Proof of Guilt

by Charles Todd

  “The French family has been in the wine business for centuries. Shakespeare records that the Duke of Clarence was drowned in a butt of Malmsey. If this is true, then very likely it was a wine provided to the Court by the French family. The grandfather, as you describe him, decided to go into the business of growing the grapes and producing his own wine, instead of merely importing it. He had a son—that would be Mr. Laurence—and a daughter, who married a Mr. David Traynor, who was then brought in by Mr. Howard French as a partner. Their son is the Mr. Matthew Traynor who presently lives on Madeira. Mr. Laurence had two sons of his own, Michael, who was killed in the war, and his brother, the present member of the family in charge of the firm.” Gooding had been concise, deferential, and yet obstructive.

  “Where in Essex can I find Mr. French the Younger?”

  Gooding smiled slightly. “Mr. Lewis French has a home in a village in Essex just north of Dedham. A village called Stratford St. Hilary.”

  Constable country, near the Suffolk border, where the artist’s most famous scenes were painted. Rutledge’s grandmother had been particularly fond of Constable’s work.

  Rutledge asked, “When did you last speak to Mr. French?”

  The clerk pursed his lips. “Friday of last week, I believe. He telephoned me to ask if I’d received final word of his cousin’s travel plans. I hadn’t, and he was not pleased. But then Mr. Traynor had business in Lisbon as well, and that could have taken longer than he’d expected.”

  That would have been the Friday before the body was found on Monday morning.

  “Does Mr. French usually reside in this village and commute to London?”

  “No, no, he has a house in London. He wanted to be sure the ancestral home, as it were, was ready for Mr. Traynor’s arrival.”

  Rutledge considered asking the clerk to view the body of the accident victim, then changed his mind. He didn’t relish having the news precede him if this was, by any chance, French the Younger. Lewis, he corrected himself.

  “Is there a staff at the Essex house when Mr. French is in London?”

  “Oh, yes. And his sister lives there. Miss Agnes French. She keeps house for her brother and her cousin.”

  “Both men are single?”

  “Mr. Traynor lost his fiancée during the war, and Mr. French has recently announced his engagement.” Something in the clerk’s face changed. “There’s to be a Christmas wedding,” he added, as if he disapproved.

  “Does his fiancée live here in London?” If the dead man was French, then he might well have been on his way to call on her.

  “She lives with her parents in Dedham, I believe.”

  Which shot down that possibility. Unless there was another woman in the picture. But Rutledge rather thought Gooding wouldn’t tell him even if there were.

  The door behind the clerk stood ajar, as if he had expected his business with Rutledge to be brief. Rutledge could just see the edge of a heavy gold-leaf frame, the sort favored by firms that choose to display portraits of founders or benefactors.

  He walked around Gooding, saying, “I’d like to see the portraits in the passage there, if you don’t mind.”

  Surprised, the clerk said, “The portraits?” He turned. “Ah. Mr. French and Mr. Traynor.”

  He reached the door before Rutledge in a swift but discreet movement and held it open for him to enter, with the air that looking at the paintings had been his own idea, not Rutledge’s.

  The passage was quite wide, and there were two larger-than-life portraits hung on the dark walnut paneling between doors to what must be private offices.

  “Both were painted by artists of the Royal Academy,” Gooding was saying. “This is Mr. David Traynor. He was perhaps fifty when this was done.”

  Rutledge recognized the name of the artist in the lower-left-hand corner.

  Traynor appeared to be of medium height, his fair hair combed in the style of the day, and his sober expression that of a successful man who knew his own worth but had earned it. One hand rested on a large crate of wine with the firm’s name emblazoned on the side, and the other seemed to point to a map lying on the table next to him, showing Portugal and the island of Madeira some distance away.

  There was no resemblance to the victim lying in the hospital mortuary.

  Rutledge moved down the passage to the next portrait as Gooding said, “This of course is Mr. Howard French, the original founder. I have often felt there was a likeness to the present Mr. French. More so than to his elder brother, who closely resembled their mother.”

