“I’m afraid—” he began, but she shook her head vigorously.
“No. You’re not telling me he’s dead. I won’t hear it. We’re counting on him. He was going to find work and we’d be all right. He promised Ma.” She was staring at him, angry tears in her eyes, refusing to hear what he had to say.
“I think you knew, when you saw me standing at your door,” he said gently.
“No, I’d hoped you’d come to hire him. And then I thought—I don’t know what I thought. It’s not true. I won’t believe it’s true.”
“He was in Wiltshire. Why was he there, do you know?”
“He never wrote, I told you that. Maybe he went to Reading or Stroud, or—I don’t know.”
“He was wearing his uniform—”
“He was proud of it, he wanted people to know he’d served King and Country. He was wounded, a wounded soldier.”
“—and an officer’s greatcoat.”
“He was given that. By the chapel. It was in a barrel of clothing collected for the missions. Only there was more need here at home. He didn’t steal it. He wouldn’t steal. Was that it? You took him up for theft? What did you do to him?”
The description fit. Too well.
“He wasn’t taken into custody. He was found dead in a place called Avebury. Did he know someone there? In Wiltshire?”
“He never said so. He served with his friends, with a Manchester regiment. What was he doing in Wiltshire? I refuse to believe you. You’ve got it wrong somehow. He wasn’t the only Corporal in the Army. There are Radleigh cousins in Shropshire. It’s bound to be one of them.”
Tears were running down her face, and her son, looking up at her, began to whimper, turning his back on Rutledge and burying his face in his mother’s lap.
He thought about what she would see, if he took her south to identify the body.
But he had to say what he’d come to say. He’d never learned how to break such news. He didn’t think there was a way to do it with kindness or even sympathy. And he felt like swearing. For the dead man, for this family depending on him. It was a senseless death.
“We can’t bury him. There’s no money. Why did you come here, with your lies?”
“Mrs. Underwood. I have to tell you. Andy—Andrew Radleigh was murdered.”
She stood up, her face hard. “You can find your own way out. Don’t ever come here again, do you hear me? Ever!”
“Is there someone I can bring—”
But she didn’t answer him. She was out the door, on the point of slamming it behind her when she remembered that there was a woman resting upstairs.
By the time he’d reached the door, she had gone. The passage was empty.
Rutledge stood there for several minutes, thinking she would come to realize there was no escape. That the truth had to be faced sooner or later.
In the silence of the house, he could hear a child’s whimpering. He couldn’t tell where it was coming from, the sound was too soft to follow.
He finally turned on his heel and left, softly closing the outer door behind him.
15
It took time, but he finally found the chapel where the Radleigh family attended services, and he told the minister there that Andrew Radleigh had been murdered in Wiltshire.
The older man, white hair longer than it ought to be, his back stooped with age, shook his head. “He was a good son. He wanted to do what was right for his family. But are you sure? Are you certain that you’ve found our Andrew?”
It was an echo of Mrs. Underwood.
“Did Andrew drink?”
“I’ve never known him to take a drink. His mother is strongly opposed to it, and both she and her daughter have been active in the temperance movement.”
Rutledge described the body, the uniform and greatcoat. The scars. But he didn’t describe the manner of death.
Mr. Morgan bowed his head for a moment, then said, “I’ll step around shortly. They will need the Lord’s comfort. Will—how will the body be brought home?”
Before he could stop himself, Rutledge said, “I’ll see to that. Still, I’d not want them to open the coffin. Time—er—time has taken a toll that would be painful for his family to see.”
“I understand. You said he was found in the open. Poor Andrew. He deserved better.”
That was the epitaph that Rutledge carried with him on the long journey south.
And all it did was stoke his anger.
He arrived in London late at night, went to his flat, and slept poorly, Hamish busy in the back of his mind, until close to dawn.
Rutledge had gone through his mail before going to bed, but there was nothing from Haldane. Disappointed, he’d had a small glass of whisky to help him sleep, then turned and tossed restlessly instead.
He had seen Chief Inspector Leslie. The man was back in London, the inquiry in Yorkshire clearly at an end.
If he wanted to speak to Leslie, it must be now, before he was sent God knows where on his next assignment.
But not at the Yard. That wouldn’t do for many reasons. Leslie had friends there, but more to the point, it was not the best place for a confrontation, with an audience of policemen watching and judging.
He waited until close to the lunch hour, and went to stand outside the building and about fifty feet away, hoping to see Leslie come out.
He didn’t.
But at four in the afternoon, some ten minutes after Rutledge was back in position, he recognized Leslie’s walk, and moved forward to intersect him.
Leslie looked up, frowned in surprise when he saw Rutledge, and then said, “I must congratulate you.”
“Indeed?” Rutledge said, falling in step beside him. They were almost of a height, although Rutledge was a little taller.
“You found the man who broke into my house in Stokesbury. I hear the Constable in Avebury—Henderson is his name, isn’t it?—also suspects the ex-soldier for that poor woman’s murder. He sent word to the Yard, only this morning.”
Had he?
“Early days,” Rutledge said equably. “I haven’t written my report yet.”
“Chief Superintendent Markham is quite pleased, or so I understand. You should be as well.”
“I was hoping for a confession,” Rutledge answered.
Leslie glanced at him. “Were you, now?”
“It would be helpful to know what name to put on the woman’s gravestone. And what connection there might have been between the two, victim and killer.”
“As we both know, nothing ever turns out quite the way we’d hoped. Still. Case closed. I expect the poor man couldn’t live with his guilt.”
“As to that,” Rutledge said as they reached the corner by the bridge, “I’m not completely convinced that Katherine ever met the dead man.”
Leslie almost broke stride, then pointed to the bridge, and they turned together to start across it. “Well done. You’ve identified her, then?”
Rutledge smiled, but there was a grimness to it. He didn’t answer.
They were halfway across the bridge, walking in silence, when Leslie stopped, and Rutledge followed suit. They stood together, looking over the stone parapet into the dark, tumbling waters below. There had been heavy winter rains to the west, and the Thames was in spate.