A Game of Fear: A Novel (Inspector Ian Rutledge #24)(2)
“You’re looking well,” he told her, and meant it. She was wearing a woolen dress in a shade of dark red that she preferred, and with it a heavy gold locket on a gold chain. He knew what was inside it—her late husband’s likeness, painted by a master, giving the sitter a warmth and life that had intrigued Rutledge as a boy. He could remember asking often “to see the Colonel, please, may I?” And she would open the tiny clasp and show him the handsome man in the uniform of another century.
“Come in. Lunch is in half an hour. And you can tell me about this latest inquiry of yours.”
“I don’t know that it will turn out to be much of an inquiry at all,” he said, following her into the high-ceilinged hall, where Shanta was waiting to take his hat and coat.
He didn’t add that it was one of the reasons he felt he could spare the time to come this roundabout way through Kent.
“Essex, you said on the telephone?”
“Yes, the village of Walmer, on the coast.”
He followed her into the library, where she offered him a whisky, then poured a sherry for herself before sitting down across from him.
“The problem is, a murder was witnessed—but no body was found at the scene. Nor has one turned up. At least it hadn’t, by the time I’d left the Yard.”
“Surely sooner or later someone will be reported missing?”
“That’s always what we hope will happen. The witness, meanwhile, has told the local man that she recognized the killer.”
“Then why has the Chief Constable asked for the Yard to step in?”
“A very good question, one I asked Markham.” He smiled wryly. “Except for the fact that the name she gave him is of someone who is already dead. The killer, apparently, is a ghost. And for all we know, the victim is one as well.”
Melinda was clearly intrigued. But she said only, “Well. If anyone can get to the bottom of it, you will. Now, give me the news from London.” She went on, asking about his sister, Frances, and a number of friends they had in common, until Shanta appeared in the doorway, announcing that lunch was served.
It wasn’t laid out in the long dining room, which could seat twenty guests with ease. Instead, a small table had been set in Melinda’s sitting room beside the fire that was always blazing at any time of the year. She’d spent her youth and the early years of her marriage in India, and claimed that she had never learned to tolerate the English chill.
It was a pleasant hour or so. Rutledge, looking up at the clock on the mantel, reluctantly rose to take his leave. “Duty calls,” he said.
Melinda didn’t protest. She understood Duty.
She hadn’t mentioned the inquiry at all after that initial bit of conversation when he arrived. Now, at the door seeing him off, she said, “There’s an airfield very close by Walmer, as I remember. Is it anywhere near this house where your only witness lives?”
“There are several wartime airfields along the Essex coast. How close one may be to Benton Hall I don’t know. Why?”
Melinda frowned. “As I recall, there was an incident there during the war. A death that was never explained. You might keep that in mind.”
Rutledge regarded her for a moment. “How did you come to know that? Nothing was said about any incident in the report I was given.”
She looked up at the tall man standing on her doorstep, and said blandly, “A friend of mine was the commanding officer there when it happened. He took it quite hard.”
Melinda Crawford was probably the most astute woman he’d ever met. In her lifetime she had experienced more than most, and her contacts among Army and Foreign Office people were legendary. He was never really certain what she’d had a hand in, for she never spoke of victories—or defeats.
He said, “Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“No. I only remember it because it upset a friend.”
Rutledge let it go—he knew her well enough to understand that this was all she intended to say. Otherwise she wouldn’t have waited until he was leaving. He kissed her again and went out to his motorcar. She waved farewell as he left, her dark red dress a splash of bright color against the facade of the house as he rounded a bend in the drive.
He made good time to Gravesend, where the ferry crossed the Thames to Essex.
It was another two hours to Walmer, up the main north road and then a turning into a network of country lanes. It was flat terrain, crops and grazing, with fertile soil that often turned to mud after the winter rains. He was delayed twice, by a slow-moving muck cart, and again by half a dozen geese waddling across the road from a farm pond.
The village proper was set on a hill that sloped down to the water. Here the River Chelmer met the Blackwater Estuary, where long fingers of land protected it on either side all the way to the sea, like a deep inlet.
Rutledge drove through the streets, noting the odd tower on one of the churches, then found his way down to the harbor. The sea was invisible from here, but the estuary glinted in the sunlight. He found several pubs and the usual shops that catered to several fishing boats and one or two smaller craft. One of the pubs was called The Salt Cellar, with its large wrought iron cellar hanging above the door, and the other The Viking, with a sign of a suitably fierce and bearded figure brandishing an axe. Weather had faded the painted background to a dull gray, but someone had touched up the head of the axe, and the brightness caught the eye. The windows were grimy, the general appearance as faded as the sign above the door.