“The Somme.”
“Dear God, that was another waste of good men.” He gestured up the road. “Drive on.”
They passed the handful of shops on their right and a few houses on their left. One offered rooms for holidaymakers. When they reached the junction with the main road, Mason said, “Turn right here—back the way you must have come in. It’s how most people arrive, unless they’re calling at the manor house. That’s closed just now.” He paused as the bonnet of the motorcar pointed toward the causeway, then gestured to either side. “The land is flatter just along here, but it’s actually like a stage, the level the builders designed for their stones, raised up to be seen from some distance. Must have been impressive too. My house, the church, the manor house—they were built centuries later, where part of the original circle and stage had been pulled down to make room for the village.” Mason glanced toward Rutledge. “Do you know much about this circle? The stones themselves?”
“A little,” he said.
“Well, it was quite vast, that original circle. Quite amazingly large, when you consider they had such primitive tools to create the surrounding ditch. No shovels or spades or picks. Just, we’re told, deer antlers.”
Intrigued, Rutledge let him chatter on. Mason was as different as night and day from Dr. Allen. And more intelligent as well. Was the man lonely, a widower with no one to talk to and eager to find a fresh audience? Or was he in his own way trying to manipulate the direction of the new inquiry?
Mason was pointing now. “The murder is confined to just one section—here, to our right, where the larger stones are still standing. Rather like a gap-tooth smile. Their size is even more impressive because the rest are missing. You get a better feel for the height and breadth of them. Right, we can stop just here.”
They got down, and Dr. Mason tramped across the grass toward one of the larger stones. “Watch for sheep dung. Sometimes in summer, the cows also come here to graze.”
Rutledge followed him to the stone he was pointing out. When they reached it, Mason put his hand on the rough, uneven surface, looking up to the top, well above his head and Rutledge’s.
Like all the other remaining stones, this one was irregular in shape. And yes, larger up close than it and its brethren appeared to be at a distance.
He stepped back for a better look at this particular stone.
His first impression was of a tall, shrouded figure with head bowed, looming above him. It was so real, it took his breath away.
And startling, like something slipping out of the mists of time. Or something the French sculptor Rodin might have hacked out of a block of rough, dark granite and left unfinished. Yet all the more powerful because of that, the missing details supplied instead by the mind’s eye.
And then as quickly as the resemblance had appeared, it faded. A stone, oddly shaped to be sure. But nothing more.
Mason, watching him, smiled, but said only, “You could dig them out of the surrounding chalk, these huge stones. They needn’t be transported here like those blue monoliths at Stonehenge. The trick was in standing them upright. I’m told they packed rubble around them at the base, but whatever they did, these have stayed here until the 1700s. Men had to work at it to knock them down. And then they hammered them to bits, filling a line of ox carts, to be carried off to whatever new building site there was. A tragedy really. Someone’s byre now holds the remnants of history.”
Dropping down to one knee closer to the base, he added, “You can’t see the blood now, of course. I should think she died with the first thrust of the knife. But whoever it was made certain of that, striking twice more before dragging her to the ditch.” He gestured toward it, filled with the brown, dry debris of last summer and the bare trees growing there. “It must have been quite deep, when it was dug. And very wide. You’d hardly know it now.” He walked on, stopping at the lip. “She was tumbled in, but didn’t go far, caught up on that fallen tree just there. Pulled by the feet, her hair matted with earth and chalk and grass. Then rolled in.” There was disgust in his voice.
“And she wasn’t interfered with?”
“No. No attempt at rape. And no sign that she’d been bound, brought here against her will. Interestingly enough, I did discover she’d had a child some time ago. Years, that is, not months. I put her age at about twenty-eight.”
That was surely what had appealed to Markham—three stab wounds, the body in the ditch, the closeness in age. The fact that neither woman could be identified.
“Any sign of venereal disease?”
“No, no, not at all.” Mason sighed. “So why was she brought here, and who came with her, with murder on his mind? Yet she must have trusted him enough to travel this far in the dark with him. We have owls, and any sound she made might have sounded like one. No scream. Taken by surprise, very likely. My thought is a husband who wanted to be rid of her. But she was attractive, not plain.”
Rutledge said, “And the child?”
“There you have me. Dead, perhaps? That might have been the problem, she was still mourning for it, and her husband tired of her tears and her unwillingness to sleep with him. And so he found comfort elsewhere.”
“It’s an interesting possibility. But surely if she lived in a village somewhere close by, she’d have been missed. He’d have to come up with a reason for her absence. She’d gone home to her parents. She’d run off with another man. Something believable that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.”
“Leslie considered that too, and he went to speak to the Constables in the nearer villages. But no one was missing, no one had left mysteriously without telling her friends or the Rector or the daily that she was planning to go away.” Mason frowned. “Oddly enough, I didn’t feel she was English.”
Rutledge regarded him. “How so?”
“Her hair. It was silky, and very black. The old phrase raven’s wing comes to mind. And her skin was slightly olive. Welsh? Mediterranean? There was a Greek fellow in medical school with me. Handsome man, the thickest head of hair I’d ever seen. But that’s not quite it either.” Mason shrugged. “I might be wrong. I’ve not traveled to Europe. And yet that was my view.”
“What became of the body? It couldn’t have been claimed.”
“We couldn’t identify her, however hard Constable Henderson and Leslie tried. We weren’t even certain what her faith was.” There was infinite sadness in his voice. “And so after the inquest we took up a subscription and buried her in the churchyard here. Chief Inspector Leslie contributed to it too. I think he took it badly that he couldn’t name her or find her killer. A personal failure, as if he prided himself on his record. Well. I can show you her grave, if you like.” He turned and walked back to the stone, putting his hand on it again. As if it were an old friend, and he was offering comfort. “We kept her silk scarf, in the event someone came looking for her and might recognize it. And we took her photograph, you know, when she was dressed by the undertaker. To show round the other villages and towns. All to no avail. Leslie took it with him. For the report, he said.”
There was no photograph in Leslie’s report. No mention of one.
“Where is the original negative now?”