A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [42]
Weaver stared down at the broken stalks of last summer’s wildflowers. “I don’t see Will Taylor mixed up in anything sinister. He was bent on feeding his family. Took losing his leg hard, an active sort who liked working out in the air. But he was trying to manage somehow.”
Rutledge said, “Did his wife have anything to tell you?”
“I questioned Alice myself,” Weaver responded. “But she didn’t know much. He was staying over in Seelyham to finish the fence, saying he’d come home when it was done. She didn’t expect him for another day or two. Sergeant Burke went on to Seelyham and asked about Taylor’s work. The fence was done properly, and a day early. Taylor was told he could wait until the morning, but was eager to get home, and set out after his dinner.”
“Was Taylor carrying his pay?”
“Yes, sir, and it was still there, in his pocket. You’d think, wouldn’t you, sir, that a thief wouldn’t fail to find that!”
THE SECOND VICTIM had been found on the road from Helford. It ran into the Seelyham road at an angle, just outside Marling. Lying in a ditch by the side of fields, he was almost invisible until the sun rose high enough to pierce the shadows.
Beyond where Weaver stood with Rutledge, the hop gardens spread out toward a distant farm, tucked into a fold of land. Their frames and their green vines gone for the winter, the gardens looked bare and fallow. An oast house, one of the most recognizable features of the Kent landscape, reared its head like a decapitated windmill close by a stand of trees, its white walls streaked and wet from the rain. Inside it was an oast, the drying kiln that was an essential part of the processing of hops.
“Tell me about this man—Webber?” Rutledge encouraged Weaver as they got out in the rain and stood by the spot. “What sort was he?”
“Most everyone in Marling knew who he was. Not the sort you’d find carousing of a Saturday night. He’d had a strict upbringing, and his mother was Temperance-mad. A carpenter by trade. Made tables and chests and the like, as his father had done before him. He was in Helford, recaning chairs. The caning Webber did was known all over. No breaks and no missed steps.”
“Was there money in his pocket?”
“Yes, sir, we found two pounds.”
Hamish commented, “A clever man, now, he’d ha’ taken the money and put it in the puir box. To confound the police.”
Rutledge responded aloud without thinking. “Both of them married: Taylor and Webber. Not likely to be unfaithful, would you say?”
Weaver answered him. “They weren’t likely, no, sir. Past an age for wild oats, and that. There’s no jealous husband looking for revenge.”
THE THIRD BODY had been found close by the crossroads where Rutledge thought he’d seen a face in his headlamps. He felt an odd frisson of cold down his spine as he got out of the motorcar, as if there were traces of something unnatural here still, a scent or lingering shadow.
Hamish, ordinarily quick to point out foolishness, was a Highlander, who understood moods.
But the corpse was a local man, not a straying doppelgänger. Harry Bartlett had gone to visit a friend who was ill—and ended by dying before him.
“Bartlett wasn’t what you’d call a staunch churchgoer,” Weaver was saying. “He had a reputation as a hell-raiser before the war, and was the first in Marling to sign up. Told everyone he was tired of bashing local heads, and thought he’d try a few Germans. He was a good soldier, from all reports. That lot often are. But he got hung up on the wire one