The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

the doctor lived — according to the nameplates on the small white gates to both properties.

Hamish said, “ ’Ware.” And it was a warning well taken.

Knocking on the surgery door, Rutledge scanned the house down the street. He could just see a small woman wrapped in a coat and headscarf, standing in the back garden, staring at the bare fruit trees and withered beds as if her wishing could bring them into bloom again. The doctor’s wife? That told him what he needed to know.

The nurse who admitted Rutledge was plump and motherly, calling him dearie, asking him to wait in the passage while she spoke with the doctor. “His first patients of the day are already in the front room. It’s better if you come directly back to the office.”

“It’s about his report on the post-mortem of Sir John.”

“He has already mailed it to the Yard,” she said. “I took it to the post myself.”

Rutledge gave her his best smile. “Yes, I’ve been in Dartmouth. It hasn’t caught up with me yet.”

She nodded and bustled off to tell the doctor that Rutledge was waiting.

Dr Taylor received him almost at once, saying, “Mrs Dunne tells me you haven’t seen the post-mortem results.” He sorted through some files on his desk and retrieved a sheet of paper. “My copy,” he added, passing it across the desk to Rutledge. “You’re welcome to read it.”

Rutledge took the sheet, scanning it quickly. “Yes. Everything seems to be in order,” he said, glancing up in time to see the tension around Dr Taylor’s eyes ease a little. “Two blows, one to the back of the head and the second to the face. Weapon possibly a cane.” He handed the report to Taylor. “There’s one minor detail to clear up before the inquest. Mrs Gravely told me that Sir John spoke to her as she was coming into the study. Was that possible, do you think?”

“I doubt if he was coherent,” Taylor said easily. “A grunt. A groan. But not words as such.”

“She also reported that he spoke to you. And that you answered him, just before he died.”

Taylor frowned. “I thought he was asking if the old dog was still alive. I told him it was dead. I wasn’t sure, you understand. But I thought if that was what he was trying to say, I’d ease his mind.”

He had just contradicted himself.

“I don’t think that the dog’s death was something that would comfort him.”

Taylor shrugged. “I wasn’t in a position to consider my answer. As I told you, he wasn’t coherent. I did my best in the circumstances.”

“Actually, I think he was probably asking if you’d use the Middleton Host to save the old dog. And you refused. You had to, because Mrs Gravely was standing there in the doorway.”

Taylor flushed. “What host?”

“He must have told you at one time or another. A medical man? That a king had found it useless and thrown it in a dung heap. But then Eleanor of Castile was probably beyond help by the time the reliquary reached her. She died anyway. King Edward loved his wife. Passionately. Everywhere her body rested the night on the long journey south to London, he built a shrine. The wonder was, he didn’t smash the relic. But I expect he felt that the dung heap was a more fitting end for it. A fake, a sham.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Inspector. And there are patients waiting.”

“It was a story that must have touched Sir John. He hadn’t been able to save either of his wives, had he? The host was, after all, no more than a pretty fraud.”

The doctor’s face changed. “That’s an assumption that neither you nor I can make. Sir John was a soldier, a sceptic; hardly one to take seriously legends about relics and miracles. Where is this taking us?”

“I’m trying,” Rutledge returned blandly, “to establish whether or not Sir John loved Elizabeth Middleton as deeply as — for instance — you must love your wife. Because it was for her you did what you did. Not the patients out there in the waiting room.” It was a guess, but it struck home.

Taylor opened his mouth, then shut it again.

“Why did you put the dog out? Did it attack you? If I asked you to have another doctor look at your ankles or legs, would he find breaks in the skin to indicate you’d been bitten? Even if it has begun to heal, the marks must still be there. Would you agree to such an examination?”

Taylor rose from behind the desk. “Yes, all right, the dog was dying when I got there. Sir John was kneeling on the floor beside it when I opened the door and called to him. He told me he was in the study, and to come quickly. Still, the damned dog growled at me and got to its feet as I struck the first blow. I had to get rid of it because Sir John was still alive and I needed to hit him again. The cold finished it off, I expect. It’s breathing was shallow, laboured.” He moved to the hearth. “My wife has just been diagnosed with colon cancer. I’d already asked Sir John if I could borrow the reliquary. To give her a chance. He told me it had done nothing for his wife, dying of childbed fever. But I didn’t care. I was ready to try anything. I just wanted to try. But he was afraid that, if my wife recovered on her own, Mumford would be swamped with the desperate, the hopeless, believers in miracles. He said it would be wrong. Time was running out, and yet that afternoon he begged me to do something for his dog. It was obscene, I tell you.”

He reached down, his fingers closing over the handle of the fire tongs. Lifting his voice, he shouted, “No, no — you’re wrong! Put them down, for God’s sake.”

And, before Rutledge could stop him, he raised the tongs and brought them down on his own head, the blow carefully calculated to break the skin but not knock him down. And as blood ran down his face, he dropped the tongs and cried out, “Oh, God, someone help me … Mrs Dunne … he’s run mad.”

And in a swift angry voice that only reached Rutledge’s ears, Taylor said, “She’s ill, I tell you. I won’t be taken away when she needs me. Not by you, not by anyone.”

He rushed at Rutledge, grappling with him.

The door burst open, Mrs Dunne flying to the doctor’s aid, pulling at Rutledge’s shoulders, calling out for him to stop.

Rutledge had no choice. He swung her around, and she went down, tripping over the chair he’d been sitting in. He turned towards the hearth, to retrieve the fire tongs as Taylor reeled against the far wall, calling, “Stop him — ”

Mrs Dunne, scrambling to her feet, must have thought Rutledge was about to use the tongs again, and she threw herself at him, carrying him backward against the hearth, stumbling over the fire screen.

Her screams had brought patients from the waiting room, pushing their way through the door, faces anxious and frightened as they took in the carnage, drawing the same conclusions that Mrs Dunne had leapt to. A woman in a dark green coat gasped and went to the doctor’s aid, and he leaned heavily against her shoulder. Two men put themselves between Rutledge and his perceived victim, one of them quickly retrieving the fire tongs from where they’d fallen, as if afraid Rutledge could still reach them.

It was all Rutledge could do to catch Mrs Dunne’s pummelling fists and force her arms to her sides, so that he could retrieve the situation before it got completely out of hand. Hamish in the back of his mind was warning him again, and there was no time to answer.

In a voice used to command on a battlefield, he said, “You — the one in the greatcoat — find Constable Forrest and bring him here at once.”

Taylor said, stricken, “He’s trying to arrest me … for murder … I’ve done nothing wrong, don’t let him lie to you. For God’s sake!”

They knew Taylor. Rutledge was a stranger. The man in the greatcoat hesitated.

The doctor swayed on his feet. “I think I’d better sit down.” The woman helped him to a chair, and his knees nearly buckled under him.

She said, “I’ll find your wife.”

He gripped her arm. “No. I don’t want to worry her.” Taylor took out his handkerchief to mop the blood from his face. “Just get him out of my office, if you will.”

Rutledge crossed the room, and the man with the tongs raised them without thinking, as if expecting Rutledge to attack him. But he went to the door and closed it.

“You’ll listen to me, then. I’m Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard.” He held up his card for all of them to see. “I’ve just charged Dr Taylor with the murder of Sir John Middleton. As for those tongs, he himself wielded them, I never touched them, or him.”

“I think you’d better leave,” Mrs Dunne snapped. “He’s a good man, a doctor.”

“Is he? I intend to order Sir John’s dog exhumed. I expect to find shreds of cloth in his teeth.” Hamish was