Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (27 page)

It wasn’t the first time Rutledge had wondered about such a possibility.

But he said, “He could have knocked at the door out to the kitchen garden. And when no one came, he walked in.”

“I still say, what if Mrs. Ross was resting, a cool cloth over her forehead, and didn’t hear the knock.”

He had no answer for that.

T
he next morning brought news that Ruskin, the cooper in Soham, had gone on a rampage in the night, wielding a side ax. It was a blade that was razor sharp on one side and dull on the other, with the typical short handle that coopers used in the close-quarter work of their trade.

It could do serious damage, wielded as a weapon.

Because he’d been on the ex-soldier list, Rutledge went to Soham to interview him, and found him in the local police station with a heavy head.

Ruskin looked up as the cell door opened, and Rutledge stood there in front of him.

“What happened?” Rutledge asked. He’d asked the constable to stay in the tiny office and give him time alone with the man.

Ruskin buried his face in his hands. “I’d been to the pub, and I didn’t want to go home. There’s a cot in the loft of the shed, and I thought to sleep off most of what I’d drunk before my wife saw me. That’s all I remember. Then I was back in Wriston, and the man in the window was shooting at
me
.” He sighed, looking up at Rutledge. “Constable says I was running down the lane shouting and waving the side ax. I was looking for someone, and I was going to kill him. I’m told it was the hurdle maker I was chasing. I must have frightened him out of his wits. Then some men wrestled me down, took away the side ax, and held me until the constable came. One of them flung a pail of water over my head. By that time I was nearly sober. They clapped me up here for the night, all the same.”

“Why were you searching for the hurdle maker?”

“God knows. I doubt I’ve exchanged a dozen words with him. Besides, it had more to do with the night Swift was killed. The nightmares came back after that. A time or two I’ve tried to drink myself into forgetting.”

That didn’t work. Rutledge had tried it, found it made the nightmares harder to escape, and gave it up. But Ruskin would have to learn it for himself.

“Nothing happened at your shop after you got there last night? No one came to see you?”

“How do I know? I don’t remember, I tell you. It’s a blank, until I started dreaming.”

“Then it was what you saw in Wriston.”

“It must have been.” He shivered. “I didn’t want to kill anyone. I didn’t want to be killed.”

But what had triggered this particular nightmare?

Looking at Ruskin, he thought it was likely that the man himself would never know. It was locked in his mind with the war he wanted to forget.

Still, Rutledge tried. He kept his voice level, quiet.

“Was it a sniper, Ruskin? One of our sharpshooters?”

“No. No.” Ruskin shook his head. “Don’t ask me, don’t make me remember.”

“Then it was German. Am I right?”

Finally, Ruskin looked up, his eyes dark with pain. “It was outside Ypres. I saw him. Staring straight at me. I knew he was going to fire. And I threw myself to one side. But the man behind me didn’t see him. Not in time. And he took the bullet meant for me. It was my
fault
.”

Rutledge put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You needn’t think about it again,” he said firmly. “You’ve done your duty.”

Ruskin didn’t answer, enveloped in a misery that nothing could stop. After a moment, unable to watch, Rutledge left.

He went to speak to the constable.

“Now he’s sober, sir, we’ll let him go with a warning. If it happens again, I’ll have to charge him. That side ax could cleave a man’s skull.”

“He can’t help responding the way he has.”

“That may be, sir, but we can’t let him endanger himself or others.”

The constable was too young to have been in the war. He’d been sent to fill the shoes of an older man on the point of retiring, and he took his duties seriously.

“Lost your father in the war, did you?”

“Sir, yes. Early on.”

Rutledge thanked him and took his leave.

Driving out of Soham, he said aloud, “I find it hard to believe Ruskin saw a German.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

“Perhaps he saw what he feared to see.”

“Aye, it’s why ye never look into a mirror.”

Trying to ignore that remark, Rutledge knew the answer must be there, in the depths of memory. He couldn’t quite reach it . . .

Something he’d been told? Something he’d seen? A passing comment, a remark overheard.
What was it?

I
nstead of driving on to Wriston, he decided to go to Isleham instead.

