The Gate Keeper

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge could hear Hamish mocking him, and fought to shake off the last remnants of the nightmare. Sitting on the side of his bed, his head in his hands, he waited for peace.

  The next morning heavy clouds obscured the sunrise, and a cold misting rain greeted him when he stepped out of The Swan and looked up at the sky. He was just in time to see the two schoolmistresses begin their brisk walk toward the school, their umbrellas shielding their faces. Rutledge didn’t follow them this time. He still didn’t know if they were targets, but they were safe enough on the street, with children all around them.

  He turned to look at the solicitor’s office, and watched the clerk arrive to open the door. Blake must still be at home. Rutledge idly wondered if the heads of dead beasts filled the man’s house as well as the firm’s walls. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

  He went back into the inn and ordered his breakfast, his mind on the inquiry that must be going on in Surrey. Had Inspector Stevenson even bothered to look for a carving? He was a good man, steady, but more than a little stiff-necked with Scottish pride. He might not have cared to have another policeman second-guess his search for evidence.

  Hamish said, “It doesna’ matter. Ye’ve enough on your plate here. Surrey can wait.”

  And Hamish was right. Except that it could mean that the killer here was already well out of reach south of London.

  Rutledge called on Dr. Brent to ask what he’d found when he examined Templeton.

  “Little enough. Like Wentworth, he was in good health. More’s the pity, dying so young. Some scars from his war, of course, but nothing that would have shortened his life. Single shot, straight into the heart. Dead before he knew what had happened, very likely.” He frowned. “That’s interesting to me. Most people would fire at the chest, and there’s a chance their shot would find the heart. If not, or if they were anxious or frightened, they’d break the ribs and hit a lung. They might even be lucky enough to strike one of the great vessels. But it’s a haphazard business. Especially in the dark, when a man’s wearing a heavy coat against the cold. It’s possible this man, whoever he is, has had medical training. An orderly in the war. Much as I hate to suggest it, even a doctor. He seems to have known what he was doing.”

  “Interesting indeed,” Rutledge said. “I’m also intrigued that he was satisfied to shoot to kill instantly. If it’s revenge, there’s usually a desire to make the victim suffer, to give him time to recognize why he is going to die.”

  The doctor reached across his desk for a pen, twirling it between his fingers. “Is that always the case?”

  “No. But more often than not. Where is the satisfaction in a quick death?”

  “Miss MacRae was with Wentworth,” Brent pointed out. “Indulging in revenge would very likely mean having to kill her as well. And in Templeton’s case, the killer was lucky no one in the house heard the shot. He couldn’t have counted on that.”

  “Even if the staff had heard the sound and realized it was a shot, the killer would have been well away before they found Templeton.”

  “Well, yes, there’s that.”

  “This killer wanted both men dead. Fast, efficient, and before Miss MacRae’s shock wore off, he’d made his escape. It goes along with what you were saying about knowing how to place his shot. I wonder what’s driving him, if it isn’t revenge?” He frowned, considering the possibilities. A bookshop owner, a gentleman farmer, and now a solicitor . . . “It must be something they know, perhaps only in part. But if it was ever put together, this knowledge, it would endanger someone. And they have to be stopped before they realize what they have in common. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “God knows.” Brent sighed. “Surgery hours have begun. There will be a line waiting.” Then he said, “Anger. That might be what drives him. A fury so deep he’s already lived with it long enough that it has burned cold.”

  Rutledge nodded. “Yes, you could have something there. It makes as much sense as my theory. Thank you, Doctor.”

  The morning was still young. Rutledge had purposely called on Brent before surgery hours began, and by now, most people would have finished their breakfast and begun their day. He had asked Mrs. Delaney for a list of people who might have known Templeton well enough to be helpful, and she had given him three names.

  Returning to The Swan for his motorcar, he drove out to the house of Templeton’s neighbor, a Mrs. Wilma Smythe.

