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

assure you.” Rutledge rose. “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Fallowfield. And I appreciate your assistance. It can’t have been easy to relive that afternoon.”
    “God, I can hardly put it out of my mind. I try for Barbara’s sake.” Fallowfield saw him to the door and closed it after him, Rutledge thought, with sheer relief.
    But there was nothing here to be going on with. In some respects it had been a wasted hour. Fallowfield had been absorbed in the wedding, and rightly so. Rutledge doubted, in all fairness, that the man would have noticed much of anything until his vows had been said and he could walk up the aisle with his bride.
    He went next to call on the Sedleys, hoping for more useful information.
    They lived one street over from the bride’s family, and both came into the drawing room to speak to him. They were a handsome couple. Sedley had an air of the successful man about him, and he looked the part: of good height, distinguished, with the first threads of gray showing in his dark hair. His wife was still an attractive woman, and the dark green scarf she wore in the neckline of her paler green dress was just the color of her eyes.
    Rutledge asked more or less the same questions as he had before, and got much the same answers. Neither of them had seen anything except Hutchinson crumpling at their feet. And neither of them could suggest any reason why the Captain should have been a target.
    In fact, Sedley’s view was that his death was related to something in London. “I can’t quite believe that someone followed him all the way to Ely to kill him. I mean to say, whoever it was took a dreadful risk. Still, there you are. The other possibility is that someone in the town had it in for the Captain, but he mentioned at some point that he’d never been to Ely before.”
    Mrs. Sedley added, “We ran him by the Cathedral after we met him at the railway station. He was interested to see it.”
    Both Mr. and Mrs. Sedley answered freely, with as far as he could tell nothing to hide. The shock of death arriving so close to them still had not quite worn off, and they appeared to be glad to help in any way they could.
    “What can you tell me about Major Lowell?”
    “Surely, you can’t believe—” Sedley began in some consternation.
    Rutledge smiled. “Not at all. He offered his assistance to the police, and Inspector Warren was grateful. I wondered what his background might be.”
    “Artillery, of course. Career officer. I didn’t have much opportunity to speak to him, but he was quiet, competent, a good man in an emergency. You must remember that Eugenia and I were there with the Captain. Within touching distance when he was shot. Fallowfield and the best man were just behind us and as stunned as we were. Lowell had been standing by the entrance to the Galilee Porch, and so he was not immediately involved in what happened to Hutchinson. He ran to help me, saw that it was hopeless, and then he got the groom out of there as quickly as possible. There hadn’t been other shots, but of course who knew? We were all targets in that moment, and I was worried for my wife. I couldn’t leave the Captain, not lying there dead, and Eugenia refused to leave me. Lowell simply dealt with everything quietly and efficiently.”
    “No one challenged his right to take charge?”
    “One of the other guests, Colonel Rollins, spoke briefly to him, and then left him to it. I did see that exchange. When it was perfectly clear that there was no further danger, people were converging on the Cathedral. The Colonel got all the wedding guests back inside and shut the doors to the nave. I didn’t know where the bride and her father were taken, but I learned later that the chauffeur had had the presence of mind to drive on as fast as he could until they were certain it was clear. Very sensible of him.”
    Eugenia Sedley added, “It didn’t take the police very long to arrive, but not in sufficient numbers in the beginning to