by Charles Todd
He started across the room to open it, and as he did, he heard a sound just behind him. Prepared for anything, he spun around. But it was only the bedroom door swinging shut.
In the quiet room it sounded as loud as a gunshot.
From the wardrobe came a whimper, cut short.
He turned toward it and reached out for the handles of the two doors.
This time Hamish warned him with a soft “ ’Ware!” just as Rutledge’s fingers touched the gilt knobs.
He stepped back at once, and in that same instant, one of the doors was flung wide from inside and a figure hurled itself at him. He recognized Cynthia Farraday just as he caught sight of the sharp, pointed scissors in her right hand.
He was only just able to dodge the blades as they slashed viciously within inches of his eyes, and he caught her hand before she could try again.
“Steady!” he said as she cried out and began to pummel him with her other hand. And then she blinked as she recognized him and broke away.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded, her voice overloud from anxiety.
“The outer door was open. I thought I ought to find out why.”
Struggling to regain her composure, she said, “I thought he’d come back. I could hear someone walking downstairs. Didn’t you even think to call out? Warn me that you were here?”
“It seemed wiser not to. The house was quiet. I didn’t know what to expect.”
“Yes, well, you gave me the fright of my life.” Her hair had fallen down around her face, and she brushed it back impatiently.
It was then he saw the pink mark on one cheek.
“Who slapped you?”
“If you must know, it was Wyatt Russell. I told you. He was just here, and he was very angry.”
“Where is your maid? I couldn’t find her or anyone else.”
“She and my cook went to Hammersmith to attend a funeral. They won’t be back until midmorning. I couldn’t sleep, I’d been sitting downstairs reading when someone knocked. I shouldn’t have opened the door, yes, I know that now. But I did, and Wyatt was the last person on earth I expected to find standing there. I thought he was in a clinic somewhere.”
“He was, until late yesterday afternoon. What did he want? Why did he come here?”
“There was blood all over his face, and his clothes were stained. I asked what had happened, and he said he’d been in an accident and was feeling light-headed. And so I asked him to come in. But he couldn’t settle, pacing the floor. He wanted to know if I’d been to River’s Edge recently.”
“What did you say?”
“I thought it best to say that I hadn’t. I offered to bring a basin of water to him, to help him wash off the blood. He thanked me and asked if I’d bring water to drink as well. But when I came back with the basin and some towels, he drank the glass of water and said that the rest could wait. That’s when he asked me if I knew a man called Rutledge. I told him I did. I was surprised, I didn’t think you and he had met. Next he asked me if I’d given you my photograph, and I told him I most certainly had not. He called me a liar, he said he’d seen it for himself. I told him he was wrong. And he slapped me. I was so shocked. And I think he was as well, because we just stood there, looking at each other. He threw the empty glass in the hearth, shattering it, and then he turned and walked away.”
“What did you do then?”
“I cleared away the broken glass, then put away the basin and towels. I was in the kitchen when I heard something upstairs. A door creaking, I thought, and then footsteps. I believed that he’d come back again. I couldn’t remember whether I’d shut the door, much less locked it. I was afraid to go and see. I took the back stairs and shut myself in my room, hoping Mary would come soon. But of course it was far too early. When I heard someone coming up the staircase, I knew he was looking for me, and there was nowhere I could go. I took the scissors out of my sewing box and got into the wardrobe. If he opened that door, I’d know he was hunting me.”
But her attack on him had been far more serious than a response to a slap. Rutledge wondered if there was more to the account than she’d told him.
Tears started in her eyes, and she brushed them away irritably, going to stand by the window. And then, before he could speak, she whirled around and said fiercely, “Why are we standing here? I’m not accustomed to entertaining anyone in my bedroom.”
She crossed to the door, leaving him there, and he followed her down the stairs. When they reached the sitting room, she said, “What did you say to him that made him come for me? You must have found him, you must have said something, done something.” She was angry with him now. “And what photograph do you have of me? Not that silly one with the orchids?”
A motorcar backfired in the street outside, and she jumped, her eyes flying to the door before she realized what the sound was.
“She’s verra’ frightened,” Hamish said.
His appearance alone- Rutledge began.
Cynthia Farraday was staring at him. “What do you hear?” she asked, and the question shocked him.
Had she heard Hamish? Actually heard him?
And then he realized that he was gazing toward the window, distracted, unaware of where he was looking.
“A motorcar,” he said. “It didn’t stop, there’s nothing to fear.” It was all he could muster.
“The photograph? Well?” she reminded him,
He struggled to think. The photograph. He’d never shown her the locket.
“Sit down,” he said. “I want you to look at something.”
“You haven’t answered me. You do have a photograph, don’t you? When did you take it? Why?”
He took out the locket and handed it to her.
But she wouldn’t touch it, staring at it as if it could bite her.
“Where did you find that?” she whispered, sitting down quickly, as if her knees had failed to support her. “My God, did you show this to Wyatt? No wonder he was so upset!”
“You recognize it?” he asked.
