Returning to the car, he asked, “Can you reach the meadow where the body was found, from this track?”
“Aye, you can’t see it from here, unless you know where to look, but there’s a smaller track that branches off from this one, about two fields away from us. If you follow that, you’ll come to the hedgerow that runs along the boundary of the Colonel’s land. It’s there that the smaller track connects with another one running up from Smithy Lane—I’ll show you that, because it’s where I found Hickam, drunk as a lord. Think of it as a rough H, sir, this track by the church and the other by Smithy Lane forming the legs and climbing to the ridge, whilst the bar of the H is the smaller one cutting across.”
“Yes, I follow you. Once you’ve reached the hedgerow, what then?”
“Find a break in it and you’ll be in the fields where the Colonel raises corn. Above them there’s a patch of rough land that’s put to hay, between the hedgerow and a copse of trees. On the far side of those trees lies the meadow. That’s the scene of the murder.”
Rutledge reversed. Back on the High Street again, he saw Hickam weaving an uncertain path along the pavement. His head down, he was muttering to himself, once or twice flinging out an arm in a gesture of disgust. He looked half drunk now, a man without pride or grace or spirit. Neither Rutledge nor Davies made any comment, but both could see that there was no need to stop.
Still driving in the direction he had taken to Mallows earlier, Rutledge saw Smithy Lane some thirty feet ahead, just as Davies pointed it out to him. An unpaved street, it ran between the busy blacksmith’s shop and a livery stable on the right and the ironmonger’s on the left. Beyond these businesses were six or seven run-down houses straggling up the slope of the hill toward the fields beyond. Where the last house stood, the lane became a cart track and soon the cart track narrowed into a country path of ruts and mud puddles. Rutledge drove gingerly, his attention on tires and axles.
But then the cart track eventually lost its way in a tangle of hawthorns and wild cherry, and here they left the car. As Davies got out, he said, “It’s here I found Hickam—he’d fallen asleep in the leaves yonder. And there,” he said, pointing to the last open ground before the track faded into the path, “is where he claims he saw the Colonel talking to Captain Wilton.”
“Did you look for signs of a horseman here? Or the prints of Wilton’s boots in the dust?”
“Inspector Forrest came to look the next morning, and then said we’d best leave this business to Scotland Yard.”
“But were there signs of the two men?”
“Not that he could see.”
Which probably meant that he hadn’t wanted to find anything. Rutledge nodded and they moved on, soon afterward passing the point where the rather overgrown track from the east met this one.
“And that’s the bar of the H, sir, like I said.”
Skirting a field of marrows, they came at length to the hedgerows. Sergeant Davies quickly found his way through them, into the fields of young wheat beyond.
“We’re on Mallows land now,” he said. The edges of the fields where they walked were still heavy with wet earth, clinging to their boots in great clots. The hayfield higher up was a wall of tall wet stalks rimmed with weeds. Burrs stuck to their trousers and wild roses caught at their coats. Davies swore once with fervent imagination as he was stung by nettles, and then they were in the copse, where walking was easier, almost silent on a cushion of damp leaves. They came out of the stand of trees into a small, sunny meadow, where the sound of bees filled the air.
The rain had washed away any signs of blood, but the grass was still bruised and trampled from the many feet that had milled around the body.
“He lay just about there, chest down, toward the wood, one arm under him and the other out-flung. His legs were straight, slightly bent at the knees but that’s all. I’d say he fell from the horse and never moved, not even a twitch. So his attacker must have come out of the trees, just as we did. Say, just here,” Davies explained, moving a few feet away from where the body had been found. “Not more than ten feet, anyway, from where the body fell, depending on whether the shot knocked him out of the saddle or he fell out of it.”
“If he was knocked out of it, why was he on his face—chest? If he was shot from the front, the force of the blast would have driven him out of the saddle backward. Even if the horse had bolted in terror, his feet would slip out of the stirrups and he’d have come off backward. On his back, Sergeant! Or his side. But not facedown.”
Davies chewed his lip. “I thought about that myself. That Harris must have been shot from the back, to fall forward on his chest. But that doesn’t fit with the horse—I saw it, there was blood all over the saddle and its haunches, but not on its ears or mane. You’d have thought, if Harris’s head had exploded from behind, not the front, that the horse’s mane would have been matted with blood and brains.”
“Then someone turned him over. The search party?”
“They swear they never touched the corpse. And there was no question but that he was dead—they didn’t need to move him.”
“The killer, then?”
Davies shook his head. “Why would he do that? He’d be wanting to get as far away as he could, in case someone heard the shot and came to see what it was.”
Rutledge looked around. “We’ve come two miles, or thereabouts. How far is the other track from this wood?”
“Two miles, a little more than that. Shorter if you don’t mind rougher going than we just had.”
“So Wilton could have reached the meadow either way—from the lane where we came up, if Hickam is right, or from the churchyard path, if Wilton walked that way, as he claims he did.”
“Aye, but it isn’t likely, is it? Somehow I just don’t see the Captain waiting in the trees to shoot the Colonel from ambush! Besides, when Hickam saw him, he wasn’t carrying a shotgun, was he? So where did he get the gun, and where is it now?”
“A good question, that. You’ve scoured the area looking for it?”
“Aye, as soon as possible we had men in the trees there and in the tall grass. But by that time, who knows what might have become of the weapon. The killer’s hidden it somewhere, most likely.”
Looking about him, Rutledge thought, It isn’t where he’s hidden it that’s half as important as where he got it.
Davies pointed and said, “Look, if you go down this hill, over the fields yonder, and across the stile when you come to another line of hedgerows, you soon find yourself in the orchard behind Mallows, and that takes you to the gardens and the house itself. Of course, you can’t see it from here, but the going’s fairly straight if you know your way. The land’s a pie wedge, like. Mallows is out on the Warwick road, and we’ve come up from the High Street. The crust, so to speak, runs from Upper Streetham to Warwick. Up here now, we’re at the point of the wedge, having come up one side. If we followed the other side, that would be the Haldane property over there.”
He turned to point generally in that direction, then faced the way they had just come. “Behind the church are the smallholdings you saw from the churchyard. Beyond them is Crichton land. This meadow then is farther from Mallows—the house, I mean—and the village, than any other part of the Harris property.”
“Which means the killer chose this place because he felt sure the shot might not be heard. There aren’t any other houses in this area?”
“No.”
Rutledge walked around the meadow for a while longer, not knowing what he expected to find and finding nothing. Finally, satisfied, he called to Davies and they started back toward the car.