No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (4 page)

“When did you see the man?”

“We were almost opposite our landing, I think. At any rate, we were talking about going in. That’s when Kate—or was it Sara?—saw someone waving.” Her hands clenched in her lap. “Victoria said he was only flirting, and to ignore him. But Kate thought he was in trouble. And he was, because the boat he was in sank right under him.”

“Go on.”

“He tried to swim to us, and Kate maneuvered the boat close enough that she and Sara could pull him out of the water. But he was struggling, and I started to help, but Kate ordered me to stay where I was, so we wouldn’t capsize. But I could feel the boat rocking hard from one side to the other, and then dip dangerously on their side, and I knew we were going to be swamped. It was horrible. The water is quite cold now, and I’m not a strong swimmer. And then this man suddenly appeared and helped us pull Harry in.”

“How did you know that it was Harry?”

“I recognized his dinghy as we got closer, and of course I know who he is. His father owns the bank in the village. Well, it’s a branch of the bank in Padstow. Victoria says he doesn’t know his place. But I’m not sure about that. He’d never spoken to me in anything but the politest way.”

She wrung her hands. “And then Mr. Trevose—I recognized him finally, even though his hair was wet and dripping into his eyes—accused us of trying to murder Harry. What’s more, he told the constable, and we were taken into
custody
.” She spoke the last word as if it were nothing short of a corner of hell. And Rutledge thought it must have seemed so to her.

“You’ve told me that Kate and Sara—Miss Gordon and Miss Langley—had tried to help the man. Where was Victoria all this time?”

“She was in the bow. I don’t think there was much she could do. Not without tipping the boat. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Trevose, I expect we’d have all been in a great deal of trouble. But why he should think we were murdering Harry, I don’t know. It was rather awful.”

She began to cry, finding a handkerchief and burying her face in it. “I don’t want to think about it any longer. Please?”

He could see she was genuinely upset, not trying to evade being interviewed. “One last question. Tell me about the oar.”

“The oar?” She raised her head and blinked. “What oar? Oh. One was nearly half out of the boat. I was afraid it was going to fall out and be lost to us. I pulled it in, but I couldn’t get the other one out from under Harry—he was in the bottom of the boat with Kate and Sara and Trevose on top of him. But Mr. Trevose decided to row after all, and I just sat there, feeling rather numb. I still couldn’t believe what had happened. It had all been so sudden.”

“Before that. When Miss Grenville took up one of the oars. What was she intending to do with it?”

“I expect she was trying to hold it out for Harry to grasp. He was clutching Sara’s and Kate’s hands, you see, and they couldn’t let go to reach for his coat. He was about to pull them into the water with him. But the boat was rocking badly, and the oar’s heavy, she couldn’t quite manage it.”

“Anything else you can think of that might help us see the situation more clearly?” he asked.

“That’s everything, to the best of my recollection. Will we be put in gaol? Are they going to hang us?”

“You needn’t fear hanging,” he assured her.

She held his gaze with her own. “Are you telling me the truth?”

“Of course I am. Why should I not?”

“People do lie to me. They tell me it’s to spare me, but it only makes matters worse when I find out the truth from someone else.”

Rutledge said, “I don’t lie in matters like this.” Pausing, he added, “Has anyone asked you to lie to me? Or told you things you knew were lies? About what happened on the river?”

“Only Victoria. She told me she never touched that oar, and not to say that she had. And she pinched me. But when Constable Pendennis asked her particularly about that, she said that a shout from shore startled her.”

“When was it that she asked you to lie?”

“As we were getting out of the boat. There was blood all over Harry’s face, and they took him out first, and then pulled up Kate, followed by Sara. We were waiting our turns, and everyone on the landing was staring down at Harry. No one was looking at us. Not then, not until Mr. Trevose told them. And then they stared. I thought they were going to take us directly to Bodmin. My brother used to read me stories about murderers and highwaymen.”

“Why should he do that?”

“To be mean, I think. He never did it when Nanny was in the room. It was always when we were alone. He kept the book in his pocket. I always knew it was there.”

“How long have you been friends with Miss Grenville?”

