Charles Todd - Watchers of Time

The track climbed a hill for some distance, angling toward the shoulder and a cluster of young trees. Blevins followed it for some fifty yards, and then pulled in where bruised grass indicated that the doctor had stopped as well. Beyond that, the track’s ruts offered a challenge. Blevins said shortly, “I’d not like to find myself bogged down up there.”

Rutledge got out and Hamish said, at his shoulder, “Walsh could ha’ made it this far.”

It was true. They trudged in silence toward the copse of trees, and a constable stepped out of it, standing there waiting. Blevins was finding it hard to get his breath, and Rutledge glanced at him.

The Inspector’s face was nearly gray with strain, his jaw set and his body tense. With each stride he began to swear softly, trying to contain the pressure that was building in his mind. Rutledge’s longer legs made easy work of the hill, but his chest burned from the night of driving.

The constable, hunched against the morning chill, touched his hat to Blevins, and nodded to Rutledge. “Constable Tanner, sir. I thought you’d want to see this. The doctor says he’s dead, and they’re sending up a cart from the farm, to bring him in.”

“Who the hell is it, man?” Blevins halted as if unable to walk another ten yards. But it was his fear of the answer that had stopped him.

“It’s Walsh, sir. Just beyond the trees.” Tanner turned to lead the way, and Rutledge followed. Blevins moved slowly in their wake, as if unwilling to confirm the truth.

Tanner continued his report to Rutledge. “I can’t say how long he’s been dead-just before dawn, I’d guess, or not long after. His clothes are damp.”

Just beyond the trees, the land sloped again, this time to the south. And about ten feet beyond the crest lay the sprawled body of a man. Rutledge could see at once that it was Walsh-the size of the shoulders, the length of the awkwardly bent legs defined him before they had reached the head.

Rutledge looked down at the bloody dent in the temple, and had no need to squat on his heels and feel the hand nearest him for warmth or touch the throat for a pulse. But he did it anyway to give Blevins time to recover.

The hand was cold, damp. There was no pulse in the equally cold bare flesh beneath Walsh’s collar. The giant-sized Matthew Walsh seemed shrunken, a bundle of discarded clothes, lying here on the wet grass, his trousers soggy with dew, and Rutledge found himself remembering what Dr. Stephenson had said about Father James. When the power of the personality had gone…

By that time Blevins had stopped just at Rutledge’s back, and Rutledge could feel his gaze running over the corpse of his prisoner.

He rose slowly to his feet, not turning. Hamish said, “He died quickly. How do you think it was?”

But Rutledge was silent. Tanner, watching Blevins’s face, shifted from one foot to the other, waiting for his superior to speak to him.

And then Blevins said harshly, anger and grief thickening his voice until it was unrecognizable, “I wanted to see him hang!”

No one spoke for what seemed minutes. Then Blevins said, “All right, Tanner, tell me what happened.”

Tanner flinched, as if he’d been accused of murdering the man himself. He was young and all elbows and knees, but he said with a confidence that belied his years, “If you’ll look just over here, sir-”

He led them some six feet from the body and pointed down at the iron half-circle lying in the grass. “See here, there’s a shoe. And I backtracked the horse some distance. He cast it perhaps a quarter of a mile back-I found a muddy patch where you could see clearly that the off hind hoof was bare.”

Blevins grunted, then squatted by the shoe. “All right. Go on.”

“It’s my thinking, sir, that the rider didn’t want to do anything about it, exposed as he was. It’s fairly open on the hill; with the farmers out early, he’d have been wary of being seen. But he brought it along with him, and here, with the trees to screen him from the farm, looked to see what the damage was, and if he could continue with this mount, or if he needed to find himself another.”

“It makes sense,” Blevins said, nodding.

“And when he lifted the off hind, the horse didn’t care for it, backed away, and when Walsh bent to try again, kicked him in the head with the shod hoof.”

“How do you read that?”

“The grass is trampled a bit, just below where he fell, sir. See, it’s bruised and the ground is torn in one place. As if he might have been trying to make the horse stand still for him. Everywhere else you look, there’s no sign of that.”

Blevins went over to look at the grass. “Are you certain the doctor didn’t do this? Or you, even.”

Tanner’s face was earnest. “No, sir, the doctor came in from the head. He said it was a heavy blow, caught Walsh just right, crushing the bone at the temple and killing him outright. An inch lower, and he’d have had a cracked jaw but lived to tell about it. An inch higher, and he’d have suffered a severe concussion.” He was clearly quoting the doctor. “The wound itself supports the possibility of it being the shoe.” He half turned, looking around them. “There’s really no other clear explanation.”

“Yes. I suppose that’s true.” Blevins’s voice was flat. He wasn’t interested in how Walsh had died. He felt cheated and was already trying to come to terms with that.

“The doctor says when he has the man in his surgery, he’ll be able to tell if there’re any grass bits in the wound, but he’d be surprised if his first opinion changes,” Tanner finished diffidently. He had grown used to the corpse, guarding it. But the Inspector from Osterley seemed to be dazed, like a grieving relative.

Blevins got heavily to his feet, as if he’d aged ten years in the last ten hours. Looking around him at the empty hillsides and the long twist of the lane below, smoke rising from the farmhouse where a man in boots was hitching two horses to a long cart, he was silent.

“I hadn’t counted on it ending like this,” he said.

“There’s no other way it could have happened,” Tanner answered, as if Blevins had challenged his account. “If the horse wasn’t his, it might have taken exception to Walsh’s handling. Especially if he was angry about the shoe, and rough.”

Rutledge walked back to the body.

It made sense. He sat on his heels and studied Walsh’s face. The expression was one of faint surprise, as if he had died even as he saw the blow coming. But was the shape of the wound right?

Hamish said, “It’s deep. The rim of the shoe must ha’ caught him. I canna’ think what else would have struck such a blow. But it’s tae bluidy to be sure.”

“She’d have lashed out blindly, and put some force behind it. Catching him before he could leap away.” Behind him, he could hear Tanner and Blevins talking quietly. “He isn’t the first or the last to die this way. And he was close to giving us the slip. Still-if he’d stayed on this route, with luck I’d have crossed his path somewhere near East Sherham.”

Hamish said, “Ye ken, horses pulled Walsh’s cart. He’d have known how to handle the mare. He saddled her and got her out of the barn without fuss.”

Below the hill, the farmer was bringing the cart through the gate, to fetch the body.

Rutledge put out his hand and roughly measured the wound without touching it. As the sun’s light began to brighten the clouds, he could see a blade of grass in the bloody edge. The doctor was here-what, a good half an hour earlier? While it was still dark enough to make such small details nearly invisible…

He got to his feet as Blevins came to stand once more at Walsh’s head.

“I’ve let him down. Father James,” the Inspector said with a heavy sigh. “I swore I’d find out who killed him. And I did! This was an easy way for the bastard to die!”