The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (60 page)

“He was troubled with gout and often ill-tempered,” the bookseller answered. “But catch him in good spirits, and he could tell sea-stories that were marvellous to hear.”

Rutledge thanked Hillier, and walked on towards the harbour. He found the water stairs and the small boat tied up just under them. Jesse was nowhere to be seen. Rutledge turned to look back at the town, just as a man popped out of the pub on the corner, rolling down in his direction, a wide grin on his unshaven face.

“Morning,” he said. “Going sommers?”

“I’d like to hire your boat for an hour or so. Are you willing?”

“I come with the boat,” he said, close enough now for Rutledge to smell the gin on his breath. He began to cast off, gestured to Rutledge to step aboard, and sat down to pick up the heavy oak oars.

“Where to?”

“The house you can hardly see behind the trees over there.”

“The clinic that was? Why do you want to go there? Not much to see, now.”

“Nevertheless …”

Nodding, Jesse moved out of the shelter of the water stairs, pulled into the current, turned smartly, and headed upstream. “We’re against the tide,” he said. “It will cost you more to go up than to come down.”

“I understand.”

It was cold down here on the water, wind sweeping down the chute between the high ridge on which Dartmouth sprawled, and the lower one on the opposite bank. In the distance he could hear a train whistle, and, soon after, the white plumes of a steam engine could be seen coming into Kingswear. As they reached mid-harbour, Rutledge buttoned his coat up to his collar against the bite of the January air. But Jesse, in shirt sleeves, seemed not to feel the cold, plying his oars and glancing over his shoulder from time to time to take stock of any other river traffic that morning. A quarter of an hour later, Jesse drew up by what had once been a fine private landing, rotting now and slippery with moss.

“Going to explore, are you? Watch where you step or I’ll be fishing you out of the river.”

As he clambered out on what was left of the private landing, he saw that it would be precarious at best to make his way across the broken boards. Moving gingerly, he finally gained the tree-line and stepped ashore. The trees had grown unhindered for fifteen years or more, he thought. He needed an axe really, to fight his way through the undergrowth that blocked any semblance of a path.

Eventually, he’d made it to the garden beyond – itself a thicket of dead plants, weeds, and vines. Above it was a terrace, and he climbed the broad steps to the long French doors that let into the house. To his surprise, one of them was unlocked, and after the briefest hesitation, he went inside.

It was out of the wind, but the house was cold, only in a different way: unused, unheated, winter seeping into the very bricks. The room in which he found himself had once been beautiful, with a pale green paper on the walls – a pattern of Chinese figures in blues and reds and deep gold, sitting in a formal garden. But it was stained now, and torn in places. A temporary wall, still there, divided the spacious room in half. If there had been any of the original furniture here, it had certainly now gone.

He made his way to the door, found himself in a passage, and began to explore. The stairs had been battered and bruised by the comings and goings of staff and patients, and the only furniture he saw were the remnants of cots in a few rooms, mostly with legs missing or springs broken. Not worth removing, he thought, when the clinic was closed. He wondered if Sir John had been aware of the state of the house, or didn’t care. He walked though the rooms, noting how they had been used, and how they had been left. A broken window on the ground floor had allowed leaves and rain to ruin the floorboards, and a desk in what must have been Matron’s office lay on its side, a nest of mice or squirrels in one half-opened drawer.

He found nothing of interest – except for signs that someone had been here before him, footprints in the dust, a bed of worn blankets and quilts by the coal stove in the kitchen, and indications that someone had also cooked there; a dented teapot still on the cast-iron top, and a saucepan on the floor.

Who had been in this house? A vagrant, looking for shelter against the winter cold and happening on it quite by accident; or someone who had come to this house because he knew it was there? A former patient? Or someone else?

Hamish said, “Look at the dust.”

And he lit a match, studying the pattern of footprints hardly visible in the pale light coming through the dirty window panes.

The person who had been here had left his mark. Two shoes, one dragging a little as if the ankle didn’t bend properly. And the small round ferrule of a walking stick. Or a lame man’s cane.

