Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [33]
And that, too, was a question worth considering. It all kept coming back to that: Why had the town united so easily against this woman?
On impulse, Rutledge shut off the engine and got out, crossing the road and walking down into the inn yard, where the stables and outbuildings stood.
They were in a fair state of repair. With little work done during the war and no money after it to tackle major improvements, upkeep spoke well for the management.
He was poking about in the stable, looking for the cabinet where Inspector Oliver had discovered the first set of bones, when a loud voice said, “Here! What do you think you’re doing!”
He turned to find a tall, heavy-shouldered man of middle age standing in the doorway, arms akimbo, staring at him with harsh dislike. Shadowed by the doorway, his face was dark and ugly but had a strength to it as well.
Rutledge, well aware that he was trespassing, replied peaceably, “I’d heard that the inn might be for sale.”
“There’s no decision been made to sell or not sell,” the man said.
“I see.” Rutledge turned, having found what he was looking for, the part of the wall pulled down to bring a skeleton to light. The cupboard, deep enough to start with, had been made shallower to conceal the grave behind it. A careful bit of work—a hundred years ago trouble had been taken to make the spot seem ordinary, unsuspicious. It must have been quite a shock for Inspector Oliver to discover that his “corpse” was nearly as old as the inn.
Rutledge began to walk toward the man blocking the exit. It made him uneasy to have his way closed—even in the relative spaciousness of the stable, he could feel the claustrophobia it invoked. The air seemed thick, suffocating—
“Tell me about the owner—” He broke off. After being buried alive in the impenetrable mud of a shell crater, weighed down by Hamish’s body, Rutledge had come to hate being shut in—confined in any fashion. Traveling on trains, sleeping in a small room, seeing himself cut off from escape through a door or down a stair—the need for space was so urgent that it ignited a rising panic. Even here he could feel the sudden dampness of sweat on his face, the difficulty breathing, the awareness of hideous danger—
“You’ll be wanting to speak to the police, then,” the man told him bluntly but didn’t elaborate. His stance was intentionally threatening now, belligerent, as if he sensed Rutledge’s sudden uneasiness. Rutledge felt his own muscles tensing.
Rutledge replied, “A woman, I understand. What has she done to find herself of interest to the police?”
“None of your affair, is it?” At last the man moved out into the sunlight, and Rutledge followed, his breathing still uneven.
Damn this, he swore, fighting the claustrophobia. Keep your mind on what you’re doing, can’t you?
But Hamish, too, was responding to the man’s aggressive stance, asking if he had believed the innuendoes and the letters—or was incensed by them. Rutledge thought, It was difficult to tell. He was a man who showed little in his face; he would not be easy to interrogate.
“Does she have any family? Heirs?”
“None.” Uncompromising. Cold. Then, grudgingly, “None that I know of.”
No mention of the boy. But he would inherit nothing . . . would he?
“Then I’ll be on my way.” Walking back toward the inn, Rutledge could sense the man’s stare boring into his back between his shoulder blades.
If this was any example of how the townspeople felt about the woman who owned this property, it was evident that she had somehow made abiding enemies.
Which didn’t fit into the picture of her that McKinstry had so glowingly painted.
Who was the woman in the eye of a controversy that might well end with a hanging?
Rutledge realized suddenly that he didn’t even know her full name. Not that it mattered, he thought, but it was an indication that whatever crime she had committed—from lying to murder—she had somehow lost her identity because of it. As if, by refusing to call her by name, Duncarrick could finish what they had begun back in June—shunning