The Gate Keeper

by Charles Todd

  6

  When Rutledge had stowed the valise in his armoire, he went down to Reception and rang the little bell to summon the clerk.

  “There was a message waiting for me when I came up to my room. Before my visitor arrived. It’s important that I answer it. Do you recall who brought it? Whoever it was, he or she would have had to ask for the room number.”

  “I only gave your number out once. And that was to the lady who just left.”

  “Was there someone else on duty earlier?”

  “No, sir. That’s to say I went to the kitchen to fetch my dinner. I wasn’t away from the desk more than a minute or two.”

  “How would someone coming in off the street have known which room I’d taken?”

  Unsettled, the clerk said, “I wouldn’t know, sir. Perhaps he got it from Constable Penny?”

  But he hadn’t given out his number. He’d simply told people he was staying at The Swan.

  He thanked the clerk and went to the kitchen, where the staff was clearing away. The woman who had brought him his tea and stayed to chat was finishing her own meal.

  Rutledge gave the same account to them. The cook, a pot in her hands, shook her head, and her two helpers followed suit. The woman who had served him said, “There was a very elegant older woman who was coming down the stairs as I closed the dining room doors. Was it she?”

  “No, she was a friend who called. Did you notice anyone else going up the stairs?”

  They hadn’t but volunteered the information that someone could have taken the back stairs. There was a door leading to them from the kitchen and another from the back entry into the rear yard.

  “No matter,” Rutledge said with a smile, thanking them. “If it’s important, whoever left the message will find me again.”

  But he thought that whoever it was must have known about the back stairs. And it was possible that he or she had simply opened doors until the right room was found. It wouldn’t have taken long—he was in number 2.

  To be sure of that, when he had climbed the stairs again, Rutledge quietly opened the door to number 1. It wasn’t locked, and one glance at the state of the room would have made it plain that it was not taken.

  He tried number 3 and number 4 as well. Neither was locked.

  But he had a key to his own room, and from now on, he would make a point of locking it whenever he wasn’t inside.

  After his dinner in the inn’s dining room, Rutledge fetched his hat and coat, then walked down The Street to the Holden house.

  He found them just rising from their own meal, and Holden carried Rutledge off to a small study after introducing him to his wife, Matilda.

  She was a very pretty young woman with a square face, black hair, and merry eyes.

  Will Holden was of the same height as the man on the road, but there any resemblance to Wentworth’s killer seemed to end. Holden walked with a noticeable limp. He said, running a hand through his dark hair, “I still can’t believe Stephen is gone.”

  Rutledge took the chair he was offered and sat down. The room was very masculine in style, with watercolors of dog breeds on the walls and heavy leather-upholstered chairs, reminiscent of a men’s club in London.

  “How well did you know him?” he asked, although Geoff Marshall had given him a very good idea of the relationship. Still, it was better to hear Holden’s own version of growing up in Wolfpit with Wentworth and the other lads they’d known as children.

  But Will Holden surprised him by saying, “I didn’t like him when we were young. I really can’t say why. He was nice enough, I expect. On the other hand, I was wild, and his was the more level head. At eight, it’s hard to value someone who always has a very good reason to say no, it’s not on, when you have your heart set on climbing the church tower and seeing the bells. My mother often held Stephen up as the font of all virtue, and that didn’t help very much either. Later on, we had more in common than we did at eight, and I quite changed my mind about him. But he went off to a public school when he was twelve, and then to university. And we didn’t see very much of each other after that.”

  There was an undercurrent in his voice that Rutledge heard, faint though it was. Envy again? Or something darker?

  “Do you think Cambridge changed him?” It was a wider world than Wolfpit, and if it had made a difference somehow, Holden would have been the first to notice.

  He frowned. “I don’t know. The last summer before he came down, he seemed to be much the same person, a little older and a little wiser, you might say. But that last term he didn’t come home and he didn’t write to any of us. As soon as it ended, he was off to Peru.” He shook his head. “I never quite understood that journey. It smacked more of running away than choosing to go away.”

  “Did he tell you why he was going? Why he chose Peru?”

  “He didn’t even say good-bye. I got a short note posted from Southampton before he sailed. We’d talked about a walking tour in Scotland that summer, and he apologized for changing his plans. He didn’t say where he was going or when he’d be coming back.” There was an aggrieved note in his voice now.

  “I understand there was a young woman he met while he was at university. Did she live in Cambridge? Or closer to Wolfpit?”

  “So I’ve heard, but he never spoke of her to me. I can’t say where she’s from.”

  “Could an unhappy love affair have spurred his decision to go to Peru? Was Wentworth the sort of man who would have felt that deeply enough to change his plans rather drastically? After all, he’d been expected to come home to run the bookshop.”

  Holden shook his head. “They say still water runs deep. It did with Stephen. He seldom spoke about himself or what he was feeling. He was open, talking to people, a good listener, the sort of friend you could count on in a pinch. But sometimes I wasn’t sure what he was thinking. He never said.”

  “A private person.”

  “I expect you could call it that. But it was almost as if he was afraid to let anyone see his weaknesses.”

  It was a perceptive remark.

