“Why did he come here today? After all this time?”
“God knows. I don’t. Oh, we’ve met before—this village is too small to avoid running into each other at St. Luke’s or in the shops. We nod without speaking. I have my pride, ” she repeated, through clenched teeth. “I won’t let him see that it matters. And it’s too late to make amends. What I might have felt for him is gone.” Her voice broke again on the last word.
Rutledge stood there, waiting. But she’d said all she needed to say. He pushed open the door and left her in the kitchen.
When he came to the house for his evening meal, he expected to find the door locked. But it was open, and his food was ready for him on the sideboard. Mrs. Melford didn’t put in an appearance then or at breakfast.
The post brought Rutledge a package the next morning.
The handwriting was unfamiliar but graceful.
Inspector Ian Rutledge. Dudlington, Northants.
There was no return address.
He opened the small box and inside, folded in a sheet of paper, was the cartridge case he’d inadvertently left at Mrs. Channing’s.
The sheet of paper was a note.
I asked Miss Rutledge for your present direction, and she has found it for me. You had forgotten to take this with you when you left, and I dislike having it in my house. I don’t know why, it’s merely a metal casing. But the more I look at it the more uncomfortable I feel. There’s something evil about it, in a way. I’d have liked to bury it in the dustbin and be rid of it.
However, it isn’t mine to dispose of, and so I return it.
He could hear her low, pleasant voice in the words as he read them, and for a moment he could see her sitting at the little walnut desk in her drawing room, writing the letter. It was such a vital image that he was surprised.
He laid the letter aside and looked again at the case.
Once more he asked himself if the shot on the road to Hertford had been meant to kill him. Or only to frighten him?
Hamish said, “If it was to kill, why leave the three casings in the hedgerow?”
Because, Rutledge thought, he came prepared. For either eventuality. Which said that he hadn’t really cared how it had turned out. He had just folded the letter and put the shell case in his pocket when there was a timid knock at the door, and a young woman stood on the threshold, poised to back away. He put her age down as sixteen.
“Come in,” Rutledge said, giving her his name and moving around the desk to the far side, to leave the room to her.
She stepped shyly into the office, looking around as she introduced herself as Martha Simpson.
He thought, She’s never been in Hensley’s house before.
“Please.” He pointed to the chair across from the desk.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you. But I’ve overheard my mother tell a friend that you’d been asking questions about Emma...”
What had the rector said about gossip?
“Yes, that’s true. Did you know her?”
She glanced at the other chair as if uncertain whether she ought to sit or remain standing. “I went to school with her. We weren’t the best of friends—her grandmother didn’t approve of me.”
“Why on earth would you believe that?” he asked, trying to put her at her ease. “You seem perfectly respectable to me.”
She laughed. “I’m the baker’s daughter, you see. Not grand enough for Mrs. Ellison. But I rather liked Emma, and I’ve been very worried about her. I wondered if you’d had news of her. I couldn’t ask her grandmother directly, I was always afraid I’d be told to mind my own business.”
“Sadly, no, I haven’t anything new to tell you. I asked questions for the simple reason that Constable Hensley had put down very little about her disappearance in his files. It seemed strange, given the fact that it was possible that murder had been done.”
Martha winced at the word. “I’d not like to think of anything awful happening to her.” She appeared to have conquered her initial shyness and finally sat down in the chair across from him. “She was talented, like her mother,” she went on earnestly. “I’ve seen some of the watercolors belonging to Grace Letteridge. Emma could draw nearly as well. She did a portrait of me, once, in pastels. I still have it, it’s framed in my room.”
“Was Emma a good student?”
“She was very bright, yes. I rather admired that. I’m hopeless at mathematics, and she often helped me when I couldn’t see how to do a problem. We sometimes studied together at Grace’s house, after tea. I looked forward to it.
She never made me feel young and useless.”
And then with an unexpected maturity that came welling up as her confidence increased, she added, “I’d always believed that Emma went to find her mother, in spite of all the rumors to the contrary. Dudlington is a backwater, with nothing to offer a girl like Emma. There isn’t an unmarried man here that her grandmother would have considered worthy of her. She wrote to her mother, from time to time, you know. And the letters were returned unopened.
But we always suspected, Grace and I, that her mother felt Emma was far too young to come to London then. She needed to finish her schooling and grow up. That’s under-standable, since Mrs. Mason had brought her here for that purpose in the first place.”
“You saw these returned letters? Do you by any chance know Mrs. Mason’s direction?”
“No, Mrs. Ellison always burned them, angry with her daughter for treating Emma so shabbily. My mother often said it was shameful the way Beatrice Mason ignored her own flesh and blood. She’d known Beatrice, and she said she’d never expected her to turn out to be such a snob.” She smiled deprecatingly, in defense of her mother. “But then you must have seen Mrs. Mason’s exhibitions in London.
She must be quite famous by now.”
He not only hadn’t seen them, he had never heard of an artist by that name. But then Beatrice Mason was rather staid for a painter hoping to take London by storm. Frances would know who she was... or who she pretended to be.
But Hamish was taking a different tack. “If she wasna’ sae successful as that, mayhap she didna’ care for her mither or the daughter to know the truth.”
“I understand Miss Letteridge spent nearly two years in London at the start of the war. Did she look up Emma’s mother while she was there?”
Martha Simpson had risen. “I’ve asked her that. She said she saw no point in it, since Mrs. Mason had never shown any desire to hear from Emma.”
He wondered if Grace Letteridge had lied for Emma’s sake.
Standing now, he asked casually, as if it wasn’t important, “I’d have thought, at seventeen, Emma might have given her heart to someone here and lost interest in London altogether. It happens.”
She bit her lip, as if misleading him came hard to her.
“I don’t know anything about that, Inspector.” The denial had come too quickly. She added, “Emma never confided in me.”
“But you knew her. You might have—er, guessed where her affections lay.”
Martha shook her head vehemently. “No. There was no one she cared for. She went to London. I’ll always believe that.”
He pressed her. “If she’s not with her mother, and not with a man she fell in love with, then what is the alternative?”
“She was too young to marry without her grandmother’s permission. And she wouldn’t have gone away with anyone, no matter how she felt about him—she’d been brought up to respect her grandmother. Emma wouldn’t have caused her such shame.”