No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery (25 page)

“Yes, of course I will.” She walked to the door, and then said, facing it, her back to him, “Do you still love her desperately? Jean?”

He remembered in time.

“She was a part of my life before the war,” he answered Kate with great care. “I think of her fondly sometimes, but I wanted her to be happy there in Toronto. She deserved that.” It was the best he could do.

There was a silence between them. Then Kate opened the door, saying, “Good night, Ian.” And it closed behind her.

He stood where he was for several minutes before leaving the study and then the house without speaking to anyone else.

R
utledge spent the night at the vicarage. But it was uneventful. Mrs. Daniels insisted on putting compresses on his face, saying, “Do you wish to go about looking as though a cow kicked you in the head?”

He remembered the expression on Kate’s face. “No. All right then. Go ahead.”

Afterward he wondered if Mrs. Daniels had slipped a little something else into the tea laced with a splash of the vicar’s whisky. For he slept well enough. As did the vicar.

And if there was anyone prowling around the house, he made no effort to get inside.

As Mrs. Daniels said, when she brought Rutledge breakfast in the morning, “It rained in the night as if the heavens had split wide open. He’s no fool, this man. He stayed snug by his hearth, like the rest of us. Or maybe he’s decided Vicar isn’t going to turn him in to the police after all.”

“Why should he decide that?”

“You’d be knocking on his door, wouldn’t you? By now?”

16

B
efore leaving, he went to sit once more with the vicar. Toup was lying on the bed, his eyes closed, but Rutledge could see by his breathing that he wasn’t asleep.

Shutting the sitting room door, so that he couldn’t be overheard, Rutledge drew Mrs. Daniels’s chair closer to the bed, and began to talk.

“If I were in London,” he said casually, as if carrying on a conversation with Pendennis or Sergeant Gibson, “it just might be possible for these three events to be coincidental. There’s Harry Saunders’s death. According to Trevose, four women of good family conspired to drown him. They are to be charged with murder, now that he’s died of his injuries. But someone hadn’t foreseen that turn of events. And so he—or she—dug holes in the bottom of Harry’s dinghy, with the expectation that he’d drown somewhere between the row of cottages where it was kept and Padstow Harbor. Either whoever it was had miscalculated or the holes weren’t large enough. He was well east of Padstow when it finally happened. Nobody has asked just where he was heading that afternoon. Possibly to call on George St. Ives. But then Harry died before anyone could ask. Is it possible that Victoria damaged his boat? A case could be made for that—she was against going to his rescue, claiming that he wasn’t drowning.”

The man on the bed hadn’t moved.

“Or it could have been George St. Ives who tampered with the dinghy. That sounds rather preposterous, until one takes into account the fact that he is in love with Victoria and too badly wounded to consider asking for her hand. If he thought Harry was annoying her—or a rival not worthy of her—or even if he thought Harry had broken her heart, he might have been angry enough to do something about it. He walks at night, you know. St. Ives. And not just in the back garden of Chough Hall. In point of fact, he was seen not far from where you were attacked. Another coincidence? Which brings us to what happened to you. Someone wanted to kill you. But it wasn’t a cold-blooded beating, was it? There was passion behind those blows. Anger? Jealousy? Fear? Whatever it was, it was a driving emotion that brought him back to the vicarage on two separate nights, with an eye to making sure you couldn’t identify him. That put Mr. and Mrs. Daniels in jeopardy, because he would have had to kill them after he killed you.”

It was not precisely accurate, this conversation, but it was purposely designed to capture the vicar’s attention. And Rutledge thought he could see a movement of Toup’s fair lashes. But he said nothing about it. “And there’s another small mystery. One you have refused to solve for me. Harry Saunders might have told me what I needed to know, but of course he died before I could ask. Who was the young woman who took a cottage on the far side of Padstow, but chose to attend church here in Heyl, in order not to attract attention? And you have no memory of who attacked you. We can’t go to his door and arrest him, because we have no idea who it might be.”

He got to his feet, walking to the window to look out at the churchyard.

“Saunders is dead. Sara Langley, Victoria Grenville, Kate Gordon, and Elaine St. Ives are going to be taken to Bodmin soon. I’ve dragged my feet as long as I can. It’s no place for a gently bred young woman.” He had a sudden memory of another young woman who could have answered to that. “God knows what it will do to them—and that’s not even taking into account their reputations. What worries me is that they will be convicted and hanged. Trevose will be very happy about that. Mrs. Grenville will understand why.” He took a deep breath. “There it is. I don’t know if you’ll ever remember anything about your assailant. But he’s a killer. When I saw what he’d done to you, I knew that he could kill and very likely would kill again. It’s even possible, God knows why, that he meddled with the Saunders dinghy. If there’s anything else you know, even if you don’t or won’t believe that it’s relevant, it could save a life. Yours? Someone else’s? Mine, even. If you opened your eyes and looked at my face and your own, you’d believe me.”

