A Long Shadow

27

Rutledge was shocked into speechlessness. Of all the people he had expected to find in Frith’s Wood, Mary Ellison was the last. He released her at once.

She stood there, and he could feel her eyes glaring at him, but her voice was husky as she spoke.

“You aren’t the only one to watch from windows,” she said. “What have you found in the wood? Who was the man you brought back to Dudlington with you? Inspector Cain? Is my granddaughter there in the wood? Tell me! ”

“I don’t know—” he began, still at a loss for words.

What could he say to her?

Hamish answered his thought. “Nothing. It’s too soon.”

Rutledge said aloud, “We’ve been searching quietly, so as not to cause you pain. Or give people a reason to gossip.”

She was still breathing hard. “I saw you putting the implements into the car. I saw you leave. Where else would you be taking a rake or a pitchfork at that hour of the night but the wood? I couldn’t sit there waiting.” Her voice shook. “I have a right to know what you’ve found, and why you brought that other man here!”

“Mrs. Ellison, let me take you home.”

She seemed to shrink into herself. “It can’t be my granddaughter. I won’t believe it. In that heathen, un-blessed place? No, I refuse to believe it.”

“What did you find, when you got to the wood?”

“Nothing.” She was still breathing hard. “It was dark, and the lantern cast shadows everywhere. I couldn’t stay any longer, that place terrifies me. Nothing in the world could ever have taken me there but Emma.”

“Let me see you to your house. It’s very cold, and you’ve had a shock.”

She shook her head. “I know my way. Go back there and do whatever it is you have to do.”

As his own breathing slowed, he watched her walk steadily down Church Street and turn into Whitby Lane, and then he went on across the fields again to find Mainwairing.

He wasn’t where Rutledge had left him, and it was clear that his curiosity had got the better of him.

Rutledge went down to the wood. The leaf mat under his feet was silent, and he walked carefully, almost from memory. Mainwaring had his torch and the lamp, and he was on his own.

“There.” It was Hamish speaking.

A flash of light caught his eye and he went in that direction. Mainwaring nearly jumped out of his skin when Rutledge spoke from behind him.

“Found any bones?”

“Blast you, Rutledge! Did you catch whoever it was you were chasing?”

“Yes. Let’s get on with it. This way.”

It took him a few minutes to find the bones again, and he gently pushed aside the covering he’d drawn back over them.

Mainwaring squatted at his heels. “Interesting.”

“Saxon massacre victim?”

“Lord, no, not at all. Look at the condition. This wood isn’t the Irish peat bogs, you know. The conditions here are deplorable. Here, let me get closer.”

They exchanged places, and Rutledge held the lantern while Mainwaring worked.

It took some time to clear enough of the skeleton to make a judgment. The small bones were gone, carried off long since to feed whatever animal had discovered them.

But the skull was there, and the shoulders, part of the rib cage—and the pelvis.

Mainwaring whistled under his breath while he worked, as if to keep the spirits at bay. At one point, he said to Rutledge, “I can see why the locals don’t like this place. I don’t much care for it myself. When I walked under the branches of the first trees, I felt as if I’d stepped back in time to something ugly. Do you believe in ghosts, Ian?”

“I could be persuaded to here. What are those, the thigh bones?”

“Yes. Best indicator of height. But the feet are gone.”

He continued to work, the lantern light shining on his face and on the bones that came to light under his careful prodding, his hands moving delicately as he cleared away rotting leaves and earth.

“That should do it,” he said, getting stiffly to his feet.

“You can have the local man—Inspector Cain, was it?— bring in people to finish the work. There’s no point in keeping this business secret any longer.”

“You’re telling me, then, that we’ve found what we came here to find.”

Rutledge felt depressed. It was a sad end for the pretty, lively girl he had pictured in his mind. Now the question was, who had brought her here and hidden her body?

And what was he going to tell Mary Ellison tomorrow morning?

This morning.

Mainwaring was cleaning his hands on his handkerchief. “You were right to send for me. It wouldn’t have done to pursue this case under the impression it explained Hensley’s unfortunate wounding. He couldn’t have had anything to do with our bones.”

Rutledge said, “I’m sorry?”

