Charles Todd - A Lonely Death

"Going deaf as a post," the woman who cleaned and cooked for the two men had told Walker. "Both of them." But she herself had heard nothing.

As for the foreman who had discovered Anthony Pierce's body the next morning, he had written that he'd found the outer door shut and hadn't seen Pierce until he had come in and turned toward the stairs.

"Mr. Anthony had gone there to see to a broken gauge, because I found my tools had been moved when finally I went up the stairs to have a look at it again myself."

Which indicated, Rutledge thought, that Pierce had been killed on his way out of the brewery rather than on his way in. No one had been lying in wait for him, but it was likely that someone had followed him there and, finding the door unlocked, stepped inside.

He went out after finishing the statements and walked first to the place on the Hastings Road where the van driver had come upon the body of William Jeffers.

There was nothing to be seen here, but Rutledge had no trouble finding the spot from the description given by the driver.

Standing there on the quiet stretch of road, Rutledge looked around. There was a farmhouse some hundred yards away, but Walker-very thorough in his thinking-had interviewed the family living there. Unfortunately their bedroom windows were on the far side of the farmhouse, and they had not seen or heard anything. Except for tending to a child with a fever who had cried at half past three in the morning, they had slept soundly.

There were shrubs along the side of the road that marched toward the farmhouse lane, and pastures on the far side. The Jeffers house was beyond these, tall, spare, and jutting from the fields like a sore tooth.

"A perfect place for an ambush," Hamish remarked as Rutledge scanned the surrounding landscape.

Next he went to the Roper farm, walking down the lane past the house and to the barn where the murder had taken place. There was no one about, although clothes hung on the line, drying in the warm afternoon sun, and so Rutledge went inside the barn. There were bloodstains on the floor where Jimmy Roper had died, but any footprints that might have been there at the time of the murder had long since been lost as first the maid and then the elder Roper had walked round the body, and then the constable himself, followed by the doctor, not to mention whoever had led away the cow that had been in the now empty stall.

His next stop was the brewery, but before going there Rutledge paused at the hotel to ask where the nearest telephone was to be found.

He was told there was only one telephone in Eastfield, and that was in the office of Tyrell Pierce.

Making his way there again, Rutledge stopped briefly at the door that led into the two-story building where the great wooden kettles were housed, and opened it. The stairs were not ten feet from the door, leading upward into the richly scented heart of the building. Someone had conscientiously swabbed up Anthony Pierce's blood, but the location was marked by the very clean spot on the floorboards where abrasives had been necessary to reach deep into the stained wood.

Standing outside again, Rutledge considered the three murder scenes. All they had in common was their solitude at the time of the killings. But someone had followed each man to his death, and that meant someone had been in Eastfield on each occasion-whether he had been noticed by anyone or not.

Hamish said, "Aye, but he canna' materialize out of thin air. Where does he keep himsel' when he's no' prowling about in the dark?"

It would lead someone to believe that the killer lived in Eastfield…

Rutledge left the thought there and walked briskly toward the door leading to the brewery's office.

It was a busy room, bright and cluttered with paperwork, with some half dozen clerks dealing with orders for Arrow beers or placing orders for everything from hops to bottle labels, and there was no privacy at all.

The senior clerk, a man named Starret, led him to the telephone on his desk, then stepped away to let Rutledge use it.

He put through a call to London, and after a time was connected to the Yard. It was another five minutes before Sergeant Gibson was found.

"Yes, sir?" he answered warily.

"I'd like to find out what became of the following men after the war, and I'd like to know if there was anything particular in their records that might have an impact on the murders here in Sussex. Did their paths cross that of the Eastfield Company or of any individual in that company?"

He had written the three names, their ranks and regiments, in his notebook, taken from the discs that Dr. Gooding had retrieved during his examinations.

Gibson repeated them, and then said, "It will be a day or two. Shall I ring you at this number when I've learned anything?"

Rutledge told Gibson how to reach him, and then was on the point of hanging up when Gibson said, "There's been a complaint to the Chief Constable in regard to the Yard taking over this case."

"Indeed?" Rutledge asked in surprise.

"A Mrs. Farrell-Smith, sir."

He remembered the name. She was the woman Anthony Pierce had been seeing recently. But why would she complain to the Chief Constable? He asked Gibson that, careful to phrase his question in a fashion that half a dozen listening ears couldn't interpret and gossip about.

"I can't say, sir. Except that she appears to feel it was unnecessarily complicating matters."

Rutledge thanked him and hung up.

He thanked the clerk as well, and went out the way he'd come in. There was a private staircase to Pierce's office as well as a door leading into it from the clerks' room, and for a moment Rutledge debated speaking to Pierce. He changed his mind and went out into the street.

Constable Walker was surprised when Rutledge walked into the police station and asked directions to Mrs. Farrell-Smith's house.

"I didn't interview her-" he began in apology, but Rutledge cut him short

"She might know something that Anthony Pierce didn't tell his father. It's a long shot, but worth exploring."

"Shall I go with you, sir?" Walker asked, half rising from his chair.

"No. I don't want this to appear to be an official visit. Merely a matter of being thorough."

"I see," Walker said, but Rutledge thought he didn't.

The Misses Tate Latin School was at the head of Spencer Street. Two houses had been connected by an addition that closed the gap between them, apparently by someone who knew what he was about, because the results were pleasing, rather than haphazard. A central door had been let into the addition, but Walker had said that Mrs. Farrell-Smith had chosen to live in the smaller house to one side of the school, and that she could usually be found there at this hour of the day.

He went up the pair of steps leading to the walk and the door, and was let in by a young girl in a school uniform, her hair hanging down her back and held away from her face by a blue ribbon. She was quite pretty, and meticulously polite, asking him to wait in the hall while she inquired if Mrs. Farrell-Smith would receive him.

She disappeared through a door to the left of the staircase and returned with a smile, asking him to come in. He had wondered if Mrs. Farrell-Smith would speak to him, given her complaint to the Chief Constable.

The girl announced him, then went away, closing the door softly behind her.

The room had been turned into a private office, with bookshelves and chairs set in front of a lovely old desk of well-polished walnut. At the moment, it was cluttered with papers and folders, some of them held in place by a large, chipped glass paperweight, as if she had been recording marks or sorting files before the start of a new term.

The woman behind it rose as he came in. She was tall for a woman, and far prettier than she allowed herself to be. Her hair, pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck, was fair and determined to wave in spite of attempts to keep it straight and tidy. Her eyes were a very dark blue, and her nose was straight above firm lips. He put her age at thirty.