No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (21 page)

“You aren’t forgetting that Inspector Carstairs saw St. Ives on the road to Padstow?”

“On the contrary. The question is, did he see St. Ives clearly enough to identify him? Or did he make the assumption that it was St. Ives he must have seen?”

“I’m to question the Inspector?” Pendennis asked warily.

“He won’t bite. And I need to know if St. Ives was on that road. When, and where he was going.” To drive holes into the bottom of Harry Saunders’s dinghy?

Pendennis, not best pleased with his orders, nodded and went to fetch his notebook.

Meanwhile, returning later that morning to Chough Hall, Rutledge tried again to gain access to George St. Ives. This time, instead of asking to speak to the father, Rutledge asked for the son.

The maid shook her head. “He’s not receiving visitors, sir. You’ll have to come back another time.”

He decided that this was as good a chance as any to try a more roundabout route. He’d been wanting to take out the Grenville boat to see how it handled, and the tide was right. Leaving Chough Hall behind, he drove past the gates of Padstow Place and found the rutted lane again that led to their landing.

The boat was still there, and he launched it without too much trouble. Accustomed to rowing, he found it easy to guide the craft out into the current and then pull upstream. He discovered that he couldn’t see Padstow Place from the water, but where the terrace of Chough Hall overlooked the river, there were gardens that ran partway down to the water. The rest was rough ground, and where that began, a path appeared to lead through the scrub up to the house. A small stretch of sand made a rather narrow but nice strand, and to his surprise he saw a man standing there, watching him as the boat drew even with the grounds.

It wasn’t the father. Therefore it must be the son. What’s more, the resemblance was strong. The same build, the same set of the shoulders and head, the same height.

Rutledge maneuvered the boat toward the sand and, kicking off his boots, got out and pulled it up far enough that he could trust it to stay there. Then he turned.

“That’s the Grenville boat,” the man said, an accusation rather than a statement.

His face was terribly scarred, deep gouges in the flesh that ran diagonally from his forehead to his chin, drawing his eyes downward and slightly twisting his nose and mouth. On the right side they went on down his throat, disappearing into his collar. And the ear on that side was ragged with scar tissue.

“As a matter of fact it is. I’m afraid I’ve borrowed it without leave.”

“And you’re trespassing.”

“Actually, I rather think you’re the man I’ve come to see.”

There was sudden tension in the man’s body. Rutledge wondered if he was about to bolt. On the strand beside him lay a pair of sticks, the ferrules still bright, with no signs of wear. Were they new? He couldn’t be sure. St. Ives might own several pairs. He was wearing gloves and a light jacket against the wind.

And that was frustrating. Rutledge couldn’t tell if his hands or forearms were marked. There was no reasonable excuse to ask to see them.

“My name is Rutledge. I’ve come several times to speak to you, but your father refused to let me in.”

“I watched you pulling upriver. You know how to handle those oars.”

“Long practice. Was it your father’s doing or yours that prevented me from seeing you?”

“You don’t sound Cornish. And so you must be the man from London he was so angry with.”

“Scotland Yard.”

The man nodded. “I thought as much.”

“I understand you were out walking early on the morning the vicar went to call on the elder Mrs. Terlew. Her daughter-in-law told me that she’d seen you pass by.”

He regarded Rutledge for a moment, then said, “I wasn’t walking in that direction.”

“There are witnesses.”

“Witnesses be damned. It’s not true. Is this what you’ve come for? I thought you wanted to ask about Saunders. And my sister.”

St. Ives hadn’t moved. Not even to shift his weight from one foot to the other. The stance of a man who had troubles with balance?

“What can you tell me, then?”

“My sister has never hurt anyone in her life. She’s hardly likely to kill someone she knew, like Saunders.”

“How well did she know him?”

“Not the way you’re suggesting. We grew up in this house, she and I. Of course we knew Harry Saunders. For that matter, what reason would any of them have for harming the man? It’s beyond belief.” He was angry now.

“Yet there’s a witness—another witness—claiming he saw the attempt to kill Saunders. First by shoving him overboard, and then using one of the oars to strike him in the head.”