  “There is no portrait of Mr. Laurence, Mr. Howard’s son.”

  “It hangs in the office of the present head of the firm, Mr. Lewis. He is quite fond of the painting.”

  The man also appeared to be of medium height, his hair a medium shade of brown, his eyes a medium shade of blue. But there was no mistaking the fact that there was nothing “medium” about the shape and thrust of his jaw. While Traynor celebrated for posterity his rise to new heights of wealth and prestige, there was no doubt that his father-in-law was the force behind the firm’s changing fortunes.

  Nor was there any doubt that the dead man bore enough of a likeness to the portrait that he could very well be a relative of the founder, even though he didn’t possess that thrusting jaw or air of power. It was mainly in coloring and size, the ordinary nose, the shape of the head. Not conclusive, of course.

  But that likeness, coupled with the watch, was convincing evidence that Mr. French the Younger was dead.

  Now the question must be why? And where had he been killed?

  Chapter Five

  It was time to speak to the Acting Chief Superintendent again.

  Rutledge thanked Frederick Gooding for his assistance and turned to go. But he had a feeling, as the clerk politely accompanied him to the door and closed it almost silently behind him, that the man was more than curious about this visit from Scotland Yard and was busily speculating about what had precipitated it.

  Then why had he not pressed for more information? Shown more concern? He had maintained the reserve that made chief clerks a formidable presence in any firm, giving Rutledge the French family genealogy but not much else in the way of real information. Was it an attempt to protect the head of the firm with silence until Gooding could find out for himself why the watch was in the hands of Scotland Yard? Or did he already know—or guess—how it had got there? Some indiscretion that would reflect unpleasantly on the firm’s good name and reputation?

  What sort of man was Lewis French?

  Certainly the firm was not accustomed to receiving representatives of Scotland Yard. The police had no file on it. The question was, would Gooding himself try to locate Lewis French to warn him of the Yard’s visit and possession of the watch?

  Rutledge wished he had known enough beforehand not to have shown the watch to Gooding at all. But it had been the only lead he’d had when he knocked on the firm’s door.

  The Acting Chief Superintendent was in his office when Rutledge returned to the Yard, and according to Gibson, there was no one in there with him.

  Rutledge knocked at the door, then opened it as Markham called, “Come.”

  Joel Markham had come through the ranks as Bowles had done but so far seemed to hold no grudge against men who had been to University. He was a burly man, fair hair beginning to recede, rather avuncular in appearance, but it would have been a mistake to think his easy manner was weakness. His hard green eyes told another story.

  He considered Rutledge as he gestured to a chair. “I expect you have something to tell me about that accident in Chelsea. Just this morning I was asking Sergeant Gibson if we were to be favored with word on the result of your inquiry.”

  Rutledge smiled. “I’ve only just found the last piece of the puzzle regarding the dead man. And I am forced to the conclusion that he was murdered, his body brought to Chelsea, and left there on the street without identification in the hope that he might not be identified either in the near fu
ture or ever, depending on how clever the police were in learning more about him.”

  He went on to explain about the watch and the queries from other parts of the country, and finally his visit to the wine merchants.

  “And no one had reported this man French as missing?”

  “He was in Essex, according to the clerk. He may have come to town on a personal matter. He was recently engaged; it could have had something to do with a ring or other arrangements. Whatever it was, no one appears to have had any reason to worry until now.”

  “Then you’d best get yourself to Essex before they do miss the man. Catch them before they hear the news from someone else.” Markham considered Rutledge. “You drive your own motorcar, I hear. Why is that? Why not the train like everyone else?”

  Rutledge could feel himself stiffening. How to answer this man without telling more than he wished to be generally known?

  “The war, sir.” It was curt almost to the point of rudeness, but he was still struggling with the question.

  “The war?” Markham prompted.

