No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (22 page)

“What was the story? There must have been a reason for people to believe it.”

“A vicar three before this un lost three babes to diphtheria. The well had gone bad. His wife went mad with grief, wandering the rooms looking for them. Vicar had to have her put away, for fear she’d harm herself. They brought her back after some years, but she was never the same. She would sit in a rocker in her room and rock back and forth, back and forth. She said it made her easy, but some thought she was rocking one of the babes. It was sad. One of my cousins told me the story.”

“Very sad, but our ghost, if he was there last night, is all too real. You have only to look at the vicar’s injuries to know that.”

Daniels nodded. “Well. I should be getting back. She’s turning Vicar on his side every two hours to prevent fluids settling on his lungs. Time to do it once more.” He turned and walked up the steps, disappearing inside.

Rutledge watched as the door closed behind Daniels, listening for the sound of the bolt, and he heard it slide home.

He found, ghosts or not, he believed Mrs. Daniels. She was a levelheaded woman who took her work seriously, and he couldn’t imagine her being routed from a patient’s bedside by any spirit.

He walked around the house, looking for signs of someone’s presence, but found nothing, not even Daniels’s footprints until he reached the door to the kitchen garden.

He was about to turn away when Hamish spoke, pointing out several drops of candle wax on the step in front of the door.

“If I was set on breaking in,” he went on, “I’d bring a stub of a candle to gie me light while I tried to open yon lock. It wouldna’ do to break the glass and reach inside. Too noisy, and it’ud leave a trace.”

Rutledge knelt to look more closely at the lock. Hamish was right, the only onlookers here were the tombstones in the churchyard.

But he couldn’t be sure someone had meddled with it. Still . . . Rising, he dusted off the knee of his trousers and went back to his motorcar in the drive.

Daniels had been awakened by his wife’s movements as she looked at each lock, surely including this one. With the household stirring, whoever it was would have gone away.

But if the attempt was real, if the candle wax was fresh, then whoever it was would try again.

A stranger in the village, even at night, would surely attract attention. But George St. Ives was known to walk then, and villagers were used to his presence, seeing no need to report it.

Rutledge spoke to Pendennis, warning him to be on his guard.

The constable, apparently taking the warning with a grain of salt, said, “It’s a terrible risk. Coming into the village like that. And the wind was up last night for a bit, with a shower. It could have been the wind Mrs. Daniels heard.”

“It could,” Rutledge responded. “But if whoever it was came down through the churchyard instead of up from the village, there’s no one to see him but the dead.”

Pendennis went to stand in the square, looking up at the church and the vicarage. “Aye,” he said thoughtfully, his gaze on the rough land beyond the churchyard, sour land that no one had ever plowed to his knowledge. Furze and broom dotted it, with a half dozen wind-twisted trees. “It’s the long way around. But he’d take it, wouldn’t he, to stay out of our way.” He walked with Rutledge to the motorcar. “I’ll keep a watch.”

Rutledge drove on to the telegraph office in the railway station in Padstow and sent the address he’d found in the vicar’s pocket to Sergeant Gibson in London.

He was just stepping out of the station doorway when he thought he saw a familiar figure rounding the next corner.

Frank Dunbar, the householder he’d spoken to out where Saunders had kept his boat?

Nearly sure of it, he seized his chance and went on to the cottages on the outskirts.

The man in the third cottage didn’t answer Rutledge’s knock. And it had that empty feeling that houses often have when no one is at home.

Rutledge turned and went to the cottage where Dunbar had claimed the two spinsters stayed over the past summer. He found that the lock yielded easily to persuasion, and he stepped inside.

The rooms were decorated in simple chintzes and inexpensive carpeting, both chosen to give the appearance of a cozy holiday cottage. Shades of rose and pale blue and cream and a soft yellow enlivened the otherwise plain furnishings, and the overall sense was of comfort. Views from the windows more than made up for any lack of elegance, and he stood for a moment looking out at the headland on the far shore of the estuary. There appeared to be a ruin on the seaward side, and he could pick out people walking along the strand below. The deceptive silting that was the Doom Bar, the sandbar that obstructed the harbor, was invisible as the tide ran out.

There was nothing personal left anywhere. If there had been family photographs or small treasures or even books, they had been taken away by the women who had let the cottage. The drawers and shelves and even the crevices between the seat cushions and the frame were empty. Someone had come in and given the rooms a thorough cleaning and draped dust sheets over the upholstered furniture. The mattresses in the two bedrooms had been rolled up for airing, and the doors to the cabinets left open as well.