  She was a war widow who had been close to Templeton’s wife, Rose, and she led him into her sitting room with the usual platitudes about a man’s death. Before he could ask her about Templeton, she said, “She was such a lovely person, always volunteering wherever there was a need. She did what she could for the children who had lost their fathers, organizing them into what she called her helpers, sending them out to take a basket of food to one family or turn over the vegetable garden for another, whatever needed doing. It took their minds off their own sorrow, you see, and let them know that they weren’t alone in their suffering.”

  He had a difficult time bringing her around to Templeton. “My husband liked him,” Mrs. Smythe finally told him. “And he helped Tom with an irrigation problem. He even got down into the ditch with Tom and found the perfect place to set up a pump. Tom had been struggling with that field for two years.”

  Rutledge came to the conclusion that Mr. Templeton had avoided her. Her stock-in-trade was gossip, and she rattled on about Rose Templeton in terms that made him suspect she hadn’t been as close to her neighbors as she claimed, although she had assured him that they were “dearest friends.”

  His next stop was at the home of an older couple who had been friends with Templeton’s father. They lived on the outskirts of a village on the Ipswich road. Mrs. Farrow asked if he’d care for tea, but Rutledge thanked her and launched into his questions about the dead man.

  They remembered the boy with affection, the man with respect.

  “Did he have any enemies?” Rutledge asked George Farrow.

  “Nice people don’t have enemies. I don’t think it was possible for anyone to dislike him. He was the last person to cause trouble. He and Stephen Wentworth reminded me of each other, in a way. They went about their lives quietly, never expecting too much of others, and never shirking their own duty.”

  But it was Mrs. Farrow who said, “Something happened to him in France. Not just the war, something that touched him personally. Rose saw it too, and we talked a number of times about what it might have been. There was a very odd letter that she showed me. All it said was, ‘My God, they’ve got it wrong. So damned wrong. I’m ashamed.’ She was quite surprised that it had got past the censors. We decided that they must have believed he was responding to some domestic issue his wife had asked about. But that wasn’t the case at all. Rose was completely bewildered.”

  “Did he ever explain what he meant?”

  “I don’t know if she ever found out. When he came home on compassionate leave, she was dying.”

  “What happened to the letter?”

  “I don’t know. I told her to burn it, that he wouldn’t want to be reminded of it when the war was over.”

  “Was there anyone who would have profited from his death?”

  Mrs. Farrow answered him. “Frederick? No. I can’t imagine how. George and I have known him since his fourth birthday. He was a good man.”

  “And the war? Was there anything there that might have come back to haunt him?”

  “He never talked about his war,” George Farrow spoke then. “I let it be known that I’d listen if he ever wanted to look back, but he told me he had put it behind him. For good.”

  Rutledge had known men who said much the same thing, and hadn’t in the two years since the Armistice found a way to live with what had happened to them.

  He didn’t need Hamish, stirring in the back of his mind, to point out that he himself was one of them.

  Rutledge’s last call was on the Rector of St. Mary’s in Wolfpit, Thomas Abbot, a tall sl
im man with a pince-nez that gave him the air of a Cambridge don. When Rutledge found him in the rectory, he was just finishing his sermon for Sunday, and he said, leading Rutledge back to the study where he’d been working, “How shall I find the words to express what we feel about the loss of two men like Stephen Wentworth and Frederick Templeton?” He indicated a chair by the fire, and sat down in the matching one himself. Behind him was a mahogany desk cluttered with books and papers and correspondence.

  “I understood that neither of them were in regular attendance at St. Mary’s.”

  Abbot smiled. “I don’t count that as the only virtue worth noting about a man’s life.”

  Rutledge returned the smile. “Indeed. Tell me about Templeton.”

  “He was a fine chess player. We have played at irregular intervals for some years now. Frederick even sent me occasional moves from the trenches. And we were evenly matched. Which made it all the more challenging.”