Rutledge found Thornton at home.

The man was surprised to see him. “I can’t think why you’ve found it necessary to call on me again. But I’ll help in any way I can,” he said as Rutledge was ushered into the room with the globe and the maps and the books.

“I’ve been to see the cooper in Soham. The man called Ruskin. Do you know him?”

“I can’t say that I’ve ever met him. Still, I’m sure we must own some of his wares. You can ask my housekeeper, if you like.”

“He had a difficult war. Last night he ran amok, thinking he was being hunted by the man who’d killed Swift. He saw him, by the way. Just as Mrs. Percy had.”

“Did he indeed,” Thornton said, his eyes narrowing. “How did he describe this person?”

“He said he was a German sharpshooter.”

Thornton stared at him. “Good God. He can’t be serious.”

“The hurdle maker didn’t find it amusing.”

“Are you saying Ruskin killed him?”

“Only that he was on a rampage and the hurdle maker got in the way. He wasn’t hurt, as far as I am aware.”

“But why did he think Swift’s killer was German?”

“I’m not sure he did. But whatever he saw, it triggered that memory.”

“They were devilishly clever at making themselves invisible. It was usually something in the landscape, something we’d never think twice about. That was early on, of course, before we knew what they were up to,” Thornton said. “One of the worst we faced was in the stump of a dead tree. They’d reinforced it. We couldn’t touch him. He was out of grenade range as well. Hardly the sort of thing you’d see in a dormer window.”

Devilishly clever at making themselves invisible . . .

But
invisible
was the wrong word.
Invulnerable
—

There it was, the memory Rutledge had been looking for.

“They used a helmet sometimes,” Rutledge said slowly. “Have you ever been to the Tower of London? I was taken there as a child, to see the ravens. The armor frightened my sister, I remember. Especially the casques, the helmets with the fanciful armorial figures. When the German snipers peered over the parapet of their trenches, they sometimes used a helmet, steel with slits for the eyes and mouth. Only much cruder, of course, than what’s in the Tower. There was one man in particular. He was damned good. Something of a legend, I expect, on his own side, but someone we wanted badly. I never saw him, he wasn’t in my sector. But when he was killed, in the next sortie someone found his helmet. That could explain what Mrs. Percy saw. Why Ruskin was so shaken.” He paused. “Know anyone here in the Fen country who brought back such a souvenir?”

“No. I don’t,” Thornton said pensively. “Are you sure about this? I never saw it either.”

Rutledge held out his hand. “Give me a pen and some paper. I’ll draw it.”

Thornton passed him what he asked for. And in that brief exchange, he could read the man’s eyes, unguarded.

Speculation? Anger? Uncertainty? Or a succession of all three?

Sketching, Rutledge said, “A friend of mine described it.” He finished and gave the drawing to Thornton.

It was more like half a cylinder than a helmet shaped to fit the head. Some of those for knights, he remembered, had even had ears. Here the eyes and nose had been crudely cut out, the mouth no more than a ragged slit. A face and yet more an ugly, terrifying rendering of it.

And Ruskin had seen it twice. In the trenches and in the upstairs window of the ironmonger’s house.

Thornton leaned forward to examine it. “Nothing like that in our sector. Are you sure about this? Or is it apocryphal?”

“No, I think it actually existed. My friend knew what he was talking about.”

He held out his hand for the drawing, and Thornton reluctantly passed it across the desk to him.

“I can see why this disturbed anyone who saw it. I’d hardly want that as a souvenir.”

“But if you were—or had been—a sharpshooter yourself, you might find it interesting. Most particularly, if you were the one who’d killed him.”

“Yes, I see. The question is,
who
?”

“I thought perhaps it might be you. You might have such a helmet.”

“Me!”

“You lied to me about Swift. You knew him better than you were willing to admit.”

“But why should I have shot the other man, Hutchinson?”

“If there’s a reason, I shall find it,” Rutledge said, rising. “I’ll see myself out. Good day, Thornton.”

Chapter 16

H
e walked out of the room, leaving the man sitting there, a frown on his face.

