Charles Todd - A matter of Justice

She sighed. "I'll go fetch the children and set out our dinner. I doubt any of us will swallow more than a spoonful."

He let her go, and waited. After a time, Hugh walked into the parlor without his daughter.

"She'll come home in her own time. I'll ask Miss O'Hara if she minds keeping her a little longer."

He walked past Rutledge and went out the door.

Rutledge waited, and in ten minutes, her face washed and her hair brushed, Gwyneth Jones stepped shyly into the parlor.

The resilience of youth, he thought.

"The selfishness of the young," Hamish countered. "She got what she wants, even if no one else did."

She was indeed a pretty girl, despite the dark circles beneath her eyes and the strain in them only just easing. In a small voice she apologized to Rutledge for being so troublesome, and then looked around for Miss O'Hara.

"She's in the garden. She wanted to give your family a little privacy."

Gwyneth nodded and went out.

After a time, Miss O'Hara walked back in her own house and shut the door behind her.

"Well," she said, hands shoved into the pockets of the short jacket she was wearing, "all this drama has made me hungry. You'll take me to The Unicorn to dine. I'll expect you in half an hour, and let the gossips be damned."

He found himself laughing.

And then realized that she was quite serious.

The next morning, Padgett met Rutledge at the dining room door as he was leaving after his breakfast.

Padgett followed him into Reception and said, "The rumor mill has been busy. I hear you had dinner with the lovely Miss O'Hara. Won't look good in London, will it, if you have to take her into custody for murder."

"I doubt she killed Quarles because he flirted with her in the street."

"Oh, ho! She's already in the clear-" He held up a hand before Rutledge could make the retort that Padgett saw coming. "Never mind. We've got a far different problem. The baker, Hugh Jones, is in the station wanting to make a statement."

Rutledge swore silently. "Let him make whatever statement he cares to write down and sign. But we'll not take any action on it until I'm satisfied he isn't lying."

"His girl's come home. He thinks that makes him your favorite suspect."

"And it does. But I haven't yet been able to show he knew she'd left her grandmother's. If Jones killed Quarles without knowing she was leaving Wales, it was coincidence."

"She'd written him that she was unhappy there. He just told me as much. He might have been clearing the way for her to come."

Rutledge considered Padgett. "Do you really think Hugh Jones is our murderer?"

"Better him than me," Padgett said tersely. Then he added, "I don't see him leaving his family destitute. And he would. Still, if Quarles goaded him, who knows what he might have forgotten in the heat of the moment? He's a strong man, mind you."

"There's something else I want to speak to you about. Let's walk."

They went outside where they couldn't be heard. Rutledge said, "This business with Brunswick leaves me unsatisfied."

"Whether he killed his wife or she killed herself?"

"In a way. Sunday, when we were discussing past murders here in Cambury, you told me about a young soldier returning from the war who believed his wife had been unfaithful. He knocked her down and killed her."

"Yes, he claimed it was in a fit of temper."

"Who was the man he suspected of sleeping with her?"

Padgett frowned. "We never knew. He told me he'd killed his wife, and there was the end of it. Gossip claimed it was a lorry driver who'd been seen about the place from time to time, but he turned out to be her brother. And after killing her, the husband wasn't about to besmirch her good name. Odd business, but for all I know, the war turned his mind, and it was all in his imagination. There was no talk about her before he came home."

"Could the other man have been Harold Quarles? There's a rumor about a mistress. Was she this woman? Or is his mistress just wishful thinking on the part of busybodies?"

Padgett's eyebrows flew up. "Quarles? Somehow I don't see it. And nor did the gossips. But there's her farm, and this business of him playing squire when he first came to Hallowfields. It could have begun that way. What put you on to that possibility?"

"Thinking last night about Brunswick and his wife."

Padgett shook his head. "The soldier's wife was quite pretty. But water over the dam, now. Nothing we can do about it, even if it was Quarles."

"It might explain why Brunswick was so certain his own wife was unfaithful. There was precedent."

"I put that down to his naturally jealous nature. But you never know. Dr. O'Neil is releasing Stephenson today. With orders not to open the shop for the rest of the week."

"I've spoken to the Army. Stephenson's son died in France of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Has the rector been to see him?"

"Yes, according to O'Neil, Mr. Heller was there for nearly an hour. And he said that afterward, Stephenson appeared to be in a better frame of mind. We seem to be at a standstill. Do you think we'll find our man? " He was serious now, and his eyes were on Rutledge's face, trying to read his thoughts.

"We'll find him," Rutledge answered grimly. "Whoever did this went to great lengths to leave behind no evidence we could collect or use against him. But there's always something. When we have that, we'll have him."

Padgett was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You're the man on the spot. I'll see to Jones. And I'll have a brief chat with Brunswick as well."

He nodded and walked away. lmost without conscious thought, Rutledge went to the hotel

Rutledge stood looking after him with mixed feelings. yard and got into his motorcar. He hadn't planned to drive out to Hallowfields, but he found himself drawn again to the tithe barn, restless in his own mind, unable to pinpoint what it was that niggled at the corners of this inquiry, why it was he couldn't seem to draw all the edges together and make a whole.

He had watched Mrs. Newell do that with her willow strands, the basket taking shape under her deft fingers, the certainty with which she worked demonstrated by the steadily rising levels on the basket sides, the way the willows, whippy and straight, bent and wove to her fingers, and the simple grace with which it all came together.

Would, he thought, driving down the High Street toward Hallow- fields, that murder inquiries had the same subtle texture and execution.

He left the motorcar by the main gate and walked from there to the gatehouse at the Home Farm, then stood in its little garden, trying to put himself in the darkness of Saturday near midnight, and the confrontation in this place that must have led to murder. After a moment he went across to the one stone that had been slightly dislodged from its neighbors. No blood or hair would have adhered to it. Whoever had used it would have seen to that. But he hefted it in his hand and felt the smooth weight of it, the neatness with which it filled his palm and the size, which allowed him a firm grip.

It was made for murder, he thought, as perfect a weapon as even an ancient warrior could have found, before he learned how to shape a tool for killing.

Hamish said, "It's whimsy, this."

Rutledge smiled and put it back in its place beside its neighbors.

He looked up at the gatehouse, across to the tithe barn, no longer guarded by one of Padgett's constables, and then down the lane toward the Home Farm.

Was there nothing here to re-create that scene of murder?

Pacing on the grassy verges of the lane, he tried to shut his mind to someone calling somewhere in the distance and the sound of a tractor rumbling into a barn.

At the end of his next turn, he looked up, following the flight of a bird, and realized that the parkland on this side of the road, part of the estate, had a matching stretch of wood on the far side, perhaps thirty feet deep, and overgrown. Whether or not it belonged to the estate, he didn't know, but seedlings must have escaped from the park over the decades and found fertile soil there, making themselves a poor reflection of their better grown neighbors.