A Fine Summer's Day (17 page)

“Were they the same age? Had they been to the same school?”

“The man with the trust was the eldest, the shopkeeper was some twenty years younger, and Hadley must have been ten to fifteen years younger still.”

“And they're not related? Distant cousins, or even through marriage?”

“No relationship at all. Not that we've turned up.”

Wylie shook his head. “I can't think what it might be that they shared. Hadley was to all intents and purposes a gentleman farmer, but he worked as hard as any man I know.”

“Anything else that you think might be useful? What about all those workers out from London?”

“If this had happened when they were here working, I'd say you must interview the lot. But they weren't. Still, it's possible that one of them held a grudge, it simmered, and we've seen the aftermath of it.”

“But that wouldn't explain the shopkeeper and the man of leisure.”

“No. I doubt a farm laborer down from London would have any knowledge of the other two.” Wylie shrugged. “I know this village. There's not a soul in it who would harm one of the Hadleys. And I
can't picture Jerome taking advantage of his wife's absence in Canterbury to kill himself. I'd seen him just this past week, and he was cheerful, looking forward to her return, and even thinking about driving down to spend a day or two in Canterbury, then bring her home. Hardly the attitude of a man depressed enough to kill himself.”

“Unless he'd had bad news about the farm and felt he'd failed as its steward.”

“Not Hadley. He'd have faced it squarely and dealt with it.”

Rutledge thanked the doctor, got down, and drove back to the Hadley farm. He asked permission to look through Hadley's desk in the small room where he kept the farm accounts. The local police had been there before him, but he spent three hours searching for anything that might explain Hadley's death.

The accounts were in order, the farm was prospering, and the death duties for Mrs. Hadley's father had been paid off long ago. Nothing to indicate that a man had felt it better to take his own life than to have to face his wife with dire news.

He thanked Mrs. Tolliver, left the farm, and instead of going to Maidstone to speak to Inspector Watson, he drove instead back to Melinda Crawford's house.

She had paid to have a telephone installed as soon as it was possible to do so, and from there, he could call London.

R
utledge had tea on the terrace with his hostess, and then asked for the use of her telephone.

She grinned at him. “Is that why you came back? Why didn't you say so straightaway instead of fidgeting for half an hour.”

“I didn't fidget,” he answered her.

“Not literally, perhaps, but figuratively, definitely. Go on. Call Jean if you like.”

“Not Jean. The Yard. There's something I need to know before I can go any further with this present inquiry.”

“By all means. And then come back and satisfy an old woman's curiosity.”

He kissed her on the forehead as he passed her chair on the way to the telephone closet just off the main hall.

He was in luck. Sergeant Gibson was still at the Yard.

“Having any success there in Kent, sir?” the sergeant inquired when he was summoned to the telephone.

“I need information, Sergeant. And it's rather urgent.”

He went on to explain what it was he was after. Had any of the other Inspectors on duty at the Yard recently handled a case where the outcome was uncertain, but the weapon of choice was laudanum in glasses of milk that the victim drank without a struggle.

“As to that, sir, I don't know.”

“Look into it for me, will you? It's important enough that I'll wait by the telephone to hear from you.” He passed on Melinda's number, thanked Gibson, and hung up.

As he walked back out onto the terrace, Melinda turned to study his face. “Your telephone call. It had a satisfactory conclusion? It must have done, for here you are, back again this quickly.”

She alone of all his family and friends had that uncanny way of seeing through him. Not that he had much to hide from her. But she seemed to read his moods and his distractions with ease, and sometimes it was trying to be so transparent.

He said, “I was looking into this case in Aylesbridge.” He proceeded to tell her about Hadley's death. She was surprised.

“But I know him, Ian. Not well of course, but he and his lovely wife were often at county functions I bothered to attend.”

Melinda had created quite a stir when she had bought this house and staffed it with Indian servants she'd brought back from Delhi with her. Her Sikh chauffeur drove with skill and speed, frightening horses and small children. Her personal maid, a Hindu with what appeared to be an endless assortment of saris, had a reputation for being a shrewd businesswoman, making certain her mistress was never cheated by purveyors of goods to the household. Shanta also treated Rutledge as a favored member of the family, indulging him when his parents weren't looking. He knew Melinda turned a blind eye, and so he'd enjoyed his popularity in the kitchen as well as the stables.

Melinda Crawford was nothing if not clever. She listened to his account of the inquiry in Moresby and again in Stoke Yarlington, then nodded as he finished and sat back.