The only conclusion he could draw about the former occupants was that they had not been demanding in their needs, and they had felt at home in these surroundings. Hardly the sort a siren would let, a woman who would find it amusing to steal the heart of a banker’s son while spending the summer in the wilds of Cornwall, flaunting her conquest in a village church, and then walk away, leaving his heart broken.

And yet when he opened the armoire in the larger bedroom and peered inside, the delicate scent of an expensive perfume wafted up to him. The sort of perfume his sister, young and single, might choose to wear, floral with a hint of spice. Not one elderly spinsters, as Dunbar had described them, would be likely to use. He went back to the armoire in the smaller bedroom and looked inside a second time. But he could smell only the cedar of the wood and a slight mustiness.

A slim bit of evidence—that one person and not two had taken this cottage. Hardly admissible in court.

Smiling at the thought, Rutledge looked out to be sure it was safe to leave unobserved, and then closed the door, relocking it.

Going around to the dustbins in the back, he looked inside the barrels, but they were empty. Must have been since September, for there was an inch of rainwater in the bottom. They smelled of long use.

A last glance as he was turning away—and something caught his eye. It appeared to be caught on a rough place along the inner wall of the dustbin. Leaning into the barrel as far as he could reach, his fingers just touched it. It took a full minute to work it clear and then wriggle it up the side. His greatest worry was dropping it into the filthy water below.

Finally it was far enough up that he could use his other hand to secure it. Clutching it, he went directly to the motorcar and prepared to leave before Dunbar returned. It wasn’t until he was well away that he pulled to the verge of the road to look at what he’d found.

Someone had torn a page from a magazine into little pieces, then put them in the dustbin. Only one piece had survived. Rutledge looked at both sides. One showed water of some sort, but the place was unidentifiable. The other showed a window surrounded by white walls. A house? An hotel? The sepia tones of the reproduction and the condition of the paper made it difficult to be sure.

Turning it over in his fingers, he decided to visit the estate agent he’d spoken with before, on the off chance the man could identify the scene this represented.

Rutledge found a place to leave his motorcar and walked the short distance to the agent’s office.

He was not in, but as Rutledge turned to leave, he saw the man trotting toward him.

“Sorry. I went to see a friend. Decided to spend a summer in sunny Cornwall, have you?”

“I’m in need of answers rather than cottages,” Rutledge said, and followed the agent inside.

“Too bad. There’s still a good choice just now.”

Rutledge handed him the bit of paper from the bin. “Can you identify this?”

The man took it, then looked up at Rutledge with a grin. “Exciting lives you Inspectors lead, hunting down such frightful miscreants as this. Oh, yes, it’s got around, who you are. Where did you find this bit?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. It’s not particularly important,” he added, not quite sure he trusted the man to keep quiet about his visit. “But I’d be remiss if I didn’t follow up on every possibility. You’d be surprised how tedious that is.”

“Well, this will fail to help you, I’m afraid.” He stood up and went to a row of shelves in the back of the agency. Searching around, he found what he was looking for and brought it over to hand to Rutledge. It was a broadsheet along the lines of
The Sunday Pictorial
. “Look at page three. There’s an article about Cornwall, with illustrations. You can see why I might have kept it.”

And there it was, when he turned to page three: the photograph of a large white building bearing a sign reading
THE FOWEY HOTEL
. On the reverse were other photographs, and the one matching the window of the hotel showed the sea at Fowey. The theme of the article was Cornwall as a holiday center for war-weary Britons.

Going back to the front page, he saw that the date was the spring of 1919.

A back issue, then. If someone had been intrigued by this article, he or she might have looked for other accommodations and in the end, rented one of the cottages belonging to Frank Dunbar.

“You’re right,” he said, handing the broadsheet back to the agent. “A dead end.” He thanked the man and left.

What disturbed him most about this inquiry was that whatever direction he turned, there wasn’t a shred of evidence that he could take back to London with him. Nothing that would be useful to counsel chosen by the families of the accused.

Except for the holes in the dinghy . . .

It all seemed to come down to who had put them there, and why.

For if that dinghy hadn’t sunk in the middle of the Camel, leaving Harry Saunders to drown, there would have been no need for rescue, and no accusations of attempted murder, no suspects waiting to be turned over to the police.

Harry Saunders could have drowned at sea, with no one the wiser until his body washed ashore somewhere along the coast.

Walking back to his motorcar, Rutledge remembered one of the legends about the sea here at Padstow. About the mermaid who had fallen in love with a fisherman, but he spurned her, and in her grief and fury, she had created the Doom Bar to close the estuary. Mermaid stories seemed to be popular in villages near the sea, and as a rule, a fisherman fell in love with one and when he’d been tempted to follow her into the deep whence she’d come, he drowned.

