The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

Trafalgar CHARLES TODD

Mumford, Cambridgeshire, 1920

The old dog died at two o’clock, thrown unceremoniously out of his warm bed by the fire and on to the cold January ground.

And it was this fact that troubled Rutledge as he delved deeper into the mystery of Sir John Middleton’s death.

It was the housekeeper-cum-cook, gone to the village for onions for Sir John’s dinner, who found the old dog lying by the wall under the study window. Mrs Gravely, stooping to touch the greying head, said, “Oh, my dear!” aloud — for the old dog had been company in the house for her as well — and went inside to deliver the sad news.

Opening the door into the study as she was pulling her wool scarf from her head, she said anxiously, “Sir John, as I was coming in, I found — ”

Breaking off, she cried out in horror, ran to the body on the floor at the side of the Georgian desk, and bent to take one hand in her own as she knelt stiffly to stare into the bloody mask that was her employer’s face.

Her first thought was that he’d fallen and struck the edge of the desk, she told Rutledge afterwards. “I feared he’d got up from his chair to look for Simba, and took a dizzy turn. He had them sometimes, you know.”

The doctor had already confirmed this, and Rutledge nodded encouragingly, because he trusted Mrs Gravely’s honesty. He hadn’t been particularly impressed by the doctor’s manner.

Rutledge had been in Cambridge on Yard business, to identify a man brought in by the local constabulary. McDaniel was one of the finest forgers in the country, and it had appeared that the drunken Irishman, taken up after a brawl in a pub on the outskirts of town, was the man the police had been searching for since before the Great War. He fitted the meagre description sent round to every police station in the country. In the event, he was not their man — red hair and ugly scar on the side of the face notwithstanding. But Rutledge had a feeling that the McDaniel they wanted had slipped away in the aftermath of the brawl. The incarcerated man had rambled on about the cousin who would sort out the police quick enough, if he were there. When the police arrived at the lodgings that their man in custody had shared with his cousin, there was no one else there — and no sign that anyone else had ever been there. The case had gone cold, and Rutledge was preparing to return to the Yard when the Chief Constable came looking for him.

“Sir John Middleton was murdered in his own home,” Rutledge was told. “I want his killer, and I’ve asked the Yard to take over the inquiry. You’re to go there now, and I’ll put it right with the Chief Superintendent. The sooner someone takes charge, the better.”

And it was clear enough that the Chief Constable knew what he was about. For the local constable, a man named Forrest, was nervously pacing the kitchen when Rutledge got there, and the inspector who had been sent for from Cambridge had already been recalled. The body still lay where it had been found, pending Rutledge’s arrival, and, according to Forrest, no one had been interviewed.

Thanking him, Rutledge went into the study to look at the scene.

Middleton lay by the corner of his desk, one arm outstretched as if pleading for help.

“He was struck twice,” a voice said behind him, and Rutledge turned to find a thin, bespectacled man standing in the doorway. “Dr Taylor,” he went on. “I was told to wait in the parlour until you got here. The first blow was from behind, to the back of the head, knocking Sir John down but not killing him. A second blow to the face at the bridge of his nose finished him. I don’t know that he saw the first coming. He most certainly saw the second.”

“The weapon?”

Taylor shrugged. “Hard to say until I can examine him more closely. Nothing obvious, at any rate.”

“Has anything been taken?” Rutledge asked, turning to look at the room. It had not been ransacked. But a thief, knowing what he was after, would not have needed to search. There were framed photographs on the walls, an assortment of weapons — from an Australian boomerang to a Zulu cowhide shield — were arrayed between them, and every available surface seemed to hold souvenirs from Sir John’s long career in the army. A Kaiser Wilhelm helmet stood on the little table under the windows, the wooden propeller from a German aircraft was displayed across the tops of the bookshelves, and a half dozen brass shell-casings — most of them examples of trench art — were lined up in a cabinet that held more books.

“You must ask Mrs Gravely that question. The housekeeper. She’s been with him for a good many years. I went through the house, a cursory look after examining the body, to be certain there was no one hiding in another room. I saw nothing to indicate robbery.”

“Any idea when he was killed?”

“We can pinpoint the time fairly well from other evidence. When Mrs Gravely left to go into Mumford, he was alive and well, because she went to the study to ask if there were any letters she could take to the post for him. She was gone by her own account no more than three quarters of an hour, and found him lying as you see him when she returned. At a guess, I’d say he died between two and two-thirty.”

Rutledge nodded. “Thank you, Doctor. I’ll speak to her in a moment.”

It was dismissal, and the doctor clearly wished to remain. But Rutledge stood where he was, waiting, and finally the man turned on his heel and left the room. He didn’t precisely slam the door in his wake, but it closed with a decidedly loud snap.

Rutledge went to the window and looked out. It was then he saw the dog lying against the wall, only its feet and tail visible from that angle. Opening the window and bringing in the cold, damp winter air, he leaned out. There was no doubt the animal was dead.

He left the study and went out to kneel by the dog, which did not appear to have been harmed in the attack on Sir John. Death seemed to be due to natural causes and old age, judging from the greying muzzle.

Hamish said, “There’s been no one to bury him.”

An interesting point. He touched the body, but it was cold, already stiffening.

Back inside, he asked the constable where he could find Mrs Gravely, and he was told she was in her room at the top of the house.

He knocked, and a husky voice called “Come in.”

It was a small room, but backed up to the kitchen chimney and was warm enough. Cast-offs from the main part of the house furnished it: a brass bed, an oak bedside table, two comfortable wing chairs on either side of a square of blue carpet, and a maple table under the half-moon window in the eaves. A narrow bookcase held several novels and at least four cookbooks.

The woman seated in the far wing-chair rose as he crossed the threshold. She had been crying, but she seemed to be over the worst of her shock. He noted the teacup and saucer on the table and thought the constable must have brought it to her, not the doctor.

“I’m Inspector Rutledge from Scotland Yard. The Chief Constable has asked me to take over the inquiry into Sir John’s death. Do you feel up to speaking to me?”

“Yes, sir. But I wasn’t here, you see. If I had been — ”

“If you had been,” he said, cutting across her guilt-ridden anguish, “you might have died with him.”

She stared at him. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

He began by asking her about Sir John.

By her account, Sir John Middleton was a retired military man, having served in the Great War. Rutledge could, of his own knowledge, add that Sir John had served with distinction in an HQ not noted for its brilliance. He at least had been a voice of sanity there and was much admired for it, even though it had not aided his Army career. Had he made enemies, then?

Hamish said, “Aye, it’s possible. He didna’ fear his killer. Or put up a struggle.”

And that was a good point.

“Was he alive when you reached him?”

“Yes, I could see that he was still breathing, ragged though it was. He cried out, just the one word, when I bent to touch him, as if he knew I was there. As if, looking back on it now, he’d held on waiting for me. Because he seemed to let go then, but I could tell he wasn’t dead. I was that torn — leaving him to go for the doctor or staying with him.”

“What did he say? Could you understand him?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Trafalgar, he said. Clear as could be. I ran out then, shouting for help, and I met Sam on the road. He was willing to take a message to Dr Taylor, and so I came back to sit beside Sir John, but I doubt he knew I was there. Still, it wasn’t until Dr Taylor was bending over him that I heard the death rattle. I think he tried to speak again, just before.”

The doctor had said nothing about that.

“Are you certain Sir John spoke to Dr Taylor?”

But Mrs Gravely was not to be dissuaded. “I was in the doorway, facing Sir John’s desk. He had his back to me, the doctor did, but I could just see Sir John’s mouth, and his lips moved. I’d swear to that.”

“Did he know that it was the doctor who was with him? Was he aware, do you think, of where he was?”

“I can’t speak to that, sir. I only know he spoke. And the doctor answered him.”

“Could you hear what was said?”

“No, sir. But I thought he was trying to say the old dog’s name. Simba. It means lion, I was told. I can’t say whether he was trying to call to him or was asking where he’d got to.”

“How did Dr Taylor respond?”

“I don’t know, sir. I could see the doctor rock back on his heels, and then came the death rattle. I knew he was gone. Sir John. There was nothing to be done, was there? The doctor said so, afterwards.”

