The Confession

by Charles Todd

  Looking up, Rutledge said, “I’ll have these ready in another half an hour.”

  Gibson answered, “It’s not the reports, sir. There’s a dead man found in the Thames and brought into Gravesend. He didn’t drown, and no one’s claimed the body. They’ve sent along a photograph, in the hope that the Yard can help out. It’s likely he went into the Thames in London. He’s not known in Gravesend, at any rate.”

  He took a photograph from the folder he was carrying and set it down on Rutledge’s desk.

  Rutledge’s first glance was cursory; he didn’t expect to recognize the thin face staring back at him from the photograph. His gaze sharpened. Looking at it a second time, he said, “Is this the man who came to the Yard a fortnight ago? Surely not.” He hadn’t expected Russell to end his suffering quite so soon.

  “It was twelve days, sir. As I remember. Sergeant Hampton spotted the likeness—he was the one brought the man up to see you—and in my view he’s usually right about such things. A good memory for faces, has the sergeant. That’s why I brought the photograph up to show you. I thought you might want to know. There’s a strong resemblance, Sergeant Hampton says, although the water hasn’t been kind to him.”

  “No. What did the postmortem show?”

  “He hadn’t long to live. An abdominal cancer, inoperable. It could well have been a suicide, given that. Except for the fact that someone shot him in the back of the head.”

  “Did they indeed?” He studied the photograph. “The man who came to the Yard was dying of cancer. Given this photograph, I should think the body must be his. Who is handling the inquiry in Gravesend?”

  “Inspector Adams, sir.”

  “I’ve heard of him. A good man. Very thorough.” He shuffled the papers in front of him into a folder and set it aside. “These can wait. And it’s as well to see the body for myself. To be sure.”

  Gibson said, “Will you be asking the Chief Superintendent? He’s having lunch with the Lord Mayor.”

  “I’ll leave a message. It will be late afternoon before he’s back at the Yard.” Rutledge took out a sheet of paper, and after a moment’s thought, wrote a few lines on it. Capping his pen, he passed the sheet to Sergeant Gibson. Glancing at his watch, he said, “I should be back before they’ve reached the last course.”

  As the sergeant left, Rutledge collected his hat and notebook and walked out of his office. Five minutes later he was in his motorcar and threading his way through the busy London traffic as he headed east.

  Gravesend was an old town on the south bank of the Thames, settled where a break in a long stretch of marshes provided the only landing stage. For centuries, ferrymen here held the charter to transport passengers to and from London. If anyone knew the river it was the people of Gravesend. On the outskirts of the town, Rutledge stopped for directions at a coaching inn that had been refurbished, then followed the omnipresent Windmill Hill into town, where he found the police station.

  Inspector Adams, a slender man with horn-rimmed glasses perched on the top of his head, looked up as Rutledge was ushered into his office.

  “Scotland Yard?” he said as Rutledge gave his name. “You’re here about our corpse, I think. It was an educated guess, sending that photograph to London. He’s not one of ours, we’re fairly certain of that. And the most likely place he came from was somewhere south of the Tower.”

  Rutledge asked, “Any idea how long he’d been in the water?”

  “At a guess, a good four and twenty hours.”

  “And there was nothing in his pockets to help with identification? A hotel key, medicine bottle, even a handkerchief?” There should at least have been a key from The Marlborough Hotel.

  “Nothing.” Adams pulled his glasses down and searched for a paper in the clutter on his desk. “Here we are. White male, approximately thirty years of age, fair, five feet eleven inches tall,” he said, reading from the sheet he finally located under a stack of books. “No distinguishing marks, suffering from terminal stomach tumor that has metastasized. Pockets empty, shot at close range, most likely with a service revolver, judging from the caliber. Clothes those of a gentleman. In the water for a day, day and a half.” He looked up over the rims of his glasses. “If his killer had waited a few months more, Nature would have dispatched our victim for him. Hasty, I should say.”

  “He admitted that he didn’t have long to live.”

