish said, “He doesna’ move like a man full of the drink.”

Rutledge had been thinking the same thing. After a moment, he left the motorcar where it was and, walking across the wet grass toward the priory barn, followed the shadowy figure. It had disappeared around the corner of the building, and Rutledge went after him.

He’d just reached the corner and was about to turn it, when someone came around from the far side and nearly blundered into him.

“Who the hell are you and what are you doing here?”

Rutledge said, “I could ask you the same thing. I’m Scotland Yard.”

The man moved back. “Indeed. Rutledge, is it? I’m Thornton. You interviewed me.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“I saw someone lurking about in the churchyard. I was just coming home—I’d got caught in the rain over in Soham. I watched for a minute or two, couldn’t decide what he was doing, and started after him to ask his business. But he went out through the lych-gate, doubled back, and disappeared in this direction. I’d like very much to know who he was.”

“Where did he go?”

“That’s just it. I lost him on the far side of the barn. He simply disappeared.”

“Did you go inside?”

“The door is locked. To keep the young people out, and to prevent the Travelers from using it to sleep rough.”

“What did he look like?”

“I’ve no idea. I never got a good look at him.” Thornton raised his left hand. “I brought a stick with me. Just in case. There’s seldom trouble here in Isleham, but after the shootings, it puts the wind up when you see someone hanging about like that. At this hour of the evening.”

“Was he carrying anything?”

“I don’t know. It looked like it. A satchel or something. Or it could have been his dinner and his bedroll. It was too dark to be sure.”

Then which man had attracted Rutledge’s attention? Thornton with his stick? Or the interloper with his bedroll? It was impossible to tell. And yet there was no reason for Thornton to be sneaking around in his own village unless he
was
following someone else.

“Let’s have another look.”

Together they walked around the barn, but there was no one to be seen.

“He could have gone through the fields, but I doubt it,” Thornton was saying. “The thing is, they’re wet, and the pitches are running high. What brings you to Isleham? Still interviewing ex-soldiers?”

“The road from Ely to Wriston is flooded.”

“Not surprising. There are low places along there. And sometimes the banks are weakened and the water comes through. I’ll report it.”

“Can I give you a lift?”

“Yes, that’s kind of you.” They walked together toward Rutledge’s motorcar. “What brings you out at this hour?”

“I was in Ely. Police business.”

Thornton smiled, a flash of white teeth in the darkness as he turned toward Rutledge. “Successful, I hope.”

“Early days,” Rutledge answered.

It was not far to Thornton’s house. Rutledge stopped and his passenger got down.

“Thanks. If I discover who it was, I’ll let you know.” He turned and walked up to his door, setting the stick to one side before going inside.

Rutledge watched him go.

And then he went back to the priory barn and searched a second time. But no one was there. Where had the man gone?

He stopped at the barn door and tested it, even though Thornton had told him it was kept locked. It swung open, a greater darkness inside.

“Anyone there?” he called, his voice echoing around the walls.

There was no answer. He stood there, testing the darkness. He’d left his torch in his motorcar. After a moment, he moved forward, working his way around the walls. But when he’d made a circuit of the interior, he found no one there. And no one had slipped out the door, he was nearly sure of that.

He went back to the motorcar and took out his torch. When he shone the light on the door, he saw that the lock had been broken. Someone then had forced his way inside while Thornton was moving around the walls outside.

He turned on the torch and cast the light about. Except for a few wet footprints on the dry, dusty floor, there was no other sign of whoever had come inside.

He must have escaped while Rutledge and Thornton were driving away. And where he was now was anyone’s guess.

Rutledge went back to his motorcar and slowly drove up and down the streets of Isleham, but the only thing he saw was a dog trotting homeward. Rain had kept most people close.

So who had been out in the wet, lurking, as Thornton had put it, in the churchyard? Or had the man been a figment of Thornton’s imagination?

Dissatisfied, he headed for Wriston, coming in from the direction of Burwell rather than the flooded Ely road and over the bridge past the mill.