As Rutledge turned the crank, Hamish said, “Ye canna’ search every house in the Fens. And ye ken, the helmet and the rifle could be anywhere.”

But Rutledge was trying to remember the rest of what he’d been told about the German sniper. It had been a chance meeting with Captain Graves in France, and they had had very little time to talk.
What else had he said about that particular sniper?

A Scots company had killed the man. Was that it? Rutledge couldn’t be sure.

The cat was out of the bag now. Thornton knew he was a suspect. But then he must have guessed in Ely that Rutledge was suspicious of the lie he’d told—and been caught in.

In Wriston, he left the motorcar outside the ironmonger’s house and walked down the lane where Mrs. Percy lived.

She called, “Come,” as she had before, and he found her sweeping her kitchen floor.

“You again,” she said tartly. “I’ve told you it’s useless, I don’t know anything.”

He reached into his pocket, unfolded the sheet of paper with the drawing on it, and set it down on the table.

Curiosity got the better of her. She stood the broom against the doorframe, walked across the kitchen, and looked down.

He could hear her suck in a breath, the shock of what she was seeing hitting her like cold water in the face. She reached for the back of a chair to steady herself, then turned to him.

Her eyes were wide, frightened. She cleared her throat, then had to do it a second time before she could find her voice. Even then it was more a croak. “Where did you come by this?”

“It’s a drawing of a face guard—a protective covering for the face—that the Germans sometimes used when they were shooting at us in the trenches. It’s metal, smooth, dull metal. What you saw in that window above the ironmonger’s shop was a soldier’s disguise. Not a monster.”

Her pale face flushed with rising anger. “You mean to say I was tricked?”

“Yes, in a way. If anyone was looking up when he took that shot, only that strange face could be seen. Its intent was to confuse and make people afraid.” He waited. “Is this at all like what you remember?”

“It could be a twin,” she said. “I haven’t slept well since I saw it. I’ve been the butt of jokes. I’ve been questioned over and over again. I hope you find him and hang him, whoever it is.”

“Will you give Constable McBride a new statement?”

“Of course I will.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ll just fetch my hat.”

Leaving him standing there, she walked away. Two minutes later, she was back, wearing a dark blue straw hat with pansies around the brim. It was the hat of a much younger woman, and he wondered if she had kept it all these years or had bought it at a jumble sale.

Rutledge accompanied her to the police station. McBride, staring at the sketch, said, “Well, I’ll be—” He stopped in time. “But is this possible? How did he come by such a thing?”

“He was given it, he made his own from rumors he’d heard, or he stole it. We don’t know. But there’s your monster. Mrs. Percy has come to give you an amended statement. If you’ll make a copy of it, I’ll take it to Inspector Warren myself.”

“Gladly. Thank you, sir. Now, Mrs. Percy, if you’ll sit behind the desk here, I’ll fetch paper and pen.”

Rutledge left him to it.

He stopped at the market cross and looked again at the dormer window.

Given the torchlight and the smoke, the face peering down at the crowded square below, it would be easy to believe that a monster was up in that window. And because the killer had had to raise up to use the rifle, he’d needed a disguise.

And this reinforced Rutledge’s belief that his man was an experienced sniper.

A master of disguises—no two the same. Keeping the police guessing, keeping witnesses too frightened to know precisely what it was they’d seen.

Who in Wriston—who in the Fens—had been a sniper and kept it hidden, a dark secret of the war?

Or had he learned the trade from someone else who knew it well? That too was a possibility.

Leaving his motorcar where it was for the time being, he walked back to The Dutchman Inn.

Priscilla Bartram, feather duster in hand, was putting the sitting room to rights. When she heard him come through the door, she hurried to meet him, duster still in hand.

“You were gone most of the morning,” she said. “Is there any news?”

“I’ve been questioning a number of people,” he said vaguely. “It’s often the details that trip people up. Verifying this or that. Making sure that when someone says he was in such and such a place at such and such a time, he’s telling the truth.”

She would have preferred exciting information she could pass on to friends. Relenting, Rutledge smiled. “A dull morning on the whole, but I think we’ve discovered Mrs. Percy’s monster. Just an ordinary man wearing a disguise.”