“All my life. Victoria and Stephen and George and I were always in and out of each other’s houses.”

“George is your brother?”

“Yes. He was badly wounded in the war.”

“And Stephen?”

Her eyes filled again. “Victoria’s brother. He was killed at Mons. I was to marry him when the war was over.”

He let her go then, and sent for Sara Langley.

4

S
ara Langley was a tall strawberry blonde, with blue eyes and a smattering of freckles across her nose. They did nothing to diminish her attractiveness or her poise.

“Inspector Rutledge?” she asked, stopping in the doorway.

“Yes. Come in, Miss Langley.” He explained as he had before that he had arrived to replace Inspector Barrington, and wished to conduct his own interviews.

“You have made Miss St. Ives cry,” she said, coming into the room and taking the chair he offered. “That was unkind of you.”

“I’m sorry,” Rutledge said. “I’m afraid I asked who Stephen was.”

“Ah. They were very much in love.” She looked around her at the library, filled with books, her gaze sad. “She would have been mistress here one day.”

“How did you come to know Miss Grenville?”

“We came out in the same year. It’s exciting, of course, but a little daunting as well. I made several very good friends, and together we did what we could in the war to help. That brought us even closer. I got to know Kate then as well, and her cousin.”

He could tell by the way she said the words that she had no idea that he was the man Jean would have married. He left it that way.

“Tell me about taking out the boat. Whose idea was it?”

“I don’t remember. After lunch, it was such a fine day that we decided to ride our bicycles as far as the landing. Perhaps it was Victoria who suggested going out in the boat. I’m not the best of sailors, but I agreed when the others were willing. I didn’t want to spoil their fun.” She grimaced. “As it happened, I wish I had refused.”

“And there was nothing unusual about the outing?”

“No. Elaine asked if we could go as far as the St. Ives gardens, to see if George was on the terrace. I expect he was—someone was. And then we turned back.”

“Did you see the other boat, the one that was foundering?”

“Yes, I pointed it out to the others, in fact. There was someone standing in it, waving his arms over his head. Victoria told us to ignore him, that he was merely flirting. We were heading for the house landing, you see, and I thought he must want to join us or some such. I thought it rather foolish of him, and then as we watched, we could see the boat beginning to sink under him. After that everything happened at once. Kate took the oars, and we rowed down to him. But by that time, the boat had sunk, completely out of sight, and he was trying to swim toward us, and not making a very good job of it.”

“Go on.”

“Kate brought us alongside, and shipped the oars. She leaned over and caught one arm, while I was able to reach the other, just as he was about to go under again. He was flailing about, and we kept telling him to reach out and take hold of the side of the boat, that he was too heavy for us to lift out. But he didn’t hear us, I don’t think he heard much of anything; his strength was giving out, and he had panicked. It was rather awful, I thought we would either go in with him or have to watch him drown. Neither Kate nor I could manage to bring him in, and he wasn’t able to help us.” She shivered. “I’ll never forget his eyes. He looked at me, pleading for his life, and I could do nothing but try to keep his head above water. As it was he was swallowing water at quite a serious rate.”

“Where was Miss St. Ives?”

“She wanted to help, but she would have capsized the boat if she had come over to our side. And I don’t think she could have made a difference anyway, there was so little room between Kate and me.”

“And Miss Grenville?”

“In the bow. I didn’t have time to look at her, I just knew she was there. And then the oar came down on my arms, and I cried out because I lost my grip on Harry.”

“What was she doing with the oar?”

“I don’t know—perhaps it was about to float away, but whether she was trying to bring it in, or shove it over where Harry could catch on to it, I don’t know.”

“Were you bruised? When the oar struck you?”

She hesitated, then pushed up the sleeves of her dress. There was heavy bruising on both forearms. It must have been very bad in the beginning, sore to the touch. It was still blue, fading into green and yellow on the right arm, and already green and yellow on the other. “Kate was bruised too. Perhaps it was wrong of us, but neither of us mentioned it.”

Out of loyalty to Victoria Grenville?

Looking at her forearms, he wondered if she had inadvertently saved Saunders’s life, as the oar struck her before coming down on the man’s head.

