A Divided Loyalty Read online

  Dedication

  Mommy Kitty, so tiny, so pretty, so strong in spirit, who survived so much before finding a home and the love she so deserved. Love she gave back for seventeen wonderful years, and left her paw print on our hearts forever. God bless her!

  Mark McLucas, whose heart failed him too soon, and yet it was his kind heart that endeared him to those who cared about him. He was an artist, a lover of all things Harley, a lover of dogs, especially his wonderful Jenny, who was with him to the very end. A father who loved his young children and fast cars and movies. Who left no great mark on this world and yet left it a kinder and better place for having been in it. May he find peace at last . . .

  Jackson, so beautifully marked, a bashful giant, a veritable lapful, who offered love and loyalty and a wonderful spirit to the very end. Who found his forever home, alas without his brother, Jesse, and had his own special place in two big people’s lives.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  About the Author

  Also by Charles Todd

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  London and Wiltshire

  February 1921

  Ian Rutledge was walking down the stairs at Scotland Yard when he met Chief Inspector Leslie coming up them two at a time.

  “Markham in?” Leslie asked, pausing on the landing.

  “He was just stepping into his office as I came out of mine.” Rutledge didn’t add that he’d heard the man’s voice in the passage and purposely waited for the Chief Superintendent to pass his door before opening it. Markham was back from leave, and in a foul mood. He’d already had much to say regarding Rutledge’s last inquiry and Jameson’s report.

  They were not at present on the best of terms. Rutledge’s unopened letter of resignation still lay in a side drawer of the Chief Superintendent’s desk. The sword of Damocles held over Rutledge’s head, and at the same time a bitter frustration on Markham’s part as well as Jameson’s that both were prevented from accepting it immediately. Not while praise was still being heaped on the Yard for closing the Barrington matter.

  It had been made quite clear to Rutledge that any weakness on his part, any lapse in performance, any mistake in judgment, even any hint of insubordination, however unintended, might be a welcome opportunity to open the drawer and take out the envelope.

  Leslie grimaced. “Inspector Bradley has come down with an appendix. I just got word. Are you working on an inquiry just now?”

  “I’m giving evidence in the Trotter trial at half past eleven. What do you need?”

  “Someone to go to Avebury. There’s a body.”

  Rutledge knew Avebury: a great prehistoric stone circle with a small village almost in the center of it.

  “Sorry, I can’t help.”

  “Damn it, I was just away myself, and looking forward to a day or two off.” Leslie grimaced. “I expect he’ll insist that I go to Wiltshire, like it or not.” With a nod he went on up the flight.

  Rutledge had known Brian Leslie before the war and had encountered him in France a number of times, where they’d both served in the trenches. They had become friends in spite of the difference in rank at the Yard and the fact that Leslie was married. Brian Leslie was an intelligent and interesting man, at home in any situation. It was one of the qualities that had made him a successful interrogator during the war, dealing with German prisoners. But the war had changed him too, made him a little edgier, a little more aloof. God knew, they were all haunted by something.

  Continuing down the stairs, Rutledge thought to himself that he would have preferred Avebury to the stuffy, overcrowded, overheated courtroom where his claustrophobia made him feel cornered.

  But duty called.

  Brian Leslie had taken the train to Wiltshire, where he’d been met by Constable Henderson and driven on to Avebury in a horse and carriage.

  Henderson was apologetic.

  “There’s no other way of getting there from Marlborough railway station. As you’ll see, sir, it’s a good distance.”

  “No matter,” his companion snapped.

  Looking out across the winter landscape, Leslie rubbed his gloved hands together against the cold wind that had sprung up in late afternoon and brought heavy clouds with it. He mustn’t blame Henderson, he told himself.

  If anyone was at fault, he was. And the Chief Superintendent, for being so bloody stubborn. If he himself hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back to London, if he’d had the sense to spend another night on the road, he wouldn’t have been available when Markham was casting about for someone to take over the inquiry here. No one would have questioned another twenty-four hours. Even his wife had been surprised to see him walk through the door.

  Rousing himself, he began the questions that were expected of him. “All right. The Yard was vague. Tell me what I’m going to find.”

  “Do you know Avebury, sir?”

  “Yes.” He added as an afterthought, “As a child.”

  “There are the stones, of course, sir. Weathered into various shapes, but some of them still quite tall. There are gaps—my granddad told me that over the centuries many of them have been knocked down or even broken up. They stood in a giant circle, and surrounding the lot was a deep ditch. The village was built later, inside the circle.”

  “Yes, I recall that,” he said impatiently, immediately regretted it, and said mildly, “Go on.”

  “Two mornings ago, one of the lads on his way to school saw the butcher’s dog sniffing at the base of one of the larger stones. Curious, he went over to see what it was Bouncer had discovered. The grass was beaten down and sticky with something dark, most of it already seeped into the earth below. Stephen scratched at it with his ruler, and saw the tip was a rusty color. He showed this to the other lads when he reached the schoolhouse, making out it was blood on the tip, and one of them was my son, Barry. When he came home to his lunch, he told me, and I went to investigate. I thought it must be a ewe, sir, that one of the dogs had got at. The sheep do graze there sometimes. But as I looked around for it, and got as far as the ditch behind this part of the ring, there she was.”