  “You know him then. Does he have a name?”

  “As a matter of fact, he does. Wyatt Russell, Furnham Road, Essex. It’s the name he gave when he came to the Yard recently to report a crime. At this stage we haven’t found any evidence to indicate that his information is true. But we also can’t prove that it isn’t. The question is, does his murder nearly a fortnight later have any bearing on what he told us? What did he intentionally—or unintentionally—stir up? Who else is involved in this?”

  Hamish spoke, his voice jarring in the small office. “Ye ken, ye asked yoursel’ that same question, when the man wouldna’ gie ye any details about the murder.”

  Rutledge nearly lost track of Adams’s reply. He had to repeat himself.

  “What sort of crime was he reporting?”

  “A murder.”

  “Well, there you are. Someone will have taken exception to that.”

  “Except that my visitor claimed he was the killer.”

  “Did he, by God!” Adams pushed his glasses back to the top of his head. He sat there for a moment, then asked, “Have you considered the extent of his cancer? He must have been in almost intolerable pain and taking a fair amount of drugs. You have to wonder if he was in his right mind. He could have felt responsible for a man’s death and finally convinced himself that he’d actually killed him. Guilt can take many forms.”

  Rutledge was all too aware of that.

  “We’d have to ask a medical man. Russell himself had made some remark about the morphine speaking.”

  “I’m glad it’s your case and not mine. Will you want the body? No one so far has claimed it. Potter’s field seems an ignominious end. He must have a family somewhere.” He opened his desk drawer and fished out a small packet. “This was around his neck. Whoever killed him missed it when going through his pockets.”

  He tossed the packet to Rutledge, who caught it deftly and unwrapped the brown paper.

  Inside was an oval gold locket on a gold chain. An ornately scrolled E graced the front. The locket itself was either old or worn, possibly both. Rutledge found the clasp and opened it. Inside were two small spaces for photographs. The right-hand oval was empty, but on the left there was a woman’s face. Despite the water stains, he could see that she was pretty, young, the just visible collar of her dress fashionable, her hair drawn softly back into a knot behind her head. It was impossible to judge her coloring, but he rather thought her hair was a light brown.

  “I wondered if this was hers, and she was dead. That would explain why he’s wearing a woman’s necklace,” Adams said. “A sentimental gesture.”

  “Russell lost his wife in childbirth a little less than a year after they were married. Neither her Christian name nor her maiden name began with an E.”

  “So much for sentiment,” Adams said dryly.

  Still considering the face in the locket, Rutledge said, “He knew he was dying. That means he’d seen a doctor. Possibly in London. We’ll need to find him and speak to him.”

  “I thought you told me he lived on the Furnham Road in Essex. That’s on the Hawking, isn’t it?”

  “The house there is closed. When I met him, he was staying in The Marlborough Hotel. Someone there should be able to tell us more.” Rutledge frowned. “Are we absolutely certain that Russell didn’t fire that bullet into his own brain? To avoid a worse death?”

  “Impossible, according to the doctor. Unless the man was a contortionist. Would you like to see the remains?”

  Rutledge accompanied Adams to the hospital where the body had been taken. Down in the bowels of the building they walked
through a series of passages to where a small morgue had been set up. The other three bodies had died in the hospital, Adams explained, and were awaiting the undertaker. In the far corner lay their murder victim.

  When Rutledge pulled back the covering over the body, he recognized Russell instantly. The likeness was stronger than that of the photograph, which must have been taken in poor light. “Yes. I’d swear to his identity in the witness box.” He moved the dead man’s head slightly to look at the entry wound of the bullet. “Your doctor is right, he couldn’t have shot himself. Who did you say found the body?”

  “A waterman by the name of Acton. He got it into his boat and brought it in. You can speak to him if you like. He should be back in Gravesend in about five hours.”

  “You have his statement? It’s satisfactory?”

  “On my desk. And yes, Acton has been on the river for years. No reason to think he had anything to do with Russell’s death.”

