The Confession (10 page)

Rutledge opened his door and fumbled for the lamp that must be near it. Finding it, he struck a match and lit the wick. As the flame strengthened, he took in his surroundings. The room wasn't very large, but neither was it small enough to aggravate his claustrophobia. There were two narrow beds, a desk under the window, and a small wardrobe with two doors. Turning the key in the lock, he left it there and set his valise down between the beds. The coverlets were faded, a deep green that was now nearly the color of moss in the shade of a tree. There was a medallion in the center of each, with what appeared to be entwined initials, but they were spotlessly clean and the room smelled faintly of lavender and Pears' Soap.

It had been a long day. Walking to the open window and looking out, he realized that his room was over the kitchen, and just beyond, the kitchen gardens. A lighted window cast a golden glow over the rows of vegetables, and as he watched, someone walked past the beds and came up to the rear door of the inn.

He stood, half concealed by the curtains, and through the open window he could just hear what was being said, even though whoever it was spoke in a low voice.

“Did they tell you? The old man is gone.”

“Yes. Molly stopped in on her way home.”

There was silence for a moment, and then the first voice said, “How is she?”

“Well enough. Considering. She's still grieving for young Joseph.”

“It will be hard on her, losing his dad. Molly and Ned were close.”

“Whose motorcar is that I see on the street in front of the inn?”

“Belongs to a fellow by the name of Rutledge.”

“Yes, I thought I recognized it. What brings him back so soon?”

“He came for the funeral. He says.”

“Damn. How did he know? It just happened.”

“I told him there was no room to be had. But he insisted.”

“How long does he expect to stay?”

“He didn't tell me.”

There was a longer silence. “Hell. We can deal with him if we have to.”

“Not in my inn.”

“No.”

And then it appeared that the man in the shadows outside the kitchen must have left, because the squares of light vanished and the garden was quiet enough that Rutledge could hear the crickets.

He was nearly sure the man outside the kitchen door was Barber, from The Rowing Boat.

Hamish said, startling him, “I wouldna' go wandering in the dark. No' here.”

But sleep wouldn't come, and Hamish was fretful in the back of his mind as well. In the end, Rutledge dressed, went quietly down the stairs and out into the night.

The stars were bright in the blackness of the sky, and across the road he could hear the unseen river moving toward the sea. Turning toward his left, he walked to the edge of Furnham and out into the countryside. Ahead he could just see the silhouetted barns that marked the three farms.

He was fairly certain that the airfield hadn't been built at the middle farm, where Nancy Brothers and her husband lived. And if he were choosing, the land nearest the estuary would offer greater clearance for night fighters taking off in a hurry or crippled aircraft looking for an easy landing. It would also afford a better view of Zeppelins moving toward the mouths of the rivers that would point them directly into the heart of London. France was not so very far away, after all, and there would be no problem with navigation over a short stretch of open sea.

Looking over the low fence designed to keep cattle from roaming, he could see the massive black bulk against the stars that would be the house and barn. Far enough away, he thought, that he could do a little exploring without awakening the owner.

The fence was rusted and broken in places, although grasses and vines had mended the wire in their own fashion, running up the posts and making a heavier barrier than the original one. Finding a short gap some twenty feet farther on, he stepped through the tangle of briars and vines and into the field beyond. He kept walking, minding where he went, and soon enough he could see where the airfield had been laid out, including the rough foundations of the buildings that had been put up in haste. Where the actual flying field had been, the texture of the grass and weeds was different. Moving back to explore the ruins again, he tripped over a low-lying pile of stones and swore as he fought for his balance. In the distance a dog began to bark, and he stood still.

But it wasn't chained by the farmhouse, as he'd expected. He could hear the barking growing louder as the animal raced toward him.

Rutledge stayed where he was, and when the dog was fifty feet away, he whistled softly and held out one hand palm down. The dog, large and dark, slowed, legs stiff, tail straight, and the ruff on the back of his neck standing up. Rutledge dropped to his haunches and called, “Come on, there's a good dog,” speaking quietly until it approached. All at once its tail dropped and began to wag, and stretching out its muzzle, the animal sniffed Rutledge's fingers.

It had been a good two years since the airfield had been shut down, but clearly the dog remembered the men posted here and their friendliness, and soon accepted Rutledge as one of them, letting this newcomer scratch behind its ears.

