“I daren’t.”
“If you don’t, he will always be out there. Watching.”
She glared at him. “That’s a cruel thing to say to a woman living alone.”
“I don’t think he’s within a hundred miles of Avebury now. He got away with murder, Mrs. Parrish. He’s not coming back. It would be the height of foolishness to take such a risk, when he’s completely clear. Unless you can put a name to him, he had nothing to fear from you.”
“Of course I can’t put a name to him. I’d have told Chief Inspector Leslie straightaway if I’d known who it was. It would have sent him to prison. I’d have been safe then.”
He hadn’t meant his remark literally, but she had taken it in that sense.
“We’ll have no chance of stopping him if everyone keeps a small piece of the puzzle to himself, thinking that it won’t matter all that much if the police aren’t told. Hoping that somehow they’ll find it out without his help. A very comforting way of avoiding doing one’s duty in something as nasty as murder.”
Her lips tightened. After a moment she snapped, “It’s not a piece of the puzzle, as you put it.”
“But how can you be the judge?” he asked quietly.
He thought he’d lost her, but then she started to speak again.
“I don’t sleep very well, I haven’t since my husband died. Sometimes I read at night, sometimes I knit until I’m ready to sleep. That night I came down to the kitchen to heat a little milk, to see if that would make me drowsy. I didn’t bring a lamp down with me, I can find my way even in the dark. When I’d finished the milk, I went back up to my room and paused to look out my window. I often do, even when I don’t wish to. Those stones have always made me a little uneasy, although my husband loved them. He was born here, you see, they had always been out there. He was used to them. For me they’re—I don’t quite know. But sometimes I’ve wondered if the builders who put them up all those centuries ago are ever drawn back to them. Or the dead from the barrows out on the plain. Not ghosts, you know. I don’t believe in ghosts. But I found it hard to believe that they could bear to see what they’d built changed so much.”
He listened patiently now, letting her get around in her own fashion to what had disturbed her.
Taking a deep breath, she continued. “I’ve never seen anything, not in all these years of looking. It was reassuring, in a way. My husband would have laughed at me, if he’d known.”
Picking at the wool of her skirt, she said, “That night it began as a pinprick of light. I saw it coming from out there where the barrows are. Silbury Hill and the others. Just a pinprick.” She looked away from him. “You’ll call me a silly old woman. But I couldn’t turn away, I felt as if I’d been turned to stone myself. And it grew larger. Ever larger, and it moved from the road to the grass, and across the grass to the stones. And then it went out. I dropped the curtain I’d been holding open, and went quickly back to my bed. And I stayed there until the sun was well up.” She paused. “Later I heard the news. About the murder. I didn’t know what to make of that when they told me where she was found.”
“Did you know—afterward—what that light actually was?”
“No. I didn’t want to know. I’d let that superstitious nonsense rule my thinking, and all the while a woman was being killed. Could I have stopped it? I don’t see how. But the thought that I hadn’t tried was horrifying to me.” She shook her head, looking inward, not at Rutledge. “Still. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t rid myself of the possibility that she was a sacrifice against any further desecration of the stones. More nonsense, but I see the stones differently from anyone who was born here. They’re strange, unsettling. They don’t have such things in Kent, where I was born. How could I confess to feeling that? With Constable Henderson sitting there, big as life, hearing every word?” She shuddered. “The whole village would have learned about it, and they’d think I was out of my mind. Mad. A mad old woman. But I’m not.”
“You have told me now.”
“Yes, but you’d already guessed something. And my conscience wouldn’t let me lie again.” She smiled uneasily. “You think me a fool, don’t you?”
“Was the pace of the light slow, as if someone was walking—leading a procession or the like?”
“No, it grew larger rather quickly. Faster than a man can walk. That’s why I was so—so confused.”
“And you didn’t hear anything? The trotting of a horse? A motorcar?”
“In the first place there was only a single light. Hardly a motorcar. And as for a carriage, there was no sound. Not hoofbeats, nor the rumble of the wheels over the ruts. It was a quiet night, and sound carries. That’s why I was so—so certain.” She hesitated, then added, as if asking for forgiveness, “It wouldn’t have changed anything. It wouldn’t have told Chief Inspector Leslie who had done such a terrible thing.”
“It could have told him how the killer had come here. And from which direction.”
“I don’t see how it possibly could do that,” she countered, frowning. “You’re just trying to make me feel guilty.”
“The killer came from the direction of the Down. Not up from the church—nor down from the inn. Not even along the ancient avenue. And he was probably riding a bicycle. With a torch to help him find his way.”
“But where was she, then? Was she already here? Waiting by the stone? I didn’t see her bicycle. And he didn’t leave it behind. How could he have taken both bicycles away with him? After—after what he’d done? That would be awkward, impossible. No, I don’t see how.” Her voice rose a little with her anxiety.
“It wouldn’t have been awkward at all,” Rutledge answered, thinking through it. “If they’d come together on the same one. Not if it was a tandem bicycle.”
6
“I haven’t seen one of those since I was a girl in Kent. My uncle bought one, but my aunt refused to get on it. And so he took me up instead.” Mrs. Parrish shook her head. “Where would such a thing have come from? Besides, the ground is so uneven here, no one rides for pleasure. What must it be like at night?”
“Is there one in Avebury?” he asked, struck by how adamant she was.
“I’ve lived here for forty-two years, and no one in the village has ever owned a tandem bicycle. I mean to say, where would you ride it, even if you bought one? Up and down the causeway road perhaps, but anywhere else the ground isn’t smooth enough for a pleasant outing. Besides, they don’t manage very well with only one person pedaling.”
Hamish, speaking for the first time since Rutledge had come through Mrs. Parrish’s door, said, “She doesna’ want to believe it wasna’ spirits.”
Rutledge thought that Hamish might well be right. Frightened as she was of them, even though she’d called them nonsense, the light somehow justified all her fears, gave the spirits validity.
“That’s just it, they didn’t come from the village, did they? The two people on the bicycle. They would have to come from wherever it was kept.”