A Game of Fear: A Novel (Inspector Ian Rutledge #24)(10)

And so he followed her, and they started back through the house to the sitting room. Their footsteps echoed in the passages and on the stairs, and as Lady Benton started to open the door that linked the newer rooms with the other part of the house, they could hear voices on the other side.

“Tours,” she said, despair in her voice, her hand still on the knob. “I’d forgot. We book small private tours on the days we’re closed to the public. There’s one this morning.” She turned to Rutledge. “We’ll have to wait. They will be staring if I come through. Word has got around, I expect.”

“We can wait,” he said, and walked to the windows in the small lobby where the stairs debouched. There was an outer door here as well, the upper half glazed rather than paneled. It appeared to open into a walk sheltered by a line of high hedge. “Where does this lead?”

“Around to the stables, which is where I keep a motorcar and my staff leaves their bicycles. There are no horses. I miss riding. Just behind the stables are the tennis courts. No one uses them now.” For a moment she stared out the glass. Then she said, “Am I breaking down? Are my nerves going? The doctor wanted to give me sedatives, to help me sleep. I tossed them into the dustbin. You’re a policeman. Was there a murder?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge answered her gently. “I won’t, not until I’ve looked into your account.” It wasn’t the answer she was hoping to hear. And so he added, “I shouldn’t worry about it too much, if I were you. You believe in what you saw. There must have been something there.”

“I could have kept it to myself—I needn’t have called the Inspector.” Her fingers were twisting together again. “I did what I believed to be my duty. Now when I go into the village, people stare. I’ve taken to doing my marketing elsewhere.” She touched his arm lightly. “Will you promise me something?”

“If I can.”

“If—if you should discover that what I saw was only a figment of my imagination—or, well, a dream—will you tell me first? Before you speak to Inspector Hamilton or to London?” She lifted her chin, making the best of it. “I should like to be prepared, you see.”





3


Rutledge looked down at her drawn face. “I can’t promise. But I will do my best.”

“Yes. I understand. Thank you.” She turned. “I believe the tour has moved on. If you will excuse me, I must see that all is well in the café and elsewhere. Can you find your way out? Or if you wish, you have the run of the house. If there are questions, ask anyone. There is nothing to hide.”

Rutledge thanked her, and then, rather than go through the house again, he let himself out the unlatched door and walked down to the stable block. It was not large, for there was a separate carriage house with its apartment above for the coachman. They were locked, and from what he could tell they hadn’t been tampered with. That meant the barns for the farm stock were somewhere else. He found Lady Benton’s motorcar in a small shed that had been erected expressly for it between stable and carriage house. There was fencing, with a gate, that separated the buildings from the farm lane that gave access to them. It was closed at present. Across the lane there was another fence, but as far as he could tell, the pasture was empty. That brought up another question—who ran the farms that supported the estate?

He glimpsed the tennis courts—two of them—noting that there were no nets, and weeds were beginning to push their way up through the grass.

The kitchen was in this wing of the house, facing the stables. There was a kitchen garden with a cutting garden just beyond.

He circled the house, counting six other doors, not including the one through which he’d entered the house or the one that he’d used just now to leave it. One of the six was the pair of long doors opening into the terrace below Lady Benton’s bedroom. Nine in all, counting the kitchen. Not unusual in large old estates when dozens of servants came and went from the kitchen and the gardens, while the owners and their families and guests were free to use any door they chose. But this house, with only one person in residence, was vulnerable. The locks, as far as he could see, were a generation old. Anyone could find a way inside, and hide in rarely used rooms or closets and attics.

When the visitors left, he would have to come back and explore more thoroughly.

He’d deliberately ended his search at the terrace and the private garden where the events of Friday night, whatever they might have been, had occurred. He’d come through the hedge and the black iron gate that kept out trespassers, then stopped to consider the expanse of grassy lawn, the two flower borders running down each side, and the cupid fountain in the center. It seemed a little larger than it had from Lady Benton’s windows. After a moment or two he walked out onto the lawn, moving toward the fountain and the bed of pink hyacinths. And there he turned to look up at the windows of the east front.

Remembering something Lady Benton had told him—that she and her husband often slept at night with the curtains open—he realized that on that particular floor, not open to the public, in all the windows, the drapes were drawn across. Save for hers.

A man who had just killed might look at the house to see if he’d been watched. And his gaze would be drawn at once to the window where the drapes were open. Where, in a dark room, someone might be standing, invisible to him on the ground.