In the flare of his headlamps, he could see the bald new repairs where the arm had broken. There was very little standing water, but Ross and his men had been quick, thanks to Miss Trowbridge’s warning. Even so, he could hear the rush of water beneath the bridge, and there was the glitter of pooling in the ruins of the mill house.

A light glowed in the windows of Miss Trowbridge’s cottage, and the door opened a little to let the white cat in. If she saw Rutledge she gave no sign of it, shutting the door as soon as Clarissa darted inside.

He continued to The Dutchman Inn and pulled up near the steps.

There was water on the street, puddles everywhere he looked as he splashed around the motorcar to the door. Miss Bartram had been watching for him. He walked in to find her just coming into the hall.

“I’ve put some dinner aside for you,” she said cheerfully. “I thought perhaps there wouldn’t be time to find anything in Ely.”

It was kind of her, and he ate the food she warmed for him. But he couldn’t satisfy her curiosity about what had taken him so long in Ely.

He wasn’t sure he knew the answer to that himself.

F
og followed the rain. When Rutledge woke in the middle of the night, he could see the thick white mist outside his windows, wrapping the house in the eerie silence of three o’clock in the morning.

He went to the window to look out, but he could barely make out his motorcar.

Listening, using his ears rather than his eyes, he could have sworn he heard a bicycle being pedaled along the High. Was it his imagination, that half-asleep, half-awake moment when one is roused in the middle of the night? He couldn’t be sure, and then the sound vanished, lost in the darkness.

What he heard next, he recognized instantly: the sound of a horse being ridden fast, coming from the direction of the mill.

He found his clothes without turning on the lamp, and slipping downstairs, he let himself out as quickly as he could.

The horse had gone past, he couldn’t tell where, but he could no longer hear hoofbeats.

He began walking, using the High Street to guide him, staying in the middle of it. It wasn’t long before he could hear voices in the distance, and using those as his goal, he walked on. The mist, mercifully, wasn’t as thick as it had been that first night.

At length he could make out what sounded like McBride’s voice, and then someone responding, urgent and frightened. A woman’s voice? Miss Trowbridge, as far as he knew, didn’t keep a horse. Who then? Miss Burrows?

“McBride?” he called, suddenly galvanized into action.

“Rutledge?” McBride answered. “I didn’t know you were back. You’d better come.”

He followed the voice, and there in front of a house door, not the police station, was McBride, his uniform donned over his nightshirt while Miss Burrows was holding the reins of her horse, peering anxiously into the mist.

Seeing him finally, she said, “I heard the shotgun. I was afraid to go to the house—in this. And so I came for help.”

“You can’t drive in this,” McBride said to Rutledge. “You don’t know the roads.”

“I can try,” Rutledge said. “But I think Miss Burrows ought to stay here.”

“
No
. No, it’s my father, I want to go.” She hastily secured the horse while McBride was trying to persuade her to wait.

“We’re wasting time,” Rutledge said. “Are you coming, McBride?” He turned, hoping he could find his way back to the inn. The mist seemed to thin, thicken, and thin again. He recognized the dormer window of the ironmonger’s shop and knew he’d passed the market cross without seeing it. And then the motorcar came into view. He bent to turn the crank as McBride hurried to open the rear door for Miss Burrows. Rutledge spared a fleeting thought for Hamish as she slid into the seat, then he was behind the wheel, reversing to drive back toward the mill.

It was difficult. He saw the gate to Miss Trowbridge’s house and then nearly missed the turning over the bridge. Soon Miss Burrows, reaching over from the rear seat, pointed.

“There—the road you’re after.”

It was a straight run then, until the last of the trees lining the lane into the Burrows farm loomed to his left, and he made the turn with ease.

The problem was how to approach the house. He drove with care, missing the ruts he could see, slipping and sliding in the wet clay. Then the lights of the house glowed through the mist.