Rutledge could hear the echo of the doctor’s voice in her words, “I couldn’t do anything for him.”

“And then?”

“Dr Taylor turned and saw me in the doorway. He told me to find my coat and go outside to wait for the ambulance. But it wasn’t five minutes before he was at the door calling to me and telling me there was no need for the ambulance now. It might as well be the hearse. Well, I could have told him as much, but then he’s the one to give evidence at the inquest, isn’t he? He had to be certain sure.”

Rutledge went back to something Mrs Gravely had said earlier. “Trafalgar. What does that mean to you?”

The housekeeper frowned. “I don’t know, sir. As I remember from school, it was a battle. At sea. When Lord Nelson was killed.”

“That’s true,” Rutledge told her. “It was fought off the coast of Spain in 1805. But Sir John was an army man. And his father and grandfather before him.” He had seen the photographs in the study. At least two generations of officers, staring without expression into the lens of the camera. And a watercolour sketch of another officer, wearing a Guards uniform from before the Crimean War.

“Will you come down with me to the study? There are some photographs I’d like to ask you to identify.”

“Please, sir,” she answered anxiously. “Not if he’s still there. I couldn’t bear it. But I’ll know the pictures, I’ve dusted them since they were put up there.”

“Fair enough. The woman, then, with the braid of her hair encircling the frame.”

“That’s Lady Middleton, sir, his second wife. Elizabeth, she was. She died in childbirth, and the boy with her. I don’t think he ever got over her death.”

“Second wife?”

“He was married before that. To Althea Barnes. She died as well, out in India. He’d tried to persuade her that it was no place for a woman, but she insisted on going with him. Two years later she was dead of the cholera.”

“The young man in the uniform of the Buffs?”

“His brother Martin. He died in the first gas attack at Ypres.”

“And the old dog, outside the study window. That, I take it, is Simba? When did he die?”

“It was the strangest thing!” Mrs Gravely told him. “He was lying by the fire, as he always did, when I left for the village. And I come home to find him outside there in the cold. He was still warm, he couldn’t have been there very long. I can’t think what happened. I come into the study to tell Sir John that, and there he was, dying. I couldn’t quite take it all in.”

He thanked her for her help, and left her there mourning the man she’d served so long and no doubt wondering now what was to become of her.

Sam Hubbard, the farm-worker who had gone for Dr Taylor, had had the foresight to summon the rector as well. Rutledge found Sam standing in the kitchen talking to Constable Forrest and warming his hands at the cooker, mud on his boots and his face red from the cold.

He turned and gave Rutledge his name, adding, “I’ve buried the old dog under the apple tree, as Sir John would have wished. They planted that tree together. A pity Sir John can’t be buried there as well.”

“Did you find anything wrong with the dog? Any signs that he’d been harmed?”

Sam shook his head. “It was old age, and the cold as well, I expect. He was having trouble with his breathing, Simba was.”

“Did you work for Sir John?”

“He sent for me when there was heavy work to be done. Mr Laurence, who lives just down the road, doesn’t have enough to keep me busy these days. And, in my free time, I did what I could for Sir John. He was a good man. There weren’t many like him at HQ. More’s the pity.”

“In the war, were you?”

“I was. And I have a splinter of shrapnel in my shoulder to prove it.”

Rutledge considered him. He’d been coming up the road when Mrs Gravely had hailed him, but he could just as easily have been going the other way, turning when he heard her and pretending to know nothing about what had happened here in the house. And he’d taken it upon himself to bury the old dog.

“Where were you this afternoon? Before Mrs Gravely asked your help?”

Sam Hubbard’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you think I could have killed Sir John? I’d have died for him, for speaking up during the war and trying to keep as many of us poor bastards alive as he could. They were bloody butchers, save for him. Caring nothing for the men who had to die each time there was a push or a plan. If it was one of the likes of them lying dead in the study, you’d have to wonder if I had had a hand in it. But not Sir John.”

The passionate denial rang true — but Hubbard had had time to consider the questions the police would be asking. Tell one’s self something often enough, and it soon became easier to believe it. Like the rehearsals of an actor learning his part.

Mr Harris, the rector, was in the parlour. He had seen the body before the constable had got there, and he seemed shaken, standing by the parlour windows with a drink in his hand.

“Dutch courage,” he said ruefully, lifting the glass as Rutledge opened the door. “I don’t see many murder victims in my patch. And I thank God for that. How is Mrs Gravely faring?”

“She’s a little better, I think. What can you tell me about Sir John? Have you known him very long?”

“I’d describe him as a lonely man,” Harris told Rutledge pensively. “I encouraged him to take an interest in village affairs, to see the need for someone of his calibre to serve on the vestry. But he was loathe to involve himself here. It’s not his home, you know. He was from Hereford, I believe, but sold up and moved here after the war. He said the house was not the same without his wife, and he couldn’t bear the emptiness — his word. Elizabeth was much younger, you see. Sir John was married twice. Once early on in his career, and then again some months before the fighting began in 1914.”

“Did he bring Mrs Gravely with him from Hereford?” He’d noted her accent was not local.

“Yes, she was taken on by Elizabeth Middleton just before their marriage, and she agreed to stay with him after her mistress died.”

“I understand his first wife died in India. Of cholera. Is there any proof of that, do you think? Or do we just have Sir John’s word for what happened to her?”

“That’s rather suspicious of you!”

“In a murder case, there are few certainties.”

“Well, I can only tell you that it’s written down in the Middleton family Bible. It’s on the bookshelf behind the desk. I’ve seen the entry.”

But what was inscribed in the family Bible was not necessarily witnessed by God, whatever the rector wished to believe.

“Did they get on well?”

“I have no idea. Except that he described Althea Middleton once as headstrong. Apparently, she’d insisted on having her way in all things, including going to India.”

“Did she also live in Herefordshire?”

“I believe she came from somewhere along the coast. Near Torquay. I went there once on holiday, and knew the area a little. Sir John mentioned her home in connection with my travels. The second Lady Middleton — he called her Eliza — was a love match, certainly on his part. He wore a black armband throughout the war and told me, if it hadn’t been for his duty, he’d not have been able to go on without her.”

“No children of either marriage?”

“None that I ever heard of. Which reminds me, speaking of family. You might include poor Simba in that category. I saw his body there under the window.” Harris shook his head. “The dog was devoted to Sir John. I’d see the two of them walking across the fields of an afternoon, when I was on my rounds. I wonder who put him out. It isn’t — wasn’t — like Sir John. Odd, that, I must say.”

“Odd?”

“Yes, he would never have shown Simba the door, not at the dog’s advanced age. The dog had belonged to Elizabeth, you see. Sir John had been worried about him since before Christmas, when his breathing seemed to worsen. It got better, but it was a warning, you might say, that his end was near. Sir John would have gone outside with him, and brought him in again as soon as he’d done his business.”

“But they walked the fields together?”

“Yes. I meant over the years, you know. Not recently, of course.”

Which, Hamish was pointing out, could explain why the killer came to the house rather than accost Sir John on an outing.

But the dog had been with him today, Rutledge replied. And the dog was put outside. Had the visitor arrived at the door just as his victim was preparing to walk the dog?

Hamish said, “He was killed in the study, no’ in the entry.”

“Does Trafalgar mean anything to you?” Rutledge asked Harris.

“It was a great sea battle. And of course it’s a cape along the southern Spanish coast. The battle was named from it, I believe.”

“That’s no’ likely to figure largely in a military man’s death in Cambridgeshire,” Hamish commented.

Rutledge thanked the rector, and Harris went in search of Mrs Gravely, to offer what comfort he could.

There was a tap at the door, and Rutledge went to open it himself.

Dr Taylor had returned, and nodding over his shoulder to the hearse from Cambridge, he said, “If you’ve finished, I’ll take charge of the body.”

“Yes, go ahead. When will you have your report?”

“By tomorrow morning, I should think. It ought to be fairly straightforward. We have a clear idea of when Mrs Gravely left for market, and when she returned. And the wounds more or less speak for themselves. I don’t expect any surprises.”