He recalled the scent in the armoire. Perhaps it
was
a mermaid who had lived there, and Harry had been destined to die in the sea where she’d come from. A fanciful thought: the woman who had let the cottage had come down a road to reach here, not up from the depths.

But it was an interesting possibility. After all, many such legends had some basis in fact. Who, in this story, had fallen in love with the wrong person? The man? Or the mermaid? She had come for the summer, and at its end had gone away. Unhappy? Or angry? Or with no reason to remember the man who kept his boat on the strand below her door?

Hamish, good Covenanter that he was, raised objections to this talk of mermaids. Rutledge tried to ignore him.

Perhaps he’d been wrong about jealousy leading Victoria to murder.

It was the vicar who could tell him more about this mysterious young woman. And whether she had tried to bewitch Harry Saunders, punching holes in his boat when he spurned her. Perhaps Toup had not wanted to drag her back into the affairs of the village, suspecting that she had already done enough damage.

But David Toup was in no state to answer him.

He stopped at the telegraph office, on his way through Padstow, to ask if there had been a response to his message to the Yard.

It was too soon, much too soon, but Rutledge was anxious now to find any lead that would help him sort out facts from possibilities. He had a bad feeling about where this inquiry was going, and he didn’t like it.

15

G
renville was waiting for Rutledge when he returned to the inn from Padstow.

He had been pacing in front of the door, and he was not in the best of tempers. But he controlled it as well as he could and said, “I’m worried about this attack on the vicar. In fact, I’ve been to see him. Will he come through this?”

“Let’s walk down to the water,” Rutledge suggested, getting out and waiting for Grenville to join him. When they were out of earshot of the inn and the people going about their business in the street, he continued. “Carrick is optimistic. At least physically, that is. Heaven knows what his mental state will be. It’s possible he won’t remember the attack.”

“But surely you have some feeling for who did this?”

Rutledge remembered that Grenville was the local magistrate. “I’ve questioned the Terlew family. The first they knew of his intended visit was when a son of the house found Toup bleeding and unconscious just off the path to the farm. The vicar had promised to call, but there had been no date set. Mrs. Par, Toup’s housekeeper, tells us there was a message for him in the door that morning, but whether that was why he set out for Half Acre Farm we don’t know. We haven’t found the message in the vicarage, and it wasn’t on his person. What’s more, the only person the Terlews saw that morning, before or after the beating, was George St. Ives. But he swears he was nowhere near the farm.”

“George?” Clearly Grenville hadn’t been expecting that. “I thought—I’d been told that he refused to leave the house.”

“Apparently he does, for exercise, after dark.” As if changing the subject, Rutledge paused and then asked, “Were he and your daughter close? I’m aware of the connection between Miss St. Ives and your late son. I wondered if it was true of St. Ives and Miss Grenville.”

“Yes, of course, the four of them more or less grew up together. School holidays, and the like, they were inseparable. I was rather surprised that my son had grown so fond of Elaine. But that summer of 1914 a good many decisions were made, for fear time had run out. And if Stephen was happy, I welcomed it. God knows, it was the last happiness for him.”

Rutledge himself had proposed to Jean Gordon in June of that fateful summer. He could in a way sympathize with Stephen Grenville.

“This business with the vicar—it doesn’t have anything to do with the death of Harry Saunders, does it?” Grenville asked. He was an intelligent man as well as magistrate. It was not unexpected that he would consider such a possibility.

“So far, there’s no indication that it has any connection. The only obvious one of course is George St. Ives passing by a little before the attack. If you discount that, until the vicar recovers his senses—possibly his memory as well—we know very little about what happened there in Terlew’s field.”

“Yes, well, I’d welcome any news that would free my daughter and her friends. Not that I wish anyone else to suffer. There’s been enough of that already. I sent a message of condolence to Saunders’s parents. They refused to acknowledge it. Not that I can blame them. When word came that Stephen was dead, I thought my own world had ended. What you learn, in times of great loss, is that the human spirit can survive the most terrible events in one’s life and somehow go on.” He took a deep breath, staring out toward the river. “Not that it makes anything any better. You just learn to tolerate the difference, the change. And then you get on with it.” He turned to Rutledge. “Were you in the war?”

“Yes. In France.”

“Was it as bad as we’ve heard? Worse?”

He wasn’t asking for truth. He wanted reassurance that his son had not suffered as much as people were saying, now that soldiers had returned home and censorship had ended.

