No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (20 page)

“I’ve looked into Saunders’s background. Do you know anything about those cottages where he left his boat? There’s a small landing there.”

“They’re to let, every summer, and they’re generally occupied. There has been no trouble with the people who do come to stay. As a rule, they’re older, settled, looking for a quiet few weeks by the sea. The younger ones prefer to stay in town, closer to the restaurants and the shops and so on. Any particular reason for inquiring about them?”

“The boat that sank came from there.”

“Yes, of course. And in regard to Toup. Any theories?”

“Pendennis doesn’t know of any problems the vicar has had with his parishioners. He was wearing his clerical collar, there was no mistaking him for anyone else. George St. Ives was out that way this morning. I called on the family to see if he’d spotted anyone coming through. A walker. A vagabond. For that matter, anyone who shouldn’t have been on the farm’s land. But he was resting. His father preferred not to disturb him.”

“Oddly enough, I’ve seen young George myself. On the outskirts of Padstow. And yet I wasn’t aware he was walking.”

That was news indeed. “Apparently he’s been strengthening his legs of late. A surprise for his father.”

“Face that would frighten children. I don’t blame him for walking at night, poor bastard. No stares or glances of pity. Wasn’t he to marry the Grenville lass?”

“His sister was engaged to Grenville’s son.”

“Yes, that’s right. I remember now. Pretty girl, young Elaine. My wife was in school with her. A year or so ahead, but she knew Elaine. A sad business, all around. Well, I’ll leave you to it. My wife is about to present me with our second child, and I want to be there for this one’s birth. I was outside Ypres when my son was born. Didn’t see him until he was three years old. He wouldn’t even come to me when I walked through the door.” He shrugged, as if to show that it hadn’t hurt. “Cost of war,” he went on. “Let me know if you need anything.” And he was gone.

Pendennis blew out a breath. “He’s a good man,” he said to Rutledge. “But I’d not like to cross him.”

Rutledge rather thought he himself had, and it was as much a need to see the man from London that had brought Carstairs to Heyl as the need to find out what had happened to the vicar.

It was just after the dinner hour when a message came from the Chief Constable.

Rutledge was summoned to the police station by Pendennis and found the messenger, an older man, waiting for him there.

There were only two lines on the sheet of paper.

If you believe the two inquiries are in any way connected, I will clear the attack on the vicar with London.

Rutledge stared at the lines, ignoring Pendennis hovering behind him, waiting to find out what the Chief Constable had written.

Was
there a connection? It was still too soon to be certain. But there was the question of George St. Ives, whose sister was one of the four women in the rowing boat. The last thing Rutledge wanted just now was to find Carstairs using the opportunity offered by the Toup inquiry to meddle in his own case.

He asked Pendennis for pen and paper, bent over the constable’s desk, and wrote a short reply.

Thank you, sir. I am not in a position at this stage to tell you whether there is a connection between the attack on Mr. Toup and the death of Harry Saunders. However, anyone looking into what happened to the vicar will be interviewing many of the same people involved in my present inquiry. It would be better if I dealt with both until such time as I can see that these are separate issues. I will then call on you and ask to turn whatever evidence I may have discovered over to someone else.

Hamish, apparently looking over his shoulder, startled him by commenting, “The Yard willna’ like it.”

Rutledge, striving to ignore the voice, signed his name to the note and handed it to the messenger.

“Thank you.”

The man nodded and walked out to the carriage waiting to carry him back to the Chief Constable.

“Is it wise? To take on a second inquiry?” Pendennis asked when Rutledge told him what the Chief Constable had decided. “Not that I’m eager to see Inspector Carstairs darken my threshold again. But I could help with the vicar’s case.”

“So you could. And you can begin by finding out if anyone brought a message to the vicarage, asking Mr. Toup to call on the elder Mrs. Terlew. She wasn’t expecting him that morning. We need to know if the vicar was lured to the farm where he could be attacked in a quiet corner.”

“I’ll be on it first thing tomorrow,” Pendennis said.

“No. Find his housekeeper tonight and ask her. If necessary we’ll roust someone from his bed to talk to him.”

“Sir.”

After watching the constable on his way, Rutledge walked back to the cell and looked in on their patient.

Toup was still restless, and the nurse, looking up as Rutledge quietly stepped into the room, said drowsily, “There’s no sign of him waking up.”

She had been nodding off, a shawl around her shoulders and a pillow at her back to make the station’s hard wooden chair more comfortable.

He nodded and left.

But on his way back to the inn he wondered if it had been wise for him to send Pendennis to interview the vicarage housekeeper straightaway.