  “Did you spend much time with him after the war? Any idea how it might have affected him?”

  “I came back from France with only one thought in mind. Marrying Matilda. By the time Stephen got home, I was a married man with a child coming. We were still friends and all that. But we had much less in common. I’d share a pint with him sometimes in The Swan, but we had less and less to say to each other.” He shrugged. “It was sad in a way. Neither of us could afford to lose any more friends. As it was, we’d left most of them behind in the trenches. Or at sea.”

  “Any hard feelings that he enlisted in the Navy rather than following the rest of you into the Army?”

  Holden frowned. “We’d have liked to have him with us. Of course we would have. Geoff—that’s Geoff Marshall, another friend—always held that Stephen had chosen the Navy to please his mother, but he never struck me as being that close to her. Looking back, he never mentioned her the way the other lads did. ‘My mum told me to be home by three—my mum gave me sweets to share around—my mum had something to say about tearing my shirt whilst climbing that tree.’ Odd, in a way.”

  “What about his father?”

  “I remember he bought Stephen a sled one winter when we had an unexpected snowfall. And there was a bicycle later on, I think.”

  “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to see him dead?”

  “Murder? He’s the last person I’d expect to hear was murdered. I’m still shocked. You must wrong someone if they’re to hate you. I can’t imagine what it was that Stephen had done.”

  But in Rutledge’s experience, hate was not always earned.

  Although he talked with Holden for another few minutes, he learned nothing more. Thanking the man, he left. Walking back toward the inn, he crossed the street and went on down the road, almost to the eastern outskirts of the village. There were several run-down cottages there, and another larger brickyard, then the open field
s. Here the sheep had run, making the village prosperous over the centuries, but he didn’t see any of them now.

  Coming back past the bookshop, he heard what sounded like the ringing of a telephone. He hurried to the door and got it open just as the ringing stopped. Making his way through the darkness in the shop, he reached for the telephone and asked the switchboard who had called. But all the woman at the other end could tell him was that the call had come from London.

  He put through a call to the Yard, and Sergeant Williams answered, not Sergeant Gibson.

  “Mr. Rutledge, sir? Yes, I did just try to telephone you. I’ve been asked to tell you that the Chief Constable has agreed to call in the Yard in the case of the murder of Stephen Wentworth. However, Chief Superintendent Markham has questioned the request that it should be you in charge. You’re a witness, sir. After the fact, but nevertheless, a witness. It might be best to send down Inspector Vernon.”

  “With respect, I think it’s the opposite case. I was there at the start of the inquiry, I saw the body in place. It gives me a greater insight than arriving days later.”

  “Yes, sir, I can see that, sir. But what shall I tell the Chief Superintendent, sir?”

  It was more a plea than a question.

  “Tell him that I prefer to take charge at this point, but I will let the Yard know at once if I feel that my presence on the scene at the beginning is not helpful in pursuing my duties.”

  He could hear the smile in Williams’s voice as he said, “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I will quote you on that.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant. See that you do.”

  Rutledge rang off, then stood there in the darkness of the bookshop, looking around at the shadowy shapes of the shelving. What had changed Wentworth’s dedication to this work, after he’d gone to so much trouble to purchase the shop?

  But the shelves were silent.

  He locked the door and left. In the distance he could hear a dog barking and remembered that this was once a place where wolves roamed. He found himself feeling some sympathy for the last wolf caught here, the last of his kind, alone and lonely.

  There was no one in the police station, but a night lamp was burning on the desk. Rutledge found pen and paper, then wrote a few sentences telling Penny that it was official. He was the officer in charge.

  Shutting the police station door behind him, he crossed to the inn. The street was empty, and his steps echoed.

  Climbing the stairs to his room, Rutledge wondered why Stephen Wentworth had hidden his feelings, as Will Holden had suggested, and if he had lost the woman he was said to have loved because he couldn’t break free from that inbred need for his own privacy. Or if there was some other reason for ending the relationship. He would have to travel to Cambridge sooner or later, to speak to her . . .

  The next morning was dismally wet. It had warmed in the night, enough to bring an early fog with it. Nothing like the London fogs, which seemed to cloak the spirit as well as the clothing in a cloying mist that brought on coughing fits and left a damp grime behind. Still, this one was enough to keep anyone by his hearth who had no particularly pressing business elsewhere.

  Rutledge stared out the inn window as he considered where to begin, now that he had been assigned the inquiry. The Wentworths would be finishing their breakfast. And before they went back to Norwich, he would have to speak to them. It wouldn’t be a comfortable interview. The bereaved often saw their dead as someone more than human, above reproach, possessor of all the virtues. It was sometimes hard to sift the truth from the flood of memories in support of that belief. And yet the interview had to be done as soon as possible.

  He lingered over a second cup of tea, to give them time to do the same, then set out briskly for the house, his umbrella tilted against a blowing rain.

  When he knocked at the door, there was no immediate answer. And then Wentworth’s father opened it, saying sharply, “Are you from the undertaker’s?”

  “Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I’m in charge of the inquiry into your son’s death.”

