Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

“I’m Inspector Rutledge from Scotland Yard. The Chief Constable has asked me to take over the inquiry into Sir John’s death. Do you feel up to speaking to me?”

“Yes, sir. But I wasn’t here, you see. If I had been — ”

“If you had been,” he said, cutting across her guilt-ridden anguish, “you might have died with him.”

She stared at him. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

He began by asking her about Sir John.

By her account, Sir John Middleton was a retired military man, having served in the Great War. Rutledge could, of his own knowledge, add that Sir John had served with distinction in an HQ not noted for its brilliance. He at least had been a voice of sanity there and was much admired for it, even though it had not aided his Army career. Had he made enemies, then?

Hamish said, “Aye, it’s possible. He didna’ fear his killer. Or put up a struggle.”

And that was a good point.

“Was he alive when you reached him?”

“Yes, I could see that he was still breathing, ragged though it was. He cried out, just the one word, when I bent to touch him, as if he knew I was there. As if, looking back on it now, he’d held on waiting for me. Because he seemed to let go then, but I could tell he wasn’t dead. I was that torn — leaving him to go for the doctor or staying with him.”

“What did he say? Could you understand him?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Trafalgar , he said. Clear as could be. I ran out then, shouting for help, and I met Sam on the road. He was willing to take a message to Dr Taylor, and so I came back to sit beside Sir John, but I doubt he knew I was there. Still, it wasn’t until Dr Taylor was bending over him that I heard the death rattle. I think he tried to speak again, just before.”

The doctor had said nothing about that.

“Are you certain Sir John spoke to Dr Taylor?”

But Mrs Gravely was not to be dissuaded. “I was in the doorway, facing Sir John’s desk. He had his back to me, the doctor did, but I could just see Sir John’s mouth, and his lips moved. I’d swear to that.”

“Did he know that it was the doctor who was with him? Was he aware, do you think, of where he was?”

“I can’t speak to that, sir. I only know he spoke. And the doctor answered him.”

“Could you hear what was said?”

“No, sir. But I thought he was trying to say the old dog’s name. Simba. It means lion, I was told. I can’t say whether he was trying to call to him or was asking where he’d got to.”

“How did Dr Taylor respond?”

“I don’t know, sir. I could see the doctor rock back on his heels, and then came the death rattle. I knew he was gone. Sir John. There was nothing to be done, was there? The doctor said so, afterwards.”

Rutledge could hear the echo of the doctor’s voice in her words, “I couldn’t do anything for him.”

“And then?”

“Dr Taylor turned and saw me in the doorway. He told me to find my coat and go outside to wait for the ambulance. But it wasn’t five minutes before he was at the door calling to me and telling me there was no need for the ambulance now. It might as well be the hearse. Well, I could have told him as much, but then he’s the one to give evidence at the inquest, isn’t he? He had to be certain sure.”

Rutledge went back to something Mrs Gravely had said earlier. “Trafalgar. What does that mean to you?”

The housekeeper frowned. “I don’t know, sir. As I remember from school, it was a battle. At sea. When Lord Nelson was killed.”

“That’s true,” Rutledge told her. “It was fought off the coast of Spain in 1805. But Sir John was an army man. And his father and grandfather before him.” He had seen the photographs in the study. At least two generations of officers, staring without expression into the lens of the camera. And a watercolour sketch of another officer, wearing a Guards uniform from before the Crimean War.

“Will you come down with me to the study? There are some photographs I’d like to ask you to identify.”

“Please, sir,” she answered anxiously. “Not if he’s still there. I couldn’t bear it. But I’ll know the pictures, I’ve dusted them since they were put up there.”

“Fair enough. The woman, then, with the braid of her hair encircling the frame.”

“That’s Lady Middleton, sir, his second wife. Elizabeth, she was. She died in childbirth, and the boy with her. I don’t think he ever got over her death.”

“Second wife?”

“He was married before that. To Althea Barnes. She died as well, out in India. He’d tried to persuade her that it was no place for a woman, but she insisted on going with him. Two years later she was dead of the cholera.”

“The young man in the uniform of the Buffs?”

“His brother Martin. He died in the first gas attack at Ypres.”

“And the old dog, outside the study window. That, I take it, is Simba? When did he die?”

“It was the strangest thing!” Mrs Gravely told him. “He was lying by the fire, as he always did, when I left for the village. And I come home to find him outside there in the cold. He was still warm, he couldn’t have been there very long. I can’t think what happened. I come into the study to tell Sir John that, and there he was, dying. I couldn’t quite take it all in.”

He thanked her for her help, and left her there mourning the man she’d served so long and no doubt wondering now what was to become of her.

Sam Hubbard, the farm-worker who had gone for Dr Taylor, had had the foresight to summon the rector as well. Rutledge found Sam standing in the kitchen talking to Constable Forrest and warming his hands at the cooker, mud on his boots and his face red from the cold.

He turned and gave Rutledge his name, adding, “I’ve buried the old dog under the apple tree, as Sir John would have wished. They planted that tree together. A pity Sir John can’t be buried there as well.”

“Did you find anything wrong with the dog? Any signs that he’d been harmed?”

Sam shook his head. “It was old age, and the cold as well, I expect. He was having trouble with his breathing, Simba was.”

“Did you work for Sir John?”

“He sent for me when there was heavy work to be done. Mr Laurence, who lives just down the road, doesn’t have enough to keep me busy these days. And, in my free time, I did what I could for Sir John. He was a good man. There weren’t many like him at HQ. More’s the pity.”

“In the war, were you?”

“I was. And I have a splinter of shrapnel in my shoulder to prove it.”

Rutledge considered him. He’d been coming up the road when Mrs Gravely had hailed him, but he could just as easily have been going the other way, turning when he heard her and pretending to know nothing about what had happened here in the house. And he’d taken it upon himself to bury the old dog.

“Where were you this afternoon? Before Mrs Gravely asked your help?”

Sam Hubbard’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you think I could have killed Sir John? I’d have died for him, for speaking up during the war and trying to keep as many of us poor bastards alive as he could. They were bloody butchers, save for him. Caring nothing for the men who had to die each time there was a push or a plan. If it was one of the likes of them lying dead in the study, you’d have to wonder if I had had a hand in it. But not Sir John.”

The passionate denial rang true — but Hubbard had had time to consider the questions the police would be asking. Tell one’s self something often enough, and it soon became easier to believe it. Like the rehearsals of an actor learning his part.

Mr Harris, the rector, was in the parlour. He had seen the body before the constable had got there, and he seemed shaken, standing by the parlour windows with a drink in his hand.