The Confession ir-14

by Charles Todd

  Shaking the rain off his hat, he took the stairs two at a time and went into his room.

  He knew at once that someone had searched it.

  The photograph of the body of Ben Willet was safely in his motorcar, and the locket that had belonged to Mrs. Russell was still in his pocket.

  What else could the intruder have been looking for?

  He debated confronting the inn’s owner, and decided against it. Standing by one of the windows in the passage, he watched the lightning move up the river, coming from the sea, the thunder loud enough to rattle the sash in front of him. At one point the very air seemed to turn blue around him, and a tree shattered, then went down with a roar he could hear above the thunder that followed. Someone shouted, but he couldn’t tell just where the lightning had struck.

  Even after the worst of the storm had subsided, rain continued to fall. But toward the east the clouds broke and a faint rainbow arced above the river to the west. Someone began using an axe to clear away the tree, strong, rhythmic blows, and shortly afterward Rutledge could hear the ring of a second axe as well.

  It was nearly time for lunch, and he decided not to dine in the inn but to go up the High Street to the same tearoom where he and Frances had stopped.

  He could see as he left the inn that a tree had fallen across the road where the bend led toward the outlying farms. Jessup was one of the men with an axe.

  The welcome in the shop was no warmer than before, but he was served a sandwich, a cup of tea, and a Banbury bun. There were several women at two of the other tables, and the topic of conversation appeared to be the death of Ned Willet. One of the women was saying, “Do you suppose Ben will come for the funeral? Sandy told me that Abigail had written to him when her father took ill. But there’s been no word.”

  There was a silence, filled only with the strokes of the axe. And then one of her companions said, “Haven’t you heard? He was murdered. In London.”

  “No-oh, no, I hadn’t.” The woman shook her head. “What a terrible blow. Do they know who killed him? And what’s Abigail to do? First Ned, and now Ben. He was the last of those Willet boys. How is she holding up?”

  “Sandy hasn’t told her yet. She was fond of Ben,” the first woman said.

  “He didn’t return the feeling,” the third woman put in. “How many times has he shown his face here? Too good for the likes of us.”

  “Yes, well, when you’re in service, I daresay you do as you’re told,” the second woman retorted, hurrying to his defense.

  “He came home when his mother was so ill,” the third woman reminded her companions. “Just goes to show, I say.”

  Rutledge finished his meal, paid for it, and then walked over to the table where the three women sat.

  “You knew Ben Willet?” he asked. “Do you recall where he was in service? The house is in Thetford.”

  They stared at him, shocked that he would approach them.

  “I had intended to ask Abigail Barber but didn’t wish to intrude on her grief,” he carried on.

  The third woman said, “You’re the man from London.”

  “Yes. Scotland Yard.”

  They glanced at one another, apparently of two minds about helping him. But Rutledge had the feeling that they didn’t know the answer themselves. Then the second woman said, “If it will spare Abigail any more grief, I’ll tell you. The family’s name is Lawson. Ned claimed the house was twice the size of River’s Edge.”

  He thanked her and left.

  He drove back toward London until he found the turning to the north, coming up from the ferry in Tilbury. But the roads had suffered in the rain, and it wasn’t until well after dinner that he reached the outskirts of Thetford.

  It took nearly half an hour more to locate the house he was after. The local police informed him that there was no one by the name of Lawson or Lawlor, but he might try one Alfred Laughton, who owned a fair-size estate some three miles out on the Bury Road.

  It was set well back from the main road and difficult to see in the dying light. Contrary to what the woman in the tea shop had told him, it was most likely the same size as River’s Edge, possibly even a little smaller.

  But in a far better state of repair. The gardens were immaculate, and the fountain in front of the door was splashing audibly in the quiet of the evening. Even the mortar between the bricks was smoothly dressed, without cracks or crevices. There were gas lamps lit by the door, their flames flickering gently. He lifted the brass knocker and let it fall against the plate behind it.

  After several minutes a maid answered the door, her uniform crisp and her manner formal.

  He identified himself and asked for Mr. Laughton.

  “I’ll see if he is receiving visitors, sir.”

  She left him in the spacious hall and returned finally to invite him to step into the library.

  He found Mr. Laughton there, a man of perhaps fifty, in evening dress, his right sleeve empty and pinned at the shoulder. He was standing with his back to the open windows at the far end of a richly appointed room, the gilt and leather bindings on the shelves catching the lamplight while comfortable chairs were arranged by the cold hearth.

  “Mr. Rutledge,” he said in greeting.

  “Good evening, sir. I regret the intrusion, but I’m investigating a crime in London. Information has led me here, where I believe you have employed a footman by the name of Benjamin Willet.”

  “Good God,” Laughton said blankly. “Willet? He was employed here before the war. A good man, as I remember. Very conscientious. Like everyone else, he enlisted as soon as he could-giving us a month’s notice, mind you. Typical of him.”

  “And did he come home from the war?”

  Laughton took a deep breath. “No. He didn’t. That’s to say he survived the war, and his place was waiting for him, as we’d told him it would be. But two months after the Armistice, he wrote to us from London to say that he had discovered a new vocation.”