“I won’t lie,” Rutledge said quietly. “There were days that could drive any man mad with the horror of them. But that was not all it was in the trenches. You learned to depend on the man beside you, to trust him in ways you never trusted any other human being before that. You looked out for him and he for you. He was father and brother and son to you. It’s what got you through, that friendship. Knowing that you weren’t alone. And God willing, he was there when you were wounded or dying. Or there was a nursing Sister holding your hand.”

It was mostly true. But dying was a lonely business even so. He didn’t tell Grenville that.

The man looked away again, and it was a moment before he could speak. Then he said, “Thank you.” And he walked briskly away, back to where his horse was waiting in the inn yard.

Rutledge stayed where he was until he heard the horse walk out of the yard and then pick up its pace to a trot.

Then he turned and went to the inn, up to his room, where Hamish was waiting.

I
t was late when he came down again. He forced himself to walk to the vicarage and looked in on Toup, but there was no change. The doctor had come again, and according to Mrs. Daniels, he’d made noises of concern.

“But he’ll be all right. Vicar.” Mrs. Daniels nodded knowingly. “There was Tommy, kicked by the cow. And didn’t he come back to us again, and no harm done? Or Sam’s girl, who fell out of a tree when she was ten. Knocked her senseless.”

He couldn’t be sure whether she was that sanguine or she was merely whistling in the dark. Studying the patient’s face, ugly as the bruises and swelling fully developed, Rutledge had his doubts.

“Any closer to finding out who did this?” Daniels asked from the doorway.

“I’m waiting to hear from the Yard on several points,” Rutledge said. It was true, but it must have sounded as hollow to Daniels’s ears as it did to his own.

He went back to the inn and changed to dark clothing. Then, in a roundabout way, he circled the vicarage and found a vantage point on the far side of the churchyard, well concealed behind a tall, gracefully carved Celtic cross. He had made certain while at the vicarage that the hens were shut up for the night in their coop, well away from where he expected to be watching.

He had begged a Thermos of tea from the inn’s clerk before going up to change, and as the night grew chill, he drank half a cup. Something scurried past his feet, and sometime later he heard an owl call from the church belfry. Night sounds that were normal. As he watched, the last lamp went out in the vicarage, save for a small shielded one that glowed in the downstairs sitting room window. As his eyes adjusted again, it was a pale beacon: it was the room where Toup lay.

Rutledge was tempted to stamp his feet, chilled by the cold ground he was standing on. Down in the village he could see Pendennis making his last rounds of the night, and after a quarter of an hour, the constable walked up the drive to the vicarage and tapped lightly on the door. The sound carried in the stillness.

An exchange of words, low and brief, and then Pendennis turned and walked around the house, testing doors as he passed. Satisfied, as he reached the drive again, he strode quietly back the way he’d come and turned toward his own home.

Another hour passed. Rutledge drank a little more of his tea, knowing it must last him until dawn, and dawn came late this time of year.

He heard the church clock strike three and almost decided to give up his vigil. Surely if anyone wanted to break into the vicarage, he could have come by now when sleep was the deepest and one’s guard was down.

Just then a light flared in the sitting room. And as it did, it briefly outlined a hunched figure just passing outside beneath the window. It wasn’t as bulky as Daniels. Rutledge hadn’t seen anyone arrive, and he swore under his breath.

He moved fast, grateful for his own night vision as he avoided the headstones. He had reached the vicarage when he heard the front door open, and after an instant, someone shut it smartly behind him, as if to be certain nothing slipped in through the crack. Rapid footsteps echoed as someone hurried down the drive. Daniels? Where was he going?

“ ’Ware!” Hamish shouted, but it was already too late.

The sudden sounds of departure must have alarmed the prowler, and now he was coming back round the corner in rapid retreat, just as Rutledge got there from the other direction. In that same instant, the oncoming figure stumbled over something in the dark and pitched forward, arms outspread and windmilling, plowing straight into him.

They clung to each other, assimilating the shock of physical contact, and then broke apart just as quickly.

Rutledge reached out to catch the other man, clutching at his coat, finding purchase, and holding fast.

The man spun away, leaving the coat dangling in Rutledge’s hand, and in the same motion, his other hand swung around. Something cold and hard slammed into the side of Rutledge’s head, dropping him to his knees.

Rutledge could feel the coat being snatched from his grip, and then a second blow brought down a heavy curtain of darkness.

