Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Page 5

  “Then the shooter could have easily come and gone through a rear door without being seen or disturbing anyone.”

  “Oh, yes. It was dark, all the light was in the square, torches smoking enough to blind a regiment. But Mrs. Percy, our only witness, claims she saw a face in the dormer window. That has to be where the man with a rifle was standing, not the chimney pots. I believe her. Not, mind you, a monster’s face, which is what she initially described to Constable McBride and then to me. But something.” Warren grimaced. “As if we didn’t have our hands full enough with what happened here in Ely.”

  “I must agree with Mrs. Percy, from my own observations this morning. Especially if the wind was blowing the smoke away from that window. But what she saw wasn’t a man with a rifle.”

  “Yes, well, there’s that. But you won’t convince me that there were two people in the dormer.”

  “How did she describe the face?” Rutledge asked.

  “She wouldn’t. She told me it was monstrous, the stuff of nightmares. My words, there, but close enough. She was badly frightened then and later when I came to speak to her. What’s more, she is a little hard of hearing. She couldn’t get any closer through the crowd of people, and being rather short, she moved around behind Herbert Swift. Lucky for us.”

  “There are several possibilities. Someone wearing a gas mask from the war—although that would make firing his rifle more difficult. Someone badly burned. Or even someone who wrapped his head, to be certain he wasn’t recognized.”

  “That last would mean someone local.”

  “Very likely.” Rutledge paused. “There’s been no trouble in Wriston before this? You said no one locked his door at night?”

  “They do now,” Warren replied grimly. “But no, nothing major. Petty crimes, quarrels, that sort of thing. The last murder in Wriston was back in the 1890s.”

  Rutledge remembered what Miss Bartram had said about being glad of someone else, even a stranger, in the house last night when it was impossible to see who—or what—was outside the windows.

  “Did Swift have enemies? Had he stepped on any toes in announcing he was standing for office?”

  “Not that we can discover. The general view was, he was well liked, and likely to win. The other camp had only put up a token candidate to oppose him. Mind you, he wasn’t here during the war. Any friends—or enemies—he made while he was away are another matter.”

  “That’s when he could have met Hutchinson.”

  “Possibly. Yes. But proving it will be difficult.”

  They moved on to the first shooting, in Ely.

  Warren stood up and said, “Come with me, you’ll want to see this for yourself.”

  They walked from the police station to the Cathedral. Warren was saying as they went, “We’ve enough statements to fill the nave. And they come down to a single fact. We have damned little to go on. I’d hoped, when word reached us about what had happened in Wriston, that he’d made a mistake we could use, but he hasn’t.”

  Ely’s Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity came into view then. It was unique among English Cathedrals with that elegant octagonal tower, called the Lantern, set above the crossing of the transepts and the nave. Now, as the two men approached, the massive, battlemented West Front loomed before them. There was a small double-arched west door, and few of the embellishments or niches for saints to decorate the opening. Compared to Salisbury, for one, or Lincoln, it was more or less plain. And yet it was both elegant and powerful.

  Warren said, pointing, “Here is where the motorcars pulled up. At the top of the Green. Arriving guests descended and walked toward that west door. Captain Hutchinson was among the last to arrive, in the motorcar belonging to the Honorable Reginald Sedley and his wife.”

  “Why was he with them? Any particular reason?”

  “He was staying with them. I gather they hadn’t met before. The bridegroom’s family had arranged accommodations for many of the out-of-town guests, and Hutchinson was up from London.”

  “Go on.”

  “According to the statements from the Sedleys, they were talking about the wedding as they moved toward the west door. And behind them, another motorcar had followed their own, stopping to set down its passengers. That was the bridegroom and his best man, as we were to discover. The chauffeur of that motorcar was already moving on, making room for the one behind it. This meant that the bridegroom was only a little way behind Captain Hutchinson, and perhaps about five feet to his right. And then everything seemed to happen at once.”

  Warren moved forward, then stopped again.

  “Hutchinson went down just here. The reverberations of the shot shocked everyone for an instant, and then Mrs. Sedley began screaming for a doctor as her husband knelt to try and help the victim. When we were finally able to speak to her, it was clear she hadn’t seen anything but the Captain collapsing at her feet. Nor did Sedley, for that matter. He was intent on doing what he could to save Hutchinson. But of course that was hopeless.”

  Now Warren pointed toward the Cathedral. “There was general pandemonium. Guests who hadn’t yet entered the west door and local people who were standing behind a barrier set up just there, to keep them out of the way of the wedding party”—Warren pointed to the spot—“while watching the show, ran in every direction, expecting more shots to be fired.”

  “It must have been difficult to account for everyone who was a potential witness.”

  “Believe me, it has been a nightmare.”

  “Better you than me.”

  “Yes, well, I hope they give you more than they have given us. There was an artillery Major, man by the name of Lowell, who more or less took charge. He sent someone for the police, another man to find a doctor who was amongst the wedding guests, and ordered everyone within hearing to stay where they were. Unfortunately, he himself had been standing just inside the church doorway and couldn’t tell us where the shot had come from. But he informed us at once that it had been a rifle. And of course that was borne out by the distance. Still, it saved an inordinate amount of time trying to sort out the various accounts.”