Nor did Rutledge. But he said, “Have a care, all the same.”

Taylor said sharply, “I always do.”

Rutledge stepped aside, watching as the men collected Sir John’s body from the study and carried it out the door.

As he walked with them to the hearse, one of them said to him, “I was in the war. I’ll see he’s taken care of.” Rutledge nodded, standing in the cold wind until the hearse had turned and made its way back on to the road into Mumford.

As he swung around to go back inside, he saw Mrs Gravely at an upstairs window, a handkerchief to her mouth, tears running down her cheeks. Behind her stood the rector, a hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Rutledge was glad to shut the door against the wind, and rubbed his palms smartly together as he stood there thinking. Had the killer knocked, he wondered, and waited until Sir John had answered the summons, or had he come in through the unlocked door and made his way to the study?

Hamish said, “He knocked.”

“Why are you so certain?” Rutledge answered the voice in his head. It was always there — had been since July of 1916, when Corporal Hamish MacLeod was executed for refusing to carry out a direct order from a superior officer. The price, Rutledge knew, of MacLeod’s care of his men, shifting the burden of guilt from his own shoulders to Rutledge’s. It had not been easy that day to send weary, sleep-deprived soldiers over the top again and again and again, knowing they would not survive. But orders were orders, and, although numbed to the cost, as the battle of the Somme raged on, Rutledge had done what he could to shield them. It hadn’t been enough, he knew that, and Hamish knew it. And Hamish had broken first, willing to die himself rather than watch more men sacrificed. The machine-gun nest was impregnable, and every soldier in the line was all too aware of it. No amount of persuasion had shifted Hamish MacLeod from his determination not to lead another attack and, in the end, an example had had to be made.

And Rutledge, well aware that the young Scottish corporal would not see home again, had delivered the coup de grace to the dying man. But Hamish MacLeod did come back — in Rutledge’s battered mind: an angry and vengeful voice at first, and then with time, a relentless companion who yielded no quarter, sharing the days and nights, and silent only when Rutledge slept, although dreams often brought him awake again, into Hamish’s grip once more.

“Because the man was struck from behind. He wouldna’ have let a stranger get behind him.”

It was a very good point, and Rutledge agreed. A knock, then, and Sir John opened the door to someone he knew. They walked back into the study, and at some point the old dog was put out. Before or after Sir John had been attacked? There was no way of knowing. Yet.

He went into the study and began his search.

He saw the Bible at once, on the shelf just as the rector had told him. Opening it to the parchment pages between the old and new testaments, Rutledge scanned the record of family marriages, then turned the page to look through the listing of deaths.

There was the entry for Middleton’s first marriage and, in darker ink but the same hand years later, his second. Entries also of his wives’ deaths.

Althea Margaret Barnes Middleton, of cholera, he read, with the date and Calcutta, India after it.

And then, in a hand that was shaking with grief, Elizabeth Alice Mowbray Middleton, in childbirth. Under that, John Francis Mowbray Middleton, stillborn.

Putting the Bible back where he found it, Rutledge began to go through the desk drawers. Two of them held sheets of foolscap. He realized that Sir John had been writing his memoirs of the Great War. Glancing through the sheaf of pages, he saw that Middleton had just reached the Somme, in 1916. The next chapter was headed, Bloodbath. He quickly returned the stack to the drawers, then paused to consider the possibility that Sir John had been killed to stop him from finishing the manuscript. But if that was the case, why leave the pages here, to be found — and possibly completed — by someone else?

Hamish said, “Was it unfinished, or is part missing?”

“I can’t be sure.” He made a mental note to speak to Harris about the manuscript.

The rest of the desk held nothing of interest, and the bookshelves appeared to be just that — shelves of books the dead man had collected over a lifetime, with no apparent secrets among them.

He saw the small box on a reading table next to the bookshelves, and picked it up. It was very old, he thought, and inlaid with what appeared to be ivory and mother of pearl. Opening it, he looked inside. It was lined with worn silk, but otherwise empty.

As he was putting it back in place, a title in gilt lettering on the shelf by the table caught his eye, and he frowned. A History of The Barnes Family.

That was the maiden name of Sir John’s first wife. He pulled the volume from the shelf and looked at the title page. There was an inscription on the opposite page: To Althea, with much love, Papa. The frontispiece was a painting of a house standing at the edge of what appeared to be a lake, Georgian and foursquare, with a terrace overlooking a narrow garden that ran down to a small boat-landing, jutting out into the water. Rutledge turned the book on its side to read the caption.

Trafalgar. Dartmouth, Devon.

He turned to the index, and looked for the name there. There were several references to the house as well as the battle. The house, he discovered on page 75, was built in Dartmouth in 1800, on the site of an earlier dwelling, and rechristened Trafalgar after the head of the family had served on HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship on that fateful day. The water in front of the house was Dartmouth Harbour.

Going in search of the rector, Rutledge found him having tea with Mrs Gravely. Harris stood as Rutledge came into the kitchen, saying, “What is it?”

“Just a few more questions,” Rutledge said easily. “What do you know about Althea Middleton?”

“Very little,” Harris admitted. “Only what Sir John told me over the years.”

“Her family is from Dartmouth.”

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I told you she had lived near Torquay. Not surprising. Her father was a Navy man — like his father before him apparently — and probably his father’s father as well, for all I know.” He smiled wryly. “Sir John told me once that her father was appalled that she had fallen in love with an army officer. He had felt that nothing less than a Naval captain would suit.”

“One of her ancestors served aboard Victory.”

“Did he indeed! I don’t think Sir John ever mentioned that fact. Just that hers was a naval family and he’d enjoyed more than a few arguments with her father about sea power and the course of the Empire.”

“Sir John also appears to have been writing a history of the Great War.”

“He always said he was tempted to write about his experiences. I didn’t know he’d actually begun. It would have been worth reading, his view of the war.”

Mrs Gravely said, “A history? He liked to work of an evening, after his dinner. I wasn’t to disturb him then, he said. He was a great reader. I never gave it another thought on mornings when I found the study floor littered with his atlases and notes.”

Rutledge turned back to Harris. “Who lives in the Barnes house in Dartmouth now?”

“There’s a house? I had no idea. Let me see, there was something said once, about Althea Middleton having had a brother. But, as I remember, he was disinherited. And Barnes himself died whilst his daughter was in India.”

“Then it must have been his daughter who inherited the property, and it passed to Sir John at her death.” He would ask Sergeant Gibson at the Yard to look into the matter. “His solicitor is the same as mine,” Harris told him, and gave Rutledge directions to the firm in Mumford.

“Would you care for a cup of tea, Mr Rutledge?” Mrs Gravely asked. “I was just about to make a fresh pot.”

“Thank you, no,” he said. “Has anyone come to call on Sir John in the past few weeks?”

“Not since before Christmas,” she answered him. “And then it was a man who’d lost his foot in the war and had been given a wooden one in its place. I heard him come up the walk, because it made an odd sound. A thump it was, and then a lighter sound, as he put his cane down with the good foot. The old dog growled something fierce, and I had to hold on to his collar when I went to the door.”

A cane. The murder weapon hadn’t been found, the likelihood being that the killer had taken it away with him. A cane could have done the damage to Middleton’s head and face, if wielded with enough force.

“Do you remember his name?”

“He didn’t give it, sir. He said, ‘Tell Sir John it’s an old comrade in arms.’ And I did as he asked. Sir John went to see for himself, while I took the old dog into the kitchen with me.”

Was that why the dog had been put outside? Because he knew — and disliked — the killer?

Rutledge thanked her and went back to his search of the house. There was money in a wallet in the bedside table, but it had not been touched. Nor had the gold cuff-links in a box on the tall chest by the bedroom door. What had the killer been after, if not robbery?

Trafalgar? A property in Dartmouth?

The deed.

Rutledge left to find a telephone, and had to drive into Cambridge before he was successful. He put in a call to Sergeant Gibson at the Yard, and gave him a list of what he needed.

“I’m driving to Dartmouth,” he said. “I’ll find a telephone there as soon as I arrive.”

