A Fearsome Doubt ir-6

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge’s reaction was, I’m not surprised…

  Hamish said, “Aye. It stands to reason he’d go to ground, if there’s someone looking for him. And the man searching for Ridger may be a step ahead of you. He may ken that Ridger is in Kent…”

  “Yes, it makes sense.” Rutledge took the stairs two at a time and spent the next half an hour finishing his notes about the conversation with Grimes in Seelyham. He debated driving to Canterbury to look up Miss Whelkin, and then decided against it. She would be home again in a few days.

  Closing the notebook, he sought out Sergeant Burke and asked the man to draw a rough map of Marling.

  It was nearly tea time when Rutledge pulled into the drive at the home of Lawrence Hamilton and his wife, Lydia. They had been his hosts when he met Raleigh Masters, and Rutledge was certain they would know as much about this part of Kent as Richard Mayhew had done.

  He was surprised to find that Bella Masters was already there. She looked tired, unhappy, but her face brightened as Lydia Hamilton welcomed the newcomer and offered him a cup of tea.

  Mrs. Masters said, after the courtesies had been observed, “I’ve come to invite Lydia and her husband to dine with us tonight. But they have another engagement. Could I persuade you to join us, Mr. Rutledge? There will be only six, I’m afraid. Tom Brereton, Mrs. Crawford, Elizabeth Mayhew, and you, but I can promise you a fine dinner and lively conversation.”

  Lydia’s face, turned away from Mrs. Masters, pleaded with Rutledge to accept.

  It was not common for a policeman to be invited to dine. It was, indeed, a measure of Mrs. Masters’s desperation that a stranger and a lowly inspector would be acceptable at her table.

  For his own reasons, Rutledge agreed. “I’ll call for Elizabeth, if you like,” he said.

  “That would be lovely!”

  Lydia put in, “I think I hear Lawrence-”

  Rutledge said, “If you don’t mind, I’ll meet him in the hall. There are a few questions I’d like to put to him.”

  She nodded, and then a look of alarm spread over her face. As if his words had touched a wellspring of concern that was swiftly hidden.

  He thought ironically that it was the policeman she dreaded…

  Lawrence was coming down the stairs when Rutledge stepped into the hall and shut the sitting room door behind him.

  Hamilton held out his hand and greeted him with a smile. “I hear we have another guest.”

  “Mrs. Masters. I’ve accepted a dinner invitation in your stead,” Rutledge answered lightly. “In return, I need a favor.”

  “I hope to heaven Bella’s made peace with her cook! Or you’ll be back demanding my firstborn,” Hamilton retorted humorously, leading Rutledge into a small study. Closing the door, he said in a more serious tone, “What’s this about? The murders? I’d heard you’d come down to help the local people. Any progress?”

  “None.” He took the chair that Hamilton indicated and looked around the room. It was a study-cum-office, where open law books and stacks of paper indicated an ongoing brief.

  Hamilton gestured wryly and said, “I can’t find a reference. It’s there somewhere, but I can’t put my finger on it. I asked Raleigh if he recalled it, but he said I’d earn my keep if I find it on my own.”

  Rutledge said, “He may have forgotten it himself.”

  Hamilton laughed. “The man’s memory is famous. Matthew Sunderland taught him that, early on. To cultivate a good memory. I sometimes think that Raleigh would be pleased to discover that Sunderland was his father. It would be the crowning moment of his life.”

  “Tell me about Sunderland.”

  “He was one of the best men of his day. Toward the end there was something that wasn’t noticeable early on. An arrogance. A certainty that he was never wrong. It persuaded judges, sometimes. I never discovered whether this was a pretense or if Sunderland actually believed strongly in his own judgment. Needless to say, he was convincing as hell! Did you ever work with him?”

  “The Shaw case. And one other before that. Most of my cases were not of a caliber to rate Matthew Sunderland, K.C.”

  “Yes, well, he was a watchword for years. Almost an assurance of conviction, when he was prosecuting. Now, tell me, what is it you need from me? Certainly not the past history of a dead man.”