Rutledge knelt there considering the prints, hearing again Mrs Gravely’s description of how Sir John’s December caller had sounded coming up the walk to the door. These prints were not recent. He would swear to that. Fresh dust had settled over them, almost obliterating them in places.

He went back through the house looking for something, anything, that might be a clue to the interloper.

All he found was a crushed packet that once held cigarettes. It had been tossed into the coal stove and forgotten. He smoothed it out as best he could and saw that it was an Australian brand.

Giving it up, he went back to the door on to the terrace and stepped out, shutting it behind him.

Jesse was still sitting in his boat, smoking a cigarette of his own.

“Where can I buy Australian cigarettes?” Rutledge asked the man.

“Portsmouth, at a guess. London. Not here. No call for them here. Why? Develop a taste for them in the war, did you?”

“No. I found an empty box in the house. Someone had been living there.”

Jesse seemed not to be too surprised. “Men out of work in this weather take what shelter they can find. I came on one asleep in my boat a year back. Wrapped in a London newspaper for warmth, he was. I bought him a breakfast, and sent him on his way.”

“Any Australians in Dartmouth?”

“Up at the Royal Navy College on the hill, there might be,” Jesse told him, manoeuvring the boat expertly into the stream again. “But they’d be officers, wouldn’t they? Not likely to be breaking into a house.” The ornate red brick college – more like a palace than a school, and completed in 1905 – had seen the present king, George V, attend as a cadet. Jesse bent his back to the oars, grinning. “What do you want with a derelict old house?”

“It’s not what
I
want,” Rutledge said pensively, “but what someone else could very easily wish for.” He turned slightly to look up the reaches of the River Dart, already a broad stream here as it fed into the harbour. “It wasn’t always in disrepair.”

But to kill for it? Hamish wanted to know.

That, Rutledge answered silently, would depend on what Sergeant Gibson discovered in London.

He found a telephone, after Jesse had delivered him back to the old quay in Dartmouth. Watching through the window as the ferry plied the waters between the two towns, he asked for the sergeant and, after a ten minute wait, Gibson came to the telephone.

“The old man, Barnes,” the sergeant began. “He died in a freak accident. Slipped in his tub, and cracked open his head. Foot was swollen with gout at the time. There was some talk because the staff was not in the house when it happened. They’d gone to a wedding in Kingswear. The constable come to investigate thought there was too much water splashed about the bathroom. But the servants were all accounted for; the son predeceased his father, and the daughter was in India. The inquest brought in accidental death.”

“The son was dead?”

“As far as anyone knew. He’d got himself drunk and wandered on to Dartmoor. They never found his body, but his cap was hanging on a ledge, half way down an abandoned mine shaft. A shoe was found at the edge. When the father was told, he cursed himself for disinheriting the boy. He was certain it was suicide.”

But was it?

That was years ago, and should have no bearing on a murder in Cambridge in 1920.

“Sometimes memories are long,” Hamish reminded him.

And Hamish should know, Rutledge thought grimly, for the Scots were nothing if not fanatical about revenge and blood feuds.

“Who owns the property at present?” he asked Gibson.

“It came to Sir John when his wife died.”

Just as he’d thought.

He left Dartmouth for the long drive back to Mumford. Once there he located the offices of Molton, Briggs, and Harman, who were, according to the rector, Mr Harris, solicitors to Sir John Middleton.

Mr Briggs, elderly and peering over the thick lenses of his glasses, said, “The police informed us of Sir John’s death. Very sad. Very sad.”

“Since he had no children, I need to know who stands to inherit his property?”

“Now that’s very interesting,” Briggs said, clearing his throat. “He has left the cottage in Mumford to Mrs Gravely, for long years of devoted service.” Taking off his glasses he stared at them as if expecting them to speak. “I doubt he expected to see her inherit so soon.” Putting them back on his nose, he said, “There is a bequest to the church, as you’d expect, and certain other charges.”

“And the property in Dartmouth? How is that left?”

“The one formerly known as Trafalgar? It was to go to a cousin of his first wife, but she died of her appendix. He made no decision after that. Until last December, that is, when he came in to tell me that the house was to go to the son of his late wife’s brother.”

“The brother died on Dartmoor. Years ago. After being disinherited.”

