A woman pushing a baby in a pram told Rutledge, “He was in the shop once when I stepped in to see about the heel on my best pair of shoes. But he didn’t know what he was about, and so I told Peter. After that, he never came to work at Littleton’s.”
And a man sweeping the doorstep of the ironmonger’s said, “I didn’t know him well. He used to walk about at night, to stretch his legs. We talked once or twice, as I was taking Harriet out—she’s my dog—and she would sniff at his shoes and growl, as if she didn’t much care for him. Strange man. My wife was glad when he went away.”
“When was that? Do you know?”
“I didn’t even know he’d left until I’d asked Peter how he was getting on. And Peter said he’d decided to live with a cousin in Wales. Made sense. I doubt they had room in the house, and it was one more mouth to feed. Peter did his best, mind you. But it was a strain on the family.”
“Were you ever told why he’d come here to live?”
“Fell on hard times, Peter said. I didn’t press for more. It wasn’t my business, or anyone else’s. But my wife always thought he must have been in gaol somewhere, and afterward had nowhere to go. She said Peter was a good man to take on responsibility like that. She said that if Henry had nothing to hide, he’d be helping more in the shop or walking the children to school or coming to services of a Sunday. The Jordans said he’d been in trouble in Whitby. Attacked a woman.”
He shook his broom against the wall of the shop to clean it, and went back inside. “Gossip, for all I know,” he ended as he prepared to shut the door in Rutledge’s face. “He mayn’t have had anything to hide. But he’d have fared better, wouldn’t he, if he’d been open about it.”
Hamish said as Rutledge turned toward the motorcar, “He willna’ be missed. Even by his cousin.”
Which would go far to explaining Littleton’s assumption of suicide, the decision to move to Wales notwithstanding. Good riddance, a body to bury, a family skeleton disposed of, and on Christmas or Easter, a prayer to be said in passing for Shoreham’s soul….
Reaching the motorcar, Rutledge decided to drive on to Wales without going back to Elthorpe today.
He spent the night in Shrewsbury, then crossed the border in a fine rain that seemed to wrap the river valleys in playful mist, rising now, then thinning, the great sweep of hillsides and heavy clouds barely visible before they were veiled again. He saw sheep sometimes, not yet shorn of their winter coat, huddling in the lee of whatever shelter they could find, but the land was empty save for the few towns he had to pass through. There were scattered farms at the end of long and winding lanes, and even they appeared to be deserted, as if all the people of Wales had gone away somewhere else. And yet it was a beautiful drive.
Aberystwyth sat on Cardigan Bay, the water curving into the town and a ruin of a castle standing out on the headland to the right. Rutledge stopped in the town only long enough for a meal in a small, dimly lit café where he was regarded with interest. Asking at shops that catered to farmers, he finally discovered where Llewellyn Williams lived. There were seven men of that name within a twenty-mile radius. He backtracked along the way he’d come until he found the lane leading into a village with an unpronounceable name. Beyond it he soon spotted the track that continued into the Williams farm.
It was a small house with a sagging slate roof, surrounded by outbuildings. As he stopped, a dog came out to sniff at his motorcar before baying toward the house. As a welcome it lacked a great deal, and although Rutledge, good with animals as a rule, did his best to befriend the dog, he thought it best to leave well enough alone after a tentative move to leave the motorcar won him a low growl.
After some minutes, a man came to the door. He was of medium height, thin, dark, nondescript. But he didn’t resemble the sketch at all.
“Llewellyn Williams?” Rutledge called.
“What do you want with him?” It was wary, as if strangers weren’t welcomed here.
“Call off your dog. I need to speak to you, and it’s too wet to stand here shouting at each other.”
The man hesitated. After a moment, he whistled to the dog and it came to sit grinning up at him. His hand went to its massive head, a gentle touch.
Rutledge walked across to him. “I’m Inspector Ian Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I’ve come in search of Henry Shoreham.”
“What’s he wanted for?” the man asked.
“He’s done nothing more than disappear. His family is worried for him.”
“I doubt it. He has no family to speak of. But I haven’t seen him. I told another English policeman as much. If you’d spoken to him, it would have saved you a journey.”
“You aren’t Welsh.” It was a statement.
Williams shrugged. “My family is—was. I moved to England when I was a child. My mother’s cousin lives in Yorkshire. Littleton is his name. Henry was staying with him.”
“But left to come and live with you.”
“You can look about if you like. He’s not here.”
“So I’m told. There’s a possibility that he was murdered.”
Williams’s eyebrows rose. “That other policeman simply told me he thought Henry was dead. He didn’t say anything about murder.”
“Yes, well, murder it was.” He pulled out the folder with the sketch, trying to shield it from the rain. “Here’s the dead man’s likeness. Inspector Madsen has arrested someone for his murder.”
Williams looked at the sketch for a long moment and then said with resignation, “You’d better come inside.”
The house was plainly furnished, many of the pieces early Victorian. But it appeared to be comfortable enough, weather tight and warm with the coal fire on the hearth.
“How long have you lived here?” Rutledge asked with interest as the dog slumped down on the hearthrug and sighed.
“I inherited the property from my father’s cousin. He had no children. Neither do I, but there it is, the house is mine. He ran sheep here, but I couldn’t manage it. A neighbor offered me a good price for them, and I’m living on what I was paid for them.”
“How well do you know your cousin Peter Littleton?”
“He’s on my mother’s side of the family. I haven’t seen him in many years.”
“And Henry, from Whitby? Did you see him often?”
Williams shook his head. “It’s a long way to travel. We were never close.”
“Yet you offered him houseroom here.”
“Which he never took me up on. Just as well, I don’t know how the two of us would manage. The house is large enough, but the money I have isn’t. I don’t know that I could afford to keep him.”
“He left Addleford, to come here to you.”
“And changed his mind, as far as I know. I expect he was walking or looking for a lift, and found another place he liked better. You drove here, you know how long a journey that would be. I’m not saying he’s dead, mind you. He just never came to this part of Wales.”
There was no anxiety over Shoreham’s fate, no concern about the long walk across Wales, no interest in what the man might have encountered, poor and alone and with no friend to turn to.
“You never made any attempt to learn what had become of him? If he were ill, dependent on the charity of strangers, dead and buried somewhere as a pauper?”
Williams had the decency to look ashamed. “It’s not that we don’t care,” he said hotly, “it’s that life is hard enough without taking on another man’s troubles. Henry isn’t here. You can search the house, if you like. You won’t find him. If I knew where he was, I’d want to help him, but I can’t go searching half of England in the hope of finding him. There’s not the money for it.”
“And what about the man dead in Elthorpe? I could make a case that you and Peter Littleton between you tired of your cousin and killed him, leaving him to be found by strangers.”