The man lifted his head again, his dark eyes giving nothing away as he regarded Rutledge. “The horses and the lads know their business.”
“I’m sure they do. But one misstep, one foot tangled in the tow rope, one instant of losing one’s concentration—I can see it happening.”
“But then you aren’t a boatman,” he retorted and went back to his rope, closing the conversation.
Rutledge walked on, watching the horses pulling the narrowboats toward him. They walked steadily, at a pace, the tow rope not always taut where each boat’s momentum eased the effort to pull it. The boatmen, standing in the stern, watching the bow down the spine of their boats, sometimes shouted to each other or to someone they saw on shore. But for the most part they concentrated on their craft as they pulled into the basin and half a dozen people came out to greet them.
There were three men and a boy of perhaps fifteen leading the horses, moving close by their bridles, and Rutledge saw that the horses did indeed wear blinders.
As the boats eased to a stop, the tow ropes slacking off and dipping into the water, the horses were led forward and allowed to drink.
He walked toward them, and when he reached the elder of the three men, he said, “Thirsty work, I take it.”
The man looked up. “Man and beast.”
“Worked the narrowboats long, have you?”
“I have.”
“What about the man at the tiller?”
“My son. We take turns.”
The lead boat was a dark green, with yellow trim. There were curtains at the windows, and he could see that the other two boats had them as well. There would be no way to know what the boat was carrying. Or who was aboard. Rutledge noticed two flower pots on a low shelf in the bow of the boat where a boy led the horse. A sign that a family lived aboard? And then a curtain in the boat bringing up the rear twitched, and a child’s face appeared in the window for an instant, then disappeared.
“Do you think he’d allow me to travel back across the Aqueduct with him? I left my motorcar over there.”
“You can ask.”
Rutledge walked on and did, offering a pound note as he asked his favor.
The younger man took it, glanced to see that his father wasn’t watching, and pocketed it quickly. “In the bow. Don’t stand. I need to see.”
But it was nearly a quarter of an hour before they moved out of the basin and toward the Aqueduct.
The boat came close enough that Rutledge could step on board, then moved into the stream toward the crossing as the horse took up the strain, the older man talking quietly to the animal. And the boat glided silently toward the waterway.
The horse was out in front, stepping onto the path, and the boat moved with it, the man at the tiller guiding it smoothly into place, still the first boat in line.
Neither the horse nor the man leading it seemed to notice the drop so perilously close as the boat seemed to fill the waterway and move quietly along, the sound of hooves the only distraction. Rutledge rose slightly to look down into the valley from the safety of the bow. The view was quite impressive. But he couldn’t pick out the spot where Roddy had found the body.
Sitting again, he watched the horse putting its feet down with the assurance that the path was there, and the man moving beside it, glancing back along the line of the boat toward the tiller a time or two, then studying Rutledge when he thought he wasn’t being seen.
They reached the far side, glided on into the basin there, and Rutledge was put ashore. He thanked the man at the tiller with a wave, and walked on to where he’d left his motorcar.
If the dead man had come here, no one was about to admit to seeing him. The police had already been here to ask questions, and a stranger coming after them wasn’t very likely to be taken into anyone’s confidence.
As Rutledge bent to turn the crank, Hamish said, “Ye ken, if he came at night, who was to see?”
“I’d not care to cross on that towpath in the dark.”
“Aye, it would depend on how much he wanted to reach the far side.”
But what was he looking for that couldn’t wait until the morning? And how had he got here in the first place? The police hadn’t found a motorcar. Train service was sporadic. Had he walked? From where?
Remembering the child’s face at the window, Rutledge realized that a dozen men, alive or dead, might be behind those pretty lace curtains. Who would know—or guess? And if one was tossed over the bow on the opposite side of the narrowboat from the towpath, it wouldn’t disturb the horse making its careful way across.
How easy was it to leave the horse to find its own way? Or to leave the tiller untended?
But the channel of water over the Aqueduct was barely wider than the boat. There was no place for it to go, once it started across. Lash the tiller, and it would stay on course. The boat’s length would assure that.
It would be nearly impossible to track every narrowboat that had crossed the Aqueduct in the past ten days, much less interview their owners. Not until the police were in possession of sufficient information to make an interview worthwhile.
Rutledge got behind the wheel of the motorcar, then sat there for a moment or two, thinking. Finally he turned his back on the Aqueduct, his mind made up.
The Bantam Battalions had had their beginning in Birkenhead, on the Cheshire coast, early in the war. The average height of men in England was five feet six inches. The Army had set as its regulation height anyone above five feet four, then dropped that to five three. But men shorter than that had clamored to join as well, and General Kitchener had listened, allowing the Bantam Battalions to recruit men between five feet and five three. The initial advertisements had brought in not dozens but hundreds of shorter men eager to serve their country. One had reportedly offered to fight any six men of regulation height, to prove his mettle. The first battalion’s officers were of regulation height, and that had been true throughout the war, until the Bantams had been assimilated into other regiments toward the end. More than a few had gone into the new tanks, where space was cramped even for them.
Rutledge had known one of the Bantam officers in France. Word was, Alasdair Dale had retired to Chester at war’s end, to return to his former occupation, that of solicitor.
It had also been rumored that Alasdair was planning to write a history of the Bantams. To set the record straight. Whether he’d got round to it or not, he’d had the best working knowledge of the Battalions of anyone Rutledge could think of. If the gossip was right, he’d written most of the wills of the first recruits. Wills had been required by the Army, and most men took that philosophically, but a few had seen it as stepping on their graves. Rutledge had had his own drawn up in the months after his parents’ death, making provision for his younger sister, Frances. But the Army had insisted on a more current one, as several years had passed.
The city of Chester was not that far from the Telford Aqueduct, only a few hours’ drive. Once a Roman garrison, it had preserved the walls the legions had built, rebuilding and restoring them well into the Middle Ages. Behind them, Charles I had tried to hold the city during the Civil War. And they were still standing, the city’s pride. Set on the same River Dee where the body had been found, only closer to the sea, Chester had a long history of trade and industry, but its real glory was the tall, elegant black-and-white Tudor houses that graced street after street.