“The brother fled to Australia for charges of theft. The death on Dartmoor was staged to save the family the disgrace.”

“The brother was a convict?” Rutledge asked, surprised. Even Sergeant Gibson had failed to uncover that information.

“Yes. He gave the police a false name. His father went to Dartmoor and staged his son’s death. To spare the then Lady Middleton. So Sir John told us in December.”

“Then the son couldn’t have returned to kill the father.”

“The fall in the bathroom? He was drunk. He stayed drunk much of the time.”

“Was Sir John quite certain this was his brother-in-law’s son?”

“Yes, he had the proper credentials. It’s quite in order.”

And the son had gone to Dartmouth and slept in the house that would be his. Had he then decided to hasten that day? Or had he been given permission to begin repairs on the house?

Mr Briggs didn’t know. “I was told to make the necessary changes to Sir John’s will. I was not privy to any other arrangements between the two.”

The house would require hundreds – thousands – of pounds to make it habitable again, let alone to restore it. The young Barnes, with his wooden foot, had been there and seen what was needed.

Had he come back, when he realized that the bequest was an empty promise and that the house would fall down around his ears, long before Sir John died a natural death?

“Where can I find this young Barnes?”

“I was given an address in London. I was told that he could be reached through it.”

Briggs fiddled with the papers in front of him, found the one he wanted, and told Rutledge what he needed to know. “I expect it is a residence rather than a hotel,” he added.

But Rutledge recognized the address. It was a small hospital where the mentally disturbed from the war were committed when there was no other course open to a doctor.

Rutledge thanked Briggs, and turned the bonnet of his motorcar towards London.

The street where the hospital stood was not far from St Paul’s Cathedral. Two adjoining houses had been combined to form a single dwelling, and the main door was guarded by an orderly with great moustaches. Rutledge showed his identification, and was admitted. Reception was a narrow room with a long desk against one wall. Another orderly sat there with a book in front of him. He looked up as Rutledge entered.

“Sir?” he said, rising to stop Rutledge’s advance. “Are you looking for someone?”

“Yes. A man by the name of Barnes. He was in the war, has a wooden foot. I expect he’s a patient here.”

“Barnes?” The orderly frowned. “We don’t have a patient named Barnes. There’s a Doctor Barnes. Surgeon. He lost his foot in the Near East.”

Surprised, Rutledge said, “Is he Australian?”

“He is indeed.”

“I’d like to speak to him, if I may.”

The orderly consulted his book. “He’s just finished surgery, I believe. He should be in his office shortly.”

Rutledge was shown to a door where a middle-aged nursing sister escorted him the rest of the way, to an office behind a barred door.

“We must be careful with our patients,” she said. “Some of them are very confused about where they are and why they are here. It’s sad, really,” she went on. “They’re so young, most of them.”

“What sort of surgery does Dr Barnes do?” he asked as she showed him into the drab little room.

“Today he was removing a bullet pressing on the brain of one of the men in our charge. Very delicate. But it had to be done, if he’s to have any hope of living a normal life. The question is, will he ever live a normal life, given his confusion.”

She sounded tired and dispirited. He thanked her, and sat down in the chair in front of the desk, prepared to wait.

When Dr Barnes finally entered the office, he wasn’t what Rutledge had anticipated. Young, fair, intense, he seemed to fill the room with his presence.

Rutledge rose.

“What brings Scotland Yard to Mercy Hospital?” he asked, going around the desk and taking the chair behind it.

“I’m afraid I’ve come to give you bad news. Your uncle is dead.”

The tired face changed. “Sir John? What happened? He was healthy enough when I saw him last.”

“Someone came into the house when Mrs Gravely was in Mumford and killed him.”

The shock was real. “Dear God!”

“It appears you’ll be inheriting Trafalgar sooner than you expected.”

Dr Barnes made an impatient gesture. “He was kind enough to leave it to me. I don’t think he wanted it, come to that. But he could have said no. Still, I have no time now to restore it. Or even think of restoring it.” He made a face. “Nor the money, for that matter. I’m needed here, anyway. For the time being. Well, to be honest, for some time to come.”