Together they walked on across the field, and then turned toward the barn. Here Rutledge saw great stacks of wood and brick out behind the building, where the thrifty farmer had retrieved what the Royal Flying Corps had left behind. In another pile were broken propellers, cracked struts, and even torn bits of canvas and metal, where aircraft had crashed or been in a dogfight, and the equally thrifty ground crew had salvaged what they could. He wondered what the farmer intended to do with such bits.

The dog wandered into the farmyard, and Rutledge turned back the way he'd come. Finding the gap in the fence was harder from this side, but after several tries, he came across it.

On the road again, he walked toward the village. He was almost there, the river glinting in the distance, when he heard oars in oarlocks and quiet voices echoing across the water. Then close by, the sound of a boat being dragged up on the rough shale.

He stepped quickly into the shadows of the large plane tree at the bend in the road, well hidden beneath the broad leaves weighing down the branches overhead.

Three men strode up from the water, silent and staying close to one another as they made their way along the side of The Rowing Boat, keeping between the tall shrubs that marked the pub's boundary line and the darker shadows under the roof 's overhang. As they reached the High, Rutledge could see that each man carried a haversack slung over his left shoulder, hunching a little under of the weight of it. And under his right arm, each man carried a shotgun, the barrel just catching the starlight and glinting dully.

Smuggling, Rutledge realized, and slid deeper into the shadows until his back touched the smooth bark of the tree. He stood no chance against three shotguns.

The men separated without a word, two hurrying off up the High and the third coming directly toward him.

Chapter 8

T
here was nothing he could do but stand where he was, his back pressed against the tree trunk, his body braced for whatever he would have to do. There was no time to pull his hat lower to cover the paleness of his face or even to turn away. He carefully ducked his head so that his chin was nearly touching his collar, and waited.

Hamish, his voice a low growl, seemed to be waiting too, just behind his shoulder. But Hamish was not there, and no help if it came down to a fight.

Rutledge watched as the man cut diagonally across the road, grunting as he shifted the haversack a little to ease his shoulder.

Fifty feet. Thirty. Twenty feet and closing.

Near enough now to see him standing there, surely. And the men who had gone the other way were still within hearing. One shout and they'd turn. He could deal with one of them, he even stood a good chance of disarming the man nearest him, given the element of surprise. The other two could bring him down from a distance, and his only hope was to make it out of range before they fired.

Barber had had no qualms about clubbing him to death. These men would shoot first and worry later.

Something in the way the man walked was familiar. Had he seen him before? When he was here with Frances?

Just then, only ten feet away, the man grunted as he shifted the haversack again.

And the haversack was all that stood between them, blocking the man's view of Rutledge there under the tree. He walked on, whistling under his breath.

It also prevented Rutledge from seeing the man's face.

He wouldn't have been able to identify him if his life had depended on it. Not in a courtroom. There was just that instinctive recognition. And it too could be wrong.

A door opened a little farther along on Rutledge's side of the street and then shut again as quietly as possible. By that time it was too late to move away from the tree to see where the other two men had gone.

Hamish said, his voice seeming loud enough to be heard on the far side of the river, “Ye ken, this is why no one is happy to have Scotland Yard come to ask questions.”

Had they known anything about Ben Willet's death? Or had they believed that it was only an excuse to look into other matters?

The inn was only a short distance ahead, but Rutledge waited until he was certain there were no watchers guarding the backs of the three men. He was just about to move when someone detached himself from the recessed doorway of The Rowing Boat and turned to jog up the High Street, disappearing into the small village school.

He waited another ten minutes, in case the watcher left the school and went home. Finally, satisfied that he was in the clear, he stepped quietly out of the shadow of the plane tree and walked without haste toward the inn.

Rutledge had seen Barber—or in point of fact, heard him—at the kitchen door of the inn hardly more than an hour ago. Therefore he couldn't have been one of the three coming up from the river. Nor was he the watcher in the pub's doorway, for that man was smaller in stature. Still, Rutledge wouldn't have been surprised to learn that Barber was the force behind the smuggling.

Smuggling wasn't unheard of along the southern coast of England even in this day. Fisherman had long ago learned that they could supplement their meager living from the sea by dropping in at a French port and making quiet arrangements with their opposite numbers. War or peace, men needed to eat, and His Majesty's Excise be damned. But this last war, with submarines as well as Naval vessels and German raiders patrolling the seas, must have curtailed the usual cross-Channel trade, much less fishing. Times would have been hard for villages like Furnham. The question was, why had the village turned its back on the airfield, which could have brought in much-needed revenue to the shops and pub?

