“Yes, these could be hers. I don’t quite know what this is.” He fiddled with the string where Mrs. Johnson had tied the broken ends together. “I was leaving for Avebury, and my wife asked me to take her lapis beads to the jeweler’s shop on my way to the railway station. The clasp needed mending, and I could pick them up when I got back to town. Only when I walked into the shop, I didn’t have them. There was no time to go back to the house, the train was due in twenty minutes. I put them out of my mind, went on to Avebury. To be honest, I hadn’t got around to telling her I couldn’t find them. They must have been in my other clothes, in my valise. I kept hoping they would turn up at home.” He looked up, smiling ruefully at Rutledge. “If these are hers, you’ve probably saved my marriage. They’re her favorite beads.” The smile faded. “I’ve looked in my motorcar, all over the house—it never occurred to me they might have fallen out in Wiltshire of all places.” His voice trailed off, then he shook his head again. “I’m grateful.”
A silence fell.
Rutledge said, “I’ve read your report on Avebury. So far I can’t put a name to the dead woman. How did you fare, searching for her? No use going over the same ground. Not that I’ve got any better ideas.” He kept his voice light, not pressing.
“I never got very far.” He sighed. “There was nothing to point me toward her past. The Chief Constable put out a description to his counterparts in neighboring counties, asking for help, and that didn’t bring in any leads either. No one recalled her, she hadn’t gone missing, no one was searching for her. A blank, Rutledge. As if she didn’t exist. Meanwhile, Markham was pressing for results, as usual. I called for an inquest, but there was only one verdict it could bring in. I didn’t like it, but I had the feeling that if I stayed in Avebury for another fortnight, and another after that, the verdict wouldn’t change. I was angry about that, but as I was leaving, Dr. Mason told me that if he’d killed once, he’d kill again, and we’d have him then. Cold comfort for his next victim!” He considered Rutledge for a moment, his eyes shadowed by his hat. He was still holding the string of beads in his right hand. “You mentioned something about a personal reason for Markham sending you to Avebury?”
Rutledge said only, “It was because of another inquiry entirely. An unidentified woman was killed and left in an open grave—not hers, it was dug for a man who had just died in that village. I found her killer. For some reason Markham felt that there was a similarity in the deaths and the way the bodies were discovered. He thought I could find answers in Avebury too. If I didn’t, nothing lost.”
Except, of course, Markham’s confidence in him.
“But there’s no connection?”
“Dr. Allen might have killed before, but he couldn’t have been responsible for Avebury. He was in Bath at the time of that murder. Having an affair with a young schoolmistress. We examined his appointment book after we took him into custody. He was supposed to be conferring with a colleague, but the dates coincided with what her cousin could tell us about the victim’s evenings with a new friend she’d met at a concert. The cousin thought it was a woman.”
“Well. I can only wish you better luck than I had. I hope Dr. Mason is wrong about his killing again, but our murderer brought a knife with him to Avebury. He knew he might use it.” He dropped the beads into his greatcoat pocket. “Do you mind if I keep these?”
Rutledge was on the point of objecting. Were they evidence? But he’d seen Mrs. Leslie wearing just such a strand. If he turned them in with his report, Leslie would have to apply for their return. It could take years—and if he, Rutledge, also failed to bring someone to trial, they might never be released.
Hamish was saying, “Yon jeweler recognized them.”
Leslie was adding ruefully, “I’ll give them back, of course, if I’m wrong about them. The jeweler will know. And he can mend the clasp while he’s about it.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
There was another silence.
Then Rutledge thanked him, adding, “I must be on my way. I hope you find your man.” He turned to walk back to his motorcar, leaving Leslie there in the shadows of the yew.
Hamish said, “It was no’ a verra guid idea to come here. Ye accomplished nothing.”
It was too late to second-guess his decision now. And he was beginning to think that Avebury had never held the answer to the victim’s murder. It had been the place, nothing more.
He closed the churchyard gate and turned toward the hum of people in the market square.
Passing a pair of men already the worse for drink, Rutledge threaded his way through the cluster of market-goers waiting for tables in the pub. One of the stall owners was loudly hawking his wares, while several others were taking advantage of the lull to eat boxed lunches they’d brought with them.
“He didna’ ask you how long you’d be staying here,” Hamish commented.
No, Rutledge answered silently. Usually he would have done.
They would have adjourned to The Golden Boar, and talked or dined together.
Giving Leslie the benefit of the doubt, Rutledge added, “It’s a measure of his worry about what’s happening here.”
The magician was still there, talking to a pretty young woman wearing a dark blue coat. She was looking up at him with a shy smile. He was dark, attractive, and far more sophisticated than his audience. Rutledge crossed the street, walked up to the man and woman, and asked where he could find the post office. The magician looked blank, but the woman politely pointed in the direction he should go. Rutledge thanked her and went on his way.
But when he looked back before stepping into the post office, she had also walked on, the spell the man had cast broken. The magician was standing there, staring after her as he blew on his hands. Then he walked off, disappearing behind a line of makeshift stalls.
Satisfied, Rutledge went on to where he’d left his motorcar. He wasn’t convinced that the magician was the killer Leslie was hunting, but the man was Trouble. There was something decidedly off about him, and the way young women looked at him was what also made Leslie’s killer successful, that Pied Piper charm.
Not his inquiry, of course.
He drove out of Denby and turned south. He kept seeing Leslie drop the lapis beads into his pocket.
It could have happened the way Leslie had said. He told himself that several times.
The necklace falling out of his pocket as he was bent over, scanning for evidence. Or perhaps he reached for his gloves, having forgotten the beads were there, and the broken clasp caught somehow and they were pulled out.
Leslie was a Chief Inspector at Scotland Yard.
Then why had he, Rutledge, driven this long way to Yorkshire?
He concentrated on the road ahead, ignoring Hamish in the back of his mind.
Once he found the dead woman’s name, he would ask her family if she had owned lapis beads. But on the whole he still believed they weren’t hers. The killer would have made a point to take any distinctive jewelry she might have been wearing. It could have led to identifying her, and while struggling to manage the bicycle alone, he could well have lost them. And yet the man in the London shop had recognized them, after all.
“Ye ken,” Hamish said, “it doesna’ matter. You’ve just given evidence away. Ye had better hope it was Mrs. Leslie’s beads.”