The Confession

by Charles Todd

  He walked down to the water and stood looking toward the sea. The day was fair and already warmer than usual. Far out in the North Sea he could just make out a ship steaming by, the smoke of its funnels a thick gray line above a hull that was nearly invisible from here.

  Barber spoke just behind him, and Rutledge turned quickly. He hadn’t heard him walk down to the water’s edge. The lapping of the river on the strand had covered the sound of his footsteps.

  “What brings you back to our fair village?” he asked.

  “Ned Willet’s funeral,” Rutledge said, keeping his voice light. “When is it to be?”

  “It was yesterday. You missed it,” the man replied, with some satisfaction.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We’re not.” Barber reached down and picked up something from the strand. It was a flat stone, and he sent it skimming across the water. “Not bad. Seven skips,” Barber went on. Then he turned back to Rutledge. “You’ll be leaving then?”

  There was nothing to keep him here. Except for the search for Russell. And yet the man’s eagerness to see the last of him aroused his suspicions.

  He took a chance. “Making another run to France, are you? Before the moon is full?”

  Barber’s face was a picture of dismay and anger, then wariness. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Rutledge picked up a stone just by the toe of his boot and sent it skimming across the river. It skipped nine times. “Hypothetically, of course.”

  Weighing the word, Barber stared at Rutledge, then looked out to sea as Rutledge himself had done earlier. But not before Rutledge had caught the doubt in his eyes.

  He had pushed far enough. After a moment Rutledge added, “My only interest is what happened to Ben Willet. I’ve told you. Help me there, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “I don’t know who killed him.”

  “Nor do I. Was it you, because when he came home from France he was different, no longer a villager, prepared to keep village secrets? Or was it Major Russell, perhaps out of jealousy? Or because Willet knew too much about the death of Justin Fowler? Miss Farraday, because Willet presumed on her friendship?”

  Barber picked up another stone, looked at it, and let it drop to the strand again. He was silent so long that Rutledge thought he wasn’t going to answer at all.

  Finally he said, “The answer could lie in France. Have you thought about that? He wouldn’t be the first one to want to stay, hanging about with that useless lot in Paris, drinking and whoring and posturing with the rest of them, rather than coming home and doing right by his family. It would have killed the old man.”

  Rutledge turned to look up the river so that Barber couldn’t read his face.

  On the postal card Willet had sent to Cynthia Farraday a few days before his murder, he’d told her he was intending to visit his father and then return to Paris and finish his last book. But Abigail claimed he hadn’t come home since the war. And if he hadn’t, why did Sandy Barber suspect his brother-in-law had chosen to stay in Paris after 1918?

  A footman from Thetford, son of a fisherman in Furnham, would have been eager to return to the Laughton house where his former position was awaiting him.

  “Why should you think that Ben Willet would be one of them?” he asked, his eyes on a shorebird flitting here and there after whatever the current had on offer.

  Barber lifted a shoulder in irritation. “I don’t know. Someone—Jessup, I believe it was—said something after—” He cleared his throat. “He said better men than Ben had been tempted to stay on.”

  What had Barber been about to say before he’d caught himself ? After one of his runs to France for contraband? After meeting Ben Willet in London or Tilbury or on the road to Furnham?

  “That was an odd remark,” Rutledge said, facing him. “Did he know Ben so well?”

  Barber flushed. “I don’t know what the hell possessed him to make it. It doesn’t matter, does it? The point being that once Ben was free from Furnham, he never looked back, not really. Too good for the likes of us, I expect. In his cast-off clothes and his airs, he made fun of the household in Thetford. And most likely he kept the kitchen staff in Thetford rolling on the floor with his imitations of us.” There was an intensity of bitterness in his voice that was unexpected.

  He loved his wife, Rutledge thought, and was angry for her sake. But this was a new intensity.

  What did he know?

  And as if he knew he’d already said too much, Barber turned on his heel and walked away without a word.

