With that, Gibson pulled his collar up and walked off.
It was a long and cold drive back to Northamptonshire.
The rain caught up with him again thirty miles outside London, as if it had been lying in wait.
He regretted going to speak to Meredith Channing. It had achieved nothing, and he felt he’d betrayed more than he’d learned.
It had been unsettling to hear that she’d seen him in France. It was what he’d considered from the beginning, and he hadn’t been pleased to confirm it.
For the next thirty miles, he debated her role in what had happened. He couldn’t picture her shooting at him from behind a hedgerow.
“It was a dead soldier,” Hamish reminded him. “So the lad said.”
“Dead soldiers don’t lie in wait with a real revolver.
Whatever Tommy Crowell saw, it wasn’t a corpse.”
But then what had it been?
“It doesna’ signify,” Hamish told him. “You have a duty to yon constable.”
“It won’t help Hensley if I’m dead before he is,” Rutledge retorted.
He stopped in Northampton. Matron was not pleased to see him, but late as it was, he received permission to step into the ward and have a look at Hensley.
“But you’re not to wake him, do you hear? He’s still in a great deal of pain, and we’ve just given him something to ease it so that he can sleep.”
“I won’t speak to him,” Rutledge promised.
When he walked quietly down the row of beds, he was accompanied by a cacophony of snores. He couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could sleep through the noise.
He reached Hensley’s bed and went to stand beside the man stretched out there, half on his back, half on his side.
Lines of pain marked his face, visible even in the dim light of the single lamp on the ward sister’s table, and Hensley was not snoring. The sleep was deeper, drugged. One hand was curled into a fist, as if it had been clenched as Hensley drifted into unconsciousness.
After a moment, Rutledge turned and walked back the way he’d come.
The sister at the table said quietly, “You look very tired, Inspector. I hope you don’t have far to go tonight.”
“Thank you, no.” She wasn’t the plump nurse who had been angry with him on his first visit. A much younger woman, with kind eyes and a pleasant smile. A face it would be nice to wake up to, in the morning, if you were ill or in pain.
And even as he thought it, he realized how tired he actually was.
By the time he reached Hensley’s house in Dudlington, closer to dawn than to midnight, he felt bone weary. Still, he walked through the rooms, torch in hand, and searched them carefully.
In one corner of his mind, he’d half expected to find the shell casing that he’d left in Chelsea sitting somewhere here, waiting for him.
14
The cold rain had given way to colder sunshine, and Rutledge felt the stiffness in his body that came from heavy sleep in a room without a fire.
Hamish, apparently already awake, said sourly, “The Oaks would be mair comfortable.”
“That’s very likely.” Rutledge swung his feet out of bed and looked at the clock. He’d missed his breakfast. Mrs.
Melford would be furious with him for missing his meals yesterday as well.
Just then he heard her calling to him from the foot of his stairs, and remembered that there was no key to the house door.
“Inspector! Your eggs are growing cold, and I shan’t keep them warm more than five minutes longer.”
The outer door slammed, and Rutledge went to fetch his shaving gear.
In the event, he was a good seven minutes late, and Mrs.
Melford glared at him as he came into her dining room.
But she brought his breakfast, and he found he was hungry.
“Any news of the constable?” she asked, as if assuming his absence had been spent in Northampton.
“Resting.”
She went to fetch a rack of toast and set it before him with a pot of marmalade.
“Are you any closer to finding whoever it was shot him?”
“Not yet.”
“Yes, well, we’d all expected the Yard to be more effi-cient.”
“The Yard,” he answered her shortly, “works with information. Apparently in Dudlington, there’s none to be had.”
She disappeared again and came back with warmed milk. He found himself thinking how different mornings had been in Westmorland, where the kitchen had seemed an oasis of warmth and brightness. Had it been love he’d felt there, three weeks ago—or only his loneliness responding to something rare: unforced companionship?
He’d probably never know the answer to that now. And he must learn not to wish for more than a brief friendship. The letter from Elizabeth Fraser had been clear.
Don’t come back—
Hamish was restless, urging him to finish his meal and leave the past where it could do no harm. “Ye canna’ marry anyone. It’s no wise.”
Mrs. Melford was saying, “Everyone in Dudlington has been wondering why it was you interviewed Grace Letteridge.”
He came back to the present with a jolt.
“Do you suspect her of complicity in Hensley’s attack?” he countered.
Her mouth tightened. “Really, Inspector!”
“Miss Letteridge had spent some time in London. In the early years of the war. I spoke to her about that.”
Disappointed, she said, “She’d been a good friend to Emma. We were wondering if that had anything to do with your visit. So soon after you’d spoken with Mrs. Ellison.”
“You knew Emma Mason, then?”
“Everyone did, Inspector. She was a bright, pretty, sweet-natured girl.”
“What does Dudlington think happened to her?”
“She’s buried somewhere in Frith’s Wood. That’s what they say. Although the wood was searched and there was no overturned ground or other evidence of digging. Still, whoever it was could have waited until after the search to put her into the ground,” she added ghoulishly.
He thought about the empty rooms in Hensley’s house, and how easy it would be to leave a body there until it could be moved.
Hamish reminded him of the unlocked door.
That’s true. But no one appears to go beyond the parlor.
More to the point, Hensley is Caesar’s wife—a policeman and above suspicion, he answered silently. And then aloud he asked, “I’d have thought her grandmother would have contacted Emma’s mother, to ask if Emma was there.”
“Poor woman, she doesn’t know where her daughter is.
She won’t admit that, you know, but Miss Arundel, our postmistress, says that letters have come back marked Unknown. For years now.”
“Which means Emma could indeed be in London with her mother. And Mrs. Mason doesn’t intend to send her back to Dudlington.”
Mrs. Melford frowned. “I suppose that’s true.” But her tone of voice indicated that she was far from believing it was.
He finished his tea and rose to leave. “Thank you for waiting for me this morning. It won’t happen again.”
Without acknowledging his apology, she turned and went back to her kitchen. He found his account on the table by the stairs and paid it.
***
Rutledge walked down Church Street to the far end. Beyond the rectory stood the barn from which Ted Baylor had heard his dog barking.
Baylor was a younger man than Rutledge had expected.
Dressed in muddy boots, dark corduroy trousers, and a heavy coat that emphasized the width of his shoulders, he stopped stock-still as the man from London came down the stone-flagged passage between the milking stalls where cows were lined up head-in, their rumps steaming in the cold air.
“Mr. Baylor? Good morning,” Rutledge said. “I’ve been told it was your dog that alerted you to trouble in Frith’s Wood the day that Constable Hensley was shot.”