The Red Door

by Charles Todd

  “I want to leave here as soon as the doctors will let him go,” she answered. “I want to go home, and I want to have Harry back again.”

  “You ought to stay with us for a few days,” Amy suggested, but Jenny shook her head.

  “I’m sick of London.”

  Edwin moved to stand beside Rutledge. “Has he told you why he left? Or where he was?” he asked quietly.

  “I’m not sure how much I believe,” Rutledge answered. “But at a guess, I’d say he never left London.”

  “London?” Edwin stared at him. “Well. That most certainly is good news.” He hesitated. “There are no charges, I hope, growing out of this. The inquiry, the search?”

  “None.” Bowles would never agree to any, Rutledge knew.

  But before Rutledge left the clinic, he had a last word with Walter Teller. The doctors had pronounced him in good health and told him that he was free to return to Essex. What they really believed they kept to themselves.

  Rutledge said, “This will not happen again. Is that understood?”

  Walter’s head reared back, as if about to challenge Rutledge. And then he said, “It wasn’t deliberate. I didn’t ask the police to search for me.”

  “What did you think would happen, when the clinic discovered you were missing? To protect themselves, the first order of business was to summon the police.”

  “Yes, I suppose I should have expected that. But why the Yard?”

  “You’re an important man, Mr. Teller. We were concerned.”

  Teller had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “Yes, all right. It won’t happen again. For that matter, I can’t think of any reason why it should.”

  Rutledge said as he walked to the door, “There’s something else. You’ve put your wife through a very difficult time. The least you can do for her sake is change your mind now about your son’s schooling.”

  Teller said, “It was my father’s wish—”

  “He’s dead, Teller. Your wife is very much alive. Do it for her.”

  “I’ll consider it. I can at least do that.”

  Rutledge nodded and went out.

  Rutledge could hear Hamish before he reached his motorcar. He could feel the sunlight fading, replaced by the raw gray light of the trenches just before dawn. And then the guns picked up, their shells dropping with precision, without a break between them. It had driven more than one man mad, the shelling, and he had lived with the sound until it was almost a part of his very bones.

  Somehow he managed to start the motorcar, but how he reached the Yard, he didn’t know. And then the trenches faded as quickly as they had come.

  Rutledge sat in his motorcar, staring through the windscreen, trying to shake off the aftermath. And then the motorcar began moving again, and almost without thinking, he found himself driving toward Chelsea.

  A reasonable time had passed. It would be proper to call and see how Meredith Channing was faring. It would be expected.

  But when he got there and knocked at the door, no one came to answer it.

  Hamish said, “She’s no’ in London.”

  Rutledge stood there on the steps, accepting the silence beyond the closed door. And then he turned and walked back to his motorcar.

  Chapter 16

  It was necessary to report to Bowles how the inquiry into the disappearance of Walter Teller had ended.

  Rutledge braced himself and knocked at the man’s door. “Come.”

  It was difficult to judge his mood from the one word.

  But as Rutledge walked into the office, he could see that for once Bowles was not scowling.

  Rutledge said, “The Teller inquiry is closed. Teller returned to the clinic on his own, and from what the doctors have said, he’s recovered and free to return to Essex.”

  Bowles raised his eyebrows in an expression of surprise. “Did he now? And where has he been all this time, pray?”

  “Sleeping in churches. Walking the streets. Thinking. Who knows? I wasn’t sure how much I could believe. He’s a very private man, and I don’t expect anyone will ever know the truth about what happened. Not even his wife.”

  “You’re the policeman. What’s your opinion?”

  Rutledge considered the question. “It seemed to me that the arrival of a letter from his missionary society coincided with problems with his wife, and he didn’t know how to respond to the letter. At the same time, he was on the point of sending his son to Harrow early, against her wishes.” That answer would serve well enough for a report. He had no idea why Walter Teller had been ill or left the clinic without a word. He rather thought, but had no intention of telling Bowles, that Teller’s brothers had suspected something. Yet they hadn’t confronted him. And that was decidedly odd, given their anger when he returned. Was it Jenny’s presence that had stopped them?

  Bowles nodded. “I should think it might be very difficult to go back to those godforsaken posts after all these years away. I wouldn’t fancy it myself. But he may have felt honor bound to fulfill his commitment to the Society.”

  Rutledge said nothing.

  “If it were anyone but Walter Teller, I’d have a word with him. Wasting police time and putting us all through the hoops. I must say, I expected better of the man.”

  “I already have made it clear—”

  “At least you managed to keep this business out of the newspapers. With the number of police involved in the search, it’s a wonder word didn’t get out.”

  “If it had gone on much longer—or had had a different ending—we might not have escaped their attention.”

  “There’s that. All right. Let me have your report before the day is out.”

  But instead of returning to his own office, Rutledge went out of the Yard and walked to Trafalgar Square and then past St. Martin-in-the-Fields, taking the streets at random while his mind was busy.

  It had reached a very unsatisfactory conclusion, this inquiry, he thought, ignoring the people coming and going around him, the busy traffic of a London day.

  Why had Teller returned on his own? And where was he? What had he really been doing with his time?