He waited, but there was silence. Turning, he walked to the door, and his hand was on the knob when the vicar spoke. His voice was ragged.

“St. Ives. The only person I saw that morning was St. Ives. But I refuse to believe he would hurt me. In God’s name,
why
?”

“I don’t know.” Rutledge turned. “Who was the young woman who lived in that cottage outside Padstow?”

“She’s no one of importance,” Toup said, looking at Rutledge for the first time. “I will swear to it if you like. A summer visitor. A young war widow.” His eyes, the still-swollen lids twice their size, blinked several times. “Come closer. I can’t see you clearly.”

Rutledge walked to the bed and leaned over it. Toup raised his head to stare.

“Oh, my oath, Rutledge.” He closed his eyes again. “Was it St. Ives? Tell me it wasn’t.”

“I don’t know. Whoever it is, he was more agile. Or else driven by fear to do his best. But then the only time I’ve had the opportunity to watch St. Ives walk, he knew I was there.”

“It will not save the women who are accused,” Toup said. “How could it?”

A very good question.

Rutledge had no answer.

H
e went back to the cottages, but Dunbar wasn’t at home. Rutledge waited for an hour or more, knocking twice in the event the man was refusing to come to the door.

But there was no sign of him. Looking in the windows where he could, Rutledge could see that the interior was tidy, the curtains open, a cup and a teapot sitting on the kitchen table.

Not dead in his bed, then, Rutledge thought.

He would have liked to go inside, but he couldn’t risk it. He had no authority to be there, and if Dunbar came walking up the path, he would be well within his rights to call in the Padstow constable.

Frustrated, Rutledge gave Dunbar another few minutes, then left, following the road into Padstow in the event he could spot the man on his way back from marketing.

Driving on, he returned to the village. The street above the landing was busy, people going about their midday business. He was stopped once or twice before he could enter the inn by people wanting news of the vicar. The doctor had come again in his absence, and this had been worrisome.

“He’s slowly recovering. He has no memory of what happened to him. The doctor tells me it probably will never come back.”

His inquisitors shook their heads in sorrow, but Rutledge knew the news would be repeated over and over again until everyone had heard it. As he intended.

Several others inquired about his face, a mixture of curiosity and concern.

Rutledge said ruefully, “Serves me right, to go wandering about the Cornish countryside in the dark. Are there stones every quarter mile?”

And they smiled. If the Cornish countryside had one stone, it had thousands. The wasteland was full of them, and low-growing gorse and furze were a constant trap for unwary boots.

When finally he was free to go inside, Rutledge went up to his room and stood by the window. Across the Camel, rooftops and windows caught the sunlight, winking back at him.

Almost from the start he had been working under the assumption that the first act in this inquiry had been the death of Trevose’s brother Paul years before on St. Michael’s Mount. Even Mrs. Grenville had believed it.

But what if it wasn’t? Setting aside Trevose and the charge brought against the women in the boat, what if Scotland Yard had been summoned to Cornwall after Harry Saunders drowned in the Camel, unable to swim away from his sinking boat, and the sabotage of the dinghy had been discovered as it was raised?

How would he—or even Inspector Barrington—have proceeded at that stage?

He would have traced the dinghy back to where it was kept, and looked closely into the inhabitants of those three cottages, with an eye to uncovering any connection with Harry Saunders. And in doing that, he might well have learned about Harry escorting one of the cottage residents to services at St. Marina’s instead of St. Petroc’s, and this would have led him to the vicar of St. Marina’s, Mr. Toup.

The connection with Toup would have been reinforced as soon as the vicar had been beaten within an inch of his life.

He went back down to his motorcar and drove to Padstow.

Saunders’s parents still refused to see him.

And so he went on to Dr. Carrick’s surgery.

There was, Rutledge was told, a rash of chills making the rounds, and the doctor’s waiting room was full.

“Is it the vicar? Has he taken a turn for the worse?” Carrick’s nurse asked.

“He has not.”

“Very well, you can make an appointment and return tomorrow.”

“My visit will take no more than five minutes. But it is urgent.”

He would have to come back. She was adamant.

Politely thanking the nurse, he sat down among the coughing children and feverish adults waiting to be seen, and ignored the frowns and curious stares sent his way. By his calculations, he was fifteenth in line to see the doctor. Four more patients came in after him, and one of the children began to vomit.

