A Lonely Death by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online Page A

gunpoint until he could be relieved. They were taken prisoner. If he hadn’t stopped them from firing, God knows how many of our men would have been killed.”
    “Where is Daniel now?” Rutledge asked.
    Pierce flushed. “I don’t know. He came back from the war, spent two weeks with us here in Eastfield, and then disappeared one night. We haven’t heard from him since. I blame Inspector Norman there. Not two days after Danny came home, Norman was on my doorstep wanting to know if Danny had been part of a group of men who had robbed the owners of a small hotel and their dinner guests. He claimed that the description of one of them could have fit Danny quite easily.”
    “Did your son have an alibi?”
    The flush deepened. “He didn’t need one. His word was good enough.”
    But once a troublemaker, always a troublemaker, in the eyes of the police.
    Walker stirred uneasily, as if he’d been caught in the crossfire between Pierce and the Hastings police.
    Dropping the subject of Daniel Pierce, at least for the moment, Rutledge asked who had found the bodies of the other two victims.
    Walker said, “It was the housekeeper at the Roper farm. She thought Jimmy might still be sitting with Dandelion. Instead she found his body just outside the stall. And young Mr. Pierce was discovered by the foreman, coming in to work the next morning. He thought the killer might still be in the brew house, and sent his men to search, armed with whatever weapons they could lay hands to, while he stayed with the body and one of the other men came for me.”
    “But there was no sign of an intruder.”
    “No, sir. Whoever he was, he hadn’t broken in.”
    “Who survives Jeffers and Roper?”
    “Mrs. Jeffers, his wife. And Roper’s father—he’s old, frail.”
    Rutledge turned to Pierce. “Your son Anthony wasn’t married?”
    “The young woman he would have married at the end of the war died in the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. Of late, Anthony had been friends with Mrs. Farrell-Smith. She’s head mistress at the Misses Tate School. It’s a well-established institution here in Eastfield. A good many people from outside the village—Battle, Hastings, as far away as Rye—send their children here. Anthony attended it himself until he was twelve. The Tate sisters were still alive then.”
    “Have you seen any strangers here in Eastfield? Has anyone asked for Jeffers, Roper, or Pierce?”
    “I spoke to any number of people—in the hotel, the shops, the pubs, the restaurants,” Walker said, shaking his head. “And there hasn’t been anyone here that we didn’t know. And that’s what’s most worrisome. I’d always thought of a garrote as being a French weapon. But the only Frenchman in Eastfield is in the churchyard, and he’s been there these thirty years and more.”
    T en minutes later, when Rutledge and Constable Walker had taken their leave of Pierce, Rutledge waited until they were well out of earshot of the brewery and any of its workers before asking, “What do you think became of Daniel Pierce?”
    “Daniel?” Walker repeated, and then looked away. “I don’t know. He just—left. In the middle of the night. If you want to know what I think, he didn’t wish to be a burden on his father. The Pierces have enjoyed a fine reputation all through the years. And Anthony was a good man, best suited to being the heir in temperament. Not one to carouse and come home drunk in the middle of the night, singing bawdy songs as he walked down the street.”
    “Pierce seems to believe his son changed.”
    “Yes, well, a father would, wouldn’t he? But I’ve made inquiries from time to time—on my own, sir, not officially. And there’s been no word of him in the towns where I know the police. So perhaps he has.”
    “Why should you search for him?” Rutledge asked, his curiosity aroused.
    Walker flushed, the question catching him unprepared. After a moment he said, “I’ve always had a soft spot for young Daniel,