'Nonsense. I'm perfectly capable of walking that far alone.'
He waited until he was certain she was gone, sitting in the dark parlor for a quarter of an hour. Only then did he go back down the cellar stairs with his torch and look into the closet.
The satchel contained money, far less than he'd expected. And the papers were an odd assortment. One of them was a letter to the young woman who had been searching for the man, Sandridge.
It was straightforward, just as Hensley had told him, denying that there was anyone in Dudlington by that name, and suggesting that she had got the wrong Dudlington.
The only interesting thing about the reply was that it had been written on official stationery, giving it the stamp of authority.
The others were a collection of interviews in the days following the disappearance of Emma Mason. Rutledge took them to his bedroom, and in the course of the evening, read through them.
The first documented Mrs. Ellison's frantic summons one morning, reporting her granddaughter gone in the night.
The constable's notes were brief.
'She was very upset. Called Miss Mason to her breakfast, and when there was no answer, went up to room to wake her granddaughter. She was not there, and no indication of hasty departure. No letter left behind. Grandmother then searched rest of house, no sign of Miss Mason. I immediately organized a search party, calling in every available man. Spoke to everyone in village, house by house. Covered fields two miles in every direction, also barns and sheds…'
The next five or six pages were questions put to various people who had had some contact with Emma that last day. One of them was Martha Simpson. She'd heard words between Emma and Miss Letteridge that morning, and it had had to do with London, she thought. Betsy Timmons, Hillary's older sister, had remembered Emma crying in her room in the afternoon as she'd gone upstairs to begin her cleaning.
Hensley himself noted, 'I saw Miss Emma at around six o'clock as she was leaving the baker's shop, and she was carrying a letter in her hand. When I spoke to her, she ignored me. I had the impression there was something on her mind.' He had added, 'Her lamp remained burning until late in the night. I can't say when it went out.'
The next interview was with the rector. He said only that he'd seen Emma Mason at the church the day before her disappearance. He had found her sitting there in a pew- not Mrs. Ellison's, as he remembered-and she seemed to be crying. But when he approached her and asked if she was unhappy, she'd shaken her head and told him that she was praying for her grandmother. He hadn't known what to make of that, but it was clear that she didn't want to confide in him, and he had left her there.
There was an interview with Mrs. Lawrence. She had seen Emma as she was leaving the church, but Emma had turned away from her and instead walked out toward the fields. Mrs. Lawrence thought she might be meeting someone there, because Emma had seemed furtive.
The final report came from Mrs. Simpson. As she was looking out her window just at dusk, she had seen Emma arguing with a man, but she couldn't identify him in the poor light. The girl turned and walked into her grandmother's house, shutting the door 'with some force.' Mrs. Simpson was reluctant to describe the man, 'for fear she might be mistaken,' and Hensley reported that he hadn't pressed.
Rutledge couldn't be sure whether these were copies or the originals, which Hensley hadn't forwarded to Inspector Abbot in Letherington. Neither could he be sure whether the constable had kept them to use in his own investigation or was trying to conceal his own personal role in the girl's disappearance. Had he, for instance, been the man that Mrs. Simpson saw but couldn't name?
Mrs. Ellison was growing deaf-she might not have heard her granddaughter leave in the night. For that matter, she might not have heard someone come to the door and on some excuse lure the girl out of the house.
All in all, Rutledge hadn't found anything incriminating one way or the other. Not sufficient money to prove that Hensley had taken a bribe in London, nor any proof that he'd had something to do with the girl's disappearance.
What was odd was that the letter regarding Sandridge and the interviews regarding Emma Mason had been stored here together.
As if there was some connection.
Setting the interviews aside, Rutledge considered what he'd read.
Who had the girl been speaking with when Mrs. Simpson saw her at dusk? Was it Hensley? If so, he'd adroitly covered his tracks by admitting to encountering her on the street. And Mrs. Simpson had seen Emma walk into her grandmother's house afterward. But whom had she met when she walked into the fields after leaving the church?
If the baker's wife had suspected it was Hensley on the street with Emma Mason at dusk, it would explain the rumors blaming the constable for her disappearance. A comment here, a remembered remark there, a lively imagination adding another bit of information, and before very long, suspicion would be rampant.
Hamish said, 'Ye're forgetting yon woman with the rosebushes.'
Grace Letteridge might easily have been the person to start a rumor about Hensley. For reasons of her own.
She'd quarreled with Emma. Was it an old jealousy between them rearing its head again? Over Robert Baylor?
He'd said once that jealousy was a crime of hot blood.
Something could easily have stirred it back to life again.
Emma Mason might not have walked out of her grandmother's house in the middle of the night to meet a man, but she could very well have come down to the door if a distressed Grace Letteridge had knocked.
It was an image he couldn't get out of his mind. Emma, her bedroom lamp burning late into the night, still awake. Grace Letteridge, watching from her own windows until Mrs. Ellison had gone to bed, then waiting for the older woman to fall asleep. The village quiet, only the sound of the church clock striking the hour. Grace standing in her doorway to be sure no one was watching, and then slipping across the street. Emma, answering her door, because Dudlington was a village where she knew everyone and feared no one. And Grace standing there, tears in her eyes, saying she couldn't sleep, that they had to make up their quarrel then and there. Then coaxing, urging Emma to come to her house, where they could talk without disturbing Mrs. Ellison. And Emma, vulnerable and easily led, following her across the street and into the house, the door shutting behind her…
He wondered if Hensley had been standing at his own darkened window, watching Emma in her room pacing the floor, his field glasses offering him a clear view of her face as she moved back and forth across his line of sight. And then, tired, he put up the glasses and went back to his bed, Emma's light still burning. Unaware that in five minutes- ten-Emma would be lured to her death.
If this was true-any of it-then why had Grace or anyone else shot Hensley with an arrow? Why stir up the past by reminding people of Emma and the suspicion that she was buried in Frith's Wood?
What had happened that had forced Grace Letteridge to act?
25
The rain had been swept away by first light, the wind heralding clearing and colder weather. Rutledge went down to the kitchen and blew the fire into life to heat his shaving water. Hamish said, 'The men shaved in the trenches in cold water.' 'Yes, well, our gas masks had to fit smoothly. I'm not in France now.' 'You havena' thought of Westmorland for some time.' The voice in his head had a hard edge this morning, turning from one harrying to another. But it was true, he hadn't. 'Hostages to fortune,' he said aloud, taking the kettle upstairs with him. He knew himself, he was the sort of man who would have been happier settled into a good marriage, with children coming in a few years. If the war had never happened, if he'd married Jean in 1914, he might already have a child of three clinging to his hands or asleep on his knee, and another due in the spring. A very different world, that.
Instead he'd gone to France, had fought in the trenches for four horrific years, and then come home damaged by what he'd seen and what he'd done. He shuddered to think how a child might view Hamish. Children were quick to grasp the subtleties of emotions around them, to see through evasions and quickly identify prevarication. He