He caught the apprehensive look she cast at the nearest window, as if expecting to see the face peering in. He didn’t think she was the sort of woman whose nerves produced shadows where there were none. And yet the killing of Swift had given her cause to worry. After all, she had seen him die.

She led him back to the kitchen, where there was cool water waiting for him, and with it she offered a plate of biscuits.

He ate them to please her, and then was about to leave for Ely when she stopped him at the kitchen door.

“I was thinking,” she said hesitantly, as if reluctant to be considered a meddler. “You asked me, didn’t you, if I recognized anyone from Wriston at the funeral of Major Clayton.”

“Yes. Have you remembered someone else?”

“Not precisely. There were several other people I recognized, from other villages. Is that important? If not, I won’t bother you with it.”

“Make a list for me. That would be very useful.”

Happy to have been helpful, she nodded. “I’ll have it ready when you come back.”

Retrieving the motorcar, he set out for Ely.

But Inspector Warren wasn’t as pleased as Rutledge had expected him to be.

“All well and good,” he said. “But the Chief Constable was here late yesterday, a musical evening at the Cathedral. He stopped to see me and told me again how anxious he is to see this matter brought to a successful conclusion.”

“We aren’t dealing with an ordinary murderer. This man is clever, and winkling him out of wherever he’s been hiding will be difficult.”

“I understand. The point I’m making is that the Chief Constable doesn’t. He was expecting the Yard to make swifter progress.”

“And so we are,” Rutledge said, smiling. But when he left the police station, his face was grim.

He shut himself in the hotel telephone closet, and gave what he was about to do some thought.

First the call to Gibson.

The sergeant answered in his usual taciturn manner.

“Anything for me?” Rutledge asked. He weighed the silence before Gibson spoke. Then he could hear the opening of a drawer, the rustle of papers.

“The servant girl. Catriona Beaton. Seems she left the house in the middle of the night, and wasn’t seen again. But a body that might have been hers was found near the railway tracks in Hampshire some weeks later. There was enough clothing left to make a tentative identification. She’d been buried in a shallow grave in a stand of trees above the tracks, and her remains were washed out by that heavy rain. Schoolboys, playing the truant, found her. According to the inquest, she was murdered by person or persons unknown. Girls without references face a heavy go of it.”

Rutledge asked, “Was she pregnant, do you know?”

“That couldn’t be determined.”

“Did Hutchinson own a motorcar? Did he have a chauffeur?”

“He did own a motorcar, but he chose to drive himself.”

“What did Miss Hutchinson have to say about the girl’s death?”

“That she’d been a good, hardworking young woman, and that it was a tragedy for the entire household. What’s more, she paid for the girl to be buried decently. Apparently Miss Beaton had no family.”

It was often those women without a family, without a protector, who suffered most from the attentions of their employers.

Neither Miss Newland nor Mrs. Cookson had told him anything about the girl’s body being recovered.

“Did the police speak to the staff?”

“Miss Hutchinson told them it would be too upsetting—she’d break the news herself.”

And she hadn’t. The question was, why? Had she told her brother?

Or had she feared he’d killed the girl himself? Love scorned could lead to murder as quickly as love satisfied. It was very likely that Miss Hutchinson wouldn’t wish the household to speculate and gossip—and reach unwelcome conclusions.

And Mary Hutchinson? He put the thought into words.

“And Mary Hutchinson?”

“Orphaned young, brought up by her uncle, married, and died of overwhelming grief after losing her child.”

The attending doctor had been kind. They often were in cases of suicide.

“Any information on Anson Swift?”

“That’s the lot. Except to add that the Whiting you inquired about died of natural causes.”

Necessary information, although it left much unanswered.

Rutledge thanked him and put up the receiver.

His next call was to a friend at the War Office.

When he explained what he needed, the voice at the other end of the line said, “You do realize that this desk isn’t an adjunct to Scotland Yard.”