He didn’t know how long he was unconscious. He came to in waves of nausea and pain, his face buried in the raw dampness of fallen leaves that had blown against the corner of the house. He could smell their earthy wetness as he lay there for a few seconds more, gathering his wits, and then with an effort he got to his feet.

Swaying for a moment, he scanned the churchyard.

He couldn’t see anyone—what’s more, he couldn’t hear anyone. Either his quarry had gone to ground, or he had made good his escape.

Still dizzy, he forced himself to move, and then he made a thorough search.

There was no sign of anyone.

If it weren’t for the mad throbbing in his head, Rutledge could almost believe he’d imagined the encounter. It had happened so fast, neither he nor his quarry had had time to do anything more than react.

How could he possibly have missed him? he demanded of himself. How had anyone got past his guard? He’d learned in the trenches how to watch the lines and spot snipers making their way to their hide. Or listeners who sometimes crawled almost to the lip of a trench and eavesdropped on the talk below.

The only answer was, the man had settled himself somewhere just after Rutledge had chosen the Celtic cross, before his eyes had become fully adjusted to the night. And the same must have been true of the prowler. He’d had no notion that Rutledge was there.

But he must have had his revolver out, ready to use it if whoever had left the vicarage turned or in any way sensed his presence. And then very likely, he had been heading for the rear of the vicarage, where he could force his way in. With only a middle-aged woman between himself and his quarry, he could have dealt with both and still escaped before Daniels—or whoever it was—had returned.

It was why, Rutledge thought, the man hadn’t shot
him
. It would have brought the village on the run.

The question was, he told himself, making his way to the rear of the house, how long had this intruder been stealthily watching the vicarage? Long enough to know who was inside and what the routine was.

He made certain the kitchen garden door was still locked, and then turning, he walked unsteadily back to the front door of the vicarage. Knocking briskly, he called out to Mrs. Daniels and identified himself.

He saw the twitch of a curtain as she first looked out the hall window to the left of the door, and then it was opened, the light from her lamp blinding him with its brightness as she stepped out, as if relieved to see him.

“I’m so glad you came—” She broke off as he moved toward her and the lamplight spilled across his face. Staring at him, she exclaimed, “You’re bleeding!”

“He came back. And he was armed. He hit me with his revolver. Whoever he is, he must have been in the war.”

“Is Daniels all right?” She peered past him, looking for her husband.

“He hasn’t come back.”

“Step in. Go on to the kitchen. I’ll find a cloth to bathe your face. And something cold for it.” With a wary glance around, she opened the door wider, and then after he’d crossed the threshold, she closed and locked it again. Following him down the passage to the vicarage kitchen, she clucked in dismay. “That will hurt like the devil tomorrow.”

“It already does,” he admitted, and sat down, grateful for the chair. He was dizzy and unsteady on his feet, and he wasn’t sure just how much farther he could have walked.

She filled a basin with water, and did what she could for his face. “There’s a terrible cut along your cheekbone,” she said as she worked. “It ought to have stitches. But some sticking plaster will have to do.” It was when she was trying to close the wound that he winced, and she discovered the bloody knot on the back of his head. She cleaned that as well, and then stepped back. “That’s all I can do for the lump, short of shaving your head. I’ll put the kettle on. You’ve had a shock. Go on into the sitting room. He’s awake. The vicar. Or he was before you knocked at the door. I’ll bring the cup and a compress in there to you.”

Surprised, Rutledge said, “Is he indeed? Is that why Daniels left in such a hurry? To find me?” He stood up gingerly, found he could manage, and started toward the sitting room, not waiting for Mrs. Daniels to answer. Opening the door, he stepped quietly inside. The vicar lay in his bed, his eyes staring up at the ceiling, as if he didn’t quite know where he was.

Rutledge drew Mrs. Daniels’s chair closer to the side of the bed and sat down, saying in a normal tone of voice, “I’m glad to see you’re back with us.”

The vicar’s gaze swept around the room, and then settled on Rutledge. “I don’t sleep in the sitting room.” His words were slurred by his swollen lips.

“You’ve broken your leg. It was easier to bring the bedding to you than it was to take you up the stairs. Do you mind?”

“My leg?” He tried to move it, but the coverlet didn’t stir. “What’s wrong with my leg?” he asked then, growing alarm in his voice.

“It’s in a splint. Dr. Carrick’s doing, I’m afraid. Do you remember how you happened to hurt it?”

The vicar stared at him. “I don’t know. It wasn’t broken when I had dinner last night. I could swear to that.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. Toup didn’t remember what had happened two days before. It was all a blank. There had been a chance that he might remember, and Rutledge had banked on it. Now there was nothing.