  But it had been what Rutledge needed. Still, he said, “I wonder if you recall someone named Jimsy Ridger.”

  “Good God, Jimsy was an eel. Convicting him of anything was impossible. He never came my way, of course, but I’ve heard enough tales about him. Most particularly since he’d spent a goodly part of his life where I lived, and no one in London let me forget it. He wasn’t actually from our part of Kent, but he had a habit of popping up here at the least likely moments.”

  “Tell me about him. Not his criminal history, but what you know of him.”

  Hamilton got up to offer Rutledge a glass of whisky and then, sipping his own, said ruminatively, “He came with the hop pickers. A wild lad, with no sense of fear. And no one, really, to look out for him. Consequently he fell in with the wrong people. Or they fell in with him.”

  It was almost word for word the description that Sergeant Burke had given Rutledge. “I need a picture of him as a man,” he said, studying the amber liquid in his glass but not drinking.

  “I doubt that anyone can give you that. Jimsy was as charming as a snake, and as quick. But no one got through the charm into the person behind it. He had more energy than most, and had learned to skirt the law with impunity. Underneath the surface, I always thought he was lonely. No, lonely isn’t the word. I think-” He paused, trying to find the right explanation. “Jimsy was one of those people who never successfully formed friendships. He was too devious and too questionable in his character for most people to like him. He never got close to anyone that I know of. And as a result, he was dangerous. There were no ties, you see, to hold him. In a way, he was like Matthew Sunderland-odd though it might sound. He walked in his own shadow, and showed the world only what he thought it fit for the world to see.”

  Rutledge stopped by Elizabeth Mayhew’s house to leave a message that he’d be collecting her in time to drive to the Masterses’ house for dinner.

  She was waiting for him in the hall, when he came to lift the knocker on her door later in the evening. She opened it herself, and said, “Ian, I could have had myself driven over, you needn’t have come!”

  “I came because I’ll enjoy your company more than my own thoughts, tonight.”

  She looked up at him as he closed the door behind her and ushered her down the walk to his car. A fitful moon slipped in and out of the trees and a bank of thinning clouds, its thin crescent cold in the November air.

  “You’re tired, aren’t you, Ian? I wish you hadn’t let Bella persuade you to dine with them. Come to that, I shouldn’t have, either. But Melinda Crawford will be there, and I couldn’t let her down.”

  “Nor I.” He settled her into the motorcar with a rug for her knees as before, and then went to crank the engine. As he climbed in beside her, she sighed. It was as if she had had other plans that she’d changed, and regretted having to do so.

  Rutledge said as they went down the drive, “Did you ever see the Tarrant exhibition in London before the war? There was a painting there that caused a great deal of comment. The name of it was Tristan .”

  “Richard liked it. I wasn’t fond of it,” she replied. “He was drawn to flying, you know. I thought the painting made it seem far too glamorous. Or to put it another way, I wasn’t eager to praise anything that would encourage his attraction.” She laughed bitterly. “I was afraid that flying machines would take him from me. I couldn’t even imagine then that war would do that, and I’d be helpless to prevent it. It’s not wise to love too well.”

  Hamish said, “She didna’ ken what you were asking about yon portrait.”

  It was true-Elizabeth had taken Rutledge’s question at face value, remembering her husband, not reminded
of anyone else.

  He said, as if moving on, “No, not wise at all. But Richard was intrigued by the concept of flight. He’d told me once that he would like to see the Downs as a bird could. And how the Weald stretched beyond the horizon we were limited to. He was intrigued with maps, and this was the ultimate opportunity to draw the face of the earth.”

  “He once talked for hours with Melinda about the project to map India. I think, under different circumstances, he’d have been among the first to volunteer. He was drawn to adventure. Perhaps I never really had him in my heart the way I thought I did.”

  “He loved you very deeply. It made dreaming very safe, because you were there to come home to.”

  She moved restlessly. “I’d rather not talk about Richard just now.”

  He changed the subject, and as they drove through the night reached a truce in whatever silent war lay between them.

  Raleigh Masters greeted his guests with a chilly courtesy.

