A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [30]
“I hadn’t heard the story. How did it happen?”
“They were at Whitby. On holiday. She went out alone a little while after tea, to shop for Albert’s birthday gift. There was a man near the corner. He’d been drinking, and was flinging his arms about, shouting. He was angry or upset, I don’t know. And he shoved her out of his path. She fell against a wrought-iron railing, cutting her face badly. Passersby rushed to help her, and two men held on to her assailant. The police came and took him up for public drunkenness. He was quite sober by that time, crying and apologizing. But it was too late, wasn’t it? The damage had been done. She was taken to hospital, bleeding profusely, and the doctors feared for her eye. They took her directly to surgery and sent someone to find her husband. Albert called it an accident. Of course it was, but if the man hadn’t been drinking—if he’d been in his right senses rather than looking for trouble—nothing would have happened to Alice.”
“And Albert forgave him, you say? In public or private?”
“Both. He was—” She stopped, horrified. “You aren’t thinking—? This man they found dead—it couldn’t have been the one in Whitby, could it? Is that why Inspector Madsen has gone back to Dilby so many times?”
Rutledge answered, “Early days yet, but I’ll take the sketch to Mrs. Crowell and ask her. She won’t have forgotten what he looked like.”
“But that will just bring it all back again.”
“Did you see the man, could you identify him instead?”
“I wasn’t engaged to Julian then. I knew about the incident, of course. It happened just before the war. Early July, I think. Julian and I weren’t engaged until August. It wasn’t—I wasn’t involved. Ask Albert. He’ll be able to tell you.”
“He’s already told the police that he can’t identify the dead man. I have no choice, you see, but to speak to Mrs. Crowell.”
She came out from behind the desk, her face set. “I’m going with you, Inspector. Let me find someone to mind the desk while I’m gone.”
“No, I think it best—”
“It isn’t a question of what you think, Inspector. I won’t have Alice upset about this business. I’m coming to be certain she isn’t. A woman ought to be there with her.”
7
Ten minutes later Miss Norton climbed into Rutledge’s motorcar and settled herself. “The quickest way is as the crow flies, of course. But as we aren’t crows—” She began to direct him, out of Elthorpe, then around the skirts of the estate on whose grounds the great abbey ruins took pride of place, and down an unmade road that wandered for several miles before dividing. The right branch continued to the west, while the left turned more to the south.
“To your right,” Miss Norton said. “It’s only another mile or two.”
They soon came into a small village clinging to the road. “There’s the school,” she said. “Alice should be upstairs. Alone, I hope.”
He passed the row of shops, a tiny lending library, a church more the size of a chapel, and came to a house a little larger than the others he’d passed, the front façade softened by stonework around the windows and above the door.
“It was a prosperous merchant’s home,” Miss Norton was saying, her nervousness showing in the tenseness of her voice. “And left to the village some sixty years ago to be used as a school. I wish I’d never mentioned Alice,” she went on. “How did you trick me into saying anything about her?”
“It wasn’t a trick,” he replied, drawing up in front of the school. “You were telling me about your fiancé. Julian.”
“Yes, and somehow—”
He got down and went around to her door as she added, “You won’t tell Inspector Madsen about this foolishness, will you? He’s already brought Albert in for questioning four times now. It will only make him more anxious to prove something.”
“If Mrs. Crowell identifies this man from the sketch, then I’ve no choice.”
“Oh, blast the sketch,” she said furiously, slamming her door behind her. “I wish I’d never seen you.”
She marched ahead of him, back ramrod straight, her face closed. She went directly into the school, leaving him to follow or not, as he pleased.