“Trevose,” he said, his mouth turning down. “Why should you believe him, against the word of my sister? Or for that matter, the word of Miss Grenville? He was wrong about the dinghy, wasn’t he? He said it wasn’t there. And yet the divers found it just where it should have been.”

“Four witnesses against one? Good odds, except for the fact that they happen to be the accused. It’s expected that they would want me to believe their version of events.”

“You’re a fool, then,” St. Ives said contemptuously. “And not a very good judge of character.”

“Perhaps that’s true. Could I trust you to tell me the truth if I asked if the rowboat came up as far as this house, on the Saturday in question?”

“No reason to lie about that. Yes. I was on the terrace.”

“They called and waved. You didn’t respond.”

“Who else would it have been?” he snapped. “Sitting there?”

“Your father. A friend.”

Goaded, he said, “If you want the truth, I was desperate to be out there on the water as well. But the doctor refuses to let me. I don’t have the strength to swim if something went wrong.” It went against the grain, Rutledge could tell, to have to make that admission.

“Can I have your word that Saunders wasn’t in the Grenville boat at that time?”

“He was not.”

Rutledge found he believed him. And it corroborated what he already knew.

“Why do you walk at night? Even your father wasn’t aware of it, but a few people have seen you. Pendennis, for instance, and Mrs. Daniels. They aren’t all liars, are they?”

“Look at me. If you looked like this, would you stroll into the village at midday?”

“Inspector Carstairs in Padstow has even seen you walking in that direction.”

“He must be joking. I can’t possibly make it that far.”

“Have you seen anyone else walking late in the night?”

“I didn’t look for them. I wasn’t interested in having company.”

“Surely your father has told you about Mr. Toup. How badly he’s been hurt. I was hoping you might have seen someone else on the path that morning. That you could help us find the man who did it.”

“I haven’t seen Toup in months. Nor he me. He was told not to come to the house. I didn’t need spiritual guidance. God forsook me a long time ago.”

Hamish spoke suddenly, jarring Rutledge.

“He’s denied having seen yon vicar. But he hasna’ asked why you would think he wanted to harm the man.”

It was true. Nor had he responded to the question about seeing someone else on the track.

“Looking at the facts of your sister’s case,” Rutledge said, “they point to the possibility that she and Miss Gordon and Miss Langley had no real reason—that we’ve discovered so far—to want to kill Saunders. And there’s no doubt it was Miss Grenville who refused to help drag him into the boat—”

He thought for an instant that George St. Ives was going to swing at him, leaving him with no option but to drop the man in his tracks. The anger that had been seething under the surface had very nearly boiled over into action. But St. Ives had caught himself in time.

“She’s no murderer,” he said savagely. “Damn you, if you’re half the policeman you’re supposed to be, coming down here from London to find out the truth, you’d know that.” He reached down for his sticks and nearly fell. Recovering through sheer willpower, he caught them up and turned his back on Rutledge, hobbling swiftly toward the path that led up to the terrace.

It was a shambling walk, unsteady and uneven. But Rutledge had seen the anger in the man and felt the frustration he had fought down. There was enough of both that he could have lost whatever control he’d had and attacked. But his opponent this time was not a frail clergyman, it was an able-bodied policeman with the advantage of height and reach. And St. Ives had recognized that.

Yet in spite of the anger in the man, it didn’t explain why he might have wanted to kill the vicar. The only thing that George St. Ives
had
betrayed in their conversation was the fact that he was in love with Victoria Grenville. Hopeless though it might be. The only reason he’d been willing to talk at all was to learn what evidence the police had and how they viewed it. As if the secondhand accounts given to him by his father hadn’t satisfied him. He’d wanted to see for himself what danger his sister and above all Victoria Grenville stood in.

Rutledge watched St. Ives almost to the terrace, to make certain he got there, then turned and launched the boat again.

He looked down at his wet stockings and trouser legs, and then ruefully shook his head. He hadn’t gained as much as he’d hoped for by coming here. And while he was inclined to believe St. Ives when he said he hadn’t been on the Half Acre Farm track the morning the vicar was beaten, if that was true, who had Mrs. Terlew seen?