That left the woman watching over the vicar as the only line of defense, if whoever had attacked the vicar decided it was in his best interests to finish what he’d begun. If Toup regained consciousness, he would very likely be able to identify the person.

Rutledge turned, walking swiftly back to the police station.

There he sat behind Pendennis’s desk until Mr. Daniels, the nurse’s husband, came to spend an hour with her. Daniels was a large, burly man, and Rutledge left him to it.

A
s it turned out, the person who was rousted out in the middle of the night was Rutledge himself.

He woke to a pounding on his door, and had to fight sleep for a moment before he called, “Yes? Who is it?”

The door swung open, and Daniels stood there foursquare in the glow of the lamp hanging by the head of the stairs.

“Mr. Rutledge, sir? The vicar is showing signs of regaining his senses. If you want to speak to him, you’d better come.”

“Yes, thank you, I’ll be right there.”

He threw back the covers and dressed hastily, then set out for the station at a run.

Daniels, Rutledge discovered, had fallen asleep in the chair he’d set next to his wife’s, and never stirred until she’d shaken his shoulder and told him to fetch the man from London.

Mrs. Daniels met Rutledge at the police station door, which she had apparently locked as soon as Pendennis had called it a night, and she locked it after him as he came in.

“He’s waking up?” Rutledge asked, following her back to the cell.

“I wouldn’t say waking up, exactly, sir. But there are Signs.” Her inflection capitalized the word. “The coma isn’t as deep. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could hear your voice.”

They had reached the cell. Toup’s condition appeared to be unchanged to Rutledge’s eyes. He sat down where Mrs. Daniels had kept watch while husband and wife stood in the doorway, anticipation on their faces.

“Mr. Toup? Inspector Rutledge here. How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?”

There was no immediate response. And so at a nod from Mrs. Daniels, he reached out and took the vicar’s thin hand in his own. How many times had he given what comfort he could to maimed and dying men in France? And sometimes a touch was what they needed, a reminder that they were alive and among friends, that help was on the way. Or that they wouldn’t die alone . . .

He could hear Hamish in the back of his mind, and he struggled to keep his thoughts focused on the bruised man on the cot.

He began to talk, starting with Mrs. Terlew’s mother-in-law. “Bad cough, but I don’t think she’s any worse.”

Mrs. Daniels nodded again, in encouragement.

“I spoke to her daughter-in-law. They’ll be happy when you can stop by. Mr. Terlew was away, looking to buy some ewes. I gather his wife—or perhaps his mother—is something of a weaver. I saw the wheel and the loom. It was her son who found you, by the way, and came for help. Dr. Carrick was here to have a look at you. He says you’ll be uncomfortable for a little longer, but you should heal quickly. Except for the broken leg. You’ll be giving your sermons from the rood screen, not the pulpit, for a few weeks. But that’s all right.”

He went on in the same vein for another five minutes, beginning to think that Mrs. Daniels had misjudged her patient’s condition.

And then just as he was about to give up, Toup spoke.

His voice was no more than a tired thread. Rutledge had commented on the fact that it was a cool evening, casting about for different topics and settling on the weather.

“Morning. It’s morning. I’ve only just had my breakfast.”

Rutledge realized with a start that Toup was talking about their conversation at the vicarage door.

“I know, sir. I was commenting on last evening,” he improvised.

“Forgive me. I’ve a dreadful head.”

There was silence for a time.

“Did you see George St. Ives? Is he walking noticeably better these days?” Rutledge asked. He’d avoided mentioning the beating. He wasn’t sure whether Toup had got that far in his memory.

“Angry. He was angry.” The vicar’s swollen face twisted, and Rutledge realized that he was trying to frown. “Why? Not God’s curse . . .”

It was garbled. Rutledge was no longer certain that Toup was talking about the previous morning’s encounter.

“I’ve never met him,” Rutledge said. “Tell me, how does he look?”

“There’s pain. I can tell.”

His own? Or St. Ives’s?

And then the vicar’s body lurched, and he made a futile effort to lift his arms above his head, as if to protect it. He cried out once, a cry that tore at the silence of the police station, a mixture of deathly fear and anguish. He lost consciousness.

“Poor man,” Mrs. Daniels said softly. She stepped forward, settling the coverlet again and making soothing noises. Straightening up, she added, “Poor soul. He doesn’t know.”

Rutledge wasn’t certain what she meant—that Toup didn’t know where he was, or that he couldn’t tell the Inspector anything at this stage.

