'Did Hensley offer any explanation about why he'd ventured into the wood in the first place?'
'He didn't have to. I could imagine the reason for myself. We've always wondered if Emma Mason was buried there. And I think he's spent the last three years searching for her grave.'
9
Who is Emma Mason?' Rutledge asked. There had W been no file for a missing woman, or a murder, in Hensley's parlor.
'She was a local girl. Seventeen at the time she vanished. We searched the countryside for miles around. No one had seen her leave, and no one knew what had become of her. Her grandmother was distraught-she would have led the search parties herself, if she'd been up to it.'
'Foul play, then?'
'We couldn't think of anyone who might have harmed her. And we couldn't come up with a sound reason why she should leave. Abruptly, without a stitch of clothing missing or even a toothbrush with her.'
'Then why suspect she was buried in the wood?'
'It was the only place,' Middleton answered with sadness, 'that someone could have disposed of a body without being seen by half the village looking out its back windows. A logical place, so to speak. But we covered every inch of the wood, and there was nothing to indicate that the ground had been disturbed. I doubt if anyone could have dug a grave there, anyway, with so many roots. Still-the search had to be made, if we were going to be thorough.' Following the directions Middleton had given him, Rut- ledge left his motorcar at the church and walked across the fields from there. He had gone no more than a few hundred yards when he realized how open the land was under a bowl of gray winter sky. The grass was brown, there were no trees except along the stream, and all the way to the horizon, nothing broke the emptiness.
He felt suddenly vulnerable.
If someone had followed him to Kent and to Hertford- why not here?
The grass crunched under his feet, and the wind had a bite to it. He could see the wood now. Bare branches stood out darkly against the slate color of the clouds, like fingers reaching upward. It was a larger wood than he'd expected, and denser. Impossible to see beyond the trees to the next field, the trunks and undergrowth weaving a thicket.
Behind him he could see the week's wash blowing on lines in the backs of houses, the slate roofs dark under the gray clouds overhead, and the tall, thin spire of the church soaring into the sky like a lonely sentinel.
A dog barked from a house on the far side of the church, near a small barn. Ted Baylor's dog?
By the time he had reached the wood, Rutledge was aware that Hamish was tense and lurking in the back of his mind.
He stepped into the line of trees, sensing the eyes of villagers watching from behind their lace curtains. He had a feeling that if a Saxon warrior met him at the edge of the wood and lopped off his head with a long blade, no one would be surprised.
Hamish said, 'It's no' a very good idea to tempt the dead.'
'No. Not while walking over them.'
Walking was difficult, dead or no. Fallen boughs and rotted trunks were traps for unwary feet under the mat of wet leaves. He stumbled once and caught himself with a hand on the nearest tree. There was a small area where the leaves had been churned by a multitude of feet. Hensley, then, and his saviors.
Looking around, Rutledge wondered how anyone had managed to get the badly wounded constable out of the wood, tight as tolerances were. Somehow they had got it done.
He examined the ground for some distance on either side of the site where he presumed Hensley had been found. But there were not enough signs to indicate whether the man had been dragged to the scene or fell there. It would surely have been as difficult getting him here as it had been to extricate him. Rutledge realized he needed a good deal more light to be certain. But on the whole, as Hamish was saying, it appeared that Hensley had been in the wood and on his feet when he was shot. Whether he had intentionally lied about that or honestly couldn't remember any of the events before the arrow struck him, it was hard to say.
Some distance away, in the soft earth by the bole of a tree, Rutledge found a deep indentation that indicated someone had been standing here. But whether it was the man with the bow and arrow, or Hensley himself, it was impossible to tell.
With Hensley down, Hamish was reminding him, there had been no one to do an investigation of the ground in his place. The doctor had been busy with his patient, and his helpers had been in a hurry to get out of the wood as quickly as possible. If they'd searched at all, it was cursorily.
Rutledge moved on, studying the earth underfoot intently before taking each step. But the clues were small and hard to see. A stalk bent here, a leaf dislodged there, a twig broken where someone had brushed by it. There was no way to know who had disturbed any of them, Hensley or his attacker. The odd thing was, he hadn't started a rabbit or seen a bird flitting from tree to tree, twittering with curiosity. The wood was empty and quiet. And that was ominous in itself… How difficult would it be to dig down into the composted soil, to make a grave? Would that have been Hens- ley's fate if he'd died straightaway? Even a killer might have qualms about burying a man still alive. Rutledge shuddered at the thought. It could probably be done, this digging. But it would have left scars on the ground for all the world to see. That is, if the world bothered to come and look here. Rutledge made his way deeper into the trees, taking his time. The farther he went, the dimmer the light, as if it had been sucked away from the heart of the wood. What's more, it was hard to see behind or ahead, and that alone would make a man feelHe stopped short, listening. But there was no one moving behind him, though he would have sworn he heard footsteps there. Who would be bold enough to walk into Frith's Wood after him? Hamish said, 'I canna' say I like it in here. We'd best be gone.' But Rutledge continued straight ahead, hoping to come out of the wood on the far side. Instead he had gone in a half circle and wound up where he'd come in. I've got a better sense of direction than that, he told himself. Yet it would have been easy enough to get off track as he avoided thickets and trunks grown too close together.
He stopped to listen again, but the footfalls he'd believed he had heard were silent. In a way, that was more chilling than knowing they were still behind him.
It would take ten men and the better part of a day to cover all the wood as carefully as he'd done in his own circle, and he wasn't sure he could find ten men in Dudlington who would be willing.
Frith's Wood was an excellent place for an ambush. On his way back to Hensley's house, Rutledge saw a stooped man puttering in the small garden of what must be the rectory, set as it was almost in the precincts of the church. He turned that direction and came to lean on the low wall that separated the churchyard from the rectory grounds as he called out, 'Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. May I come in and speak with you?'
The man looked up and waved. 'Come around to the gate-just there.'
Rutledge did as he was told and found his way around the side of the house to where the man waited, leaning on his pitchfork.
'I'm Frederick Towson, rector of St. Luke's,' he said, taking off one of his gardening gloves to offer his hand. 'Or has someone already told you as much?'
'No. I've only just met a handful of people here.'
'I saw you walking toward the wood. Looking for clues, are you? Come in, and we'll have some tea to warm our bones.' Towson smiled. 'Yours may not be as old as mine, but this cold isn't particular.'
Rutledge followed him into the tall, narrow stone house, surely far too big for one man to manage on his own. There must be a woman who came in to clean. He made a mental note to find out who it was.
'I try to do a little work in the gardens each day, to keep my hand in, but the truth is, my thumbs are brown, not green. If anything grows at all, it's through the kindness of my neighbors. They come to offer advice, and I listen.' He opened the kitchen door and pulled off his muddy boots before stepping inside. Rutledge stopped long enough to use the iron scraper, shaped like a sleeping cat crouched by the door.
The kitchen was a warm, cozy room painted a pleasing shade of blue. The furnishings were old but well polished, and there were blue-and-white-patterned curtains at the windows, matching the cloth on the table.
'Sit down. I'll just put on the kettle.'
