The Gate Keeper

by Charles Todd

  “Easy for you to say ‘only a dream.’ You aren’t the one who watched a killer fire at a friend, and thought for a horrified moment that he intended to turn and shoot you next!”

  He had not seen her so rattled, even when he’d told her about Wentworth’s death. He responded gravely, “You misread me, Miss Blackburn. But from my perspective, your niece is my only witness to this crime. At the moment only she can help me stop whoever it is from killing again. And she’s far safer in Wolfpit than she would be traveling alone. You must realize that as well.”

  “Then you stop her, Inspector. Why do you think I have come out to fetch you?”

  She turned on her heel and marched away, not waiting to see if he intended to follow her or not.

  Rutledge had the feeling that Miss MacRae was suffering from delayed shock. In the pressure of the moment, she had answered his questions as best she could, she had even found the courage to drive his motorcar to Wolfpit to find Constable Penny. She had held up well later that morning when he’d come to interview her. But her dream, vivid and bringing into sharp focus her own danger in the aftermath of Wentworth’s death, must have broken through the protective shell she had surrounded herself with, and let the demons in.

  When they reached the house door, Miss Blackburn turned to him. “You will be pleasant, if you please. No threats or callous disregard for her feelings.”

  It wasn’t a question, more like the dictated terms of the owner of a dwelling, be it house or castle. The price of admission.

  “I have nothing to gain by threatening her.”

  “Precisely.”

  She turned back to the door and opened it, once more leaving him to follow. At the foot of the stairs, she called, “Elizabeth? Inspector Rutledge would like to have a word with you.”

  She waited, but there was no immediate answer.

  “Elizabeth?” More sharply now.

  Then, with a suddenly fearful glance over her shoulder, as if to see how Rutledge was taking the silence from the head of the stairs, she went up them quickly and turned down the passage to Elizabeth’s room.

  Rutledge waited, tense, by the handsome newel post. In the back of his mind, Hamish was warning him to be prepared.

  “Inspector!” Miss Blackburn’s cry filled the ominous silence, and he took the stairs two at a time, turning in the direction she had taken. A bedroom door stood wide, pale light from the windows casting a paler glow across the polished floorboards.

  He went into the room prepared for anything, and found Elizabeth MacRae lying on the floor in a widening pool of blood.

  Miss Blackburn, her face gray with shock, was kneeling by her niece, trying to find a pulse. She looked up as Rutledge came through the door. “She’s not dead,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort he wasn’t meant to see.

  He was already scanning the room: window closed, no sign of a struggle, but there were half a dozen jumpers lying scattered at her feet, and a silk stocking was tangled around the heel of her shoe.

  “She tripped,” Rutledge said, coming to kneel by Miss Blackburn. “And her head caught the edge of the bed as she went down.” He could see the cut, deep enough to bleed freely, just above her left eyebrow. “Towels? And some cold water?” he added in an attempt to give Miss Blackburn something to do to take her mind off her fright.

  “It’s your fault,” Miss Blackburn said, suddenly losing her temper. “She was so upset by this business that she wasn’t watching what she was doing. And this is the result. Look at her. See what you’ve done.”

  He didn’t answer her directly. This angry outburst was a way of coping with her fear. “It doesn’t matter whose fault this is. Do you have any smelling salts? They will help bring her around.”

  “No, I don’t,” she snapped. “I’m not given to fainting.” But she got up and went to find what he needed, coming back almost at once with towels and a pitcher of water.

  Bathing Elizabeth MacRae’s face while Rutledge wiped up the blood on the floor, she said, “Darling, it’s all right. You tripped. There’s an ugly bump on your head, but no harm done.”

  Miss MacRae’s eyelashes fluttered, and she threw out an arm, as if to catch herself from falling, and then her eyes opened and she looked up at Audrey Blackburn with alarm.

  “What am I doing on the floor?”

  “No, don’t try to sit up just yet, darling. Catch your breath first.”

  She realized there was someone else present, turning to stare at Rutledge, on one knee beside her. He had moved the bloody towels out of sight.

