"What do you mean, someone outside?" Walker demanded. "In front?"
"No, there, " Tuttle said, pointing to a side door.
Walker said to Rutledge, "There's an alley outside. It led down to the stables and outbuildings. They were torn down at the turn of the century, and a warehouse for Kenton Chairs built in their place, facing the street that runs behind the station." He strode down the short passage and shook the latch, but it was still secure. As he came back, someone else took up the story.
"At first it sounded as if he was trying to force the lock. And then for a time there was nothing. We were just settling down when we could hear him again. I swear it sounded as if he was sliding something under the door. Marshall thought he might be blocking it, but after a bit it smelled as if he was trying to burn his way through. The passage filled with smoke. You can still smell it!"
Walker sniffed the air, then turned to Rutledge. "Do you?"
Rutledge nodded. It was faint, but enough smoke lingered to pick it out, now that it had been brought to his attention. Walker went again to the door and this time opened it. "Inspector? Sir?" he said after a moment, and Rutledge went to see what he'd found.
Charred rags were jammed against the bottom of the door, and Rutledge bent down to touch them. They were still damp, as if they had been lit and then nearly doused, to create a maximum of smoke with a minimum of fire. Rutledge looked up the alley toward the main road, but he couldn't see Mrs. Sanders's window. Which meant she couldn't have seen whoever was at work here.
"He could have set the building on fire," Walker declared, kicking the rags away from the door, and then squatting beside them to sift through them. But they were torn cloths, something that could have been found in a dustbin or a tip, Rutledge thought, used for cleaning and then discarded.
"I doubt the station would have caught. The outside of the door is blackened but not heavily charred. I think he was intending to stampede your charges."
Walker got to his feet. "If that's what he was after, he succeeded. There must have been pandemonium. Nobody relishes the thought of being burned alive."
"He must have seen you leave with Tom. He knew he was safe."
Walker looked at Rutledge. "I don't like the sound of that. That he was watching." He took a deep breath. "I was of two minds when you wanted these men clapped up. But now they'll be released, and the two of us can't watch six of them."
"But fright may have sharpened their memories. Let's find out."
They went back inside and told the anxious men in the holding cell what they'd discovered.
Tuttle, Walker's nephew, said, "Be damned to him, then. He's a coward."
But Marshall disagreed. "My uncle was out in India for a time. He told me that old tigers got a taste for man, when they couldn't kill larger prey. And they were more dangerous because of that. Their brethren in the jungle would slip away if they got the scent of a person. But not these."
"He's not a tiger," one of the other men said. "He's mad, that's what he is."
"I don't think so," Rutledge answered him. "And I ask you again. Is there anything in your pasts that could have come back to haunt you? Is there anyone who has ever held a grudge? In the war, here in Eastfield, in any place for that matter."
But they shook their heads.
Hamish said, "It was something loomed large in the killer's mind. But ye ken, not in theirs."
"How well do any of you know Daniel Pierce?" Rutledge asked. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Walker's gesture intended to stop him from asking these men about the younger Pierce. But this was a murder inquiry, and Tyrell Pierce couldn't set limits on the directions it took.
"We knew him as a boy. But not as a man," Tuttle said after a glance at his companions. "He went away to school, you must know that, and even when he was home during holidays, he didn't have anything to do with us. Then after the war, he was hardly here in Eastfield before he was gone again. It was 'Mr. Daniel' then, and touching your cap to him."
"Did you resent his going away to school? Or was there something between you before then, while he was still Daniel? An old hurt, a misunderstanding, a case where no harm was meant, but he took it hard? Or perhaps you did?" His eyes swept the half circle of men, and he read nothing there that would help him.
"He gave as good as he got," Marshall answered, his glance sliding toward Walker and then away again. "We avoided him if we could manage it. He was Anthony's-Mr. Pierce's-little brother, and no one cared to have him tag along after us. What's more, he was a tattletale if we weren't careful, and on purpose he never got it right. Often as not, we were in trouble for something we hadn't done. I was that glad when he and his brother went off to that school. We'd had enough of both of them."
Rutledge considered the man, wondering what he had to hide. Because his voice and his shifting gaze betrayed him.
Hamish said, "He didna' care to be caught."
And that was very likely it-Marshall had been a ringleader in whatever mischief was afoot, and Daniel Pierce was a thorn in his side.
"The only reason we was allowed to play together was Mr. Pierce was busy at the brewery and couldn't always keep an eye on Anthony. And who else was there, I ask you, his age? The rector's son was older, and Dr. Gooding only had girls," Henderson added.
"Anthony was all right," one of the other men put in. "He never caused any trouble."
Which was an odd way to put it.
Still, they were getting nowhere. Burning down an empty mill and frightening lovers in a churchyard hardly led to murder. On the whole, he thought Hamish was right, the killer saw injury where others did not. If, in fact, it was the past that had led to these deaths.
He said, "When you leave here, don't take what happened last night lightly. Don't go out alone after dark. Not even on your own property. Take someone you trust with you. Between nine at night and early morning, lock your doors. If someone summons you, ignore it unless there's another person to go with you. And don't turn your back on a stranger. It could cost you your life. The four men who were killed had no chance to cry for help. Remember that. They were dead before they quite knew what was happening to them. It's not a risk worth taking."
And he let them go home. There was nothing else he could do.
Walker watched the five men gather their belongings and walk out the door of the police station without looking back. Even Tuttle, his nephew had nothing to say as they left.
"Do you think they'll heed your warning?" Walker asked.
Rutledge shook his head. "We'll know when the next victim is found." R utledge left the constable at the police station and went to The Fishermen's Arms to shave and change.
After an early breakfast, he went to the brewery and waited patiently in the office until Tyrell Pierce had finished overseeing the work on a new gauge for their primary vat.
He came in, brisk and busy, the distinctive aroma of roasted hops following him in the door. He ushered Rutledge into his office and said immediately, "Is there any news? Have you found this killer?"
"Not yet." Rutledge took the chair Pierce indicated and watched the man round his desk and sit down.
Hamish was saying, "Do ye reckon there's a reason his son canna' come back to Eastfield? And the father knows what it was he did, and who is to blame for it?"
Pierce was fit enough, Rutledge found himself thinking, but it was difficult to see what Daniel Pierce was afraid of-or was ashamed of. No one else seemed to remember. Unless of course the smoking rags under the police station door was a red herring, and the four men who might have told the police the truth were already dead. It was hard to believe that Pierce had murdered his elder son to protect the younger.