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earnestly, She s mair real to me noo than Maggie. What am I to do?
Anguish sharpened his face and his eyes had pleaded.
Where he could, Rutledge tried through channels of his own to find
out what had happened to the wives at home. But sometimes the truth
was more bitter than the suspicion. And he had concealed that.
Rutledge said now, Mrs. Taylor, I think I ought to take you home.
It won t help, standing here in the rain.
Surprisingly, it does, she told him forlornly. I feel closer to him
here than I do in the churchyard. I was afraid, when Sergeant Burke
came to the door, that Will had She faltered.
Surely the other deaths proved that he wasn t didn t kill him-
self.
Alice Taylor shrugged. Only Will knows that. She brushed her wet
dark hair out of her face and began to walk slowly to the motorcar.
Turning her head once, she looked back at the line of trees. I wish I didn t
feel guilty. As if I d driven him to whatever it was happened to him.
Rutledge held the door for her and she climbed into the motorcar.
As he got in after cranking the motor, he said, Did anyone come to
see him before he died? A stranger? A man you didn t know.
She turned to him. I don t know, to tell you the truth. Will took to
walking out while I was doing up the washing-up after dinner. As if he
didn t have anything left to say to me. Or I to him. One night he came
back and asked if I remembered Jimsy Ridger. I said I did, and I was
sharp about it. Jimsy was no friend of Will s. And he said someone was
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looking for Jimsy, but he d given the man false directions. He didn t like
his cut.
Those were his words, I didn t like the cut of him ?
She nodded, flicking wet hair out of her face again. In her own way,
she was a pretty woman, with such white skin and dark coloring. Welsh,
perhaps, or Cornish.
What did he mean by that, do you think?
I can t say. I wasn t interested in Jimsy Ridger. He was in Will s
company, and I never liked him very much.
Why?
He was something of a scoundrel, Jimsy was. Light-fingered, like.
He never stole anything from us, that I know of, but he wasn t someone
I quite trusted. I was afraid he might be hanging about looking for
money.
Where is Jimsy Ridger now?
She looked out across the wet fields. In hell, for all I know. He
didn t come back to Kent after the war. He d been to Paris, and won
money at cards. So it was said. Kent wasn t for the likes of him, after
that. But then who knows, with someone like Jimsy?
Rutledge took her to the small cottage she pointed out as hers. It
was half-timbered, of a style popular in the late Victorian era. But the
plaster between the black beams needed paint and the chimney sagged.
She looked up at it.
Will was going to find someone to repair the chimney. I suppose
that ll be up to me now.
He came around to open the door for her and she stepped down into
the wet grass that met the rutted road in an irregular verge.
I ll do my best to find your husband s killer, he said.
She had walked up the muddy walk before she turned. I don t
know that it matters, she answered him. Will didn t much want to
live, anyway. Maybe the murderer did him a favor.
a fearsome doubt 125
Mrs. Taylor s voice lingered in Rutledge s mind as he drove down
the roads that led out of Marling and toward the nearest villages, then
back again, forming a mental map of the ground where the three mur-
ders had occurred. As darkness fell, he could see the lights springing up
in the windows of farms and cottages off to either side, none of them
close enough to matter.
They would ha been dark again, the occupants in their beds and
sleeping soundly, Hamish said, when the killing was done. Country
folk aren t likely to keep late hours.
Yet someone had.
He found himself wondering if Mrs. Bartlett and Mrs. Webber had
felt as estranged from their husbands as Mrs. Taylor had done. It was
hard to believe that one suicide had sparked two more as desperately
tired men gave up trying.
He himself knew the fierce silent urge toward death, when there
was no hope left.
But Hamish, always practical, said, Where did they buy good
wine?
That was always the sticking point. The wine.
He drove in the early dusk toward Marling, his headlamps picking
out the overgrown hedgerows and the dark pockets of thick grass be-
tween trees that sometimes marched in avenues for a little distance.
Vistas that in summer were glorious with a patchwork of green were
now brown and dry, and the long sweep of the land had lost much of its
charm.
He was not more than a hundred yards from the first cottage mark-
ing the outskirts of the town when he saw someone quickly moving into
a clump of trees edging a field. Moving as if afraid to be seen.
Pulling hard on the brake, Rutledge brought the car to a halt, and
got out, running toward the faintly seen outline of a human form. The
trees thinned almost at once as he plunged into them, and brought him
out into another field. His feet sank heavily into the wet, plowed soil,
where the summer s crop had been turned under for the winter.
Cursing, he tried to pick up his pace, but it was useless. Then the figure
ahead of him stumbled and fell and swore harshly.
126 charles todd
Rutledge reached him before he could flounder to his feet.
Hardly a murderer, he thought in disgust as the thick miasma of
drunken breath hit him in the face before he could put out a hand to
help the man to his feet.
Leave me alone! the man shouted, struggling to shake off his grip.
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