Then Bill shattered their illusions. “Did he leave scorched grass, where he lay? The Devil? Is that why they’re questioning schoolmasters, they’ve found the grass and want to know if anyone’s different?”
“How different?” Tad asked anxiously. “Nobody else has been sick, just Robbie.”
“He’s possessed,” Bill said. “That’s why he’s sick. He’s possessed.”
Tad shouted at him, “There’s nothing wrong with him. There’s nothing wrong with my brother!” And he marched off down the road, leaving them to look after him, their faces tight with sudden worry.
The doctor’s report was brought in to Madsen. The man hadn’t died where he was found, it was impossible that he could have, considering the cause of death. In fact, he’d been dead at least four-and-twenty hours before he was discovered.
Furthermore, there were no scars or other marks to make it a simple matter to identify him. He could be anyone. From anywhere.
And Madsen, though he didn’t care for unfinished business on his watch, reviewed the evidence and decided that his next step would have to be identifying the corpse before he could make any connection with Albert Crowell stick. If he could prove that Crowell knew the man, it would go a long way toward building his case. If there was anything between them, he could take the schoolmaster into custody.
But that was easier said than done. Where, for instance, should he begin?
He considered bringing Alice Crowell in to Elthorpe to look at the dead man. He even toyed with going back to the school to ask Crowell where he had been every minute of the past three days. But he already knew what Alice Crowell would say. Her husband had been with her—busy at the school—listening to her read. Standing by him even with a possible charge of murder hanging over the man’s head.
Madsen kept the file open on his desk where it could nag him every time he looked at it, and it became an obsession even when he was not there.
Why had Crowell’s book been found by the corpse’s feet? An old book, on alchemy of all things. He pondered that as he dealt with a quarrel between two farmers over the death of a prize ram. What did the book have to do with the dead man, except to betray the name of his murderer? Why had Crowell been carrying this book with him? Was it concealing something? Had it been the excuse that allowed Crowell to approach the victim?
Over his tea, Madsen was beginning to believe the two men must have met at the ruins, gone somewhere else, and the body had been carried back there to throw the police off. The caretaker could have been wrong, he might have simply glanced into the cloisters the day before and missed the corpse up against the wall. In a hurry as he made his rounds, and not wanting his employers to know he’d been slack.
Madsen went back to the doctor’s surgery and stood looking down at the corpse. Why the respirator that hadn’t saved the victim’s life, and why the cloak that at first glance looked like a monk’s habit? To lay a false trail for the police?
He tried to put it all together, but there was no making sense of it.
Walking back to his office he considered the fact that neither Crowell’s house nor the village school was served by gas. So where had he taken the dead man to kill him? Why did the man have to die?
He shut himself in his office to think.
Debts owed? Some scandalous connection between the two men that didn’t bear looking at? Then why leave the body here, if the man hadn’t died here? It only made the killing more blatant. What was it in aid of, that respirator and the cloak? A warning to someone else?
What was the schoolmaster involved in and how would it affect Alice Crowell when the truth came out?
It all came down to that bloody book, he told himself for the hundredth time as he walked home for his dinner. If the book hadn’t been there, the police would have been mystified. An oversight, a mistake, the kind that got murderers hanged.
What was there in Albert Crowell’s life that he was desperate to hide?
By morning, Madsen was unable to stay away from the Crowells. Three more visits to the school, three more frustrating interviews with the schoolmaster, three more missed encounters with Alice, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to be other than where he wanted her to be. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask for her outright. Not while he badgered her husband.
In the dark hours of the night he’d even considered the possibility that she had killed her lover and left the book to muddle the case. But he knew it wasn’t true. The man, according to the doctor, was pushing fifty and not the sort who could sweep any woman off her feet.
Twice on his excursions to the Dilby School, he found himself faced with staring boys, nosy little bastards, more eyes than face. He never remembered being so fond of his own schoolmasters that he wouldn’t have cheered to see them taken away for a week.
He had spoken to one of them, the Tredworth boy. “What are you hanging about for? Know anything about this business, do you?”
Hugh had shaken his head vigorously. “No, sir. I—it’s just—” He took a deep breath and blurted, “Thought I might be a policeman when I grow up, that’s all. And nobody will tell me what’s happened. They change the subject when I come into the room.”
“It’s not a matter for children’s ears,” Madsen had said, annoyance creeping in. “Stay clear of it, or I’ll have you in for questioning myself.”
After that he saw no more of Hugh or his friends.
4
The dinner had, in many ways, been trying.
Rutledge had sat opposite Meredith Channing, and he had spent the evening trying to keep his mind closed to her. It was difficult, with Hamish restless and more intrusive as the hour stretched into two and then into three. The soft Scottish voice railed at him, warning him no’ to lower his guard, as if they stood in the darkness of France, waiting for an attack they couldn’t see but knew would surely come. For a moment he could smell the war again, and it shook him, it was so real.
Frances, beside him, had been brittle, her laughter forced, her smile too bright. Rutledge began to wonder if there had been more to Simon Barrington’s departure for Scotland than met the eye—or that Frances had been prepared to confide.
The Farnums, thank God, had been their usual cheerful selves, and Maryanne Browning seemed to revive in the warmth of conviviality. Widowhood had been a blow. Like most women of her upbringing, she’d relied on Peter for everything, and suddenly faced with taking charge of her own life and fortunes when Peter dropped dead in the second influenza epidemic, she had been at a loss to know how to begin. There had been no time to prepare, to learn how certain things were done, how to cope with lawyers and bankers and men of business. Peter had done all that. He should by rights still be here to lift the burden from her. The struggle had taken its toll, though to her credit Maryanne had never shirked her duty. That too had been part of her upbringing—to accept duty and responsibility, however difficult or distasteful they might be.
Frances had been right about this evening, a much-needed palliative for her.
He recalled his question to Frances—was this a matchmaking attempt, including him in the gathering? But it seemed to be the farthest thing from Maryanne’s mind. She treated Rutledge like the friend he was, Peter’s friend, and therefore someone to trust and turn to but not to consider romantically. A brother that Peter had never had. Consequently, he returned the compliment and treated her in much the same way he treated Frances, although without the worry that she would see through him as his sister did. Maryanne was not in Frances’s league when it came to reading people.