  Mr. Wentworth stared at him blankly for a moment, then seemed to grasp what Rutledge had said. Face-to-face, Rutledge could see that while he resembled his son in coloring and features, he gave the impression that he was a weaker man. It was there in the softer line of the jaw and a short chin. There were circles under his deep-set blue eyes, signs of grief or of a long familiarity with pain. “Come in. My wife has just gone up to finish packing her valise. If you’ll step this way.” He gestured toward the parlor, and Rutledge walked ahead of him into the room he’d already seen. It felt more alive than it had earlier. As if the presence of the former occupants had rejuvenated it somehow.

  “The Constable has told me how my son died. I hope you’re here to tell me why he died.”

  “It’s too soon for answers, when there are so many questions still to be asked,” Rutledge replied quietly. “Your son is well thought of here in Wolfpit. There seems to be nothing in his past or his present that could have led to his death.”

  Taking the chair opposite the one he’d offered Rutledge, Mr. Wentworth said, “He was never the sort of person who caused anxiety. Not even as a child. A peacemaker rather than a troublemaker.”

  And yet Stephen Wentworth had chosen to own a bookshop when he could have enjoyed a life of leisure.

  “Were you pleased when he chose to buy the bookshop?” Rutledge asked, following up on that thought.

  “Not particularly. I thought it was more a whim than a lifelong passion. But he had spent a great deal of time there, and I expect it seemed natural to him to take it on when Delaney fell ill. He was always bringing home lost dogs as a child. None of which he could keep, of course, and I was sometimes hard-pressed to find suitable owners for them.”

  “Most boys grow up with dogs. Why wasn’t Stephen allowed to keep one?”

  “My wife—his mother—doesn’t particularly care for animals. She felt they were unhealthy in a house.”

  Rutledge’s parents had been more indulgent. He had had dogs most of his childhood, and not all of them had been pedigreed. The last, a white male called Rover for his ceaseless desire to roam the countryside at all hours of the day and night, had died at a ripe old age almost two years before the war, and in a London flat, with the hours he kept as a policeman, Rutledge had not replaced him.

  “Tell me why Stephen chose to go to Peru after he came down from university.”

  Surprised at the change in direction, Wentworth shook his head. “I wish I could. It was sudden, unexpected. I wondered if it had to do with a young woman he’d been seeing in Cambridge. Her father was something to do with one of the colleges.”

  Here was new information indeed. A woman who might be considered unsuitable for the Wentworth heir . . .

  “Did you and Stephen’s mother ever meet her?”

  “Only briefly. While we were there at the end of term, she left to visit friends.”

  “And how did your son seem? Brokenhearted? Unhappy? In a mood that might send him halfway across the world to recover?”

  “In fact he seemed very much himself.” He stirred uneasily. “Stephen was deep, you know. I sometimes wondered if I really understood him.”

  “Secretive?”

  “No. ‘Private,’ I think, is a much better word.”

  “And yet people liked him. That’s not usually the case if a man keeps to himself.”

  “You’re twisting my words, Inspector.”

  “I’m trying to see your son through your eyes.”

  The door opened just then, and a woman dressed in severest black came into the room. “I’ve closed my valise—” She broke off. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had a guest.”

  Both men had risen as she entered. But Rutledge thought that Wentworth was more than a little put out by his wife’s presence. As if he would have preferred conducting this interview alone. He covered it well, nodding toward Rutledge.

  “Inspector Rutledge has come to ask questions
about Stephen’s life. The better to find answers to what has happened.”

  She stared at this man from London. Her face was not pretty, nor was it unattractive. Instead it was expressive of a woman who had been disappointed by life.

  “I should think it’s more to the point to learn about the man who killed Stephen,” she said coldly.

  “And that’s one of the ways of going about it,” Rutledge said pleasantly. “The more I learn about your son, the better able I am to find his murderer.”

  “That makes no sense to me at all.”

  “Nevertheless,” Rutledge replied.

  Raising her eyebrows at that, she looked him over a second time. Then, to his surprise, she sat down on the small sofa across from the fire and said, “He was always a disappointing child. And he grew into a disappointing man.”

  Rutledge stared at her. Here was a grieving mother, but she looked more like a disapproving headmistress discussing a recalcitrant pupil.

  “How so?” he asked, trying to hide his distaste.

  “He could never settle. He had to have that bookshop, and then he had to be off to Peru. It’s all of a piece with everything he’s ever done. He’d ever done,” she corrected herself, remembering that he was dead.

  “And yet he’s your only son.”

  “He is not. His brother died soon after birth.”

  In a flash of insight, Rutledge saw the problem. The dead child had never lived to disappoint. The living child must have always been compared to what might have been. “If your brother had lived . . .”

  But what had Stephen done as a child to make him less acceptable than a dead memory?

  Before he could respond, her husband broke into the conversation. “You must understand, Inspector, that we are still in a state of shock. This has been unbearably sudden, and we can barely face this news in our own minds.”

  Mrs. Wentworth glanced at her husband, opened her mouth to say something more, then carried on with the theme of shock. “Our daughter is waiting for us. She has the care of small children and had to stay behind. If we’re to return here later in the week for the funeral, we must be on our way.” She rose and turned toward the door. The two men got hastily to their feet.