“You do.”
Barber turned on his patrons. “I’m leaving. If one word of what happened just now goes beyond this room, you’ll have me to answer to. Am I understood?”
There were hasty nods of agreement, and then Barber said to Rutledge, “Come with me.”
From The Rowing Boat they went left, and Rutledge soon found himself in a muddy lane that led north from the High Street past a row of elderly cottages. The one at the far end was barely larger than its neighbors, and here Barber turned up the walk.
“You’ll remember your word,” Barber demanded before reaching out to lift the latch and swing the door wide. Rutledge nodded.
The front room was surprisingly comfortable. The furnishings were old but well polished and upholstered in a faded dark red. A thin carpet with arabesques in deep shades of blue, red, and cream covered the floor. It seemed out of place here, somehow, but gave the room an air of worn elegance, and Rutledge wondered if it had come from River’s Edge. Sunlight spilled across it to touch the iron foot of a plant stand where the fronds of a luxuriant fern overhung a dark blue fired clay pot. To Rutledge’s eyes, it appeared to be French.
Barber left Rutledge standing there and went to fetch his wife.
After several minutes he returned accompanied by a small, plump woman with a pretty face, although she was pale and there were dark pockets beneath her green eyes, as if she hadn’t slept well in a very long time.
“Mr. Rutledge, I’ve told Abigail that you’re trying to find anyone connected with the family that lived at River’s Edge.”
“I hardly knew them,” she said apologetically. “I don’t know why you should wish to see me.”
“I’m casting at straws,” he told her, smiling, and she appeared to relax a little. “Did you know the family? Mr. Russell or his mother?”
“I knew them if I saw them in the shops, ’course I did. But not to speak to. They didn’t come into Furnham all that often.”
“How would you describe them?” he asked. And when she hesitated, he added, “There’s no photograph, as far as I know, of the family members.”
“Oh. Not even in River’s Edge?” Shyly offering him a seat, she asked, “What is this about, then?”
From behind her shoulder, Sandy Barber sent him a fierce frown.
“Alas, the house is closed.” He fell back on his recollection of his father’s methods of dealing with clients. John Rutledge had been a very fine solicitor, and his easy manner had belied his sharp mind. “A legal matter,” he told her. “To do with a certain piece of personal property that has been recovered. We don’t seem to know where to return the item.”
Reassured, she said, “Well, then. Mr. Russell was tall and fair. A friendly enough man. He’d touch his hat to us if he encountered my mother and me on the street or in a shop, and say ‘Ladies’ as he passed by. My mother always said he had good manners. But he wasn’t one to stop and ask after the children if one had been ill, or inquire how my father’s boat had fared after a high wind. Mrs. Russell, now, she would speak to my mother if she met her in a shop. She knew my father; he sometimes would take a choice bit of fish out to Mrs. Broadley, the cook at River’s Edge. ‘That was a fine bit of sole,’ Mrs. Russell would say. ‘Thank Ned for thinking of us.’ Sad that she disappeared the way she did.”
Rutledge caught Barber’s eye. The barkeep had left the impression that the Willet family had had very little to do with the Russell family. “What did local gossip have to say about her disappearance?”
“We thought she’d drowned herself. Well, it was what you’d naturally wonder about, isn’t it? Last seen walking down to the water’s edge?”
“People don’t drown themselves without a reason,” he responded quietly. “Was Mrs. Russell-unhappy?”
“Not precisely unhappy,” Abigail Barber answered, trying to remember. “I do recall my mother saying that she hadn’t seemed like herself in a while, as if something was on her mind. But then the war was coming, wasn’t it, and there was her son and Mr. Fowler, of an age to go.”
“I understand you had brothers about the age of Mr. Russell. Did they ever spend time together-go off on the river together?”
She laughed, her face flushing a becoming pink. “God love you, Mr. Rutledge, I don’t think I’d live long enough to see that day. But Ben had an eye for whatever Mr. Russell was wearing. He longed to be a footman, and someday a gentleman’s gentleman. Once or twice he went up to the house with my father, and he’d come back and say, ‘I wonder how he gets that polish on his shoes,’ or ‘He must have dressed in a bit of a hurry today. The back of his coat wasn’t properly pressed.’ He could mimic their voices too. It came natural to him.”
“Did he indeed? Was he hoping to be taken on as a footman in the Russell household?”
“Oh, no, sir, it wasn’t at all likely. Ben said he’d be best off where he wasn’t known. But what he learned would help him fit in, he said.” She glanced over her shoulder at her husband. “He was a fisherman’s son here. He said he could be anybody somewhere else.”
Ben Willet, so it seemed, was ambitious.
“How did your father take this desire to go into service?”
“He had other sons to go out in the boat with him. That was before the war, of course. Tommy and Joseph never came back from France. But Ben was always his favorite, and I think he was sorry not to have him want to go to sea.”
“Did you know Justin Fowler?”
She shook her head. “He was a cousin or some such, wasn’t he? But I never saw him, that I know of. He didn’t come to Furnham. We put it down to him being more of a snob.”
“Was there bad blood between Russell and Fowler?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
He could hear a weak voice calling from another part of the house.
“My father,” she said, rising quickly. “He’s not well.”
Rutledge rose as well. “One more question. Did Miss Farraday come to the village on occasion?”
Her face hardened. “Oh, yes, I knew who she was. If you want to know, she had an eye for the lads, and no time for the rest of us.”
“Any particular lad?” he asked.
“I saw her once or twice speaking to Ben. But he told me later she hadn’t.”
And then with a hasty excuse, she hurried back to her bedside watch.
Rutledge said, “Thank you. Mrs. Barber was very helpful.”
“Was she?” Barber was urging him toward the door. He lowered his voice. “To my way of thinking you’re no closer to knowing about Ben than you were before. I told you it was no use speaking to my wife.”
“No closer to finding his killer, perhaps.”
Barber said, an edge to his voice, “Then what was that all about?”
“Catching you in several lies.”
“What lies?”
But Rutledge gave him no answer. And they walked in uneasy silence back to where he’d left his motorcar.
R utledge had stayed longer than he’d intended in Essex. He set out for London, and driving out of Furnham, he felt a sense of relief as the village disappeared in his mirror, reduced to a tiny rectangle of glass.
In the war, he’d been blessed with a strong sixth sense, which had kept him alive far more times than he’d deserved. And unexpectedly that had stayed with him as he’d resumed his career.
There was something wrong in Furnham. Not just Ben Willet’s killing, but something else that seemed to reside in the very bricks and mortar of the village. Frances had felt it and had been made uneasy by what she’d called the whispering of the grasses. If there was such a thing as a communal conscience, he thought, it was laden with guilt.
Barber had been defending his wife and her family, and that was understandable. But the easy shift from surly to murderous was not common. The club Rutledge had taken from the man could have been lethal, and the back windows of the pub looked out over the river, offering a swift passage to the sea for an unwanted body. The narrow estuary, with few shallows to trap a corpse, was at a guess not a quarter of a mile away, the current running strong.
What was appalling was Barber’s certainty that his patrons would hold their tongues if he’d killed the
