He stopped in the yard of The Monk’s Choice, and went to knock at the door. There was no answer. And so he took out the key again, and tried it.
It didn’t fit.
As he went back to the motorcar, he looked up at the windows on the first floor, but there was no one watching him—not that he could see at any rate.
Pulling out of the yard, he looked across at the fenced-in field of the Home Farm, where in the mist he’d seen the mare standing.
He thought it was empty at first, then saw that someone was walking back to the barn. At this distance it was difficult to tell if the man was Henry.
On the off chance that Henry had seen something the night of the fire, he went on, pulling into the lane that ran past the house toward the barn and stables and other outbuildings. But there was no one around, although he called.
From there he went to Patricia Lowell’s house, to test the key in her door.
To his surprise, it didn’t fit. He’d been almost sure that it would, that it had been her key, since it hadn’t worked at the Hall. That it had fallen from her pocket as the noose was put around her neck and she was hauled up into the rafters.
The house had two other doors, but they too were no match for the key.
Hamish said, “It’s for a lock that doesna’ exist. For a door at the airfield, long since taken doon. It could ha’ been there for years.”
Rutledge was tempted to agree. But why else was the hut burned?
He went on into the village—little more than a hamlet, except that it had a small church. Twenty houses, he thought, on the main street, a dozen more on each of the smaller lanes that turned off the road.
There was someone in the Rectory garden, weeding between the rows.
Rutledge stopped and got out, walking around the Rectory house to the kitchen garden. This was, he thought, the New Rectory, smaller than the old one, which had been Patricia Lowell’s home and that of her family.
The Rector looked up as he heard Rutledge approaching.
“Good day,” he said cheerfully, standing up to greet his visitor. “You find me with time on my hands. And as the Devil is said to find work for idle hands, I’m ridding the world of a few weeds. How may I be of service?”
He was an older man, graying and tired for all his lighthearted greeting. Rutledge had seen the man’s name on the board by St. Matthew’s churchyard. It was MacNeal Farmer. And he could hear the slightest hint of a Scottish accent in the man’s voice.
“My name is Rutledge. Scotland Yard. I’m looking into the death of Patricia Lowell. Was she a member of your church?”
“She was indeed,” he replied, his expression changing to sadness. “As were her parents. A sad end for a lovely young woman. If you’d care to step into the kitchen, I’ll put the kettle on. I could do with a cup.”
And so Rutledge followed him into the house through the kitchen door. The room was spotless, the kettle on the cooker, and the curtains at the open windows stiff with starch.
As if he had noticed Rutledge’s glance, Farmer said, “My wife is away doing good works. We have an ill parishioner, and she’s sitting with her for an hour.” He began to make tea with practiced ease, as if he had done it many times. “But it’s Patricia you wish to know about. She had a kind heart. And widowhood was difficult for her. She and her husband were very close, and she took his loss quite hard. I think it was the work at the Hall that saved her. Got her out of that lonely, empty house, gave her something she felt she was contributing, and brought other people into her day, even though they were strangers.”
Bringing cups and saucers out of the cupboard, searching in a drawer for spoons, he shook his head. “It must have been the nights that were hardest. Clara stayed with her the first week after the news came about George. I feared for her, to be honest. But the young are resilient. And it helped, I think, that he had been away for two years by that time. She was used to his being gone.”
“Did she have any close friends?”
“There was Betty Hicks, but she died in the influenza epidemic. It took a toll here. I’m priest in two churches. The Rector in the next village died in the war. And the Church hasn’t seen fit to replace him, so far. He was killed on the Somme, ministering to the ill and dying. So many of them died, you know. He wrote to tell me how it was, how many couldn’t be saved.” He drew a breath. “I can’t begin to think what it must have been like out there.”
But Rutledge had been there, had seen it for himself. He could feel the rising tide of memories, and fought them off. And so he made no answer, and Farmer took that as disinterest.
“Forgive me, it was Patricia you came to ask about, not the war.”
Bringing the teapot to the table, then fetching the little jug of milk from the pantry, he added, “What else would you like to know?”
“Anything out of the ordinary, anything that was different—unusual—in the last week before her death?”
“I didn’t see her at all that last week. Well, at services on Sunday, of course. She was in the congregation, I don’t recall anything untoward about her then, no anxiety or sadness, nothing that would have led me to feel a concern for her.” He passed a cup to Rutledge, adding, “Sometimes the shepherd must go to his flock when someone is in trouble. Too many eyes, you see. Or they haven’t the courage to call. I try to make it easy for them to speak to me.”
“Nothing in the village that might have affected her. A death—a newcomer—an illness—anything?”
Farmer shook his head. “I’m sorry.” And then, brightening a little, he went on. “Oh—it escaped my mind. It must have been a fortnight ago, she came to the Rectory to speak to me. I was visiting the sick, my wife was here, and when Clara asked her if she would like to come in and wait for me, she said she had come about the flowers in her husband’s memory. She always honors him with flowers in the church. And that it could wait.”
“Did she seem unsettled when she spoke to your wife?”
“Clara didn’t notice it if she was.”
“And you didn’t follow up—the shepherd going to his flock?” Rutledge tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“Actually, I did, but she wasn’t at home. Since she didn’t call again, I assumed she had talked to someone on the flower committee this month.”
What in hell’s name had she intended to speak to this man about? Rutledge asked himself, drinking his tea. Or had Mrs. Lowell’s visit been about the flowers after all, and it was after that when something had happened?
He’d always had in the back of his mind that she must have seen something—someone—on the way from the Abbey to her house. But how to find someone to ask?
Farmer was saying, “And then there’s Mrs. Trask, poor soul, who sees shadows under her bed. I don’t think she sleeps well. At any rate, she sent her son for me, to tell me that she had seen a stranger lurking about the churchyard in the middle of the night. But when I investigated, there was no one at all. There’s a table tomb, old Mrs. Thompkins’. She had a fear of being put in the ground. But it offers a little shelter, and we’ve had soldiers out of work who sleep rough in its shelter—”
He broke off when Rutledge, who had been occupied with his own thoughts, barely listening to the Rector, suddenly realized what the man was saying.