  “Then I’ll take the statement rather than wait.” As he replaced the sheet over the dead man, Rutledge said, “If you learn any more about him—if anyone in Kent comes to you searching for him—let me know. But I rather think you’re right about London being the place to begin.”

  “I’ve already gone through our list of missing people. No one fits his description, and he’d have been missed by now. Surely someone would have come looking for him.”

  “What about Tilbury, across the Thames from you?” Rutledge asked as they left the hospital.

  “We sent a photograph to the police there at the same time we sent one to the Yard. I followed it up with a telephone call, and my opposite number didn’t know him or have him on any lists there. Still, I’ll ask again, now that I have a name to give them and I know he once lived in Essex.”

  Rutledge thanked him, taking with him the locket, a copy of the statement from the ferryman, and the report of the postmortem.

  They lay in an envelope on the seat beside him as he drove back to London. And from the rear of the motorcar came the voice he knew as well as his own, and dreaded to hear.

  Hamish said, “You didna’ believe him. Russell. Ye ken, if ye had, he might well be alive.”

  “No. He made his choice. He wouldn’t tell me what I needed to know. He made a mystery of what he had to say because he didn’t want to incriminate himself. Or betray someone else.”

  There was a derisive chuckle.

  Hamish wasn’t there. Rutledge had told himself that a thousand times, but it was no comfort. Hamish was dead and buried in France, and that was no comfort either.

  The doctors had called it shell shock, this hearing of a voice that was so real Rutledge answered it in his head—or sometimes to his absolute horror, aloud. Corporal Hamish MacLeod had fought beside Rutledge almost from the start, a young Scot, but with a grasp of military tactics well beyond his years. A bond had grown between the two of them, officer and man, because each knew he could trust the other implicitly, and both knew that the care of the men under them was paramount. Watching the maimed and the dying through two years of heavy fighting had taught them that. Green men, facing battle for the first time, had only a slim chance of survival. If their officers could double those odds, it counted for much.

  And then on the Somme, in those first bloody weeks of fighting, Hamish MacLeod had put Rutledge in an untenable position: he had refused an order outright, in front of his men. His reasons were sound—he knew going over the top one more time after a well-concealed German machine-gun nest was insane, that more men would die needlessly. And yet HQ had ordered that it be taken out at any cost before the next assault, and Rutledge had had no alternative but to try, for the sake of the hundreds of British soldiers who would be crossing No Man’s Land in only a matter of hours. The good of the few—or the good of the many. That was the choice. Hamish had chosen his bleeding and exhausted company.

  No amount of argument could sway him. Even when, as an example to other weary and dispirited men, Rutledge had to threaten his corporal with a firing squad, it had not changed his mind. And Rutledge had had to carry out that threat, against his better judgment and against the weight of his own guilt. He had had to deliver the coup de grâce to the dying man, taking out his pistol and firing it point-blank, and watching the anguished eyes go dull.

  He hadn’t wanted this, he hadn’t wanted Hamish MacLeod on his soul. Even his own mind had refused to accept what he had done. The burden of guilt had been insupportable. And in the way of damaged minds, his had created a living Hamish, proof that the young corporal hadn’t died. Keeping him alive through two more years of grinding stalemate and death, bringing him home in the only way he could.

  Military necessity had been paramount. Rutledge had almost hated Hamish for breaking, for forcing his own hand. But close as he was to breaking himself, he had known that the young corporal was right. Still, Duty was all. Compassion had no place on a battlefield. Obeying orders was the paramount rule.

  There had been times when Rutledge himself had wanted to die, to shut out the voice hammering at him. And he couldn’t, because when he himself died, Hamish would finally be dead as well. He’d led a charmed life in the trenches those last two years of the war—his men had commented on that again and again. But Rutledge had understood it for what it was. God had not wanted him. A murderer . . .

