Rutledge smiled, and Peg recollected her place. “If there’s nothing else sir?” She left, closing the door softly behind her.
He ate the pasties and two of the cakes, drank his tea while it was hot, then wished he hadn’t. Leaving his coat over the back of his chair, he opened the door again for whatever air was stirring and finished unpacking, his mind on the dead woman.
Singleton Magna was not where she lived. Everyone in such a small town, including Hildebrand, would have known her instantly if this had been her home. And she didn’t live close by, or by this time someone would have recognized her photograph or the children in it. Or come looking for her.
The question then was, had she and the man with her left the train because they’d seen Bert Mowbray there in one of the cars, staring at them in shocked surprise, and in a panic decided to make a run for it? Or had the family been on its way to a place beyond Singleton Magna? If so, how had they planned to travel that distance after leaving the train?
Could they have been completely oblivious of the man watching them?
Because sometimes you felt eyes on you, when there was some strong emotion behind the stare. Had she sensed them, as the guilty often did? And what had she told the man with her? “There’s my husband! The one thinks I’m dead!” Or had she told lies? Anything to make him trust her?
Come to that, how much did the man himself know? Enough to make him accept the need for haste and putting distance between themselves and Mowbray? Or was he as much a victim of her scheming as Mowbray himself?
What if, somewhere along the road, the truth had sunk in and he’d decided that running wasn’t the answer. And instead chosen to confront the man from this woman’s past? Or—decided to leave her to face the consequences of her folly alone.
Interesting conjectures, but only that—conjectures. They’d know when the other bodies were found.…
Rutledge spent what was left of the afternoon coordinating a widening search. Making telephone calls to towns along the railway in both directions, asking local police for assistance in locating any passengers on Mowbray’s train who might have information about the woman and her children. He persuaded police in the busy holiday towns along the coast to do the same, though they were not sanguine about finding any needles in the haystack of people on their doorstep. They had already passed around the circular Hildebrand had sent them. It hadn’t brought any response.
He called in more searchers from the nearest towns and outlying villages, telling constables and sergeants and inspectors that any men they could spare would be greatly appreciated. A thinly veiled order, couched in the politest terms. Then he and Hildebrand looked at a rough map of Singleton Magna and its environs, already quartered with lines showing where the search had scoured the landscape. Next Rutledge read reports from earlier parties, all of them ending with the same last line: “Nothing to report.”
Hamish, reflecting his tiredness, pointed out that it was useless to go back over the same ground again and again, but Rutledge knew the value of many pairs of eyes. What one had missed, another might see. It was harder to convince Hildebrand of that.
“I can’t grasp how a man in his state of mind could be so clever,” he said again, tossing his pencil back on the cluttered desk. “It’s not likely he knew more about this territory than we do. Stands to reason! And yet we’re fair flummoxed! I can’t understand how we’ve missed them.”
“I don’t know that it’s cleverness,” Rutledge said thoughtfully. “A small child can be buried in a field. Tucked under a hedge or loose stones by a wall. Stuffed in the hollow of a tree. He might have felt compelled to bury them, whether he remembers it or not. It’s the man whose body should have turned up by this time.”
“I’ve climbed up church bell towers,” Hildebrand told him defensively, “taken pitchforks to haystacks, walked the railway tracks for five miles in both directions, even looked down wells and run sticks up chimneys.”
“Very resourceful of you,” Rutledge applauded, sensing ruffled feathers. “What we need now, I think, is to try to follow in his footsteps. It might be helpful to send men back to every person Mowbray encountered, then use the time they saw him as a map to chart his movements. That could give us a better idea of where he might have gone when no one was looking.”
Grudgingly Hildebrand agreed. “If those extra men come in, I’ll see to it. I’ve looked into what gaps I discovered. But I suppose it won’t do any harm to go over those two days again.”
He stared consideringly at Rutledge. Quiet enough, and competent, he had to give him that. One to check every detail, which was frustrating, knowing how thorough he’d been on his own. Still, that wasn’t unreasonable, it was the sort of thing he himself would expect, in Rutledge’s shoes. Hadn’t arrived demanding an office and a sergeant either, setting himself up as God Almighty, wreaking havoc in another man’s patch. But somehow distant, not the sort you’d ask to join you for a pint at the end of the day. And there was an intensity about him, underneath it all. Hildebrand found himself wondering if the Londoner was still recovering from war wounds. That thinness and the tired, haunted eyes …
None of which was worrying to the local man in charge. It was more a matter of pride that drove him.
Rutledge didn’t appear to be a meddler, but you could never be sure. There’d been rumors about what he’d done in Cornwall. Simple enough case to begin with—and look how that’d been turned inside out! Well, Scotland Yard would learn soon enough that Singleton Magna knew what it was about.
Best course of action, then, was to say yes to everything and quietly do as you thought best. And hope to hell London was kept well occupied sorting out jurisdictional squabbles.
Hamish, without fuss, said, “Watch your back, man!”
Rutledge nodded. But whether in answer to Hildebrand or his own thoughts it was hard to tell.
When a frail thread of cool air ushered in the evening, Rutledge went down to his motorcar and drove out of Singleton Magna on the road that led to the farmer’s field where the body of Mrs. Mowbray had been found. The sun slanted low in the west, turning trees and steeples and rooftops to a golden brightness that seemed timeless and serene.
The place was comparatively easy to find—a field of grain that ran gently down a hillside toward the road and then continued for some forty feet across it. Beyond the lower field, a pattern of mixed dark green led on toward a clump of trees along a small stream, and beyond that he could just see the tall church tower of Singleton Magna, apparently not so far away as the crow went, but possibly four miles by the high road.
To the west of where he pulled over and got out of his motorcar, he noticed a Y in the road and a weathered signpost, its arms pointing toward more villages out of sight over the slight rise.
As a place to commit murder, he thought, standing there in the golden light, this was as isolated a spot as any.
And by the same token, as isolated as it was—how had Mowbray and his victim come to meet here? Or had they come here together from some other place?
“Ye’ll not be getting answers from yon puir sod in the gaol,” Hamish reminded him. “He’s a witless man.”
Which was a very good point, Rutledge thought.
This case, so obviously clear-cut and so near to being closed, was going to sink or survive in the courtroom on the basis of cold, hard fact. Weapon. Opportunity. Motive. And the how and when and where of the act.
“Aye,” Hamish replied, “broken men conjure up sympathy. Unless they’re branded cowards …”
Rutledge winced and turned his back on the motorcar, looking up at the field. Why here? he asked himself. Because she had gotten away from Mowbray, as someone had suggested? And it was here that he’d caught up with her again? Simple happenstance?