  Hamish said, “He willna’ tell anyone.”

  And Rutledge thought that that was probably true. He wondered if Teller had decided to return to the field. Perhaps his soul-searching had found his answer.

  Suddenly he recalled what Mary Brittingham had said, that Walter Teller wasn’t a saint. He was bitter. About what? It would be enlightening to know.

  And that, Rutledge decided, was the best explanation of the man he’d heard.

  But of course that was not something that could be expressed in a report.

  Chapter 17

  Peter Teller sat in his garden in Bolingbroke Street and poured himself another glass of whisky. His hand was shaking, but he was far from as drunk as he wanted to be.

  His brother Walter was back, greeted like the prodigal son. It was a travesty. All that was needed was the fatted calf, he told himself sourly.

  What did he know? He had stared into his brother’s eyes and seen nothing. And not even Walter was that cold-blooded.

  Draining the glass, he sat back in his chair, moved his bad leg a little in the hope of finding a more comfortable position, and stared through the silhouetted leaves above his head at the night sky, black as he was sure his soul was.

  What in God’s name had he done? To make matters worse, he couldn’t have said under oath what had become of his cane. It wasn’t in the motorcar. In his haste he must have dropped it. In the grass? Along the road? When he got out two hours later to stretch and massage his leg?

  He hadn’t intended to frighten her. He had only wanted to say what he’d come to say and walk away.

  He wasn’t even sure now just what he had said—the words had spilled out, a reflection of fear and anger. He’d charged German positions under fire, he’d killed men, he’d fought for King and Country, and yet in those few seconds he’d lost his courage, and with it lost his head.

>   What sort of man was he? To run as he had, to leave her there, an act of such sheer cowardice that he couldn’t blot it out of his mind, no matter how much he drank.

  And he could tell no one. Not Edwin, not Susannah. Certainly not Leticia.

  For a time he considered going inside, finding his service revolver, and putting an end to his shame and revulsion. But he couldn’t do it. The same tenacity that had made him fight over and over again to keep his damaged leg when the surgeons were intent on removing it forced him to face the man he was. Perhaps, he told himself bitterly, after the shock wore off, he might even learn to stand himself again.

  He was becoming a maudlin drunk, and that he despised.

  Susannah came out into the garden, wrapping her dressing gown closer against the late night chill.

  “Won’t you come to bed? A night’s rest will do you more good than this.” She nodded toward the glass in his hand.

  “In a little while,” he said, still studying the stars, avoiding her eyes.

  “You promised two hours ago. Please, won’t you see the doctor tomorrow, and ask him for drops or something to help with the pain? You can’t go on drinking to dull it. I blame Edwin if you want the truth, for not going himself.”

  There were no drops to cure this pain, he answered her silently, and then aloud, “I expect the doctor will say what he always does. That I shouldn’t drive.”

  She regarded him for a moment, and then asked, “What’s wrong, Peter? It’s eating away at you. Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  “Go to bed, Susannah. I’ve had too much to drink to make any sense. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  She turned and walked back to the terrace door. There she paused and said, her voice carrying perfectly to him where he sat, “Did you kill her, Peter? Was all the rest of what you told us a lie?”

  He pretended he didn’t hear. Reaching for the decanter again, he poured himself another measure, concentrating on not spilling it.

  The terrace door closed behind his wife, and in a sudden fury, he flung the glass of whisky against the trunk of the ginkgo overhanging the iron rail fence. It shattered, but he was already regretting what he’d done and he shoved himself to his feet to cross the lawn and pick up the shards before someone found them in the morning and read more than anger in the glittering, whisky-soaked pieces.

  Chapter 18

  Rutledge finished his report and handed it to a constable to be typed for Chief Superintendent Bowles.

  And still restless, he considered going to Frances’s house and spending the remainder of the afternoon with his godfather. Then he recalled that today was the grand excursion to Hampton Court by boat.

  He stopped to speak to Chief Inspector Cummins, who had just returned from Paris, where he’d been persuading the French to allow him to bring a witness back to England to testify in regard to a killing in Surrey.

  Cummins greeted him, then said, “Go away for four days and my desk grows papers like the French grow grapes. What sort of mood is his lordship in?”

  Rutledge smiled. “Mercurial.”

  “Damn. The French are being pigheaded. He’s not going to like that.”

  Rutledge hesitated, and then in spite of himself asked, “Has the Front changed much?”

  He had meant the France of the war years. The blackened ruin of a countryside. Cummins had not pretended to misunderstand him.

  “Not very. It takes trees a while to grow back, although there’s more grass now. I found myself feeling depressed and turned around. But the French farmers are a hardy lot. They’ll not let good land go to waste for very long.”

  “Blood-soaked land . . .”

  Rutledge shivered at Hamish’s words.

  They talked for several minutes, then Rutledge returned to his office.

  A quarter of an hour later, Constable Ellis was at his door, saying quickly, “You’re wanted, sir. Chief Superintendent.”

  Hamish said, “ ’Ware!” as Rutledge crossed the threshold, and he guessed that Cummins had been there before him with his own bad news. And Bowles had not taken it well.

