No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (11 page)

His choice of words was deliberate.

“Hardly that. She was very much in love with Stephen Grenville, and his death was a great loss for her as well as his family. She was quite ill for weeks after the news came, and we feared for her. She had hardly recovered when her mother died in the influenza epidemic. That was just after George had been brought to England, terribly wounded. It was likely he would die, and I think his mother couldn’t bear it. At any rate, in my view Mrs. St. Ives never fought to live. As it happened, George survived. But he’s hardly the man he was. Elaine has seen death take two of the people she loved most, and she has seen what the war has done to her brother. To be accused of killing Harry Saunders, whether by accident or design, will be too much for her. Prison could well turn her mind.”

8

T
he house at Padstow Place was in an uproar.

When the maid opened the door to him, he could hear St. Ives’s voice raised in anger. And then a reply in only slightly more measured tones from Grenville.

The maid was saying, “A moment, please, sir, I’ll inquire—”

He smiled, setting her gently aside. “I believe I’m expected.”

Before she could prevent him, he was across the entrance hall and already moving briskly toward the library.

The door stood open. Grenville was beside the hearth, looking distinctly beleaguered. In front of him St. Ives was pacing the floor, his face red with fury.

Both men turned to stare at Rutledge as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

“What’s the matter?”

Both men began to speak at once, and then Grenville said, “He came here demanding to take his daughter home. As my own daughter and his, as well as our two guests, were given into my custody, I have refused. Such a decision could find all four young women back in gaol.”

“He’s right, you know,” Rutledge told St. Ives before he could splutter his own response. “He’s their gaoler, and if you interfere, I shall have to take steps.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” St. Ives told him.

“You’re wrong. I’ll have no choice but to back up Constable Pendennis, who made this arrangement before I took over the case. Don’t put me in that position.”

His voice was cold, authority in every word, and St. Ives, glancing at Grenville to see if there was any support forthcoming, and not seeing any, said, “Oh very well. But I hold you responsible, Grenville, and you as well, Rutledge, if my daughter suffers any more stress at the hands of the police.”

Rutledge turned to Grenville. “Have you told them about young Saunders?”

“Yes, as we were finishing breakfast. I was afraid that they would overhear the servants talking about his death.”

“Quite right. How did they take it?”

“How else would you expect?” Grenville snapped. “They were very upset. They’re intelligent young women, Rutledge, they could see at once how this changed their situation. Kate, Miss Gordon, asked me if you would come to take them away, and my daughter was in tears, along with Miss St. Ives. Miss Langley just sat there, staring at me. I don’t believe any of them realized Saunders could die of his injury.”

“There has been a new development.” The men’s gaze focused on him as if he’d offered them a lifeline. “I have found the boat that Saunders was in. It sank, just as we have been told. I was able to have it removed from the water and taken to a salvage yard in Padstow. It will be evidence.”

“Thank God,” St. Ives whispered. “It shows that Trevose is lying.”

“Actually, it doesn’t. It simply shows that your daughters and their guests were telling the truth when they claimed Saunders was in the water because his dinghy sank beneath him.”

“You mean it doesn’t change the oar,” Grenville said, suddenly weary. “Yes, I understand that. But surely, if the dinghy has been found, it explains how he came to be in the water in the first place. And that in turn reaffirms the fact that the accused were trying to bring him into their boat. Regardless of what Trevose thought he saw from the shore.”

“It helps their case,” Rutledge agreed. “But there will still be a trial.”

St. Ives sat down, his face gloomy. But Grenville had remained standing by the hearth, a frown on his face. “Why did the dinghy sink?”

Rutledge was not ready to tell them. “A very good question. Would you give me a few minutes alone with Miss Gordon?”

“Why her?” St. Ives asked suspiciously.

“Because he knows her,” Grenville said, his gaze on Rutledge’s face.

“On the contrary,” Rutledge blandly answered him, “she may be able to clarify a point in her statement.”

In the end he was allowed to interview Kate in the morning room.

As she came through the doorway, he could see at once the toll the news had taken on her. She was pale, her eyes overlarge, as if her face had grown thinner than it had been when last he saw her.

“It’s the worst possible news, isn’t it, Ian? That Harry Saunders is dead. I am so sorry. For his family, as well as for us. I understand that he’s an only child?”

