Because, Rutledge thought, he came prepared. For either eventuality. Which said that he hadn't really cared how it had turned out. He had just folded the letter and put the shell case in his pocket when there was a timid knock at the door, and a young woman stood on the threshold, poised to back away. He put her age down as sixteen.
'Come in,' Rutledge said, giving her his name and moving around the desk to the far side, to leave the room to her.
She stepped shyly into the office, looking around as she introduced herself as Martha Simpson.
He thought, She's never been in Hensley's house before. 'Please.' He pointed to the chair across from the desk.
'I'm so sorry to disturb you. But I've overheard my mother tell a friend that you'd been asking questions about Emma…'
What had the rector said about gossip?
'Yes, that's true. Did you know her?'
She glanced at the other chair as if uncertain whether she ought to sit or remain standing. 'I went to school with her. We weren't the best of friends-her grandmother didn't approve of me.'
'Why on earth would you believe that?' he asked, trying to put her at her ease. 'You seem perfectly respectable to me.'
She laughed. 'I'm the baker's daughter, you see. Not grand enough for Mrs. Ellison. But I rather liked Emma, and I've been very worried about her. I wondered if you'd had news of her. I couldn't ask her grandmother directly, I was always afraid I'd be told to mind my own business.'
'Sadly, no, I haven't anything new to tell you. I asked questions for the simple reason that Constable Hensley had put down very little about her disappearance in his files. It seemed strange, given the fact that it was possible that murder had been done.'
Martha winced at the word. 'I'd not like to think of anything awful happening to her.' She appeared to have conquered her initial shyness and finally sat down in the chair across from him. 'She was talented, like her mother,' she went on earnestly. 'I've seen some of the watercolors belonging to Grace Letteridge. Emma could draw nearly as well. She did a portrait of me, once, in pastels. I still have it, it's framed in my room.'
'Was Emma a good student?'
'She was very bright, yes. I rather admired that. I'm hopeless at mathematics, and she often helped me when I couldn't see how to do a problem. We sometimes studied together at Grace's house, after tea. I looked forward to it. She never made me feel young and useless.'
And then with an unexpected maturity that came welling up as her confidence increased, she added, 'I'd always believed that Emma went to find her mother, in spite of all the rumors to the contrary. Dudlington is a backwater, with nothing to offer a girl like Emma. There isn't an unmarried man here that her grandmother would have considered worthy of her. She wrote to her mother, from time to time, you know. And the letters were returned unopened. But we always suspected, Grace and I, that her mother felt Emma was far too young to come to London then. She needed to finish her schooling and grow up. That's understandable, since Mrs. Mason had brought her here for that purpose in the first place.'
'You saw these returned letters? Do you by any chance know Mrs. Mason's direction?'
'No, Mrs. Ellison always burned them, angry with her daughter for treating Emma so shabbily. My mother often said it was shameful the way Beatrice Mason ignored her own flesh and blood. She'd known Beatrice, and she said she'd never expected her to turn out to be such a snob.' She smiled deprecatingly, in defense of her mother. 'But then you must have seen Mrs. Mason's exhibitions in London. She must be quite famous by now.'
He not only hadn't seen them, he had never heard of an artist by that name. But then Beatrice Mason was rather staid for a painter hoping to take London by storm. Frances would know who she was… or who she pretended to be.
But Hamish was taking a different tack. 'If she wasna' sae successful as that, mayhap she didna' care for her mither or the daughter to know the truth.'
'I understand Miss Letteridge spent nearly two years in London at the start of the war. Did she look up Emma's mother while she was there?'
Martha Simpson had risen. 'I've asked her that. She said she saw no point in it, since Mrs. Mason had never shown any desire to hear from Emma.'
He wondered if Grace Letteridge had lied for Emma's sake.
Standing now, he asked casually, as if it wasn't important, 'I'd have thought, at seventeen, Emma might have given her heart to someone here and lost interest in London altogether. It happens.'
She bit her lip, as if misleading him came hard to her. 'I don't know anything about that, Inspector.' The denial had come too quickly. She added, 'Emma never confided in me.'
'But you knew her. You might have-er, guessed where her affections lay.'
Martha shook her head vehemently. 'No. There was no one she cared for. She went to London. I'll always believe that.'
He pressed her. 'If she's not with her mother, and not with a man she fell in love with, then what is the alternative?'
'She was too young to marry without her grandmother's permission. And she wouldn't have gone away with anyone, no matter how she felt about him-she'd been brought up to respect her grandmother. Emma wouldn't have caused her such shame.'
He could imagine how the wives of the baker and the greengrocer and the butcher would have relished that sort of scandal, and taken pleasure in rubbing Mrs. Ellison's nose in her disgrace. He had to agree with Martha there.
'It's possible that Emma hoped her mother would give her the necessary permission.'
'No. Somehow I can't believe-she'd have come back if that were true.' She was agitated, as if he'd accused Emma of being immoral. After a moment, she added, 'I've made a mistake in coming here. I'd hoped for news. Constable Hensley wouldn't answer me either. It's frustrating when everyone believes you're too young to know the truth! But please don't tell my parents I was foolish enough to come here alone. They'll be angry with me. I'm sorry-' And she was out the door, without looking back.
He called to her, but it was too late.
Restless, he went for a walk to clear his head. He went as far as The Oaks, and then turned right, cutting across the wide sweep of fields that ran down to the little stream, where trees marked its winding path through the pastures behind Dudlington. The wind caught up with him as soon as he was out of the shelter of the village, and he could feel the cold penetrating his coat and touching his skin with icy fingers. No wonder the village turned its back on the fields, however picturesque they might seem-they faced west, and the prevailing winds met no resistance on this open land until it reached the stone and mortar of man's huddled world.
He turned and looked back. The sky was a leaden bowl overhead, and the fields were a withered brown. Dudlington looked small and insignificant from here. Constable would have found very little of interest to paint on these highlands, even if the cattle in the barns were put out to graze.
From here he thought he could see the backs of brown sheep in the pastures across the main road. They were the color of dark rich gravy, and their winter coats were thick and heavy.
The fell sheep in Westmorland had been white under their blanket of snow. He wondered what they'd make of these tamer surroundings, protected and cosseted by Lake District standards. It was, he thought, a measure of the will to survive, that living things learned to cope. Then why had Ted Baylor chosen today, of all days, to try to mend Barbara Melford's broken heart? What had changed in his circumstances, or hers? Or had he come for an entirely different reason? Love? Or an attempt to survive? Baylor had been the first to find Constable Hensley lying there cold enough to be counted as dead.
Suddenly, without warning, Rutledge felt vulnerable, as if standing here he made a perfect target for anyone hunting him.
There was nothing to explain the sensation. Only a sixth sense honed in war. The small windows of the houses he could see from here were blank, closed against the wind. And from the long barns that held cattle, well out of the village itself, it was a very difficult shot. Even if someone lay concealed behind the sheep, it would take a rifle to hit him at that distance.
Still, he stood there, searching the land all around him, turning slowly.