“To Dartmouth?” Gibson repeated doubtfully. “You know your own business best.”

“Let’s hope I do,” Rutledge replied. He left a message with the Cambridge police, and set out to skirt London to the southwest.

It was early on the third day that he arrived in Dartmouth, having spent two nights on the road after running short of petrol near Slough. Colourful houses spilled down the sides of the high ridge that overlooked the town and the water. Most of them were still dark at this hour. Across the harbour was the town of Kingswear, just as dark. He found a hotel on a quiet side street, a narrow building with three floors, its façade black and white half-timbering. The sleepy clerk, yawning prodigiously, gave him a room at the front of the hotel with a view of the harbour. He stood by the window for some time, looking down towards the quay and the dark water, dotted with boats silently riding the current.

The Dart River opened up here to form the harbour, and castles — ruins now — had once guarded the entrance to this safe haven. It was deep enough for ships, and wide enough for a ferry to convey passengers from one side to the other. Just whereabouts the house called Trafalgar was situated, he didn’t know. He hoped the hotel clerk might.

In the event, the man did not. “Before my time, I daresay. You could ask at the bookshop on the next corner,” he suggested later that morning. “Arthur Hillier is the person you want. Oldest man around. If there was a house by that name, he’ll know of it. But I doubt there is. You’ve come on a wild goose chase to my way of thinking.”

Rutledge found the bookstore just past the shoemaker’s shop. It possessed a broad front, the tall windows displaying books on every subject, but mostly about the sea and Dartmouth itself, including works on the wine trade with France and fishing the cod banks. A bell jingled as he opened the door, and an elderly man looked up, brushing a strand of white hair out of still-sharp blue eyes.

“Good morning, sir,” he said cheerfully. “Here to browse, or is there something in particular you’re looking for?”

“Information, if you please,” Rutledge replied. “I’m trying to locate a dwelling that was here some years ago.” He had brought with him the volume on the Barnes family history, and opened it to the frontispiece. “This house, in fact.”

Hillier pulled a pair of eyeglasses from his cardigan pocket and put them on. “Ah. Trafalgar. It isn’t called that any more. For a time it was a home for indigent naval officers and, after that, it was a clinic during the war. Now it’s more or less derelict. Sad really.”

“Do you know anything about the former owners?”

“Well, you do have the Barnes history, don’t you? But I knew the last of the family to live there. Not well, you understand. Fanciful name for the house. It was called that after an ancestor was wounded the same day Lord Nelson was killed. Quite the fashion to commemorate the battle with monuments and the like. Trafalgar Square in London was one of the last to do so; I expect they didn’t know what else to do with that great patch of emptiness. At any rate, the house was River’s End before that — just where the Dart opens into the harbour, you see.” He gestured to the door. “Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

Rutledge followed him out of the shop, towards the harbour. “There’s a boat,” Hillier was saying, “that will convey you to the mouth of the River Dart. Where it broadens into the harbour, you can just see the rooftops of Trafalgar over that stand of trees. They weren’t there in my day, those trees. You could see the gardens then. Quite a sight in the spring, I remember.”

He could see where Hillier was pointing, but the morning sun hadn’t yet reached that part of the harbour, and he had to take the man’s word for it that the house was behind the trees. But then he looked a little farther along. There, just visible over the treetops, was the line of a roof.

“The boatman is just there, at the foot of the water stairs. Jesse is his name. He’ll see you there and back without any trouble.”

“You said you knew the last of the family to live there. What do you remember about him?”

“He was troubled with gout and often ill-tempered,” the bookseller answered. “But catch him in good spirits, and he could tell sea-stories that were marvellous to hear.”

Rutledge thanked Hillier, and walked on towards the harbour. He found the water stairs and the small boat tied up just under them. Jesse was nowhere to be seen. Rutledge turned to look back at the town, just as a man popped out of the pub on the corner, rolling down in his direction, a wide grin on his unshaven face.

“Morning,” he said. “Going sommers?”

“I’d like to hire your boat for an hour or so. Are you willing?”

“I come with the boat,” he said, close enough now for Rutledge to smell the gin on his breath. He began to cast off, gestured to Rutledge to step aboard, and sat down to pick up the heavy oak oars.

“Where to?”

“The house you can hardly see behind the trees over there.”

“The clinic that was? Why do you want to go there? Not much to see, now.”

“Nevertheless …”

Nodding, Jesse moved out of the shelter of the water stairs, pulled into the current, turned smartly, and headed upstream. “We’re against the tide,” he said. “It will cost you more to go up than to come down.”

“I understand.”

It was cold down here on the water, wind sweeping down the chute between the high ridge on which Dartmouth sprawled, and the lower one on the opposite bank. In the distance he could hear a train whistle, and, soon after, the white plumes of a steam engine could be seen coming into Kingswear. As they reached mid-harbour, Rutledge buttoned his coat up to his collar against the bite of the January air. But Jesse, in shirt sleeves, seemed not to feel the cold, plying his oars and glancing over his shoulder from time to time to take stock of any other river traffic that morning. A quarter of an hour later, Jesse drew up by what had once been a fine private landing, rotting now and slippery with moss.

“Going to explore, are you? Watch where you step or I’ll be fishing you out of the river.”

As he clambered out on what was left of the private landing, he saw that it would be precarious at best to make his way across the broken boards. Moving gingerly, he finally gained the tree-line and stepped ashore. The trees had grown unhindered for fifteen years or more, he thought. He needed an axe really, to fight his way through the undergrowth that blocked any semblance of a path.

Eventually, he’d made it to the garden beyond — itself a thicket of dead plants, weeds, and vines. Above it was a terrace, and he climbed the broad steps to the long French doors that let into the house. To his surprise, one of them was unlocked, and after the briefest hesitation, he went inside.

It was out of the wind, but the house was cold, only in a different way: unused, unheated, winter seeping into the very bricks. The room in which he found himself had once been beautiful, with a pale green paper on the walls — a pattern of Chinese figures in blues and reds and deep gold, sitting in a formal garden. But it was stained now, and torn in places. A temporary wall, still there, divided the spacious room in half. If there had been any of the original furniture here, it had certainly now gone.

He made his way to the door, found himself in a passage, and began to explore. The stairs had been battered and bruised by the comings and goings of staff and patients, and the only furniture he saw were the remnants of cots in a few rooms, mostly with legs missing or springs broken. Not worth removing, he thought, when the clinic was closed. He wondered if Sir John had been aware of the state of the house, or didn’t care. He walked though the rooms, noting how they had been used, and how they had been left. A broken window on the ground floor had allowed leaves and rain to ruin the floorboards, and a desk in what must have been Matron’s office lay on its side, a nest of mice or squirrels in one half-opened drawer.

He found nothing of interest — except for signs that someone had been here before him, footprints in the dust, a bed of worn blankets and quilts by the coal stove in the kitchen, and indications that someone had also cooked there; a dented teapot still on the cast-iron top, and a saucepan on the floor.

Who had been in this house? A vagrant, looking for shelter against the winter cold and happening on it quite by accident; or someone who had come to this house because he knew it was there? A former patient? Or someone else?

Hamish said, “Look at the dust.”

And he lit a match, studying the pattern of footprints hardly visible in the pale light coming through the dirty window panes.

The person who had been here had left his mark. Two shoes, one dragging a little as if the ankle didn’t bend properly. And the small round ferrule of a walking stick. Or a lame man’s cane.

Rutledge knelt there considering the prints, hearing again Mrs Gravely’s description of how Sir John’s December caller had sounded coming up the walk to the door. These prints were not recent. He would swear to that. Fresh dust had settled over them, almost obliterating them in places.

He went back through the house looking for something, anything, that might be a clue to the interloper.

All he found was a crushed packet that once held cigarettes. It had been tossed into the coal stove and forgotten. He smoothed it out as best he could and saw that it was an Australian brand.

Giving it up, he went back to the door on to the terrace and stepped out, shutting it behind him.

Jesse was still sitting in his boat, smoking a cigarette of his own.

“Where can I buy Australian cigarettes?” Rutledge asked the man.

