The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  He couldn’t quite capture the image. But it had been there. The muzzle wavering and then steadying. Or was he confusing it with the shotgun firing wildly?

  And then he was fully awake, and a memory receded into sleep.

  Another took its place.

  Why had Fletcher-Munro come here last night—to the flat—before his meeting with the man he assumed to be Barrington? How had he discovered where Rutledge lived?

  Had he seen the boy, Freddy, that day as he was driving home from Ascot? Afterward, had he made it his business to find out who the boy was—and where he was, through the years? Had he been afraid the renewed police interest in the Barrington case and the newspaper coverage might bring back a childhood memory long since forgotten? But how had Fletcher-Munro known where to find Morrow in Dover? That couldn’t have been left to chance. He’d had information he could rely on.

  An hour later Rutledge was on the road to Wendover, in Kent. The family was just sitting down to lunch when he knocked at the door, and the maid who stood there asked if he could return in an hour.

  “It’s urgent,” Rutledge told her. “I need to speak to Mr. Morrow now.”

  She went away. It was Morrow himself who came to the door.

  He looked Rutledge up and down, angry as he recognized him. “You’re the reason my son has been taken from us.”

  “He wasn’t taken away, Mr. Morrow—he was put in a safe place after the attack on him in Dover.”

  “It’s absurd, this attack. My son is blind, he fell. Even he has said so.”

  “He doesn’t remember, Mr. Morrow. It’s natural he should blame himself rather than think someone wanted to harm him.”

  “Who would wish to harm Alfred?”

  “That’s why I’ve come. Someone knew your son was arriving in Dover that morning very early. Before light, because the Belle was dependent on the tides. You and your wife, of course. The chauffeur, Rollins, who was to collect him. Jonathan Strange, who was bringing him in to the port. Anyone else?”

  Morrow stared at Rutledge. “What do you mean, someone knew?”

  “Just that, sir. It’s possible someone else was waiting for him, knowing that your chauffeur was delayed. And when he saw his chance, he set upon your son there in the darkness and did his best to kill him.”

  “I refuse to believe such a thing.”

  Holding on to his patience, Rutledge said, “Who would you have told about your son returning home that morning?”

  “I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone about it. But I most certainly will report your badgering of me. Good day, Inspector.”

  Rutledge’s boot was in the door before it could close. “I shall have to interview your staff. If you’ll summon them to the kitchen, I’ll speak to them there.”

  “I won’t have my staff badgered either—”

  With little rest and a long day looming ahead of him, Rutledge lost what was left of his patience. “Mr. Morrow, if I must take you into custody for hindering a police inquiry, I’ll do just that. Or you can finish your meal in peace while I question your servants.”

  “There are only seven,” Morrow retorted. “Housekeeper, two maids, Rollins, who is chauffeur and valet, and my wife’s lady’s maid, the cook and the scullery maid. Outside, we have a gardener and his helper. Every one of them have been with us for many years.”

  “One year or ten, it doesn’t matter.”

  Morrow threw up his hands in disgust. “As you wish.”

  Ten minutes later, Rutledge was in the servants’ hall, and the seven indoor staff had been collected there. Their faces were tight with worry, watching him. He had no idea what Morrow had told them to expect from this interview.

  Keeping his expression benign, he smiled, and said, “I’m sorry to have taken you from your duties. There are some questions I need to ask you. As you must know by now, Alfred Morrow was attacked in Dover, and I need to learn more about his absences from home. I’m sure you’ll be willing to help me in any way you can.”

  This was greeted with a stony silence.

  He looked around the room, and then he let his gaze swing back to Rollins, the chauffeur-valet.

  The man swallowed hard, turned to his companions as if half expecting them to volunteer in his place, then rose, and followed Rutledge to the housekeeper’s sitting room with the air of a man going to his execution.

  21

  A tall, thin man, with a beak of a nose, Rollins had been hired as valet in 1911, but when Morrow had bought a motorcar two years later, he’d been asked to drive it when Mrs. Morrow wished to go out. Before very long, Mr. Morrow had preferred to be driven as well.

