A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [74]
“Were you ever told why he’d come here to live?”
“Fell on hard times, Peter said. I didn’t press for more. It wasn’t my business, or anyone else’s. But my wife always thought he must have been in gaol somewhere, and afterward had nowhere to go. She said Peter was a good man to take on responsibility like that. She said that if Henry had nothing to hide, he’d be helping more in the shop or walking the children to school or coming to services of a Sunday. The Jordans said he’d been in trouble in Whitby. Attacked a woman.”
He shook his broom against the wall of the shop to clean it, and went back inside. “Gossip, for all I know,” he ended as he prepared to shut the door in Rutledge’s face. “He mayn’t have had anything to hide. But he’d have fared better, wouldn’t he, if he’d been open about it.”
Hamish said as Rutledge turned toward the motorcar, “He willna’ be missed. Even by his cousin.”
Which would go far to explaining Littleton’s assumption of suicide, the decision to move to Wales notwithstanding. Good riddance, a body to bury, a family skeleton disposed of, and on Christmas or Easter, a prayer to be said in passing for Shoreham’s soul….
Reaching the motorcar, Rutledge decided to drive on to Wales without going back to Elthorpe today.
He spent the night in Shrewsbury, then crossed the border in a fine rain that seemed to wrap the river valleys in playful mist, rising now, then thinning, the great sweep of hillsides and heavy clouds barely visible before they were veiled again. He saw sheep sometimes, not yet shorn of their winter coat, huddling in the lee of whatever shelter they could find, but the land was empty save for the few towns he had to pass through. There were scattered farms at the end of long and winding lanes, and even they appeared to be deserted, as if all the people of Wales had gone away somewhere else. And yet it was a beautiful drive.
Aberystwyth sat on Cardigan Bay, the water curving into the town and a ruin of a castle standing out on the headland to the right. Rutledge stopped in the town only long enough for a meal in a small, dimly lit café where he was regarded with interest. Asking at shops that catered to farmers, he finally discovered where Llewellyn Williams lived. There were seven men of that name within a twenty-mile radius. He backtracked along the way he’d come until he found the lane leading into a village with an unpronounceable name. Beyond it he soon spotted the track that continued into the Williams farm.
It was a small house with a sagging slate roof, surrounded by outbuildings. As he stopped, a dog came out to sniff at his motorcar before baying toward the house. As a welcome it lacked a great deal, and although Rutledge, good with animals as a rule, did his best to befriend the dog, he thought it best to leave well enough alone after a tentative move to leave the motorcar won him a low growl.
After some minutes, a man came to the door. He was of medium height, thin, dark, nondescript. But he didn’t resemble the sketch at all.
“Llewellyn Williams?” Rutledge called.
“What do you want with him?” It was wary, as if strangers weren’t welcomed here.
“Call off your dog. I need to speak to you, and it’s too wet to stand here shouting at each other.”
The man hesitated. After a moment, he whistled to the dog and it came to sit grinning up at him. His hand went to its massive head, a gentle touch.
Rutledge walked across to him. “I’m Inspector Ian Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I’ve come in search of Henry Shoreham.”
“What’s he wanted for?” the man asked.
“He’s done nothing more than disappear. His family is worried for him.”
“I doubt it. He has no family to speak of. But I haven’t seen him. I told another English policeman as much. If you’d spoken to him, it would have saved you a journey.”
“You aren’t Welsh.” It was a statement.
Williams shrugged. “My family is—was. I moved to England when I was a child. My mother