Charles Todd - A long shadow

Rutledge mended his fences. "I'm sure you're right." But he made a mental note to have a word with Mrs. Ellison.

"I don't know what bearing this has on anything. But it rather puts paid to the idea that Emma is alive and well, living with her mother in London, doesn't it?" Cain prepared to stand up, gathering his bad leg under him. "I'd not like to think that my constable had anything to do with her disappearance."

"What's become of your sergeant and the motorcar?"

"He's gone round to speak to the rector. I'm not sure I like the sound of that fall. My sergeant says Towson is crippled up with rheumatism and oughtn't to be clambering about in attics or cellars either, for that matter. Mrs. Melford brought me a cup of tea, that's how I learned the news."

"He was lucky," Rutledge said, repeating his earlier words to Dr. Middleton. "The question is, was the fall an accident or not?"

"Good God!" Cain said, staring. "You're not telling me we're about to have a rash of unexplained attacks on people."

"Hardly a rash of them. Yet. Time will tell. But I might add that the attics of the rectory look out on Frith's Wood. It's one of the few places that do, short of climbing the church tower."

"You can climb that tower, you know," Cain informed him. "There's a rickety stair up to the bell, above the clock face. I haven't the foggiest notion what can be seen from there, but at a guess, it would be the best viewpoint of any."

"How did you come to know that?" Unspoken between them was the reference to Cain's war injury.

But Cain grinned. "Two boys went up there on a lark when the Armistice was declared in 1918. They rang the bells, and half Dudlington believed we'd been attacked by Germans, or worse. My sergeant told me about it. Hensley summoned him to come and read them the riot act."

Rutledge laughed. But he made a second mental note to look at that stair for himself.

When Cain had gone, Rutledge collected his torch and Hensley's field glasses, then walked to St. Luke's. The door was unlocked. A heavy, twisted ring of iron, reminiscent of the Sanctuary Rings of the medieval period, when clinging to one protected a man from arrest, was newer than the church, as if added to give the building a feeling of age.

He stood there for a moment, looking up at the soaring spire. There were several square stages forming the sturdy footing of the tower, each level diminishing in size as it rose upward to the housing of the bell. The spire itself, reaching upward from there in a graceful inverted cone, had tiny windows counter set on opposite sides, two facing north and south, two facing east and west.

Hamish said, "I wouldna' care to climb that high."

"Then stay here."

The tower door led to another one carved of heavy dark wood, and beyond that lay the sanctuary. The nave was high-ceilinged but flat. Someone had painted trompe l'oeil ovals there, three of them, in Renaissance style, with scenes of angels and saints floating on clouds. And in the center panel, Christ was seated in glory, one hand reaching high into the painted sky. The aisle columns were Doric with carved capitals, and they appeared to uphold, without effort, this deceptively vast expanse above them.

The pulpit was tall and heavily carved. Rutledge thought it might have come from an earlier building that had been replaced.

There were long windows, some with simple stained glass, and a brass rail around the communion table. The chancel was rather plain, with an old painted wood crucifix behind the altar.

No tombs here, the church wasn't old enough for Crusader knights and Elizabethan ladies. There were only a few monuments. He did find a nice memorial tablet to a man who had served in the Sudan with Gordon. His name-it was Harkness-rank, dates, and his regimental insignia had been inlaid in the stone in brass. Rutledge wondered if he'd been the last of the family's male line, leaving to a distant cousin, Mary Ellison, pride in continuing the female line.

He returned to the tower room and saw the narrow stairs to one side that disappeared through a square hole in the ceiling. The steps were stone for the first flight, in keeping with the construction of the church, but as he started to climb, he could see very quickly that the next flight was wood, without backs to the risers. Not a very pleasant prospect.

He reached the next stage of the tower and could just see the bell rope disappearing into the darkness high above his head. He looked down past his feet, where it hung like a mesmerized snake suspended in midair with nowhere to go. Only, he thought, there was no visible head or tail. He grasped the sides of the narrow stairs firmly and went up another flight, hand over hand to steady himself. And he refrained from looking down, for the stairs were fixed to the outside walls and a well of darkness was opening up in the empty center. Overhead, shining his torch straight up, he could see the great bronze bell.

Another flight, and the space was filled with the mouth of the bell, the clapper swaying lightly in the movement of cold air through the shuttered openings on four sides.

"Yon draft must come from the Cairngorms," Hamish said, startling Rutledge.

His foot missed the next step and he swore as his body began to swing out over the bottomless space yawning beside him. But his handhold on the rough side rails was strong enough to pull him back again to safety. There was a distinctly hollow pit in the middle of his stomach until he felt his dangling foot settle once more on the solid strip of wood.

A dozen more steps, and he was at the head of the bell, where massive beams held it in place at the top of the tower.

The clock was hung on the outer side of the window arch facing toward the village.

And over his head, a single ladder disappeared into the spire. Shining his light up into the darkness, he could see the wooden skeleton of the tower, the framework on which it had been built, like an octagon that narrowed more with each foot of height. How old was that ladder? It might still hold a boy's weight, but what about a man's?

Rutledge thought, I don't need to climb farther But he knew he did. Coming down was something else, and he wasn't prepared to think about that yet.

The ladder was steadier than he'd expected, and with a sigh of relief, he started up it.

When he came to the first window, he realized that it looked toward the village, while its brother on the far side overlooked the fields.

But the next pair of windows, facing north and south, gave him a bird's-eye view of Frith's Wood, and he could see more detail from here than he'd anticipated. With his arms wrapped tightly about the side rails of the ladder, he brought up the field glasses. Through them, he could have roughly followed movement across the breadth of the wood, and even down into the thickets of undergrowth. Especially at this time of year, when the trees were bare and even the briars and weeds mere stalks and thorny strands. It was interesting to see just how closely he could bring it in. Far better than from the rectory attic, surely.

Who would have the courage to come here, just on the off chance of seeing where Hensley had gone?

Letting the glasses hang from their leather strap around his neck, he began to back down the ladder. It was just light enough to see where he was going without the aid of his torch, but the tolerances were much tighter at this height, and he was beginning to feel the pressure of claustrophobia sealing him in. A nail sticking out farther than most of its neighbors plucked at his coat, yanking at him. It was easy enough to free himself, but the sense of losing his balance was strong.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he went down the ladder another few rungs.

God, but it was dangerous! And just behind him, making it impossible to look down, was Hamish He continued his descent and finally arrived at the lower pair of windows. He stopped for a moment to look at the village, a toy city for a child. Like seeing it from an airplane, he thought, picking out the narrow canyons that were the streets, and the chimney pots of houses he recognized. The nearer ones showed him their back gardens, where sheds held tools and other gear, and lines for drying clothes ran helter-skelter across the space available, to give them as much length as possible.