He waited for another half an hour, but wherever Toup was, it was not in the police station in the middle of the night. At length he thanked Mrs. Daniels and got up to leave.

“Pay no heed,” she said. “Head injuries don’t always come back to us the first time.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true.” And then on an impulse, he asked, “Do you know anything about George St. Ives?”

“I do, poor man.”

“Have you seen him walk of late?”

“I saw him one night. It must have been almost a year after he came back from the war. He was struggling down the road to his father’s house. I asked if he needed help and he nearly took my head off. I was coming back from a lying-in, you see, and I was tired. I didn’t need to be told a second time to mind my own business.”

“Have you seen him since then?”

She looked away. “If I have, I’ve said nothing. Strange things walk at night. I mind my own business and pay them no heed.”

“What sort of strange things?”

“My father met a piskey once, coming back from Padstow. He knew what it was straightaway, because it wanted him to turn off the road and go another way.” She glanced at the vicar. “
He
wouldn’t care to hear it. But my father was an honest man, and if he saw a piskey, it was true.”

“I wasn’t asking about your father. What have
you
seen?”

She answered him with reluctance. “Shadows where there are none. Shapes on the horizon. Sounds that shouldn’t be there. You look away before you see too much.”

“Why isn’t George St. Ives fearful of piskies and the like, if he wanders about in the middle of the night?”

“You must ask him.”

It was good advice.

“I have walked at night—and I saw nothing on the road but a farmer coming into the village.”

She studied him for a moment.

“And you’re sure it
was
a farmer?” she demanded.

He couldn’t tell her it was Trevose he’d been watching. Letting it go, he left her to sit with Toup and went back to his bed.

14

B
ut instead of his bed, Rutledge left the motorcar in the village and walked toward Padstow Place, listening to the night sounds around him as he made his way there. He could hear scurrying in the dry autumn brush on either side of the road, and louder sounds in the farther distance. The wind was still, and he couldn’t hear the river from here.

A nervous man, he thought, would find meaning in those stirrings by the roadside. Or the odd outline of a misshapen tree. Even the fleeting image at the corner of his eye. A night bird rising from the scrub, but easily mistaken as someone vanishing in the dark.

I looked away . . .

Superstition was the perfect shield for anyone who didn’t want to be seen.

There were some who claimed the piskies were the old gods, diminished in size and importance once the missionaries came to Cornwall from Wales and Ireland. Playful now, mischievous sometimes, but powerless to influence human affairs. Others believed them to be the souls of babies who died before they could be christened. Either way they were not to be trifled with.

George St. Ives, educated far from Cornwall, wouldn’t share those fears.

Who else was not afraid of the dark?

It was something to consider.

He had passed the turning to the Grenville landing and then the gates to the house and was well on his way toward Chough Hall when ahead of him, where the road angled slightly toward the river, Rutledge caught sight of a figure just disappearing around the next bend.

Too tall for a piskey, he told himself, amused. But it had been the merest glimpse, and he wasn’t certain how that person had been walking: well or with an effort.

He picked up his pace, but whoever it was had disappeared. By the time Rutledge reached the gates, he was sure he had lost the figure he’d been following.

Had it been George St. Ives? He would have known of any shortcuts to the house, where he could quietly enter a side door without awakening anyone. Walking down the drive, he risked being spotted by someone who couldn’t sleep.

Cursing himself for not thinking about that sooner, Rutledge retraced his steps, carefully searching for a half-invisible track leading into the estate from the main road.

He didn’t find what he was looking for. But that didn’t mean such a track didn’t exist. As a boy, he himself had learned how to slip in and out of his parents’ house with great stealth. Growing up at the Hall, George St. Ives wouldn’t be the first of his line to know how to come and go without being seen. And such access would have been available longer if it didn’t shout its presence to gardeners and family alike.

So much for that. But it proved that the son of this house might walk without his father’s knowledge.

Rutledge wondered if St. Ives had questioned his son about such nighttime forays, or if he was so certain they didn’t happen that he had never broached the subject. He leaned toward the latter possibility—if St. Ives had brought up George’s walks, very likely they would have stopped for a while.

St. Ives, like so many parents across England, had had to deal with the aftermath of the Great War in unexpected ways. Their hero sons had returned covered not in glory but in swaths of bandaging. If they returned at all. But it was easier to mourn a memory that had marched away in the autumn of 1914 and never come back. He was still the handsome young man in uniform that families last remembered, smiling at the photographer, eyes alight with the excitement of going to war. The shattered remnants of their child, coming home so utterly changed, was a very much harder cross to bear.

