“Do you lock the barn?” he asked.
“Why should we? The cows don’t try to leave. Where the hell did you find her?”
“Near The Oaks. I almost ran her down.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Why should I lie about it? Besides,” he retorted, “I have a witness.”
“It doesn’t make any sense.” Baylor was examining the cow, running his hand over her sides and flanks. “She’s mine, all right. As far as I can tell, she’s not hurt. I don’t like the look of this. Who would want to harm one of my beasts?”
“Where was your brother tonight?”
“In his bed. Where I’d have been if I hadn’t fallen asleep while reading.”
“Can you be sure where he was? You weren’t awake.”
“Yes, by God.” He stamped his feet, warming them. “He’s not likely to be out in the damp night air. Not with his lungs.”
“Then why didn’t your dog bark, if a stranger meddled with the barn?”
Baylor said, “I was thinking of the cow—where is that bloody dog?”
The cow was settling in at last, going down to her knees and then her belly. With an almost human sigh, she lay there, quiet as a statue except for her regular breathing.
“We’d better have a look for him,” Rutledge answered.
They searched the yard and Baylor went to the kitchen door to shout for the dog in the house. But it was nowhere to be found.
“Where did you say the cow was? By the road? We’d best look there for the dog as well.”
Rutledge said, “She’d been pegged down by the road, but there couldn’t have been a dog up there. I’d have seen it, even if it didn’t bark. Would Bossy allow anyone to approach her and lead her away, without a fuss? If she didn’t know him?”
“Depends on whether or not the man knows cattle, doesn’t it?”
Baylor went to the barn again, made a swift search, and came back to the door where Rutledge was waiting.
“He doesn’t wander off, that dog. I don’t like this.”
“Nor I.” Rutledge stood there in the night air, thinking.
“Can you whistle him up? Give him instructions to bring in the herd?”
“Oh, yes.” Baylor gave the signal, a series of low- and high-pitched whistles. They would carry for some distance—had to carry, when herdsman and dog were separated.
When there was no response, he repeated it.
Hamish said, “Listen!”
There was a sound, muffled and far off, that could have been an animal in distress.
Baylor cocked his head. “On the other side of the rectory, I think.” And he set off at a trot in that direction.
Rutledge followed the bobbing lantern, but when they reached the far side of the rectory, there was no sign of the dog.
“Whistle again.”
Baylor did, and the muffled sounds were louder, a strange whine, hollow and well above their heads.
Baylor held up the lantern, looking around, scanning the roofline of the rectory.
Rutledge, more accustomed to tracing sounds, said,
“The church. The tower room, I’d say.”
As they reached the tower door, Rutledge put out his hand for the lantern. “Let me go in first.” For all he knew, it was a trap.
He pulled the door open and stepped inside.
The dog had been tied to one of the handles of the sanctuary door and muzzled with a length of dark cloth. He growled at the sight of Rutledge, visible mainly as a hulk-ing shadow in the doorway as the lantern cast his silhouette against the wall.
There was no one else in the tower entrance or on the stairs.
“Baylor?”
Ted Baylor came in and spoke to the dog, reducing it to whines and wriggles of ecstasy. He took away the muzzle, and the dog began to bark in short, staccato yelps. Baylor soothed him as he untied the rope.
“I’d have killed him, if he’d harmed the dog,” he said through clenched teeth. “Tell me who?”
“I wish I knew.” Rutledge had opened the sanctuary door and lifted the lantern high, but there were too many places to hide. “Bring the dog here.”
“He can’t go in there.”
“Not in there. To the door.”
But the dog sniffed briefly at the air of the nave, then turned back to Baylor.
“There’s no one in the church,” Baylor said.
“You’re right, I think.”
“What’s all this in aid of?” Baylor asked, nodding toward the north and Frith’s Wood. “Is it to do with the bones they’ve found? Were they the girl’s? That’s the whisper going about.”
“I don’t know. I can tell you the bones don’t belong to Emma Mason. You can scotch that rumor, if you would.
There’s no point in upsetting her grandmother, if it can be helped.”
“And who’s to gossip to the grandmother, I ask you!”
Baylor said sourly. “She all but accused my brother Rob of attempted rape, a few years ago. There’s no love lost there.
But yes, I’d not want to learn bad news that way.”
He turned to go, taking the dog with him. “What you’ve done. It’s appreciated,” he said over his shoulder, his voice gruff.
And he was gone into the night, his lantern bobbing as he crossed the churchyard, the dog’s wagging tail flicking in and out of the yellow glow.
Rutledge walked back through the quiet streets to the motorcar, where it sat in the field. He was about to crank it when a thought struck him.
What if someone had meddled with it in his absence?
“First the kirk, and now the motorcar. Ye’re edgy, man!”
Still, without his torch or a lamp, there was no way he could be sure that all was well.
In the end he walked to Hensley’s house and went in, to find Frank Keating pacing the floor, waiting for him.
***
“Where the hell have you been?” Keating demanded. “I’ve been here for close on two hours.”
“I had other business to see to.” He fought to keep weariness out of his voice.
“The bones?”
“Yes. Apparently word of them is all over Dudlington.”
“A man from Letherington came into the bar tonight. I heard him tell his mates about digging in the wood, and finding bones. I shut the bar then, and came to look for you.”
There was something in his eyes that Rutledge couldn’t judge. Fear, he thought, and a resistance, almost as if he had come here against his better judgment.
“Was it the girl?” he asked, finally, when Rutledge stood there, silent. “For God’s sake, tell me who it was you found? Bloody hell, man, tell me!”
“It wasn’t Emma Mason. In fact, it wasn’t a woman’s body at all.”
Keating seemed to collapse into himself with relief.
“That’s all, then,” he said, brushing past Rutledge on his way to the door.
Rutledge put out a hand to stop him. Keating jerked his arm clear. “Don’t put your hands on me!”
“Why should you care whether the bones belonged to the girl or not?”
“I told you. I’ve seen her about the village. Too pretty for her own good, and all the men leering at her. I hear how they talk in the bar, mind you. Foul-mouthed bastards!
Hensley worst of all. I threw him out, told him not to come to The Oaks again.”
“Do you think what he said was bragging, or the truth.”
“If it’ud been the truth, I’d have choked the life out of him.”
Rutledge said again, “Why do you care about Emma Mason?”
“Why do you think? I lost my own daughter and I’ll never have another. The hurt doesn’t go away, no matter what you tell yourself. It’s there day and night. I’d have killed any man who touched her. Why should I stand for such talk about another man’s child, if I wouldn’t have stood for it about my own?”
With that he was out the door, slamming it behind him.