“Of course I do. It’s Aunt Elizabeth’s. I don’t think she ever took it off. Where did you find it? ” she asked again, and then, her lips trembling, she said, “You’ve found her, haven’t you?”
“No. But someone must have done. Ben Willet was wearing it when he was taken out of the river. The locket was given to me by Inspector Adams in Gravesend.”
He thought she was going to faint. The color went out of her face, and she leaned back in her chair.
“No. No, Ben would never have done such a thing. He was one of the searchers.”
“It’s possible he found it when he was searching. It’s gold, quite valuable.”
“But he kept it, didn’t he-I mean to say, if that’s true, he never returned it to the family or sold it.”
As if, Hamish was pointing out, keeping the locket made any difference.
“He put it to another use.” Rutledge took the locket between his fingers and opened it. “This is what was inside.”
Cynthia leaned forward reluctantly, as if half afraid of what she might see.
“Oh,” she said, drawing back. “My photograph. I thought-she told me that her wedding photographs were inside.”
“According to Nancy Brothers, they were. She was surprised to see that they’d been removed.”
“This is what Wyatt saw yesterday? Before he came here? This is the photograph he claimed I’d given you? How could you be so heartless as to let him believe such a thing?”
“I didn’t. He jumped to conclusions and told me that a policeman was not good enough for you. He left the clinic, and while we were wasting time hunting him, he got a head start. I had the devil’s own time catching him up. And then he slipped away again. I was afraid he might be coming here.”
“But was there an accident? As he’d claimed? He was so bloody, one of his hands badly bruised, and I couldn’t be sure, but it appeared he was limping. You-the two of you didn’t come to blows? I thought that was why he was so angry.”
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He told her about the stolen Trusty, and that Russell had refused treatment at St. Anne’s.
“I expect I should have been grateful he only slapped me. I was so frightened. I couldn’t know, could I, what had set it off or why.”
“He has a temper?”
“That was the problem. I’d never seen him so livid. At least not before the war. I’ve had very little contact with him since then. He hasn’t encouraged visitors at the clinic.”
“It would seem that he’s still in love with you.”
“He has an odd way of showing it,” she retorted with a semblance of her old spirit. “And for all I know, he could have believed that I’d killed his mother.”
R utledge had intended to leave as soon as possible and go after Major Russell, but Cynthia Farraday was still uneasy. He went down to the kitchen and made tea for her, then waited with her until Mary, her maid, and the cook returned later in the morning.
He saw the alarm in her eyes when she heard someone coming through the servants’ door into the hall, and then as she recognized Mary’s footsteps, the alarm faded.
When Mary reached the sitting room, Miss Farraday said, “Ah. Mary. Mr. Rutledge is just leaving.” And turning to Rutledge, she said coolly, “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue.”
And then as he was about to follow Mary out, she added quickly, “Will you try to find Wyatt?”
“I have no choice,” he answered her.
“And you’ll keep me informed? I should like very much to know more about that locket.”
He thought, as he left her house, that she had been embarrassed by her own weakness. The danger passed, no longer alone, her natural resilience had returned, and she was determined to show him that it had.
Driving to Scotland Yard he reviewed part of a conversation he and Cynthia Farraday had had earlier. She hadn’t wanted to be left alone, and so she had gone with him to make the tea. To distract her as they sat together in the tidy kitchen, he had said, “Tell me about coming to live at River’s Edge.”
She made a face. “It was River’s Edge or a boarding school for girls. Young as I was, I told our solicitors that I would run away if sent to one. I couldn’t bear it. I wanted so badly to stay at home. Instead they wrote to Elizabeth Russell and asked if she would consider becoming my guardian. She replied that she would, and she came herself to fetch me, which I thought was very kind. I didn’t meet Wyatt until I arrived at the house. He was a few months older, but we got on well together until I was seventeen and he decided he was desperately in love with me. I told him not to be silly.”
“Did he listen to you?”
“I thought he had. But when he came down from Cambridge, he informed me that while he would say no more about it, I must understand that his feelings hadn’t changed. You have no idea how that confused my comfortable and safe world. When I went to Aunt Elizabeth and asked her what to do, she told me that I was far too young to think about love, and she didn’t expect to see me married until I was past my twentieth birthday. It was such a relief. But I could tell she was pleased that Wyatt cared, and as I told you once, I didn’t know how to interpret that. When she disappeared, I wasn’t eager to live under Wyatt’s roof without her. Still, I told everyone that I longed for the excitement of London and convinced my solicitors to open the house here. It made leaving easier for all of us.”
He said, “You had no feelings for him?”
“As a cousin and a friend, of course I did. I just wasn’t in love with him. Yes, he was handsome, he wasn’t a dancing master, and he was great fun. I wanted everything to stay the way it had always been.”
He smiled at her reference to the dancing master. “How did you feel later when he announced his engagement to be married?”
“Happy for him. Relieved, as well. And perhaps just a tiny bit jealous.” She made a face. “So much for his vows of undying love.”
“He needed an heir for River’s Edge, in the event he was killed.”
“I wondered once or twice if he was happy. Content, perhaps, but not outrageously, gloriously happy.”