“That’s true.”

“How very sad.” She took a deep breath. “Is there something you wanted to ask me about my statement? I thought I remembered everything.”

He went past her and quietly closed the door, then led her to the windows, where he hoped they had less of a chance to be overheard.

“We’ve found Harry Saunders’s boat. At least we can now prove you were not lying about watching it sink. You’re not out of the woods yet, Kate, but that’s an important bit of evidence.”

He thought for a moment she was going to faint from sheer relief. But in typical Kate fashion, she gathered herself together and managed a smile, although it wavered as she said, “I could use a little good news.”

“Will you help me with a small problem? I hesitate to ask, because it could prove rather damning for one of your friends.”

“No, Ian, please don’t put me in that position,” she said at once, reaching out to touch his arm. “I don’t think I could live with such a betrayal.”

It was what he’d hoped she would say.

“All right, then, on another line of inquiry. In London, I’d ask my sister. But we aren’t in London.” He reached into his pocket and brought out the little square of cloth. “What is this?”

She smoothed it out in her palm, holding it to the light. “What a pretty pattern. I think it’s muslin, the sort of thing I’d wear in the summer.”

“A woman’s dress, then?”

“Yes, I think so. Or a child’s, even. Very feminine and sweet. I can see it worn with a green sash, the color of those leaves, and perhaps the same color ribbons on one’s hat.”

He could picture it too. “Yes, I agree.”

“Where did you find it?” She felt it with her fingers. “That’s sand. And the cloth is stiff, as if it’s been in salt water.” She looked up at him, hope in her eyes. “Are you saying you found this in Harry Saunders’s boat? That there’s someone he was fond of? Oh, but how sad—”

“I have no way of knowing whose gown this might have come from. Where I discovered it, there are often summer visitors. But it appears to be from a more expensive sort of gown than they might have worn.”

“Well, from what I can see of it, you’re right.” She held it up to the light. “See? The way it’s woven? It wouldn’t have been cheap.”

He could just make out the slight ridges that formed a pattern around the sprig of flowers. Now it was time to distract her.

“Thank you, Kate. It probably has no bearing on the inquiry, but I’m required to pursue every possibility.”

“I can tell you that we weren’t wearing anything like that last Saturday. It wasn’t warm enough for one thing, and for another, this isn’t the sort of clothing to go bicycling in. It could catch on something too easily.”

Changing the subject, she said, “If you found the dinghy, Ian, you must know why it sank. It went down rather fast, I can tell you. When I first saw Harry Saunders waving at us, the boat was still afloat. And then even as I watched, it was as if the water came rushing in.”

“It must be examined,” he agreed.

“There aren’t boulders or sandbars in that part of the river, are there? There’s the Doom Bar, of course, at the mouth of the estuary. More than one ship has come to grief there, not knowing it was in their path. I’ve heard Mr. Grenville mention it. There are stories about it. I’ve even heard people singing about the Doom Bar and ships caught in a storm.”

He was suddenly interested. “Would Saunders go out that far in a dinghy? Surely not.”

“I wouldn’t know. It seems rather dangerous to me.”

“Keep this to yourself, Kate, if you please.”

“Of course I will. Mr. Grenville has told me he’s sent a telegram to my father, asking him to come down again. I know he must, but I hate it. I hate him seeing me like this. I’ve never been accused of any crime, and I think he’s found it rather dreadful to have me in this predicament and be unable to do anything about it. I can’t blame him, to tell you the truth. But our visits are—uncomfortable.”

He wanted to assure her that she had done no wrong, but he couldn’t, not until all the facts were in. That was his duty.

He couldn’t even put a hand on her shoulder to comfort her. That too would be wrong.

Instead, he said, “I didn’t know your father well before the war. He was still on active service. We met—what, three or four times at most?”

“Three, I think.”

“You should go before Grenville becomes suspicious. I told him there were questions about your statement. If he asks, you must say I asked you not to discuss it.”

He walked with her to the door.

After she had gone, he looked at the length of cloth again.

Who had been with Harry Saunders last summer, who had caught her skirt on a splinter of old wood from the landing? It might be important to know.

W
hile he was about it, he asked to see Miss Grenville.

