Charles Todd - A matter of Justice

It was quite Dickensian. The question was, how much of the story was true? Enough certainly for a man like Hurley to believe it. The old lawyer was not one easily taken in. Or else Quarles had been a very fine spinner of tales…

Rutledge left soon after. The morning sun was so bright it sent a stab of pain through his head, but he had done what he'd come to London to do, and there was nothing for it but to return to Somerset as soon as possible.

Hamish was set against it, but Rutledge shrugged off his objections. He stopped briefly to eat something at a small tea shop in Kensington, then sped west.

It was just after he crossed into Somerset, as the throbbing in his head changed to an intermittent dull ache, that he realized Davis Pen- rith had not asked him how Harold Quarles had died.

As Rutledge came into Cambury, he pulled to one side of the High Street to allow a van to complete a turn. The sign on its side read CLARK AND SONS, MILLERS, and it had just made a delivery to the bakery. A man in a white apron was already walking back into the shop after seeing it off. Welsh dark and heavyset, he reached into the shop window as he closed the green door, removing a tray of buns.

Was he the Jones whose daughter had been sent to Cardiff after receiving Harold Quarles's attentions?

Very likely. And to judge from the width and power of his shoulders, he could have managed the device in the tithe barn with ease.

Rutledge went on to the hotel, leaving his motorcar in the yard behind The Unicorn, then walked back to the baker's shop. A liver and white spaniel was sitting patiently outside the door, his stump of a tail wagging happily as Rutledge spoke to him.

Jones was behind the counter, talking to an elderly woman as he wrapped her purchase in white paper. His manner was effusive, and he smiled at a small witticism about her dog and its taste for Jones's wares. Watching her out the door, he sighed, then turned to Rutledge.

"What might I do for you, sir?"

Rutledge introduced himself, and Jones nodded.

"You're here about Mr. Quarles, not for aniseed cake," he replied dryly. "Well, if you're thinking I'm delighted to hear he's dead, you're right." At Rutledge's expression of surprise, Jones added, "Oh, yes, word arrived with the milk early this morning. Bertie, the dairyman, had heard it at the Home Farm. Great ones for gossip, the staff at the Home Farm. Tell Bertie anything, and he's better than a town crier for spreading rumors. But this time it isn't rumor, is it?"

"No. And you'll understand that I need to know where you were on Saturday evening. Let's say between ten o'clock and two in the morning."

Jones smiled. "In the bosom of my family. But I didn't kill him, you know. There was a time when I'd have done it gladly, save for the hanging. I've a wife and six children depending on me for their comfort, and even Harold Quarles dead at my hands wasn't worth dying myself. But I say more power to whoever it was. It was time his ways caught up with him."

"I understand he paid more attention to your daughter than was proper."

Jones's laughter boomed around the empty shop, but it wasn't amused laughter. "You might call it 'more attention than proper.' I called it outright revolting. A child her age? Filling Gwyneth's head with tales of London, telling her about the theater and the shops and seeing the King morning, noon, and night, to the point she could think of nothing else but going there. She was barely sixteen and easily persuaded into anything but working here in the shop, up to her elbows in flour and dough in the wee hours while the ovens heat up, taking those heavy loaves out again, filling the trays with cakes and buns before we opened at seven. It's not easy, but it's what kept food on my table as a boy and food on hers now. She was my choice to take over when I can no longer keep it going, but after Quarles had unsettled her, she'd no wish to stay in Cambury. I don't see her now, my own daughter, but once in three months' time. I can't leave here, and I can't bring her back, and she's the apple of my eye. But she isn't the same child she once was. He cost her her innocence, you might say."

It wasn't unusual for a girl Gwyneth's age to change her mind every few months about what she wished to do with her life. It was a time for dreaming and pretending that something wonderful might happen. Quarles had precipitated her growing up in a way that Jones was not prepared to accept.

Reason enough to kill the man.

But Jones seemed to read his mind, and he said before Rutledge could pose the next question, "I would have done it there and then, not wait, if I was to kill him. I could have put my hands around his neck and watched him die in front of me. I was that angry. If you're a father, you understand that. If you're not, you'll have to take my word for it. Rector helped me see sense. I'm chapel, not Church of England, but he made me think of my family and where I'd be if I let my feelings carry me into foolishness."

The words rang true. Still, Jones had had time to think about what he'd say to the police when someone came to question him. Since early morning, in fact.

Jones was adding, "My wife was here as soon as she'd heard. I didn't tell her, it was going to come out soon enough anyway. She asked me straight out if I'd done this. And I told her no. But I could see doubt in her eyes. Thinking I might have gone out after she went to sleep. I didn't."

In his face was the hurt that his wife's suspicion, her need to come to him at once for assurance, had brought in its wake. Which to Rut- ledge indicated just how much hate this man must have harbored.

"Did you know that Quarles was in Cambury this past weekend?"

"Not at first. Then I saw him with Mr. Masters on their way to the ironmonger's shop. That was Saturday morning."

"We'd like you to make a statement, Mr. Jones. Will you come to the police station after you close the shop and tell Constable Daniels what you've just told me?"

"I'll do it. And put my hand on the Bible to swear to it."

The door of the shop opened, and two women came in.

"If there's nothing more, I'll ask you to leave now," Jones said quietly. "It won't do my custom any good for me to be seen talking with the police. Now that the news is traveling."

Rutledge nodded and went out while the women were still debating over lemon tarts and a dark tea bun with raisins in it.

He walked along the High Street, listening to Hamish in his head until he reached the police station. Constable Horton was there, reading a manual on the use of the typewriter.

He looked up as Rutledge came in, smiling sheepishly. "I hear him swearing in his office. I wondered what the fuss was all about. Looks easy enough to me, once you know where your fingers belong." Setting the manual aside, he added, his eyes carefully avoiding the red and swollen abrasion on the Londoner's forehead, "The inspector isn't here, sir, if it's him you're after."

"I need the direction of the Jones house. I just spoke to Mr. Jones in the bakery. I'd like to talk to his wife next."

"Inspector Padgett thought you'd gone up to London."

"So I have," Rutledge answered, and left it at that.

Horton explained how to find the Jones house, and Rutledge thanked him, leaving on the heels of it.

The Jones family had a rambling home at the bottom of James Street, apparently adding on with the birth of each child. There was no front garden, but the window boxes were rampant with color, and the white curtains behind them were stiff with starch.

Rutledge tapped on the door, and after a moment a woman answered it, a sleepy child on her hip.

She had been crying, her eyes red-rimmed.

Rutledge introduced himself, showing her his identification. She hesitated before inviting him into the house, as if trying to come up with an excuse to send him away. In the end she realized she had no choice.