No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (13 page)

Still, Padstow wasn’t a large town, and Heyl was even smaller. Had she heard no gossip?

Apparently not. Gossip too moved in particular circles.

He thanked her, and she had already opened the door when she shut it again and turned.

“I just remembered . . . It was this past summer. A young woman came to Sunday services at St. Marina. I hadn’t seen her before. And she didn’t come every Sunday. Quite pretty, with brown hair and lovely taste in clothes. I never knew her name, she never offered to introduce herself. And then by September she was gone. Harry Saunders usually brought her to the vicarage, and then she came alone to the church. He came sometimes, but not always. If he didn’t stay, the vicar would take her home. Wherever home was. When I asked him who she was, Mr. Toup told me she was his cousin and visiting with friends over in Rock. I thought no more about it. Whenever Harry did stay for services, Victoria was there, and I expect he’d come to see her.” She smiled. “She would tell me not to leave her alone with him, but any woman is flattered by attention, and I thought she rather liked knowing she’d captivated him.”

And then she was gone, leaving him to weigh what she’d just told him.

9

R
utledge was crossing the hall when Mrs. Grenville came down the stairs. She was wearing a dark red dress with a gold chain necklace, and the combination was very attractive with her dark hair.

“Good evening, Inspector.”

“Good evening, Mrs. Grenville.”

“We’ve been given the sad news. And I understand, too, that poor Harry Saunders’s dinghy has been found.”

“That’s true,” he answered her, and then he had the strongest feeling that she had been watching for him.

She crossed to where he was standing and said, “I’ll see you out.”

“Thank you.”

They walked together as far as the house door, and with a quick glance over her shoulder to see if anyone was within earshot, she said quietly, “And has Mr. Trevose reconsidered his earlier statement, that my daughter and her friends were trying to drown Harry? I should think that finding the dinghy would change his mind, at least about the fact that Harry was in our boat. Instead he must have been trying to reach it after his own went down.”

“Mr. Trevose remains adamant that what he reported was what he saw.”

Her expression changed from polite interest to uncertainty. “But I should think he would find it hard to claim any such thing, now.”

“He refuses to discuss the matter. But the inquiry is ongoing, and there is every possibility still that new information will come to light.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, saying, “Dear God, I hope so,” under her breath. And then she forced a smile and thanked him.

He walked out to his motorcar with the distinct impression that she was still watching him. He could only hope, for her sake, that the past could stay buried, but if that was what was driving Trevose, the man wouldn’t give up his pound of flesh very easily.

It was well after six o’clock when Rutledge reached the vicarage. He expected to find Mr. Toup sitting down to his dinner, but the vicar was just hanging his coat on the rack by the door as he opened it to Rutledge’s knock.

“You only just caught me,” he said. “Or have you come looking before?”

“I’ve been out to Padstow Place and only just returned to the village.”

“Well, then, come in. May I offer you a drink? Vicars are supposed to drink only sherry, but I much prefer a good whisky. I’ve been to one of the outer farms, sitting with a parishioner who is recovering from pneumonia. We had feared at her age that she might not live, but she’s a sturdy soul. The cottage was so hot from the coal fire, I thought I’d perish from the heat. But she feels the cold in her bones, she says.”

He led Rutledge into the study, where the fire was burning down. Toup looked at it, decided to leave it where it was, and went over to a cabinet where he kept his whisky.

“Some of my parishioners are strong temperance supporters, and so I try to make certain they aren’t shocked by my habits.”

Rutledge smiled, taking the whisky that Toup poured for him.

“Now, tell me. How are Miss Grenville and her friends bearing up? I’ve called several times, but Mr. Grenville has taken his duties to heart and refused to allow me to speak to them. I understand, of course, but I continue to call to assure them that I care about them.”

“It’s been difficult. They expected to be returned to gaol when Saunders died, but finding the dinghy has called into question some of Trevose’s assumptions. Early days.” It was the standard police response when certain information hadn’t been made public.

“What brings you here this evening?”

“I was told that there was a young woman who visited St. Marina this summer, and Harry Saunders generally brought her to the vicarage to attend.”

Alarm spread across the vicar’s face, quickly suppressed.

“A summer visitor,” he answered casually. “Sometimes Saunders would bring her over in his carriage. As a courtesy.”

“Who is she?”

“A cousin of mine,” Toup replied. “She’s very young, and I thought it best for her not to stay here. My housekeeper doesn’t live in.” He smiled. “Even a man of my age is not immune from malicious gossip. Rock was more suitable.”