  Then, before they could stop her, she put up a hand, touching the wound and wincing. As she drew her hand away, she saw the blood on her fingertips, and Rutledge thought for a helpless moment that she was about to be sick.

  “Oh dear God,” she said faintly. “Stephen’s blood.”

  Miss Blackburn said bracingly, “Nonsense. It’s your own. You tripped and took a nasty spill, my dear, and you will probably have a headache too. Such a fright you gave me. I thought the ceiling had fallen in, and rushed up the stairs to see why you were rearranging the furnishings.” Over her niece’s head she glared at Rutledge, daring him to contradict her.

  But there was no answering smile. “I was trying to pack, wasn’t I?” She struggled to sit up, and felt a wave of dizziness. She put up her hand again, and this time touched the lump on her forehead. “Oh.”

  “I was downstairs,” Rutledge was saying. “I’d just called. Can I help you to my motorcar? I’ll be happy to take you to be seen by Dr. Brent. It might be a very good idea. You were unconscious for a bit. He may worry about a concussion.”

  The color was coming back into her face, and the dizziness appeared to be receding. “I’ve bled all over my shirtwaist. How awful.”

  Taking up the bloody towels, Rutledge said to Miss Blackburn, “I’ll be downstairs. It will take only a few minutes to fetch the motorcar.” And then he added to Miss MacRae, “I’m glad you’re all right.” With a nod, he left the room.

  As he walked down the passage, he heard the younger woman say, “Why was the Inspector here?”

  But he was too far away to hear Miss Blackburn’s answer.

  Instead of leaving, he stood in the center of the parlor, where he could be seen at once from the doorway, and after some minutes, he heard footsteps coming smartly down the stairs.

  Miss Blackburn. Miss MacRae was surely still too shaken to leave her room. He stepped forward, and spoke before she saw him, so as not to frighten her.

  “Why are you still here?” she demanded at once, keeping her voice low.

  “I wanted to be certain she was all right,” he said. “In the event I need to bring the doctor to her.”

  “She will be, when I’ve made her a cup of tea. If I see anything to worry about, I’ll go to Dr. Brent’s surgery myself.”

  “Is she still determined to go back to Scotland?”

  “I haven’t asked her.”

  “She can’t, you know. I’ve explained why. It will be better coming from you.”

  “Elizabeth is my niece,” she retorted. “I will do what is best for her. Not for you.”

  “Would it be easier if I arrested her as a material witness? I will if I must.”

  She stared at him, clearly appalled. “You will do no such thing,” she told him roundly.

  “Think about that,” he said, turning toward the door. Then he remembered what he’d wanted to ask her. “Who in Wolfpit knew Stephen Wentworth best? I’ve met his mother and father, and parents aren’t always the best judges of their children. Is there anyone else I ought to speak to?”

  “Mrs. Delaney, I expect. Show yourself out, Inspector.” And she walked on down the passage, leaving him standing there.

  But he’d already spoken to the widow of the former bookshop owner.

  Closing the door behind him, he considered the short list of people he’d questioned. As a rule, the village Constable was a useful source of information, but Rutledge was not sure
yet where Penny’s loyalties lay. With the Wentworths? Or possibly even with Inspector Reed.

  He decided to return to Mrs. Delaney. She had shown more grief than the dead man’s mother. And she appeared to know more about the boy who had grown into a man with a love of her husband’s bookshop.

  He walked on to her door, but no one answered his knock. As he turned back toward the center of the village, he saw her just stepping out of Dr. Brent’s surgery. He went to meet her, and saw that the reason she was hurrying with head down was that she was crying.

  When he spoke to her, she tried to nod and pass him by.

  “What is it?” he asked gently. “Shall I walk you home?”

  “Thank you, no,” she said, looking away.

  But he turned to give her his arm, and she had no choice but to walk on with him to her house.

  They had just reached it when she said in a gruff voice, “I asked if I might see Stephen. It’s taken me some time to work up the courage. But that’s more than his mother or father did. I thought someone should at least—but Dr. Brent told me that I was not his family.” She looked at him, her eyes bereft.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “Still, it’s for the best, I should think. Instead, remember the boy and the man you knew so well.”