“Portsmouth, at a guess. London. Not here. No call for them here. Why? Develop a taste for them in the war, did you?”

“No. I found an empty box in the house. Someone had been living there.”

Jesse seemed not to be too surprised. “Men out of work in this weather take what shelter they can find. I came on one asleep in my boat a year back. Wrapped in a London newspaper for warmth, he was. I bought him a breakfast, and sent him on his way.”

“Any Australians in Dartmouth?”

“Up at the Royal Navy College on the hill, there might be,” Jesse told him, manoeuvring the boat expertly into the stream again. “But they’d be officers, wouldn’t they? Not likely to be breaking into a house.” The ornate red brick college — more like a palace than a school, and completed in 1905 — had seen the present king, George V, attend as a cadet. Jesse bent his back to the oars, grinning. “What do you want with a derelict old house?”

“It’s not what I want,” Rutledge said pensively, “but what someone else could very easily wish for.” He turned slightly to look up the reaches of the River Dart, already a broad stream here as it fed into the harbour. “It wasn’t always in disrepair.”

But to kill for it? Hamish wanted to know.

That, Rutledge answered silently, would depend on what Sergeant Gibson discovered in London.

He found a telephone, after Jesse had delivered him back to the old quay in Dartmouth. Watching through the window as the ferry plied the waters between the two towns, he asked for the sergeant and, after a ten minute wait, Gibson came to the telephone.

“The old man, Barnes,” the sergeant began. “He died in a freak accident. Slipped in his tub, and cracked open his head. Foot was swollen with gout at the time. There was some talk because the staff was not in the house when it happened. They’d gone to a wedding in Kingswear. The constable come to investigate thought there was too much water splashed about the bathroom. But the servants were all accounted for; the son predeceased his father, and the daughter was in India. The inquest brought in accidental death.”

“The son was dead?”

“As far as anyone knew. He’d got himself drunk and wandered on to Dartmoor. They never found his body, but his cap was hanging on a ledge, half way down an abandoned mine shaft. A shoe was found at the edge. When the father was told, he cursed himself for disinheriting the boy. He was certain it was suicide.”

But was it?

That was years ago, and should have no bearing on a murder in Cambridge in 1920.

“Sometimes memories are long,” Hamish reminded him.

And Hamish should know, Rutledge thought grimly, for the Scots were nothing if not fanatical about revenge and blood feuds.

“Who owns the property at present?” he asked Gibson.

“It came to Sir John when his wife died.”

Just as he’d thought.

He left Dartmouth for the long drive back to Mumford. Once there he located the offices of Molton, Briggs, and Harman, who were, according to the rector, Mr Harris, solicitors to Sir John Middleton.

Mr Briggs, elderly and peering over the thick lenses of his glasses, said, “The police informed us of Sir John’s death. Very sad. Very sad.”

“Since he had no children, I need to know who stands to inherit his property?”

“Now that’s very interesting,” Briggs said, clearing his throat. “He has left the cottage in Mumford to Mrs Gravely, for long years of devoted service.” Taking off his glasses he stared at them as if expecting them to speak. “I doubt he expected to see her inherit so soon.” Putting them back on his nose, he said, “There is a bequest to the church, as you’d expect, and certain other charges.”

“And the property in Dartmouth? How is that left?”

“The one formerly known as Trafalgar? It was to go to a cousin of his first wife, but she died of her appendix. He made no decision after that. Until last December, that is, when he came in to tell me that the house was to go to the son of his late wife’s brother.”

“The brother died on Dartmoor. Years ago. After being disinherited.”

“The brother fled to Australia for charges of theft. The death on Dartmoor was staged to save the family the disgrace.”

“The brother was a convict?” Rutledge asked, surprised. Even Sergeant Gibson had failed to uncover that information.

“Yes. He gave the police a false name. His father went to Dartmoor and staged his son’s death. To spare the then Lady Middleton. So Sir John told us in December.”

“Then the son couldn’t have returned to kill the father.”

“The fall in the bathroom? He was drunk. He stayed drunk much of the time.”

“Was Sir John quite certain this was his brother-in-law’s son?”

“Yes, he had the proper credentials. It’s quite in order.”

And the son had gone to Dartmouth and slept in the house that would be his. Had he then decided to hasten that day? Or had he been given permission to begin repairs on the house?

Mr Briggs didn’t know. “I was told to make the necessary changes to Sir John’s will. I was not privy to any other arrangements between the two.”

The house would require hundreds — thousands — of pounds to make it habitable again, let alone to restore it. The young Barnes, with his wooden foot, had been there and seen what was needed.

Had he come back, when he realized that the bequest was an empty promise and that the house would fall down around his ears, long before Sir John died a natural death?

“Where can I find this young Barnes?”

“I was given an address in London. I was told that he could be reached through it.”

Briggs fiddled with the papers in front of him, found the one he wanted, and told Rutledge what he needed to know. “I expect it is a residence rather than a hotel,” he added.

But Rutledge recognized the address. It was a small hospital where the mentally disturbed from the war were committed when there was no other course open to a doctor.

Rutledge thanked Briggs, and turned the bonnet of his motorcar towards London.

The street where the hospital stood was not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. Two adjoining houses had been combined to form a single dwelling, and the main door was guarded by an orderly with great moustaches. Rutledge showed his identification, and was admitted. Reception was a narrow room with a long desk against one wall. Another orderly sat there with a book in front of him. He looked up as Rutledge entered.

“Sir?” he said, rising to stop Rutledge’s advance. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes. A man by the name of Barnes. He was in the war, has a wooden foot. I expect he’s a patient here.”

“Barnes?” The orderly frowned. “We don’t have a patient named Barnes. There’s a Doctor Barnes. Surgeon. He lost his foot in the Near East.”

Surprised, Rutledge said, “Is he Australian?”

“He is indeed.”

“I’d like to speak to him, if I may.”

The orderly consulted his book. “He’s just finished surgery, I believe. He should be in his office shortly.”

Rutledge was shown to a door where a middle-aged nursing sister escorted him the rest of the way, to an office behind a barred door.

“We must be careful with our patients,” she said. “Some of them are very confused about where they are and why they are here. It’s sad, really,” she went on. “They’re so young, most of them.”

“What sort of surgery does Dr Barnes do?” he asked as she showed him into the drab little room.

“Today he was removing a bullet pressing on the brain of one of the men in our charge. Very delicate. But it had to be done, if he’s to have any hope of living a normal life. The question is, will he ever live a normal life, given his confusion.”

She sounded tired and dispirited. He thanked her, and sat down in the chair in front of the desk, prepared to wait.

When Dr Barnes finally entered the office, he wasn’t what Rutledge had anticipated. Young, fair, intense, he seemed to fill the room with his presence.

Rutledge rose.

“What brings Scotland Yard to Mercy Hospital?” he asked, going around the desk and taking the chair behind it.

“I’m afraid I’ve come to give you bad news. Your uncle is dead.”

The tired face changed. “Sir John? What happened? He was healthy enough when I saw him last.”

“Someone came into the house when Mrs Gravely was in Mumford and killed him.”

The shock was real. “Dear God!”

“It appears you’ll be inheriting Trafalgar sooner than you expected.”

Dr Barnes made an impatient gesture. “He was kind enough to leave it to me. I don’t think he wanted it, come to that. But he could have said no. Still, I have no time now to restore it. Or even think of restoring it.” He made a face. “Nor the money, for that matter. I’m needed here, anyway. For the time being. Well, to be honest, for some time to come.”

“You went to call on Sir John in December. And you were in the house in Dartmouth then — or soon after that. You broke in.”

The smile was genuine, amused. “Hardly breaking in. But I had no key. And it was to be mine. I decided it would do no harm. How on earth did you know? Did someone see me? Or the smoke from the fire in the kitchen?”

“Marks in the dust,” Rutledge said. “Of a foot that dragged, and a cane.”

“Ah. Have you found who killed Sir John? I hope you have. He was a good man.”

“We have no leads at present,” Rutledge said with regret. He hesitated, then added, “The last thing your uncle said, as far as anyone knows, was one word. ‘Trafalgar’. It seemed likely that he was referring to the house. Why should that have been on his mind as he lay dying?”

