It was too early for custom.
Chairs had been piled on tables, and the floor was wet in places where it had been mopped. The interior was clean, with dark paneling and the handsome old bar. The brass shone even in the dimness of the room. A far cry from The Viking, its neighbor along the harbor road.
The owner, Bill Johnson, came through from the kitchen. Drying his hands on a towel, he laughed when they asked to see the register for the rooms he had available.
“Why should I need a register? More often than not, it’s the man too drunk to make it to his own bed who sleeps there. I’ve known three to a bed, on busy nights.”
“We’d like a quick look,” Hamilton told him, and started toward the stairs.
Johnson said, “Go ahead.”
Hamish said, “There’s naebody here.”
Rutledge waited until Hamilton had disappeared above, his footsteps moving about overhead.
“Know any of these people? We’re looking for them,” Rutledge said casually, putting the list of names on the bar, where Johnson was standing.
He scanned the names, looked up at Rutledge, and said, “Haven’t had the pleasure of meeting them.” He turned and came around from behind the bar.
Oddly enough, Rutledge thought, Johnson’s reaction had been one of relief.
Why?
Because the name he’d been braced to see on that list wasn’t there?
Was there someone else, one of the long list of other names, that he, Rutledge, had missed?
Johnson was saying, “What have they done, those four?”
Hamilton was already on the stairs.
Rutledge said quietly, before he came into view, “Smuggling.”
“Oh, aye? I thought that had died out in my granny’s time.”
“Apparently not.”
Hamilton said as he came down the last few steps, “Nothing.”
They thanked Johnson and left. There was the other pub, and Rutledge kept his own council, moving on to The Viking. But the only room above was a storeroom, and not for guests.
Hamilton shook his head as they stepped out into the morning’s bright sunlight. “I told you this was a waste of time. And we’ve run out of options, unless my men come up with something.”
“One more to go. The Monk’s Choice.”
Where there was a suitcase shoved under the bed . . .
Hamilton grumbled all the way out there, much to the discomfort of the Constable sitting in the rear seat. They had collected him at the station as they drove up the long sloping hill back into town.
Hamish’s usual place . . .
As they got out in the pub yard, Rutledge said, “Have you been looking under beds? In armoires?”
“Of course I have,” Hamilton snapped. “Behind the drapes and under the table as well.”
Newbold was unhappy to see them, staring balefully at Rutledge as soon as he and Hamilton stepped through the door.
“What, again?”
“A routine police matter,” he said. “You’re the last pub on our list.”
Hamilton showed him the names while Rutledge and the Constable went up the stairs.
They looked into the bedroom where Newbold slept, opened the door of the cupboard, and went into the empty room. Rutledge opened the armoire while the Constable got down on his knees and lifted the coverlet, shining his torch under the bed.
“I don’t think he’s cleaned under here for a month,” he said, getting to his feet and sneezing loudly.
“What did you find?”
The Constable shook his head. “Nothing.” And at the look on Rutledge’s face, he added, “See for yourself?”
Rutledge got down on one knee, shone the torch under the bed with one hand while he held up the coverlet with the other.
The Constable had been right. The floor beneath the bed was empty. But in the back corner, where the suitcase had been, there was a rectangle of wooden flooring that was relatively free of dust.
Where the suitcase had recently been removed.
Rutledge went back to Newbold’s room and looked again to be sure. But the valise he’d seen was not there.
Someone had already retrieved it.
Hamilton had much to say about coming up with nothing, taking the time of the police, and accomplishing aggravating a good many people all morning.
Rutledge let him grumble, all the while wondering if Franklin was about to do a runner. If that was why the suitcase had gone.
The two pub owners, Johnson and Newbold. Was there a connection between the two men? Or was he searching for straws where there were none.
He broke into Hamilton’s monologue as they reached the outskirts of Walmer. “Are Newbold and Johnson related?”
Hamilton stopped. “What? No. They aren’t. Constable?”
“No, sir. I’d have heard.”
Rutledge put them down at the police station, turned the motorcar around, and went to the little village where he had spoken to the Rector, Mr. Farmer. But the man had no other information to give him, saying finally, “I am haunted by the fact that I wasn’t at home the day Mrs. Lowell came to see me. There’s no reason to think that whatever was on her mind had anything to do with her death. Still, I would sleep better if I could believe that.”
“Is there anyone she might have confided in? Something that she might have felt was too trivial to worry Lady Benton about? Anything at all that might help me find an answer to her murder?”
They were sitting in the Rectory kitchen, and Farmer got up to pace. “I’ve been over and over every conversation we’ve had in the past two months or more. I’ve questioned my poor wife until she’s as unsettled as I am.”
Rutledge recalled something Farmer had told him earlier. “You said you had gone to Mrs. Lowell’s house, after she had come here to look for you.”
“Yes—yes I did. But she hadn’t come home from the Abbey. The hours there aren’t regular, I’m sure, depending on whether or not they have an afternoon tour.”
“And there was nothing at the house that seemed irregular?”
“If there had been, I’d have told you on your last visit. I was there for no more than five minutes, I’m sure. I knocked at the door, there was no answer. The handyman came around the corner of the house and told me she hadn’t returned from the Abbey, I thanked him and left. That was all.”
“What handyman?”
“I didn’t ask his name. He said Mrs. Lowell had hired him to clear out the bicycle shed. Rats had taken up residence in a back corner, and he had dealt with them. He was waiting for her to come home to pay him for the day’s work.”
Rutledge swore to himself. “What did he look like, this handyman?”
“Thirties, I expect. Polite. Brown corduroys and a flannel shirt. I thought perhaps he’d come from the Abbey. He didn’t appear to be itinerant, or living rough. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few hours to rid her of the rats. It was the sort of thing Lady Benton would do for her.”
But Lady Benton had told him that she had had to let Bert and the gardening staff go in the autumn . . .
“Was it usual for Mrs. Lowell to take on someone to help her at the Old Rectory?”
“Bert, the gardener at the Abbey, often did a bit of work for Mrs. Lowell on his days off, and I have recommended someone to Mrs. Lowell when she needed help. A plumber in February, when there was trouble with the drains, and another time she needed someone to chop wood for the house fires. I myself went over back in December to help her put up a small Christmas tree, then returned in the New Year to take it down. In March my wife helped take down the curtains in the kitchen and wash them, then put them back up . . .”