Some said it was fired in revenge for moving everyone into the new village. But I expect, like many great houses of its day, it was likely to burn without any help. Gives me the willies to see my wife walking about with a candle. But there’s no hope of electrical power in these scattered villages. There’s no money for starters.”
“How have you learned so much about the history of this place?” Rutledge asked, curious.
“I married into the history, old man. My wife’s family has lived in Letherington for at least five generations. My mother-in-law reminds me of that daily. Another reason I pine for Canterbury.” He shrugged. “I met my wife there, in fact, and never dreamed she would expect to live in a house across the road from her mother, after we’d married.”
“Any suggestions about Hensley’s past or present that might lead me in the right direction?”
“To be truthful, I can’t imagine who would have the gall to shoot Hensley. You might ask yourself if it was something to do with his cases in London. I’ve learned that he was involved with a number of inquiries there. One into a German waiter who was a spy. Or said to be a spy. I doubt that he was. But in 1914 people could find spies under their beds. And there was another case, I don’t remember the ins and outs of it. But a man named Barstow, in the City, claimed he was burned out by his rivals. Everyone agreed it was a case of arson—what it took some time to determine was exactly who had set the fire. Barstow was looking to rebuild, and he had a taste for revenge. He’d burned his own place of business, and blamed it on his enemies.
And they actually went to trial for it.”
“I remember hearing about Barstow. Hensley was involved with that?”
“Possibly involved in it, more to the point. It was rumored that Hensley took bribes to look the other way.
Bribes he was supposed to share with his superior. But he stoutly denied any such thing and was rewarded with Dudlington, a quiet backwater. Markham, the old constable, had just retired and gone to live with his daughter in Sussex.”
And Hensley’s superior at the time was then Chief Inspector Bowles.
Hamish was reminding Rutledge what Hensley had said in the hospital ward.
“Was it Old Bowels who sent you?”
And Bowles had been furiously angry about the attack on Hensley.
It wouldn’t do to bring his name back to the attention of either the police or the newspapers, if there was any hint of scandal attached to his departure.
“What became of the file on Emma Mason?”
“Damned if I know. There’s a good bit in my office, but not the whole of it. My predecessor in Letherington wasn’t what you might call compelled to put every detail down on paper. I’d have thought Hensley kept some records of his own interviews.”
Cain got stiffly to his feet. “I don’t know much more about Dudlington’s skeletons than you do. I relied on Hensley’s experience when there were problems. I have a good constable in Fairfield and an even better sergeant in Letherington now, who see me through. Any help you can give me here will be appreciated. Come back in five years’ time, and if I’m still here—God forfend!—I’ll know my turf like the back of my hand.”
“Where is your carriage?” Rutledge asked him at the door. “I didn’t see it as I came in.”
Cain grinned. “My constable’s at The Oaks. He’s very good at gossip. I depend on him to tell me what’s being whispered in the dark corners of the bar.”
And he was off, favoring his left leg as he walked through the rain toward Holly Street.
Rutledge saw him out of sight, and then climbed the stairs to the bedroom.
The cartridge casing was still there, where Rutledge had left it.
Rutledge made a point to search out the house belonging to Grace Letteridge.
It was one of the few buildings in the village that boasted a thatched roof. Thatching had always reminded Rutledge of a woman wearing a marvelous hat and feeling slightly self-conscious about it. In the case of this particular house, the comparison was apt. It was set farther back from the lane and stood out from its neighbors in the fine-ness of its stonework. Someone had built a low wall around the front, creating a courtyard of sorts where roses, cut back for the winter and mounded over, like tiny graves, marched across the brown grass.
He ducked his head under the low thatched roof that covered the porch, and knocked at the door.
It was opened by a woman in her late twenties, her hair a dull gold and her eyes a very pretty amber in a very plain face.
“Miss Letteridge?”
“And you’re the man from London. How is Constable Hensley?” There was a derisive note in her voice as she asked.
“He’s expected to live,” Rutledge answered, and waited for her response.
Miss Letteridge led him into the small parlor before answering. “I’m sorry to hear it. I never liked him, and I shan’t be two-faced about it.”
“That’s rather coldhearted.”
“Sit down. I won’t offer you tea, because I don’t care for it myself and don’t keep it in the house. I do have some sherry...” Her words trailed off, indicating that she would prefer not to offer him that either.
“Why don’t you like Constable Hensley?” he asked again. The room was well furnished, with a number of watercolors on the pale blue walls that caught his attention.
They had been done with great skill.
It clearly irritated Miss Letteridge that he appeared not to be giving her his full attention.
“For the same reason I don’t particularly care for any policeman,” she answered tartly. “They look after their own, don’t they? Hensley was sent here under a cloud, and we weren’t told of it. He wouldn’t get into trouble here, would he? After all, we’re very peaceable in Dudlington, and he only had to walk the streets and mind his own business until he could collect his pension. That was the theory, anyway.”
“How did you know he was under a cloud when he came here?” Rutledge asked, intrigued.
“Why else would a London police constable be sent to an out-of-the-way village where nothing ever happens?
Where he wouldn’t attract attention? I’m not a fool, Inspector, I know something about the world outside Northamptonshire. I worked in London during the first two years of the war. There weren’t enough able-bodied men to do half of what was needed. Women were pressed into service at every turn, and a police constable worth his salt would have risen quickly through the ranks as men enlisted. Instead his superiors banished him.”
“That may well be the case. But so far I haven’t heard that it affected the performance of his duties.”
“No, I doubt if it affected his duties. You’re right. But once a murderer, always a murderer.”
Rutledge stared at her. “Do you know for a fact that Constable Hensley murdered someone in London and got away with it?” Even Sergeant Gibson hadn’t told him that.
Nor had Cain.
“He condoned arson. And a man was caught in that fire, so badly burned that even his wife couldn’t identify him. I went to London myself and read accounts in the newspapers. They weren’t very helpful, so I talked to his widow.
She’s bitter because the police swept it all under the rug.
He didn’t die straightaway, you know. Harold Edgerton.
He lingered for nearly a month, but in the end the doctors couldn’t stop the infections that overwhelmed him. By that time, there were rumors that he’d started the fire himself. All he’d done was to go back to his desk that evening to retrieve some papers.”
“Constable Hensley knew all this?”
“Why else were they in such haste to get him out of London?”
“And what you’re trying to say, then, is that you believe he killed Emma Mason.”