Out of the darkness came the most ferocious noise that Rutledge had ever heard. He stopped, and even as he pulled up the brake he realized it must be the dog that Burrows had been planning to borrow.

McBride was saying, “Good God, it’s Black Shuck.”

Miss Burrows countered with, “It’s the dog. Something’s wrong.”

“We don’t know that,” Rutledge argued and blew the horn several times.

“Burrows?” he shouted. “It’s Rutledge. And Constable McBride. We’re here with your daughter. I’m coming in.”

The shotgun fired, and even over the dog’s barking, Rutledge could hear the pellets raining down in the trees on either side, ten feet ahead of his bonnet.

“Damn it, man, have you run mad?” Rutledge bellowed, angry now.

“Papa?” Miss Burrows cried, her voice breaking. “Please. Are you all right? What has happened? Please—I want to come in.”

She was opening the door, getting out. Rutledge reached over the back of his seat and caught her arm.

“No. Stay where you are. He’s going to shoot as soon as you come into range.”

Miss Burrows fought him, crying and calling to her father.

Rutledge, keeping his eyes away from where Hamish should be sitting, pulled her back inside the motorcar.

And then through the mist Burrows shouted, “Is it you, Betty?”

Suddenly still, Miss Burrows said in a husky voice, “That’s my mother’s name. Betty.”

“We’ll have to wait for sunrise,” McBride said. “But what if he’s hit someone, and he’s out there, wounded?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Rutledge said quietly. “Walking up there is suicide.”

“Betty?” Burrows called again. “Where are you?”

“Something’s wrong,” Miss Burrows was saying, “His heart—”

But Rutledge didn’t think it was the man’s heart. “Answer him. Let him think you’re his wife.”

“I can’t.”

“You must, if you expect us to help your father.”

“Dear, is that you?” she responded, her voice trembling. “Why have you got out your shotgun? I want to come in. Will you let me?”

They sat there, waiting.

And then Burrows called, “McBride? Is that you, Constable?” The barking stopped. “What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?”

“I got word you’d seen something. I’ve come with the Inspector to see if you were all right.”

“You aren’t walking, are you?”

“No, we’re in Mr. Rutledge’s motorcar.”

Rutledge turned the headlamps off and then back on again.

“Come in. Hurry. There’s someone out there, and I don’t think I missed him.”

“All right. We’re coming in,” McBride called. “Don’t shoot. We’ll stop in front of the house.”

And Rutledge eased in the clutch, moving slowly forward, prepared to reach for the brake if Burrows fired again.

This time he let them come as far as the steps of the house. Miss Burrows was out of the motorcar almost before Rutledge had stopped.

“Papa?” She ran into the house, calling her father. They could hear the dog’s deep, throaty growl. McBride was out and racing after her, calling to her to wait. Rutledge was at their heels.

They found Burrows sitting by the window of the front room. At his feet, its hackles rising, lay the largest brown dog Rutledge had seen in some time.

“Be quiet, Hector,” Burrows said, then noticed his daughter. “I thought you were over with Ed and his wife.”

“I was. I heard you fire. I didn’t know what to do.” She reached out to touch his shoulder and drew her hand back almost in the same movement.

“He’s burning up with fever,” she told the two men in a low voice.

Rutledge moved the lamp in order to see him better. One side of Burrows’s face was swollen twice its size, red and inflamed where the bullet had grazed him.

“Hello,” Burrows said now, as if they had come to call. He set the shotgun down by the chair, and added to his daughter, “I don’t feel particularly well. Perhaps I ought to go lie down, now that you’re here.”

She turned quickly to Rutledge. “What are we to do?”

“He needs a doctor. As soon as possible,” Rutledge said, moving around Burrows to put the shotgun out of reach, then leaning down to look at his face. The dog growled again, getting to its feet. “It’s infected. The wound. I thought you’d taken care of it.”

“He wouldn’t let me. Not after that first day. He said it was healing.”

But it hadn’t.

Straightening up, Rutledge said, “Where is the nearest doctor?”