“I’ve just poked a hole in your favorite theory. This isn’t your lost Emma Mason. This is a man’s body. Probably closer to thirty-five than to forty. But he didn’t bury himself. Which says he was murdered. I can’t tell you how, there’s nothing on the remaining bones to show us.”

Inspector Cain came with his team of workmen and watched them scour the area around the site of the burial, looking for more evidence.

The people of Dudlington clustered close by the church, watching silently but unwilling to come any nearer.

Rutledge had knocked on Mary Ellison’s door as soon as he’d reached Dudlington, fairly certain she hadn’t gone to bed.

She answered the door fully dressed and stood there staring at him, waiting for the blow to fall.

He said, “We didn’t find Emma. I don’t know whether that’s a comfort to you or not.”

He thought for an instant she was going to fall, for she swayed and then caught the edge of the door’s frame with her hand.

“I can’t tell you whether it is or not. At my age, there’s not much time left to hope.”

The body was brought out of Frith’s Wood in a blanket and carried to Letherington.

Speculation was rife. Mrs. Melford and Mrs. Arundel had found an opportunity to speak to Rutledge, and Mrs.

Channing had come down to Hensley’s parlor, her face filled with sadness.

“I think I’m going to return to London,” she told Rutledge when there was a chance to speak to him privately. “I don’t like this place. It seems so bleak this morning, with everyone unsettled by what’s happening in the wood.”

“I saw the rector go into Mrs. Ellison’s house, hobbling on crutches. I would have taken my oath that I’d found her granddaughter. And I think she believed I had as well, although I didn’t tell her what we’d discovered.”

“Just as well. She’s a strong woman, she’ll manage.

Still, it brought everything back to her, I’m sure.”

“Yes.”

“Who is the young man who was working with you?”

“He’s from London.”

Mainwaring had gone up to Hensley’s bed and fallen asleep there, not stirring for several hours. Rutledge wished he could have done the same. Two nights without rest had left him groggy. And the ankle that had plagued him for several days had begun to ache again like the very devil from stumbling over the grave in the churchyard.

Hamish, withdrawn and silent, seemed tired as well.

Mrs. Channing, her mind elsewhere, said thoughtfully,

“This exonerates Constable Hensley. The girl wasn’t buried in the wood after all. Or so everyone is saying. But what happened to Emma Mason?”

“I don’t know. I don’t suppose anyone will.”

“I don’t think I’d be very good at police work. It’s dreadful sometimes, isn’t it?”

“Dreadful, yes.”

“I took the liberty of making tea,” she told him. “You’ll find it on the dining room table.”

“Thank you. I don’t seem to have much appetite this morning.” He walked into the dining room and poured himself a cup, adding sugar and a little milk.

She followed him there and stood in the middle of the room, as if uncertain what to do, go or stay. “Did you really want those bones to belong to the girl?”

He reached in his pocket for a telegram that Inspector Cain had handed him that morning, while waiting for his men to do their macabre work in the wood.

“I asked one of my best men in London to find what he could about Beatrice Ellison and her daughter, Emma Mason. He couldn’t trace either of them. Mrs. Ellison believes her daughter died when the Germans marched through Belgium. It may be true. Even so, it doesn’t explain what became of Emma.”

She took the telegram and scanned it. “Yes, I see. This, then, was your last hope. The body in the wood.”

“It may still be there, of course. But I have a feeling it isn’t.”

“I understand.”

She went back to the office to fetch her coat. “Was there a young man involved in the girl’s disappearance, do you think? If she’s married and living elsewhere, she’d be hard to find.”

“There was a young man—he was set to marry someone else. Whether she got herself involved with him or not, I don’t know. He died in the war. There’s a memorial to him in the churchyard.”

“Then she disappeared by her own choice. Perhaps because of that someone else. It would be hard to live in a village this small with the other woman, so to speak.”

“For a time,” he said, “I thought the other woman had killed her.”

Her eyebrows went up. “It could still be true.”

“I’d dig up that rose bed, if I thought it would do any good,” he said, half to himself.

It was Hamish who answered him. “Or look beneath yon wall.”

***

Grace Letteridge came to call shortly after Mrs. Channing had gone back to The Oaks.

