A Fearsome Doubt - Charles Todd [72]
Rutledge said, “They live together, then.”
“Oh, yes. Miss Judson is what you might describe as a mature lady. I’d guess Mr. Judson is well past his three score years and ten.”
They had reached the property and were walking up the drive when a woman with a dog came out of the house, went down the stone steps, and stopped to stare at them with interest before moving in their direction.
“Inspector Grimes,” she said, nodding to Dowling and Rutledge. A tall, angular woman in her forties, with clear gray eyes and a no-nonsense manner, she waited with composure for Grimes to explain himself.
“I’ve brought Inspector Dowling from Marling to speak with you, and Inspector Rutledge, from London. I’d like them to hear what you told me.”
Frowning, Miss Judson said, “You attach more importance to it than I do.”
“I daresay we do,” Grimes agreed affably. “But in police work, it’s the small things that sometimes loom large in the end.”
She faced the other two men and explained in her abrupt fashion, “I had gone to fetch the rector to my father. As I walked down the drive and turned toward the rectory, I passed a man coming out of Seelyham. It was late, and I didn’t expect to find anyone else on the road. I nodded as I passed him, and went on to knock on Mr. Sawyers’s door. When the two of us walked back, the man was nowhere to be seen.”
“Did you recognize him?” Rutledge asked.
“Indeed not.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Well enough to be a gentleman. Certainly not shabby enough to be a beggar, even though he was on foot. We’re the last house, you see, and I thought perhaps he might have been staying at The Arms and couldn’t sleep. I suggested as much to Inspector Grimes, here.”
“Could you see his face or judge his coloring?”
She smiled. “There was no moon, Inspector—Rutledge, is it? I wouldn’t know him again if he came to tea. Except that he had a good bearing. I thought perhaps he’d been in the war.”
They thanked her and took their leave. As Grimes walked back to the main road he told them, “I asked at The Arms. There was no one who might have taken it in his head to try the air well after midnight. Two ladies visiting a cousin, and a pair of travelers too drunk after their dinner to have made it down the stairs again without breaking their necks.”
“Then we have a man walking out of Seelyham on a Tuesday night. No one was murdered on a Tuesday,” Rutledge pointed out.
“But there was on a Saturday,” Grimes reminded him. “And here’s the other bit of the puzzle. Another woman was walking through the churchyard around nine o’clock Saturday evening. She was coming home from sitting up with a child with croup. Rounding the corner by the church she walked straight into a man coming out of the bushes. He was living rough, she thought, and she didn’t care for that. She walked on, and came to find me. But by the time I reached the churchyard, he’d taken the hint and moved on.”
“She spoke to him?”
Grimes laughed. “Miss Whelkin would ask the devil who he was roasting over the fires of hell. If we’d sent her to fight the Kaiser, the war would have been over in two years.”
Rutledge smiled. Such women were the bane of ordinary villagers, and the delight of policemen.
“She stopped stock-still and wanted to know if he was waiting for someone. There’s a young girl here in Seelyham who is no better than she ought to be, and Miss Whelkin was of the opinion the man was loitering for a chance to meet her. She asked him outright, and he answered that he’d come a long way and was tired. He’d fallen asleep when he went into the church to pray. She was fairly certain he was from Cornwall.”
“Has she visited Cornwall?”
“My guess is that she hasn’t,” Grimes replied sourly. “But she swore he could pass for Tristan. Whoever he might be when he’s