She was skeptical. 'I don't know that we have one available. I'll just ask Mr. Keating.'
She left him there in the hall, and soon a balding man of about forty-five came out to speak to him.
'You're looking for a room, is that it, sir? For the night?'
The inn appeared to be empty, except for the man and the woman.
'For several days. Inspector Rutledge, from London.' He was curt, tired of delay.
'Ah. You're looking for Constable Hensley's house, I take it. Second on the right, Whitby Lane. Not hard to find-follow the main road into the village and you can't miss it.'
'I've no intention of staying the night at Hensley's house. I'm looking for a room here.'
Keating was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'We've got a room or two. I keep them for travelers. This is a rather isolated part of the world, as you must have noticed, and we're accustomed to people late on the road, looking to stop the night. But I'm afraid we're booked up, just now.'
The words were firm, brooking no argument. But where were the motorcars or carriages by the door to support Keating's claim?
Rutledge was about to point that out when he recalled what an elderly sergeant had told him years before: 'I remember the day when a policeman under the roof frightened away custom. I'd be offered poor service and a cramped little room at the back, beneath the eaves, in the hope I'd go away sooner.'
He didn't think Keating was prepared to offer him even that. The innkeeper stood there, inflexibility in every line, although the pleasant expression on his face stayed securely in place. Short of calling the man a liar, there was nothing more to be said.
Rutledge turned on his heel and left.
He found Hensley's small house squeezed between a bakery and a greengrocer's. The door was unlocked, and he let himself in, feeling the chill from no fire over the last several days. The cold seemed to hang in the air, and the darkness in the tiny entry compounded it.
Retrieving his torch from the motorcar, he walked back inside searching for a lamp. The bloom of light dispelled the sense of emptiness, but it wasn't until he'd got a fire going well in the parlor that served as an office that he took off his hat and coat and set them aside.
The parlor was a square room, windows only on the front, and it was occupied by a desk sitting across from the hearth, papers scattered over its surface. Rutledge paused to look at them and found nothing of interest. Notices from Northampton, a letter inquiring for a Mr. Sandridge in the town, and a logbook that had been kept meticulously until the day Hensley was shot.
In the back was a sitting room, a kitchen with an empty larder, and upstairs a bedroom with sheets on the bed that were damp and wrinkled.
'It willna' do,' Hamish told Rutledge. 'It's no' a place to be comfortable.'
Rutledge took out his pocket watch and looked at it. The Oaks would be serving dinner in another forty-five minutes, and the thought of a warm meal and a bed pulled at him. Keating be damned.
There was a voice from the hall at the foot of the stairs. 'Halloooo!'
He went to the top of the steps and called down, 'Inspector Rutledge here. What do you need?'
'Well, I told myself it couldn't be Bart Hensley.' She moved into the light of his torch as he pointed it down the stairs in her direction. 'What are you doing here? He hasn't died, has he?'
'No.' He could see her now, a tall, slender woman wearing a knitted hat and a gray coat with a black collar. 'I've come to investigate what happened to him.'
'Well, then, dinner is at eight. I usually prepare it for him. An arrangement we've had since he came here in 1915. You might as well take your meals at my house too. There's not much choice in Dudlington. I'm your neighbor next but one, on the other side of the bakery. Oh, and you can leave your motorcar just by the side of the house. It's out of the way there.' And she was gone, shutting the door firmly behind her. Rutledge presented himself at the house on the far side of the bakery, exactly at eight. The door was opened, and the woman invited him in. 'My name is Barbara Melford. I'm a widow, I live alone, and I am paid for each meal. The dining room is this way.'
Her house was larger than the constable's, with good furnishings and a fire in the dining room where the table was set for one.
'You don't take your meals with Hensley?' Rutledge asked.
'I am paid to feed him, not to keep him company. As I've already said, I'm a widow. And I'm not looking to marry again, least of all, not to Constable Hensley.'
He could see her clearly now in the lamplight: a woman in her thirties, smartly dressed-for his benefit and not Constable Hensley's-trying to cover her apprehensive- ness with a chilly demeanor.
Hamish, taking a dislike to her, said, 'Why did she invite you to dine?'
For information?
Rutledge took the chair at the head of the table and pulled his serviette out of a china ring with blue violets painted in a garish pattern.
'We've had no news about Constable Hensley's condition. Was his surgery successful?' Barbara Melford asked as she brought in the soup, creamed carrots with leeks.
'Apparently, although he was in a good deal of pain when I spoke to him,' Rutledge answered, choosing his words with care. 'Nothing was said about when he might be released.'
'I can't imagine being driven that far with an arrow in my back!' she commented, returning to the kitchen while he sat in the dining room in lonely splendor. It was a pretty room with drapes of a floral brocade and an English carpet under a table that could seat eight. Rutledge found himself wondering if Mrs. Melford had ever entertained here, when her husband was alive.
He was tired, and it was a very tense meal, as his hostess brought each course in silence and disappeared again, but he could feel her eyes on him through the crack in the door leading to the kitchen.
Once he tried to question her about what had happened, but she answered brusquely, 'I can't see the wood from my windows, thank God! You must ask someone who can.'
There was a flan for dessert, better than many he'd had, but he didn't linger over his tea. As soon as the first cup was empty, he folded his serviette, and calling to Barbara Melford to thank her, he started for the door to the hall.
She came to speak to him then, following him as far as the front door to point out a silver tray on the small table at the foot of the stairs. 'You'll find your account waiting here every morning. I serve breakfast at eight sharp.'
'I'll be here.'
He stepped out into the cold night air, feeling it strongly after the heat of the dining room. Hensley's house was still chilly, the fire struggling to do more than heat the parlor. He searched for the linen cupboard and at length discovered clean sheets and pillow slips as well as two or three fairly new blankets.
Making up the bed, he considered his conversation with Hensley, wrapped in pain still, but alert enough to answer questions guardedly. Why, since he'd been found in that wood, would the constable refuse to admit he'd gone there? For one thing, moving a large man with an arrow in his back would have been difficult, and dragging him would leave marks. That would have to be looked into, tomorrow.
'And where is the bicycle he was riding?' Hamish asked.
'I'll find out tomorrow. There should be someone who can tell me. The doctor, for one.'
'At a guess, yon widow doesna' care o'ermuch for the constable. She must be desperate for money, to put up wi' him.'
'Or she finds him willing to talk more than he should about village business. A man can be flattered into boasting.'
It was late when Rutledge finally got to bed. The house seemed unfamiliar and unwelcoming. And he hadn't found a key for the door. Yet Hensley had used the parlor for his office.
'Which means,' Hamish answered the thought, 'that there are no secrets to be found here.'
Rutledge was up well before eight, dressed, and already searching through the meager files in a box in the parlor. It appeared that Dudlington had no experience with crime as such. The constable had registered every complaint with meticulous care. A lost dog found and returned to its owner. A quarrel over a ram's stud rights.