  “What were his other interests?”

  “You must know the answer to that, if you’ve looked into his life at all. His work was all-absorbing. It began when he was a young lad and asked his father why one of their fields was not producing as well as others next to it. His father’s answer didn’t satisfy him, and he began coming in on market day and asking some of the local farmers how they dealt with similar problems. He brought in a new variety of apple, French as I recall, and started a small orchard. When it began bearing, he set up a cider press. It was the way his mind worked. See the need, find an answer, and when you have that answer, find a way to better it.”

  “What sort of officer was he during the war?”

  “He knew how to handle men. Well, he’d had enough experience dealing with farmers and their tenants, some of whom still did things the way their grandfathers had done them before them. Judging from the letters he wrote, I’d say he was a popular officer. But after a time the endless killing and maiming made him bitter, and what he saw of the destruction by the Germans during their retreat made him angry.”

  Rutledge had seen it too, a land laid waste. The thinking was, it would slow the Allied advance, but much of it was nothing short of viciousness on the part of a vanquished foe.

  Was this what Templeton had written about so passionately to his wife, in the letter that Mrs. Farrow had been shown?

  Abbot was saying, “He came back a man who had seen the worst that men could do to each other, and it didn’t help that his wife died of the Spanish influenza. I thought it would change him. Instead, he threw himself into his work with a desperation that was pitiable. I don’t know that his death wasn’t a release for him.”

  It was an interesting remark from a man of the cloth, but Rutledge had a feeling that the Rector was a realist, who didn’t turn away from the truth.

  And it gave him a better view of Templeton than anyone else had done.

  Rutledge took the opportunity to ask about the sexton. Surprised, the Rector said, “He keeps to himself. I have wondered if his previous life was unhappy. But he’s trustworthy and a hard worker. And so I leave him in peace.”

  As Abbot walked him to the door, he said, “Have you visited our church? Wool money, of course. It has the most exceptional double-barreled vaulting with angels. If you care about such things, you’ll be glad you stopped in.”

  Rutledge thanked him and left.

  Hamish said, “You havena’ found what you were after.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to. Not here in Wolfpit.” He had left the motorcar at The Swan when he came back from calling on the Farrows, and he went to collect it, driving out to the Hardy house and asking to speak to Robin Hardy.

  This time his quarry came to the door.

  “The houseguests have all gone away. I can be seen in the company of a policeman,” he said wryly.

  “That’s helpful,” Rutledge said, and went to shut the door of the sitting room where the housekeeper had left him while she looked for Hardy. “Have you heard that Frederick Templeton is dead? In very similar circumstances to the killing of Stephen Wentworth. Did you know Templeton?”

  “Not well. To be honest I had no need to consider growing marrows and finding the right bull to improve my herd. My brother runs the estate his own way.”

  Rutledge studied him for a moment. “That’s how he was lured out of his house. A request to inspect a prize bull.”

  “Don’t look at me. I had no reason to kill him. And I don’t know what I would do with said bull if I found him. My brother wouldn’t listen if I brought in a dozen for him to choose from.”

  “What went wrong with Templeton’s war? You were in France. You must have heard rumors.”

  There had been a subtle change in Robin Hardy’s expression at the mention of Templeton’s war.

  “You were in France too,” Hardy countered. “What did you hear?”

  “I didn’t know Templeton before the war. I never met him during it. I commanded in a Scots regiment.”

  “Did you now. I don’t know how you managed the pipers. It was more than I could take, hearing them. Sent shivers up my backbone.”

  Rutledge wasn’t about to be sidetracked. “I need to know. Two men are dead. I’d not care to see the number rise to three.”

  “Wentworth wasn’t in France. He was on the high seas.”

  “Did Stephen Wentworth ever ask you about a gate keeper?”

  Hardy stared blankly at him. “And what, pray, is a gate keeper?”