  He was muttering about the French under his breath, then he looked up and said, “What the hell kept you?” But before Rutledge could frame an answer, Bowles went on testily, “I thought we were finished with these Tellers.”

  “Sir?”

  The Chief Superintendent barked, “Now we have a request from a village in Lancashire to look into the death of a Mrs. Peter Teller. Seems she was murdered.”

  It required a moment for Rutledge to digest the news.

  “Sir?” he repeated. “I just saw the Captain’s wife. Yesterday. Surely there’s some mistake?”

  “Are you deaf, or is your mind wandering? I’ve just told you, Peter Teller’s wife. Who said anything about Captain Teller? She’s just been found dead by the constable in Hobson. Unusual name, all the same. Might be a relation, though it’s unlikely. Lancashire?” He shook his head. In Bowles’s view, the farther from London, the more benighted the place. “You’ll have to deal with it, I can’t spare anyone else.” He closed the file and looked Rutledge in the face. “I’d counted on you to handle Walter Teller’s disappearance. It would have pleased a number of people to see us successful in that quarter. Instead he came back under his own power. You reported that he slept in a church. Why didn’t someone think to have a constable concealed there? Failure on your part, you know. See that we’re not embarrassed a second time. Do I make myself clear?”

  “I understand,” Rutledge replied as Bowles searched his cluttered desk for his pen. And he did understand. Political repercussions were always uppermost in Bowles’s mind. Using them or avoiding them, he had become quite adept at sensing the way the wind would blow. But to clear the record, Rutledge added, “Teller slept in different churches. Not just one. That’s to say, if he was telling the truth. There are dozens of churches in London.”

  “He’s a cleric, is he not? Someone should have taken that into account.” He found his pen and uncapped it. “You’re to leave for Hobson straightaway.” He made a final note on the file and passed it to Rutledge.

  Rutledge crossed to the door. Bowles said, “And, Rutledge . . .”

  He turned.

  “I shouldn’t think the family would like seeing this bruited in the newspapers. For all we know, this Teller could be on the wrong side of the blanket. Might explain Hobson, if you take my meaning. The family has had a very trying time of it already.”

  As Rutledge walked back to his office to set his desk in order, Hamish said, “Ye willna’ be here to take yon godfather to the station.”

  “I’ll leave a note.”

  Sergeant Gibson, standing in the doorway, asked, “Sir?”

  Rutledge had answered the voice in his head aloud, without thinking. He turned to face Gibson and forced a smile. “A commentary on what’s ahead,” he answered lightly. “Do you know anything about the police in this village of Hobson?”

  “The constable—Satterthwaite is his name—gives the impression he’s a sound man, sir. He’ll steer you right.”

  “Let us hope. All right, anything else I should know?”

  “No witnesses. No sign of robbery. No physical assault. Nothing to go on but the woman’s body found in the front passage of her house.”

  “What did the husband have to say about it?”

  “It appears he’s dead, sir.”

  “Indeed?”

  “So the constable informed me, sir. Didn’t come home from the war.”

  “I don’t remember Hobson. Is it hard to find?”

  “Satterthwaite says, look for the turning after the crossroads. It’s not very well marked from this direction, but it’s off the road to Thielwald.”

  “I’ll bear that in mind.”

  Rutledge stopped at his sister’s house and left a note for her explaining his absence, and another of farewell to his godfather. He would have liked to see Trevor and the boy, to say good-bye and wish them a safe jo
urney, but they weren’t planning to return until late that evening, hoping to dine near Hampton Court. And he had a long drive ahead with no time to lose.

  Half an hour later he was on the road north, facing little traffic, with Hamish unsettled in the seat just behind him, the voice close enough that sometimes over the soft purr of the motor, he could almost swear he heard Hamish breathing. He was always careful not to look in the rear seat, and he kept the small mirror turned in such a way that he couldn’t see any reflection but his own. He’d made a bargain with himself four years before when he realized that he couldn’t shut the voice out of his head: the day he saw Hamish MacLeod would be the day he sent both of them to the grave.

  Even when he stopped for a late dinner this side of Derby, the voice followed him, a counterpoint to his own thoughts.

  He had traveled this road before, coming down from Westmorland, although instead of warm breezes sweeping through the motorcar there had been a harsh wind off the winter snow, the aftermath of a blizzard that had shut down roads and cut off families from one another but not from a murderer.

  And then the turning he was after appeared around a bend in the road, and he was heading in a different direction, the shadows in his mind receding with distance.

  After one last turn, he found crossroads and the fingerboard pointing toward Thielwald. Some three miles beyond that, he saw the side road that bore to the left toward Hobson. He followed that through grassy pastures and a thin stand of trees, before cresting a slight hill and coming down to the first of Hobson’s houses, sturdy and uncompromisingly independent, like the people who lived in them. A milking barn in the distance to his left caught the last long rays of sunlight, and ahead of him, just leaving the muddy lane that led to it, a line of cows made their way down the High Street, heading for their night’s grazing on the other side of the village, their udders flaccid after milking. The bell on the leather strap around the neck of their leader clanked rhythmically as she swayed from side to side, paying no attention to the motorcar in her wake.