At the corner where he could see the rear gate into the garden with its tables, he paused.
The figure was just leaving, walking briskly toward the yard not far from where his motorcar stood. There were no more than a handful—four or five—other vehicles there, as most people who came to dine usually walked to the hotel.
Keeping the railing that set off the garden from the lane between him and the figure, Rutledge followed at a distance.
He saw the other man stop by the boot of the Rolls, then move toward the bonnet, fumbling to lift it.
Rutledge moved fast then, coming up before the man could react. And because his own reflexes were swifter, he had caught the man’s left arm, swung him around and pinned him to the side of the motorcar.
“What the hell did you think you were about?” he demanded savagely, not bothering to hide the fury he was feeling. Yanking the man forward, he twisted his arm behind his back and marched him to the hotel, ignoring his prisoner’s struggles and protests. He was taller, he had a longer reach, and there was nothing the other man could do to get free.
In front of the hotel, where the light from the windows was good enough to take a look at what he’d caught, Rutledge turned his captive so that he could see his face.
It was the man called Norm with the scold of a wife. From The Monk’s Choice . . .
His disappointment only increased Rutledge’s anger. “What were you doing with my motorcar? If you lie, I’ll have you in for malicious mischief and vandalism.”
Norm wasn’t laughing now. Grimacing at the pain in his arm, he said, “Newbold—it was Newbold’s idea. To damage your motorcar—for what you did in the pub tonight. Making us all look like—like fools. Let me go, damn you!”
“What were you doing to it?”
“Pull some of the wires—I don’t know—”
Another couple walked past, staring, but kept going without a word.
“If I catch you—or anyone else—near my motorcar again, I’ll have Newbold’s license, and bring the lot of you in for plotting to obstruct the police in the course of carrying out their duties.”
“You can’t do that! I was only going to—”
“Can’t I? I’m Scotland Yard, remember? Not your local Inspector. Now go home and apologize to your wife for calling her a scold in a public house.”
He gave the arm a last twist, then released the man.
Norm turned and glared at him, but Rutledge said quietly, “Don’t even think it. Next time it will be your neck, I promise you.”
Something in that quiet voice reached the other man. “We intended no harm—”
“Tell Newbold to go to hell.”
And he walked into the hotel, leaving Norm standing there, one hand clasped at his aching elbow. But he quickly left.
Satisfied, Rutledge let him go. Newbold was irascible, a man who had carried his father’s rancor into the next generation. But he hadn’t come to do his own mischief, he’d sent someone else. The question was, had it been done privately, or was it with the knowledge of all the patrons there?
Hamish said, “He’s no’ a murderer. But he could run with one.”
And that was a good point.
He went back upstairs, ignoring the stares of the desk clerk and a few people sitting in the lounge.
In his room, he finished the tea before it could go cold, then retrieved the papers under his bed. He found the article again, about the dead man in the ditch who had finally been identified as a young soldier by the name of Robinson. Just as Vermuelen had written. Rutledge sat down in his chair and scanned it until he came to the comment in ink.
One of those missing possessions the police did not list. It was something that the dead man had found as a child, playing in the strand along the Cornish coast. A roughly made silver ring, twisted rather like a snake. According to the family.
Rutledge stared at it, read it a second time, then took out the handkerchief with the bits he’d found in the ashes of the hut fire.
And there it was. The sea must have worn off some of the details, but when Rutledge held it under the lamp, turning the ring in his fingers, he could see now the remaining pattern of a snake’s body.
To be sure, he went to the washstand and cleaned the ring with soap and water.
After drying it, he went back to the lamp again. And if he’d had to answer under oath what the design was, he could truthfully reply that the ring looked very much like a snake swallowing its tail.
It was an ancient symbol, the Ouroboros. Found in ancient myths and in alchemy. A snake or even a dragon biting its own tail. Eternity.
A man’s ring. He slipped it on his own finger, and it was tight. A slightly smaller hand, then. But it had fit Robinson’s killer too, and he had kept it. Only to lose it somehow as he tried to hang a dead woman. And he was desperate enough to burn down the hut to be sure that no one else found it and could connect him with a murder.
Hamish said, “If no’ with the lad’s murder, it might connect him with yon airfield.”
And it might, if someone remembered it. Was that someone Patricia Lowell?
Hamish added, “But there isna’ a lake.”
Lake . . .
Rutledge set down the cutting and went to the armoire and his valise. In it were the papers that he’d brought back from France.
He returned the pages concerning the war to the valise, and took the later pages to the desk.
He was halfway through them when he remembered. Vermuelen had spoken of the lake in that last rambling monologue at the end.
His English, sometimes muddled with French, and his heavy Flemish accent, added to the weak voice of a dying man, had made it difficult to find a thread.
Hamish said, “He said lake twice.”
That was true.
Rutledge closed his eyes, his head back as he tried to recapture that last conversation.
There had been the reference to the nun, the man’s sister—his final message, barely finished, for Haldane, but before that, what had he said about a lake?
Must look . . . And bloody—no, possibly body.
Haldane must have told Vermuelen to look for what had been taken from the body—not a lake, nor even a snake. A snake ring. And he, Rutledge, must look for it as well.
The one piece of information that hadn’t been made public. That Franklin had kept and was possibly still wearing it, because he hadn’t known the importance of the ring to the soldier he’d killed for his identification.
And Vermuelen must have seen that ring, still on the killer’s hand, before he asked Franklin to travel with him to Calais.
He was trying to tell Rutledge that it was a means to find and identify a killer.
Rutledge sat back in his chair. Franklin had lost the ring in the hut.
While he, Rutledge, had found it in the ashes, without knowing its significance.
He got up and began to pace the room.
Franklin might have lost it, but before that, someone would surely remember it. A woman noticed such things as rings and clothing and the like.
Lady Benton hadn’t known what it was, as he’d spread out the items left from the fire. Perhaps she hadn’t had that much to do with the man wearing that ring.
But Patricia Lowell might have recognized it. The question was, in what connection? Why had it meant something to her? And even if she had connected it to someone who had been serving at the airfield during the war, that surely wasn’t motive enough for murder.