Dr Barnes got to his feet and turned, looking out the high window. There was nothing to be seen from it, except for the wall of the house next door, some four feet away. “You think I must have killed the old man, don’t you?” He turned. “I can probably supply witnesses to swear I was here — nearly round the clock, for the past month or more. But that isn’t what matters. I didn’t harm him. I told you, it would do me no good if I had killed him twice over. There isn’t time to do anything about the house or the land.”

“If he’d changed his mind and left it to you, one might wonder if he’d have been equally as easily persuaded to leave it to someone else.”

“But to whom?” Barnes asked. “Who did I have to fear?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge said. “But that one word ‘Trafalgar’ is damning.”

Barnes sat down again. “There must be some other meaning.”

“Yes. But what?”

Barnes shrugged. “My family wasn’t the only one with a connection to the battle. Surely.”

“Sir John had no connection to it. There was only the house in Dartmouth.”

“There was the war. He made enemies there, very likely. I heard tales of what he did at HQ. He tried to bring reason to the decisions being made.”

And Sir John had been writing his memoirs. It was possible.

Hamish said, “The blows. He couldna’ ha’ been thinking clearly.”

“Yet,” Rutledge replied silently, “yet he remembered the old dog.”

Thanking Barnes for his time, he rose, saying, “I must have my men question the staff here. There will be statements to sign.”

“Yes, to be sure. I have nothing to hide.” As Rutledge reached the door, Barnes said, “I’d like to come to the services. Will you see that someone lets me know, when the arrangements are made?”

“Mr Briggs will see that you’re kept informed.”

As he was leaving, the heavy door to the stairs swung open, and a sister came out, carrying a tray of medicines. For an instant he heard the screams of someone in a ward above, and he knew what that meant. A living nightmare, the curse of shell-shock.

The screams were cut off as the door swung shut. Shuddering, he went through the other door and was in Reception once more, where he could breathe again.

Outside in the street, he walked for half an hour before returning to where he’d left his motorcar. It had been necessary to exorcise the memories those screams had reawakened.

“Do you believe yon doctor?” Hamish asked as Rutledge turned the crank.

“He’ll have dozens of witnesses to prove that he was here at the hospital. So, yes, I believe he had nothing to do with killing Sir John.” He got into the motorcar. “But that isn’t to say that he didn’t hire someone to do the deed for him.” He considered the screams he’d heard. Was there a patient in the hospital whose fragile mental state might make him a perfect murderer? Who could be set in motion by a clever killer, chosen because he could be depended upon to do as he was told to do?

It was far-fetched. But, at the moment, Rutledge was running out of options.

Hamish said, “It comes back to yon dog, ye ken. Why was he put out in the cold?”

Would a damaged mind think to rid himself of the dog? Why had it been necessary? Simba was too old to attack and do any real damage. Although, Rutledge thought as he pulled into traffic, anyone with a dog bite in Mumford, or even as far away as Cambridge, would need treatment. And that would lead to discovery and questions by the police. Even Doctor Barnes would find it hard to explain how one of his patients could have been bitten.

Turning the motorcar around, he drove towards Cambridge. It was late when he arrived, but Mrs Gravely was still awake, a light on in the kitchen, and he lifted the knocker, letting it fall gently rather than imperatively. She opened the door tentatively, then smiled when she recognized him.

“I’m that glad of company,” she said. “I don’t quite know what to do with myself. There’s no one to cook or clean for. The police tell me to leave everything be, and the doctor tells me poor Sir John’s body hasn’t been released, and, until it is, I can’t begin the baking for the funeral. No one knows when there’ll be an inquest.” She gestured to the furnishings as Rutledge stepped into the house. “I haven’t been told what I’m supposed to do with all Sir John’s things. No surprise I haven’t been sleeping of nights.”

He wondered how she would react when the will was read, and she learned that the cottage was hers. Would she be pleased — or would the memory of Sir John’s body lying in the study haunt her every time she walked into the room?

He let her make a cup of tea for him, and then said, “The man who came here in December, the one with the wooden foot, is actually the son of the first Lady Middleton’s brother.”

“My good Lord,” she said fervently. “I’d have never guessed.” She paused, measuring out the tea. “But why didn’t he say so? Why tell me he was an old comrade in arms?”

“Perhaps he thought Sir John might refuse to receive him, if he used his own name.”

Frowning, she shook her head. “I expect that was so. Still …” She left the word hanging, and busied herself taking down cups and saucers, retrieving the sugar bowl from the cupboard, then walking into the pantry for the jug of milk.

“You’ve cleaned for Sir John these many years. Did he have anything in this house worth stealing? I don’t count money. Or gold cuff-links. Something of great value. Something that would make killing him worthwhile?”

Because Dr Barnes hadn’t the money to restore Trafalgar, whatever he might claim about time.

“I can’t think that there was. Some of his books? I don’t know about such things, but someone else might.”

“It didn’t appear that there were books missing.”

“That’s true,” she agreed. “I’m used to dusting them. They’re all there save one.”

Rutledge took the Barnes family history from his pocket. “My doing, that. I needed to show someone the photograph in the front.”

“I’ll see it’s in its rightful place,” she said, moving the book aside and setting down his cup of tea. “There’s a bit of chocolate sponge cake, if you’d like that,” she told Rutledge. “I made it for my dinner.”

He thanked her, but refused. After a moment she sat down across from him. “There are the weapons between the photographs, in the study. But none of them was taken.”

Not even all of them would raise the sum needed to restore Trafalgar. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “If it were robbery, it would be for something worth thousands of pounds. Not a few hundred.”

She nodded. “I worry, sometimes,” she said, looking away as if embarrassed. “If I’d been here that day — or come back from the greengrocers a little sooner — could I have prevented what happened? I know you told me I might well have become a victim too. But it weighs on my mind, you see. I needn’t have gone into Mumford that day. His dinner would have been all right without that onion.”

“I doubt it,” he told her bracingly. “Most killers would wait for their chance. If you hadn’t left that day, you would have left on another.”

Hamish said, “It’s a kind lie.”

He went through the study and the parlour again, looking for something missing — some explanation for why a man had to die — knowing very well that Mrs Gravely would have noticed and brought it to his attention long ago.

It was all as he’d seen it the first time. The tidiness of the soldier, used to Spartan conditions. The collector of books, most of them on warfare, Cambridge, even India. The husband, who loved his second wife and kept her portrait where he could see it, but who bore no grudge against his first wife, headstrong though she may have been. The fastidious man who was always freshly shaven and carefully dressed, judging by the body.

Rutledge went back to the bookshelves, and ran his finger down the line of titles. Nothing out of the ordinary. Several volumes: William the Conqueror, Henry II, Edwards I and III. Soldiers all — in the days when kings led their men into battle. The tactics of the American general Robert E. Lee. The strategies of Napoleon.

He stopped and pulled out one of the books at random. As he opened it, something fell out and drifted lightly to the floor.

Stooping to pick it up, he saw that it was an article cut from a newspaper, yellowed and thin.

It was about the destruction of the Great Mews of Whitehall Palace. The stables of Edward I and his predecessors. This had been done early in the eighteenth century, when the ramshackle mews was more of an eyesore than it was useful. Rutledge glanced at the spine of the book and saw it was a biography of Edward I. The cutting was well before Sir John’s time and, turning to the end covers, he saw that the name inscribed there in an ornate bookplate was that of Sir Robert Middleton. Father? Grandfather? Uncle?

He set the book aside and picked up the Bible. Searching the list of births and deaths, he realized that Sir Robert was a great-grandfather of Sir John’s. Not a contemporary of the destruction of the royal mews, but Sir Robert had been alive in the first part of the nineteenth century when various architects, including the famous Nash, had taken on the task of creating a square that would fit into the overall view of a new and spacious London. The name given to the finished square came from the column bearing the statue of Admiral Nelson: Trafalgar Square. But as Hillier, the Dartmouth bookseller had said, it had been among the last of the memorials to Lord Nelson.

Interesting; but it was, as Hamish was reminding him, decades in the past. Hardly pertinent to a murder in 1920.

