A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [10]
Why had Crowell’s book been found by the corpse’s feet? An old book, on alchemy of all things. He pondered that as he dealt with a quarrel between two farmers over the death of a prize ram. What did the book have to do with the dead man, except to betray the name of his murderer? Why had Crowell been carrying this book with him? Was it concealing something? Had it been the excuse that allowed Crowell to approach the victim?
Over his tea, Madsen was beginning to believe the two men must have met at the ruins, gone somewhere else, and the body had been carried back there to throw the police off. The caretaker could have been wrong, he might have simply glanced into the cloisters the day before and missed the corpse up against the wall. In a hurry as he made his rounds, and not wanting his employers to know he’d been slack.
Madsen went back to the doctor’s surgery and stood looking down at the corpse. Why the respirator that hadn’t saved the victim’s life, and why the cloak that at first glance looked like a monk’s habit? To lay a false trail for the police?
He tried to put it all together, but there was no making sense of it.
Walking back to his office he considered the fact that neither Crowell’s house nor the village school was served by gas. So where had he taken the dead man to kill him? Why did the man have to die?
He shut himself in his office to think.
Debts owed? Some scandalous connection between the two men that didn’t bear looking at? Then why leave the body here, if the man hadn’t died here? It only made the killing more blatant. What was it in aid of, that respirator and the cloak? A warning to someone else?
What was the schoolmaster involved in and how would it affect Alice Crowell when the truth came out?
It all came down to that bloody book, he told himself for the hundredth time as he walked home for his dinner. If the book hadn’t been there, the police would have been mystified. An oversight, a mistake, the kind that got murderers hanged.
What was there in Albert Crowell’s life that he was desperate to hide?
By morning, Madsen was unable to stay away from the Crowells. Three more visits to the school, three more frustrating interviews with the schoolmaster, three more missed encounters with Alice, who seemed to have an uncanny ability to be other than where he wanted her to be. And yet he couldn’t bring himself to ask for her outright. Not while he badgered her husband.
In the dark hours of the night he’d even considered the possibility that she had killed her lover and left the book to muddle the case. But he knew it wasn’t true. The man, according to the doctor, was pushing fifty and not the sort who could sweep any woman off her feet.
Twice on his excursions to the Dilby School, he found himself faced with staring boys, nosy little bastards, more eyes than face. He never remembered being so fond of his own schoolmasters that he wouldn’t have cheered to see them taken away for a week.
He had spoken to one of them, the Tredworth boy. “What are you hanging about for? Know anything about this business, do you?”
Hugh had shaken his head vigorously. “No, sir. I—it’s just—” He took a deep breath and blurted, “Thought I might be a policeman when I grow up, that’s all. And nobody will tell me what’s happened. They change the subject when I come into the room.”
“It’s not a matter for children’s ears,” Madsen had said, annoyance creeping in. “Stay clear of it, or I’ll have you in for questioning myself.”
After that he saw no more of Hugh or his friends.
4
The dinner had, in many ways, been trying.
Rutledge had sat opposite Meredith Channing, and he had spent the evening trying to keep his mind closed to her. It was difficult, with Hamish restless and more intrusive as the hour stretched into two and then into three. The soft Scottish voice railed at him, warning him no’ to lower his guard, as if they stood in the darkness of France, waiting for an attack they couldn’t see but knew would surely come. For a moment he could smell the war