The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction

“Then you’ll know which trousers they were. If the shreds match, he will be tried for murder. We can also look at those tongs, if you will set them carefully on the desk. The only prints on them will be Dr Taylor’s, and yours, sir. Not mine.”

“Can you do that?” the man holding the tongs asked, staring down at them.

“There are people who can.”

He moved to the desk, putting them down quite gently. Dr Taylor reached for them, saying, “He’s bluffing, look, it’s my blood that’s on them.”

Rutledge was across the room before Taylor’s fingers could curl around the handle of the tongs, his grip hard on the doctor’s wrist, stopping him just in time.

The man in the greatcoat said, “I think I ought to fetch Constable Forrest after all, if only to sort out this business.”

He left the office, and they could hear the surgery door shut firmly after him.

The doctor said, “I tell you, it’s not true, none of it is true.” But even as he spoke the words, he could read the faces around him. Uncertainty, then doubt, replacing belief.

The woman in the dark green coat said, “I really must go — ” and started towards the door, unwilling to have any further involvement with the police. The other man, without looking at the doctor, followed her in uncomfortable silence.

Taylor called, “No, wait, please!”

Mrs Dunne said, “I’ll just put a sign up on the door, saying the surgery is closed,” and hurried after them.

Rutledge turned to see tears in Taylor’s eyes. “Damn you,” he said hoarsely. “And damn the bloody dog. I love her. I wanted to save her. Do you know what it’s like to realize that your skills aren’t enough?” He turned from Rutledge to the window. “Do you know how it feels when God has deserted you?”

Rutledge knew. In France, when he held his revolver at Hamish’s temple; he knew.

“And what would you have done if the reliquary failed you too?” Rutledge asked.

“It won’t. It can’t. I’m counting on it,” he said defiantly. “You won’t find it, I’ve seen to that. By God, at least she’ll have that!”

But, in the end, they would find it. Rutledge said only, “What did you use as the murder weapon?”

Dr Taylor grimaced. “You’re the policeman. Tell me.”

Hamish said, “He did the post-mortem. Any evidence would ha’ been destroyed.”

And there had been more than enough time for Taylor to have hidden whatever it was, on his way back to Mumford before he was summoned by Sam Hubbard.

When Constable Forrest arrived, Rutledge turned Taylor over to him, and warned him to have a care on their way to Cambridge. “He’s killed once,” he reminded the man.

He watched them leave, and Mrs Dunne, who had come to the door as the doctor was being taken away, bit her lip to hold back tears.

Rutledge walked to the house next but one to speak to Taylor’s wife, and it was a bitter duty. Her face drawn and pale from suffering, she said only, “It’s my fault. My fault.” And nothing would dissuade her. In the end, he had to tell her that her house would have to be searched. She nodded, too numb at that moment to care.

He left her with Mrs Dunne, and went to tell Mrs Gravely that he had found Sir John’s killer.

She frowned. “I’d never have believed the doctor could do such a thing. Not to murder Sir John for a heathen superstition. Poor Mrs Taylor, I can’t think how she’ll manage now.”

He left her, refusing her offer of a cup of tea. Then, just as he was cranking the motorcar, she called to him, and he came back to the steps where she was hugging her arms about her against the cold wind.

“It keeps slipping my mind, Mr Rutledge, sir! And it’s probably not important now. You asked me to keep an eye out for anything that was missing, and I wanted you to know I did.”

“Is there anything? Besides the reliquary?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh, nothing so valuable as that.” She smiled self-consciously, feeling a little foolish, but no less determined to do her duty. “Still, with the old dog dead, and Sir John gone as well, I never noticed it missing until yesterday morning. It’s the iron door-stop, the one shaped like a small dormouse. Sir John used it these past six months or so, whenever Simba needed to go out. To keep the door from slamming shut behind them, you see, while he walked a little way with Simba, or stood here on the step waiting for him. He never cared for the sound of a slamming door. He said it reminded him too much of the war. The sound of the guns and all that.”

Rutledge thanked her and drove to Cambridge to ask for men to search the sides of the road between Sir John’s house and Mumford.

As they braved the cold to dig through ditches, and push aside winter-dead growth, Rutledge could hear the doctor’s voice again.

You’re the policeman. Tell me.

Three hours later, he drove once more to Cambridge to do just that. A few black hairs still clung to the dormouse’s ears, and on the base was what appeared to be a perfect print in Sir John’s blood.

Dead of Winter

RICHARD A. LUPOFF