  Training took over. “Clothed?”

  “Yes, sir. They were in some disarray, as if she’d been rolled down into the ditch. You couldn’t see her until you were right on her.”

  “How was she lying?”

  “On her face. I could tell from the way her arms and legs were spread out that she must be either unconscious or dead. That’s to say, it wasn’t natural. My first thought, sir, was that she might have been alive when young Stephen saw Bouncer, and we’d left it too late. I scrambled down the bank into the ditch—it’s precarious just there—and managed to turn her over. There was blood all over her clothing and her eyes were open. I knew then that she was dead.”

  Henderson paused, busy guiding the horse into a long straight stretch of road.

  Leslie waited.

  “She was slim, black hair, dressed nicely. Clearly not down on her luck. But not dressed for walking about in a field, either. She’s not local, sir, I saw that straightaway. I was in a dilemma about how to fetch the doctor when I heard Ben Wainwright just coming over the causeway. He delivers kegs to the inn, and it’s a fairly heavy wagon. I got myself up to where he could see me and shouted to him
to fetch Dr. Mason. He went on to where the road stopped, got down, and hurried toward the surgery. A few minutes later, he came back with the doctor, and in the end we got her out of there. There wasn’t a stretcher, but she was light, and a blanket did well enough to transport her to the surgery.”

  “No chance that Wainwright had anything to do with putting her there?”

  “No, sir. He’s Chapel, married with three daughters. But I checked, and he was at home till it was time to take the team into Marlborough to load. Three in the morning. She was likely already dead by then, according to the doctor.”

  “You’re sure she wasn’t local? There are any number of small villages only a few miles in any direction.”

  “I asked around the village, in the event she was related to someone here or was expected to visit. And I’m fairly certain I got the truth, sir. Then while I was waiting for the Yard to send someone, I spoke to every Constable in a good ten-mile radius, and not only was there no missing woman fitting her description, nobody had seen her about. And she was the sort of woman you’d remember, sir, if you’d seen her. Not so much a beauty as—” He searched for the right word, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Different, somehow. The doctor can tell you the rest.”

  It was a concise report, informative and to the point. Leslie glanced at Henderson. “In the war, were you?”

  “Yes, sir.” He grinned. “Lied about my age, said I was thirty-one when I was thirty-six. But they took me anyway.”

  Then that was where Henderson had learned to report properly, if his training as a Constable hadn’t taught him.

  Leslie nodded. “Regiment?”

  “The Wiltshires, of course. Rose to the rank of Sergeant,” he confided proudly. “But of course, that was easy to do, given how many we lost. The Germans, we heard, were in worse straits.” Then he grinned. “I was happy to come home, sir, where no one was shooting at me.”

  Leslie asked, “Many murders in this part of the county?”

  “No, sir. At least not like this one. The last one I recall was in 1913, when a farmer fell out of his hayloft onto a pitchfork. Only, the doctor told us that the angle of his wounds didn’t fit the account given us. Seems the pitchfork had been in him before he fell.”

  Farm accidents were always difficult inquiries. Too easy to pass off murder as an accident when there were no witnesses to say otherwise.

  He could see the first of the standing stones in the distance. They were nearly there. “Any idea who could have done this? No witnesses coming forward?”

  “No, sir. And no other strangers to account for. We don’t even know how she got here without anybody noticing. It’s not the time of year when people on holiday come to stare at the stones.”

  True enough, Leslie thought. With the turn, the wind was playing around his shoulders, even in the carriage. He was grateful for the rug over his knees. He shoved his gloved hands into his pockets, to keep them still.

  He could see some of the stones clearly now, as they followed the road that led toward the village. To his left was a double line of smaller stones, the ancient avenue leading to the circle, paralleling the present road. To his right, the land stretched out more, hummocked and rippled with ancient earthworks.

  He had come to Avebury in childhood, free to play among the stones while his parents visited at the Rectory. Magical then. Now, in the gray afternoon light they were foreboding, unwelcoming. Looking away from them, Leslie made an effort to remember the Rector at that time. He’d been at school with his father, hadn’t he? Tall, a deep laugh. Mrs. Townsend was a more shadowy figure, rather aloof. Surely they weren’t still here? Turning to Henderson, he asked, “Who is Rector now?”

  “Mr. Marshall.”

  “What became of Mr. Townsend?”

  Henderson glanced at him. “Did you know him?”

  “My parents did.”

  “He was offered a living in Shropshire, I believe, and he died there some ten years later. I don’t remember him myself, but my mother does. She says he christened me.”

  That would account, Leslie thought, for the visits to have stopped before he was seven. Shropshire was too far from London to dine with a friend.

  “But Mr. Marshall is a good man. Christened my son.”

  Leslie said nothing. They passed over the causeway, put there ages ago to bridge the ditch. To the right, beyond the bare tops of a few trees, smoke curled from a chimney, darker than the clouds. The inn, he remembered.

