'Murder often is, Rector.'
They walked together from the kitchen to the door. Rutledge said, 'Whoever killed Harold Quarles, he or she may come to you for comfort of a sort. In a roundabout way, perhaps, but you'll sense when something is wrong. Be careful, then, will you? It's likely that this person could kill again.' He saw once more the winged body in the shadows of the tithe barn's roof. Murder hadn't satisfied the killer-whoever it was had needed to wreak his anger on the dead as well. But in the cold light of day, as powerful emotions drained away, there could be a need to justify them, to feel that what had been done was deserved.
'I would hate to think that anyone I knew might be capable of murder.' The rector had looked away, evading Rutledge's eyes.
'Let us hope it was not one of your flock. But the fact remains that someone was capable of it. Or Quarles would still be alive, and you'd be finishing your breakfast in peace.'
Heller stopped at the door. 'I don't believe in judging, Inspector. So that I myself need not fear judging.'
With that remark, the rector swung the door shut.
Hamish said, 'A verra' fine sentiment. But no' the whole truth.'
Rutledge was halfway down the rectory path when he saw a man crossing the churchyard toward the north door, carrying a sheaf of papers under his arm. The man looked up, and for a moment their eyes met. Then he turned away and stepped inside the church. But there was something in that glance-even at the distance between the two men-that held more than curiosity about a stranger. It had lasted long enough to be personal, as if weighing up an adversary.
Rutledge changed course as he went through the gate that separated the churchyard from the rectory. As he reached the porch and opened the door, he could hear music pouring from the church organ, the opening notes of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. It was triumphant and sure, the instrument responding to the touch of trained hands. The great pipes sent their echoes through the sanctuary, filling it with sound, and the acoustics were perfect for such an emotional piece.
Hamish said, 'His thoughts may ha' been elsewhere. He came to practice.'
'I'd swear he knows why I'm here in Cambury. Not many people do. Yet.'
'Ye ken, he must ha' seen you with yon inspector. And he's feeling guilty for anither reason.'
Rutledge considered that for a moment, half of his mind on the music as it seemed to wrap around him there in the doorway. He hadn't mistaken that brief challenge. And he was certain the man knew Rutledge had taken it up and come as far as the church door.
Indeed, as he turned to go, he could feel the organist watching him in the small mirror set above the keys.
Let him wonder why the encounter had ended here. Or worry.
Outside, Rutledge stopped by the church board to see the name of the player. It was the third line down. One Michael Brunswick, and Mrs. Quarles had mentioned his name only four hours earlier.
10
It was past one o'clock when Rutledge walked into the police station. Padgett was on the point of leaving, and he frowned as Rut- ledge met him in the passage.
'I thought you might be sleeping still. I can tell you, I'd have stayed in my own bed if I'd been given the choice.'
Rutledge said, 'I went to speak to the rector.'
Padgett's tone had an edge. 'And was he any help in our inquiries?'
'Did you expect him to help?'
There was a twitch in Padgett's jaw. 'Where's your motorcar? Still at The Unicorn? Constable Jenkins hasn't returned with mine.'
As Padgett followed Rutledge across the High Street, he went on. 'I've had time to think. I was all for blaming Mrs. Quarles. But I was wrong. This killing is most likely connected with London in some fashion. That's where Quarles lived and did business. We're wasting our time at Hallowfields.'
'If that's true, why wasn't he killed in London?'
'Too obvious. There, the first people the police will want to speak to are his clients and business associates. You know the drill. But kill him in Somerset, and the police are going to look at his neighbors here, never thinking about London.'
Rutledge smiled. 'Which is precisely what someone here in Cam- bury may have been counting on-that we will hare off to London. Someone at Hallowfields may point us in the right direction.'
Padgett had no answer to that.
Hamish said, 'He wants you away to London. Ye ken, he'd like naething better than to find the killer himsel'.'
But as the other inspector climbed into the motorcar, Rutledge found himself thinking that Padgett had other reasons to want to see the back of Scotland Yard.
They drove in uneasy silence back to Hallowfields.
Mrs. Downing summoned the indoor staff to her sitting room off the passage across from the kitchen, and they stood in front of the policemen in a ragged row, clearly uneasy. Rutledge counted them. The cook, her scullery maid, three upstairs maids and a footman, the boot boy, and the chauffeur.
All of them denied any knowledge of where Mr. Quarles had gone last evening. He had not called for the motorcar, nor had he taken it out himself. Aside from the message to the kitchen that he wouldn't be dining at home, no one had seen him after five o'clock.
Mrs. Blount, the cook, was a thin woman with graying hair. She added, 'I was told not to expect Mr. Quarles for dinner, and that was that. It's not for me to question his comings and goings.'
'Who gave you that message? Did you speak to Mr. Quarles yourself, or to someone else?'
'I believe it must have been Mrs. Quarles,' Downing, the housekeeper, answered after no one else spoke up.
Lily, the youngest of the maids, softly cleared her throat. 'I was coming to clear away the tea things when I heard him tell someone in the passage that he was dining out.'
'Did you see who it was he was speaking to?'
'No, sir, I didn't.'
'It was me he told.' The woman standing behind the others spoke up.
'And you are…'
'My name is Betty, sir.' There was strain in her face. Rutledge put her age at forty, her pale hair and pale eyebrows giving her a look of someone drained of life, enduring all the blows that came her way with patient acceptance, as if she knew all too well that she counted for little in the scheme of things. 'I look after Mr. Quarles when he's to home.' Her accent wasn't Somerset. Rutledge thought it might be East Anglian. A stranger among strangers.
'And no' likely to pry,' Hamish put in. 'Or gossip with the ithers.'
'No one saw him leave?'
Downing said repressively, 'We have our duties, Inspector, we don't hang about looking out the windows to see what our betters are up to.'
'We was that busy in the kitchens,' the cook added, as if excusing the staff. 'There was no one in the front of the house just then. Mrs. Quarles had asked for a tray to be brought up, and Mr. Archer was taking his dinner alone in the dining room.'
'Did any of you hear anything in the night? Dogs barking, a motorcar on the drive, shouting…'
They hadn't, shuffling a little as they denied any knowledge of what had happened.
Betty said, 'Please, sir. I've been told Mr. Quarles is dead. Mrs. Quarles called us all together to say so. No one will tell me anything else.'
'I'm afraid it's true,' Rutledge answered her. 'Someone killed him last night.'
He could see the horror reflected in every face, and in Betty's eyes, a welling of tears that were quickly
