“I don’t know,” he told her truthfully. “We’re still looking into her death.”

  Her voice was thick with the tears she was fighting to hold back. “Where is she now?”

  “Dr. Wister’s surgery.”

  “Yes. Of course. I should have thought—but when did you find her? This morning?”

  He hesitated, knowing how it would strike her. “Last evening. After I left you.”

  She colored slightly. “After I was frightened into hysterics by a horse. I was going to send down to the Home Farm today to see why there was one in that pasture. It’s for winter grazing, the grass is all used up.” Clearing her throat with a cough, she added, “How did you come to find her?”

  Rutledge told her, keeping the worst to himself. She listened, then nodded. “I’m glad you thought to look there. I can’t bear to think of her, all alone, waiting to be found.” She straightened her shoulders. “Dear God . . .” as she fought for control. Finally, rising, she said, “I-I think I should like a cup of tea. Will you come down to the kitchen with me?”

  He picked up her breakfast tray, and carried it down for her. While she was dealing with the kettle and the teapot, she said, sadly, “She was such a kind soul.”

  “You told me once that she felt uneasy, passing the pub. Do you think there was anything to that? Or just a general unease?”

  “The owner is not a particularly nice man. She said he leered. But as I’ve told you, he never said a word to her or approached her. Much as I dislike him, I don’t believe he’d harm her.”

  But he’d been awake very late last night. Rutledge had watched his lamp put out.

  “I’ve been thinking about getting a dog. I haven’t had one since Eric’s died just before he enlisted. But what am I to do with it when we have visitors? I can’t simply lock him in my bedroom all day.”

  “You can build a run near the stables for days when there are tours. You’ll want one to protect you. Not a lapdog.”

  “My staff will spoil it terribly, whatever breed I choose,” she replied wryly. Then, reverting to the death of Mrs. Lowell, Lady Benton sighed and added, “I shall have to notify Patricia’s solicitor. And stop in at the Old Rectory for her copy of her will.” Biting her lip, she looked at him. “Would you go with me? We can take my motorcar, then I’ll drop you at the stables before I run in to Walmer. I won’t keep you long.”

  She offered him a cup of tea while she changed but he chose instead to walk through the rooms, thinking.

  When Lady Benton came down again, dressed for going out, she found Rutledge in the sitting room. She had put a little powder on her face, to hide the ravages of grief, but her eyes were still red. He said, “You told me once that you had a rather troublesome visitor. In what way, troublesome?”

  “He didn’t appear to be the sort of man who toured historic houses. And he asked questions that seemed out of the ordinary. How many people lived here now, how many rooms were in actual use, how many staircases there were. And he was always slow to keep up. When one of my staff—Mrs. Sutton, I think it was—asked him not to linger after the tour had moved on, he told her he’d paid for his visit and intended to make the most of it. It made the other guests uneasy, and Mrs. Hailey, who was in the next room and overheard the exchange, came to find me. I offered to return his money, but he told me he had no intention of leaving before the end of the tour. Rather aggressively, actually. And so I asked one of the gardeners to help him leave. You could hear the man cursing all the way to the outer door. It was very embarrassing.”

  “He never came back?”

  “No. Not to my knowledge.”

  She collected her gloves and handbag, and started toward the door.

  Going ahead to open it for her, he said, “Do you recall when this was?”

  “It was after the airfield was dismantled. June? July? 1919.”

  “Could you describe this man, do you think?”

  “Absolutely.” She locked the outer door and he followed her to the stable yard. She was saying, “He was fairly tall—not as tall as you—with dark hair, cold gray eyes, and a scar down one cheek. The left one. A strong man, physically, but Bert, the gardener, was more than his match. The odd thing was, Patricia was just coming up from the crypt, and she thought the man who was waiting for our visitor in the drive seemed familiar. But she only saw him for the briefest moment.”

  “Did you ask her to describe him? For future reference, if either man returned?”

  “I never thought to ask. To tell you the truth, I had a feeling both men had been sent by that man, Wilbur. I told you, I think, that he’s been persistent.”

  “Why would he try to disrupt a tour?” And yet the man was just the sort who might think of forcing her to sell, one way or another. With ghosts in the private garden . . . ?

  “If word got around, and the tours fell off, I might be forced to sell the meadow.”

  “Did Bert, the gardener, see the other man?”

  “He must have done.”

  “Where is Bert now? I’d like to ask him.”

  “I’ve no idea, I’m afraid. I had to let the gardening staff go last year. and I don’t know where he might be now. So far we’ve managed, the staff and I, but it’s beginning to show. I’ll have to find new people soon.”

  He had just turned the crank and was getting into his motorcar beside her when she began to work with her keys. Taking one off the heavy ring, she handed it to him.

  “You ought to have this,” she said. “It was Eric’s—to the door we just came through. In case.”

  He took it, added it to his own keys, and then started through the gate, which he’d opened earlier. He saw her scan the field for the horse, but it was empty, as usual.

  “I must speak to Henry at the Home Farm. About the horse.”

  “Do you think Henry had anything to do with it?”

  “Oh, no. He’s sixty and hardly the sort to play practical jokes. Or put a mare in the wrong field.”