  To put an end to the memories threatening to overwhelm him, Rutledge pulled to the verge and stopped the motorcar. Reaching for the envelope on the seat beside him, he took out the locket. Opening it, he looked down at the face of the woman whose photograph had been so carefully placed inside.

  Who was she? Why had she been important in the life of one Wyatt Russell?

  The woman staring up at him was silent, and after a moment he closed the locket and returned it to the envelope. Why had the dead man been wearing it?

  Perhaps if he knew the answer to that, he told himself, he would know why Wyatt Russell had died.

  When he reached London, Rutledge went directly to The Marlborough Hotel, where he and Russell had dined. If Russell’s belongings were still in his rooms there, it was possible they could tell him more about the man than he’d wanted to reveal when he was alive.

  There was a couple just arrived, and it took several minutes before they had registered and relinquished their luggage to the man waiting to carry it to their room. As they walked away, Rutledge stepped forward and asked to see the register for the date, twelve days ago, when he’d come here with Russell.

  The clerk was reluctant at first until Rutledge quietly identified himself as Scotland Yard. And then he insisted on checking the register himself.

  After going through the guest book, the clerk shook his head. “I don’t find a Mr. Russell for that date or any other close to it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “If you would, go back through it again. He indicated he’d taken a room here. He wasn’t well.”

  The clerk ran his finger down the list of hotel guests, turning the pages slowly.

  “No, Inspector, I’m sorry. I don’t see that name.”

  Either Russell had lied about where he was staying—or he had lied about his name.

  Rutledge thanked the clerk and left. By the time he’d returned to the Yard, Chief Superintendent Bowles was waiting for him. Gibson gave him a warning, with an I-told-you-so expression on his face.

  Knocking on the Chief Superintendent’s door, Rutledge stepped inside. “You wished to see me, sir?”

  “What’s this business about Gravesend and a cadaver?”

  “I recognized the photograph they sent to the Yard, and I went to see the body for myself.” He gave a brief account of Russell’s visit and the information he’d learned in Gravesend. But he said nothing about the lunch with Russell or stopping at the hotel before returning to the Yard.

  “And you’re sure of this dead man’s identity?”

  “I’m sure he’s the same person who came to my office,” Rutledge answered carefully. “I’d like to go to Essex, to v
erify the information I was given. And there may be people there who can tell me more about Russell.”

  “Yes, yes, by all means. I don’t put much stock in his confession, I suggest that you not waste your time in that direction. It’s his death that concerns us.” He paused, taking up his pen and rolling it in his fingers, as if it might produce answers for Rutledge if he stared at it long enough. Then he said, “I’m acquainted with Inspector Adams’s superior. It wouldn’t do to let this matter drag on. If you take my meaning?”

  Rutledge did. Bowles was pleased to take over the inquiry, bring it to a swift and certain end, and put his opposite number’s nose out of joint.

  An hour later, Rutledge was on his way to Essex.

  This time he didn’t have Frances to keep him company. This time it was Hamish. Although the sun was shining and the day was fair, the journey seemed to drag, and he would have sworn that Furnham was twice as far as it had been earlier.

  He’d decided that perhaps the place to begin his inquiries was with the clergyman in charge of the isolated church that he and Frances had seen. It was roughly halfway between the deserted house at River’s Edge and the village of Furnham. If anyone knew something about Russell’s background, it would likely be the man who had ministered to his family.

  As he passed the gates to the estate, he wondered again why Russell had deserted it. Because of his wife’s death? Or because he had committed murder there and got away with it? Until someone had found him out and come for him.

  An eye for an eye.

  Ahead he could just see the peaked roof of the church, standing out like a sentinel in the long reaches of the marshes. The grasses had more color today, varied in texture as well as shade, and the river beyond was intensely blue as it mirrored the sky. And yet the warm late summer’s day was chilled by the whispers of the wind through the grasses, setting them to move and rustle, as if hidden among them were crowds of people talking together.

  Frances had noted it as well, but alone now, he realized that it was defining this place in a way that he hadn’t expected.