  Mrs. Delaney took a deep breath. “Why should anyone want to kill him? I can’t seem to wrap my mind around that. An accident of some sort—we’re all vulnerable to fate—I would find shocking and grieve just as much as I do now. But the uselessness of it all, the sheer waste of murder appalls me.”

  “Who knew him best in the years before he began to come to the bookshop? When he was quite young and couldn’t read yet?”

  “His parents, of course,” she said, frowning as she studied his face.

  “Someone more—objective,” he suggested. “His sister, perhaps?”

  Mrs. Delaney shook her head. “Hardly objective. His parents saw to that.”

  Small wonder, he thought, that the boy spent his leisure time in the bookshop, where he was welcomed and in some fashion loved.

  “In what way?” he asked her.

  “Little ways. She was younger, of course, and so it must have been easy to show her that Stephen was not valued. It astonishes me still that he became the person he did. He must have drawn from some inner source of strength. Amazing, really. When you stop and think about it.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? I certainly never did, nor could I ask the child such a question.”

  “There was no one who stood by him? A grandparent, a favorite aunt, someone who helped him until he could find his own strength?”

  “Only Nanny,” she said, “but what could she do? His grandmother tried, she left him financial independence, which tells me she understood what was happening. I don’t think she could do much more than that. She wasn’t well in her last years, and died when he was still just a lad.”

  “Is Nanny still alive?” he asked, feeling a surge of hope.

  “I think so. She went to live with a friend in the next village when Stephen was seven. He had a tutor until he was sent off to school, boarding school. Far too young, if you ask me. But perhaps that was the saving of him too.”

  Rutledge asked for directions to the house of Nanny’s friend, and was given vague instructions on how to find her.

  He waited until Mrs. Delaney had gone inside, shutting her door behind her, then went to the inn and his motorcar.

  As it turned out, the little cottage was easier to find than he’d expected.

  Winthrop was more of a hamlet than a village, down a narrow lane that turned off the main road and wandered a mile or so into the countryside before a string of cottages and shops appeared. It was barely eight miles from Wolfpit as the crow flies, but it might as well be on the moon, he thought. He wondered if it had started life as a collection of weavers’ crofts, before the mills took away their livelihood, for many of the cottages were of a size to hold a large loom. The prosperity that had built Wolfpit had never reached here.

  One of the last cottages on the lane was set in a garden. It had been painted a pleasing yellow at some stage in its life, and that had faded to a paler shade that blended perfectly into its setting.

  It was, he thought, the rose-covered cottage that many British living abroad dreamed of for their retirement back in England. Quaint was one word that suited it. And charming was another. English summed it up well. A small sign by the white gate identified the cottage as Primrose Hill, the name that Mrs. Delaney had given him.

  The garden was bedded down for the winter, bleak but surprisingly tidy.

  The woman who answered his knock was also a perfect example of an English nanny: round and soft, her graying hair pulled neatly back into a bun at the nape of her neck, and round glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was wearing a dark blue coat and held a matching hat in her hand.

  Rutledge smiled. “I am looking for the woman who was nanny to the Wentworth child Stephen.”

  He expected her to name herself, but she said, “You’ll be wanting Hazel, then. She’s in the parlor reading. I’m just popping out to buy something for our tea.” And with a nod, she stepped past him and went off down the path to the lane.

  Bemused, he stepped into the entry and peered into the parlor. “Hazel?” he asked of the woman sitting by the fire in the hearth, a book in her lap. “I’m sorry, it’s the only name I know.”

  She turned, examined him from head to toe, and rose. An angular woman, her back as straight as a board, and her hair salt-and-pepper gray, she had gray eyes to match.

  Something in her expression made him feel six again, and in Nanny’s charge.

  But she said in a pleasant voice, “I thought I heard Sally speaking to someone. My name is Hazel Charing. And you are?”

  He told her and even produced his identification, but she barely glanced at it. He thought she had learned more about him in that scanning glance than his card could have told her.

  “Close the door and come in. The chair there, across from me.”