  Rollins expressed the opinion that Morrow had never been mechanically inclined, “more of a bookish man,” and when the novelty of the new motorcar had worn off, he had been happy to let Rollins assume the duty of driving when needed.

  Surprisingly, once in the housekeeper’s room, he seemed to steady himself and answer Rutledge’s questions in a firm but quiet voice. Yes, he’d been delayed by the overturned cart. There had been no place just there to take the motorcar around the obstruction in the road, and he’d fumed at the delay, getting out twice to see if he could move the abandoned cart himself. He had also gone to the police when Alfred Morrow hadn’t turned up. Rutledge asked him about his family. Rollins was a local man with a sister who was housekeeper to the Rector, and a brother who worked in one of the two pubs in the village.

  Hamish said, as Rutledge let Rollins go, “He’s no’ the one you want.”

  The housekeeper, a Mrs. Parkinson, was also local. She’d come to the Morrows in 1907 as a downstairs maid when she was seventeen, and she’d been the likely choice for the position when the previous housekeeper had retired in 1916. She had no relatives in London, but her sister worked for the Archbishop of Canterbury, and it was clear that Mrs. Morrow had taken that into account when choosing her next housekeeper. Even Mrs. Parkinson acknowledged that in a wry comment.

  “It was more than her friends could claim,” she said. “But I don’t think I’ve disappointed her.”

  Next he called for Williams, the lady’s maid. She was slim, her dark dress well cut, her fair hair drawn back in a style that was current in London, and he changed his mind about the first question to ask her. Instead he commented, “You keep up with the latest fashion?”

  “I must, if I’m to carry out my duties properly,” she answered primly.

  “How do you manage to keep up with London fashions? Do you travel there often?”

  “Mrs. Morrow seldom travels outside of Kent.” There was a hint of disappointment in her voice. “But my sisters in London keep me abreast of what’s being worn and the latest hairstyles.”

  “Sisters?” he asked.

  “I come from a large family, Inspector. We went into service because we were poor and it was the only way out of it.”

  “And you correspond with them regularly?”

  “Oh, yes. It was my eldest sister, Lizzie, who found this position for me when Mrs. Morrow’s maid suddenly retired.”

  He busied himself with his pen, not looking at her. “Lizzie is in London? Does she work for an employment agency there?”

  “No. She’s housekeeper for a man of business. Nan is housekeeper for an MP. Only a junior one, of course, but he is said to have Promise. Josephine is lady’s maid to a barrister’s wife, and Marie, who was a nursing Sister during the war, is in Harley Street. We’ve done rather well, our family.”

  “While you are here in an out-of-the-way country village with the Morrows. How long have you worked here?”

  Something in the way he said it must have given him away. Her face changed. “I came as the downstairs maid, in 1912. I prefer the country. It’s lovely here in spring.”

  “And you are paid rather well, I take it, to spy on the Morrows?”

  “I don’t spy,” she said, her voice cold. “I simply keep an eye on the family. They aren’t very worldly. As you might have noticed. But they are good
and kind, and I—”

  “—spy for your sister’s employer,” he went on. “Who does Lizzie work for?”

  He had to frighten it out of her, threatening her with the horrors of a women’s prison. It wasn’t pleasant, but he had to have confirmation.

  In the end, sobbing, she gave it to him.

  Fletcher-Munro.

  “Do you know why you were spying?” he asked her then.

  She shook her head, her face still buried in his handkerchief. “I have told you. They aren’t very worldly—”

  “And their wages, in addition to what you were paid by Lizzie’s employer, add up to a handsome sum.”

  “They don’t pay London wages here,” she defended herself. “I have to think of my future, that’s all. I’ve done them no harm.”

  “That’s probably true,” Rutledge said. “Until their son Alfred was attacked in Dover. You told Lizzie when he was coming home. When Rollins was expected to collect him from the port.”

  “She’s always worried about Mr. Alfred. She says, if ever she had a son, she would want him to be just like Mr. Alfred. All of us care about him.”