  At the Old Rectory, he walked through the house while Lady Benton went up to Mrs. Lowell’s room to collect the will.

  He could swear that no one else had been in the house since he and Lady Benton had searched it the day before. It felt oddly empty now, as if the personality of the owner had faded away with her death. Returning to the parlor, he went to look at the photographs on the round table by the window. They were mostly of Mrs. Lowell with her husband or her parents. None of them appeared to be more recent than 1914.

  Hamish was saying, “There was nothing, ye ken, he wanted in the house.”

  “Or he found it without disturbing anything.”

  And then Lady Benton was coming down the stairs. He went out into the hall to meet her, and he could see that she’d been crying, but she held up a sheaf of folded papers.

  “I so disliked going into her desk to find the will. She was such a private person.”

  “Still, she knew you’d come for it, if the need arose,” he reminded her.

  “Yes. There’s that.”

  As they left the house Rutledge took advantage of the moment to ask, “Where did she keep her bicycle?”

  “There’s a little shed out back. As I mentioned to Inspector Hamilton, I would have noticed if the doors were standing open. But they weren’t, they were closed.”

  “What sort of bicycle did Mrs. Lowell ride?”

  “She bought it at the start of the war, I think. I don’t know the name of the firm. She had one of the men at the airfield help her attach a basket to the handlebars.”

  “Who was it? Gerald Dunn?”

  “No, one of the other mechanics. I don’t think Private Dunn had arrived. The men kept coming in for nearly a month, before the squadrons were at full strength. Some were here before the buildings were even completed. That autumn was rather chaotic, if you remember.”

  He did. England had been scrambling to keep the Germans from cutting off the French coast roads, the Expeditionary Force fighting to hold on as Belgium collapsed.

  “What sort of basket?”

  “A rather nice wicker one. And it had a blue ribbon woven into the side at the top. Her workmanship.”

  Then he hadn’t imagined it after all. The bicycle had been there . . .

  9

  Rutledge waited in the stable yard until Lady Benton drove her motorcar out of the shed, then closed the gate after both of them passed through. She waved a hand in thanks, and started up the lane.

  He followed.

  In Walmer, he saw her motorcar again, outside a house with a solicitor’s plate beside the door.

  Driving on, he went to look for the young woman who worked at The Salt Cellar. But he didn’t see her on the street or coming and going from the shops.

  “Later,” Hamish told him. “When she walks down to the pub.”

  Impatient to speak again to Wister, he went back to the hotel to leave the motorcar and then had a simple lunch. At five minutes before two, he was standing again outside the door to the doctor’s surgery.

  He was drying his hands when he opened the door to Rutledge.

  “There isn’t much to tell you,” he said, leading the way to a back room. There, Patricia Lowell lay under a sheet. “A blow on the head while she was still alive. And she was alive as well when she was hanged. Possibly unconscious, but alive. Cause of death, strangulation. She was hauled up after the noose was put around her neck, she didn’t kick that stool out from under her feet. There was no fall, to end it quickly.”

  Rutledge said, “A cruel way for her to die. But this eliminates the possibility of suicide.”

  “Yes. It does. A clumsy attempt at covering up a crime.” He crossed to the table and lifted a portion of the sheet. “The reason I believe she was unconscious is that I see no defensive wounds. That would be more consistent with suicide, of course. But then there was this.”

  He dropped the sheet in place and crossed to a table where her clothes lay spread out.

  “That’s the belt to the dress she was wearing. And look here, on the prong that closes it.”

  Rutledge leaned forward. “It appears to be several strands of thread.”

  “Yes. Picture this—she’s dazed or unconscious. He can’t leave her where she is—or he can’t take her just now to the shed, because it was still light enough for him to be seen with her. And so he puts her over his shoulder and carries her somewhere until it’s dark. And that belt buckle pulls a few threads from his coat.”

  “It appears to be khaki. A uniform, then?”

  “More likely an Army greatcoat. The thickness of the wool.”

  Half the ex-soldiers wandering the countryside, looking for work, wore greatcoats from the war. They were warm.

  “If she was taken somewhere, surely she would have regained consciousness before being taken to the airfield.”

  “Yes, I’m coming to that. Her killer must have given her something to drink. Water, tea, I haven’t looked yet. And put something in it to knock her out.”

  “Whisky?”

  “Yes, that’s more likely to cover the taste. Laudanum, at a guess. Although one doesn’t wander the countryside as a rule with a vial of opiates in his pocket. Ready to give to a victim.”

  “Unless,” Rutledge said slowly, “he’s still bothered by an old war wound to have something at hand to keep him going.”

  “I agree. The khaki thread, the laudanum for a war wound. An ex-soldier?”

  “Or someone still serving.” Rutledge shook his head. “Or just now demobbed. I need a list of men associated with the airfield.”

  Wister ran a hand through his hair. “I’m not comfortable asking this. But do you think this is the first time he’s killed?”

  Rutledge said, giving it some thought, “He was calm enough to carry out Patricia Lowell’s hanging. That would have needed a strong nerve.” He was already considering what he knew of that stretch of road, any buildings that a killer would have had access to. The pub? Farm outbuildings, sheds . . .

