Rutledge was about to step into his motorcar when the main door opened. He was surprised to see Lady Benton herself come through and call to him.
“Are you leaving?” she asked, the slightest trace of anxiety in her voice. “Did you find any answers?”
He walked around the motorcar to meet her, realizing he shouldn’t have gone away without at least speaking to her.
Smiling, he said, “No answers. Not yet, Lady Benton. But I need to explore a number of avenues before I can reassure you that all is well. I would like to know, for instance, if lads from the village might have put on a show—”
He’d intended to relieve her worry, but instead, she had flushed a little and cut him off, saying, “Don’t. Don’t treat me like a child. I know what I saw, Inspector. I know it was real. At least, that it wasn’t a pair of boys trying to play at frightening me. Those were men I saw.”
“I’m sorry,” he said at once. “I was not suggesting that you were wrong. But I must eliminate any possibility of someone playing a prank or trying in some way or for some reason to frighten you.” When she didn’t seem to respond, he added, “There are certain things a policeman must do. For instance, look at every possible fact. Until he does that, he can’t begin to narrow his suspicions.”
She raised a hand to her throat, clearly embarrassed. “Oh—yes—all right. I’m sorry. I thought perhaps—but that was rather silly of me, expecting you to clear away this mystery, your first day. Carry on, Inspector. If you have more questions, you know where to find me.” And with a smile that tried to be understanding and patient, she stepped back inside the hall, and closed the door behind her.
He set out up the drive, intending to return to Walmer, but when he reached the gates, he changed his mind and instead turned in the opposite direction.
Nearly a mile up the road, he came to the inn that Hamilton had mentioned.
It really was little more than a pub. Small and not particularly well kept, the windows dusty and the sign above the door hanging on rusty hinges. Looking up at it, he saw that the name of the pub was The Monk’s Choice. And the painting was of a jolly man in a monk’s habit lifting a tankard, a broad smile on his face and a barmaid on his knee. Bawdy and disrespectful.
Intrigued, Rutledge pulled up in the small yard, and got out.
The first thing he noticed was the slant of the roof above the first floor. He could imagine how the ceilings inside sloped as well, taking up half the space. For a tall man, such a room would be worse than merely cramped.
As Rutledge was standing there, he had a feeling he was being watched, but there was no one about, and no one that he could see working in the fields across the road from the pub. He was dressed like a Londoner, and his motorcar was distinctive. And it was quiet enough that he could hear birds singing in the trees to his left. Curiosity, then, he told himself, and crossed the yard to the door.
It was heavy, creaking open into a fairly large single room, with a bar in the middle and tables on either side.
No one was behind the counter, and he stood there looking around. The theme of monks wasn’t carried on the inside. Instead, the interior was rather plain, the tables old and scarred and the chairs looking as if they’d been used by the monks themselves in the eleventh century.
But it was surprisingly neat, unlike the exterior.
There was a door behind the bar that must lead to a kitchen, he thought, and a flight of stairs that went up to the two small rooms Inspector Hamilton had mentioned.
Someone started down the steps, and an unshaven man in shirtsleeves and apron appeared. He stopped halfway, stared at Rutledge, and said, “Not open until four o’clock.” There was not a welcome nor warmth in his voice.
“You don’t serve lunch?” Rutledge asked, curious. He noticed that the hand gripping the stair railing was grimy, and the other hand held a pail, half hidden by the legs of the man’s trousers.
“No.”
“Do you take rooms for the night?”
“No.” The word was even more curt.
“Sorry to have disturbed you,” Rutledge said, and turned to leave.
But the man asked, “Not from around here, are you?”
Rutledge replied, “I came up from Kent.” When there was no further response, he added, “Actually I came to visit the Abbey. A man raises a thirst going through so many rooms.”
“I wouldn’t know. Never been there.”
He had reached the door and was about to open it when the man asked, “In the war, were you? At the airfield?”
Rutledge turned back to face him, there on the staircase.
“A friend served here,” he said. “The Captain who was killed crashing into the hedge.”
“Bloody fool.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. Heard about him. Always a daredevil, so they said. Some of the lads came here to drink.”
“What did they think? Accident or suicide?”
The man’s expression had been sullen. Now it was blank. “They never said.”
But Rutledge thought they had.
“The news was a shock to everyone who knew him. He didn’t seem the sort to kill himself. And he was too damned good a pilot to die in a hedge,” he said.
The man didn’t reply, staring at Rutledge without any expression. Then he turned and walked back up the stairs, disappearing from sight. Rutledge could hear his footsteps crossing the loose boards on the floor above.
Rutledge stood there for a moment longer, then went out the door and turned the crank.
Feeling eyes on his back, he straightened and looked up at the two windows that must mark the first-floor rooms.
In the one on the left, the curtain twitched very slightly and then went still.
Rutledge stopped briefly at the police station. Inspector Hamilton was at his desk, and he looked up as Rutledge was shown in.
“On your way back to London?”
Rutledge smiled. “Hardly. No, I came to ask what you know about The Monk’s Choice.”
“Thinking of taking a room there after all?”
“I think not. I stopped in before coming back to Walmer. What’s the history of the pub?”
“It’s been there for some forty years, at a guess. The owner’s father, one Jack Newbold, was a tenant farmer at the Abbey until he was turned off for drunkenness. He moved into a derelict house on the road and turned it into a pub. God knows where he found the money. Still, it seems he was a better publican than he was a farmer, and The Monk’s Choice did surprisingly well. Fred, the son, hasn’t prospered, since he took over. Didn’t have his father’s head for business.”
“Any trouble with the police?”
“Not really. Rowdiness, mostly. The pub was popular with some of the men at the airfield, and for a time was respectable enough to escape attracting the attention of their officers. Custom dropped off after the war, I expect.” He concentrated on the pen he’d been rolling in his fingers. “Walmer lost quite a few men. As did the Abbey. Lady Benton had to mechanize the Home Farm, to make up for their loss. Most of the women who work with her at the house are widows. Were you aware of that?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“Three of my own men didn’t make it back.” He set the pen aside, and looked across the desk at Rutledge. “The thing was, Fred Newbold, Jack’s son, was rejected by the Army. All his mates marched off to war, and he was left behind. It—affected him. He hasn’t been himself since then.”