  “If he’d died in the war—or in Dover just now—your extra wages would have stopped. Did you ever consider that?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” she protested, still staunchly protecting Lizzie and her employer. “My sister would never be a party to such a thing. Mr. Morrow warned us you’d be horrid.”

  A few minutes later, Mrs. Morrow was very upset when he asked her to lock her lady’s maid in her room for twenty-four hours. She was having tea with the Vicar’s wife the next afternoon, and expected to have her hair done properly.

  In the end, Rutledge had to see to it himself, and take away the key. He thought it might do Williams good to have a taste of what prison might be like. He wanted no warnings to reach Lizzie.

  On his way to London, he made one detour. After several false starts, he found the oast houses that Arnold Livingston had come to Kent to inspect.

  According to the man who looked after the hop gardens and the oast houses, Livington had spent two days there, and taken the train from Canterbury to Rochester, meeting Strange to discuss the cost of repairs.

  Satisfied, Rutledge did his best to make up lost time.

  He had enough evidence now to take Fletcher-Munro in on a charge of attempted murder.

  But he didn’t have the authority. Not on medical leave.

  Outside Scotland Yard, Rutledge sat in his motorcar for a full five minutes, steeling himself for the ordeal to come.

  And it was just that.

  Chief Superintendent Jameson was not sympathetic.

  A hardheaded man with a reputation for following the rules, he sat there and listened to what Rutledge had to say about the charge of attempted suicide, then frowned.

  Rutledge could read his face. The Chief Superintendent had expected an entirely different outcome.

  Rutledge was to take a leave from his position at the Yard—and then quietly retire, after the initial gossip had faded. It was what a decent man would do, Rutledge thought, after subjecting the Yard to the humiliation of attempted suicide. Rutledge had already run the gantlet of curious stares on his way to Jameson’s office. The scar on his forehead was healing, but it was still a red line that everyone could see. A reminder.

  Proof.

  “I haven’t come to argue in my defense,” he said into the silence. “But I have fresh evidence in the Barrington inquiry, and I need the authority to act on it. Quickly.”

  It went against the grain to beg. Much as his position at the Yard meant to him, his pride forbade it.

  “You were on leave. Medical leave.”

  “It’s true.” He thought about the miles he’d driven, the people he’d spoken to, the doubts he’d entertained, and the possibilities that had come to nothing. But he said only, “I was in Kent, taking my doctor’s advice, when new information presented itself. You would not have advised me to walk away.”

  “I could have given it to another man.”

  “Who did not know the people involved, not as I did.”

  He continued, as Jameson moved his pen from one side of the blotter to the other, “I should like to finish what I’ve begun. Before giving you my resignation. I have never left an inquiry unfinished.”

  Jameson looked up then, his shrewd eyes examining Rutledge.

  He could have said, How much time do you need? Instead he asked, “How long will it take?”

  It was like a slap in the face.

  “Forty-eight hours, I should think.”

  “Very well. I shall expect you to bring me Barrington in the next forty-eight hours.”

  Rutledge opened his mouth to say that it wasn’t Alan Barrington that he was about to take into custody. But Hamish was there before him, warning him not to show his hand. Instead, he replied, “The inquiry will be closed in forty-eight hours. Agreed.”

  “Good.” Jameson picked up a file and opened it as he nodded in dismissal.

  Rutledge rose from his chair, feeling like a naughty schoolboy who had just been sent down for disappointing his tutors. He got out of the room before it showed on his face, and in the passage as he closed the door, he swore silently and passionately.

  By the time he’d reached Gibson’s desk, he’d already made his plans.

  He said, smiling, “I’m reinstated. I’ll be taking someone into custody later today. There could be trouble. Who’s available?”

  Gibson looked up. “Don’t tell me, sir—you’ve found Alan Barrington.”

  “I’ve found Blanche Fletcher-Munro’s killer,” he agreed, nodding.

  “I should like to be there, sir. If you don’t mind.”

  “Thank you, Gibson. I’ll be out for an hour or more. Be ready when I come back.”

