Hunting Shadows: An Inspector Ian Rutledge Mystery by Charles Todd Page A

cartridge casing on the ground, just about where you’d step through and then step back. It had rolled into a clump of grass by the wall, half hidden by the door. He didn’t have time to look for it.” He stopped, waving in that direction. “The doctor and the Major disagreed over that one.”
    Rutledge looked at where Hutchinson had fallen and then turned back toward the gate. “It would be a fairly easy shot,” he replied. “It wouldn’t take a marksman to do it. As long as the people at the barrier were out of his line of fire. Why did they disagree? The doctor and the Major.”
    “Lowell felt that the gate was a possible shot, just as you said. But when the doctor examined the body, he claimed the shot had come from above. Up there.”
    Warren pointed up at the west tower. “A constable climbed all the way up there and told me the slope of the roof would have prevented a decent shot. People were walking toward the door, and anyone standing up there with a rifle was bound to be noticed.”
    Rutledge shielded his eyes from the sun as he stared upward. “Surely there was room to kneel.”
    “He says not. And no one has brought it up save for the doctor. Of course, Dr. Bradley has had no military experience, but later during the postmortem, he showed me the course of the bullet. It would seem he was right, although the only evidence, the casing, was here.”
    “What did Lowell have to say about that?”
    “At the time, he never turned Hutchinson over. There was no reason to.” Walking on toward the Cathedral, Warren added, “By the time we arrived, there were at least two hundred people milling about. Wedding guests, bystanders, those drawn from the school down there to your right. Ordinary people who heard the shouting and screams and came to see what had happened. My men began to sort them and take down names to collect statements. And I began to realize that no one had seen anything useful. By this time, the bride’s father was pressing us to allow the wedding to go on, late as it was, and as soon as the body was removed, we really saw no reason to prevent it.”
    “Are there any statements in particular I should pursue?”
    “There are several it wouldn’t hurt to look at. Oddly enough, the bridegroom was convinced he was the target, while the bride, arriving in the middle of the chaos, thought he was the victim and was hysterical. It would probably have been wiser to postpone the affair.”
    By this time, they had reached the west door and Warren pulled it open.
    “Is it usually closed? This door?”
    “As a rule it’s open during services and for occasions such as the wedding.”
    They walked inside. It had been some time since Rutledge had been in this Cathedral. Beyond the porch, to his right the lobby spread out toward the shorter twin towers overlooking the wall where the ladder had been left. Ahead, through another set of doors, he could see the unusual painted vault of the nave. It was quite long, leading down to the crossing, which supported the Octagon, which in turn supported the Lantern overhead. Thence to the choir. Ely was, in a way, a glimpse of what churches and Cathedrals must have looked like before the Reformation, when there were frescoes and painted statues and ceilings. The Victorians had reveled in adding color too, but not always successfully.
    As he made his way down the aisle, he looked to his left and saw a rose petal, dried now, the color faded, that had escaped the cleaning women. It was caught under the edge of one of the kneelers, a sad reminder of the wedding’s chaos.
    Silence surrounded them in the nave, their footsteps echoing to the stone walls. It was cool and dimly lit after the warm sunny afternoon outside. Warren’s voice was subdued as he said, “We had people out in the Lady Chapel, up on the roof, up in the Lantern, searching all the buildings in the Cathedral precincts, the Bishop’s quarters, everywhere we could think of. This place is a rabbit warren,