A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [71]
Hamish said, “It’s Fiona’s favorite among the flowers.”
Rutledge went through the gate and walked among the stones until he saw the shoemaker striding back to his shop.
Crossing the road after him, Rutledge waited until he’d opened the shop before going inside. The musical ring of a small bell above the door announced his presence, and the shoemaker raised his head from the leather he was trimming. He bore a faint resemblance to the dead man—around the same height, the same unremarkable shape of face, brown hair, and blue eyes. Nothing to set him apart from hundreds of other Englishmen.
I’m looking for Henry Shoreham,” Rutledge said. “I’m told you can help me find him.”
Littleton’s face changed from the smile he used to welcome custom to a wariness that went deep.
“Who’s asking?” He smoothed the leather with his fingertips, as if judging its quality without looking at it.
“Rutledge, Inspector, Scotland Yard.”
The shop was redolent with the scents of leather, wood, and polish. A cobbler’s bench sat by the window and there were lasts on the shelves against the back wall. Patterns lay on a table below. And two chairs, high enough to allow the shoemaker to work on the footwear of a client without squatting, were set into the near wall, facing the counter.
“He never went to trial for what he did.” It was defensive, as if Rutledge had come to take Shoreham back to Whitby. “So it never ended, you might say. No one let him forget what had happened. There was the young woman of course, she suffered and was scarred, mind you, but Henry also paid dearly for his drunkenness. And he never set out to hurt anybody. He wasn’t that sort.”
“I’m not here to charge him. The problem is we can’t seem to locate him at present. Is he still living with you?”
“If you’ve come this far, you know he’s not here. Inspector Madsen will have told you.”
“Quite. Why did Shoreham choose to come to Addleford? Because you were here?”
“Because he didn’t have two pennies to rub together. They didn’t want him back at the bank. Bad for business, they said. Everyone recognized him. There was nothing else he knew how to do but clerking. When no one would take him on and his savings ran out, he left Whitby and came to me to get back on his feet. But he couldn’t get the hang of shoemaking, and then a neighbor of his from Whitby moved here as well, and the story was spread about again. He decided to go to another cousin in Wales. Sheep aren’t easy to manage, but they don’t have to fit someone’s foot just right.”
Hamish said, “Ye canna’ judge how he felt about his cousin.”
It was true, there was a distance in what Littleton was saying, as if he were discussing a stranger.
Rutledge asked, “When did he leave?”
“I could tell he’d made up his mind, and I let him go. And the house was crowded with seven people under our roof, I’ll admit it. My wife was just as glad to see him move on. But then he’s not her kin, he’s mine.”
“When did he leave?” Rutledge repeated his question.
“It must be getting on to a week, now.” Littleton shrugged. “A fortnight even. One of the little ones has been ill. I’ve had more to worry about than keeping in mind when Henry set out. I had no way of knowing, see, that it would matter to have the exact day.”
“Did Constable Pickerel or Inspector Madsen tell you there was a dead man at Elthorpe who might be your cousin? Surely that should have worried you.”
“Constable Pickerel said nothing of that when he first came here. He was all for leaving for Wales straightaway. My cousin Llewellyn knew Henry was coming, but there wasn’t a fixed date. You could have blown me over with a feather when the constable reported Henry never got there. Then Inspector Madsen came, going on about a dead man. I was afraid that it might be Henry. That he’d finally done himself some harm, out of remorse. That he never intended going to Wales.”
“Yet you felt no need to travel to Elthorpe, to be sure?”
Littleton looked him in the eye. “It was the inspector