A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [40]
Hugh’s brows flicked together, and Rutledge could almost hear the thoughts rushing through his head. Who told? Who spoke out of turn?
“If you won’t tell me, I must ask the other boys. Robert is younger, he might not be as stubborn as you are, or as determined to protect his friends.”
“Robbie has nothing to do with us.” The words were angry, and full of fear as well. “Leave Robbie out of this.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. There are suspicious circumstances surrounding a man’s death, you see, and I’ve come north to find out why he died. If he was killed.”
It was all Hugh could do to stop himself from blurting out, None of us killed him—it was the Devil!
Rutledge tried another direction. “Do you know the book on alchemy that belongs to Mr. Crowell?”
“I’ve seen it,” Hugh said warily. He had nearly forgotten the book by the time the Elthorpe inspector brought it back to the school. That had shaken him. But with a child’s sense of what was important, he could now safely deny all knowledge of it. It was where it ought to be, wasn’t it, and no one knew he’d borrowed it. Now he dredged up his first acquaintance with it. “He shows it when he’s trying to explain how people get things wrong, but in the end, each bit of knowledge helps the next person looking for the truth.”
Even to his own ears that sounded very much like a memorized lesson he was parroting.
“Police work is much the same,” Rutledge told him, seizing his opportunity. “We try this bit of knowledge and that bit, and in the end, we learn the truth. We—the police—found that book in Fountains Abbey the night a man died. And so we came to speak to Mr. Crowell. His name was in it, you see. And the police believe he might have been in the ruins of the cloister talking with the man who was later killed.”
“Mr. Crowell wouldn’t kill anybody. Not even in the war, he couldn’t.”
“Then how did his book come to be in the ruins beside a dead man? Who else could possibly have left it there? That’s our dilemma. That’s why we must know who might have met the man that night. Someone did. We found candle wax in the cloister as well. They must have stood there and talked at some point.”
Hugh was silent, confused, his face working with his thoughts, his body tense as a cornered animal’s.
“We have a body, we have a book with another man’s name in it, Mr. Crowell’s name, and no answers to the puzzle,” Rutledge persisted. “You can see, surely, that we must get to the truth if we’re to show whether Mr. Crowell is to blame for what happened. Otherwise, he’ll be held responsible.”
Hugh said, as if he thought it was all a trick, “There’s no one dead I heard of. Who is it, then? And what was he doing in the abbey late at night?”
Rutledge answered him with honesty. “We don’t know his name. He’s a stranger.” He reached for the file on Mrs. Crowell’s desk and opened it to show the sketched face to Hugh. The boy hesitated, then curiosity got the better of him.
“That’s him, then?” Hugh stared at the face. “He doesn’t look dead.”
“I assure you he is. We don’t know where to find his family.”
After a moment Hugh looked away. “What killed him?”
“He was—er—overcome by gas.” Rutledge had debated what to say, knowing that the question would surely come up. It was important to be honest with the boy, now.
That took Hugh aback. “Like in the war?”
“No. Not like in the war.”
“I never saw him before.” There was a wealth of relief behind the words. “Never.”
“He hasn’t come to call on someone in Dilby? Perhaps met him by the church or at the edge of the village? On the road, or even out in a field?”
Hugh shook his head vigorously.
“Perhaps you didn’t see his face, only his back or a silhouette. The problem is, who did he come here to see?”
“He never came to Dilby that I know of. It’s God’s truth.”
“And so we’re back to the book of alchemy. And why it was left at this man’s feet. In an ancient abbey cloister, of all places.”
Another thought had