Even back in London, he had never really considered whether or not he was good enough still at his work to return to it. He hadn’t considered whether the skills and the intuitive grasp of often frail threads of information, which had been his greatest asset, had been damaged along with the balance of his mind by the horrors of the war. Whether he could be a good policeman again. He’d simply expected his ability to come back without effort, like remembering how to ride or how to swim, rusty skills that needed only a new honing….
Now, suddenly, he was worried about that. One more worry, one more point of stress, and it was stress that gave Hamish access to his conscious mind. The doctors had told him that.
He sighed, and Sergeant Davies, clumping along through the grass beside him, said, “Aye, it’s been a long morning, and we’ve gotten nowhere.”
“Haven’t we?” Rutledge asked, forcing his attention back to the business in hand. “Miss Sommers said she did see Wilton walking this track. But where was he coming from? The churchyard, as he claims? Or had he walked by way of the lane, as Hickam claims, met the Colonel, and then crossed over this way? Or—did he go after Harris, follow him to the meadow, with murder on his mind?”
“But this way leads to the ruins by the old bridge, just as he told us, and Miss Sommers saw him here around eight, she thought. So we’re no nearer to the truth than we were before.”
“Yes, all right, but since Miss Sommers saw him here, he’d be bound to tell us that he was heading for the mill, wouldn’t he? No matter where he’d actually been—or was actually going.”
“Do you think he’s guilty, then?” Sergeant Davies couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“There isn’t enough information at this point to make any decision at all. But it’s possible, yes.” They had reached the car again, and Rutledge opened his door, then stopped to pick the worst of the burrs from his trousers. Davies was standing by the bonnet, fanning himself with his hat, his face red from the exertion.
Still following a train of thought, Rutledge said, “If Miss Sommers is right and Wilton was up there in the high grass early on, say eight o’clock, he might well have been a good distance from the meadow by the time the Colonel was shot. Assuming, as we must, that the horse came straight home and the Colonel died somewhere between nine-thirty and ten o’clock, when Royston went down to the stables looking for him.”
“Aye, he would have reached the ruins and the bridge in that time, it’s true. So you’re saying then that it still hangs on Hickam’s word that Captain Wilton was in the lane, and when that was.”
“It appears that way. Without Hickam, there’s no evidence where the Captain had come from before he ran into Miss Sommers. No evidence of a further quarrel. And no real reason except for what Johnston and Mary overheard in the hall at Mallows for us to believe that the Captain had any cause to shoot Harris.”
Sergeant Davies brightened. “And no jury in this county is going to take a Daniel Hickam’s word over that of a man holding the Victoria Cross.”
“You’re forgetting something, Sergeant,” Rutledge said, climbing into the car.
“What’s that, sir?” Davies asked anxiously, coming around and peering into the car from the passenger side so that he could see Rutledge’s face.
“If Wilton didn’t shoot Harris, then who did? And who turned the corpse over?”
After lunch at the Shepherd’s Crook, Rutledge took out the small leather notebook, made a number of entries, and then considered what he should do next. He had sent Davies home to his wife for lunch, while he lingered over his own coffee in the dining room, enjoying the brief solitude.
What was Harris like? That seemed to be the key. What lay buried somewhere in the man’s life that was to bring him to a bloody death in a sunlit meadow?
Or to turn it another way, why did he have to die that morning? Why not last week—last year—ten years from now?
Something had triggered the chain of events that ended in that meadow. Something said—or left unsaid. Something done—or left undone. Something felt, something glimpsed, something misunderstood, something that had festered into an angry explosion of gunpowder and shot.
Royston, Wilton, Mrs. Davenant, Lettice Wood. Four different people with four vastly different relationships to the dead man. Royston an employee, Wilton a friend, Mrs. Davenant a neighbor, and Lettice Wood his ward. Surely he must have shown a different personality to each of them. It was human nature to color your moods and your conversations and your temperament to suit your company. Surely one of the four must have seen a side to his character that would lead the police to an answer.
It was hard to believe that Charles Harris had no sins heavy on his conscience, no faces haunting his dreams, no shadows on his soul. There was no such thing as a perfect English gentleman—
Hamish had started humming a tune, and Rutledge tried to ignore it, but it was familiar, and in the way of songs that run unbidden through the mind, it dragged his attention away from his own speculations. And then suddenly he realized what it was—a half-forgotten Victorian ballad called “The Proper English Gentleman” written by a less well known contemporary of Kipling’s—less popular perhaps because his sentiments were bitter and lacked Kipling’s fine sense of what the reading public would put up with, and what it would turn from. But the ballad had been popular enough in the trenches during the war:
He’s a proper English gentleman who never spills
his beer.
He dines with all the ladies and never shows his fear
Of picking up the wrong fork or swearing at the soup
When it’s hot enough to burn him, or jumping
through the hoop
Of English society, and all it represents.
But he’s a damned good soldier in front of all the
troops
And marches like a gentleman in his fine leather
boots
And eats in the reg’lar mess and calls the men by
name
And shares the dirty work with ’em, what’s called
the killing game
Of English Imperialism and all it represents.
But by his own hearthside he’s a very different sort
And he beats his tenants quarterly and no one dares
retort,
He takes their wives and daughters, and never stops
to think
That a man might someday shoot him when he’s
had enough to drink!
Of English duplicity, and all it represents,
He’s the finest of examples, and there’s others of his
kind
Who keep their secrets closely and never seem to mind
That the man who sits at table and has their deepest
trust
Might carry in his bosom the foulest kind of lust,
Not English respectability, and all it represents.
So watch your step, my laddies, keep your distance,
ladies dear,
Watch out for English gentlemen and don’t ever let
them near.
Their faces won’t betray them, their deeds are fine
and true,
But put them near temptation and it really will not
do—
For certain English gentlemen and all they represent.