  Tales of the wild bohemian ways of Paris, painted in lurid detail, had come home from France with returning soldiers. Most of them had never seen Paris, but most knew someone who had, and those who had were not above embellishing for greater effect. For Ned Willet’s son to prefer that world to the staid life of service in a respectable household was unimaginable to someone who had rarely left this backwater of Essex.

  Rutledge turned to follow him. “Will you let me speak to your wife?”

  Barber shook his head. “She can’t help you. And besides, she’s still cut up about her father’s death and Ben not making it back here in time. She told me this morning that she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t written. What am I to do? Tell her that he’s dead as well? She even asked me to go to Thetford and see if he’s all right. What’s more, the whispers have already started. Someone talked to his wife, despite my warning. And when I find out who, I’ll kill him myself.”

  Rutledge said, “She’ll have to know the truth sometime.”

  “Let her heal a little first. When will they release his body?”

  “I can give the order tomorrow.”

  “That’s too soon.”

  With a nod Barber turned and walked away again. Rutledge let him go this time.

  Hamish said, “There’s more to him than meets the eye.”

  “I agree.” Then Rutledge added thoughtfully, “He would kill Ben Willet himself, if he thought Willet was going to hurt Abigail. But there’s nothing he can do. The man is already dead. And that’s grief he has to carry.”

  “It’s verra’ possible that he did kill him. Gie him a little rope . . .”

  “Meanwhile, I have to find Major Russell.”

  And that meant returning to River’s Edge.

  Halfway to his motorcar in the inn yard, Rutledge saw Nancy Brothers coming toward him, a market basket over one arm. She hesitated, and he thought perhaps she didn’t wish it to be known that he had come to the farm to interview her. But after that brief moment she walked on, ducked her head in a diffident nod, and passed him without a word. He touched his hat, but didn’t speak, in accordance with her unexpressed wish.

  It was a measure, he thought, of the village attitude toward him. Indeed, he’d been surprised that Sandy Barber had sought him out. Hamish reminded him that Barber was a force to be reckoned with in Furnham and made up his own rules. But Rutledge had a feeling that the encounter had gone beyond curiosity. A fishing expedition, then?

  He was just stepping into the motorcar when the inn’s clerk came to the door.

  “Are you leaving, then?” he asked hopefully. “I’ll fetch your valise for you.”

  Rutledge shook his head and drove off toward River’s Edge, leaving the clerk looking after him with frustration writ large on his face.

  As far as he could tell, after he’d left the motorcar and walked up to the gate, nothing had changed there. The chain was still looped between the pillars, and the high grass showed his passage but not, he thought, that of someone else.

  Unless someone had walked in his tracks.

  He made his way up the drive to the house, remembering last night and his care not to be seen until he was ready to show himself. And that had been wise, given the weapons he’d found in the study. Now he went boldly toward the house across the open ground, and around to the terrace. It was one thing to shoot an intruder in the dark, and quite another to fire on him in the light of day.

&nb
sp; Instead of mounting the steps, he scanned the river for any sign of watchers. Where, for instance, had Cynthia Farraday met Ben Willet?

  “Ye canna’ tell. You do na’ know the coves and inlets. Ye’d require field glasses to be sure.”

  Rutledge turned to study the margins of the lawns, that line where the cultivated grass ended and the marsh began. How much draining had it taken to rip this estate out of the marsh’s grip? Or had this been a naturally higher stretch of land? He could see for himself that there were half a dozen places that might be the beginning of a track through the reeds, but striking out into one of them would be foolish at best, unless one knew what he was about. And how often did the tracks shift? Would Russell have been able to find his way after all this time? Rutledge was reminded, in fact, of a maze, with its artificial twists and turns intentionally leading the unwary down blind alleys.

  There was the river, of course, to help keep one’s bearings, but as the ground rose in hummocky patches and dipped into small wet pockets, even that guide could disappear.

  He was beginning to understand how Mrs. Russell could vanish so easily. But was she alive—or dead—when she did?

