“It’s not a matter for the head but for the heart,” he replied, turning the motorcar to go back the way he’d come.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw something among the trees in the churchyard. The boys who had asked permission to leave while he was interviewing Mrs. Crowell.
He pulled the motorcar to the verge and said to Miss Norton, “I’ll just be a moment.”
He walked briskly across the churchyard, and the two boys, who had ducked behind the apse of the chapel, turned wide-eyed as he came round the corner. There was no time to run. And nowhere to run to. They stood their ground of necessity.
The other boy, the one Hugh claimed was sick, looked it, his face pale and his eyes red. Even Hugh was drawn and wretched, his gaze dropping to his shoes after that one wild glance at Rutledge.
“We couldn’t make it home,” Hugh said finally. “You can see, he’s been sick all down his front.”
“I was worried,” Rutledge said. “Can I offer you a lift?”
“Oh, no,” the other boy—Johnnie, was it?—began.
Hugh said quickly, “If he’s quiet a bit, he’ll be all right.”
Rutledge considered them. “If you’re sure?”
“Yes, sir.” It was a fervent chorus.
He turned to leave, then stopped. “What do you know of this business the police have been speaking to your schoolmaster about?”
Children heard their elders talk and were sometimes better at putting two and two together than adults.
But Hugh’s reaction was unexpected. Like a cornered animal, he backed against the stone wall of the chapel and seemed to have lost his tongue.
Johnnie was sick again, dry heaves jerking his body.
Rutledge waited until the worst had passed, then handed him a handkerchief.
Hamish said, “Ye can see he’s in no case to answer ye.”
Johnnie, looking as if he wanted nothing more than his bed at home, leaned against the nearest tombstone.
Rutledge persisted, speaking mainly to Hugh but keeping his eye on Johnnie. “Did you see something the night when someone was killed near Elthorpe? Did you see Mr. Crowell leave the school where he was working that evening, and go to meet someone?”
Hugh took a deep breath. “We were home in bed, weren’t we, Johnnie? There was nothing for us to see.”
It was the truth. Even Hamish could read that in the boy’s fervent manner.
And yet it wasn’t the whole truth.
“Who did you see leave the village?” Rutledge persisted.
“Nobody!” they exclaimed loudly, in unison.
“You needn’t be afraid. If there’s something you want to tell me, I’ll see that no harm comes to you.”
The boys stood there, hangdog but refusing to budge.
Hamish said, “Ye havena’ found the key.”
Rutledge changed direction. “Do you like Mr. Crowell? Is he a good master?”
They nodded vigorously. Reassuring him, proving that they had no reason to step forward, no reason to be afraid.
“Is there anyone else at the school, other than the Crowells?” He’d seen no one, but that might be the rub. If not Mr. Crowell…
“There’s Old Fred. He cleans,” Hugh said, as if offering up a sacrifice to hungry gods. “We had two other masters, but they were killed in the war. Mr. Crowell has had to manage on his own since he came back.”
“And Mrs. Crowell. Does she walk at night? Without her husband?”
“I never saw her,” Hugh maintained. And the ring of truth this time was clear, unequivocal. “What would she be going about at night, alone, for?”
“Johnnie?”
“No, sir. Never. You can ask anybody.”
Rutledge gave it up. “You’re sure I can’t see you home? Johnnie? Do you have far to walk?”
“Not far.” He gripped his stomach with both arms wrapped around his body. “Please, can we go now?”
“Yes, be on your way.”
Rutledge watched them scurry away, like mice frantic to escape the claws of a cat.
Mary Norton was looking after them also as he reached the motorcar and stopped to turn the crank.
“I think you’ve put the fear of God into those two. Was it really necessary?”
“I think they’ve put the fear of God into themselves, and I’d like to know why.”
“Then you’re still harassing Albert Crowell,” she said, making it a statement and not a question.
“I’m trying to get at the truth,” he answered her as he closed the door on his side of the motorcar and let in the gear. “I’m not here to badger anyone.”
“That’s what people always say, but the police have made a good job of upsetting Albert and his wife.”
He wanted to tell her that she herself had caused Alice Crowell anxiety in her earnest and misguided effort to prove that the dead man wasn’t Shoreham. “The problem is that the only piece of evidence we have points to Crowell. And once I find out why it does, it may serve instead to clear his name.”
“The sooner the better, then, before he’s lost his job and his reputation. Have you policemen thought of that? No, I expect not. He’s the fox and you’re the hounds, and there won’t be any peace for him until you lot have caught him.”
She sighed, and said nothing more for the rest of the journey.
After dropping Mary Norton at the hotel, Rutledge went back to the police station, intending to report to Madsen.
But the inspector had left, he was told by an elderly constable. “He’d missed his luncheon. Not knowing when you’d return.”
Rutledge thanked the constable and walked back to the hotel.
Hamish said as Rutledge closed the door to his room, “Was it a lie, that the man in the sketch wasna’ the one who scarred the schoolmaster’s wife?”
“I don’t think she lied. But I think she’s tried to forget his face and has partly succeeded. I’ll ask Gibson at the Yard to track down Shoreham. But if that’s who the dead man is, why meet him at the ruins, take him away and kill him, then bring him back? And what does a book of alchemy have to do with revenge?”
“A lure?”
Rutledge put the sketch in his valise and then, on second thought, pulled it out again to keep with him. After a brief half hour given over to his lunch, he left almost at once, intending to visit the abbey.
He approached the abbey through a quiet parkland that led him to a stream crossed by stepping stones. And soon he was there, in front of the great arched ruin soaring into the gray sky.
Hamish said, “There are abbey ruins in Scotland. Burned by the Borderers who came for revenge.”
“I’m not sure these weren’t destroyed for revenge,” Rutledge said, looking up at the elegance of simplicity in design. The abbeys were wealthy, and wealth Henry VIII envied.
The monks had built well here. Something of what they’d done had survived Henry VIII by three centuries and more. The King had destroyed the abbey and what it stood for, but not the memory of its beauty. Or its greatness.
A strange place, Rutledge thought, to leave a dead man. Why here?
He went through into the nave, his footsteps alternately echoing on stone and whispering on the grass. The cloister was open to the sky, constructed for contemplation and peace, where monks could walk or sit in the noonday sun or pray in private.
He found the wax drippings from a candle, then the crushed grass where the victim had lain, but too many other feet had come and gone here, there was nothing to tell him about the dead man or who had been here with him.
He turned to look at the stone surrounding him, at the curve of an arch and the delicacy of a wall. Why here? Why meet here?
This was private property, the chance of being discovered at any moment was a risk that had had to be considered. Or did it appear safe, because it was private and therefore there was nothing to fear?