“They were at Whitby. On holiday. She went out alone a little while after tea, to shop for Albert’s birthday gift. There was a man near the corner. He’d been drinking, and was flinging his arms about, shouting. He was angry or upset, I don’t know. And he shoved her out of his path. She fell against a wrought-iron railing, cutting her face badly. Passersby rushed to help her, and two men held on to her assailant. The police came and took him up for public drunkenness. He was quite sober by that time, crying and apologizing. But it was too late, wasn’t it? The damage had been done. She was taken to hospital, bleeding profusely, and the doctors feared for her eye. They took her directly to surgery and sent someone to find her husband. Albert called it an accident. Of course it was, but if the man hadn’t been drinking—if he’d been in his right senses rather than looking for trouble—nothing would have happened to Alice.”
“And Albert forgave him, you say? In public or private?”
“Both. He was—” She stopped, horrified. “You aren’t thinking—? This man they found dead—it couldn’t have been the one in Whitby, could it? Is that why Inspector Madsen has gone back to Dilby so many times?”
Rutledge answered, “Early days yet, but I’ll take the sketch to Mrs. Crowell and ask her. She won’t have forgotten what he looked like.”
“But that will just bring it all back again.”
“Did you see the man, could you identify him instead?”
“I wasn’t engaged to Julian then. I knew about the incident, of course. It happened just before the war. Early July, I think. Julian and I weren’t engaged until August. It wasn’t—I wasn’t involved. Ask Albert. He’ll be able to tell you.”
“He’s already told the police that he can’t identify the dead man. I have no choice, you see, but to speak to Mrs. Crowell.”
She came out from behind the desk, her face set. “I’m going with you, Inspector. Let me find someone to mind the desk while I’m gone.”
“No, I think it best—”
“It isn’t a question of what you think, Inspector. I won’t have Alice upset about this business. I’m coming to be certain she isn’t. A woman ought to be there with her.”
7
Ten minutes later Miss Norton climbed into Rutledge’s motorcar and settled herself. “The quickest way is as the crow flies, of course. But as we aren’t crows—” She began to direct him, out of Elthorpe, then around the skirts of the estate on whose grounds the great abbey ruins took pride of place, and down an unmade road that wandered for several miles before dividing. The right branch continued to the west, while the left turned more to the south.
“To your right,” Miss Norton said. “It’s only another mile or two.”
They soon came into a small village clinging to the road. “There’s the school,” she said. “Alice should be upstairs. Alone, I hope.”
He passed the row of shops, a tiny lending library, a church more the size of a chapel, and came to a house a little larger than the others he’d passed, the front façade softened by stonework around the windows and above the door.
“It was a prosperous merchant’s home,” Miss Norton was saying, her nervousness showing in the tenseness of her voice. “And left to the village some sixty years ago to be used as a school. I wish I’d never mentioned Alice,” she went on. “How did you trick me into saying anything about her?”
“It wasn’t a trick,” he replied, drawing up in front of the school. “You were telling me about your fiancé. Julian.”
“Yes, and somehow—”
He got down and went around to her door as she added, “You won’t tell Inspector Madsen about this foolishness, will you? He’s already brought Albert in for questioning four times now. It will only make him more anxious to prove something.”
“If Mrs. Crowell identifies this man from the sketch, then I’ve no choice.”
“Oh, blast the sketch,” she said furiously, slamming her door behind her. “I wish I’d never seen you.”
She marched ahead of him, back ramrod straight, her face closed. She went directly into the school, leaving him to follow or not, as he pleased.
There was a central hall with stairs leading up to the first floor. The building was quiet, the students gone home at the end of the day. The sign over the nearest door read SCHOOL OFFICE.
Miss Norton passed it by and was already halfway up the stairs.
An echo of voices, a child’s and a woman’s, reached them, disappearing down the passage ahead of them.
“Alice?” Miss Norton called.
“Yes? Mary? Is that you?” Mrs. Crowell turned to stare. “What on earth brings you here at this time of day? Who’s minding the hotel?”
“I asked Velma to step in for me.” As they came closer, Mary Norton indicated the man behind her. “Alice—this is Inspector Rutledge from London. Scotland Yard.” Her words seemed to fill the passage, floating ahead of her, echoing behind her.
To his surprise as he caught up with the two women, Mrs. Crowell turned warmly to him, extending her hand.
He took it as she said, “How nice of you to come!” as if she’d been expecting him.
A classroom door opened farther down the passage, and a head popped out, vanishing again just as quickly. Rutledge glimpsed a pale, startled boy’s face. Then it was gone.
He followed the two women into a tidy office, and Mrs. Crowell shut her door.
“I’m so glad you came to see me first,” she went on, speaking directly to Rutledge, “because it’s important to know the facts behind my concerns. There is a history of sorts between my husband and Inspector Madsen.” She was intense, earnest, as if she had rehearsed the manner of her presentation many times over. “This may well explain why he’s so anxious to prove that my husband is guilty of murder. But he isn’t—truly he isn’t. I can think of no reason in this world why he should kill a stranger. I can’t explain how my husband’s book got to the ruins either, but if you think about it, is it likely that he’d take such a silly thing with him if he were intent on murder?”
Rutledge could see the scar clearly now, running across her face from the corner of her left eye to the line of her jaw on the right, near her ear. It had healed smoothly without pulling at the flesh around it, but it was still ugly, marring the rather classical features of straight nose, square jaw, and well-set gray eyes. She had not been strictly beautiful, but was certainly a very attractive woman, before the wound. He couldn’t tell if she was still self-conscious about it or had grown used to it.
Hamish said, “She doesna’ look in the mirror verra’ often.”
Before Rutledge could answer Mrs. Crowell, Mary Norton said quickly, “He’s brought a sketch to show you, my dear. Will you look at it and tell me if you recognize this man?”
“The dead man?” Alice Crowell paused as she was about to take her chair behind the desk. “But—” she faltered. “Why—I mean why should I wish to see it?”
“Because—well, to assure the police that Albert is telling the truth when he says he never saw this person before.” Mary’s words were hurried, as if to break the worst news quickly and avoid any mention of the man who had scarred Mrs. Crowell’s face.
“Oh. Very well.” Alice reluctantly held out her hand for the folder that Rutledge was carrying. “He isn’t—I shan’t have nightmares, shall I?” she asked as he passed the folder to her.
“It’s merely a man’s face. Nothing more frightening than that.”
As the two bent over the sketch he’d brought, Mary’s dark head close to Alice’s fair one, Rutledge wondered how he would have felt about someone who did such injury to Jean. Or to Frances, for that matter. If he could have forgiven the drunken man with such apparent grace. Or perhaps Crowell had seen the change in his wife’s appearance as a way of keeping her here in this small, dingy school when it was clear that she wasn’t from this part of the country. Her accent, like Rutledge’s own, spoke of good schooling and a wider circle. Righteous men, he thought, often feel the need to serve in the most forbidding places.