  Turning to climb the steps to the terrace, he debated whether or not to go inside. If Russell was there, walking in uninvited could be considered trespass. And laying siege, in the hope to see him come out of his own accord, was wasting time.

  What was the man’s state now? He’d left the house in Chelsea after slapping Cynthia. Not hard, but enough to shock both of them. His body was battered from the motorcycle accident, and he knew he was being hunted. Did he see himself as a man with a damaged mind who had burned his bridges?

  There was a good chance that Russell had never intended to stay here, and every intention of dying here by his own hand.

  Rutledge crossed to the door and tried it. It was still unlocked, just as he’d left it. But when he swung it wide, the morning sun fell across a muddy footprint on the floorboards just inside.

  He hadn’t risked turning on his torch, and there was no way of knowing if it had been there last night before he’d seen the man out by the landing, or not. Squatting beside it, he touched the rim of mud. It was hard, dry. And the shape didn’t match his own boots; it was longer and wider. He cast about for any indication that the wearer of the shoe had gone out again.

  Two or three crumbles of mud were caught in the threads of the carpet a stride away, but after that he could find nothing.

  Straightening, he called, “Russell? Major Russell, are you here?”

  The words seemed to echo through the house, loud enough to be heard by anyone inside, but even though he called again, no one answered.

  Hamish was reminding him that he was here, where the Yard couldn’t reach him if new developments occurred in London. Or, for that matter, if something happened to him out here on the Hawking.

  But he took his chances and walked into the garden room, taking care not to destroy the footprint or add his own.

  He went directly to the study, to look at the gun case. If Russell was here and armed, he wanted to know it before encountering the man.

  He opened the glass door. The shotguns were just what he’d expected, used for hunting. Below were the revolvers. And he would have sworn last night that there were only two in the case.

  Now there were three.

  Chapter 16

  He stood there for a moment, thinking. Remembering how the cold metal had felt as he touched the handguns in the dark.

  Yes, just the two last night, he was sure of it. He couldn’t be mistaken. Not with weapons.

  The third was a service revolver, and it was the same caliber as the one that had been used to kill Ben Willet. It appeared to have been cleaned recently, no way of knowing when it had last been fired. The science that could tell him was in its infancy, and not always trustworthy.

  Taking out his handkerchief, he examined the other revolver. Fired, but not cleaned since then.

  He set it back where he’d found it.

  More to the point, how had this third handgun magically appeared in less than twenty-four hours?

  Did it mean Russell had finally come home?

  What did this have to do with the man he’d seen last night? He’d been upstairs in the master bedroom, after searching the ground floor and then the first floor. Could the man have come in and set the revolver in the gun case? The house was large enough that neither man would necessarily have heard the other’s movements. What had taken him to the water’s edge before he left? Did he think he was safe enough that he could take his time about leaving? Or was he looking for signs of a boat along the riverbank? If the tide was out, there could have been a rowboat riding low in the water.

  No answers to any of his questions.

  Rutledge listened to the house. The maker of that footprint could still be here, and for all he knew, the revolver could have been used here.

  He remembered that Timothy Jessup had mentioned seeing him at River’s Edge, and asked if he intended to buy the property. But Rutledge, as aware of his surroundings as any man of his experience could be, had not seen Jessup.

  Frances was right. One could conceal a battalion out there in the grass.

  There was nothing for it but to search the house again, and then the grounds.

  But they yielded nothing. Save for the footprint and the revolver, he would have been prepared to swear that he’d been the only living soul inside River’s Edge last night.

  Closing the terrace door behind him, he walked down to the water’s edge. No sign of a boat here, but at the second landing, while he couldn’t find any proof that anyone had come in here, he found the faint imprint of a man’s boot in the damp earth just above the high-water mark.

  He squatted there, studying it. It appeared to belong to the same foot as the one in the house, but the soft earth hadn’t preserved it as well as the hard surface of the wooden floor.