  Rutledge saw his wife glance at him several times, an uneasiness in her eyes. But their host was pleasant and made an effort to draw out his guests. They were seated in a drawing room where the elegance was growing shabby around the edges, as if there was no money to renew the drapes or the gilding in the plastered ceiling. The house, Georgian and foursquare, possessed a beautiful staircase in the entrance hall and a collection of exquisite Venetian glass displayed in cabinets between the doors. The light from the lamps caught the colors and gave them a depth that was jewel-like. Whether the collection was valuable or not, Rutledge couldn’t judge, but the quality was there, in shape and design.

  Bella had gestured toward the cabinets as she ushered him into the drawing room and said diffidently, “My father’s hobby. Glass. My mother traveled to Italy every winter for her health, and in his free time, my father roamed the old markets in Venice, searching for unexpected treasures. Raleigh doesn’t care for Italy.”

  Nor for the glass, Rutledge thought.

  Melinda Crawford, looking rather tired, greeted him with warmth and kissed Elizabeth’s cheek as if delighted to see her. Brereton, standing by the hearth, shook hands with Rutledge and asked quietly, “Any progress?”

  “Early days yet,” Rutledge told him. It was the standard formula. But even as he spoke the words, Hamish was reminding him how empty they were.

  Brereton said, “Kent has always had an independent spirit. My guess is that whatever people may suspect, they won’t point fingers.”

  Rutledge was saved from answering by a query from Elizabeth regarding a mutual friend in London. Twenty minutes later, as they were finishing their sherry, dinner was announced, and Rutledge found himself escorting Mrs. Crawford. She pinched his arm, as if in warning, as they followed their host and hostess through to the dining room.

  “Even if this meal is inedible, you must swallow every mouthful for Bella’s sake!” she hissed under her breath.

  He smiled and said, “I’ll try.”

  But it appeared the cook was intent on making amends. The roast of pork, seasoned with rosemary, was as delicious as any Rutledge had ever eaten. As the conversation flowed around him, he listened to two threads that seemed to intertwine and then separate.

  Local gossip of the ordinary variety, to be heard at any country dinner table in England-and an undercurrent of speculation about the newcomer from Leeds who was buying one of the larger houses in Marling. Whether he intended to live there or if it was purchased for a son or daughter, whether he was the sort one would wish to meet or the sort one ignored.

  “There’s money,” Bella was saying. “And I hear from John Sable that he’s renovating the house and gardens.”

  John Sable owned a small construction firm in Helford, Brereton explained to Rutledge across the table.

  “He won’t come cheaply,” Elizabeth responded. “I’d asked John about working on the drains, and he sent a note quoting an exorbitant sum.”

  Brereton said, “Too bad our Leeds friend’s not interested in the old property out on the road to Seelyham. The one with the stone gates. Shame to see it go to rack and ruin. But I suppose we must wait on the lawyers to sort out who inherits.”

  Bella nodded. “I remember going to a party there, oh, well before the war. It was Mrs. Morton’s seventieth birthday, and her husband wanted to cheer her up a bit. There were lovely old pieces in that house. I remember she was mourning the fact that there was no one to pass them on to. Only a distant relative out in New Zealand, I think it was. Influenza took both of them last year. And the house has stood empty ever since. There’ll be damp and dry rot, and heaven only knows what else, before it’s finished. And who’ll pay for that, I ask you?”

  Rutledge found himself thinking that people like the Mayhews and the Hamiltons, and indeed the Masterses, with their declining income and rising prices, would be hard-pressed to keep their homes as once their ancestors had. But the new money, the war money, would manage quite well. The man from Leeds, for one.

  “Has anyone actually met this man?” Brereton asked, looking around the table.

  After a moment of silence, Elizabeth said tentatively, “I think I may’ve.”

  Everyone turned to stare at her, and she went pink. “It was quite by accident and very brief,” she said, stumbling over her words. “I’d gone to Helford at the end of last month to meet someone taking the train down from London. And a man was asking the stationmaster about transportation to Marling. He had a rather loud voice, although he was dressed well enough-” She broke off, shrugging. “I didn’t see his face.”