She stepped briskly into the office and said, “I expect I owe Constable Hensley an apology. I always believed it was he who killed her. That he went to the wood time and again to see if anything had been disturbed. It made sense that he couldn’t stay away, that he wasn’t able to put it out of his mind. Out of guilt. But she’s not there, after all.”

Rutledge said, “Hensley isn’t well. He may not live.

Whoever shot him may be guilty of murder.”

“I didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re accusing me of.”

“You told me once,” Rutledge said, taking the chair behind the desk and leaning back in it, “that you would like to see him dead.”

She made a gesture with her hand, as if brushing away his words. “I’m not a murderer. Although I do have a temper sometimes. I won’t deny that.”

“We’re back where we began, then. Tell me, how old is your rose garden?”

“If you’re asking me if Emma is buried there, you’re a fool.”

“We could dig it up and find out. Inspector Cain can bring his men back to do it, after they’ve finished in the wood.”

She turned to go. “You’ll have to get a warrant, first,” she told him. “I won’t let you touch it without one.”

Rutledge was leafing through the file on Emma Mason when Mainwaring came in from conferring with the police in Letherington.

“I’ve talked to the local people—Cain, and his sergeant, and their coroner. Your body has probably been out there in the wood for some time. We aren’t in agreement about how long, but if you want my best guess, it would be forty years.”

“Forty—”

“Indeed. We’ve examined the bones in good light and in more detail, looked at the condition, and sifted through the soil around and under them. And this is what came out of the earth under them.”

He held out a slim gold toothpick.

Rutledge took it, turning it in his fingers. It had been engraved: Christmas 1881.

“It doesn’t prove he died then. He could have carried this for many years.”

“And this.”

It was a farthing, cleaned of its earth and corrosion. And it too bore the date 1881.

“Whoever went through his pockets missed both of them.”

“How many memories go back that far, to 1881?”

“Cain has promised to go through his predecessors’ files.”

“Yes, that’s the right place to start,” Rutledge agreed.

“Our bones must have come from one of the villages close by, if not Dudlington itself. Frith’s Wood is too far off the main road, and half hidden to boot. It’s not the most likely place for a stranger to conceal a body. For one thing, he wouldn’t know of the stigma attached to the wood.”

“The reverse could be said for the local people. They want no part of that wood, and I can’t say I blame them.

Cain had the devil of a time getting his work party together.”

Hamish said, “I wouldna’ wait for yon inspector to sift through files. There’s no pressing need to hurry, by his lights.”

It was true. But then Mrs. Arundel, the postmistress, could give him a list of the oldest inhabitants of Dudlington.

“I must say, Ian, that you do have the most interesting luck. I’m glad not to be in your shoes when Bowles hears of this.” Mainwaring held out his hand. “Cain has found someone driving to Northampton, and I should just make my train. Good luck, old man. You’re going to need it!”

Rutledge said, “Early days yet.”

They shook hands, and Mainwaring took the stairs two at a time on his way to fetch his case.

When he came down again, Rutledge had already gone.

Mrs. Arundel, sitting behind her brass cage, considered Rutledge’s question.

“The oldest residents... Well, Mrs. Lawrence on Church Street, for one. She lives with her grandson and his wife, Patricia. Mr. Cunningham, of course, but he’s not very clear in his mind, most days.”

It was the lorry belonging to workmen at the Lawrence house that had run him down. Mrs. Melford had informed him that they were turning one of the smaller bedrooms into a nursery.

“Yes, I think I know the house.” He thanked the postmistress and left.

Patricia Lawrence answered Rutledge’s knock. She was clearly pregnant, her maternity smock hardly concealing her condition. When he’d explained his business, she said doubtfully, “My husband’s grandmother is a lovely old lady, but she can be quite dotty at times. I don’t know if you’ll have much luck.”

The elder Mrs. Lawrence was reading in a small parlor on the first floor. Her glasses were perched on her nose, but her eyes were shut, and a soft whistle accompanied her breathing, just skirting a snore.

“Grandmama?” Mrs. Lawrence said, touching her shoulder lightly.

“Eh?” the old woman said, looking bemused. “I’m reading, can’t you tell?”

“There’s a policeman to see you, if you’re up to speaking with him.”

“Not that bold as brass constable, is it?”