  Standing again, he looked back at the house, beyond the kitchen gardens and the few outbuildings, and felt a rising frustration with Major Russell. Where the hell was the man?

  Halfway back to Furnham, just beyond the turning that led to the Rectory and the churchyard, Rutledge saw Constable Nelson pedaling toward him on his bicycle. Rutledge slowed.

  “Looking for me?” he asked.

  Nelson stopped. Rutledge could see that he was sober, although haggard, as if he had finished the last of his stock. “No, sir. But I will ask. Did you see a loose mare back the way you’ve just come?”

  “A mare? No, I haven’t.”

  “One of the villages upstream reported her missing. Jumped the pasture fence. She’s a valuable beast, and I was asked to keep an eye out for her.”

  “When did she go missing?” Rutledge asked quickly.

  “The owner’s not sure. He went to St. Albans for a few days, and when he came back, she was gone. He doesn’t believe she got this far, but he sent word by the ironmonger’s son, who went to the dentist in Tilbury.” He gestured to the dusty, unmade surface of the road. “No tracks that the boy could pick up on his way home, and none I’ve seen so far. But I said I’d look.”

  A pretense of doing his duty? Or was there more to this? Had he been asked to look for Russell? Rutledge was nearly certain that Matron wouldn’t have contacted the police, but the owner of the Trusty might well have wanted his pound of flesh. It was even possible Nelson was keeping a watch on the troublesome Londoner’s movements for someone.

  Testing the waters, Rutledge said, “How well do you know Timothy Jessup? He was Ben Willet’s uncle, I’m told.”

  “Jessup? You don’t want to tangle with that one,” Nelson said, alarm in his face. “A nasty piece of work. Never in any trouble with the law, you understand, and I thank God for that. All the same, nobody ever crosses him.”

  Rutledge heard overtones in the man’s voice that made him wonder if Jessup and not Sandy Barber was the leader of the smugglers.

  “How well did he get on with Ben?
”

  “I wouldn’t say they were close. Abigail has always been Jessup’s favorite. And he was against Ben going into service in Thetford. I overheard them quarreling once. Ben was trying to explain that he wasn’t cut out to be a fisherman. Jessup wanted to know if he thought he was better than his father, and Ben said it wasn’t that. He’d rather blacken another man’s boots in a city than gut fish here in Furnham. Jessup knocked him down then and told him to stop daydreaming and get on with the life he was born to lead. And Ben said, ‘You don’t want anyone to leave, that’s all. For fear he’ll talk about things he shouldn’t.’ ”

  “What things?”

  Nelson said uneasily, “It was just talk. A boy’s talk. And he’d been up to River’s Edge a time or two. He’d seen a different way of life.”

  “The smuggling,” Hamish said. “Yon uncle was afraid the lad would tell someone.”

  But was it only that? Had Furnham corrupted its only officer of the law just to protect a few bottles of brandy, a little tobacco, and whatever other small luxuries these men had brought in on their backs? The entire village seemed to be involved in the secret, not just a handful of rogue fishermen.

  Constable Nelson was preparing to mount his bicycle again. “Someone told me last year that Ned Willet had written a book and it was published in France. I doubt Ned could put two words together on a page, much less a book. But I didn’t believe that. Not for a minute.”

  “Why not?” Rutledge asked, curious.

  “I never knew anyone who wrote a book. And I’m not likely to. Not anyone from Furnham.”

  And he was gone, pedaling along the road, seemingly the model of a village constable. Sober and responsible until the next bottle of French brandy was left outside his door. It was easy to see where his loyalties might lie.

  France.

  Rutledge was letting out the clutch, preparing to drive on, when the single word stopped him.

  Ned Willet.

  What was Ben Willet’s full name?

  Was it possible that on one of the runs to France, someone had asked Jessup if the old man had written a book? Jessup would have found that as amusing as the constable had. And on his next run, had the Frenchman produced such a book, to have the last laugh?