  He did as he was asked, and joined her by the fire. The day was still gray and cold, although the rain was holding off. The fire’s warmth felt good.

  “I understand you were once nanny to Stephen Wentworth, when he was a lad.”

  “You’re the policeman who found him,” she countered.

  “Sadly, yes.” He hadn’t expected the news to have traveled this far, but he rather thought Winthrop was deceptive. “I’ve heard a great deal about the man. I’d like very much to know more about the boy.”

  “You mean, you wish to know why his parents hated him so?” she asked bluntly.

  “In fact, yes.”

  She set the book aside. “I was hired as nanny before the birth, when it was learned that Mrs. Wentworth was to bear twins.”

  He hadn’t intended to interrupt her, but he said, “Twins?” in his surprise.

  “Yes. She went into labor some six weeks early. Robert was born a little before midnight. Such a lovely child. He had fair hair, almost golden in the lamplight, and his eyes were blue. Perfectly proportioned. The ideal baby, and a boy as well. When he was put into his mother’s arms, she cried out in delight, and held him to her, calling him her Robbie, telling him how sweet he was and showering love on him. Mr. Wentworth was overjoyed, laughing and crying tears of happiness. It was several hours later that Stephen was born. We’d had to take Robbie away when she went into labor a second time. And then the second son came into the world.” She turned to stare into the fire. “Such a different baby. Angular and with a shock of ugly black hair. It was as if he hadn’t been quite finished but had hurried to be born anyway. They were not identical, of course, but the difference was rather startling.” Turning back to him finally, she continued. “When we had bathed Stephen and wrapped him in a blanket, we gave him to his mother in his turn, and she refused to take him. She exclaimed that he was hideous and couldn’t have been hers. And she aske
d us to bring Robbie back to her. I took Stephen, while the doctor handed her Robert, and she made over him until she was tired, and we let her sleep. The crib closest to the bed was his, and Stephen’s was against the far wall, out of sight. By the time we had cleaned up the room and taken everything away, Mr. Wentworth went over to the crib where Stephen was lying, and bent over it. ‘A pity,’ he said, shaking his head, and he walked off to the study to wet the boys’ heads with a glass of brandy.”

  She looked at Rutledge as she finished, to see what his reaction was. “You didn’t know they were twins?”

  “No,” he said. “No one mentioned that to me.”

  “I expect after all these years most people have forgotten,” she said, nodding.

  “But what happened to Robert?”

  “Ah. You’ve spoken to his mother. He was the most beautiful child. Angelic. She had a portrait done of the two of them, mother and son, by a famous London photographer when the boys were two months old. But Robert was frail. While Stephen flourished, it was as if he sucked the life out of his brother. And when he was about six months old, Robbie was found dead in his crib, with Stephen curled up next to him.”

  Rutledge felt the jolt of shock. He was beginning to understand.

  “Mrs. Wentworth swore that Stephen had killed him out of jealousy. It was rather terrible. Mr. Wentworth asked me to take Stephen away for a few weeks, for fear she would do him a harm in her wild grief.”

  Rutledge sat there, forcing down his anger at the selfish, mean-spirited woman, ungrateful that she still had a living child.

  “What did the doctor have to say about the boy’s death?”

  “He was of the opinion it must have been a weak heart. But Mrs. Wentworth wouldn’t hear of it or allow a postmortem. She sent him away. I heard her raging against Stephen, begging God to take him and let her boy live.”

  There would be no reasoning with such grief. And it had grown more vicious with time, instead of passing through the normal stages of mourning.

  Miss Charing was still speaking. “He lived in the nursery with me after that, never coming down for tea or a good night kiss from his mother. No outings, no presents at Christmas, no invitations to visit friends. Mr. Wentworth came from time to time, doing his duty. He bought the boy a pony—then a wooden ship to float on the farm pond. A kite once, and a toy train that ran on wheels. He wasn’t cruel. Just never kind. On school holidays Stephen came to visit me. I’d left by that time, and there was a younger girl set in my place when Miss Patricia was born. You would have thought Miss Patricia was their only child. It was quite remarkably cruel.”