She rang for more tea, then said, “This killer has a scheme, I should think. He's not acting randomly. He's selected his victims with care, always coming upon them when they're alone. He's studied them and knows when it's safe to approach them. The question remains, what is that scheme?”

“I don't know yet.” Rutledge got up to pace. “So far these have all been men.”

“Yes, that's true. Which points to business affairs, I should think, rather than personal matters. Only they've never shared a business relationship that you know of. The only link I can find, then, aside from the laudanum, is Bristol and its environs.”

“They were all reasonably successful men. Even Clayton had sold his shop for a goodly sum. It's possible each of them refused to help someone desperately in need of money. And he's taking his revenge. But why wait so long? Was this man in prison? Out of the country? Ill? Shut up in an institution?”

“A good question. The Army perhaps? Posted in the Empire somewhere and unable to return to England?” Melinda shrugged elegantly. “My dear boy, it could be any of these things. A veritable needle in a haystack. How do you propose to find that needle?”

“I don't know yet. Much will depend on what Sergeant Gibson has to tell me. Surely if this killer has had other victims, he must have made a mistake, left a clue, or in some way tipped his hand.”

“We can only hope he has.”

But it was late when Sergeant Gibson returned Rutledge's call. Well after ten.

They had just finished their Madeira and set their empty glasses on the drinks tray. Melinda was on the point of going up to bed when they heard the trill of the telephone from the hall.

“Ah,” she said. “That must be for you. Answer it, Ian.”

And so he had, not waiting for one of the staff to summon him.

It was Gibson, as he'd hoped.

“There's been another such case, sir. Inspector Penvellyn in Northumberland.”

Rutledge remembered discussing that inquiry with Inspector Cummins, considering the possibility that the Cornish Inspector hadn't dealt well with the people in the far north of the country.

“What about his successor? Martin, I think it was.”

“No luck there, either, although Inspector Martin was convinced the wife had killed her husband. She had had laudanum after her surgery to remove her gall bladder, and had even begged more from the local doctor. The problem was, there was no way to prove his suspicions.”

A frustration Rutledge recognized.

“Will you have a copy of that file on my desk? I'll be back in London tomorrow morning to have a look at it.”

“I don't see how it's pertinent to Kent, sir. With all respect.”

“Nor do I. But I'm hoping I'll find what I'm looking for once I've read it. And, Sergeant? Not a word of this to either Inspector Martin or Penvellyn. And most particularly not Chief Superintendent Bowles.”

“Mum's the word, sir,” Gibson said, doubt still large in his voice.

When Rutledge returned to the sitting room, Melinda took one look at his face.

“You're leaving tomorrow for London.” It was a statement, not a question.

“Yes, there's a file I must read for myself.”

“Will you be returning to the inquiry here in Kent?”

“I don't know. I expect I shall have to.”

“Well. I have enjoyed your company, my dear. And Ian. You know my door is always open.”

With a smile, she said good night and left him there.

Rutledge watched her go, affection in his gaze. She was a remarkable woman, and he was very fond of her.

Without waiting for breakfast the next morning, Rutledge was on the road a little before six, making his way toward London. Traffic was fairly light at first, and then it picked up as he neared the city.

Sunlight filled the air, but there had been a red dawn when he set out, brilliant and blazing. If the old saw about red skies was true, then there would be storms before the day was out. It had been a remarkably fine summer, with very few breaks in the weather.

He reached the Yard before Bowles had appeared, and walked quietly through the passages to his office. There he'd had to search for the file that Sergeant Gibson had promised him, finally discovering it in a stack of innocuous documents that Rutledge had been meaning to return to the files. He wondered briefly if this had been a hint from Sergeant Gibson, or if the man had tried to conceal the file from casual searches for one of Rutledge's court documents.

He'd shut the door behind him, and now he sat down in his chair, his back to the room, and opened the file.

First he scanned Inspector Penvellyn's reports. The Cornish Inspector had got nowhere. Part of the problem was his lack of experience in dealing with Northumberland. But the local man had not been thorough in his interviews before Penvellyn arrived.

A Northumberland schoolmaster, living just outside Alnwick, had been found dead in his sitting room by his wife, who had come downstairs after waking shortly before four in the morning to find her husband hadn't come up to bed.

In the beginning, there had been no mention of a glass of milk. Inspector Martin had discovered there had been one during a third interview with the victim's wife after the postmortem had revealed the death was caused by an overdose of laudanum. The local man had failed to note it.

