He rose and walked to the stairs. “Admiring the view,” he said, coming down. “I’ll take the smaller room.”
“It’s already spoken for. Norm, here, he’s had words with his wife, and wants to take it until she’s calmed down.”
Norm stood behind him, grinning. “A regular scold, my Dora is.” That brought a laugh from the rest of the men watching the exchange.
Rutledge had the feeling that Dora was not, and the others knew it.
“Very well.” He’d paid for his half, and started toward the door.
A large man sitting by the bar rose. “You’ll have a game of darts, then, before you go.”
The laughter had faded, there was now an odd tension in the room, waiting for his answer.
Hamish said, “’Ware . . .”
Rutledge sighed. He had no desire to fight his way out of the pub. “Why not?” he said, walking across the room, his gaze on the man who’d challenged him. “Loser buys the next round, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
The man joined him in front of the dartboard, as Rutledge picked up the darts. He fumbled with them, dropped one, and quickly retrieved it, seemingly embarrassed. There was a low rumble of laughter behind him.
Handing them to the large man, he said, “Why don’t you throw first?”
It was unexpected, but the man nodded, threw the darts with practiced ease, then turned and grinned.
“Better that,” he said.
Rutledge stood there for several seconds, as if uncertain. When he looked around the room, he could see that every man was leaning forward, eager to watch how his first throw might go.
Then he turned, lifted his arm, and threw the first dart. It hit the wall instead of the pitted elm board. There was a roar of laughter behind him.
The large man walked over and picked it up, bringing it back to Rutledge. “Point is, you want to hit the board.”
Rutledge took the three darts, set his foot, and this time threw them in quick succession.
They hit the outer rings, doubling the large man’s score.
There was silence in the room for an instant. Then shouts of laughter at the large man’s expense. His face turned a dark red, more anger than embarrassment for being taken as a fool. Then, thinking better of whatever was on his mind, he had the grace to laugh with the others.
He clapped Rutledge on the shoulder and said, “What’ll you have, then?”
Rutledge accepted the other half, and when he was finished, he said a good night and left without hindrance.
As he stepped out into the cool evening air, he smiled grimly.
There was more to an Oxford education than Greek and the Classics, he thought, bending to turn the crank. The man was dead who had taught him how to play—his chest ripped open by machine-gun fire at second Ypres.
14
It was too late to go in search of Hamilton when he reached Walmer, and so he went to the hotel, asked for a tray to be brought up to his room, and went up the stairs.
A packet of papers lay on the coverlet of his bed. He could just make out the outline, against the paler cloth. He lit the lamp first, set his hat and coat on the chair, and went to pick it up. Curious.
It was heavily sealed, impossible to tamper with without tearing the packet open.
He took out his penknife and slit the top, drawing out the contents.
The thickest pages were the names of all the men who had served at the Abbey airfield. He scanned them, and they appeared to be as complete as the album of signatures that Lady Benton had shown him.
There was also a cutting from a newspaper, and a note attached.
Hardly worth including, but there you are.
It was a grainy view of several men coming down the passage inside a courthouse, on their way to a particular room.
He could pick out the barrister in his wig and robe, and a turnkey, whose faces were reasonably clear. Between them was a man in street clothes, his hands cuffed before him. Franklin, surely? He was looking down, trying not to face the camera. All that Rutledge could judge was his general height, perhaps five foot ten, and dark hair. Hardly enough to make a swift arrest in Walmer, Haldane was right there.
Rutledge read the attached article.
This photograph was apparently taken just before Franklin had broken free of the two men with him, and made a dash through the front doors of the courthouse to freedom.
He had been charged with the murder of his wife, her mother, and a sister-in-law. He had steadfastly refused to give the police any explanation for the crime, claiming he was innocent. They had taken him into custody only because he was the primary suspect, but the inquiry had also revealed that his sister-in-law had told a friend that he was tiring of her sister and their mother, who had been living with the couple. The article concluded by reporting that Franklin had no family living in the county, and the newspaper had failed to discover if he had any living relative at all.
The question then would be, who had provided him with protection in those first several seconds of his escape? In the immediate chaos after he broke free, the fact that he was dressed in a dark suit for his appearance in the dock would have made it difficult to spot him in busy streets on market day. By the time the authorities had collected themselves and started after him, chance favored him, and not the police or the prison guards.
Had someone spirited him away? Then who? Or had it truly been a simple matter of chance, and he was out of sight before anyone had reacted?
Rutledge set that aside, and picked up the cutting under it.
This was from a different newspaper about the finding of a soldier’s body, left in a ditch just off the road, his clothing and all his possessions removed.
There was a notation in ink just under that.
Before Rutledge could read it, there was a knock at the door. His supper had been brought up.
He collected his tray, poured a cup of tea from the pot, and ate most of his meal.
So far, while the material that presumably Haldane had had delivered to his hotel room was interesting enough, there was very little that was useful in tracking down Miles Franklin or anyone else who might have killed Mrs. Lowell and was, in a very real sense, haunting Lady Benton. Hardly worth, in fact, paying for the service with that journey to France. At least, he had found Meredith Channing’s grave. And that had eased some of the pain he’d felt at her shocking death. He owed her that final tribute, an acknowledgment of what might have been . . .
He got up and went to stand by the window. There were no diners in the garden tonight. No candles lit to mark each table. Only darkness, where on other nights there had been voices and laughter. Fitting, he thought, because there had been so much darkness in his relationship with Meredith—his shell shock, her missing husband, standing between them like shadows—
Hamish said, “There—by yon gate.”
And Rutledge saw what he was talking about.
Taking his time, he turned from the window and stretched. Then, out of sight of the watcher below, he took the papers he’d been examining and shoved them under the bed. Keeping low, he went to the door, stepped out, and shut the door. And began to run.
He leapt down the steps, turned, and went out the main door, nearly colliding with a young couple just starting to walk in.
He reached the corner and stopped, catching his breath before easing around the side of the hotel, among the plantings there.