Glancing at his watch, Rutledge saw that it was half past one o’clock in the morning. The house was quiet, and he thought perhaps Mrs Gravely had gone up to her bed. Still, he sat down at a table in the parlour and read the faded cutting. It told him very little more. Picking up the book, he thumbed through the pages, looking for any reference to the Royal Mews. There was nothing of interest. He went back to the study, searched for other books on Edward I, and carried them into the parlour. Had it been only coincidence that the cutting was in that particular history?

It was close on five when Mrs Gravely came in with sandwiches and a pot of tea. He ate absently, his mind on the hunt. When she came to take away his plate and cup, she said, looking over his shoulder, “He must have loved that book. I can’t count the times I’d find it on his desk when I was dusting.”

Rutledge turned to see what she was pointing to. A slim volume bound in worn leather, printed a hundred years ago.

It was written by a man called Baker, and it purported to offer an account of the crusade the then Prince Edward Longshanks made to the Holy Land. He had already turned homeward in 1272 when he learned of the death of his father, Henry III, and that he was now King. He was two years in reaching England to be crowned. Legend claimed that with him he brought a small gold reliquary, encrusted with precious stones and containing a piece of the True Cross. It remained with him through the early years of his reign — although it was more common to give such relics to a church in thanksgiving for a safe return. As he’d been sickly as a child, it was thought he kept the relic for his own protection. But when it failed to save his dying Queen, Eleanor of Castile, in a ferocious fit of temper, he ordered it buried in the largest dung pit in the stables.

According to Baker, it had been lost to history from that time forward, until a workman had discovered it during the demolition of the stables in the eighteenth century. The man had shown it to his brother-in-law, a yeoman farmer in Kent, who paid him handsomely for it, and the object had remained in the farmer’s family, passing from father to elder son in each generation. It had become known, Baker went on, as the Middleton Host, although the family had denied any knowledge of it, and with time, the Host and the family itself had been lost to history. The remodelling of the land once occupied by the stables had revived the tale, but Baker had been unable to prove whether the tale was true or not. He had contacted a number of families by the name of Middleton in Kent and elsewhere, but had failed to find any trace of the story.

Rutledge sat back, considering what he’d just read. Then he rose and went back to the study to look at the small wooden box by the bookshelves.

There was no way of knowing what it had contained. Even Mrs Gravely, when questioned, had no idea what had been kept inside — if anything. She had dusted it, but never opened it.

But suppose — just suppose — it had held the Middleton Host.

That would match with the message that the dying man had tried to pass on to his housekeeper.

Trafalgar. Not the name of his late wife’s home, but the square in the heart of London. Would he have told the secret to Althea Barnes? A great joke, that, one she might have appreciated and passed on to her father and her brother.

What would such a reliquary be worth? Monetarily and intrinsically.

What would it be worth to Dr Barnes, working daily with men whose minds were destroyed by war? Had he come, in December, to ask for the use of the Middleton Host? And instead been pawned off with promises of the house in Dartmouth? A house he had no use for and couldn’t afford to keep up? An albatross, compared to the cure the reliquary might achieve in men who could be brought to believe in its power.

Rutledge went to the door, called to Mrs Gravely that he would be back shortly, and hurried to his motorcar. Driving into Cambridge as dawn was breaking, he went to the telephone he’d used before and put in a call to the clinic where Barnes worked.

He was informed that Dr Barnes was with a patient and couldn’t be disturbed.

Swearing under his breath, he walked out to his motorcar and was on the point of driving to London when another thought occurred to him. Even tired as he was, it made sense.

The old dog.

Mrs Gravely had claimed that Sir John had spoken to Dr Taylor just before he died. She had nearly been sure that he’d asked about his dog. And the doctor had responded with a single word. No. She had thought that the doctor was telling Sir John that the dog was dead.

Turning the motorcar around, he drove back to Mumford. He searched the High Street of the little town, then looked in the side streets. Shortly after nine, he found Dr Taylor’s surgery, next door but one to the house where the doctor lived — according to the nameplates on the small white gates to both properties.

Hamish said, “ ’Ware.” And it was a warning well taken.

Knocking on the surgery door, Rutledge scanned the house down the street. He could just see a small woman wrapped in a coat and headscarf, standing in the back garden, staring at the bare fruit trees and withered beds as if her wishing could bring them into bloom again. The doctor’s wife? That told him what he needed to know.

The nurse who admitted Rutledge was plump and motherly, calling him dearie, asking him to wait in the passage while she spoke with the doctor. “His first patients of the day are already in the front room. It’s better if you come directly back to the office.”

“It’s about his report on the post-mortem of Sir John.”

“He has already mailed it to the Yard,” she said. “I took it to the post myself.”

Rutledge gave her his best smile. “Yes, I’ve been in Dartmouth. It hasn’t caught up with me yet.”

She nodded and bustled off to tell the doctor that Rutledge was waiting.

Dr Taylor received him almost at once, saying, “Mrs Dunne tells me you haven’t seen the post-mortem results.” He sorted through some files on his desk and retrieved a sheet of paper. “My copy,” he added, passing it across the desk to Rutledge. “You’re welcome to read it.”

Rutledge took the sheet, scanning it quickly. “Yes. Everything seems to be in order,” he said, glancing up in time to see the tension around Dr Taylor’s eyes ease a little. “Two blows, one to the back of the head and the second to the face. Weapon possibly a cane.” He handed the report to Taylor. “There’s one minor detail to clear up before the inquest. Mrs Gravely told me that Sir John spoke to her as she was coming into the study. Was that possible, do you think?”

“I doubt if he was coherent,” Taylor said easily. “A grunt. A groan. But not words as such.”

“She also reported that he spoke to you. And that you answered him, just before he died.”

Taylor frowned. “I thought he was asking if the old dog was still alive. I told him it was dead. I wasn’t sure, you understand. But I thought if that was what he was trying to say, I’d ease his mind.”

He had just contradicted himself.

“I don’t think that the dog’s death was something that would comfort him.”

Taylor shrugged. “I wasn’t in a position to consider my answer. As I told you, he wasn’t coherent. I did my best in the circumstances.”

“Actually, I think he was probably asking if you’d use the Middleton Host to save the old dog. And you refused. You had to, because Mrs Gravely was standing there in the doorway.”

Taylor flushed. “What host?”

“He must have told you at one time or another. A medical man? That a king had found it useless and thrown it in a dung heap. But then Eleanor of Castile was probably beyond help by the time the reliquary reached her. She died anyway. King Edward loved his wife. Passionately. Everywhere her body rested the night on the long journey south to London, he built a shrine. The wonder was, he didn’t smash the relic. But I expect he felt that the dung heap was a more fitting end for it. A fake, a sham.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Inspector. And there are patients waiting.”

“It was a story that must have touched Sir John. He hadn’t been able to save either of his wives, had he? The host was, after all, no more than a pretty fraud.”

The doctor’s face changed. “That’s an assumption that neither you nor I can make. Sir John was a soldier, a sceptic; hardly one to take seriously legends about relics and miracles. Where is this taking us?”

“I’m trying,” Rutledge returned blandly, “to establish whether or not Sir John loved Elizabeth Middleton as deeply as — for instance — you must love your wife. Because it was for her you did what you did. Not the patients out there in the waiting room.” It was a guess, but it struck home.

Taylor opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“Why did you put the dog out? Did it attack you? If I asked you to have another doctor look at your ankles or legs, would he find breaks in the skin to indicate you’d been bitten? Even if it has begun to heal, the marks must still be there. Would you agree to such an examination?”

Taylor rose from behind the desk. “Yes, all right, the dog was dying when I got there. Sir John was kneeling on the floor beside it when I opened the door and called to him. He told me he was in the study, and to come quickly. Still, the damned dog growled at me and got to its feet as I struck the first blow. I had to get rid of it because Sir John was still alive and I needed to hit him again. The cold finished it off, I expect. It’s breathing was shallow, laboured.” He moved to the hearth. “My wife has just been diagnosed with colon cancer. I’d already asked Sir John if I could borrow the reliquary. To give her a chance. He told me it had done nothing for his wife, dying of childbed fever. But I didn’t care. I was ready to try anything. I just wanted to try. But he was afraid that, if my wife recovered on her own, Mumford would be swamped with the desperate, the hopeless, believers in miracles. He said it would be wrong. Time was running out, and yet that afternoon he begged me to do something for his dog. It was obscene, I tell you.”

