She took a deep breath. “It was you needed the pint, I’ll be bound. I expect it wasn’t only Langley’s you stopped in. Don’t scare me like that, Larry. It’s not right. I thought you’d taken a bad fall, at your age.”
Rutledge retrieved his hat and coat and thanked them again. Mrs. Blake didn’t ask him to stay for supper, even though it had been cooking earlier as they had been preparing to set out.
It was a measure of her worry, he thought.
But he had a feeling that both he and Larry would feel the soreness in their calf muscles tomorrow after the unaccustomed use.
Driving back toward Avebury, Rutledge went back over his conversation with Larry Blake. The man had come to the conclusion that he himself had reached—what was so important that the victim had agreed to take a bicycle that distance in the dark? What was it in Avebury that she wanted to reach so badly that it couldn’t wait until morning? Or who?
Over a late supper at the inn, he gave the matter some serious thought.
Interviewing the villagers earlier, he had put the usual questions in such cases—questions much like those Chief Inspector Leslie had asked before him.
Did you know this woman?
Have you seen or met her before, here in the village or elsewhere?
Do you know of anyone she might have come here to find or to meet?
Did you see or hear anything unusual among the stones or on the road over the causeway the night of the murder?
Can you account for your whereabouts the night the woman was killed? Between ten in the evening and dawn? Can someone vouch for you during that period?
Did you leave Avebury at any time the day before the murder?
The responses that he’d been given echoed what Leslie had reported in the file.
Except of course for Mrs. Parrish, who had witnessed the light moving toward the stones, and told no one.
Who else had failed to come forward when Leslie questioned them? Or for that matter, when he himself covered the same ground?
Hamish said, “If ye go back wi’ these same questions, ye ken ye’ll hear the same answers.”
Rutledge quickly turned his head to see if anyone else had heard the deep Scottish voice. But the four or five people still dining were busy with their food and hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Very well, then, he asked himself, what questions ought I to be asking?
By the time he’d risen from the table, he’d worked out a possible solution.
The next morning Rutledge went to find Dr. Mason, who was scrubbing potatoes for the pot.
He shrugged wryly. “I’ve learned to do many things that my wife once did for us,” he said, leading Rutledge to the kitchen at the back of the house. “I’ll put the kettle on, if you like.”
“Actually I’ve just come for some advice. Who is the finest gossip in the village?”
Mason had picked up the brush again, and he turned to stare at Rutledge. “Are you interested in hearing rumors—or starting them?”
“I don’t know. Both, possibly.”
“That would be Mrs. Dunlop. Her husband was the shoemaker. She does for me and for the Rectory and for Mrs. Parrish. Several others. But not at the manor house. There’s no one in residence just now, and they have their own staff. I daresay she knows one or two of them.”
“Where can I find her?”
“She’ll beat the carpets at Mrs. Parrish’s this morning. Sure you won’t stay for a cup?” he added wistfully, a lonely man with time on his hands.
“Later perhaps.” He buttoned his coat. “Do I need an introduction?”
“I doubt it. She’s probably already talked about you to everyone who will listen.”
Rutledge smiled and went down the passage to the outer door.
He walked back up the road to the Parrish house. A woman with a kerchief over her hair and a floral-patterned apron over her dress was just sweeping the front steps, and she looked up as he started up the path to the door.
“Mrs. Dunlop?”
She nodded.
“I’d like to speak to you if I may?”
“I’m doing for Mrs. Parrish. She won’t care for it if I spend my time speaking to you. I’ll be off at four.”
“I won’t keep you very long.”
She turned back to the door. “Come in, then. There’s no one in the kitchen.”
He followed her down the passage, thinking that he’d seen more kitchens in Avebury than front parlors. But this was her domain, and it was spotless. There was a large pot on the cooker, and it smelled like a stew.
“That’s for Mrs. Parrish’s dinner. She’s fond of my cooking.” She indicated a chair, but she herself remained standing.
“You know most of the people here in Avebury, I think?”
“I’m no gossip,” she said, bristling.
“So I’m told,” Rutledge said pleasantly. “But there are questions I must put to you, if I’m to find who killed the woman found by the stones. Helping the police in the course of their inquiries is not gossip.”
But she continued to regard him warily.
“There are several possible reasons why the victim came to Avebury. She knew someone here. She was meeting someone here. Or she thought someone she wanted to meet might be here.”
“Or she was lost,” Mrs. Dunlop added.
“Or she was lost,” Rutledge agreed, although he didn’t believe that was what had brought her to this rather out-of-the-way village. “Did she know someone here? Or had she come to meet someone here?”
“That’s not likely, not to my way of thinking. Most everyone seemed to be shocked by violent death on our doorstep. We’ve lived with these stones, we’re used to them. But there are others who think the stones have powers.”
“What sort of powers?”
“How am I to know?” she demanded tartly. “I’m a good Christian woman and go regular to services at St. James’s.”
“Something sinister—even evil?”
“There was a man found dead on one of the stones at Stonehenge. Not that long ago. It worried us, that killing. What if people like that came here?”
But he himself had been given that inquiry, and the death at Stonehenge had had nothing to do with the powers of the stones.
“A man with a secret might use that as a blind for ridding himself of a woman he no longer cared for. Or believed she could tell his wife what he’d been up to.”
“He’d be stupid to kill her on his doorstep.”
“Not if she’d surprised him by appearing without warning.”
“He’d be better off taking her to one of the barrows and leaving her there. Besides, where did he meet her in the first place? It’s not as if this is on the main road with people coming and going.”
It was an interesting point.
“He could have met her in London. During the war.”
Mrs. Dunlop shook her head. “We lost more men than we got back.”
“She might not know that.”
“It’s two years since the war was over. Where has she been all this time?”
She was as good at questioning as any Constable at the Yard, he thought wryly, listening to her.
“Ill, perhaps? Uncertain where he was now? Not enough money to travel and search?”