Rutledge couldn’t help but think how that had described his engagement to Jean. Only he hadn’t recognized it then or even later. Only with time.
“And what about Justin Fowler?”
Her face didn’t change, but there was something in her stillness that was different. And then in spite of herself, she said, “I think I could have loved him. I knew he liked me. But he was so-so remote. I never knew why.”
And by her admission, she had just unwittingly given Wyatt Russell a motive for murdering Fowler, and possibly even Ben Willet as well.
I t was too late to overtake Major Russell before he reached Essex. If that was where he was going. Rutledge made a detour to drive by the house Russell had inherited from his late wife, and even knocked at the door. As he listened to the sound echoing in the hall beyond, he knew that the house was empty.
It was possible too that after his encounter with Cynthia Farraday, Russell had realized what he had done and returned to the clinic of his own volition.
Given George Hiller’s affection for the Trusty, the man would be out for his blood. If word of the accident had even reached him by now. Russell would have to face his anger as well as Matron’s.
He decided to make a telephone call to the clinic from the Yard and establish whether or not Russell was there, before making the long drive to the River Hawking.
Rutledge found a place to leave the motorcar and walked the short distance to the Yard, his mind still on Russell.
Stepping through the door, he felt the change in atmosphere almost as a physical blow.
The sergeant at the desk was grim-faced, his greeting a curt nod. And as Rutledge climbed the stairs, he heard the silence.
The Yard was never quiet, with men going in and out of offices, doors opening and closing, telephones ringing, typewriters clicking, footsteps loud on the bare floorboards, voices in the corridors. Sounds that Rutledge had become so accustomed to that he hardly noticed them. Except now, when they were missing.
He was on the point of entering his own office when he saw Sergeant Gibson step out of another room down the passage, closing the door quietly behind him.
Rutledge stopped, his hand on the knob, waiting for Gibson. He couldn’t read the Sergeant’s face. For once it was blank, without expression.
“What is it?” Rutledge asked. “What has happened?”
“You haven’t heard, then?”
“No,” Rutledge answered, Hamish’s voice sounding a warning in his mind.
“It’s Chief Superintendent Bowles. He’s in hospital. A heart attack.”
Rutledge was stunned. “Bowles?”
He’d thought the man was indestructible.
“What’s the outlook?”
“Grim,” Sergeant Gibson replied. “Sir. We’re to go on about our duties as if he were here and in charge. Meanwhile, upstairs they’re making a decision about his temporary replacement.”
As long as it wasn’t Mickelson, Rutledge was comfortable with whatever choice his superiors made. Not that the man had the seniority for such a promotion. Still, stranger things had happened. And he and Mickelson had a long history, none of it pleasant.
He thanked Gibson and went into his office.
Trying to imagine the Yard without Bowles was impossible, Rutledge thought as he sat down at his desk. The man had been his nemesis almost from the day he arrived here, jealous of the new wave of men replacing those who had risen from the ranks. Rutledge himself had done his duty as a constable, and walked the streets in fair weather or foul. But he came from very different roots, and what’s more he’d been well educated. Bowles appeared to believe from the start that Rutledge had an eye to his position, true or not, and had done everything in his power to prevent it. Consequently Rutledge had been passed over for promotion more than once. The reasons for denial had been true, as far as they went, but couched in terms that reflected on Rutledge�
�s ability.
Rutledge also had a feeling that Bowles had used his authority as a Chief Superintendant to search his background for any flaws. And he had wondered more than once if Bowles had somehow discovered just where his newly returned Inspector had been from the day of the Armistice in 1918 to the date of his official return to the Yard, 1 June 1919.
Indeed, his very first inquiry after the war was one where the chief witness was a shell-shocked man. And Bowles had not told Rutledge that. He’d had to discover it for himself when he reached Warwickshire.
If Rutledge’s shell shock became public knowledge, his position at the Yard would be untenable. He knew that. And as for Hamish MacLeod-it was unthinkable that anyone should learn about him. The shame would be unbearable.
Rutledge went cold at the thought.
Hamish said, “Aye, but Dr. Fleming is no’ one to talk.”
But there had been others in the clinic, nurses, orderlies-visitors.
Unable to stand the close confines of his office, he glanced through the papers awaiting his attention, dealt with them swiftly, and remembered his promise to the woman who had seen the Triumph crash.
He wrote a brief note indicating that against all odds, the cyclist had survived the accident without serious injury and had been released from St. Anne’s hospital in a matter of hours.
It would do. It was all she needed to know.
Sealing the envelope, he set it to one side for the constable who came round to collect letters for the post, then thought better of it. Pocketing it, he walked out of the building. No one stopped him or asked where he was going.
He found a postbox on a corner just beyond where he’d left his motorcar and then continued to The Marlborough Hotel, where he could use a telephone.
The clinic, he was told by an operator’s disembodied voice, did indeed have a telephone, and he was put through after several minutes.
When Matron came on the line, he knew at once that Russell hadn’t returned.
Giving her a brief account of events, including the whereabouts of the Trusty, he added that he was still searching for the Major.
She listened to him, then said, “A moment, please, Inspector.”