  “I wish I knew.” Rutledge went back to his previous question. “What happened to Templeton in France? He wrote something to his wife, something about being ashamed. What was that about?”

  Hardy rose. “The poor man is dead. Let that die with him,” he said roughly. “Besides, it couldn’t matter here. Wentworth was in the North Atlantic. If you want to find their murderer, it has to be something that linked the two in Suffolk. Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense.”

  Rutledge stayed where he was. “If I find out why Templeton had to die, it could well explain Wentworth’s murder too.”

  “Then it wasn’t the damned war, I tell you.”

  Hamish said so clearly that the words seemed to echo around the sitting room, “It’s no use. He willna’ talk.”

  Rutledge got to his feet, nearly stumbling over one of the legs of his chair.

  “Are you all right?” Hardy demanded. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Rutledge almost laughed. Recovering as best he could, he said, “Sorry. A war wound.”

  Hardy said sympathetically, “I carry a piece of shrapnel near my spine. Sometimes it catches when I least expect it. The pain is little short of agony. But thank God it never lasts long.”

  Rutledge said, “No. Not long at all.”

  He left then, taking a deep breath of cold December air as the house door swung shut behind him.

  Hamish had nearly betrayed him again. Rutledge was angry all the way back to Wolfpit.

  As he was slowing to make the turn into The Swan’s rear yard, he saw a woman just walking through the inn door. He didn’t recognize her and found himself thinking she might be Rose Templeton’s sister and her husband’s heir.

  He left the motorcar and hurried in after her. She was standing at the desk, speaking to the clerk, and the man nodded in Rutledge’s direction as he came through the door.

  She turned to him. She was quite pretty, he thought, with fair hair and dark blue eyes. She was wearing a handsome blue walking dress under a coat cut in the latest style, and her fingers were smoothing the small handbag she carried with her.

  He realized she was anxious.

  “My name is Rutledge,” he said, smiling. “How can I help you?”

  “Inspector Rutledge?” she asked, as if men by that name were thick on the ground in Wolfpit.

  “That’s right,” he replied. And to the clerk, he said, “Is there a quiet room where we could talk, and perhaps have tea brought in?”

  The clerk led them down the passage that ran past
the stairs, opening a door on his right. “There’s no fire,” he said.

  “There’s no need,” she replied quickly, losing her nerve and turning to go.

  But Rutledge was blocking her way. “Tea,” he reminded the clerk, and ushered the young woman past him and into the room, shutting the door behind him but not quite latching it. That, he thought to himself, should satisfy decorum, if that was what was worrying her.

  She stopped in the middle of the room and turned to him, her anxiety pronounced. “I shouldn’t have come,” she began, but she didn’t quite have the courage to brush past him and leave.

  “Perhaps not,” he said pleasantly, “but now you’re here, it’s best to finish what you’ve begun.”

  “Alice was coming to speak to the milliner—she prefers her to our own—and I said I’d come. Just for the outing.”

  “Just so,” he agreed. Then he added, “I’ve given you my name. Can you tell me yours?”

  “No. Yes. I’m Carrie Reed.” She said it in such a way that he knew she expected him to recognize it.

  Not the sister then. Inspector Reed’s bride.

  “Yes, of course. And you’ve come to help us find out who killed Stephen Wentworth.” He expected that to put her at her ease. Instead, she looked stricken.

  “No. That is, I don’t know anything about his death. I—I wanted—”

  She froze as the door opened and one of the women from the kitchen brought in a tray with two cups and saucers, a pot of tea, a bowl of honey, and a jug of milk. “The kettle had just gone on the boil,” she said cheerfully, and with a nod to Rutledge she disappeared, closing the door behind her.

  He walked to the tray. “I’ve missed my lunch,” he said quietly, and poured two cups, giving her time to collect herself.

  When he held out a cup to her, he thought she was going to drop it, her hands were shaking so. But she got herself together, accepted it, and sat down in the nearest chair.