No Shred of Evidence: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery Read Online Free PDF

out in a gesture of distress, then let it fall to her side.
    “How are you, Ian?” she asked, her voice husky.
    He was still battling the darkness but somehow he managed to say, “I’m well.”
    She didn’t seem to believe him. But she said, “I wanted to come and see you, but Frances told me it wouldn’t be advisable.”
    In a panic of uncertainty, he said, “ When? ” Surely not the hospital—please God, not the hospital!
    “A week or so after you returned to the Yard. She said it was too soon after—after Jean had broken her engagement to you.”
    “I broke it,” he said. “I set her free.”
    “Did you? It was very kind of you. She wanted to leave England, to go away and not think about the war any longer. I think it was best for her. She had taken the war very hard. But you know that. She wrote often, she said.”
    But in the last two years of the war her letters had been brief and infrequent, and often laced with her own fears and uncertainties. She hadn’t been prepared for such a long war. For so many friends dead or wounded. It had taken a toll on her. And yet she had been laughing, happy, when he had seen her coming out of St. Margaret’s with her friends.
    He frowned, remembering. Kate had not been among them. He hadn’t noticed at the time, had eyes only for the young woman he had hoped to marry and lost. It had taken all his courage to turn away before she could see him standing there. But she hadn’t seen him . . .
    “Yes,” he answered. “And you, Kate, how have you been?”
    “Like everyone else, I’ve coped,” she said with an attempt at lightness. “There wasn’t much choice in the matter, was there?”
    “No.”
    She took a deep breath. “Are you here officially? How did you know I was in Padstow?”
    “Officially. And I didn’t know—I had only been given the surnames of the women involved. God knows, Gordon isn’t an unusual name. It never occurred to me that you could be in Cornwall. Inspector Barrington died. I’ve been sent to take his place.” It was disjointed, but the best he could do.
    “I’d heard. I was so sorry, he seemed to be very considerate.”
    A silence fell. He thought he could hear the ticking of the clock, then realized it wasn’t the clock, there wasn’t one in the library. It was his own heart.
    “Kate,” he began, and cleared his throat. “We will have to talk about what happened.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why did you go out in the boat? At this time of year?”
    She told him. “And so we rowed up the river, as far as Elaine’s house, and it wasn’t until we were coming back toward the landing that we saw the boat in trouble. And a man waving. I didn’t know then who he was. But the boat sank around him, and I don’t think he could swim well. We rowed down as quickly as we could, and when we spotted him in the water, we tried to bring him aboard. But he was too heavy for us, you see. His wet clothes combined with his weight. Sara and I tried to pull him up out of the water, but he was panicked, he was flailing and struggling, and it was impossible, really. I was about to tell Victoria that she had to row us in somewhere, beach us if necessary, as soon as she could, while we clung to him, and then this other man appeared—out of nowhere, it seemed. I didn’t realize until later that he’d been on the riverbank and seen us. But as soon as Harry—that was the only name I knew him by just then—was breathing and safe, this man turned on us and accused us of trying to murder him. Ian, it was horrible, we were near to exhaustion ourselves, I was shivering with the cold, as was Sara, we were almost as wet as that man and Harry. And I didn’t know what to say, I simply stared at him. That was when he took the oars and began to row us toward the village. Sara and I clung to each other for warmth, our teeth chattering. Elaine was crying, her face in her hands, and Victoria sat there in the bow like a woman turned to stone.”
    She broke off with