Rutledge recalled Leslie’s reaction to the lapis necklace. He’d admitted quite freely that it must be his wife’s. And he had a plausible reason for it having been lost in Avebury. Nor had he made excuses.
The guilty usually looked for excuses.
The clasp had been broken. Mrs. Johnson had tied the ends together for Peggy to wear the beads.
“Sorry,” Rutledge said, smiling as his toast arrived with a pot of jam. “I’m clutching at straws.”
But Mason was still considering the suggestion. “It’s odd, isn’t it? How you think others are seeing what you’re seeing? I’ve looked into many dead faces in the course of my medical life, but hers wasn’t—there was that little smile, almost imperceptible. I doubt she died smiling. Those stab wounds were vicious. She must have felt horror, shock, and of course pain in her last moments. It was almost as if she welcomed the peace of death, once it came.” He shook his head. “I’m growing maudlin in my old age. She was young, she had a long life ahead of her. I’m sure it’s the waste I was feeling.”
But it was there in the photograph. Not just in Dr. Mason’s imagination. Rutledge had seen it, Haldane had seen it.
What had Leslie felt as he saw her body the first time? And if he knew her—why had he said nothing?
In ordinary circumstances, Rutledge would have gone to him and asked him. But now there were the beads, causing an unexpected chasm to open up between them.
But beads aside, there had to be a motive for murder. Why would a strange woman have sought out Leslie in the first place?
“What is it?” Dr. Mason leaned forward. “What are you thinking about?”
“About how difficult to interpret some evidence can be.”
Mason leaned back, a fleeting expression of disappointment crossing his face.
As Rutledge’s pot of tea arrived, the doctor replied, “Rather like medicine, I expect. People want answers I can’t give them. I find it sad that she had to be buried under ‘Unknown but to God.’ I asked to have that last added. It seemed right, somehow. And as I’d helped pay for the burial, no one could argue.” He smiled briefly at the memory. “I’m a sentimental old fool. She could have been my granddaughter.”
Rutledge pushed his toast away. “She was someone’s daughter. Someone’s mother. Possibly someone’s wife. What brought her here to die?”
9
He should have returned the photograph to the Rector, as he’d promised. But Rutledge wasn’t ready to relinquish it. As well, he had a feeling that no one would ever come knocking at the Rectory asking about her. Haldane had been right about that. And so keeping that promise to the Rector and his wife could wait.
Before leaving the doctor at his door, Rutledge asked where Mrs. Johnson lived.
The Johnsons had a cottage farther down the road that ran past the inn and the doctor’s house. Her husband had been the village farrier before the war and now made his living as a carpenter.
She was not happy to see Rutledge standing on her doorstep.
“It was wrong of you to send that tea service to Peggy. I don’t have the money to repay you for it. Alastair said, send it straight back. But she’d seen it. I didn’t have the heart. All the same, it goes against my principles.”
“Why? I took Peggy’s beads, and I couldn’t find any to replace them that might please her. The tea service was a poor substitute.” He smiled deprecatingly. “I’m not married. I don’t know much about children. I had to ask a friend for help.”
It worked.
Mollified, she said, “Still, you shouldn’t have.”
“It’s about the beads that I’ve come. You told me that Peggy’s brother had found them by the causeway. I’d like to ask him about that.”
“Here, he didn’t steal them.”
Rutledge took a deep breath. “I never thought he had. It’s just that it’s an odd place for someone to lose a necklace. While it’s not likely to be related to the woman found dead by the stone, I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t make certain of that.”
“You’re in luck,” she said sourly. “Tommy has measles. He’s come out all over in spots.”
Rutledge stopped himself in time, but the words were running through his mind.
Tommy wouldn’t have considered the measles a bit of luck.
“Perhaps if I just stood in the doorway?”
“Oh very well.”
She let him in and led him to the stairs. Tommy was in the larger of the two small bedrooms at the top of the flight.
“Tommy, this is the policeman from London. He’s curious about that string of beads you gave your sister for her birthday.”
The room was dim, curtains drawn over the windows to keep out the light. The boy lay on his cot, looking wretched, but perked up when his mother stepped aside and he saw the man from London. His gaze went directly to Rutledge’s hands, as if expecting a gift of his own. The disappointment in his eyes was evident.
Rutledge cursed himself for not thinking of that.
“Hallo, Tommy. How are you feeling?”
“I was sick this morning. All over my sheets.”
“Bad luck, that. I’m sorry. I’ve come to say that it was generous of you, to give those beads to your sister for her birthday.”
Tommy ducked his head, partly shyness, partly regret. “They was in the dust. As if stepped on.”
“Were they indeed?” Rutledge asked. “Hard to see, then?”
“It was the brightness of the clasp I saw, not the beads. I thought it was a shilling.”
“Were you disappointed when you retrieved it, to see beads attached to the bright bit?”
“What’s a body to do with beads?” he asked. But Rutledge had a feeling that he had been rather proud of his discovery, useful to a boy or not.
When Rutledge didn’t immediately respond, Tommy went on. “They’re always finding bits and bobs here. Antlers. Broken pots you’d think was more important than a whole one. I’d never found anything. Not even that body left beside the stone.”
“You weren’t one of the boys who discovered her?”
“No, worse luck.” He caught his mother’s look of disapproval, and said stoutly, “Nothing ever happens to me here. ’Cept the measles.”
“I’m confused. You discovered the beads after the body was found? Not before?”
“After. The day after the Chief Inspector left. Nobody was allowed to play there once the body was found. Or even drive along the road over the causeway, until he’d finished searching it.”
Hamish said, his voice quiet in Rutledge’s ear, “It’s possible he was telling the truth. Yon Chief Inspector.”
“Did you see the body in place, before it was moved to Dr. Mason’s surgery?”
“Half the village did,” Tommy claimed. “They came crowding round before Constable could push them back.”
“Here, you didn’t tell me that,” his mother said, angry.
“I didn’t want to worry you,” her son replied, looking from her to Rutledge and back again.
“Did you think the beads were as old as the circle?” Rutledge asked.