Rutledge laughed. “Where else will I find such an excellent source of information?” Then he added in a very different tone, “This man has killed twice. If he’s reverting to what he did in the war, I need to hear about it. If he’s using his training in France to rid himself of enemies in England, I want to know.”

“How many names have you got?”

Rutledge told him, and heard the groan at the other end.

“It would be simpler to search Regimental records than hunt for a single man, regiment unknown, service unknown. If they used sharpshooters, it’s usually found there. All right, give me the first ten.”

When that was finished, Rutledge said, “And then there is Captain Gordon Hutchinson. Did he have anyone up on charges? Were any of his men taken up for cowardice and shot? What was his record?”

“I’ll do my best.”

Rutledge gave him the number at the hotel, and thanked him. “The hotel will forward any messages to Inspector Warren.”

“You owe me a bottle of the finest whisky money can buy,” the voice said, and rang off.

All I need is one good bit of evidence, Rutledge thought, not moving out of the telephone closet. But everywhere I turn, it’s not there.

Hamish said, “Go to Warwick.”

That was where Mary Hutchinson had grown up.

There was a tap at the door. He looked up to see a man standing there impatiently waiting his turn in the telephone closet.

Rutledge left him to it, and turned toward Wriston.

Whoever this killer was, he knew how to stay out of the public eye. Whether he was the old man, the owner of the barrow, someone from the Fen villages, or one of the wedding guests, he’d successfully evaded being seen by anyone. And while he had been visible in Wriston, he had given away nothing.

The one person Rutledge had spoken to in all the Fen country who’d impressed him as the most likely suspect was Thornton. The man was intelligent, clever, well read, and probably could outwit all of them put together. Brenner was more of a hothead, and while hotheads could be dangerous, these murders had taken meticulous planning.

Had Thornton been a sniper in the war? Or the spotter for one? Given his propensity for living as a recluse, it was possible. And there had also been men who were natural shots, who could hit targets with ease, once they were accustomed to their weapon.

And if the Chief Constable was pressing Warren, the Acting Chief Superintendent would soon be recalling him.

When he came down to dinner later that evening, Priscilla Bartram had gone to great lengths to make up for dining in the kitchen. The large round table with its eight chairs was covered with a pretty cloth embroidered with—not unexpectedly, given the glass cases in the sitting room—pheasants. He was glad to see there were none of the stuffed birds in this room, brought in to complement the cloth.

As he ate his dinner and carried on a conversation with Miss Bartram, he wondered what she would do if the wildfowlers didn’t return to Wriston. Her chances of marrying were small, given the loss of a generation of men. Her chances of keeping the inn were even less. Marcella Trowbridge had said Priscilla Bartram could use the money, and he’d been generous when she’d set her terms for meals and lodging.

When they had finished, Miss Bartram carried their dishes out to the kitchen, then turned to Rutledge. “That list I promised you. It’s in the sitting room. Shall I bring in a fresh pot of tea and a little of that cake you enjoyed last night?”

“Yes, thank you.” He got up and walked to the sitting room. There, feeling the gaze of the glass eyes all around him, he picked up the list.

There were only a handful of names on the sheet, but her handwriting was an ornate copperplate and not easy to read.

Three men had come from Soham, and he didn’t recognize the names, which meant he hadn’t interviewed them. Ex-soldiers?

A third, from Wicken, he had already spoken to.

Miss Bartram came in with the tray, setting it on the tea table at his elbow.

“The first two names from Soham and the one from Wicken are fathers of men who’d served with the Major but hadn’t come home,” she said. “It was rather sad, really. Almost as if, since they couldn’t bury their own, they could at least bury their sons’ commanding officer. Adam Lindsay didn’t stay for the luncheon. I wouldn’t have known who he was, but one of the Soham men spoke with him. And that last name, the one in Isleham, was odd. He was there at St. Mary’s but he never went inside for the service. He was still standing in the same spot when we came out. The only reason I know
his
name is that just before the war he came here with some others from Isleham for a Maundy Thursday service. That was when the roof of St. Andrew’s in Isleham sprang a leak and the church had to be closed for the weekend.” She smiled. “He certainly set the village girls in a twitter.”