Charles Todd - A matter of Justice

"You don't understand. I was misled-it was Ronald Evering who told me that Quarles had slept with my wife. And I believed him, because it was the sort of thing Quarles would do. He punished his wife by having affairs with every woman in Cambury he could seduce. Why not my wife, to punish me? Dear God, don't you see? It must all have been a lie…"

It was Inspector Padgett's nature to gloat. As Rutledge sat in the man's office and reported the arrest of Davis Penrith and the evidence that supported it, Padgett smiled. It was nearly a sneer.

"Didn't I tell you from the start that it was someone in London? And you so certain the killer was among us here in Cambury?"

"It was the way the evidence pointed. Davis Penrith told us half truths about Scotland. He was there-but he'd driven through the night, like a bat out of hell, to make certain he was in time for the dinner his wife and he had been invited to attend."

"And her letter was equally unenlightening. Yes, one of the problems of not being on the spot, wouldn't you say?"

Rutledge, heeding the succinct advice Hamish was pouring into his ear, held on to his temper with a firm grip.

"Penrith swears he was tricked. That he'd deliberately left London early in order to discuss a business matter with Ronald Evering, and instead it turned out to be a trap. I'm on my way to the Scilly Isles to look into it."

"Never been there. Never had a reason to go, and never expect to. I'm not the best of sailors. Where was Penrith all the while on that Saturday evening?"

"He'd intended to go directly to the house to confront Quarles, but just as he neared the gates, Quarles was getting into the motorcar driven by Mr. Nelson, who was joining Quarles and Mr. Greer at dinner. They sat talking, and so Penrith didn't stop. He went as far as the next village, waited a decent interval, then drove back. The motorcar was gone, and so was Quarles. He turned in at the main drive, in front of the gates, and waited again, for some time, in fact, not sure what to do. On the chance that Quarles might have taken his visitor into Cambury to dine, Penrith walked into Cambury to look for Nelson's motorcar. By now, Penrith was impatient and worried about his timetable. But he found the vehicle by Greer's house and hung about out of sight, angry and frustrated. He didn't want to return to Hallowfields, he'd have to explain why his business couldn't wait until morning. Then Quarles obliged him by leaving the dinner early. Penrith stopped him, they had words, but Quarles was in no mood to entertain Penrith's suspicions. He walked on home, and Penrith had no choice but to follow-the High Street was hardly the place to discuss his wife's fidelity. He caught up to Quarles again on the road, and again Quarles gave him short shrift. Penrith thought Quarles was taunting him, and as they went past the gatehouse at the lane turning into the Home Farm, he was so angry he picked up one of those white stones and struck Quarles from behind. Penrith only remembers two blows, and he says Quarles was alive when he got the wind up and ran for his motorcar. He flatly denies carrying the body to the tithe barn."

"I thought you said you had a full confession."

"We do. As far as it goes. The question becomes, is Penrith still lying-this time about the apparatus in the tithe barn-or is he finally telling the truth? He doesn't strike me as a man of courage. But if he didn't move the body-who did?"

"Mrs. Quarles."

"How did she know it was lying there? I don't see her taking nightly strolls around the grounds and stumbling over her husband's corpse in the course of one of them."

"Jones? Or even Brunswick for that matter."

"When you consider the point, it's rather difficult to beard Quarles in his den-it's a house full of servants and potential witnesses. Waiting for him to come to you, outside the gates, can be hit or miss. It was sheer luck that Penrith saw him with Nelson, but jealousy that made him persist. Brunswick guessed that Quarles was somewhere about when he saw Penrith come out of Minton Street. He wasn't likely to follow the two of them. The question now is, who did?"

"Brunswick. Who else?"

"Brunswick had no reason to believe Penrith was about to kill Quarles. And that's true ofJones. But someone was expecting it. And that's the man I intend to call on when I leave here. He's the one who told Penrith that his wife was having an affair, and Penrith must have left him in a fury. Evering might have followed, to see what would happen. Why else would he tell Penrith such a thing? True or not, it led to Quarles's death."

Padgett said, "You don't give up easily, do you?"

"It's a matter ofjustice, you see. Even justice for an ogre."

Rutledge left soon after and drove on to Cornwall, spending the night just across the Tamar, and arriving at his destination in time to meet the mail boat on its return from the first crossing of the day.

The sea was calm, the skies clear. Rutledge had an opportunity to speak to the master as he stood at the wheel.

The man remembered bringing Penrith.

"He was in something of a state when I met him on the quay, ready to return to the mainland. He thought the fog bank on the horizon was going to swallow us and lead to catastrophe on one those skerries out there."

"Did Evering leave the island that same morning?"

"If you're asking if I picked him up on the next run, no. Nor the next day, for that matter."

"Does he have a boat of his own?"

"He does. And he's handled it in these waters all his life."

"Where would he leave it, on the mainland?"

"Wherever he chose to put in. There are a dozen coves, not to mention fishing ports, where he could tie up."

"What about a vehicle, once he did?"

"He keeps his motorcar on the Cornish mainland. It's no use to him on St. Anne's."

Rutledge nodded and changed the subject. They came alongside the quay at St. Anne's, and Rutledge helped the master tie up. There was no mail for Evering this trip, and Rutledge walked up the hill with his mind on what he was about to say. But before walking through the arbor gates, Rutledge took a brief tour around the small island, following the road until it became a lane and then a path.

The Evering family graves were tucked in a fold in the hillside, protected from the prevailing winds, and covered with flat stone slabs rather than the more conventional stones. When the winter gales washed across the island, they were less likely to erode.

He moved slowly among them, looking at the dates-going back to the seventeen hundreds, weathered but still legible-and took note of one in particular. A small memorial chapel stood just beyond the graves, and inside he found pews, an altar, and a memorial window set in the thick wall high above it. It showed a young soldier in khaki, standing tall and unafraid against the backdrop of the veldt, his rifle across one knee, his gaze on the horizon. The commissioning date on the brass plaque below it was 1903.

Leaving the chapel, Rutledge followed the path down a hillside toward a tiny cove. Here was Evering's sailboat and a strip of sand beach protected from the wind. The sun touched the emerald green water as it ebbed, and it was shallow enough to see the bottom. There was almost a subtropical climate in these sheltered slopes. Rutledge could easily understand why flowers bloomed here before they did on the mainland. These islands were Britain's most westward outpost, and as he looked out at the cluster of St. Anne's neighboring isles, he found himself wondering what lay submerged between here and Cornwall. The south coast was full of tales about vanished lands, swallowed up by the sea.

There were half a dozen small cottages on the island as well as the main house, tucked beneath another fold in the land, and he could see the wash blowing on lines in the back gardens. Staff? Or the families who worked on the estate? From the sea these cottages would be invisible, the ancient protection of island dwellers the world over from the depredations of pirates and raiders. But neither could they see the Evering house from here or the cove or even the docking of the mail boat. Evering could be sure there were no witnesses to his comings and goings.