“Who was she?” Rutledge persisted.

Toup finished his whisky and said, “She’s not important to this inquiry, Inspector. She left here in September and hasn’t returned.”

“Anything to do with Harry Saunders is important to me.”

“May I ask who mentioned her to you?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“If I asked you, as a favor to me, to this church, to say nothing more about her, would you agree? I can vouch for her, and I can tell you truthfully that Harry Saunders was being kind when he brought her here. She’s a little reserved, and I think she felt more comfortable coming to services here rather than attending in Padstow. There’s no mystery about that. She didn’t wish to appear to be a friend of his—he has his own life, or had. He simply provided transportation because I asked him to.”

Rutledge considered his request. “Are you being absolutely truthful, Vicar?”

“On my soul, I am. She has nothing to do with what happened here on that terrible Saturday afternoon. She wasn’t even in Cornwall. I see no purpose in putting her through an inquisition by the police.”

“Hardly an inquisition.” Still, he recalled Elaine St. Ives’s anxiety when he’d first questioned her. He finished his own whisky and considered the vicar.

“I will agree to this. If I discover that this woman was in any way involved with Harry Saunders, I will expect you to tell me whatever I need to know.”

Rutledge could see that Toup was not happy about the bargain, but he had found himself in a corner and really had no choice.

Reluctantly the vicar agreed. And then he rose, set his glass and Rutledge’s on the cabinet, and said, “I won’t keep you, Inspector. But thank you.”

Rutledge stood and said quietly, “I’ll see myself out.”

“No. I have not forgot my manners,” he said, and walked with Rutledge to the door.

D
issatisfied, Rutledge went to his motorcar and found what he wanted in the boot. Then he set out on foot in the direction of the Trevose farm.

His eyes were soon accustomed to what light there was, allowing him to avoid the worst of the obstacles in his way as he cut across country. The cow pats and sheep droppings were invisible, but he persevered, hoping that in the rougher patches, the animals had found nothing worth the effort of grazing in that direction.

It was fully dark now, and he was still some distance from the house. Without warning he stumbled over an old, rotting stump where shoots had begun to grow up from the roots in a last desperate attempt to survive. He was just about to move around it when his boot struck stone, and not a stone in the earth but what remained of a low shelter of some sort. Unwilling to risk using his torch, he ran his gloved hands over it. Stone walls. Moss-covered stone roof. An opening on one side. A cold, wet spring running over his fingers. He realized that it was a small shrine, and the whispering sound he’d been hearing for the past two minutes was the soft bubbling of water out of a sacred well.

Such wells were common all over Cornwall, dedicated to obscure Cornish saints with often unpronounceable names. Was this St. Marina’s well? From its condition, he thought it must be a more neglected saint whose fame had been lost to time. Or perhaps, Hamish was suggesting, it was Trevose who’d neglected it.

Then Rutledge remembered something Trevose had said when he and Constable Pendennis had walked out into the fields to find him. Something about praying, although the constable was a Chapel man. Assuming it was a personal taunt between the two men, Rutledge had said nothing at the time, but now he smiled to himself.

Glancing up to take his bearings, he could see that the well offered a direct line of sight to the front of the Trevose house. As good a spot as any, he thought, and downwind of any dogs on the property.

He settled himself there and opened the clasp on the case holding his field glasses. They were familiar in his hands, and he focused them on the door of the house, watching for some time before it opened in a flash of lamplight, then closed again. He could just pick out the shape of a man, Trevose he thought, and he followed the shape as it set off down the lane, then cut across the fields in the direction Rutledge had just come from.

To the pub?

He waited for nearly a quarter of an hour, in the event the man had gone to fetch some farm implement he’d left behind when he came in for his dinner.

When there was no sign of him, Rutledge rose to his feet and made his way to the door.

Mrs. Penwith, a tea towel in her hands, said crossly, “You can’t lift the latch for your—?” Breaking off as she recognized Rutledge, she started to close the door, but he put his foot in the space before she could manage it.

“I’d like to speak to you,” he said quietly. “It won’t take long.”

“I have nothing to say,” she told him querulously. “I wasn’t there.”

“You weren’t,” he agreed. “What I’d like to know is why Trevose dislikes the Grenvilles.”

“Does he?” she asked, surprise in her voice. Was it genuine, or ironic?

“He appears to hold some grudge. He seems determined to see Grenville’s daughter and her friends held by the police for murder.”