“No, Grandmama. Inspector Rutledge is from Scotland Yard.”

Watery blue eyes moved to Rutledge, standing just behind the younger woman, and she looked him up and down. “He’s no policeman I know.”

“I’m here for a short while, until the constable recovers from his surgery,” Rutledge said, stepping forward. “I’m sorry to disturb your reading,” he added, pulling up the chair nearest to hers. “But I’m told that if anyone knows the history of Dudlington, it’s you.”

Sarah Lawrence smiled, delighted. “On my good days, I can tell you what it was like to see the old Queen married.

A pretty slip of a girl she was, then. Hardly came up to the Prince’s shoulder, but running to plumpness, if you ask me. I never saw that wicked Scotsman she was so fond of, but even as a small girl, I was quite taken with her Prince.

Pity he had to die, but there you are.”

“Yes.” He glanced up at Patricia Lawrence, indicating that he’d like to speak to her husband’s grandmother alone.

She nodded and said, “I’ll just fetch some tea. You’d like that, I think?”

Sarah Lawrence squinted her eyes to see the mantel clock. “Is it teatime already?”

“No, Grandmama, but we have a guest.”

“Yes, indeed. Very well, young man, tell me why you’ve come. It isn’t about the Queen, I’m sure. She’s dead.”

She was swathed in shawls, but her hair, pure white, was beautifully brushed, and her black dress was of good quality. Her grandson and his wife, Hamish noted, were taking good care of her.

“I remember my own granny,” he added, “and how she ruled the house.”

Rutledge said to Mrs. Lawrence as the sitting room door closed, “I’m looking for a man who went missing many years ago. Perhaps as early as 1881. Do you remember gossip about that?”

“What was his name?”

“Sadly we don’t know it.”

She stared at her lap, thinking. “In 1881, you say? That was the year we put in the pear tree, my husband and I. The one blown down in the storm of 1894. A pretty thing it was too, white clouds of blossoms covering every limb. I was that fond of the pear tree.”

“What was happening in Dudlington that year?” he prodded gently.

“When the storm came?”

“When you put in the pear tree.”

“Ah. I told you, that was 1881.”

He tried another tack. “Who was the doctor in 1881, Mrs. Lawrence? Do you remember his name?”

“It was Blair. Dr. Blair. I never liked him. Thought he knew more about children than their mothers did.”

“And who was the rector?”

“That would be Mr. Anderson, I think. Or, no, Mr. Anderson came in the next year. It was Mr. Fellowes.”

He walked her through the village, asking about the postmaster, the greengrocer, and every other person he could think of, to jar her memories.

“Do you remember Mrs. Ellison’s marriage? It must have been quite a social affair.”

“Pooh! She wasn’t married in St. Luke’s, too small by her lights. Connected with the Harkness family, you know.

Her aunt in Northampton arranged the wedding. There weren’t that many invited from Dudlington, though her husband had family here at the time. They’re gone, of course. That’s why he sold the farm. Mr. Shepherd owns it now. He wanted cattle, not sheep. Said his name would become a byword, if he ran sheep. They lost their only son in the war. Sad.”

“And who owned the baker’s shop?”

“Simpson’s father. He would let us have treats on our birthday.”

“What do you remember about the Christmas of 1881?” he asked, guiding her slowly.

But she frowned. “Was that a special Christmas, do you think? I don’t remember much good coming of it.”

“Why?”

“There was a typhoid outbreak that autumn. And my best friend died of it. I wasn’t intending to celebrate because of it. But Mr. Lawrence, my husband, told me we must think of the children. And the rector told me I mustn’t forsake God.”

He sat there for another ten minutes, priming the pump of her memory, to no avail. After all, it was many years ago, for a woman who must be well into her eighties.

But his questions had jarred some of the tangled threads in her mind, and as Patricia Lawrence brought in tea on a pretty painted tray, Sarah said, “Oh, do look, I’d forgot!

The teapot! I broke the spout on mine, and Mr. Ellison found me a match for it in London. He was there a number of times in ’82, and he said it might take my mind off Sally’s death. My friend, you see.”

“That was kind of him,” Rutledge replied, taking his cup as the younger woman passed them around.