  Rutledge, his attention caught, listened to Elizabeth Mayhew but said nothing.

  Hamish murmured, “Ye ken, no one would think to ask the likes of Mrs. Mayhew about strangers…”

  Raleigh Masters, ignoring the small glass containing his medicine that stood beside his plate, was finishing his fourth glass of wine instead.

  The glitter in his eyes was the only thing that betrayed him. He sat like a toad, waiting. Hamish, alert to Rutledge’s own watchfulness, growled, “’Ware!”

  As Elizabeth paused, glancing around the table uncertainly as if she’d gone too far, Bella opened her mouth to speak and then closed it sharply.

  Raleigh said, “We are an odd lot, we English. We judge a man by his voice. And the price of his clothes. God help us, if we are born brilliant but poor, and have nothing to indicate the quality of our minds.”

  Elizabeth said, haltingly, “I didn’t mean-”

  “No, of course you didn’t,” Melinda Crawford interposed bracingly. “Raleigh is simply reflecting on our propensity to judge from outward appearances. A barrister would certainly not fall into that pit.”

  She was, Rutledge realized, drawing fire on herself.

  Masters said, rather nastily, “He won’t last long if he does. All the same, there is something to be said for a man’s upbringing. It generally tells in the end. As the old saw would have it, you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

  “I shouldn’t care to try,” Mrs. Crawford retorted.

  “You would tell me, then, that your friendships are all of a sort that reflects well on your judgment of people?”

  “I never choose my friends because they reflect well on me. I choose them because they’re interesting. I consider boredom far more soul-crushing than the Seven Deadly Sins. And so I have made a point throughout my life never to be bored. It has, I think, kept me young.”

  But Masters apparently wasn’t to be deflected from whatever was on his mind. Rutledge, watching him, was reminded of a prosecutor waiting to pounce. It was, he thought, a natural mannerism in a man who had spent his life judging others.

  Masters’s eyes swept down the table to his wife’s face. “And I, I think, shall never grow old. We learn to put up with distasteful things, at the end.”

  “Raleigh, it’s hardly the end- ” Bella protested, her voice anguished.

  As if he didn’t believe her, Masters swept on. “I know whereof I speak, my dear. Otherwise,
I shouldn’t be reduced to entertaining a policeman at my table. People are not overly fond of watching death creep up on themselves or others. But perhaps Mr. Rutledge is accustomed to it.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, broken only by the sharp intake of breath from Bella Masters. Her face was pale with embarrassment. Rutledge could feel himself reddening at the insult.

  Hamish said starkly, “You canna’ quarrel with him.”

  But before Rutledge could speak, Melinda Crawford was there ahead of him.

  “Raleigh,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument, “illness is not an excuse for bad manners. You will apologize to all of us for your rudeness!”

  He glared at her. She returned the stare with the authority of a woman who has spent a lifetime learning her own worth.

  Rutledge thought, She faced down the Mutineers in India. Masters has forgotten that.

  After a moment Raleigh said, “Why should I apologize, I ask you? He comes to dine in the guise of a guest, but who knows what actually brings him here? Policemen don’t have social lives. Or if they do, I’ve never heard of it. And behind my back he asks questions of a derogatory nature about a man whose boots he is not fit to lick! Matthew Sunderland was my friend and my mentor-”

  Rutledge turned to look at Bella Masters. Guilt was written clearly in her appalled expression.

  He knew instantly that Elizabeth had spoken to her at his request-and she had passed the query on to her husband.

  He replied, “I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood. I’ve never spoken derogatorily about Matthew Sunderland. I have expressed an interest in one of his cases. One in which I myself was involved.”

  “Odd, don’t you think?” Masters inquired of the table at large. “Generally when a policeman has a question concerning a trial, he goes to his superiors. This means, I fear, that Mr. Rutledge is afraid he had not prepared his case well enough and wants the reassurance that he is right in his assumption of guilt!”

  It was too damned close to the truth, and for an instant Rutledge found himself thinking that Chief Superintendent Bowles had been in touch with Raleigh Masters. But that was not very likely.