them.'
7
Bowles was pacing his office by the time Rutledge had received his summons and knocked at the door. 'Where the hell have you been?' the Chief Superintendent demanded angrily. 'I sent for you a good half hour ago! And what's happened to your face?' 'I've just got in from Hertford, sir-' 'I don't give a dance in hell where you've come from. You're leaving for Northamptonshire straightaway. There's trouble in a place called Dudlington in the north of the county. A constable has been shot with a bow and arrow, for God's sake!' 'A bow-' Rutledge began, surprised, but Bowles cut him off. 'He'll live, no thanks to the bastard who did it, leaving him in the weather to die of his wound. It was intentional, this shooting, we're certain of that. And I want whoever it is brought to justice now. Do you understand me? Hens- ley's one of my men, or was, when I was an inspector in Westminster. He went north over my objections, and look where it's landed him.'
Bowles's face was red and blotched with fury. He shoved a file of papers at Rutledge.
'Well, don't stand there, man! I want you to interview Hensley tonight, if those fool doctors will let you, and get to the bottom of this business. They've got him in hospital in Northampton, and the local man says he's just out of surgery.'
It was useless to plead fatigue or other pressing business. Bowles was not a man who cared about anything but getting his own way. And blustering anger was a well- tested method of keeping his subordinates from arguing with him.
Rutledge took the file and left.
Down the passage he ran into Sergeant Gibson in conversation with the man sweeping the floor.
Gibson turned away to speak to Rutledge and said dourly, 'If you want the truth of the matter, Hensley left under a cloud. I never did know the ins and outs of it. A personal matter. He managed to keep it from Old Bowels' ears, I'm told. The Chief Superintendent thought he was the perfect copper. Threw him up to us any number of times.'
Rutledge said dryly, 'Then there'll be no end of suspects for this attempt at murder.'
Gibson caught himself before he grinned. Instead he retorted, 'How the mighty are sometimes brought low.' And with that he was off down the passage, leaving Rutledge standing there. Dudlington was a tiny village of stone-built houses topped with gray slate roofs and a single, slender-towered church, huddled together in the midst of open fields, as if for warmth or comfort. The rich brown of plowed acres and the yellow green of winter pasture lay like a blanket around them, but the houses turned their backs to the land, as if ignoring it, and the barns were a low afterthought, tucked here and there, as if no one had known what to do with them. It lay north of the county town, but Rutledge's first call was in Northampton.
He found his way to the hospital there, only to be turned away because Hensley was still recovering from his surgery.
Rutledge spent what was left of the night in a hotel recommended by an orderly and returned early in the morning.
Over the objections of Matron, he stepped into the ward to see if Hensley was awake.
The constable was in the men's surgical ward, halfway down the row and on the left, watching through half- closed lids as a nursing sister bathed his neighbor in the next bed. There were some six or seven other patients in the long room, two of them snoring heavily, and the others lying quietly, as if in too much pain to move.
Hensley looked up as Rutledge stopped by his bed. 'You a doctor, then?' he asked hoarsely. 'I was told they were giving me something for the pain.'
He was pale, his barrel chest swathed in bandages, his thinning dark hair combed and parted, as if he'd already been tidied by the plump sister who now turned to Rutledge.
'It's not visiting hours for another forty minutes,' she told him crisply. 'I'll have to ask you to leave!'
'I'm here on police business, Sister,' Rutledge said, bringing a chair from another bedside to place it next to Hensley's.
She tried to stare him down and failed. 'You won't tire my patient, then. Or I must ask Matron to throw you out.'
'No, I won't tire him.' Rutledge sat down, dropping his hat on the foot of the bed. 'How are you feeling?' he asked Hensley. It was a rhetorical question, asked as a courtesy.
'Bloody awful,' Hensley complained in a strained voice. The roughly handsome features were drawn, giving them a sharper edge. He made an effort to collect himself. 'I'm told the doctors here saved my life. I can't say. I don't remember much about what happened. Who are you? Not a local man…'
'The name's Rutledge. I've come from London to look into this business.'
'Was it Old Bowels who sent you?' Hensley asked, showing more interest. 'He always did look after his own.' Not waiting for Rutledge to answer, he shifted uncomfortably. 'It's these damned bandages-they stick and pull at the stitches, and there's no help for it. Bad enough what they did to remove the point of the arrow. Aches like the very devil! Between that and the catgut, I've not had a minute's peace since I came out of the ether and found myself in this bed.' He shot a black look in the direction of the sister, but she ignored him.
'You say you remember very little of what's happened. Do you remember where you were when the arrow struck you?'
Even as Rutledge spoke, his mind conjured up an image of the windscreen shattering, and he pushed it back into the shadows.
Hensley looked away. 'I'm told they found me at the southern edge of Frith's Wood. I can't say if that's true or not. If it was, I didn't get there under my own power.'
'Would this wood normally be a part of your regular rounds? Close enough, for example, for you to see or hear something that attracted your attention? Even if now you can't remember going that far?'
Hensley answered him with more intensity than the question merited. 'The last thing I remember was riding my bicycle along the road to Letherington, well to the east of the wood! How could I see or hear anything from there? I draw a blank on the rest of it. They tell me I came to my senses as they were lifting the stretcher into Mr. Staley's wagon. If I did, I couldn't tell you what was said to me.'
'Do you have any idea who might have shot you? Would someone practice archery in the wood, or hunt rabbits there?'
'Not in Frith's Wood, they wouldn't. People avoid it.' He stirred again, trying to find a little comfort. 'At any rate, the trees are too close for true archery or much of anything else.'
'Is there anyone in Dudlington who bears you a grudge?'
Something flitted across Hensley's face, a shadow of guilt, Rutledge thought.
'I don't have any notion what happened, much less why,' he answered just as a patient three beds away began to cough heavily. The sister hurried to his side, and Hensley watched her prop the man higher on his pillows. 'No one goes to that wood. Not if they've got any sense. Least of all me. I can't think why anyone might drag me there. Unless it was to hide what he'd done.'
'He's no' a light man to be hauled about,' Hamish said, stirring, his voice no more than a thread in Rutledge's mind. 'No' in the middle of the day, when people are about.'
'What's wrong with this wood?' Rutledge asked. 'Why do people avoid it?'
'It's haunted by the dead. So it's said.'
'What dead?'
Hensley shut his eyes, as if keeping them open was an effort. 'It's not a police matter. Saxon dead, a long time ago. The story is there was a massacre, raiders herding everyone from the village into the wood and slaughtering them. You haven't been there, you don't know what it's like. Strange. That's all I can say.'
'Who found you?' Rutledge asked.
'I don't know. I asked Dr. Middleton that, and he said I wasn't to talk.' He shifted again. 'They did tell me I lay there bleeding for more than two hours. I was that cold, they thought I was already dead. That was afterward, on the journey down to Northampton. I can recall a little of that.'
'Anyone on your patch who uses a bow?'