Rutledge could remember thinking, as he lay in his cot in hospital, haunted by France, still living in the trenches, that at least his parents weren’t alive to see him there. For they would have come to hospital despite his pleas for them to stay away, and the pity he would have seen in their eyes would have devastated him. It had been bad enough for Jean to see him at his worst and flinch at his thinness and the dark circles beneath his eyes, so different from the strong, vibrant man she had kissed good-bye at the railway station that last December day.

He turned to begin the long walk back to the village, watching as a badger trundled quickly across his path, intent on the hunt. He hoped it was closer to its sett than he was to the inn.

As it was, Hamish was his constant companion on the journey, the distant sound of gunfire and a vicious shelling occupying the back of his mind. Rutledge fought hard against the invasion, but afterward there was a section of the road that he had no memory of walking.

Back in the inn, his last conscious thought before falling asleep was: What if that hadn’t been George St. Ives rounding the bend ahead of him?

D
r. Carrick determined the next morning, when he came to look in on David Toup, that the vicar could be moved from the police station to his own bed at the vicarage.

“He may improve faster there. He’s stable, I think, and the risk is small if we do it in easy stages.”

Rutledge objected to taking the vicar out of the cell. “Granted it’s not the best place for an injured man to be treated. It’s confined, and there’s little fresh air. But I think he should be left there for a few more days. At least until we have some idea of who did this or why. We can lock the station door at night, when Pendennis goes home. It’s safer.”

“It’s also not the best place for an injured man’s health. God knows what germs are crawling about the place. We had no choice in the beginning, there were no stairs here, but now we do. I’m putting him where he can be cared for under far cleaner and more salubrious surroundings.”

Rutledge argued, but the doctor was not to be moved. And he could see why. He understood that part of it completely. What the doctor didn’t seem to understand was that there were other risks besides infection.

“If it will make you any happier, I’ll ask Carstairs to send a constable down here to keep watch. Someone must have been very drunk to attack a man of the cloth, possibly someone he knows very well. He won’t wish to be caught trying it again.”

“Not another constable,” Mrs. Daniels said firmly. “They’ll be putting in a cot for me. They can add one more for my husband. He’s the match for anyone wanting to reach Vicar. I’ll be more comfortable with him than with any stranger in the house. And besides, himself knows the village. He’ll have a fair idea about who should come through that door and who shouldn’t. What’s more, he knows better than to get under Mrs. Par’s feet. And people are already asking to bring broths and jellies and the like to help Vicar get well. It’s for the best. Truly it is.”

Mrs. Par was the vicarage housekeeper.

Knowing he’d lost, Rutledge put the best face on it that he could, and volunteered his help.

Later, when told that his patient had appeared to regain consciousness briefly during the night, Carrick shook his head. “I doubt he was able to make sense of what happened or where he was.” Rutledge said nothing.

The vicar’s housekeeper arrived to collect the bedding for washing, while Mrs. Daniels, her husband, Pendennis, and the doctor began the careful transfer of the vicar to a stretcher, which was then carried to the station door, where Rutledge’s motorcar was waiting.

He was eased into the rear seat, and Rutledge spared a moment’s thought for Hamish, banished from there for the duration of the journey. But it was not far to the vicarage, and there the process was reversed.

It was impossible for Pendennis and Mr. Daniels to carry the stretcher up the fourteen steps to the first floor and the vicar’s usual bedroom. But that had been thought of too, and a bed had been made up downstairs in the sitting room, willing hands helping to remove pieces of furniture and bring down a bedstead.

Preparations and transfer took well over an hour, but the vicar appeared to have made the transition without injury. It had taken a toll nonetheless, and Mrs. Daniels, drawing up the coverlet to his chin, said, “Poor lamb. I doubt he’ll stir for the rest of the day.”

Watching her, Dr. Carrick said, “I shall start to worry if he doesn’t begin to wake up sooner rather than later. It was beneficial, at the start, giving his body a chance to recover from the shock of his injuries. Now, we’ll just have to see.”

The two men left the vicar in Mrs. Daniels’s capable hands, and as they walked out together to Rutledge’s motorcar, standing by the vicarage steps, Dr. Carrick changed the subject.

“There’s some concern in town that the four women accused in the death of Harry Saunders are still at Padstow Place.”

“The decision to leave them there is mine, and not for public opinion to judge. There’s new evidence that casts doubt on how Saunders died. I can sympathize with his grieving parents, but I am not convinced that we know the whole of the story.”

