Five minutes later, his shoes squeaking with rain water, Rutledge was knocking on the door of a stone house half hidden under its slate roof.
Wilkins came to answer the summons with his bedroom slippers on his feet. He grinned at Rutledge and said, “I’ve seen drowned men drier than you! Here, wait till I’ve fetched some rags.”
As Rutledge furled his umbrella, Wilkins disappeared down the dark stone-flagged passage towards the back of the house, and soon returned with a handful of old cloths. Rutledge dried his shoes as best he could, and then followed the old man into his kitchen, where something smelled suspiciously like rabbit stew in the pot simmering on the hearth.
“I knew you’d be along before the day was out. They say you’re nosing around the Hall and the village, looking for answers that London wants. About the deaths at the Hall. Aye, I’m not surprised. If you ask me, Inspector Harvey is a fool, and Constable Dawlish too full of himself to know the difference between his nose and his toes! I’ve got some good ale in that jug over there, fresh from The Three Bells. And if you’ll hand it to me, I’ll pour you a cup.”
Rutledge picked up the heavy stone jug and passed it to him. Wilkins filled two cups and sat down with a sigh of satisfaction.
“I never thought Mr. Brian was killed falling from his horse. He was too good a rider. Born on a horse, like as not, and knew what he was about. And you don’t ride a valuable animal through sea-wet rocks, not if you’ve got any sense, with the risk of ruining his legs! It were murder, pure and simple, that happened that day—to man and mount!”
12
Caught off balance, Rutledge stared at the old man. “Did you say this to anyone at the time? When Brian FitzHugh died?”
Wilkins gave him a toothless grin, “Lord, and lose my job on the spot? Which I nearly did anyway, when Miss Rosamund gave up the racing stables. And come to that, what was I to say to her? Or to the police?” He drank his ale, belched with pleasure, and shrugged his shoulders with almost Gallic expressiveness.
“But if you believed it was murder—”
“Aye, it were murder,” he said bluntly. “I were there when they raised the alarm, running for all I was worth to see what were wrong and to look to the horse. I’d saddled him for Mr. FitzHugh, I knew which mount he’d taken out!”
“Tell me, then.”
“Mr. FitzHugh was lying face down in the sea, blood on his head, and they found blood on one of the rocks just there, where he’d been thrown and then rolled into the surf. But the horse were deeper among the rocks, wild-eyed and shaking. A spur had raked one flank, not the other. I’d never known Mr. FitzHugh to use a spur on his horses, and I’d never known Lucifer to need more than the lightest rein, he were that clever. Read your mind almost! Something happened that put the fear of God into him, and he bolted. But with an empty saddle, if I know anything about it!”
“What makes you say that?”
“There were neither horse hair nor blood on Mr. Fitz-Hugh’s spurs. And if he’d been throwed, just there, where he would hit his head on the rocks coming down, then roll over, his face into the water, why was there water in his hoots when I pulled ‘em off him, so’s they could carry him back to the house?”
“Surely the police asked that same question?”
“Aye, and they answered it, too, that the sea’d come in with the tide, soaking his trousers and his stockings. There were no footprints on the shingle but ours and Master Nicholas’, coming up from his boat, no signs of a struggle or trouble of any kind, and the doctor, he said Mr. FitzHugh had drowned, before he’d regained his wits from the fall.” He finished his ale, then went to stir the stew, squinting in the heat of the fire.
Rutledge bent down, untied his shoes, and looked at his stockings. They were wet with rain. The shoes themselves were pliable with rain water. But when he upended them, water didn’t run out. The stockings and the lining had absorbed it. Interesting point, he told himself as he laced them again.
“And no one else raised objections about the horse?”
“Mr. Cormac did. He said his father wouldn’t have taken Lucifer among the rocks, not without good reason.” Wilkins came back to sit down at the table, refilling his cup and offering more to Rutledge, who shook his head. “We found a bee caught under the girth,” he said. “Where it’d stung the horse. And that satisfied the lot of them. But I walked back down there later and had a look around. Before the stir, mind you, Master Nicholas’d drawn his boat up on shore just a few yards away, and turned it over, planning to come back and work on the seams. Well, I looked under it, and I found the print of Mr. Brian’s riding boot, next to the print of another shoe, but the tide had half erased that. He were on foot, then, talking to someone. He weren’t alone down there on the shingle, not the whole time!”
“He might have been there when Nicholas Cheney brought the boat in, and helped drag it above the tide line.” ‘‘Then why didn’t Master Nicholas say so?” “All right. Who would have wanted to kill FitzHugh?” Wilkins sighed. “That were the problem, you see. Not Miss Rosamund—siie were Mrs. FitzHugh—she’d not be likely to send him off. The twins, now, they were little ‘uns, and you’d not see them on the strand or near the headland or in the stables without their nanny in tow. Miss Olivia were a cripple. Mr. FitzHugh were Mr. Cormac’s own father. None of the servants, that I knew of, had any quarrel with him. Mr. FitzHugh had a temper, mind you, but he were fair, and no one held any grudge that I’d heard about. And that left Master Nicholas, whose boat it was. Why would he want to harm his stepfather? It made no sense to me. So I held my tongue and waited to see what happened, and when naught did, I kept on holding of it.”
Nicholas might have no reason to kill his stepfather, but he might well have covered up for Olivia, if he’d had any fear that she was involved.
With the brace on her leg, could she have moved around among the rocks?
He asked that question aloud. Wilkins thought about it. “She weren’t one to plead helplessness. I’d see her struggle to do what she wanted to do. Aye, she could get over them rocks, spider fashion, pulling her leg along. Slowlike and careful. But where she had the will, she got her way.”
Remembering what Constable Dawlish had said, Rutledge asked, “You put the horse down, didn’t you? Was she there, watching?”
“Aye, it were left to me, and a hard job it were. Loved that horse, I did. Mr. Cormac were there, his head buried in the horse’s neck and crying. Miss Olivia came with Dawlish, who were only a boy then, and said, There’s no saving him? Not even if he never races again? Must we put him down?’ And I said, The smith looked at that foreleg, miss, and he said t’were shattered, there were no way to mend it so’s it’d take his weight.’ Fleet as he were, I couldn’t watch him live out his days a cripple, struggling over every step, though I didn’t say that to her face, her being a cripple herself!”
He looked into his cup and swished the ale thoughtfully. “She stayed till it were done. Not a bit squeamish, as you’d think in a young lady like her. Afterward, she told Mr. Cor-mac, if he cared so much for Lucifer, he could help dig the hole to bury him in. And we did it, out on the headland, Mr. Cormac and a few of the lads and me.”
Rutledge walked back to the inn as the church clock struck twelve. The rain had turned into a misty drizzle again, and the street was no longer a river under his feet. More people were about, now, men and women, a few of them nodding to him in recognition. Mrs. Trepol, hurrying past, wished him a good day, and in the distance he glimpsed Rachel moving head down towards the woods that separated the village from the Hall. Hamish, rumbling with suppressed irritation, kept Rutledge from concentrating his thoughts on the morning’s work. Or was it his own reluctance?