  “Death is a part of life. But I hate to cut open the young. It’s somehow wrong.”

  Rutledge looked across at him. “Yet you chose medicine.”

  “I did. It was the war that cooled my joy in it.” He walked back to the table and stared at the sheet covering the body of Mrs. Lowell. “Such a pity.”

  “It is. Thank you. Do you mind if I take her belt with me, along with that strand of thread?”

  “No, not at all.” Wister hesitated. “Not to be a rumor monger, but should I have a look at you? I’ve heard you had a fall last night.”

  Rutledge knew he should agree to be examined. But he said, “I’m all right. I’ll see a doctor in London if need be.”

  “The cut on your forehead is all right. But let’s leave this poor lady in peace, and step into the next room. If you’re driving to London, you’ll be glad of a bit of tape.”

  As it happened, Dr. Wister was right. Sitting for several hours behind the wheel of the motorcar, his ribs began to protest long before he reached London.

  There were a number of ways to achieve what he wanted to do. The quickest way was to call on Haldane. And Rutledge was reluctant to leave Lady Benton for too long, just after Mrs. Lowell’s death.

  He was even more reluctant to speak to Haldane.

  The man lived on a quiet street in Chelsea, the door guarded by his manservant. Rutledge’s first impression on meeting the manservant—he was hardly a butler or a valet—was that he had once been Haldane’s batman and had chosen to remain with him once the war was over.

  Haldane himself claimed to have been in the Foot Police, but it was more likely that he had been a high-ranking member of Intelligence. His contacts were too wide and too well placed to be those of a simple military policeman.

  Rutledge had met him quite by accident in the course of an inquiry into a murder that had its roots outside England, where he himself couldn’t travel. He’d asked Haldane for information, and in a roundabout way it had been supplied. But Rutledge had been very, very careful not to draw on that source unless there was no other way of learning how the war and murder might have come together. And he could never be sure of Haldane’s help. Sometimes he was told blandly that Haldane was not at home.

  There was another reason for him to be chary of asking anything of the man. Rutledge had always felt that any service Haldane rendered was a personal debt rather than assistance to the Yard, and the price of that service would inevitably be collected at some point in the future. It had never been addressed in words, but there was something in the man that Rutledge, a soldier himself, recognized: a sense of duty that bordered on the ruthless.

  When he left his motorcar and went up the short walk to the door, it was opened almost as soon as he’d let the knocker fall against its plate.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “I’ve come to call on Haldane.” Rutledge had never known any other name, Christian or surname, by which to address him. And wondered sometimes if even that was fictitious.

  “If you will step in, sir, I’ll see if he’s receiving visitors.”

  To Rutledge’s ears that had always struck him as regal rather than social.

  He nodded and moved into the foyer.

  After several minutes, the man returned. “He will see you now, sir.”

  And Rutledge was admitted to the large study where Haldane was often found working. He was setting some papers aside as Rutledge entered, careful to turn them facedown so that their contents couldn’t be read across the desk.

  He greeted Rutledge as quietly as he always did, and pointed to the chair in front of the desk, his face unreadable. Hamish had commented once that he would not choose to play cards with Haldane. Rutledge had agreed.

  “How can I help you?”

  “There’s a small airfield just north of Walmer, on the Essex coast.”

  “Yes, I seem to remember that its purpose was to watch for Zeppelins, guard the coast, and escort troop and supply ships crossing the Channel. That changed with the war. Some fine pilots in that squadron.”

  “I need a list of personnel posted there. From late 1916 to the end of the war.”

  “That’s a rather impressive request. Why do you need it?”

  “A man was killed in a car crash during the war, and another was listed as a deserter. The officer in charge of the airfield took his own life at war’s end. Now a woman has been killed, her body left in one of the remaining sheds on the site. By themselves they can be explained away. Together, they raise questions.”

  “And you believe that these are somehow connected with the men who were posted to the airfield?”

  “I don’t know,” Rutledge replied truthfully. “So far I haven’t found any direct connection with Walmer itself. That leaves the airfield.”

  “Or the house that stands nearby.”

  Rutledge hid his surprise. Haldane knew about the Abbey. Why?

  “It can’t be discounted.”

  “Let me see what I can do. With no promise of results, you understand.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Come back tomorrow at ten.”

  It was a dismissal, and Rutledge left.

  As he was walking back toward the motorcar, Hamish said, “He doesna’ tell you what’s going on in his heid. It would be helpful if he did.”

  Rutledge smiled grimly. Haldane had actually told him more than was intended.

  He debated going to the Yard, but chose to drive on to his flat instead. There would be questions about his return to London when he was expected to be conducting an inquiry in Essex.

  As he turned the crank and got into the motorcar, he tried to imagine explaining Haldane to Markham.

  For that matter, he himself was never really certain why Haldane was willing to provide information to a mere Inspector at the Yard. Unless he had very good reasons of his own for doing it. If nothing else, it might allow him to clarify something where he didn’t wish his own hand to be seen.

  In this case, did Haldane’s cooperation have to do with Major Dinsmore’s death?