  “That I will, sir.”

  “And, Sergeant—best to say nothing until the deed is done. We don’t want to raise expectations before we have him in handcuffs.”

  “I understand, sir. He’s kept us doing a merry dance all these years. It’ll be all the sweeter to watch their faces as that dance ends.”

  Rutledge left, then, and spent the next hour trying to find Miss Mills. He ran her to earth not in Oxford but in a London tea shop frequented by members of the press. She was reading several sheets of closely written script, and she jumped when he spoke her name.

  Looking up, she was about to say something about startling her, saw that it wasn’t the colleague she’d been expecting, and flushed.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded, half-rising.

  “Good morning to you,” he said affably, taking the chair opposite her.

  “I have nothing to say to you.” Still affronted, she was glaring at him.

  “I should think—please correct me if I’m wrong—that listening is your stock in trade. Give me five minutes, really listen, and you might be glad you did.”

  She sank back into her chair, quickly turned the sheets she’d been studying over so that he couldn’t read them upside down, then glared. “Five minutes. And then if you don’t leave, I’ll scream and have you thrown out.”

  “That’s beneath you, Miss Mills. At least beneath the journalist you aspire to be,” he said quietly. “There will be an arrest in the Barrington inquiry this afternoon at four o’clock. Be at this address—but not in front of the house. We don’t want our quarry to get the wind up and flee.”

  “You’ve found Barrington?” The glare became suspicion. “I don’t believe you.”

  “That’s up to you entirely, of course. I’ve told you the truth. In your place, I think curiosity would take me there.”

  “I’ve looked everywhere I can think of to find him, to interview him. He’s not in England. You’re saying that he’s going to be at this address at four?”

  “No, you won’t knock on the door at three, Miss Mills. If you do, you’ll not find Alan Barrington there. If you want the story you’ve been looking for, you’ll do as I say.
”

  “Why? Why me?”

  He gave that his consideration, then said, “I’m not precisely sure myself.” But he knew very well why he wanted her there. She would be a witness to Fletcher-Munro’s arrest. And that news would be in print before anyone could stop it. Rising, he added, “My five minutes are up. Good day, Miss Mills.”

  “Can I bring a photographer?” she asked quickly, reaching a hand out to stop him.

  “You don’t want to be conspicuous.”

  And he walked out of the tea shop as she scrambled out of her chair, asking his name. By the time she’d reached the shop door, he was gone.

  Or so she thought, unaware that he’d quickly stepped into the hat shop next door.

  By three o’clock, Rutledge had set all his facts down on paper, put them in a large envelope, and covered them with a blanket in the rear seat of his motorcar. But not in Hamish’s accustomed place.

  He met Gibson at the Yard, took him up, and drove on to the house where Fletcher-Munro lived. Gibson, trying to quell his own excitement as he looked around at the elegant town houses, said, “Don’t tell me Barrington has been living here, under our noses, all this time?”

  “We’re not here to arrest Alan Barrington.”

  “What? But you said—” Gibson turned to him, excitement turning to anger.

  “I told you we would be taking the murderer of Blanche Fletcher-Munro into custody. And that’s where he lives. Her husband. He also attempted to murder one Alfred Morrow, a witness to that murder. I wouldn’t have put it past him to be the killer of Mark Thorne, Mrs. Fletcher-Munro’s first husband.”

  “We questioned him. And cleared him. He was in hospital for weeks. He can barely walk.”

  “He can walk better than we think. It’s been over ten years, Gibson. And he’s learned to put on a fine act of being crippled. His suffering has been useful.”

  “Why should he kill his wife? He was distraught—”

  “I don’t know why, but something happened that day at the Black Ascot. They’d left the race course early and were quarreling on their way home. I think she realized that he’d killed Thorne. Her first husband. I suspect he’d asked Thorne to meet him, and under the cover of the mists rolling in, he killed him and pushed him over the cliff at Beachy Head. I doubt we’ll ever prove it. But Fletcher-Munro can only hang once.”