“He told me young Saunders was dead,” she agreed. Her eyes were impossible to read, unlit by the lamplight in the room behind her. “It would appear to me that someone was at fault for that. Else, why are
you
here?”

He had no intention of telling her about the holes in the dinghy. Instead he countered, “How well has he got on with the Grenvilles in the past? Is there a land dispute?”

He watched her frown. “What sort of land dispute? He’s told me nothing of that.”

“Or is it more personal, do you think?” he suggested.

“There never was any trouble with the Grenvilles. Unless you want to count the deer. Ever seen what deer can do to a farmer’s field? Trevose was within his rights to complain.”

“One of the family, then. The daughter? Victoria Grenville?”

She stirred a little. “He’s never mentioned the daughter.”

“If not her father, her mother, perhaps?”

“He’s never liked her. But I can’t say why.”

“Would his dislike of the mother turn him against her daughter? Or perhaps make him decide to use her daughter to reach her, punish her?”

“Punish her for what?” There was a sharpness in her voice now.

He changed direction. “You’ve worked for Trevose for some time. Does he have any family to speak of? Perhaps they’re the ones with a grudge against the Grenvilles.”

There was a silence. Then she said, “There was a brother. He died long ago. No one else.”

“How did he die?”

“In service. He didn’t want to farm, he wanted to leave Cornwall behind. Easier said than done. But he thought service would give him a better chance.”

“Did they quarrel over his leaving, Trevose and his brother?”

“They fought over it one night. Came to blows. The next morning, the boy was gone. We never saw him again, until Trevose went to bring him home to bury him.”

“Trevose must have felt bad about the manner of their parting.”

“He was that upset he didn’t sleep for a dozen nights. Just sat there staring into space, saying nothing. Hardly eating, drinking heavily. It was a bad time. A terrible time.”

There was little more he could learn from Mrs. Penwith. After another question or two, Rutledge was about to withdraw his boot from the doorway when he remembered the door knocker.

“That’s an unusual design,” he said, pointing to it.

“I can’t think what possessed Trevose to put it up there. We’d had an old horseshoe in its place for as long as I could remember, and it’ud served us well enough. But he said it was a reminder of a debt owed. That every time he looked at it, coming in his door or going out of it, he remembered.”

“When was it put up?”

“As I remember, it was about the time Miss Victoria was born. There was a fine christening in the church, and afterward, Mr. Grenville paid for all of us to wet her head at the pub.”

Trevose had been safe enough putting it up. Mrs. Penwith was unlikely to see the original on the door of Padstow Place, and if the Grenvilles came to his door, they could make of it what they liked.

He thanked her for her time and let her close the door. But she wanted the last word.

“
He
won’t thank you. Not if he finds you here asking questions. And if he wants to know whether you came, I’ll swear you never did, and I’ll call you a liar to your face, if you say otherwise.”

And she shut the door with force, leaving him there in the dark. Behind him he heard a dog growl low in its throat, as if at a signal. He realized it must have come stealthily up behind him, then sensed the tension in those last words with Mrs. Penwith.

“Like dog, like master,” Hamish said quietly in the back of Rutledge’s mind.

Rutledge was not eager for a confrontation with the animal, and he had a long walk back to the village. For that matter he couldn’t be sure Mrs. Penwith would call it off if it attacked. She could swear the dog had heard him banging on the door after she’d refused to let him in.

Dropping to one knee, he said softly, “There’s a good fellow. Good dog.”

After a moment he could see the dog’s tail drop from its ridged stance, and he kept speaking to it in the same tone of voice, not moving from where he knelt. He could sense Mrs. Penwith on the other side of the door, waiting. Finally the dog lowered its head. Rutledge held out a hand, palm up. “Good dog. Come here and let me scratch behind your ears.”

He had always had a way with animals. The dog stretched forward and sniffed his fingers, then allowed Rutledge to stroke him. He reached behind the ears, then put both hands behind the dog’s head, ruffling the fur as he talked. When he rose slowly to his feet, the dog’s tail began to wag. And it followed him for some distance before breaking off and returning to the farm.

Relieved to see him go, Rutledge made his way through the darkness until he was far enough away from the Trevose property to use his torch.

Trevose had felt some guilt over his parting with his brother, and that might be strong enough to turn him against Mrs. Grenville, blaming her rather than accepting blame himself for what had happened. And it would be tempting, consciously or unconsciously, to take away someone she loved—her daughter?—for the brother she had accidentally taken from him. Grenville himself would have been a more formidable target. And to kill Mrs. Grenville would not assuage the suffering Trevose had endured.