Hamish said, 'Who hid it here? Yon constable before he went down to the wood? Or his assailant, making certain no one found him quickly?'
It was a good question, and without a good answer.
Rutledge lifted the bicycle, brushed off the earth and dried leaves, and walked it back to the place where he had come over the wall. It took some effort on his part to get it into the rear of the motorcar, and by the time he had finished, the storm, hovering in the low gray clouds all day, broke in earnest. He made a point to stow the bicycle behind Hensley's house in the bare back garden, covering it with a tarpaulin he found in the tiny shed where picks, shovels, and spades were kept.
There must have been a dozen people who saw him bring it with him, he thought, but until gossip had spread that word, he wasn't going to make an issue of his find. He wanted no questions about where and how he'd come up with it.
After washing his hands and cleaning his boots, he crossed the street to Emma Mason's grandmother's house and knocked.
This time an elderly woman came to the door. She was tall and handsome, but when he spoke to her, introducing himself, she leaned forward as if uncertain what he'd said.
He repeated his name and asked if he could come inside. She invited him into the house rather reluctantly.
The parlor was feminine, with lacy curtains, crocheted antimacassars on the arms and backs of the chairs, and a long lacy cloth over the table by the piano. On it were photographs, and one was of a young girl holding a black and white kitten and smiling up at the camera. She was quite pretty even at the age of around ten, with good cheekbones and a high forehead, framed in hair that appeared to be dark and thick and curling.
Mrs. Ellison offered him a chair and sat down herself. In the flat tones of the near deaf, she asked him his business.
'I'm looking into the… accident that befell Constable Hensley in Frith's Wood,' he said, pitching his voice so that she could hear him.
'I'm not deaf, young man,' she retorted, and he smiled.
'Apparently not.'
'I do have trouble sometimes with what the words are. Putting them together to make sense.'
'Do you know Constable Hensley well?'
'I'm his neighbor across the street. I don't invite him to my house to dine.'
'Is he a good policeman?'
'How should I know?' Her lips tightened, as if to hold back what else she might have said.
'He investigated the disappearance of your granddaughter. And couldn't find her,' he reminded her gently.
'It's always been in my mind that she went to look for her mother. My daughter. When her husband died- Emma's father-she wanted no more to do with the child. I think it was too painful a reminder of happiness lost. I don't know what became of her, to be truthful. She never wrote to me in all these years. Not even to ask how young Emma fared.' Her face crumpled, but she recovered and said in a reasonably steady voice, 'Beatrice was pretty too, and it was her downfall. Sad, isn't it, how blood can tell.'
When he asked to see Emma's room, Mrs. Ellison raised her eyebrows in disapproval. 'This has nothing to do with Constable Hensley's unfortunate accident!'
'She's not here,' he prompted her. 'I shan't be intruding. But it might help me to see what interested her.'
'Even that Inspector Abbot, from Letherington, respected her privacy,' Mrs. Ellison retorted. 'I can't think what good it would do you. Unless it's voyeurism.'
Stung, he said with some harshness, 'You can't be the judge of what's important in a police matter. I can go to Northampton and ask for a warrant to search. It would be far less pleasant than five minutes in her room.'
'Very well.' She rose, led him to the stairs, and climbed ahead of him, her back stiff with protest.
The girl's room was on the front of the house, and when he went to the windows, he could see that one of them, the one nearest the dressing table, looked directly into Hensley's bedroom across the lane.
11
The walls of Emma Mason's room had been painted a pale yellow, with cream curtains at the window and a patterned cream coverlet on the bed. The skirts of the dressing table were a yellow and cream print, matching the cushions on both chairs. The carpet was floral, with splashes of cream and ivory and yellow mixed with a pale green. The effect was like sunlight pouring in, on such a gray day, even though the lamps hadn't been lit.
'Her granny treated her well enough,' Hamish commented as Rutledge looked about him. 'It wasna' unhappi- ness at home that made her leave.'
To Rutledge's eyes nothing appeared to have changed since Emma Mason's disappearance. The room was clean, fresh, ready for its owner to step back into it again, as if these three blank years hadn't existed. The delicate scent of lavender filled the air, and Hamish said, 'It lacks only flowers.'
It was true. Something in keeping with the pretty surroundings. Daffodils in a slender glass vase, violets in something silver, roses in a cream pitcher. Rutledge could imagine it.
But there was nothing personal in the room, no dolls long since outgrown, only a few well-read books on the shelf by the bed, and a single photograph of Mrs. Ellison as a younger woman, placed by a ticking china clock on the bedside table.
A shrine? Or was this simply the way a grieving grandmother preferred to remember her grandchild?
He walked over to the wardrobe and was on the point of opening it when Mrs. Ellison said sharply, 'Only her clothing is in there. Dresses and coats and shoes. A hat or two. You needn't pry into what she wore, surely.'
He had seen what he had come to see.
On the way down the stairs, he asked, 'I understand Emma had been interested in practicing with a bow, when she was younger.'
They had reached the foot of the stairs by the time she answered, and she made a point not to invite him back into the parlor. 'Emma went through a stage where she admired that young woman who was in the Robin Hood tales. I can't think what her name was.'
'Maid Marian?'
She frowned. 'My memory isn't what it once was. It hasn't been since-since she left me. At any rate, she read every book I could find for her about that forest-'
'Sherwood.'
'Yes. Thank you. She begged me to take her there. But it isn't a great forest any longer, is it? I did ask the rector, and he said it would have been disappointing.'
'Frith's Wood,' Hamish said. 'She would ha' seen it as filled wi' bandits and heroes.'
It might have seemed an exciting, enchanting forest to a girl with an imagination that ran to old tales of adventure and damsels in distress.
'Can you tell me where her bow and arrows are now?'
'Good Lord, how should I know! It wasn't I who gave them to her, and I disapproved of them from the start.'
'Then who did?'
'She never told me. I only discovered them by chance, and after that they were never left lying about.'
'Do you remember the coloring of the feathers at the end of the shaft?'
Mrs. Ellison stared at him. 'You must be mad! Of course not. I'm not always certain what day of the week it is, young man. Dr. Middleton tells me it will get worse, this forgetfulness. Worry, he says, that's what does it. But what do I need to remember, anyway? Losing my daughter and then my granddaughter? Hardly events one wishes to take into the shadows with one.'
He thanked her then, and left.
But he had the strongest feeling that she was watching him from behind the parlor curtains as he crossed the