He reached The Dragonfly without incident and, as silently as possible, climbed the stairs to his room. The innkeeper was nowhere in sight. And his room was as he'd left it. No one had come in to search it in his absence.

Rutledge wouldn't have put it past the inn's owner.

The next morning, Rutledge was grudgingly served his breakfast in the small dining room overlooking the street. There were five tables, crowded together cheek by jowl, but he was the only guest.

“Tell me about the airfield,” he said to the young woman who was serving him.

She was pretty, fair hair tending to curls in spite of rigorous attempts to keep it out of her face, and her eyes were hazel. He wondered if this was the Molly who had brought news of Ned Willet's death.

“I dunno much about it, sir,” she said. “I was only twelve when they came to build it, and my mother saw to it that I had nothing to do with the young men who were posted here. She said they'd break my heart by dying, and there was no use to befriend them. And she was right about the dying. We saw three of them go down out over the water, trailing smoke. I was glad I didn't know them then.”

“Still, the airfield must have changed the way of life in Furnham. By sheer numbers if nothing else.”

She cast a wary glance toward the kitchen door, firmly shut. “It did that. There was a scuffle or two between some fishermen and the men up at the farm. After that, they were ordered to stay behind the fence, and we were left to ourselves. Still, we got to hear things. How they carried on in London on leave, like there was no reckoning tomorrow. How they took up with the girls and ruined them. How they made the younger lads restless and eager to try things they had no business trying. One of my brothers ran away to enlist. He was mad to fly, but he was only fifteen. My father had to go and fetch him home. It was a terrible time, really. The men would roar up the road in their motorcars and motorcycles, and three or four even had boats of their own, and it was hard enough fishing without them stirring up the river. We were that glad when the war ended and they went away.”

Someone in the kitchen began to bang pots and pans. She reached for his empty toast rack and hurried toward the kitchen to refill it, putting an end to any conversation. Over the racket he could hear a male voice shouting at her.

Rutledge found himself thinking that to the people of Furnham, isolated and insular, the murder of an unknown archduke in Sarajevo held little importance in the course of their lives. The arrival of strangers in their midst—some of them volatile and living only for today because they couldn't count on tomorrow—was immediate and personal. Furnham hadn't wanted change—or to change. And it was thrust upon them without a by-your-leave.

Finishing his tea, he didn't wait for his toast. But as he walked out of the dining room into Reception, he heard someone crying in a corner behind the stairs. He thought it was very likely the young woman who had served him.

There was nothing he could do, and trying would only have made matters worse.

He went out to his motorcar and drove back to the farm where he had trespassed the night before.

He found the farmer in the milking shed, busy washing down after the morning milking. The man was ruddy-faced and broad in the chest, a little taller than Rutledge. He looked up suspiciously as the stranger walked into the shed, followed by the black dog busy wagging its tail as if it were well acquainted with the newcomer.

“I thought you were here to protect us,” he said to the animal, then turned to Rutledge. “And what is it you want?”

Rutledge said easily, “My name is Rutledge. And you are—?”

“Name's Montgomery.”

“Good morning, Mr. Montgomery. I understand your farm was taken over during the war for use as an airfield.”

Montgomery bristled “I had no choice in the matter. Your lot took my land without a word to me, just walked in and told me that my best pastures and the marshes nearest the sea were now the property of His Majesty's Government. Near enough. And I had to find somewhere else for my cows to graze where those damned aeroplanes wouldn't frighten them into fits. And somewhere else to grow my corn and my hay for the winter. One of the aircraft crashed and caught fire. The blaze nearly touched off my roof. You won't persuade me to anything you could have in mind. So you might as well turn around and walk out of here before I lose my temper.”

“I'm sorry. I'm not here to ask anything of you other than information. I'm interested in learning how Furnham felt about the field.”

“I don't know why it should matter to you. But the fact was, I was vilified. Threatened. You'd have thought I'd written to the King personally and begged the lot of them to come here. I was damned whichever way I turned. If it hadn't been for Samuel Brothers and the other farms, I'd have lost everything. As it was, it took me nearly a year to clear away the broken glass, uproot the foundations, and turn the landing field back to pasturage. The latrines soured the land, and there was oil and petrol everywhere. I did it myself, and no one volunteered to help me. The rabble-rousers were all for sabotage, but nothing came of that. Still, there were clashes. I'd not have been surprised to see murder done on either side. The fliers called this a hardship post. No one wished to be assigned here. We even had a few American aviators from Thetford, and three of them died here. That upset my wife, I can tell you. When a man burns, the smell doesn't go away for days.”

