The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

Rutledge considered him. He’d been coming up the road when Mrs Gravely had hailed him, but he could just as easily have been going the other way, turning when he heard her and pretending to know nothing about what had happened here in the house. And he’d taken it upon himself to bury the old dog.

“Where were you this afternoon? Before Mrs Gravely asked your help?”

Sam Hubbard’s eyebrows flew up. “Do you think I could have killed Sir John? I’d have died for him, for speaking up during the war and trying to keep as many of us poor bastards alive as he could. They were bloody butchers, save for him. Caring nothing for the men who had to die each time there was a push or a plan. If it was one of the likes of them lying dead in the study, you’d have to wonder if I had had a hand in it. But not Sir John.”

The passionate denial rang true — but Hubbard had had time to consider the questions the police would be asking. Tell one’s self something often enough, and it soon became easier to believe it. Like the rehearsals of an actor learning his part.

Mr Harris, the rector, was in the parlour. He had seen the body before the constable had got there, and he seemed shaken, standing by the parlour windows with a drink in his hand.

“Dutch courage,” he said ruefully, lifting the glass as Rutledge opened the door. “I don’t see many murder victims in my patch. And I thank God for that. How is Mrs Gravely faring?”

“She’s a little better, I think. What can you tell me about Sir John? Have you known him very long?”

“I’d describe him as a lonely man,” Harris told Rutledge pensively. “I encouraged him to take an interest in village affairs, to see the need for someone of his calibre to serve on the vestry. But he was loathe to involve himself here. It’s not his home, you know. He was from Hereford, I believe, but sold up and moved here after the war. He said the house was not the same without his wife, and he couldn’t bear the emptiness — his word. Elizabeth was much younger, you see. Sir John was married twice. Once early on in his career, and then again some months before the fighting began in 1914.”

“Did he bring Mrs Gravely with him from Hereford?” He’d noted her accent was not local.

“Yes, she was taken on by Elizabeth Middleton just before their marriage, and she agreed to stay with him after her mistress died.”

“I understand his first wife died in India. Of cholera. Is there any proof of that, do you think? Or do we just have Sir John’s word for what happened to her?”

“That’s rather suspicious of you!”

“In a murder case, there are few certainties.”

“Well, I can only tell you that it’s written down in the Middleton family Bible. It’s on the bookshelf behind the desk. I’ve seen the entry.”

But what was inscribed in the family Bible was not necessarily witnessed by God, whatever the rector wished to believe.

“Did they get on well?”

“I have no idea. Except that he described Althea Middleton once as headstrong. Apparently, she’d insisted on having her way in all things, including going to India.”

“Did she also live in Herefordshire?”

“I believe she came from somewhere along the coast. Near Torquay. I went there once on holiday, and knew the area a little. Sir John mentioned her home in connection with my travels. The second Lady Middleton — he called her Eliza — was a love match, certainly on his part. He wore a black armband throughout the war and told me, if it hadn’t been for his duty, he’d not have been able to go on without her.”

“No children of either marriage?”

“None that I ever heard of. Which reminds me, speaking of family. You might include poor Simba in that category. I saw his body there under the window.” Harris shook his head. “The dog was devoted to Sir John. I’d see the two of them walking across the fields of an afternoon, when I was on my rounds. I wonder who put him out. It isn’t — wasn’t — like Sir John. Odd, that, I must say.”

“Odd?”

“Yes, he would never have shown Simba the door, not at the dog’s advanced age. The dog had belonged to Elizabeth, you see. Sir John had been worried about him since before Christmas, when his breathing seemed to worsen. It got better, but it was a warning, you might say, that his end was near. Sir John would have gone outside with him, and brought him in again as soon as he’d done his business.”

“But they walked the fields together?”

“Yes. I meant over the years, you know. Not recently, of course.”

Which, Hamish was pointing out, could explain why the killer came to the house rather than accost Sir John on an outing.

But the dog had been with him today, Rutledge replied. And the dog was put outside. Had the visitor arrived at the door just as his victim was preparing to walk the dog?

Hamish said, “He was killed in the study, no’ in the entry.”

“Does Trafalgar mean anything to you?” Rutledge asked Harris.