  “Very convenient. Could he have fired that shot, then hidden the weapon?”

  “I don’t see how. He arrived just before Hutchinson and was speaking to one of the canons by the door. In plain sight. There were other former officers attending the wedding, but they had taken their places in the nave with their wives. Lowell is unmarried and was in no hurry to go inside.”

  They were walking now toward the West Front and the door to the Galilee Porch. Warren was saying, “Those buildings to your right belong to the Cathedral. We searched them as well as the Cathedral itself. Top to bottom. The Gallery—that’s the wall there, still to your right—encloses the church grounds, offices, and the homes of various churchmen. We discovered a ladder placed up against the wall on the inside, out of sight from where we are, of course. See there, where that woman with the small child is passing? We left it where it is. I refused to allow them to move it because no one would admit to putting it there, not a churchman, not a gardener, no one. It’s possible our man used it as a fallback position. Climbing it and resting his rifle on the top as he fired, then ducking out of sight. The problem is, he’d have been visible to anyone in the grounds who looked that way. Still, it offered the best means of escape. The artillery Major told us the angle was wrong, unless the killer was going for a head shot.”

  Rutledge looked toward the wall and then turned to the spot where Hutchinson had fallen. “Yes, Major Lowell is right.”

  “Our next possibility was to the left of the Cathedral door. There, see that makeshift wall? It runs out from the Lady Chapel and then turns down by the lane.” Warren began to walk in that direction. “And there’s a door in it. It’s closed now, but it was standing ajar that day. We found a single cartridge casing on the ground, just about where you’d ste
p through and then step back. It had rolled into a clump of grass by the wall, half hidden by the door. He didn’t have time to look for it.” He stopped, waving in that direction. “The doctor and the Major disagreed over that one.”

  Rutledge looked at where Hutchinson had fallen and then turned back toward the gate. “It would be a fairly easy shot,” he replied. “It wouldn’t take a marksman to do it. As long as the people at the barrier were out of his line of fire. Why did they disagree? The doctor and the Major.”

  “Lowell felt that the gate was a possible shot, just as you said. But when the doctor examined the body, he claimed the shot had come from above. Up there.”

  Warren pointed up at the west tower. “A constable climbed all the way up there and told me the slope of the roof would have prevented a decent shot. People were walking toward the door, and anyone standing up there with a rifle was bound to be noticed.”

  Rutledge shielded his eyes from the sun as he stared upward. “Surely there was room to kneel.”

  “He says not. And no one has brought it up save for the doctor. Of course, Dr. Bradley has had no military experience, but later during the postmortem, he showed me the course of the bullet. It would seem he was right, although the only evidence, the casing, was here.”

  “What did Lowell have to say about that?”

  “At the time, he never turned Hutchinson over. There was no reason to.” Walking on toward the Cathedral, Warren added, “By the time we arrived, there were at least two hundred people milling about. Wedding guests, bystanders, those drawn from the school down there to your right. Ordinary people who heard the shouting and screams and came to see what had happened. My men began to sort them and take down names to collect statements. And I began to realize that no one had seen anything useful. By this time, the bride’s father was pressing us to allow the wedding to go on, late as it was, and as soon as the body was removed, we really saw no reason to prevent it.”

  “Are there any statements in particular I should pursue?”

  “There are several it wouldn’t hurt to look at. Oddly enough, the bridegroom was convinced he was the target, while the bride, arriving in the middle of the chaos, thought he was the victim and was hysterical. It would probably have been wiser to postpone the affair.”

  By this time, they had reached the west door and Warren pulled it open.

  “Is it usually closed? This door?”

  “As a rule it’s open during services and for occasions such as the wedding.”

  They walked inside. It had been some time since Rutledge had been in this Cathedral. Beyond the porch, to his right the lobby spread out toward the shorter twin towers overlooking the wall where the ladder had been left. Ahead, through another set of doors, he could see the unusual painted vault of the nave. It was quite long, leading down to the crossing, which supported the Octagon, which in turn supported the Lantern overhead. Thence to the choir. Ely was, in a way, a glimpse of what churches and Cathedrals must have looked like before the Reformation, when there were frescoes and painted statues and ceilings. The Victorians had reveled in adding color too, but not always successfully.

  As he made his way down the aisle, he looked to his left and saw a rose petal, dried now, the color faded, that had escaped the cleaning women. It was caught under the edge of one of the kneelers, a sad reminder of the wedding’s chaos.

  Silence surrounded them in the nave, their footsteps echoing to the stone walls. It was cool and dimly lit after the warm sunny afternoon outside. Warren’s voice was subdued as he said, “We had people out in the Lady Chapel, up on the roof, up in the Lantern, searching all the buildings in the Cathedral precincts, the Bishop’s quarters, everywhere we could think of. This place is a rabbit warren, did you know that?”

