“A mare? No, I haven’t.”
“One of the villages upstream reported her missing. Jumped the pasture fence. She’s a valuable beast, and I was asked to keep an eye out for her.”
“When did she go missing?” Rutledge asked quickly.
“The owner’s not sure. He went to St. Albans for a few days, and when he came back, she was gone. He doesn’t believe she got this far, but he sent word by the ironmonger’s son, who went to the dentist in Tilbury.” He gestured to the dusty, unmade surface of the road. “No tracks that the boy could pick up on his way home, and none I’ve seen so far. But I said I’d look.”
A pretense of doing his duty? Or was there more to this? Had he been asked to look for Russell? Rutledge was nearly certain that Matron wouldn’t have contacted the police, but the owner of the Trusty might well have wanted his pound of flesh. It was even possible Nelson was keeping a watch on the troublesome Londoner’s movements for someone.
Testing the waters, Rutledge said, “How well do you know Timothy Jessup? He was Ben Willet’s uncle, I’m told.”
“Jessup? You don’t want to tangle with that one,” Nelson said, alarm in his face. “A nasty piece of work. Never in any trouble with the law, you understand, and I thank God for that. All the same, nobody ever crosses him.”
Rutledge heard overtones in the man’s voice that made him wonder if Jessup and not Sandy Barber was the leader of the smugglers.
“How well did he get on with Ben?”
“I wouldn’t say they were close. Abigail has always been Jessup’s favorite. And he was against Ben going into service in Thetford. I overheard them quarreling once. Ben was trying to explain that he wasn’t cut out to be a fisherman. Jessup wanted to know if he thought he was better than his father, and Ben said it wasn’t that. He’d rather blacken another man’s boots in a city than gut fish here in Furnham. Jessup knocked him down then and told him to stop daydreaming and get on with the life he was born to lead. And Ben said, ‘You don’t want anyone to leave, that’s all. For fear he’ll talk about things he shouldn’t.’ ”
“What things?”
Nelson said uneasily, “It was just talk. A boy’s talk. And he’d been up to River’s Edge a time or two. He’d seen a different way of life.”
“The smuggling,” Hamish said. “Yon uncle was afraid the lad would tell someone.”
But was it only that? Had Furnham corrupted its only officer of the law just to protect a few bottles of brandy, a little tobacco, and whatever other small luxuries these men had brought in on their backs? The entire village seemed to be involved in the secret, not just a handful of rogue fishermen.
Constable Nelson was preparing to mount his bicycle again. “Someone told me last year that Ned Willet had written a book and it was published in France. I doubt Ned could put two words together on a page, much less a book. But I didn’t believe that. Not for a minute.”
“Why not?” Rutledge asked, curious.
“I never knew anyone who wrote a book. And I’m not likely to. Not anyone from Furnham.”
And he was gone, pedaling along the road, seemingly the model of a village constable. Sober and responsible until the next bottle of French brandy was left outside his door. It was easy to see where his loyalties might lie.
France.
Rutledge was letting out the clutch, preparing to drive on, when the single word stopped him.
Ned Willet.
What was Ben Willet’s full name?
Was it possible that on one of the runs to France, someone had asked Jessup if the old man had written a book? Jessup would have found that as amusing as the constable had. And on his next run, had the Frenchman produced such a book, to have the last laugh?
He reversed and turned into the road leading to the Rectory. How much did the rector know about what was happening in his own parish? Or was he as much Jessup’s creature as Constable Nelson was?
Mr. Morrison was sitting in his study-cum-parlor when Rutledge stopped in the short drive. He got up and met his visitor at the door before he could knock.
“Come in, Inspector. I’m sick of my own company.”
The parlor was simply furnished, but a lovely old desk took pride of place, and Morrison saw Rutledge looking at it.
“My father’s,” he said. “The only thing of his that I possess, actually. I was trying to think of a suitable subject for my next sermon.” He gestured to a shelf behind the desk. Rutledge could see that there were at least twenty collections of sermons there, bound in leather. He wondered if these were a relic of Morrison’s father as well. “One would think,” he went on, “that every possible permutation of religious topics had been covered already. But one soldiers on, searching for inspiration.”
Rutledge smiled. “In point of fact, it’s a book that’s brought me here.”
“Sermons?” Morrison asked blankly, staring from the shelf to Rutledge’s face.
“Actually, no. Do you have the old christening records for the church?”
“St. Edward’s? As a matter of fact, we do, going back to the early 1800s. I can search for whatever you need to know. But it will take time. In some cases the ink is faded or the writing is illegible. My predecessors were not always thinking about posterity when they made their notations.”
“What I’m after isn’t that old. I’d like to know Ben Willet’s full name. Abigail Barber hasn’t been told yet that he’s dead. And I don’t care to distress her at this stage.”
“Ben’s name? I can answer your question without consulting the records. Edward Benjamin Stephen Willet. He was named for his father, his grandfather, and an uncle. He was called Ben to prevent any confusion.” Morrison smiled ruefully. “I was entering Ned’s death, and looked up Ben while I was about it. He’d have been twenty-eight in September.”
“Edward Willet. Yes, he’d have used that name. Honoring himself and his father,” Rutledge said after a moment.
“You’re releasing the body? Is that why you’re interested? For the-er-forms?”
“Actually I was wondering what name Willet would have used if he’d published a book in France.”
“Willet? Good God, no, you’re mistaken on that score. I heard the story going round about Ned. I’m not sure who started it. Jessup, perhaps, or one of the others. I don’t often hear gossip, but there was talk in one of the shops one day. They were laughing, they had forgot I was there.”
“You don’t have a copy of the book they spoke of?”
“Hardly. It doesn’t exist. Or at least I don’t believe it does.”
“Then how did such a tale start?” When Morrison looked away, as if trying to choose his words, Rutledge added, “You needn’t worry. I know about the smuggling. It’s not what brought me here, and if it has no bearing on murder, I intend to ignore it.”
“Very wise of you,” Morrison agreed. “I shut my eyes as well. One can’t help but notice that Constable Nelson drinks himself into a stupor on brandy one can’t purchase at The Rowing Boat. Poor man, he isn’t cut out to be a policeman. He came here just now, asking if I’d seen a lost horse. I never know whether these forays of his into duty are real or a way of salving his conscience. There was a band of Gypsies said to be camping out in the marshes, and before that a stolen bicycle. Um. Where was I?”
“Smuggling.”
“Yes, I was going to add that the veil Abigail wore at her wedding was French lace, handed down from her mother. And Ned, God rest his soul, Ned used to do the runs to France before the war. He took Ben with him once or twice when the boy was fifteen. While I sat with Ned after he injured his leg, he told me the story. How Ben was seasick when a storm blew up and they had to put into a different French port. He was so ill he was taken in by a French family, didn’t know a word they were saying to him, but he walked about in a daze for weeks afterward, enamored of the daughter of the house. He got over it, of course, at that age boys generally do.”
But had he?
Rutledge remembered the copybook in a box in the Laughtons’ attic, the description of the woman in CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Was she based on the girl Ben believed he’d fallen in love with as a boy?