He reached down, his fingers closing over the handle of the fire tongs. Lifting his voice, he shouted, “No, no — you’re wrong! Put them down, for God’s sake.”

And, before Rutledge could stop him, he raised the tongs and brought them down on his own head, the blow carefully calculated to break the skin but not knock him down. And as blood ran down his face, he dropped the tongs and cried out, “Oh, God, someone help me … Mrs Dunne … he’s run mad.”

And in a swift angry voice that only reached Rutledge’s ears, Taylor said, “She’s ill, I tell you. I won’t be taken away when she needs me. Not by you, not by anyone.”

He rushed at Rutledge, grappling with him.

The door burst open, Mrs Dunne flying to the doctor’s aid, pulling at Rutledge’s shoulders, calling out for him to stop.

Rutledge had no choice. He swung her around, and she went down, tripping over the chair he’d been sitting in. He turned towards the hearth, to retrieve the fire tongs as Taylor reeled against the far wall, calling, “Stop him — ”

Mrs Dunne, scrambling to her feet, must have thought Rutledge was about to use the tongs again, and she threw herself at him, carrying him backward against the hearth, stumbling over the fire screen.

Her screams had brought patients from the waiting room, pushing their way through the door, faces anxious and frightened as they took in the carnage, drawing the same conclusions that Mrs Dunne had leapt to. A woman in a dark green coat gasped and went to the doctor’s aid, and he leaned heavily against her shoulder. Two men put themselves between Rutledge and his perceived victim, one of them quickly retrieving the fire tongs from where they’d fallen, as if afraid Rutledge could still reach them.

It was all Rutledge could do to catch Mrs Dunne’s pummelling fists and force her arms to her sides, so that he could retrieve the situation before it got completely out of hand. Hamish in the back of his mind was warning him again, and there was no time to answer.

In a voice used to command on a battlefield, he said, “You — the one in the greatcoat — find Constable Forrest and bring him here at once.”

Taylor said, stricken, “He’s trying to arrest me … for murder … I’ve done nothing wrong, don’t let him lie to you. For God’s sake!”

They knew Taylor. Rutledge was a stranger. The man in the greatcoat hesitated.

The doctor swayed on his feet. “I think I’d better sit down.” The woman helped him to a chair, and his knees nearly buckled under him.

She said, “I’ll find your wife.”

He gripped her arm. “No. I don’t want to worry her.” Taylor took out his handkerchief to mop the blood from his face. “Just get him out of my office, if you will.”

Rutledge crossed the room, and the man with the tongs raised them without thinking, as if expecting Rutledge to attack him. But he went to the door and closed it.

“You’ll listen to me, then. I’m Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard.” He held up his card for all of them to see. “I’ve just charged Dr Taylor with the murder of Sir John Middleton. As for those tongs, he himself wielded them, I never touched them, or him.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Mrs Dunne snapped. “He’s a good man, a doctor.”

“Is he? I intend to order Sir John’s dog exhumed. I expect to find shreds of cloth in his teeth.” Hamish was reminding him that it was only a very slim possibility, but Rutledge ignored him. “What’s more, I intend to ask a doctor from Cambridge to examine Dr Taylor’s limbs for healing bites. And the clothing he was wearing the day of the murder will be examined for mended tears.”

He saw the expression on Mrs Dunne’s face. Shock first, and then uncertainty. “I mended a tear in his trousers just last week. He’d caught them on a nail, he said.”

“Then you’ll know which trousers they were. If the shreds match, he will be tried for murder. We can also look at those tongs, if you will set them carefully on the desk. The only prints on them will be Dr Taylor’s, and yours, sir. Not mine.”

“Can you do that?” the man holding the tongs asked, staring down at them.

“There are people who can.”

He moved to the desk, putting them down quite gently. Dr Taylor reached for them, saying, “He’s bluffing, look, it’s my blood that’s on them.”

Rutledge was across the room before Taylor’s fingers could curl around the handle of the tongs, his grip hard on the doctor’s wrist, stopping him just in time.

The man in the greatcoat said, “I think I ought to fetch Constable Forrest after all, if only to sort out this business.”

He left the office, and they could hear the surgery door shut firmly after him.

The doctor said, “I tell you, it’s not true, none of it is true.” But even as he spoke the words, he could read the faces around him. Uncertainty, then doubt, replacing belief.

The woman in the dark green coat said, “I really must go — ” and started towards the door, unwilling to have any further involvement with the police. The other man, without looking at the doctor, followed her in uncomfortable silence.

Taylor called, “No, wait, please!”

Mrs Dunne said, “I’ll just put a sign up on the door, saying the surgery is closed,” and hurried after them.

Rutledge turned to see tears in Taylor’s eyes. “Damn you,” he said hoarsely. “And damn the bloody dog. I love her. I wanted to save her. Do you know what it’s like to realize that your skills aren’t enough?” He turned from Rutledge to the window. “Do you know how it feels when God has deserted you?”

Rutledge knew. In France, when he held his revolver at Hamish’s temple; he knew.

“And what would you have done if the reliquary failed you too?” Rutledge asked.

“It won’t. It can’t. I’m counting on it,” he said defiantly. “You won’t find it, I’ve seen to that. By God, at least she’ll have that!”

But, in the end, they would find it. Rutledge said only, “What did you use as the murder weapon?”

Dr Taylor grimaced. “You’re the policeman. Tell me.”

Hamish said, “He did the post-mortem. Any evidence would ha’ been destroyed.”

And there had been more than enough time for Taylor to have hidden whatever it was, on his way back to Mumford before he was summoned by Sam Hubbard.

When Constable Forrest arrived, Rutledge turned Taylor over to him, and warned him to have a care on their way to Cambridge. “He’s killed once,” he reminded the man.

He watched them leave, and Mrs Dunne, who had come to the door as the doctor was being taken away, bit her lip to hold back tears.

Rutledge walked to the house next but one to speak to Taylor’s wife, and it was a bitter duty. Her face drawn and pale from suffering, she said only, “It’s my fault. My fault.” And nothing would dissuade her. In the end, he had to tell her that her house would have to be searched. She nodded, too numb at that moment to care.

He left her with Mrs Dunne, and went to tell Mrs Gravely that he had found Sir John’s killer.

She frowned. “I’d never have believed the doctor could do such a thing. Not to murder Sir John for a heathen superstition. Poor Mrs Taylor, I can’t think how she’ll manage now.”

He left her, refusing her offer of a cup of tea. Then, just as he was cranking the motorcar, she called to him, and he came back to the steps where she was hugging her arms about her against the cold wind.

“It keeps slipping my mind, Mr Rutledge, sir! And it’s probably not important now. You asked me to keep an eye out for anything that was missing, and I wanted you to know I did.”

“Is there anything? Besides the reliquary?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh, nothing so valuable as that.” She smiled self-consciously, feeling a little foolish, but no less determined to do her duty. “Still, with the old dog dead, and Sir John gone as well, I never noticed it missing until yesterday morning. It’s the iron door-stop, the one shaped like a small dormouse. Sir John used it these past six months or so, whenever Simba needed to go out. To keep the door from slamming shut behind them, you see, while he walked a little way with Simba, or stood here on the step waiting for him. He never cared for the sound of a slamming door. He said it reminded him too much of the war. The sound of the guns and all that.”

Rutledge thanked her and drove to Cambridge to ask for men to search the sides of the road between Sir John’s house and Mumford.

As they braved the cold to dig through ditches, and push aside winter-dead growth, Rutledge could hear the doctor’s voice again.

You’re the policeman. Tell me.

Three hours later, he drove once more to Cambridge to do just that. A few black hairs still clung to the dormouse’s ears, and on the base was what appeared to be a perfect print in Sir John’s blood.