The initial view was suicide. Mrs. Stoddard had sworn to the police that her husband had had nothing on his mind, but it was soon discovered that he had been very worried about the future of the small
boarding school. The history master and the French master had tried to cover up the school's problems, until Penvellyn had had a discussion with Stoddard's bank manager. There he'd learned that Stoddard had been using his own money in a desperate attempt to shore up the school for another term.

Nothing had been stolen from the house nor had it been searched, reinforcing the belief that Percy had killed himself while despondent over the future.

At that stage the doctor had suggested that Stoddard had surprised a housebreaker, and then in order to sleep, had taken some of his wife's laudanum without properly measuring the dose. It was even suggested that Stoddard had come downstairs in the first place because he was having trouble sleeping, and walked straight into the housebreaker, who had fled empty-handed.

Inspector Martin, arriving to replace Penvellyn, soon realized that the doctor had tried to protect Mrs. Stoddard from the stigma of suicide by describing the death as accidental.

Martin was a straightforward man who brooked no interference with the facts. He ascertained that the laudanum had indeed been prescribed for her after surgery and that she had kept the bottle upstairs in the drawer of the table by her bed.

The glass was finally discovered when Martin took over the inquiry. It had been set in one of the drawers of the desk, and he began to suspect the dead man's wife.

A neighbor had heard arguments about the money from his personal funds that Stoddard was using to prop up the school, and Martin surmised that Mrs. Stoddard had killed her husband to stop him from bankrupting them.

The servants had indicated that the Stoddards were not the most devoted of couples, and it was Martin's opinion that household often knew more about what was going on in a marriage than either the husband or wife realized.

Try as he would, Inspector Martin couldn't shake Mrs. Stoddard's testimony that she had not killed her husband and had in fact supported his use of personal funds to help the school. And there was no record that Mrs. Stoddard had purchased more laudanum than her physician had prescribed. Nor could he prove that she had been hoarding her supply in order to kill her husband.

He did suspect from a comment that the doctor's nurse had made, that Mrs. Stoddard used any excuse she could think of to visit the doctor's surgery, and he wondered if there was any relationship between them. But it appeared that he was not her lover but rather the source of the laudanum that she needed.

Martin spent nearly a week in Alnwick, tracing every possible thread.

All he could elicit was the fact that Mr. Stoddard had been born in Bristol, owned property there, and had moved to Alnwick when he had been appointed headmaster of Riverton School.

Laudanum and Bristol. A glass of milk.

There it was again. And in a case not his own.

What the hell was in Bristol?
Rutledge asked himself.

It was not the size of London. And yet four dead men had lived or worked in the town or its environs. They had moved in different social circles, and had left there at different times in their lives. Furniture maker, man of independent means, gentleman farmer, and now a schoolmaster.

No, they hadn't simply lived there. They had owned property there. And they were all male.

Wary of jumping to conclusions, he went down a mental list of possibilities. And as he did, he realized that there was only one place where men of such varied backgrounds might have touched each other's lives.

So ordinary as to be overlooked: serving on a jury.

He remembered that he'd even suggested as much to Cummins in the case of the blackened grave stones. And Cummins had
shaken his head, considering it more far-fetched than the idea of a shared secret.

And it went beyond a simple matter of jury duty. These men hadn't been brought together to decide a petty theft or an assault. Very likely not fraud or embezzlement. Not housebreaking or horse stealing. A capital case. Murder.

His office felt suffocating, too small, too hot on this warm day, too confining when he needed to think. Rutledge rose, putting the file back where he found it, and left, turning toward Parliament, as he so often seemed to do, his feet taking him in that direction out of habit. And as he walked, his mind was engaged in sifting all the facts at his command. He couldn't go to Bowles with this until he was absolutely certain that he was right. And he wouldn't put Chief Inspector Cummins in the middle by talking to him. Not yet.

Bowles was satisfied that they had Clayton's killer in custody. He'd agreed that very likely Tattersall had killed himself for reasons he'd kept to himself. And Martin was certain Mrs. Stoddard had murdered her husband. It would take more than theory to overcome the Yard's certainty.

This was a battle he would very likely lose, Rutledge was all too aware of that. He had a fine career ahead of him, and he was engaged to the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It would be wiser not to engage in such a battle in the first place.

But there was Mark Kingston. Rutledge could tell himself that the jury that tried the man would realize that Kingston couldn't have murdered Benjamin Clayton and refuse to find him guilty.

What if they did?

He looked up at the tall spire of Big Ben, shading his eyes from the hazy sunlight. He could feel a storm in the air, but he catalogued that in the recesses of his brain, just as he noted the traffic over Westminster Bridge or the sounds of ships coming up from the river, without any of it entering his conscious thinking.