“I thought Leslie kept that too. For that matter, no one has come to claim her so far. I expect no one ever will.” Mason turned to look back at the ditch. “She was discarded, Rutledge. Like an old pair of shoes or a broken tool no one had any use for. That’s abominable.”
“What became of her clothing?”
“The Rector’s wife cleaned and brushed them as best she could. And then the poor woman was buried in them. It was all she had.”
“Anything of interest about them?”
“Not of the best quality, but not cheap either. I wouldn’t classify her as a servant girl got into trouble by her employer. More like a young woman married to a man who was starting out in life. A clerk, perhaps. Or apprenticed to someone.”
Rutledge said, “You’ve given this woman a great deal of thought.” It was a statement, not a question. Mason had told him more than Leslie had put into the report.
Mason sighed. “She got under my skin. I’ll be honest with you. I’ve dealt with a good many dead bodies in my time, and I’m not sentimental about them as a rule. A child still touches me. They seem so much smaller in death, frailer somehow. But this woman’s fate was different from someone dying of illness or old age or the like. That’s inevitable, Rutledge. She was killed before her time, and viciously. She must have known as she was forced back against the stone and the knife came out that she would die. I don’t see how he could do it, to tell the truth. There was something about her. A fragility, if you like.” He gestured to the sarsens and the circle they formed, taking in the ditch and the surroundings. “She’s rather like this place. A mystery we can never hope to solve. An enigma. And so I can’t get her out of my mind.”
Rutledge’s gaze sharpened. “How do you know she was forced up against that stone as she was stabbed?”
“We found some threads from the coat there. Just where they ought to be. Where she might have struggled briefly or was shoved back against the rough stone.” He put his hand out to touch the place where he’d found the threads. “Her killer would have watched her face as she died. And still he finished the job. Two more wounds. You couldn’t do that to someone you loved. Could you?”
“It would depend,” Rutledge said, “on why she had to be killed.”
After a moment, Dr. Mason turned away and began walking toward the motorcar.
Rutledge went back to the ditch, finally dropping down on his heels to look more closely at the fallen tree, some five feet below him. It was hardly larger than a sapling, but having brought down the undergrowth around it, forming a sort of matting, it had managed to catch the body. In time, the warming weather would cover the scene with new vines and brush, but now it looked much the same, except where the edge of the ditch had been scarred by the efforts to remove the victim. He could picture the woman lying there, crumpled, her clothing in disarray, a sleeve caught on one of the thinner limbs, her hair coming down and half covering her face.
It was easy to see why Dr. Mason had described her as “discarded.”
Not far from where she’d lain, there was a battered pail, the bottom rusted through, and below that, he could see shards of glass from a bottle.
If the woman had had anything in her pockets, her killer had taken them, according to Leslie’s report. But had there been anything overlooked in the darkness of the night, that might have fallen deeper into the ditch?
He studied the area carefully, inch by inch. But as far as he could tell, there was nothing to find. The killer must have seen to that.
He got to his feet, looking around him at the other stones and the gaps between them where their neighbors had once stood.
How had the killer and the victim got here?
Turning to his left, he could see how the land sloped to the road that passed the surgery, and several houses facing in this direction. They were some distance away from the stones, but closer than any other habitation, if one didn’t count the doctor’s house. Mason’s roof was just visible over the trees on the far side of the ditch.
The report indicated that her boots, of soft leather, didn’t show signs of walking great distances. In fact, they were well polished.
A motorcar, then? Not a horse and carriage, the wheels would have rattled over the ruts in the road. And according to Leslie, Constable Henderson had looked and found no tracks of horse or wheels on the quadrant of grass where these stones stood. On the road coming from the entrance there had been too many tracks to point to any one set. There was mention of the driver taking kegs to the inn. He and his horses would surely have covered over any sign that might have survived.
And if a carriage or motorcar had been left at the edge of the road—where his own motorcar was standing just now—anyone waking in the night and looking out a window might have spotted it. Surely the killer hadn’t risked that? Motorcars weren’t that prevalent here in the countryside. It would be remembered.
Giving it up for the moment, with a last glance at the ditch and then the great stone, he walked back to the motorcar, where Mason was leaning against a wing.
“It’s rather late for lunch,” the doctor said to him as he reached for the crank, “but I could do with a cup of tea. The inn over there does a fairly decent ale, if you’d rather have that.”
Rutledge bent to turn the crank. “Yes, I’d as soon get out of this wind.”
It was rising, dark clouds scudding across the already grim sky. There would be rain soon enough.
As he got into the motorcar and Mason swung his own door shut, Rutledge commented, “The question has always appeared to be, how did the woman get here. But what if she was already here? In someone’s house. Or what if she’d appeared on someone’s doorstep and had to be got rid of?”
“Leslie and Henderson and I talked about that. There’s really no one in the village here who might have had such an unexpected caller in the middle of the night. What’s more, in that event, who brought her here? She hadn’t walked.”
“Yes, I agree. If she’d hired someone to bring her here, the inquiries in the neighboring villages would have turned up her driver. If only to be sure he himself wasn’t considered as a suspect.”
“You’re beginning to see why Leslie didn’t get anywhere with the inquiry.”
They went into the inn, sat down at a table near the window, and ordered tea.
“You seem to know a great deal about what Leslie was doing as he went about looking for evidence,” Rutledge observed after they’d given their order.
Mason grinned. “I’m too old to have a paramour or even a daughter her age.” The smile faded. “Leslie was rather shocked by what he saw. I could tell that. Well, so was I for that matter when first I saw her lying in the ditch like a broken doll. We got her out and took her to my surgery, where I could have a proper look at her. I didn’t cut her open, I knew what had killed her. But I examined the body carefully for anything that might help us. No real defensive wounds, only a cut on one hand, possibly throwing it up at the last second. Or to fend off the pain. I don’t think she was prepared for what happened. Leslie said something about that at the inquest. He was also telling me that since the war, he’d found it harder to view the dead. But as I reported what my examination had shown, he seemed to collect himself and was quite professional after that.”