Mike Ashley - The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

“Dutch courage,” he said ruefully, lifting the glass as Rutledge opened the door. “I don’t see many murder victims in my patch. And I thank God for that. How is Mrs Gravely faring?”

“She’s a little better, I think. What can you tell me about Sir John? Have you known him very long?”

“I’d describe him as a lonely man,” Harris told Rutledge pensively. “I encouraged him to take an interest in village affairs, to see the need for someone of his calibre to serve on the vestry. But he was loathe to involve himself here. It’s not his home, you know. He was from Hereford, I believe, but sold up and moved here after the war. He said the house was not the same without his wife, and he couldn’t bear the emptiness — his word. Elizabeth was much younger, you see. Sir John was married twice. Once early on in his career, and then again some months before the fighting began in 1914.”

“Did he bring Mrs Gravely with him from Hereford?” He’d noted her accent was not local.

“Yes, she was taken on by Elizabeth Middleton just before their marriage, and she agreed to stay with him after her mistress died.”

“I understand his first wife died in India. Of cholera. Is there any proof of that, do you think? Or do we just have Sir John’s word for what happened to her?”

“That’s rather suspicious of you!”

“In a murder case, there are few certainties.”

“Well, I can only tell you that it’s written down in the Middleton family Bible. It’s on the bookshelf behind the desk. I’ve seen the entry.”

But what was inscribed in the family Bible was not necessarily witnessed by God, whatever the rector wished to believe.

“Did they get on well?”

“I have no idea. Except that he described Althea Middleton once as headstrong. Apparently, she’d insisted on having her way in all things, including going to India.”

“Did she also live in Herefordshire?”

“I believe she came from somewhere along the coast. Near Torquay. I went there once on holiday, and knew the area a little. Sir John mentioned her home in connection with my travels. The second Lady Middleton — he called her Eliza — was a love match, certainly on his part. He wore a black armband throughout the war and told me, if it hadn’t been for his duty, he’d not have been able to go on without her.”

“No children of either marriage?”

“None that I ever heard of. Which reminds me, speaking of family. You might include poor Simba in that category. I saw his body there under the window.” Harris shook his head. “The dog was devoted to Sir John. I’d see the two of them walking across the fields of an afternoon, when I was on my rounds. I wonder who put him out. It isn’t — wasn’t — like Sir John. Odd, that, I must say.”

“Odd?”

“Yes, he would never have shown Simba the door, not at the dog’s advanced age. The dog had belonged to Elizabeth, you see. Sir John had been worried about him since before Christmas, when his breathing seemed to worsen. It got better, but it was a warning, you might say, that his end was near. Sir John would have gone outside with him, and brought him in again as soon as he’d done his business.”

“But they walked the fields together?”

“Yes. I meant over the years, you know. Not recently, of course.”

Which, Hamish was pointing out, could explain why the killer came to the house rather than accost Sir John on an outing.

But the dog had been with him today, Rutledge replied. And the dog was put outside. Had the visitor arrived at the door just as his victim was preparing to walk the dog?

Hamish said, “He was killed in the study, no’ in the entry.”

“Does Trafalgar mean anything to you?” Rutledge asked Harris.

“It was a great sea battle. And of course it’s a cape along the southern Spanish coast. The battle was named from it, I believe.”

“That’s no’ likely to figure largely in a military man’s death in Cambridgeshire,” Hamish commented.

Rutledge thanked the rector, and Harris went in search of Mrs Gravely, to offer what comfort he could.

There was a tap at the door, and Rutledge went to open it himself.

Dr Taylor had returned, and nodding over his shoulder to the hearse from Cambridge, he said, “If you’ve finished, I’ll take charge of the body.”

“Yes, go ahead. When will you have your report?”

“By tomorrow morning, I should think. It ought to be fairly straightforward. We have a clear idea of when Mrs Gravely left for market, and when she returned. And the wounds more or less speak for themselves. I don’t expect any surprises.”

Nor did Rutledge. But he said, “Have a care, all the same.”

Taylor said sharply, “I always do.”

Rutledge stepped aside, watching as the men collected Sir John’s body from the study and carried it out the door.

As he walked with them to the hearse, one of them said to him, “I was in the war. I’ll see he’s taken care of.” Rutledge nodded, standing in the cold wind until the hearse had turned and made its way back on to the road into Mumford.

As he swung around to go back inside, he saw Mrs Gravely at an upstairs window, a handkerchief to her mouth, tears running down her cheeks. Behind her stood the rector, a hand on her shoulder for comfort.

Rutledge was glad to shut the door against the wind, and rubbed his palms smartly together as he stood there thinking. Had the killer knocked, he wondered, and waited until Sir John had answered the summons, or had he come in through the unlocked door and made his way to the study?

Hamish said, “He knocked.”

“Why are you so certain?” Rutledge answered the voice in his head. It was always there — had been since July of 1916, when Corporal Hamish MacLeod was executed for refusing to carry out a direct order from a superior officer. The price, Rutledge knew, of MacLeod’s care of his men, shifting the burden of guilt from his own shoulders to Rutledge’s. It had not been easy that day to send weary, sleep-deprived soldiers over the top again and again and again, knowing they would not survive. But orders were orders, and, although numbed to the cost, as the battle of the Somme raged on, Rutledge had done what he could to shield them. It hadn’t been enough, he knew that, and Hamish knew it. And Hamish had broken first, willing to die himself rather than watch more men sacrificed. The machine-gun nest was impregnable, and every soldier in the line was all too aware of it. No amount of persuasion had shifted Hamish MacLeod from his determination not to lead another attack and, in the end, an example had had to be made.

And Rutledge, well aware that the young Scottish corporal would not see home again, had delivered the coup de grace to the dying man. But Hamish MacLeod did come back — in Rutledge’s battered mind: an angry and vengeful voice at first, and then with time, a relentless companion who yielded no quarter, sharing the days and nights, and silent only when Rutledge slept, although dreams often brought him awake again, into Hamish’s grip once more.

“Because the man was struck from behind. He wouldna’ have let a stranger get behind him.”

It was a very good point, and Rutledge agreed. A knock, then, and Sir John opened the door to someone he knew. They walked back into the study, and at some point the old dog was put out. Before or after Sir John had been attacked? There was no way of knowing. Yet.

He went into the study and began his search.

He saw the Bible at once, on the shelf just as the rector had told him. Opening it to the parchment pages between the old and new testaments, Rutledge scanned the record of family marriages, then turned the page to look through the listing of deaths.