She was not the same woman he’d interviewed before. Some of her spirit had either disappeared or been overlaid with worry.

“Tell me about Harry Saunders,” he said. “I can’t interview his parents just now, but I’d like to know something about him.”

“I told you. I hardly knew him.”

“But you’ve lived here all your life. There must be things you’ve heard.” When she looked mulish—if such a pretty woman could ever look mulish—he added, “If I knew more about him, it might explain why Trevose believed the four of you were intent on killing him. For instance, did he have a reputation as a flirt, as you’ve claimed?”

“He flirted with me. I expect he flirted with other women. Whether it was all in fun or he was serious, I didn’t know. And I wasn’t interested in knowing.”

“Was he courting someone before the war?”

“I have no idea. He didn’t come home from America with a wife.”

“No.” He changed directions. “Was he generally liked?”

“I expect he was. His father owned the banks, but I’d never heard that they were difficult to deal with. You must ask my father about that.”

“He had a larger boat, I’m told. The
Sea Lion.
Did he often take her out beyond the Doom Bar?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been aboard her. He talked about her. I gathered he’d been as far as Fowey on her. His mother has cousins there.”

“How long has he had her?”

“Since after the war, I think. There had been speculation that he’d join the Navy when war was declared, but instead he went into the Army.”

“Were people resentful that he spent his war safely in America?”

“I’ve no idea. He had American cousins, I’ve heard that, and also that it was thought he might know something about coping with the American government. But that’s the Army for you. I heard Mr. St. Ives comment that Harry had never met his cousins. The Saunders family is gossiped about, just as I’m sure we are.”

“How well did Elaine St. Ives know him?”

“You must ask her. I would have thought very like the way I had known him, the occasional encounter in the village or in Padstow. ‘Hello, Harry, how are you?’ And then he’d make conversation, in an effort to keep you talking for a few minutes. He always asked after my mother or my father, or he’d say something like ‘I ran into Stephen the other day,’ and use that as a starting point for a chat.”

“How well did Stephen know him?”

“Probably the way I did, casual encounters and Sundays at morning services, if his parents decided to come to St. Marina that week. They made an effort to appear friendly, a part of village life. But of course they never could be, could they? They were richer than the greengrocer or the owner of the pub, and they weren’t received here. Neither fish nor fowl, you might say.”

He was getting nowhere, and so he thanked her and let her go. But at the door he said, “Miss Grenville, do you know where Harry Saunders kept the dinghy?”

She turned, her dark brows drawn together. “In the harbor at Padstow, I expect. He pointed the
Sea Lion
out to me when I happened to meet him there. As I said before, we seemed to meet more often than could easily be explained by coincidence.”

R
utledge left his motorcar at the inn and walked on to the police station.

Pendennis rose from the table when he came through the door.

“Sir?” A single word, but heavy with questions he didn’t know how to begin. About the salvage operation, about the dinghy, about where Rutledge had been for the better part of the morning.

“Constable.” He nodded a greeting, and then took the chair across the table that served as a desk. “As you could see, there was a dinghy in the river. And as you could probably tell, it didn’t appear to have been there for many years. I went to the salvage yard to confirm that it was Saunders’s boat, and it had the name of his larger craft across the stern. This in turn is reasonable evidence that the accused were telling the truth about his boat sinking under him.”

“But with all respect, sir, why should a perfectly sound dinghy suddenly go down like that? He didn’t keep his boat here in the village. He must have rowed some distance. Convenient, I’d say, that it sank just where the young ladies were pulling into the Grenville landing.”

“A good point, Constable. The answer is that someone had tampered with the dinghy. Saunders was lucky to have got this far.”

Pendennis’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Tampered with? By whom, sir?”

“We don’t know. Yet. I would prefer that this be kept quiet for the time being. But everyone saw the dinghy being brought up. We can confirm, I think, that it belonged to Saunders.”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”

“That brings us to Trevose’s statement. That he believed Saunders had been in the Grenville rowboat, had been pushed into the water, and was being held down by two of the women, Miss Gordon and Miss Langley. I didn’t see his original statement, of course. It hasn’t been found yet. We will now consider those comments pure conjecture on his part. I now have to ask myself why he should have been so certain the four women in that rowboat were attempting to murder Harry Saunders rather than rescue him?”