What else hadn’t he told his wife?
It was rather Edwardian, he thought, to protect women from the less savory world around them. The war had changed that—death and destruction had crept into everyone’s life. But then Leslie worked daily with the sordid business of crime and murder. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to bring it home with him at night—perhaps he’d wanted something else, this raven-haired other woman who didn’t remind him of a darker world.
How had he kept it from everyone, if there was another woman in his life?
Hamish said, “Ye canna’ know fra’ seeing his wife on the street what happens in yon house when they’re alone.”
It was true.
Of course, if she were suspicious, had felt the change in him without being aware of why he had changed, she might not be ready to confide in her friends, keeping up a good front.
The next question was, how had Leslie met the dead woman? In France, during the war? If it was she the port official Westin had remembered.
Rutledge still didn’t like what he was considering. Brian Leslie was an excellent police officer, intelligent, experienced, and absolutely trustworthy. Surely there was another answer.
He drove all night, finding himself on the outskirts of Marlborough and then searching out a back road to his destination.
It was pitch-black on the lanes he was traveling, but his headlamps picked out the landscape around him, the one or two scattered farmhouses, and empty fields waiting for spring.
He came finally to the end of the road on which the Nelson house sat, and leaving his motorcar there, he quietly moved forward until he could see it clearly.
It was dark, there was no motorcar in front of it.
Leslie wasn’t in residence.
He returned just as silently to his own motor, and reversing, drove back the way he’d come, finding an inn on the outskirts of Marlborough. He woke up the landlord, took a room, damp and with a bed like sacks of corn. Tired as he was, he slept until late afternoon.
In all the interviews he’d conducted in the immediate circle of villages surrounding Avebury, he hadn’t gone as far afield as Stokesbury, and when he was searching out tandem bicycles, he’d done his best to avoid the local Constables to avoid broadcasting his interest.
Now he arrived at four o’clock, sought out the local man, and found him just finishing his tea. If news of his appearance got back to Leslie, it was something he could understand: Rutledge hoping the new information might in some way help him in Avebury.
The Constable was a portly man with brown eyes and a receding hairline, but his straight gaze as Rutledge came through the door belied his friendly greeting. Rutledge understood. Late callers at a police station usually meant a problem to be dealt with.
“Evening, sir. Constable Benning. How may I help you?”
“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I was told by my Sergeant in London that there was a breaking and entering here, one that was only discovered recently. Apparently it happened close to the night that the murder I’m investigating in Avebury occurred. I’m hoping that there might be a connection between the two.” He gave the date but kept his expression bland when Benning nodded.
“Aye, I remember that murder.” Benning gestured to the other chair, across the desk, and asked if Rutledge cared for a cup of tea. “The kettle’s still hot,” he added.
“Thank you, no, I must return to Avebury.”
“The first I knew about the break-in was Mrs. Shelby coming by to tell me she’d had some misgivings when a man stopped by and offered a poor excuse to ask questions about the house. She keeps an eye on it for the Leslies and remembered seeing lights in the house one night not long before. It wasn’t until later, mind you, that we narrowed down that date. But neither of them had been down since the new year, and I went to have a look. I couldn’t see anything wrong, but I sent word to London, and they passed it on to the Chief Inspector. He came down to have a look inside. A pity he never went to the house while he was in Avebury about the inquiry there. We’d have had a better shot at catching whoever it was. But of course he couldn’t know that at the time.”
“He didn’t stay in Stokesbury on his way from London to Avebury?”
“I believe he was met in Marlborough when he came in by train.”
That agreed with Leslie’s report.
“What did he find, when he went to the house?”
“A back window had been forced. I couldn’t see that from where I’d been standing when I went round there. But he showed me afterward where the window’s lock had been broken. It’s in the pantry, just above the sloping cellar door. Easy enough to clamber up there—no one could see him, and he could take his time about it. Still, the Chief Inspector told me he saw nothing amiss until he walked into the kitchen and found biscuit crumbs on the table, and a wrapper beside them. That’s when he began searching from room to room and discovered the window. Whoever it was had also knocked over a pitcher kept there, as he climbed in. It was on the floor, smashed.”
“He?”
“The thinking is, an ex-soldier down on his luck might have been looking for food. Then he took what he thought he could sell without getting caught, and left before first light.”
“Have you had many ex-soldiers coming through?”
“Well, no. Not since the autumn.” Benning picked up his cup and saucer, and carried it back to the shelf above the little stove. Resuming his seat, he went on. “I do what I can for them, a meal, a few coins, and they move on. There’s no work here, no reason to stay. I had quite a time of it, assuring Mrs. Shelby she was safe enough, that he wouldn’t be coming back.”
“What did he look like? If she saw him?” Rutledge asked.
“She couldn’t describe him, not in any useful way. She kept saying he was menacing. He wanted to know if the Leslies had anything to sell.”
“And that’s the only sighting of this man?”
Benning took a deep breath. “As to that, we can’t be sure. The dogs on one of the farms west of here barked for about ten minutes on the night in question. A Tuesday night, that was. But they were shut up in the shed, to keep them from wandering. Their owner, Mr. Haskell, believes it was only another dog sniffing around. It could have been the vagrant, of course. There’s an old road by the farm, not much used these days.”
Had the Haskell dogs heard a tandem bicycle passing by?
“Where does that road lead?”
“Out to a farm that was sold off twenty years ago. House is gone, of course, but Haskell’s neighbor owns the land and grows mostly corn and beans.”
“You haven’t told me what was taken?”
“That was odd. The Chief Inspector looked in his wardrobe, thinking the man might be after warmer clothes. Instead, he seems to have taken another packet of biscuits, some bits and bobs of jewelry, a man’s gloves. Odd choice, but Leslie told me they’d bring in enough to have a decent meal, perhaps a night somewhere.”
“No silver candlesticks? That sort of thing?”
Benning shook his head. “Questions might be asked, if he had anything too valuable.”
“Clever man. Did Leslie believe this break-in had any bearing on the Avebury murder?”
“If he thought so, he never said. In my opinion, if whoever broke in that night was here in Stokesbury, he couldn’t have been doing murder in Avebury. Besides, where did he meet the woman who was killed there?”