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.

  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.

  And that was why the bicycle had had to disappear . . . somewhere on the road she had encountered the man wearing it. Trouble with a tire, the chain—and she must have seen it and remembered. Why didn’t matter—the fact was, she had. And therefore remembered the man.

  He put away everything he had been reading, locked all of it in his valise, and then locked the door to his room, after setting his tray from the kitchen outside the door.

  Leaving the hotel, he went to Mrs. Hailey’s house.

  It was late, but she was still up. As he stood at the door, he could see a light in the kitchen.

  He knocked. And after a time she lifted the lace curtain in the top half of her door and looked out, a frown between her eyes. But it smoothed out as she recognized him.

  Unlocking the door, she opened it and said, “Is something wrong at the Abbey?”

  “No, sorry, there was something I needed to ask you, and I didn’t want to wait until morning.”

  “Come in then.” She stepped to one side, and gestured to the parlor. “Could I offer you a cup of tea?” she went on, crossing the room to light the lamp on the table.

  “Thank you, no.” Then, as she sat down across from him, he said, “Was Patricia Lowell working at the Hall during the war?”

  “Yes, of course. Well, not for the first few months. But one of the other women knew her and suggested that Lady Benton ask her. She told us that Patricia was anxious about her husband, and it would be a kindness to put her to work. She had been rolling bandages, that sort of thing, which only made her think about wounds and death and the war. The Hall on the other hand offered a very different day. Needless to say, she was very grateful to Lady Benton, and was fast one of our most dependable members of staff.”

  “When the airfield was put in, was she involved in Lady Benton’s efforts to make the men’s lives better?”

  “Not at first. She was the youngest member of staff, and she was married. She didn’t find it as easy to mix as I did, or Lady Benton. She did try to help some of the shyer ones, which was typical of her.”

  Ah.

  He said, “Anyone particular?”

  Mrs. Hailey frowned, and in her usual blunt way, she asked, “Inspector. Where do you intend on going with this sort of question?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not suggesting that there was any impropriety. I’m interested in the men of the squadron.” He improvised. “I’d like to know how they got on together, with the household, with the people here in Walmer.”

  “I thought you’d come to find out who was killed in Lady Benton’s private garden.”

  “One of those men pretended to be Captain Nelson. I want to know why.”

  “There was a young mechanic with a stutter, and she found that he could speak normally when he wasn’t anxious or pressed. Or teased. And so she would chat with him from time to time.”

  Not Franklin then. There had been no mention of a stutter in any of the articles.

  “Anyone else?”

  “There was a man who always spent his free time alone, a knife in his hands, and a piece of wood. I never saw what it was he was carving. He wasn’t rowdy with his mates, never took part in any games or pranks. She tried to bring him into any planned activities, but he always refused. I told her he was unlikely to change his ways.”

  Franklin had used a knife on his victims in France.

  Including Vermuelen.

  “What was his name?”

  She smiled. “If you mentioned it, now, I’d know it straightaway.”

  “Was anyone else close to him?”

  “I don’t know that anyone was. He kept himself to himself. Someone did say—I think it was young Dunn, the local lad—that he was a fine mechanic. Or was it Captain Nelson? He’d know, wouldn’t he? And, yes, it was Patricia who told me he’d been apprenticed to a blacksmith when he was only twelve. She thought it explained his aloofness.” Taking a deep breath, as if to remind him of the time, she added, “If I remember anything else, I’ll leave a message at the house for you.”

  He thanked her, apologized again for the late hour, and left.

  She had been the right person to ask, he thought, walking back to the hotel. The one person who kept an eye on everything at the Abbey including Lady Benton.

  Hamish said, “She would ha’ been a guid minister’s wife.”

  It was true, she would have recognized every parishioner by sight and known their family history, their needs. And made certain in her own quiet way that her husband was aware of everything that might affect his flock.

  Rutledge had known women like that, and felt a healthy respect for their abilities.

  But she hadn’t come close enough to the man carving wood to notice his ring . . .

  Patricia Lowell had.

  In his room, he took out the sheets that gave the names and dates of each man in the squadron. From date of birth, date of enlistment, rank and promotions, to what had been said of him in every post where he’d served. Everything a man’s commanding officer might need to know about those under him.

  Except what they had done to make a living in private life.

  Even crossing out officers and those who actually flew the aircraft—assuming another man’s life meant assuming his skills or lack thereof—there was nothing in the lists to help there. But what if Franklin had also been a good mechanic, and chose the man he was going to kill for his identity because he could play the part? For some reason Robinson hadn’t been what Franklin needed.