Towson clucked his tongue. “I ought to go to Northampton and spend some time with him. Do you think you could see your way to driving me there?”
“I think Mrs. Channing might be happy to drive you.”
Rutledge paused. “What do you remember about the day you fell down the stairs?”
“It’s still a trifle hazy, I’m afraid. Bits and pieces are coming back to me. There was something about money—I was happy about it. But I can’t think what it was!”
“Had you by any chance just spoken with Mrs. Ellison?”
He blinked. “Mary Ellison? I don’t believe—Mary Ellison?” He leaned back in his chair, his face changing from uncertainty to a growing surprise. “Yes, by God, that’s who it was! I do remember! She came down the passage calling to me, and I answered from the head of the attic stairs. She scolded me for taking such a risk and asked if I went up there often.” Towson suddenly looked sheepish. “I’m afraid I was annoyed. Hillary Timmons and Dr. Middleton have lectured me on going up there, in fact just last week. I’m afraid I told Mrs. Ellison rather blithely that I went up several times a day to enjoy the view from the windows.”
Hamish said, “It wasna’ the answer she’d expected to hear.”
“Why had she come? Surely not just to scold you?” Rutledge persisted.
“That was what astonished me, you know. She didn’t generally call on me. But she said she was here to donate fifty pounds to the church fund. It was an unexpected gift, but one we need rather badly. When I started down the steps to thank her, she told me to go on and finish what I was doing—which was searching out a pair of gloves, though I hadn’t said anything about that.”
“She didn’t speak of an emergency?”
“Not at all. It was afterward that someone shouted for me to come at once. I’m sure she’d been gone for, oh, a good five or six minutes. I’d been thinking how best to use the money, enjoying the prospect.”
But she hadn’t gone very far, Rutledge found himself thinking. She must have looked in the kitchen and the laundry to see if Hillary Timmons was in the house. “Have you seen her since?”
“Now that was the odd thing. She came just this morning to ask me about a pot of chutney she’d left on the table in the hall a day or so ago, not wanting to disturb me while I was convalescing. Sadly she never mentioned the dona-tion to the church fund. I wish I’d remembered it and brought it to her attention.”
“Chutney?” Rutledge asked, feeling his heart lurch.
“Hillary found it there on the hall table and set it in the pantry. She didn’t know where it’d come from, but she thought I did. So when Mrs. Ellison asked me about her gift, I blurted out that it was delicious, and I thanked her profusely. I was too embarrassed to admit I had no idea what she was talking about.”
“Towson—”
“She went on to say she wondered if it hadn’t gone off.
She even suggested bringing me another pot. White lies do have a way of coming back to haunt you. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. How was I to tell her I’d never seen it, couldn’t return it if my life depended on it? All I could do was assure her it was of excellent quality.”
“And so you found it and tasted it as soon as she’d gone.” It was the sort of thing he was sure the rector would do, to make good his white lie.
“Good heavens, no! I asked Hillary if she’d seen it, and she told me where she’d put it. I don’t care for chutney, you see, and so I told the girl she could take it home to her family.”
“Rector. Will you take me to Hillary Timmons’s house?
I want that pot of chutney.”
“I’ll ask her for it tomorrow, if you like. I wasn’t aware that you were so fond of it.”
“You must take me there now!” He was on his feet, standing in the doorway, urging the bewildered clergyman to follow him.
“But I don’t understand, why shouldn’t Hillary enjoy it?
They’re not very well off, you know. I don’t particularly like taking it back, as if I’d found someone else to have it.
You’ve only to speak to Mary Ellison. I’m sure she’d be happy to give you your own.”
And he was just as certain that she would not. “All right, first we’ll look to see if Hillary already has taken it. If she has, we’ll go directly to her house.” He was firm, but when Towson didn’t move, he started down the passage to the kitchen. Reluctantly the rector limped after him.
“You must tell me—what’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Where’s the pantry?” Rutledge asked, opening the door to the kitchen. It was warm and cheerful, and he remembered standing in Mrs. Ellison’s kitchen, feeling like an interloper in her private world.
Towson went to the pantry, running his finger along pots of jam and honey and preserved plums. A man with a taste for sweets...
“Ah, this must be it. Perhaps she forgot to take it. Or doesn’t care for it after all.” Relieved, he picked up a small jar with a square of white linen over it, tied around the mouth with a silver ribbon. “Hillary did mention the silver ribbon. She thought it quite elegant.”
“I’ll buy her the finest chutney in London and have it sent to her. But I must take this with me now.”
“Very well.” But Towson was still doubtful, his eyes on the pot. “I’d be happier if this didn’t come to Mary Ellison’s ears. I’m still hopeful of that fifty pounds.”
The rector saw Rutledge to the door, looking out at the light drizzle that had begun to fall.
He said, “I’m grateful that you helped me piece together part of what had happened the day I fell. It was like a hole in my mind, the sort of thing that people must feel after a seizure or an apoplexy. It’s rather frightening, you know.”
“I’m sure it must be.” In truth, there had been a time when Rutledge hadn’t been able to remember the war ending. He hadn’t expected to see it, in fact for the last two years of the fighting in his mind he had been prepared to die. Only he hadn’t. The appalling realization that he had lived in spite of what he’d done in the trenches blotted out everything else. The guilt of surviving, when so many around him had died, was insupportable.
His men that day had been equally shocked at first, the silence overwhelming as the guns that had fired so frantically all morning stopped their battering. And then neither jubila-tion nor relief followed, just a numbness that gradually filled with the knowledge that now they could go home. Rutledge had given them their orders, as he himself had been ordered to do, saw to their safety—and after that there was nothing, a blank space of time. The next thing he was aware of, he was in a clinic in England, with no understanding of how he’d got there or why. He’d feared those missing weeks. Feared what he might have done. And not even the doctors could give them back to him. It had taken him more than a year to do that, and a night in Kent when it had all come rushing back.
Towson was saying, “I’m sure the rest will come. In time. If I don’t press too hard.”
“I shouldn’t worry too much about it,” Rutledge agreed.
“Middleton tells me I might actually have had a seizure...” There was anxiety in his voice now, put there by a callous murderer who had used this man’s goodness to bring him down.
“No. You’ll realize that when you remember.”
Towson smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a kind listener? You might have gone to the church, rather than the police, you know.”
Not with the blackness in my own soul, Rutledge answered him silently. And then with a wave, he pulled his hat down against the rain.
Rutledge carried the chutney in the palm of his hand, close to his coat as he walked back to the constable’s house.
He couldn’t take the chutney to Inspector Cain. He didn’t trust the man to have it analyzed properly. Particularly if Cain learned it had been made by Mrs. Ellison. A wild-goose chase, he would complain. Another attempt by an outsider to point a finger at a woman of impeccable reputation in an effort to solve a murder he’d not even been sent to Dudlington to investigate. Inspector Kelmore on the other hand had no ties to Dudlington. And his people were capable and trustworthy.