Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Read Online Free PDF

instead.”
    “Well, then. Come inside, Mr. Rutledge. Marcella, are you coming too?”
    “Thank you, no, Priscilla. Clarissa is probably waiting for me by the gate.”
    Rutledge was ushered inside, the door closed behind him.
    “Will she be all right?” he asked, still concerned for Miss Trowbridge.
    “Oh, yes. She’ll find her way.” She led him down a dimly lit passage to a sitting room. “Do you know Marcella well?”
    “In fact, not at all.” He took his lead from Miss Trowbridge’s comments about the cat. “She rescued me. I nearly walked into Wriston Mill.”
    Miss Bartram crossed the room to turn up the lamp. He saw that she was wearing a man’s trousers and shirt, but her short hair was becomingly cut, framing her face. He thought she must be in her early thirties.
    She looked him up and down. “Where are you from, Mr. Rutledge?”
    “I was on my way from Cambridge to Ely,” he explained once more.
    “Indeed. You’re well off the right track.” She gestured to the hearth and several comfortable chairs set in front of it. “You see the sitting room. Now, if you’ll come with me?” Leading the way upstairs and down a short passage, she said, “This room has been aired. I’ll put you here.” Holding the door for him, she waited for him to enter.
    The room was smaller than he’d hoped, seeming even smaller with the white world outside the windows. The bed boasted a blue coverlet that matched the curtains.
    There were two chairs and a table that could serve as a desk, a washstand and basin, and an armoire, crowding together around the walls.
    From the shelf above the bed, a pair of stuffed waterfowl in a glass case stared back at him as she stepped in and lit the lamp. Their glass eyes reflected the flare of her match and then the increasing light as the wick caught, giving them a haunted look. Rutledge found himself thinking that if he’d had his hat with him, he could have flung it over the mallards.
    “No luggage, then?”
    “It’s in the motorcar.”
    “It will be there tomorrow. No one will touch it,” she said complacently. “Now, will you be wanting a light supper?”
    “Yes. That would be very kind.”
    “Then come along downstairs when you’ve settled in.”
    She left him then, and he went to wash his hands. He gave her five more minutes and then, not turning out the lamp, he took her at her word.
    Looking into the sitting room once more, he realized she’d lit a second lamp and that other waterfowl were set here and there, some on shelves enclosed by glass, smaller ones in bell jars, and others in what appeared to be specially designed glass cases.
    Each display had a small brass plate giving the name of the bird. COOT. BITTERN. SEDGEBIRD. A kite and a hawk. RUFF. SPOONBILL. AVOCET. REEVE . Even a snipe. There was also a rather unusual copper-colored butterfly perched on a bare twig. He gave up reading the labels. To his eye the specimens seemed tired, their feathers lackluster.
    For her usual guests, they might be an advertisement of what to expect when they took their guns out. Or what had been there in the distant past, perhaps in her father’s or grandfather’s day. He remembered what Marcella Trowbridge had said about hunting. Seeing this display, he had to agree with her.
    Down the passage he found the kitchen. Priscilla was just taking a meat pie from her oven. He wondered if she’d intended it for her own dinner, then realized that there was another just behind it. The table had already been set, and he could see that he would be dining here.
    “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, looking up in time to see his glance at the table. “It’s a lot of extra work, opening up the dining room. With only myself here, I have no need of it.”
    “This is fine,” he assured her. “Thank you, Miss Bartram.”
    “Everyone calls me Priscilla. I haven’t used Miss Bartram in ten years. Now. Sit down and I’ll just dish up.”
    Rutledge took one of the chairs, saw that