Charles Todd - A Bitter Truth

“Will you continue to search for this child? Or will you give it up?”

“I’m not always free to come and go,” I told him honestly. “But if I can, yes.”

“I don’t see why. There’s nothing you can do about her even if you find her.”

“That’s true. I just have a feeling I ought to do this.”

He grunted wordlessly in answer.

When we came to St. Mary’s, Roger left the motorcar by the verge, and we walked through the tall wrought iron gate. I looked at the marble kitten, but it seemed to be in exactly the same place. Had Mrs. Ellis really noticed a change? I was no judge.

“I brought you here to help you remember. Was there anything unusual about the churchyard that morning?”

“It was quiet. I didn’t notice that anything had changed since we were here the day before. But when I came to the path down to the stream, I could tell that someone-something-had come that way earlier. Stems bent or broken. That was George Hughes going down, surely, and whoever had followed him.”

But he wasn’t satisfied. “There must have been something. A man had been killed here just hours before. For God’s sake, help me!”

“I wasn’t prepared to find a dead man. I wasn’t looking for signs, evidence.” Was he trying to find out whether or not I knew about the kitten? I was beginning to regret coming with him. Simon had been right, I needed to be careful.

“They took all the walking sticks at Vixen Hill. Did the police tell you what sort of weapon was used?”

I hadn’t heard that. “No. And I couldn’t see the back of his head from where I stood. Nor when I bent over him to feel for a pulse. His hair was wet, what I could see of it, and I didn’t move him.”

I think he’d forgot that I was a nurse and had seen many dead bodies before this. He glanced quickly at me, and then away.

I remembered something. “Yesterday he asked me-Inspector Rother-if your mother and I had seen birds fly up, or heard them calling, as if disturbed. But we hadn’t. And I couldn’t think why we should have done. Surely the killer wasn’t still here after all that time.”

“Not if he was wise.” Roger Ellis sighed. “All right. It was worth trying. They’ll be wondering at Vixen Hill what has kept us.” He took my elbow as we turned back across the rough grass toward the motorcar.

We were halfway there when I stopped short. “Captain Ellis.”

“I told you in France. Roger. What is it?”

“Roger. It wasn’t birds he was asking me to remember. He just used them as an example, to nudge my memory. What he wanted to know was if we’d heard a horse neighing or moving about. There are horses here and there in the Forest. But he didn’t want to put that idea into my head. Because Davis Merrit had been out riding that morning, and the horse came back without him. What if he hadn’t encountered George and killed him, as Inspector Rother wanted to believe-what if instead, quite by accident, he’d met someone else out here, and that person had not wanted to be remembered so close to where the body would eventually be found?”

“Then Merrit is dead, isn’t he? It would explain everything-sending for you and for the rest of us, having to begin the inquiry from the very start.”

“But how did the watch come into Willy’s possession? Who gave it to him? Unless Willy himself is the killer, and he was trying to throw suspicion in Davis Merrit’s direction?”

“Why would Willy kill George Hughes?” Roger Ellis asked as he closed the tall iron gates and then held my door for me. “I didn’t think they even knew each other.”

“What if they did? Inspector Rother has asked me several times if I knew any of you from France. What if the connection was there? Did George ever mention Willy to you? Did you ever see him speak to Willy?”

“No.” He cranked the motorcar and then stepped in beside me. “It’s more likely that George knew him from here, in the Forest. He lived here, remember, for much of his life. He and Malcolm.”

“But you didn’t know Willy, did you?”

He smiled grimly. “There are many people here in the Forest that I don’t know. And I’m not even certain that that’s Willy’s true name.”

“Inspector Rother called him William Pryor.”

“Pryor? I don’t know of any family in the Forest by that name. But it proves nothing. Still, you’d think if Pryor came from here, Inspector Rother would know all about him by now.”

“That’s true. Inspector Rother has told me that he suspects everyone. Even me.”

“He’s found Merrit’s body, then. I wonder where it was?”

I knew. At a place called The Pitch. But I was still wary of telling anyone too much about my conversation with the Inspector. I had a feeling he was laying a trap.

When I said nothing, Roger went on, anger in his face. “I don’t like any of this. Damn it, I left my men to come home, and they’ve been fighting. Someone told me on the ship that the Germans had tried to break through again. And I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there .”

I knew what he was feeling. Men at the Front were bound by ties that had nothing to do with blood or class or county. And a good officer wanted to be there when his men were in jeopardy. Whether he could protect them or not, he would try his best. And he was never satisfied that anyone else could fill his shoes. I’d seen badly wounded men get up and try to walk, to convince us that they were able to return to duty.

I put out a hand, before I could change my mind. “Wait. Will you go back to the churchyard with me? There’s something I want to show you.”

He stopped the motorcar. I thought he would argue with me, but he didn’t. He got down and came around to open my door.

We walked back in silence, opened the gate, and after closing it, he followed me across the cold, winter-brown grass. I stopped at his sister’s gravestone.

“Do you notice anything different here?” I asked.

Frowning, he looked carefully at the figure of the marble child, and then dropped to his haunches, squatting on an eye level with the grave.

“No. All seems as it should be.”

Watching his face carefully, I said, “Then I was wrong. I-it’s just that I thought the kitten was not in its usual place.”

He studied the kitten, almost as realistic as the little girl it kept company through all these years.

“It’s exactly where it ought to be-almost touching her fingers.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you did ask me to consider everything.”

“Yes, well done.” We went back to the motorcar after closing the gate a second time.

I had seen Roger Ellis’s expression. If that marble kitten had been used as the murder weapon, it wasn’t the Captain who had employed it.

And I realized all at once that he wouldn’t have. If he’d intended murder, he’d have come prepared. He wouldn’t have desecrated his sister’s grave.

We drove to Vixen Hill in silence. Roger Ellis had been pleasant enough so far, but then he’d wanted my cooperation. Time would tell whether his mood lasted or not.

Mrs. Ellis looked tired when I saw her as I walked into the hall. Inspector Rother had gone, and although she smiled and told her son that he’d just made her give the same account over and over again until she was confused and felt a headache coming on, he looked sharply at her.

“There’s more. What did he tell you?”

“Very little. Except at the end. Roger, I think the police have found Davis Merrit’s body. Something-I didn’t know quite what it was-distracted him the entire two hours. I could tell, because sometimes I had to repeat what I’d just said. Finally I asked him if there was any news of Davis Merrit’s whereabouts. If that was why he’d come back here to question me. And he said he was unable to question the Lieutenant at this time. Not that he hadn’t found him, mind you, but that he was unable to question him.”