“My patients appear to be as bewildered as I am. I would have spoken to Chief Inspector Leslie if I was worried that one of them might be involved in her death. As for former patients, my wife and I kept up acquaintance with some of them for a few years. They were busy with their lives, some have died. In good time, we made new friends here. You know how it is. I think the last time I heard from the past, it was at my wife’s death. A note of condolence.”
“Did your late wife have among her jewelry a pin shaped like a crescent moon? One that might be worn on a coat? Even a hat?”
Surprised, Mason said, “I really don’t know. I never gave her such a thing, but that’s not to say she didn’t own one or inherit one from her family. I can tell you quite truthfully that I never saw her wear it.” He started toward the door. “I’ll take you to her room, if you like, and you can see for yourself.”
It was a genuine offer, and Rutledge, still standing, not having been invited to sit, shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”
Mason stayed where he was. “I don’t mind being questioned, Rutledge, but I do mind being suspected of murdering that poor woman. I’d have helped her in any way I could have done, even if she’d escaped from prison and needed sanctuary. That’s part of my oath as well. It’s never been tested, but I think I would have the courage to lie to the authorities, if I believed it was for the best.”
Rutledge said quietly, “Forgive me. But I would have been remiss in my duty if I hadn’t asked you the same questions I’ve asked your neighbors, just because I’ve enjoyed our conversations.”
That mollified the doctor to a degree, but he still said, “I insist that you look at my late wife’s jewelry. I shouldn’t care to be treated differently.”
And so Rutledge followed him, carrying the lamp, up the steep, narrow staircase, counting fourteen steps without a landing.
Mason turned to his left, and came to a door just down the passage. He took a deep breath, then opened it, standing aside to allow Rutledge to enter. “Her jewelry has always been kept in the top drawer of her dressing table.”
Rutledge crossed the room, set the lamp down on the dressing table, and opened the drawer. There were three boxes inside. He opened them one after the other, and saw a string of lovely pearls, pearl earrings to match, and a pearl ring in the first one. Gifts, he thought, from her parents when she came of age.
In the second were several rings, a long gold necklace that might be worn with an evening gown, another of jet beads, and three bracelets. The last box held only Mrs. Mason’s engagement ring and wedding ring, set in the satin bed made for them by the jeweler who had sold them to a young doctor who was about to propose.
“We have no children. I let her wear them in her coffin, but I couldn’t bear to bury them with her. I wanted to look at them sometimes, and remember the evening I proposed to her.”
Rutledge closed the box and put it back in the drawer, then quietly shut the drawer. “You’ve made your point,” he said without emphasis. “Honor satisfied.”
He took up the lamp again, and walked to the door, then down the stairs to the front room, without looking to see if Mason followed.
But Mason shut the door behind him as he came after Rutledge and said, “Now you owe me the courtesy of telling me what this was about.”
“She was very likely wearing a hat that matched her coat. I found someone who remembered a woman with black hair and a hat with a crescent pin. You are the nearest house to the scene of that murder. You could have killed her and no one the wiser. You would know how to use a knife to best advantage, and you could have burned the clothes splattered with her blood. There’s no one in the house who would notice if you never wore your red jumper or your blue shirt after that night. You might have discovered afterward that she’d left her hat behind, and burned it too. But decided not to burn the pin. It might have value, it might even have been a gift from you. And in Henderson’s absence you made a point of helping the police.”
“Remind me never to play chess with you. You have a devious mind.”
“No. A policeman’s mind, always suspicious.”
Mason crossed the room to a tray with a decanter and several glasses. He inspected them for dust, then sniffed the sherry. “It seems all right.” He poured two glasses, and handed one to Rutledge. “I saw in the beginning that you were different from the Chief Inspector. He did his duty. Fully and carefully, mind you. But his heart wasn’t in it. I thought it might be something personal. An illness in the family, or the like. I’m a doctor, I’ve seen many men and women struggle to keep their feelings from showing when given the worst possible news. But there were no answers here in Avebury. He knew that, and still he didn’t stint. He left here with that murder unsolved.”
“That’s a very good description of the Chief Inspector. What did you see in me?”
Mason sipped his sherry and nodded. “It’s still good. You have a fine mind, and you are tenacious. It’s more than duty with you, isn’t it? A passion, I expect. Or perhaps there’s something driving you. You see in the victim someone who must be spoken for. Whatever the cost. I wonder why.”
“I don’t know why,” Rutledge said. It was the truth. He didn’t. But he’d taken up police work because someone had to speak for the dead. “My father was a solicitor,” he said after a moment. “He did what he could for people who came to him.”
“Yes, well. The answer may come to you one day.”
“Did you kill her?” he bluntly asked the doctor.
“Of course not.”
Rutledge finished his sherry. “Then go back to your bed. I need to find mine.”
Mason took their empty glasses and put them back on the tray. “I’ll see they’re washed later. We might want them again.”
At the door, he stopped before opening it and letting in the cold night air. “You’ve found something, haven’t you? Best to sleep on it.”
He didn’t seem to notice that Rutledge hadn’t answered him.
Instead Rutledge said, “Know anyone in Avebury who owns a fine set of lapis beads?”
“Lapis?” Mason shook his head. “I don’t believe I do. Now my wife could have answered that. She could tell you who wore what to, say, evensong or a wedding, describing the gown and the jewelry that set it off. She had an eye for that sort of thing.”
But there were no beads . . . He’d given them back to Leslie.
He drove to the inn but stood there for a moment, listening to the silence of the night.
Once when he and Mason had dined at the inn, the woman who was serving them had asked if he was making any progress finding out who had killed the strange woman. He’d smiled and told her it was early days yet. But that hadn’t satisfied her.
“It makes me anxious, walking home at night. The dark comes down early this time of year, and I’d never been afraid of it before. Now I’m torn between asking someone to walk with me and wondering if I do, whether I’m inviting a murderer to protect me.”
When she’d walked away, Mason had said, “I agree. It’s an odd place, especially at night. I’m not afraid of the dark—God knows, in my profession, I’m out at all hours, and a pretty thing it would be to fear shadows. Nor am I afraid of the circle. But they loom, those great monoliths. You can’t escape them. And if you’ve any imagination at all, you wonder at the skill that put them here. The mystery is why.”