Hamish said, “Have ye no’ considered the possibility that he attacked the vicar to draw suspicion away from the four lasses?”

“It won’t wash. For one thing, it wasn’t a methodical beating, it was a furious one. For another, he must know that since he failed to kill the vicar, as soon as Toup regains his senses, he’ll point St. Ives out. If St. Ives did try to kill the vicar, there was another reason for it.”

But Hamish persisted, like a niggling doubt in Rutledge’s mind.

“Unless he saw Victoria Grenville damage yon dinghy. And he believes the vicar also saw her out on the road that night. He walks in the dark, he couldha’ followed her.”

It was five or more miles to the cottage. A very long walk for Victoria Grenville. And an even longer one for a man whose legs were so damaged. But she could have done it. And St. Ives needn’t have followed her all the way. He could have watched her go and come back, and then put two and two together much later.

Then why wait so long to silence the vicar?

Perhaps no one had considered Inspector Barrington a threat. He’d been ill, he died, the statements had disappeared, and there was an end to it. But Scotland Yard had sent someone else to Cornwall, and Rutledge was a very different man.

Jealousy was a powerful emotion. But again it hadn’t seemed likely to Rutledge that Victoria Grenville had cared so deeply for Harry Saunders. What did lie between them, then? If it wasn’t jealousy, what was it?

As for George St. Ives, love was nearly as powerful. He would perjure himself for Victoria’s sake. Why not kill for her? He’d been in the war . . .

But even knowing this, Rutledge could still find no way to save Kate, or Sara Langley or Elaine St. Ives. It was still very likely that if one was convicted, the other three would be as well.

What was the key? The one small fact or motive that would put him on the right track?

A
fter changing out of his wet clothes, Rutledge looked in on the vicar. No improvement in his condition, Mrs. Daniels assured him, although the poor lamb was restless still.

Rutledge thanked her, then went on to search Toup’s study.

There was nothing in the desk or any other part of the room to put Saunders, Victoria Grenville, and the vicar in the same picture. The vicar’s accounts, his diary—plainly just that, a list of his daily comings and goings—and his correspondence yielded nothing more than the usual activities of an Anglican vicar. Rutledge found no secrets in the man’s bedroom upstairs. That was more monastic than the rest of the house, a spartan room with only the necessities of a simple man and his calling. A crucifix; a Bible on a tall stand, smaller than the one on the desk in the study; his clothing tidily hung in the armoire or folded neatly in the drawers of the single tall chest.

Rutledge went so far as to search the pockets of his coats.

There was a scrap of paper in one with an address in London. In Mayfair.

There was no way to judge how long it had been there. Or if it had any significance at all. A friend? A fellow priest? A relative?

Satisfied that he had done all he could, Rutledge made certain that he had put everything back just as he’d found it, and left the bedroom.

He was on his way down the stairs when Daniels appeared and jerked his head toward the door.

Rutledge followed the big man outside.

Daniels stood for a moment looking down toward the village streets, as if trying to find the words—or trying to set himself apart from what he was about to say.

“She doesn’t sleep well,” he began after a moment. “Not when she’s on duty, so to speak. It’s possible she was drowsing off again, and thought she heard it.”

“Heard what?” Rutledge prompted.

“Someone trying to get in the door there.” He gestured over his shoulder to the house door. “And then he tried a window. But he never knocked, which someone would have done if there was an urgent need for Vicar. For that matter, most people know what happened. They wouldn’t have come seeking him.”

“Yes, I agree. What did you hear?”

“That’s just it. I never heard a thing. But she was worried enough to go round making sure all the locks were closed. That’s what woke me. To please her, not because I had much faith in what she was telling me, I went outside to have a look round. And I didn’t see anything to worry me.” He looked up at Rutledge then. “Still. I thought it best to tell you.”

“You did the right thing,” Rutledge agreed. “I’ll take it that she did hear something—if only to make certain we don’t let down our guard out of complacency.”

“Aye, that’s true enough.” Daniels paused again. “When I was a lad there was some who said the vicarage was haunted. I never got head nor tail of that. Mama wouldn’t talk about it. And she was a maid in the house.”