A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [43]
Hamish was asking a question. Rutledge said, “Did these three men serve in the same unit?”
Weaver blinked. “Yes, sir, I expect they did. The Kent men stayed together. Looked out for each other.”
Officers had found that men who knew each other fought better side by side. They often died side by side, when a shell went up in their faces.
Rutledge walked along the road for some distance, then turned and walked back. “All right then, the war. Find out all you can about where they served, and who their friends were.”
“Sir? I can’t see how that might help. The war’s been over for a while now.”
“It hadn’t ended for them, had it?”
After a last look around, Rutledge turned back to the motorcar. They drove back to Marling as dusk was falling, and the road seemed long, lonely.
Hamish commented, “A man with crutches would accept a ride.”
“So he would,” Rutledge silently agreed. “But why should he be saved from a painful walk—and then be killed?”
Still, it was something to consider. What had these three men had in common, besides lost limbs? According to Weaver, not much beyond their working-class backgrounds and their service in the war. Bartlett’s wife, Peggy, was a girl he’d married since coming home, and there were no children.
Dowling had been right. There was hardly any evidence to build on. What had brought these men face to face with a killer? Greed? A secret that was dangerous to know? A killer wouldn’t offer a man a glass of wine and then fill him with laudanum, unless he first wanted to learn something from his victim. . . . Where had they drunk together?
Rutledge, listening to Hamish in the back of his mind, wondered how many more would join this unholy clutch of dead men, before the police found any answers.
THE RAIN FELL with depressing steadiness, cold and coloring everything a bleak gray. Even the church at the top of High Street seemed dark and dreary, its ragstone facade streaked with damp, and the dead flower stalks among the churchyard stones a sign of desertion rather than loving memorials. What did you grow in the churchyard in winter besides ivy and hellebore? Rutledge wondered as he drove back to the hotel. Too late for Michaelmas daisies and too early for pansies.
He washed up and unpacked his luggage, then came down to the dining room—to find Melinda Crawford ensconced at the best table. She looked up as he came into the paneled room and smiled broadly.
“Either I’m in my dotage, or you’ve answered a maiden’s prayers.”
He laughed and came to join her. “What brings you to Marling?”
“I could ask the same of you, but I’ve already guessed that in your case it’s murder. In mine it might well be. I’ve been left at the altar, in a manner of speaking.”
“By whom?” he asked, surprised.
“I was invited to dine with the Masterses, but Bella says that Raleigh is in the foulest of moods and the cook is threatening to give notice, and poor Bella’s at her wit’s end. So I left. Fortunately I remembered that the hotel here has quite good food, and I thought I might perhaps ask Elizabeth to join me.”
“And have you?” He couldn’t alter the wary note in his voice.
“She wasn’t at home, either.” Mrs. Crawford sighed. “The one thing I hate about getting old is one’s shrinking circle of friends. But here you are, quite a delightful surprise, and I’m going to enjoy my evening with a handsome young man rather than a crabby old one.”
“Has Masters taken a turn for the worse?”
“I doubt his body has, but his temper most certainly did. I could hear him roaring from the front hall. If the man hadn’t been such a brilliant barrister and the most charming of people, I’d say he was paying for past sins. Still, I have both my limbs, and I can’t imagine what it must be like not to.”
“No reason to take his temper out on his wife.”
“Bella’s not as cowardly as you might think. In fact, she may in the end prove to be stronger than Raleigh. If she doesn’t poison him first. I think tonight I’d have had a go at it.”
Rutledge felt