A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [129]
“Completely, I’d say. Church sexton, thirty years a farmer. His sister is the housekeeper to the rector. I’d as soon believe Sergeant Burke was a murderer.”
Lucinda came to rub against Rutledge’s legs, recognizing a familiar scent.
“She’s verra’ calm,” Hamish said.
“Yes, I’d observed that as well,” Rutledge answered him thoughtfully. “But then whatever happened here is over. There’s nothing to frighten her now—no loud noises, no angry, raised voices.”
Burke, coming back through the kitchen door, reported, “If there’s a path, I can’t find it.”
Dr. Pugh, following him, added, “There’s no sign of Brereton—and I called out, identifying myself. Weaver is still searching, but the light has gone, and it’s dark under the trees.”
Cleaning his feet on the scraper by the kitchen door, he walked back into the sitting room and shook his head as he studied the signs of struggle. “I’ve met Tom Brereton. He’s come to me on Mrs. Masters’s behalf a number of times, and I know of course about losing his eyesight. All the same, he was a soldier, and I’d say he was well able to defend himself. Unlike the other victims, who had to deal with crutches. Hurt, of course—there’s the blood in the sitting room. Still, even assuming he drank any of that drugged wine, he must have inflicted some damage of his own. But where is he now?”
Rutledge said, thinking aloud, “We don’t know how badly his attacker was hurt, do we? Brereton might well have turned the tables and gone after him.”
Sergeant Burke was making notes, a rough diagram of the house, then the sitting room sketched in and an X marking the location of each visible bloodstain. He said, “Mr. Brereton’s a clever man. He would have come directly to Inspector Dowling and reported the identity of his assailant. My guess is, he was dragged into the kitchen while Adams was stacking the wood, and then was carried off to hide the body.” As Weaver walked back into the house, Burke added, “We’ll have to have that stack of wood taken down. Weaver? Get on it, man!”
Dowling, coming back into the sitting room, nodded. “I agree.”
But Hamish, who had spent the last ten minutes arguing in Rutledge’s head, did not. “He talked to you about the wine,” he reminded Rutledge. “He would ha’ been suspicious as soon as he saw it.”
Rutledge, standing to one side, was reviewing his last conversation with Brereton in light of Hamish’s adamant stand.
He had wondered then if Brereton in his roundabout fashion was making a confession. If the man was already contemplating disappearing, would he have staged his own death?
It would have had the opposite effect. Another murder would have galvanized the police into furious action. It would be far simpler to say that he needed more specialized eye care and to make arrangements with Raleigh and Bella Masters for the care of the cottage and of the cat.
No, very likely Brereton was what he seemed. A victim. But why in the daylight? Rutledge came again to that question, and Hamish answered it.
“Here it’s as isolated as anywhere on the road. And I canna’ believe he’d open his door after dark, but in the daylight he would—he did when you called. He had all his limbs, aye, but he was going blind. Nearly as bad as losing a leg—if the murderer canna’ abide the sairly wounded . . .”
But why would Hauser come here and slaughter Brereton? Was he truly searching for Jimsy Ridger, or had that been a ruse from the start?
Rutledge walked through the house again, looking with care at the scene in the sitting room.
Dowling was searching now for the weapon, poking about behind the furniture, looking in the hearth.
Brereton would have let the German into the house, if Hauser had used Elizabeth’s name. Yet the bottle of wine would have put him instantly on his guard. He himself had told Rutledge that wine was key to the investigation.
Unless Elizabeth had sent Hauser to Brereton, surely against Hamilton’s orders to stay out of it, and Brereton, jealous, himself had brought out the wine.
“He fetched Raleigh Masters’s medicines for Mrs. Masters. Laudanum for pain and the moodiness