  “Most Medieval buildings are. Do you suppose the killer was dressed as a priest or the like, someone who wouldn’t be noticed because he appeared to belong in a church?”

  “Carrying a rifle?” Warren went on toward the choir. “But then he could have hidden it in a valise, a musical instrument case. Still, he’d have to open it, wouldn’t he, and assemble the rifle. A grave risk.”

  “Was there a published schedule for the guests to arrive?”

  “No, none. He couldn’t have known when to be prepared.”

  “And so he must remain invisible until he was sure.”

  “The organist brought a large portfolio with him. His music. But he was playing when the shot was fired. There are dozens of witnesses to that. The florists brought in long boxes full of flowers for the arrangements. Some of the flowers were quite tall at the back of the baskets. We searched the lot. Even the van they came in. Under the seats. The organ loft. Behind the organ pipes—have you ever looked behind those pipes? I had the altar cloth and the misericords in the choir searched. Everywhere we could think of, in the event he’d hidden his rifle and planned to retrieve it later. But he hadn’t. Or else he’d extracted it before we got to him.”

  There was nothing to see, Rutledge thought, but the beauty around him.

  He started back toward the West Front. “Without the rifle, there’s no way to learn where he got it. The Army, most likely. But when? At the Armistice? Was he still in France then? A few must have been smuggled into the country without the Army’s knowledge. Still, they were damned thorough.” Then over his shoulder, he added, “Why did Captain Hutchinson have to die? And on that day? Was there a particular order in the two deaths? Was it opportunity or was there a pattern behind the order?”

  “I can tell you why that day. Hutchinson had come up from London for the wedding. It was very likely that he’d return to London on Sunday evening at the latest. There were a number of parties and dinners before the nuptials, of course. But they were private and by invitation only. That means that his arrival here at the Cathedral would be his only public appearance, so to speak. The local newspaper carried several accounts of the wedding festivities, mostly after the fact. My wife had read them, and so I looked them up. Hutchinson was mentioned several times. And the wedding in general created quite a stir.”

  “Which means our man—the shooter—could be local.”

  “Yes, very likely,” Warren said harshly. “More’s the pity.”

  “Why was Swift running in the by-election?”

  “That I can answer. Swift had been a solicitor before the war. There was no one to take over for him during the war, and his chambers were closed. When he came home again, the view is his heart wasn’t in it. He must have seen standing for the seat of his late MP as offering a way out.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Mr. Davidson died of cancer in the early summer.”

  “If Hutchinson was related in some way to the bridegroom, was Swift connected to the man as well? However distantly? Grandmothers, wives, great-aunts? Any questionable inheritances?”

  “I asked the bridegroom that question. He’s not related to Swift in any way. But whether Swift and Hutchinson are related is another matter.” Warren took a deep breath as they left the Cathedral and stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. “I can’t walk in there without thinking of that Saturday. Where was I? Oh. For what it’s worth, I think they’re random, these killings. Targets chosen for no other reason than that they are there, wherever the shooter wants to try his luck again. I don’t envy you having to get to the bottom of this one. I’ll help you in any way I can.” He began to walk briskly back toward the police station. Over his shoulder he said, as Rutledge followed him, “But the truth of the matter is, with all due respect, I don’t believe you’ll have any better luck than I’ve had. You can see for yourself, it’s hunting shadows.”

  Chapter 5

  Rutledge took the man’s comments as they were intended, a measure of his frustration. Warren had had nearly ten days to solve the first murder and four to tackle the second. That in itself was trying; add to it the necessity of
calling in the Yard, and the man had every reason to feel he had failed in the eyes of his own Chief Constable.

  “Do you think the killer is satisfied? Or will he find a new target?” Rutledge asked after a moment. “Now that he’s twice successfully evaded the police?”

  “Who knows what’s in his mind?” Warren sounded tired. “The question is, is he moving west, looking for victims? Or is he choosing a village or town and then picking someone? Mind you, these aren’t ordinary folk—the butcher’s boy, an elderly seamstress, the dairyman. Hutchinson had something of a reputation, I’m told—he moved in the best London circles, and all that. Swift was a solicitor, standing for public office for the first time. God knows who might be in this killer’s sights next.”

  Rutledge had already considered that possibility. If there was no personal connection between these men, then it had to be something else. And fame, however minor, might draw someone’s attention if he was searching for another target.

  They carried on in silence, and when they reached the station, Rutledge stopped by his motorcar. “Anything else I should know?”

  “We’ve covered every possibility. Everything but a hot air balloon. But I’m at your disposal if you think of anything. There’s an inn close by the Cathedral. The Deacon. I’ve booked a room for you there.”

  “Thank you.”

  Warren put a hand on the bonnet of the motorcar, brushing at an invisible speck. “I like tidy murders, if I must have one. Something I can follow through to a reasonable conclusion. Most of them are like that. If I don’t know what’s going on, my constables will, and in the end we’ll find our killer. The wife, the brother, the lover, the husband. Or the jealous neighbor, the childhood friend, the man who owes money he can’t repay.” He stopped.