“I tell you, I didn’t know.”
“What was it, cowardice? Did you and Quarles get cold feet when the Boers attacked, and hide under the carriages? Was that why you survived? They were dead shots, the Boers. How was it that neither you nor Quarles was wounded, and yet everyone else on that train died?”
“I don’t remember. When the train was stopped, I was knocked down. I don’t remember.”
“How did Quarles burn his hands? If he was in that carriage with Evering, why were only his hands burned?”
“I wasn’t there.”
“But you knew when you walked away and left Quarles there—with no wounds, mind you—that Evering was alive. Wounded, perhaps, but alive. The Boers didn’t burn men to death.”
“It was the lantern in the last carriage. It was hit and broken. I don’t know why it burned, but it did.”
“You surely knew Ronald Evering was the brother of the man Quarles killed. Why did he come to you to invest his money?”
“I can’t answer that. Coincidence—one in a thousand odds—”
“I think he must have learned something, and he came to you to find out the rest.” It was a battering of questions, and Rutledge could tell that Penrith couldn’t sustain it.
“He couldn’t have known anything, no one did. We never told anyone we’d been in the army. Not even Mr. James.”
“What were you trying to hide, if it wasn’t cowardice?”
“We were hiding nothing. Nothing.”
“Why did you write a letter to Ronald Evering, just in the last few days? It arrived on St. Anne’s the same time I did, and I carried it to the house myself.”
“I—he’d said something about wanting to invest with me again. I told him that the opportunities he spoke of had not turned out the way he’d hoped, and I thought he would be wise to look elsewhere.”
“How odd, that after Cumberline, he would wish to trust you again with any sum of money.”
“Yes, I thought the same—” Penrith broke off. “That’s to say, I found it odd myself.”
“You’ve lied to me about many things. Why did you lie to me about Scotland?”
It came out of nowhere, a shot in the dark from Rutledge that shook Penrith to the core. “I was in Scotland. I swear to you I was! There’s the letter from my wife.”
“But not that whole weekend. She says something about it being such a brief visit, and that you’d arrived just in time to dine with the Douglases. I think you reached Scotland on Sunday afternoon, not on Friday. And you’re letting an innocent man hang in your place. You were in Cambury on that Saturday night. You quarreled with your former partner first on Minton Street, where you’d followed him from Hallowfields, and then you went ahead of him, knowing he was on foot. And you killed him, because you were afraid of him, and what he knew about your past. He was doing things that you didn’t approve of, that you feared would ruin both of you. The Cumberline stocks, his outrageous behavior in Cambury, refusing to listen to you—”
“It wasn’t that way, you’ve got it wrong—”
“Why did you strike your partner down, and then carry his body to the tithe barn and hoist him to the ceiling in that angel’s harness, where no one would think to look for him? Did you hope that this would give you time to reach Scotland before anyone could accuse you of killing him?”
“I never put him in that harness—you’re lying—”
“But that’s how he was found. And someone did it. If it wasn’t you, then who would do such an ugly thing?”
“I never put him in anything—”
“An innocent man is going to hang,” Rutledge said again. “And it will be on your conscience. Perhaps you weren’t there when Quarles shot the wounded—or when he burned Evering alive. It may be that you’ve nothing on your conscience but protecting a friend. But this death is on your hands. When Brunswick hangs, it will be you who slides the hood over his head and the rope tight around his neck—”
“Stop it!” Penrith put his hands over his ears, trying to shut out Rutledge’s unrelenting voice. “I am not guilty. I’ve never killed anyone. Harold Quarles was still alive when I left him—”
“You wouldn’t have left Quarles alive. Not if he knew it was you who struck him. He was a bad enemy. A dangerous man. You had proof of that, whatever you want to deny about South Africa.”
“I did. I wasn’t afraid of him. I told him that I knew why he’d tried to make everyone think he’d slept with my wife—it was because I’d left the partnership. He always punishes anyone who gets in his way. And that was my punishment. I hit him when he turned away because he called me a liar. He said he’d never gone near my wife. I told him he was the one lying . . .”
Penrith stopped, appalled. He sank down in the nearest chair, his head in his hands.
“Oh, my God. What have I done?”
Rutledge thought at first that Penrith was horrified that he’d been tricked into confessing, then he realized that the man had stared into something only he could see, and discovered the truth.
“What is it?” Rutledge asked.
Penrith shook his head. “I can’t believe— Look, I never put him in that harness. I was so angry, I couldn’t have touched him. I left him there in his own blood, still breathing. It must have been someone from the house who put him in that barn, it wasn’t me. I swear to you—it wasn’t me!”
“You’ve lied one time too many,” Rutledge said. “It doesn’t serve you anymore.”
“But it’s the truth. He was alive, there on the grass by the gatehouse. I didn’t murder Harold Quarles.”
“If you didn’t, then you must know how Michael Brunswick feels, waiting to be tried. He told me the truth, and I didn’t believe him. I accepted your word that you were in Scotland, and you gave it, knowing it was a lie.”
“No, you must listen to me—all right, I struck him twice. He was walking away, laughing, and I knocked him down to his knees to stop him, and then before I quite knew what I was doing, I hit him a second time because I was so angry with him. But I could hear him breathing—I hadn’t killed him.”
“Weren’t you afraid that leaving him alive was dangerous, that he’d tell the police what you’d done?”
“No—he wouldn’t dare. Besides, I thought—I hoped that if no one found him right away, he might not remember what had happened.”
“You hoped he would die. Davis Penrith, I am arresting you on the charge of willfully murdering your former partner, Harold Quarles.”
“You can’t do this. I haven’t killed anyone. I was tricked—”
Rutledge shook his head. “It’s finished. Will you go with me now, or must I send for constables to bring you in?”
“You don’t understand. I was misled—it was Ronald Evering who told me that Quarles had slept with my wife. And I believed him, because it was the sort of thing Quarles would do. He punished his wife by having affairs with every woman in Cambury he could seduce.
Why not my wife, to punish me? Dear God, don’t you see? It must all have been a lie . . .”
23
It was Inspector Padgett’s nature to gloat. As Rutledge sat in the man’s office and reported the arrest of Davis Penrith and the evidence that supported it, Padgett smiled. It was nearly a sneer.
“Didn’t I tell you from the start that it was someone in London?
And you so certain the killer was among us here in Cambury?”