“How badly was Saunders hurt by the blow?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I was too busy trying to drag him into the rowboat. Later I saw that he was bleeding rather heavily. But wounds in that area do tend to bleed a lot, don’t they?”

“Was he hurt when the dinghy went under?”

“I have no idea.” Giving the question some thought, she finally said, “We couldn’t see him once he went under. I can’t give you an honest answer there.”

“And then?”

“I managed to catch one arm again, but I knew we were all in desperate straits. And then someone was swinging himself into the boat, dripping cold water all over us, and I was pushed aside. He grasped Harry by the back of the collar and heaved. Kate and I caught the flailing arms, and then he was out of the water, falling headfirst into the bottom of the boat. I thought he was dying. He never moved. He was on his face, and Mr. Trevose was pushing down on his back, and he brought up water in several retches. When Mr. Trevose turned him over, I noticed the blood.”

“What actually caused the blow on the head?”

Again she hesitated. “I never saw the oar strike him, my face was down only a foot or two above the river, and my arms were stretched as far as they could go as I pulled at the poor man.”

“Yet it struck your arms.”

“Yes, but there was no time to think about it. All that really mattered to me was catching his hand again.” She bit her lip. “It was all rather horrible. I think Mr. Trevose saved his life. But pulling him into the boat could have hurt him too. You have no idea of the way he seemed to fly in. The wonder was we weren’t all spilled into the river.”

Was she lying? Or telling what she remembered of the truth?

“Had you ever met Harry Saunders before that Saturday afternoon?”

“I didn’t even know his last name until the constable told us we were being taken into custody on suspicion of having tried to kill him. Elaine recognized him, of course, she called him Harry. She knew the dinghy as well.”

“Why do you think Mr. Trevose accused you of trying to drown this man?”

“I truly don’t know. He must not have seen the other boat sink. I wondered later if he thought Harry was in the boat with us, and we threw him overboard. But why would we do such a thing?”

“Was the other boat, the dinghy, ever brought up?”

“I have no idea. I expect I haven’t even given it a thought.” She held Rutledge’s gaze. “If they haven’t searched for it, why not?”

“Harry Saunders is still unconscious. Perhaps they’re waiting for him to wake up and tell them what happened.”

“Yes, well, someone should tell them about the boat.”

Rutledge considered that a very good point, one he intended to pursue with the constable.

V
ictoria Grenville was the daughter of the house, and if the house was not entailed to the nearest male relative, she would inherit it.

Rutledge was interested to find that she was a slim young woman with dark hair and dark eyes, self-possessed and yet very alert.

All four of the women were attractive, and all were still unmarried at an age when most women were wed and had already had their first child. A measure of the war years, when men like Stephen Grenville were killed and others like George St. Ives were too gravely wounded to marry. He counted himself among the latter, knowing that whatever he came to feel for someone, there would be Hamish to deal with—and that was an unfair burden for any woman to take on. He had tried to tell Meredith Channing about Hamish, and had found it impossible.

Meredith, with that intriguing stillness that he had found so attractive. Meredith, who had seen the dark side of his life as a policeman and found it so disturbing. He was just learning to trust her, just finding that he could hope for a very different future, when her husband, missing in action, had been found alive and badly wounded in a hospital in Bruges. He had taken her there, and she had left him there. It had been the right thing to do, he had understood that much later. At the time it had seemed to be the ultimate betrayal, binding herself to a man she hardly recognized, whom she confessed she had never loved. He, Rutledge, might hold her heart, but not her loyalty.

He caught himself, and pushed back the shadows. He needed his wits about him now, unclouded by memory.

Victoria took her seat as if by right, and her dark eyes were impossible to read.

He said, smiling, “This has been a harrowing ordeal for the four of you.”

“More so for Elaine and me, because we knew Harry. He wasn’t simply a stranger we were trying to rescue.”

“And yet you took no part in that effort.”

He had caught her off guard.

“I was in the bow. Any attempt I made to rush to the aid of Kate and Sara, I could have put us all overboard.”

“And yet they were half out of the boat, soaked almost to their knees as water spilled over the gunwale, and tiring quickly. The man was going to drown before your eyes.”