An hour and a half later, the nurse summoned Rutledge, and tight-lipped, she led him down the passage to the doctor’s office.

Carrick was behind his desk.

“Are you blind? There are people out there who need care. What’s so important that it can’t be dealt with tomorrow?”

“I too have a cough,” Rutledge said blandly, and proceeded to demonstrate just that. He sat down in the chair in front of the cluttered desk.

“All right, what is it? I’m told this isn’t about the vicar.”

“The summer visitors in the cottages let by Frank Dunbar. Were you ever asked to treat any of them this summer? Most particularly one who had been quite ill, and had come to Cornwall to recover her health?”

“Is that the only reason you’ve interrupted my office today?” Carrick was angry now.

“It will save time if you answer my question and I can leave. It’s important. More so than you may realize.”

“The answer is no. As far as I am aware, this summer’s visitors were not in need of my services.”

It was a dead end.

Rutledge rose. “Thank you. I’ll leave you to your patients.”

“Here. What’s this to do with the vicar’s injuries?” the doctor asked sharply.

“I’ll tell you when I’m sure.”

“I did attend Dunbar, if that’s of any use. He had a severe attack of indigestion from dining on mussels. Harry Saunders had just brought that young woman home after attending church services, and they found him in great distress. Harry came for me, thinking it was a heart attack. I was just sitting down to my own joint, and I was grateful it wasn’t more serious than it was. The young woman agreed to see to it that he took his medicines that evening. Pretty little thing.”

“Describe her, if you will?”

“Slim, dark hair, a very pretty face.”

“And she was staying in one of the cottages?”

“The middle one. I remember because she was close enough to keep an eye on Dunbar.”

“Do you recall her name?”

“Sorry. I don’t think she gave it. But Dunbar will know, certainly.”

So much for the spinsters!

Leaving the doctor’s surgery, he drove on to the police station. Inspector Carstairs was not in, and Rutledge spoke to his sergeant.

“George St. Ives. Anything in his past that I should know about?”

“Young St. Ives?” His surprise was genuine.

“Before the war. What sort of lad was he? Any trouble with his friends? The police? A reputation for being a troublemaker?”

“High spirits, sir, but nothing I’d call trouble. He and the Grenville lad were that close, birthdays in the same month, in and out of each other’s houses. One Easter for a lark they tried to put a rooster in the church belfry.” He grinned. “Rooster got the best of them, and the doctor was called in. On another occasion, they claimed they saw a ghost ship out on the Doom Bar, and when everyone rushed out to have a look, they slipped into The Pilot and drew themselves a pint. Young Grenville was sick, but St. Ives managed to finish his glass before he was caught. No report on whether he was sick later or not. They stole a pony from Trevose, when their fathers refused to let them take out the mare, and rode it to Wadebridge to see a man with a talking parrot. Trevose wanted to see them up before the magistrate, but as the pony suffered no harm, Mr. Grenville refused to hear the case.” The sergeant studied Rutledge. “You could have asked Constable Pendennis, sir, and saved yourself coming into Padstow.”

“I could have done,” Rutledge agreed, “but I preferred to ask here. Since I have no immediate cause to think ill of St. Ives.”

Sergeant Beddoes nodded. “I understand, sir.”

And Rutledge thought he did. What’s more, this information confirmed what he was beginning to suspect: that St. Ives was in the clear, in spite of what the vicar had cried out in his delirium.

“I’ll tell the Inspector you called, shall I, sir?”

“Yes, all right. Where is he?”

He wasn’t sure afterward why he asked. It was none of his affair, well out of his jurisdiction.

“At the moment, he’s busy with what appears to be robbery that ended in murder.”

“Here in Padstow?”

“Yes, sir. An elderly gentleman. He’d just withdrawn ten pounds from his bank yesterday, and he was set upon before he could reach his home. The body wasn’t found until this morning.”

It was Hamish’s voice in the back of his mind that warned him.

“Anyone connected with the Saunders’s case?”

“Not that I’m aware of, sir. Although he does live in one of the cottages where young Saunders kept—”

“Dunbar.”

“Yes, sir, how did you know?” Beddoes was frowning. “Is there something I should tell Inspector Carstairs?”

“I don’t know. I waited at Dunbar’s cottage for him. Most of this morning. I thought he’d gone to market. Where is Carstairs?”

“There’s an alley toward the end of the harbor, runs from there into the town. The man’s body was discovered there some time ago, but it had been there for a while. Early risers thought he was a drunk. His clothes disheveled, his hat pulled down low over his face, a strong smell of drink about him. A Good Samaritan stopped, thinking he might be ill as well as drunk, and called the police. He was dead, he’d been badly beaten.”