He moved on to the barn, stepping inside the great open door. Dust motes floated in heavy air smelling of manure and hay and moldering leather. An old side saddle was propped over a wooden bench. In the far dimness, a pair of horses turned their heads to stare with interest at him. A cat, stretched out along the top of a shelf, yawned and stared at him as well, through narrow, yellow eyes. Doves cooed desultorily from the rafters of the loft.
And where was the caretaker? Out in the fields? Or in one of the scattered outbuildings?
He went back to his motorcar and blew the horn. Once, then twice. In the silence that followed he thought he heard the lowing of cows, softened by distance. He blew the horn again. After a time a man in ragged coveralls peered out of one of the smaller sheds. He was tall, wiry, his white hair cut short, his face weather-lined. It was hard to judge his age. Fifty? Older, Rutledge thought.
As he came warily toward Rutledge his stiff gait said closer to seventy.
“Lost, are ye? Well, that’s the difference between one of them newfangled motorcars and a horse. A horse has sense when you don’t!”
He smelled strongly of ale and a mixture of manure and dried earth.
Rutledge said easily, “My name is Rutledge, I’m helping the local police look into the disappearance of a young woman who was found murdered a few miles from here—”
“You’re not a local man,” the farmer said, shading his eyes from the sun to stare at Rutledge’s face. His fingernails were crusted with dirt from working in the vegetable gardens, and his chin was poorly shaved, as if he couldn’t see to use his razor.
“No. I’m from Scotland Yard.”
“Ha! London, is it?” He spat. “That Truit needs all the help you can give. Whoring son of a bitch, can’t keep his eyes or his hands to himself. Or hold his liquor!” There was disdain and disgust in the loud voice. “Constable, my left hind foot!” He considered Rutledge for a moment. “I thought they’d caught the man who’d done the killing.”
“We don’t know if we have or not, Mr.—” He left the sentence unfinished.
After a moment the caretaker said, “Jimson. Ted Jimson.” He was still watching Rutledge closely.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Worked here? Nigh all my life! What’s that to do with a murder?”
Rutledge said idly, as if it was more a matter of curiosity than anything else, “I understand that Mrs. Wyatt was here on fifteen August, from around eleven o’clock until well into the afternoon, working with a sick animal.”
Jimson thought for a time. “The fifteenth, you say? Aye, as I recollect, she was. That colicky heifer had to be fed from a bottle and cosseted. Damn near lost it, and we’d paid high enough for the bull! Stayed till nigh on four, I’d guess, getting it back on its legs. I’ll say one thing, French or not, she has a way with cattle!” He gave the impression that he was of two minds about his mistress.
“And where were you?”
“Loitering in my bed, waiting for the servants to bring me my breakfast! Where the hell do you think I might be? Working, that’s what! Besides the milking, there was rotting boards in the loft that had to be shored up and potatoes to be dug, and the fence in the chicken yard had rusted, some of the little ’uns was running loose.” Yet Aurore had said he had had a cold … or a hangover.
“Could you see Mrs. Wyatt from where you worked?”
“You don’t keep a heifer in the loft, nor with the chickens!”
“Could she see you?”
“I doubt she could, but she wouldn’t miss the hammering in the loft. What’s this in aid of, then? You think I had something to do with this killing?”
Rutledge felt a sense of tension in the man, as if he had told the truth but skirted the edges of lying. How far would he go for Aurore—or for Simon Wyatt?
“We need to be sure where everyone was that afternoon. Often people aren’t aware that they are witnesses. Was Mrs. Wyatt driving that day, or did she walk here?”
“Aye, driving. I saw her when she came up the lane in the Wyatt car. She waved to me when she got out. But it didn’t appear to me she wanted to talk.”
“Did the car leave during the time you thought she was here?”
“Not that I could say. But I didn’t set and watch it either.”
“And so Mrs. Wyatt stayed with the sick heifer, missing her luncheon?”
“How should I know? When I’d finished with the chickens and wanted my own meal, I didn’t look for her to ask permission!”
“You didn’t offer her lunch?”
“Lord, no! What I cook ain’t fit for a lady’s taste!” he said, horrified. “Bacon and cheese, it was, with onionsl”
A countryman’s meal. But the French took the same simple ingredients, added eggs and herbs, producing an omelet. It was all, Rutledge thought, in what you were used to.
“You are sure neither Mrs. Wyatt nor the car went away, from the time she arrived to the time she left. From eleven, let’s say, until four.”
The watery gray eyes flickered. “I didn’t see her leave,” Jimson answered. “But she’d come in to wash up, her boots was out by the kitchen door.”
“You mean she didn’t leave between eleven and four, or you didn’t see her go home at four?” He couldn’t seem to get a straight answer from Jimson.
“I didn’t see her go at four. When I came back from mending a fence down by the water, closer to five it was, the car was gone. I know, because I went around the house to fetch the milk cans from the road, and the lane was empty.”
Rutledge turned and looked back the way he had come. The trees were old, heavy with late summer leaves, the shadows under them dark and cool. Once this had been a thriving farm, children had been born and patriarchs had died in the house behind him, smoke had risen from the chimneys, washing had hung on the lines, the smell of fresh bread and baked pies had wafted from open windows. Dogs had run in the yard and flowers had bloomed in the weed-grown beds. Until the first Wyatt discovered the power and authority of Westminster, and the family had bettered itself.
“Do you live in the farmhouse?” he asked Jimson.
The man didn’t answer. Rutledge turned around and repeated the question, his mind still probing the past. If Simon Wyatt hadn’t gone to war, Aurore his wife would never have come to England and this place. Was it very like the home she’d left? Was this farm her sanctuary, however run down it was, because it reminded her of her parents and peace and a life very different from the one she lived in Charlbury?
Jimson said testily, “I’ve a room at the back. That and the kitchen, it’s all I want—or need.”
“Does anyone else use the other rooms?”
“Aye, we’ve got the King in one and the Queen in t’other! Are ye daft?”
“It’s a large house for one man.”
“The Wyatts always had a tenant and his family living here. I come over daily from Charlbury then. Mr. Oliphant, he went to New Zealand in 1913, and that was the end to that. The other dairymen went off to fight the Hun. Mrs. Wyatt says there’s no money to hire ’em back now, nor to fix the barn roof! I moved to the house after my wife died, just to keep an eye on the place. Mrs. Wyatt, she keeps some things in one of the upstairs rooms. Towels and coveralls.”
Rutledge had run out of questions. And yet he had a strong feeling that because he’d been partly distracted, he had overlooked something. What?
Jimson watched him, waiting.
The man wasn’t lying, Rutledge was fairly certain of that. Jimson was telling the truth as he saw it. But police work had taught Rutledge that a witness could reply to questions exactly, even honestly—and still manage to avoid the whole truth.