“Yes, he was a kind man. I never knew what he’d seen in Mary Clayton. Except that she was cousin to a Harkness and pretty as a picture.”

She was off again on another line of thought, recalling that her own father had known old Mr. Harkness, “who died of a broken heart when the manor burned to the ground. He collected butterflies, you know. His niece kept some of the trays at her house. That’s The Oaks, of course.

It’s seen a sad comedown since her day, let me tell you.”

He finished his tea and rose to take his leave. Sarah Lawrence seemed disappointed, as if she had expected him to entertain her for another hour or so.

Rousing herself, she made an effort to hold his attention. “You were asking me about ’81. Except for the typhoid, it wasn’t an unusual year, you know. But ’82, now, that was a year of tragedy. The rector’s wife died, Gerald Baylor was nearly trampled to death by one of his bulls, and Mr. Ellison died in an accident in London. A runaway horse, that was. And him leaving behind that dear little girl. Beatrice was such a suitable name, you know. I can remember her christening as if it were yesterday.”

Rutledge left soon afterward and found himself walking toward St. Luke’s Church. It was a place of tranquillity, with no echoes of Constable Hensley, Emma Mason, or Mrs. Channing.

Inside it was chilly, the stone walls already letting go of what had briefly passed for the winter sun’s warmth. He pulled up his coat collar as he chose a chair set near the pulpit, his mind working.

Hamish said, “It’s nae use, it willna’ all fit together.”

“Somehow it does. In the end I’ll see my way clear.” His voice startled him, ringing hollowly through the empty church.

“You were sent here wi’ only the ain duty.”

“Murder is my duty.”

“Aye, but no’ a corpse long dead before you were born.”

Rutledge didn’t answer him.

Hamish persisted. “It willna’ serve. There’s nae proof.

You canna’ find it after a’ this time.”

“I must speak with the rector.”

“He’s no’ the man to burden with such a tale.”

It was true. The rector, for all his experience of the world, was also a little unworldly. He wouldn’t believe what Rutledge had to tell him, and the gossip mill would soon have part of the story if not all of it.

“The doctor, then.”

“Aye. The doctor.”

After a time, Rutledge left the church and went to find Dr. Middleton.

Middleton would have none of it. “You’re reaching for the moon, you know.”

“I think what I just described to you is likely. Certainly it’s possible.”

“And how do you expect to prove it? Be reasonable, man, there’s nothing to be gained by looking into it, and it could cause a great deal of pain if you’re wrong.”

There was that as well.

“You’ll give me your word not to speak of any of this?”

Rutledge asked.

Middleton smiled grimly. “I live here, you know. I’m not about to cut my throat to spite my face!”

Rutledge went back to Hensley’s house and began to write his report.

An hour later, he finished it and set it aside under a stack of papers on Hensley’s desk.

Mrs. Channing tapped lightly at the door shortly afterward and said, “I’ve come to say good-bye. My bags are packed, and the car has been brought around.”

“It isn’t over yet,” he told her.

“There’s been nothing since the lorry ran you down. I think he’s warned off after such a public display. Or tired of the game. I expect he wanted someone he could frighten badly. And if that’s true, he chose the wrong man.”

“You don’t lie very well.”

“I don’t want to see you die,” she said bluntly. “I’ve seen enough of death and destruction. I want to hold my séances and bring back dead kings and silly jesters and the ghost of Hamlet’s father. There’s no harm in that, and it makes people laugh. And it keeps my mind from dwelling on what it shouldn’t be remembering. You were the soldier, Inspector, but I put soldiers back together. Or tried to help others do that. I don’t know which is worse.”

“I’m about to make an arrest. As soon as I do, I can leave Dudlington.”

“I think you only want me here to keep an eye on me.”

“It’s partly true.”

She was suddenly angry. “I’m going back to London.

It’s too late to change my mind.”

“Then go.”

Mrs. Channing said, in exasperation, “That’s so like a man. All right, I’ll call your bluff, Inspector. Good-bye.”

She walked to the door and was on her way out when she stopped and turned.

“I think Frank Keating has been in prison. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps the way he avoids people. If he’s paid his price for whatever he did, it doesn’t matter. But if you had sent him there—it might be worth looking into. Consider that bit of information my parting gift.”