1
London and Wiltshire
February 1921
Ian Rutledge was walking down the stairs at Scotland Yard when he met Chief Inspector Leslie coming up them two at a time.
“Markham in?” Leslie asked, pausing on the landing.
“He was just stepping into his office as I came out of mine.” Rutledge didn’t add that he’d heard the man’s voice in the passage and purposely waited for the Chief Superintendent to pass his door before opening it. Markham was back from leave, and in a foul mood. He’d already had much to say regarding Rutledge’s last inquiry and Jameson’s report.
They were not at present on the best of terms. Rutledge’s unopened letter of resignation still lay in a side drawer of the Chief Superintendent’s desk. The sword of Damocles held over Rutledge’s head, and at the same time a bitter frustration on Markham’s part as well as Jameson’s that both were prevented from accepting it immediately. Not while praise was still being heaped on the Yard for closing the Barrington matter.
It had been made quite clear to Rutledge that any weakness on his part, any lapse in performance, any mistake in judgment, even any hint of insubordination, however unintended, might be a welcome opportunity to open the drawer and take out the envelope.
Leslie grimaced. “Inspector Bradley has come down with an appendix. I just got word. Are you working on an inquiry just now?”
“I’m giving evidence in the Trotter trial at half past eleven. What do you need?”
“Someone to go to Avebury. There’s a body.”
Rutledge knew Avebury: a great prehistoric stone circle with a small village almost in the center of it.
“Sorry, I can’t help.”
“Damn it, I was just away myself, and looking forward to a day or two off.” Leslie grimaced. “I expect he’ll insist that I go to Wiltshire, like it or not.” With a nod he went on up the flight.
Rutledge had known Brian Leslie before the war and had encountered him in France a number of times, where they’d both served in the trenches. They had become friends in spite of the difference in rank at the Yard and the fact that Leslie was married. Brian Leslie was an intelligent and interesting man, at home in any situation. It was one of the qualities that had made him a successful interrogator during the war, dealing with German prisoners. But the war had changed him too, made him a little edgier, a little more aloof. God knew, they were all haunted by something.
Continuing down the stairs, Rutledge thought to himself that he would have preferred Avebury to the stuffy, overcrowded, overheated courtroom where his claustrophobia made him feel cornered.
But duty called.
Brian Leslie had taken the train to Wiltshire, where he’d been met by Constable Henderson and driven on to Avebury in a horse and carriage.
Henderson was apologetic.
“There’s no other way of getting there from Marlborough railway station. As you’ll see, sir, it’s a good distance.”
“No matter,” his companion snapped.
Looking out across the winter landscape, Leslie rubbed his gloved hands together against the cold wind that had sprung up in late afternoon and brought heavy clouds with it. He mustn’t blame Henderson, he told himself.
If anyone was at fault, he was. And the Chief Superintendent, for being so bloody stubborn. If he himself hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back to London, if he’d had the sense to spend another night on the road, he wouldn’t have been available when Markham was casting about for someone to take over the inquiry here. No one would have questioned another twenty-four hours. Even his wife had been surprised to see him walk through the door.
Rousing himself, he began the questions that were expected of him. “All right. The Yard was vague. Tell me what I’m going to find.”
“Do you know Avebury, sir?”
“Yes.” He added as an afterthought, “As a child.”
“There are the stones, of course, sir. Weathered into various shapes, but some of them still quite tall. There are gaps—my granddad told me that over the centuries many of them have been knocked down or even broken up. They stood in a giant circle, and surrounding the lot was a deep ditch. The village was built later, inside the circle.”
“Yes, I recall that,” he said impatiently, immediately regretted it, and said mildly, “Go on.”
“Two mornings ago, one of the lads on his way to school saw the butcher’s dog sniffing at the base of one of the larger stones. Curious, he went over to see what it was Bouncer had discovered. The grass was beaten down and sticky with something dark, most of it already seeped into the earth below. Stephen scratched at it with his ruler, and saw the tip was a rusty color. He showed this to the other lads when he reached the schoolhouse, making out it was blood on the tip, and one of them was my son, Barry. When he came home to his lunch, he told me, and I went to investigate. I thought it must be a ewe, sir, that one of the dogs had got at. The sheep do graze there sometimes. But as I looked around for it, and got as far as the ditch behind this part of the ring, there she was.”
Training took over. “Clothed?”
“Yes, sir. They were in some disarray, as if she’d been rolled down into the ditch. You couldn’t see her until you were right on her.”
“How was she lying?”
“On her face. I could tell from the way her arms and legs were spread out that she must be either unconscious or dead. That’s to say, it wasn’t natural. My first thought, sir, was that she might have been alive when young Stephen saw Bouncer, and we’d left it too late. I scrambled down the bank into the ditch—it’s precarious just there—and managed to turn her over. There was blood all over her clothing and her eyes were open. I knew then that she was dead.”
Henderson paused, busy guiding the horse into a long straight stretch of road.
Leslie waited.
“She was slim, black hair, dressed nicely. Clearly not down on her luck. But not dressed for walking about in a field, either. She’s not local, sir, I saw that straightaway. I was in a dilemma about how to fetch the doctor when I heard Ben Wainwright just coming over the causeway. He delivers kegs to the inn, and it’s a fairly heavy wagon. I got myself up to where he could see me and shouted to him to fetch Dr. Mason. He went on to where the road stopped, got down, and hurried toward the surgery. A few minutes later, he came back with the doctor, and in the end we got her out of there. There wasn’t a stretcher, but she was light, and a blanket did well enough to transport her to the surgery.”
“No chance that Wainwright had anything to do with putting her there?”
“No, sir. He’s Chapel, married with three daughters. But I checked, and he was at home till it was time to take the team into Marlborough to load. Three in the morning. She was likely already dead by then, according to the doctor.”
“You’re sure she wasn’t local? There are any number of small villages only a few miles in any direction.”
“I asked around the village, in the event she was related to someone here or was expected to visit. And I’m fairly certain I got the truth, sir. Then while I was waiting for the Yard to send someone, I spoke to every Constable in a good ten-mile radius, and not only was there no missing woman fitting her description, nobody had seen her about. And she was the sort of woman you’d remember, sir, if you’d seen her. Not so much a beauty as—” He searched for the right word, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Different, somehow. The doctor can tell you the rest.”