  “That’s the stone just there.” Henderson had slowed the mare and was pointing toward a half a dozen stones standing in a field to his left. “You can’t really pick out the ditch from here, unless you know to look. I can’t quite see how the killer knew it was there. Not in the dark. You’ll want to go there later, of course. I thought it best to carry you directly to the surgery, to see her.”

  Not the body. Her.

  Leslie glanced at him, then turned in the direction Henderson was pointing. It was true, the ditch wasn’t well defined at this distance. “No one reported cries in the night? Any disturbance at all? Dogs barking?”

  “Not so far as I have been able to discover,” Henderson said. “And I’ve asked those living closest. But if the attack was sudden, and she didn’t know it was coming, I doubt she had time to cry out. Doctor says it was a stabbing. Quick.” He turned slightly to point in the other direction. “Just there is the inn, sir. Where I’ve put you up. They were glad of the company. This time of year you’ll mostly have it to yourself.”

  They moved on, not turning until they reached the end of the present road, then left on a rougher one that ran down toward the church, its tower just visible. The doctor’s surgery was before it, across the road from the churchyard, and Leslie recognized the doctor’s house if not the name on the brass plate by the gate. He’d once been taken there for a cut on his chin after tumbling out of one of the Rectory trees.

  Dr. Mason was a thin man with graying hair. He wore spectacles, peering over them at Leslie as Constable Henderson introduced them.

  “Chief Inspector.” He held out his hand in acknowledgment, then ushered the two men through a door by the stairs, toward his surgery.

  “Sorry to bring you all this way,” he went on, “but there’s no doubt the young woman was murdered, and as I told the Chief Constable, the circumstances worried me.”

  “How so?” Leslie asked, frowning as he took the chair offered him before Mason walked around to his own behind the desk. “What have you uncovered?”

  “Not to say uncovered, but these stones attract a good number of visitors. The curious, of course, and those who enjoy touching a bit of history. Students from time to time, and even a schoolmaster or two. Holidaymakers often bring a picnic basket with them or stop over at the inn. We aren’t all that far from Stonehenge, it’s an easy journey between the two. But there are also a few with more sinister intentions. This death doesn’t have the hallmarks of ritual, but on the other hand, she wasn’t just killed in an empty field somewhere. There was blood at the base of one of the largest stones, and no attempt to conceal it. I grant you there wasn’t a full moon, but it was clear and bright enough by midnight. That might have been tempting to someone.”

  “Have there been other incidents like this in the past?” Leslie asked him, surprised. There had been no mention of Mason’s concerns in the thin file he’d been given. But it explained why the Yard had been called in almost at once. “In Avebury?”

  “Not here that I’m aware of, not yet, but the worry is that once it starts, it draws others. I don’t want Avebury to suffer the way other prehistoric sites have done—there are people who convince themselves that the stones have some magic powers left by their builders or that their religion has a force that can be tapped for personal gain. It’s not too great a stretch from worship to a human sacrifice to the stones or the gods behind them. Sadly, we don’t know enough about these ancient cultures to make those obsessed by them see reason.”

  Henderson cleared his thro
at, making his own point. “What concerns me is that in this part of Wiltshire, his chances of getting clear before he’s seen are far better. If he had a motorcar, he could well have been anywhere by first light. The next county. London. Wales, even. The Chief Constable did warn neighboring counties to keep an eye out, but it may already be too late.”

  Leslie took out his notebook, making a note. Looking up again, he said in an attempt to keep them to the facts, “And she wasn’t interfered with, in any way?”

  “No. Not that sort of crime.”

  “Anything we might use to help us identify her?”

  “No broken bones, no prominent moles or birthmarks, nothing unusual that I could find. She’d had a child, but not a recent birth. Her hair is dark enough that she might be Welsh. That’s all.” He let the man opposite him write something more, then rose. “Would you like to see her now?”

  Leslie took his time putting away his notebook. Anything to put off the inevitable a little longer . . . They would think him odd if he refused. It was standard procedure.

  Would they believe him, if he told them that the war had made examining the body of the dead nearly impossible for him? No, if that got back to the Yard, it could cause no end of problems.

  Mason was waiting.

  Steeling himself, he and Henderson followed Mason to a small, windowless, frigid back room. As the doctor lit a lamp and the dimness flared into brightness, he could see the shape on the table, draped in a white sheet. Mason led the way and pulled back the covering. It fell into place along the line of her white shoulders. No longer soft, too white for the living.

  This was how the dead always looked, he warned himself. This was just one more. When all was said and done.

  Mason was busy arranging the sheet, leaving the body some dignity. Henderson was looking down at the dead woman, his expression somber, and then Mason stepped back, and he could see her face, framed in that dark, dark hair.

  And he stopped thinking altogether.

  The next thing he remembered with any clarity was sitting in the carriage as the Constable drove up the road. Henderson was saying, “It’s for your use while you’re here, sir. The carriage. You’ll need transport. I borrowed it from the inn where you’re staying. The Green Man is probably not what you’re accustomed to in London, sir, but the food is excellent. Sam Bryant’s wife is the finest cook for miles around. You’ll want to try Mary’s apple tarts.”