“You mentioned Americans coming in from the field in Thetford. Did you know that Ned Willet's son was in service there?”

“Ben? I can't tell you when I last saw him. It was before the war, I know that. Is he coming down for the funeral? Ned was a decent sort. I was that sorry to hear he'd died.”

“Ben Willet himself is dead. He was found floating in the Thames nearly a week ago.”

“
Ben?
Now that's sad news.” He shook his head. “My wife called him a changeling. Nonsense, of course, but he wasn't like the rest. He came here with his father one summer, needing work. A boy of twelve, mucking out the stables and the like. She lent him books, and I found him once in the loft, reading. He was that upset, thinking I would sack him.”

“Did you know Wyatt Russell or Justin Fowler?”

“I knew who Russell was. And his father before him. Who was Fowler?”

“He came to live at River's Edge when he was orphaned.”

“I doubt I ever set eyes on him. What do they have to do with young Willet drowning?”

“I don't know. Scotland Yard is looking into his death. That's why I'm here. Before he died, Willet came to the Yard and gave his name as Wyatt Russell, saying that he had information about the murder of Justin Fowler.”

“He claimed he was Russell? Now why would he go and do such a thing?”

“We haven't discovered why. Did you often see Cynthia Farraday in Furnham?”

Something in the man's expression altered. “My wife, Mattie, never liked her.”

“Why not?”

“She never would say. Except that she brought trouble in her wake.”

“And did she, do you think?”

He glanced over Rutledge's shoulder, as if making certain his wife wasn't within hearing. But he didn't answer the question. Instead, he said, “When Mattie's bitch had a litter, Miss Farraday came here asking if she might buy one of them. I was all for letting her have her pick, but my wife wouldn't hear of it. Women do take odd notions sometimes. She said the pups would be better drowned than given to her. I found other homes for them.”

It was a harsh judgment.

As if suddenly aware that he'd been led off the subject, Montgomery added, “For Scotland Yard to be interested in Ben Willet's death, it must mean that he was murdered.”

“He was. We can't find the connection between him and the Russell family at River's Edge, but there must have been one.”

“Here, you didn't tell Ned before he died that his son was murdered! He didn't deserve that. Ned was a hard man but a fair one. And he was proud of that boy.”

“I didn't tell him. I don't know if anyone else did.”

“Was Ben still in service at Thetford? What was he doing in London?”

“His family thought he was still there. I'll be speaking to his employers. Do you by any chance know their name?”

“I couldn't tell you if I'd ever heard it mentioned. Why did you come here to the farm? It wasn't just the airfield that brought you, was it?”

Rutledge smiled. “I was getting nowhere in Furnham. I thought you might have a different perspective.”

“That lot wouldn't help the devil put out the fires of hell. I never knew what Abigail saw in Sandy Barber. But there's no accounting for tastes.”

Rutledge thanked Montgomery and walked back to his motorcar, the black dog trailing at his heels.

He went next in search of Sandy Barber and found him scrubbing down the floor of the pub. The man looked up as Rutledge approached, his mouth turning down in a sour scowl. Getting to his feet, he stood there, waiting.

“I kept my part of the bargain,” Rutledge said, without greeting. “I said nothing to Ned Willet. As far as I know, he died at peace. Now I want you to tell me what you know about his son, Ben.”

Setting his mop to one side, Sandy Barber said, “I know nothing about Ben. Or his death.”

“Look. I'm not here to hunt down smugglers—”

“Who have you been talking to?” Barber demanded. “Who told you such a wild tale?”

“I didn't need to be told. Not after you nearly took a club to me. If you hadn't killed Ben Willet, there was only one other reason to be afraid of a policeman. Here on the Hawking, France just across the water? The airfield must have been quite a problem. They'd have been patrolling the river and the estuary. You wouldn't have stood a chance getting past the Coastguard with contraband goods. It follows that someone resumed this business as soon as the airfield was evacuated.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Suit yourself.”

“And as for murdering Ben Willet, what reason would any of us have to go after him? Look in London. Or Thetford. It would make a hell of a lot more sense.”