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

the tea was steeping, and was about to get up and move it to the table.
    “No, just sit there, if you will. Better than getting underfoot.”
    Besides the pie there was cabbage and parsnips, with an excellent chutney.
    “I made it myself,” she said as he tasted it, and he told her it was very good.
    She began to ask questions about his encounter with Miss Trowbridge, and he could see that she was a gossip by nature, reinforced by what must be a rather lonely life.
    “If it hadn’t been for her cat, I’d have still been lost in this mist. Or worse,” he replied. “I don’t know how she found her way here.”
    “We’re used to it, I expect.” Finding that topic a dead end, Priscilla asked if the news of their late disturbance here in Wriston had reached as far as Cambridge.
    “The papers carried the account. A Mr. Swift killed as he was starting to address his constituents.”
    “Well, hardly an address,” she said. “He’s standing for office, and he was making his opening remarks when the shot rang out. But he was already falling, disappearing out of sight, and the cry went up that he’d been hit. Then Mrs. Percy exclaimed that she’d seen a monster. There was general pandemonium after that. The constable—we’ve only got the one—had run toward Mr. Swift, and by the time he looked around to where she was pointing, there was nothing to be seen. You’d have thought the shot fired itself. And try as he would, he couldn’t discover anything more. This, mind you, following on the heels of that poor man killed in Ely not even a fortnight ago. They’ve made no headway in finding his killer, either.”
    “Were you in the square when Mr. Swift was shot?”
    “I was. Most of us went for the entertainment, you see. There’s not much else to do of an evening, and the torches were coming down the road from The Wake Inn. Like a parade, you might say. Then Mr. Swift was stepping up on the stump of the old market cross, and the crowd quieted down to hear him speak. He’s—he was—a much better orator than the Liberal candidate. We expected to be well entertained. And just like that he was falling, cut off in the middle of a word. The noise seemed to come from everywhere at once, giving me the shock of my life. The butcher, Mr. Banner, was standing beside me, and he ducked, and so did the owner of the pub, as if expecting more shots. I don’t think I could have moved if my life had depended on it. Mrs. Percy began screeching at the top of her lungs. I thought she’d gone into strong hysterics. After a bit she calmed down a little and I heard her claiming that it was a monster, up there at the ironmonger’s window. What’s more, the constable and afterward that Inspector from Ely, Warren is his name, tried but they couldn’t shake her account. We don’t run to hobgoblins here in the Fen country. I ask you!”
    Rutledge smiled. Her vehemence told him otherwise. “Whatever she saw, it must have frightened her. Where was she standing, in relation to where Mr. Swift was speaking? Did you see her?”
    “Not before she cried out. She was a little behind him, on the far side of the cross. She had her hands over her face. I thought she was shocked by his death—she was close enough to see what happened to him firsthand. Someone told me later his blood was on her apron.”
    Enough to shock anyone, he thought. It also meant that while looking up at the speaker, she must also have been looking almost directly at the killer. Had movement caught her eye just as the shot was fired? Most certainly not in time to warn Swift, but in time to absorb the fact that a monster had been there, looking down at his handiwork. While everyone else faced the speaker, watching him break off and begin to collapse, what had she actually seen?
    The question was, who else had been in that same position and why hadn’t he or she come forward? Were they afraid to be made a laughingstock? Apparently Mrs. Percy was not . . .
    “How