  “What was it?”

  “He didn’t say, but his letter was enthusiastic, as if whatever it was strongly appealed to him. And he asked if we would mind keeping the boxes-those he left with us when he went into the Army-until he could send for them. Now that I think about it, I don’t believe he ever did.”

  “And you’ve had no further correspondence from him?”

  “To my knowledge, no. But he might well have written to someone on the staff.”

  “Would it be possible to speak to them? And to look at the belongings he left here?”

  “Tonight?”

  “I’m afraid so. It’s a pressing inquiry,” Rutledge added.

  “Well. Let me see if Thompson can help you find them.”

  He crossed the room to ring the bell by the hearth, saying, “In the war, were you?”

  It was a common question, a way of judging a man that hadn’t existed before 1914, when position and money determined who or what he was. War, thought Rutledge with irony, was a great leveler.

  “Yes, sir. I commanded Scots troops on the Somme. And elsewhere.”

  “Did you, by God! Bloody work, that.” He touched his sleeve. “Left my hand there, and they took my arm in hospital. Ended my war straightaway, I can tell you. But they kept me busy at the War Office for another year. Replacing younger men, freeing them for service.” He sighed heavily. “And they all died, you know. Every damned one of them. I felt somehow responsible. Ah. Here’s Thompson. Inspector Rutledge is looking into a crime in London. Do you think you could lay hands to those boxes Willet left behind? I don’t think anything was ever done with them.”

  The butler was late middle-aged, his hair graying. “They are still there, sir. We didn’t feel it was right to get rid of them. We’d hoped young Willet would come for them one day. Of course the war has been over for two years. Still and all, we thought it best.”

  “Yes, quite right, Thompson. Can you see to it? And the Inspector would like to speak to the staff as well. Those who remember young Willet.”
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  “Indeed, sir. If you’ll come this way, Inspector?”

  Rutledge thanked Laughton and was about to follow Thompson to the door when he was stopped.

  “I say, you don’t believe Willet is in any way involved in this business, whatever it may be?”

  To tell the truth would forewarn Thompson and the staff.

  Rutledge fell back on standard police formula. “At this stage of the inquiry, I’m not at liberty to say more. I will tell you that there is no danger of Benjamin Willet being taken into custody at any time.”

  Laughton accepted that at face value.

  “Good. Good. I’d hate to think he’d been in any sort of trouble. Good night, then. I wish you luck.”

  Thompson shut the door and ushered Rutledge to another under the main stairs, where a short flight led down into the kitchen and the servants’ hall.

  “We’ll begin with the staff, if you don’t mind, sir. They happen to be available at the moment.”

  Rutledge could now see that the servants were just clearing away the dinner served in the family dining room upstairs and preparing to eat their own meal.

  Thompson explained who this visitor was and why he had come.

  Rutledge thanked him, and added, “Did any of you correspond with Willet on a regular basis?”

  The woman in the black dress of a housekeeper said, “We all took turns writing to him and to the others who went away. And he’d answer us. Very interesting letters about France and the war and whatever news he might have. When he came home, he mentioned that he wished to try something new, and if it didn’t work out, he’d like to know he was still welcome here. But that’s the last we’ve heard. Is he all right? What has young Willet got to do with Scotland Yard?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” he told them once more. “Do you know what it was that he wished to try? And was he expecting to remain in London?”

  “I do remember he was staying with a friend,” one of the housemaids answered shyly. “I thought perhaps it was someone he’d met in the Army.”

  “It was nice stationery,” the cook added. “We commented on that. Very thick, very expensive.”

  “A house in Chelsea,” the other housemaid added. “He said there was no room in the house in Chelsea for his boxes, and would Mr. Thompson here keep them safe until he could send for them. I thought perhaps he might have been taken on as a valet by one of the officers he’d served under.”

  Beyond that, they had no more information to offer him.

  Thompson thanked them for their cooperation and conducted Rutledge to the servants’ stairs. He followed the butler up several flights to the floor where the staff slept. Halfway down the passage a separate staircase led up to a closed door.

  Thompson took out a ring of keys and unlocked it.

  There were electric lights in the attic, illuminating the rafters and the detritus of generations who had shared the same house. Trunks and boxes, cast-off furniture, outgrown toys cluttered the floor. Two long shelves on either side of the attic housed a collection of oil lamps, candlesticks, and an array of hat boxes.

  Thompson led him down the room to an open space under the eaves where several boxes had been stored, well bound with heavy string and marked with the name WILLET in large letters.

  “There you are, sir. I thought they might still be here. I doubt anyone has touched them since young Willet left.”

  “I’d like to open them,” Rutledge said. “Can we drag them out into the middle of the floor?”

  “Yes, sir. But you will be careful, will you not, Inspector? He may still wish to claim them.”

  Willet would never claim them. Still, Rutledge respected the butler’s concern.

  They carried the boxes out to the nearest overhead bulb and set them down. Pulling forward a stool and a chair, Thompson took out his pocketknife and carefully cut the string.

  “There you are, sir,” he said again.