“What new evidence?” Carrick retorted. “That man Trevose had no reason to lie. He swore to the fact that he believed there was an attempt to kill Saunders, and although it didn’t succeed at the time, he died as a result of what happened in that boat. I should think the situation is quite clear.”

“Do you know Trevose? Can you vouch for the fact that he has nothing to gain or to lose from giving his evidence? What’s more, I’m not satisfied about the sinking of the dinghy.”

“There
was
no dinghy. Saunders was in the boat with the young women when they decided to kill him.”

“You’re behind the times on your facts,” Rutledge said, bending to turn the crank. The motor caught on the first try, and he rose to watch the doctor’s face as he added, “The dinghy was retrieved from the river where it had sunk, just as Miss Grenville and her friends had described.”

That was news.

Carrick stared at him. “No one told me that. The general feeling in Padstow is that you’ve dragged your feet because you have a connection with one of the women involved. Is it true?”

“Which one?” Rutledge retorted, with an effort keeping his voice level.

“Does it matter?”

“I believe it does. I have never met three of the accused. The fourth is a cousin of someone I knew before the war. Hardly a sufficient connection to warrant allowing four murderers to go free. I wonder who spread such a rumor?”

“One of the staff overheard an argument in one of the public rooms at Padstow Place, and told a cousin who lives in Padstow.
She
told one of the maids working for Mr. and Mrs. Saunders. She believed it to be her duty.”

“Quite. Duty is often the finest of excuses for passing on gossip. Especially if it’s hurtful. You may tell Mr. and Mrs. Saunders for me that hanging the wrong person will not bring their son back. Nor will it be justice.”

They had been standing on either side of the motorcar. Rutledge gestured toward the door, and after a moment’s hesitation Carrick got in. Rutledge waited until he was settled and then got behind the wheel.

“Do you think this assault on Toup has any bearing on what happened to Saunders? I’ve heard that you are now in charge of both inquiries.”

“For very good reasons. But not because I see an immediate connection. Whoever did this to the vicar is still out there. And no one knows—yet—why Toup was the victim. Was it personal? Was it random? Will whoever it is try to finish what he’s begun, or has he long since left the area? This is why I objected to moving Toup. We don’t know.”

“I shouldn’t like to tangle with Mr. Daniels myself, and I hardly imagine anyone else would.”

“Whoever did this thrashed the vicar within an inch of his life. Literally. One or two more blows of that sort would surely have killed him. There was fury behind the blows. A vicious fury that didn’t take anything else into account. Anyone could have come down that path and seen what was happening. But whoever it was wasn’t satisfied with a beating. He kept at it, blow after blow, never letting up until whatever drove him was assuaged. That’s a dangerous man. Come with me and I’ll show you what Pendennis and I found.”

“I quite agree,” Carrick said. “I treated Toup. You needn’t persuade me. But I know these people, Rutledge. I can’t find one person in Heyl or Padstow or even in Rock that I feel would be capable of what was done.”

“That’s encouraging to hear. But I need to ask questions. Where did the vicar live before he came here? Was there something in his past that we don’t know about—and someone finally found out where he was serving? Did Toup recognize his attacker? Did whoever it was say anything to him that would explain the attack? And the best person to answer my questions is lying in his bed unconscious. We’ve looked at everyone in the village and the outlying farms. There’s no indication on their knuckles or faces that Toup attempted to defend himself. But he must have done. It’s human nature to put up a fight, clergy or not. Once he realized that he could very well be killed if he didn’t.”

“You are aware that he will very likely have an imperfect memory of events leading up to and including the attack?”

“That,” Rutledge said as he drove into the square by the police station and stopped, “is what I’m most afraid of.”

W
hen the doctor had gone and the police station was empty and quiet once more, Pendennis said to Rutledge, “I did as you asked. I spoke to Mrs. Par.”

“What did she have to say?”

“That Vicar found a note in his door that morning, asking him to call on Mrs. Terlew.”

“Did he, by God! Where is the note now?”

“She doesn’t know. It’s likely Vicar took it with him. And I searched his clothing after it was removed by the doctor. Nothing was missing. Nor was there any note.”

It hadn’t been a chance encounter, then. Someone had indeed lured the vicar to that rendezvous.

“Good man. Now I want you to talk to as many people as possible and document when and where they saw George St. Ives walking in the night. Or in the dawn, for that matter. And I want to know if Mrs. Terlew is quite certain it was St. Ives she saw the morning of the attack.”

“Are you settling on it being St. Ives?”

“Far from it,” Rutledge said easily, concealing what he really thought. “I’m looking for a pattern. And any anomalies in that pattern.”