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Elizabeth was finishing a remark that he d missed, ending with
  I shall have to invite Bella to tea. Without Raleigh. To let her know
I m not blaming her for her husband s behavior. She s never quite
known how to cope with his moods, you know, but she adores him.
There isn t anything she wouldn t do for him.
He was reminded of what Margaret Shaw had said about mar-
riage that it seldom works out the way it ought to.  What is the med-
icine he takes in that glass? Laudanum?
 I suspect it is. For pain initially, of course, but it helps with his
moods.
Or created them?
Elizabeth sighed.  Why do so many people hurt each other?
He had no answer to that question. And in the silence that followed
he remembered the conversation about the house in Marling that had
been sold to a wealthy merchant.  Tell me about the man you saw. At
the train station in Helford.
 There s really nothing more to tell. He was exceedingly well
dressed; you could almost smell expensive tailors. But his voice was
overloud, and it grated. New money. That was my first thought.
 Describe him physically.
 I m not sure I can. It was a nasty evening, and he was wearing a
heavy coat and a hat. My guess is that he was fair. She looked across at
him.  Tallish, I d say, but not as tall as you. A bit on the heavy side, per-
haps, but with the coat it was difficult to tell. He came rushing into the
waiting room, spoke to the stationmaster, and then went out again. I d
been standing inside, out of the weather, but Richard s motorcar was
waiting by the gate. He must have seen it! And so I turned away, for fear
he might ask if I was driving in the direction of Marling. She smiled
ruefully.  He seemed to be the sort who might be encroaching.
It was inbred in an Englishman s nature, this dread that someone
casually met might brashly overstep the unwritten rules of acceptable
172 charles todd
behavior. It was, perhaps, at the root of Raleigh Masters s abhorrence
of a policeman in his house. . . .
A visit to the stationmaster then, tomorrow morning, to follow up
on this man Elizabeth Mayhew had seen.
They had reached Elizabeth s house and she was thanking him for
driving her. He saw her to her door, and then turned to go.
She called,  Ian.
He turned again.  Yes?
But whatever it was she was planning to say, she changed her mind.
It was visible in her face, however much she tried to hide it.  Perhaps
we can have lunch one day. While you re here. Brightly spoken.
 I d like that, he said. And watched the door close quietly before
walking back to his motorcar.
The lobby of The Plough was empty when he came through, a night
lamp burning by the desk and another by the stairs. But when he
opened the door to his room, he found a sheet of paper slipped under it.
One of the staff had taken a telephone message for him.
It was from Sergeant Gibson. In regard to the person you d inquired
about. He made it home from France and then ended up in the river.
There s a grave to prove it in Maidstone.
So much for tracking down Jimsy Ridger, Rutledge thought, as he
shut his door and began to take off his coat. Yet someone was combing
the countryside trying to run the man to earth. Someone without
Sergeant Gibson s resources someone who hadn t discovered the
Maidstone grave.
But why was this same person killing men?
 You canna know it s the same man doing the killing, Hamish re-
minded him.
 That s true, Rutledge said, answering aloud from old habit when
he was alone. The voice seemed so real then that he could almost hear
it echoing around the walls.
a fearsome doubt 173
Helford was a small village, with a tall spired church and a church-
yard set behind a low stone wall that boasted the remains of wildflow-
ers in the crevices, a pretty sight in the spring. The main street wound
down a hill, houses and shops spread on either side of it, before curving
away in the direction of Marling. The railway station sat on the north-
ern outskirts, as if added as an afterthought. Which it had been, Helford
itself predating the train by some four hundred or more years. Hop gar-
dens and farms encircled the town, picturesque in the brightening
morning light. Several very nice old houses faced the main street, one of
them pedimented and the other boasting an elegant bay window. There
had been money here, and an air of gentility lingered. The Tudor gate-
house of a sizeable manor house lay at the bottom of the hill, tall and
graceful, with a battlemented facade and an assortment of shields an-
nouncing the proud heritage of the family within. Its aged stone church
lay just up the hill, green lawns and half-buried tombstones visible be-
yond its wall.
After a courtesy call on Inspector Cawly, Rutledge went in search of
the stationmaster.
The man was still at his breakfast.
 The next train isn t due for another hour, he told Rutledge when
he d been tracked down to a cottage not far away.  You can wait at the
station, if you like. It s open!
Rutledge explained his interest in a traveler who had arrived from
the coast one evening at the end of October, during a rainstorm.  He s not
a local man. He was looking for transportation to Marling, he added.
The stationmaster, idly stroking his graying Edwardian beard,
stared at the floor.  Heavy rain, was it? We had only one passenger on
the nine-forty from the south, and the ten-ten was late by two minutes
coming in from London. You re asking about the nine-forty, then, be-
cause there was a lady here to meet the passenger on the ten-ten. I ve [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]