  Rutledge sat in the chair and took out the first layer of items, mostly shoes and clothing that Willet had worn in the course of his duties in the house. Below that were several newspapers, now yellow with age, reporting events leading up to Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. There were even half a dozen broadsheets setting out where men could go to enlist.

  Replacing the newspapers and then the clothing under Thompson’s watchful eye, he set the first box aside and opened the next one. This seemed to include items that were in Willet’s room here in the Laughton household, and more clothing, of the sort he might wear on his half day off. There was a photograph of a fishing boat, presumably his father’s, framed in tarnished silver plate, and a cutting from a

  newspaper, also framed, showing a woman standing in front of a display of flowers. The caption beneath it read: MISS CYNTHIA FARRADAY, AND THE PRIZEWINNING ORCHIDS AT THE LONDON FLOWER SHOW.

  The date on the newspaper, just visible at the edge of the frame, was April 1914.

  She was as young as the face in the locket, smiling for the camera while one hand lifted a spray of orchids so that the photographer could capture it better.

  Hamish said, “He knew her. Knew who she was.”

  Silently agreeing, Rutledge replaced the contents as carefully as he’d lifted them out, and reached for the third box.

  Inside it were several books-one was a volume of poetry, the other a one-volume collection of Shakespeare’s plays, and the last was a novel by an American writer, Henry James. Beneath these were a stack of copybooks, the sort that children used to practice their penmanship.

  “I don’t know that you should look at those,” Thompson said as Rutledge took one and prepared to open it. “They may be private papers.”

  But Rutledge had no choice. It was difficult to decipher the handwriting-it was close together and cramped, the better to fit more lines to the page. He thought at first that this was a sort of diary, and then he realized it was not. The heading on the first page he came to was CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, and there followed a paragraph describing a village in France.

  It was, in fact, more fanciful than accurate, although the writing was very good. The next paragraph picked up a thread from what was presumably the preceding chapter, for a woman was looking for a particular house. She found it on a side street and stood for a moment in the rain, trying to decide whether to knock at the door or walk on.

  Her internal monologue as she debated what to do was extraordinarily good.

  Rutledge looked up from his reading. “Did you know about these? Did anyone?”

  “Willet had a room to himself-there was only the one footman, you see-and he spent a good deal of his free time there. Especially in the evenings, when the family wasn’t entertaining or had gone out to dine. One of the housemaids accused him of being too good to associate with the rest of the staff in the servants’ hall, but he told her that he liked to read, and this was his only opportunity.”

  Rutledge took out another of the copybooks and read a few pages. It was not as good as the work in the first one. Apparently Ben Willet was trying to write a novel, for there were only seventy-five pages here, and the writing broke off with a splatter of ink, as if he had been disgusted and thrown the pen down.

  He had begun again in another copybook, and that one also stopped abruptly. His third attempt showed promise, and by the fourth he lacked the experience to tell the tale he had in mind-witness the incorrect description of a French village that was vaguely reminiscent of Essex-but his characters showed depth and maturity.

  Thompson was growing restless, clearly eager to go back to his interrupted dinner. Reluctantly Rutledge put the copybooks back in the order in which he’d removed them, and said, “This will do for now. Thank you.”

  Thompson helped him carry the boxes back to where they’d found them, and the two men left the attic, turning out the light as they reached the stairs.

  “Was it a diary, sir?” Thompson asked, clearly worried about what his former footman had seen fit to write about the family and the s
taff.

  “Not precisely,” Rutledge replied. “I should leave the copybooks where they are. They will do no harm.”

  “Thank you, sir.” They had reached the kitchen, and Thompson said, “I still have duties requiring my attention. Mary will see you out.”

  And the same housemaid who had opened the door to him earlier led him back up the stairs, through the servants’ door into the hall. She said, as he stepped out into the warm night, “Was it really Ben Willet you came here about?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I saw him in May, the twenty-ninth, it was, when we were in the London house. He didn’t see me. I was on an omnibus and he was walking along the street. He looked-ill. I never said anything. It wasn’t my place. But I wondered. Was it a war wound, do you think? Or was he drinking himself into oblivion? They’d never take him back here, if that’s what it was.”

  “He was suffering from an illness,” he told her.

  “Was? Is he better? Dead?” When he didn’t answer, she added, “Then he won’t be coming back.”

  “I’m sorry.” He meant it.

  “We all thought he’d be back, after the war. His things were here, you see. A promise, you might call it. We liked him. He could be very funny, you know. Really, he should have gone on the stage. He was such a gifted mimic.” She bit her lip. “I didn’t want to believe it, you know. But someone told me-someone he’d known before the war-that he wanted to live in Paris. That he liked France. But he didn’t after all, did he? I saw him last May in London. Myself.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “William Neville. He was a footman in the house next but one to ours in London. He met Ben Willet in hospital in the last weeks of the war. They had trench foot, of all things. He said Ben talked about nothing but France, how different it was from what he expected. He said if he had the money to do it, he’d stay there after the war was finished. William told him he was a fool. And Ben said, all right, he’d come back to London and work five years. Then he’d go back to France and find out if he still wanted to live there. William told him that was brilliant. Ben laughed and said, no, it was economic necessity.”