“Sara—Miss Langley—is not a strong swimmer. How were we to save him, ourselves, and her, if we capsized? We were too far from the village landing for rescue. It was sheer luck, surely, that Mr. Trevose happened along.”

“Have they raised the dinghy that Harry Saunders was in?”

She took a deep breath. “I asked my father that. He told me they hadn’t.”

“And so there’s no proof that you hadn’t taken Saunders aboard when first you went out, and then when he annoyed the four of you, you pitched him overboard?”

Her dark trim eyebrows rose high. “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. I won’t even dignify the question with an answer.”

“How well do you know the injured man?”

“We all know who he is. Well, Elaine and I. He’s quite the flirt. Before the war he wouldn’t have dared be so forward. His father is in banking.”

As if that put him beyond the pale, socially.

“Where does he keep his boat?”

“I’ve no idea. Padstow, I should think? I’ve never actually seen it out of the water.”

“Here was a man out in the river at the same time as you were coming back to the landing, and yet you felt no curiosity about him? Why in that case were you so certain he was simply flirting with a rowing boat carrying four young women?”

“I was told he was waving his arms about and shouting at us. I didn’t look around. It would only have encouraged him.”

“But he wasn’t flirting. His dinghy was sinking under him. Too far from the village to hope from help there.”

“We weren’t to know that in the beginning, were we? And I had houseguests, Inspector. I wasn’t interested in expanding the party to include someone else.”

He ignored the question, countering with one of his own.

“Even when you were told that it was more than a flirtation, that he was in trouble, you left his rescue up to those same houseguests. Would you have preferred to let him drown?”

She snapped, “I had sense enough to stay where I was, rather than rush to help and endanger all of us.”

“Tell me about Harry Saunders. What age is he? Was he in the war?”

“Thirty, perhaps? And yes, he was in the war. But not in the fighting, the way my brother was, or George St. Ives and so many of our friends. He spent his war in America, with a delegation trying to persuade the Americans to fight. His father saw to that, I’m sure. On the staff of the military attaché to the embassy in Washington.”

“It was not a sinecure. They were tasked with finding weapons and powder, foodstuffs and ships, anything that would keep England afloat. Seeing to it that our desperate need remained paramount in the minds of newspapermen and the country’s leaders.”

“He was
safe,
” she said. “No one was trying to kill him.”

“What about the oar that you struck him with?”

Surprised, she said, “The oar?”

“Trevose saw you lift it and drop it on the man in the water. Sara Langley has bruises on her forearms where it struck her as she tried to hold on to him. I expect Miss Gordon was struck at the same time.”

“He couldn’t reach the side of the boat. It was the only way I could think of to bring him closer, to where he could be dragged aboard. but he ignored the oar. Didn’t anyone tell you? I had turned it around, handle first to make it easier for him. That only made it harder for me to control. We almost lost it altogether.”

No one had mentioned that she had shifted the oar, handle first and not blade.

He talked to her for another ten minutes but she had nothing more to add. He wondered if perhaps her father had coached her. And if he had, was there anything she should have brought up—or might have left out—that the police ought to know?

W
hen he had finished with Victoria Grenville, he went to find her father, who was just descending the elegant staircase that swept down from the first floor to a wide lobby.

“Can I help you, Inspector?”

“For the moment I’ve completed my interviews. Thank you for allowing me to speak to the women.”

“Of course. Is there any progress that will clear them of this ridiculous charge?”

“In my view, Miss St. Ives may well be a witness and not a suspect. But it’s too early to be sure. I need to continue my inquiry before that becomes official. Meanwhile I’d like her to remain in your charge.” It was not what Grenville wanted to hear, but Rutledge had to assume that when it came to his daughter, this man was more father than magistrate.

Grenville suppressed a surge of anger. Rutledge saw it in the high color rising in his cheeks.

“Are you saying that my daughter, Miss Langley, and Miss Gordon are still being charged with attempted murder?”

“It’s a beginning, Grenville. Be grateful for that,” Rutledge retorted. “I understand your concern for your daughter, but it will take time to get to the bottom of what actually happened.”