  He’d been buried alive when a shell landed too near his sector, and all that had saved him was the dead man’s body flung on top of him. Only, the dead man was Hamish MacLeod, whom he’d just been forced to execute for disobeying an order under fire. He’d never quite got over owing his life to the man to whom he’d delivered the coup de grâce mere seconds before the shell exploded. The young Scottish corporal had not wanted to die. But he would not lead his men back into the teeth of a German machine-gun nest when they’d lost so many already in futile attempts to silence it. Rutledge had wanted to spare him—but his corporal’s very public refusal had left him no options. The claustrophobia he’d endured since then had been nearly unbearable. Nor had he been able to free himself of Hamish or that memory.

  He said after a moment, “I took too many trains then. Packed with frightened men on their way to be slaughtered. Hours of watching them struggle to be brave. Watching them write last letters, pray to whatever God they believed in, or simply sit, staring at their own fate. I swore I’d never take another one again if I could help it.”

  It was as close to the truth as he could come. He waited for the Acting Chief Superintendent to react.

  Markham studied him closely for a moment, then nodded. “I appreciate your candor. All right, drive if it suits you. What I want is results. I don’t care, within reason, how you go about getting them.”

  Rutledge managed to thank him and get himself out of the office. It had begun to close in on him, making him want to stand up and fight his way out, away from those all-seeing green eyes and the feeling that he couldn’t breathe. The panic of being cornered with no possible escape and disgracing himself into the bargain.

  Once in the passage, he took as deep a breath as he could manage and tried to steady himself. He could feel the perspiration breaking out on his forehead, his mouth dry as a desert.

  And then as swiftly as it had come, his anxiety dissipated as he walked on to his office, grateful not to encounter anyone along the way. But he could feel his heart still hammering in his chest for several minutes afterward.

  Essex. He forced himself to think about the journey ahead. He began to collect what he would need to take with him, and that steadied him. Markham had come too close to the truth. For an instant, Rutledge had wondered if Bowles had said something to Markham. Or if the Acting Chief Superintendent had found something in his file. Rutledge had always suspected there must be something there.

  He shook himself. His own imagination had made more of the situation that it had warranted.

  Walking out the door, Rutledge located Gibson and told him where he was going and why. The sergeant listened and then asked, “Should I advise the Inspector in Norfolk that you’ll be looking into his missing man while you’re in Essex?”

  “It will depend on what I discover about French. So far no one seems to be alarmed about him. If he’s as busy a man as he appears to be, it’s odd that a week has passed without someone needing to contact him. But then his senior clerk is perfectly competent.”

  Gibson nodded. “Then I’ll hold off.”

  Rutledge started down the stairs. And stopped to add, “I’d like you to look into Frederick Gooding, the clerk at French, French, and Traynor.”

  “Any particular reason?” Gibson asked.

  Rutledge considered the question. There was nothing he could put his finger on except for that one change in the man’s demeanor. “Thoroughness,” he said finally and continued on his way down the stairs.

  He went home, packed his valise, wrote a note to his sister, Frances, to drop into a postbox on his way, and set out for Essex.

  He had friends on the Thetford Road outside Bury St. Edmunds, so he knew a good bit about the general area. Dedham had been listed in the Domesday Book as a Saxon town, its history even older than that by several centuries. Situated on the River Stour with a year-round ford, it had prospered as an agricultural community and from an influx of Flemish weavers. Wool had made it rich, like so many towns, and when wool was no longer king, it had settled into genteel obscurity. But the town had produced one famous son, the artist John Constable.

  Traffic was light, and Rutledge crossed the Thames before stopping for a cup of tea and a sandwich. He’d had nothing since breakfast, and the pub was pleasant, with a terrace in back that ran down to a little stream. The sun was warm, the air benevolent, and he was tempted to stay longer. But it was important to reach Dedham before news of his visit to the clerk in London came to their ears. The firm had a telephone, and it was not unlikely for the family to have a way of contacting London when French was in Essex.

  The shortening of the summer days caught up with Rutledge, and it was dusk before he drove through Dedham and found the French property well outside the town. At the turning, he looked to see if there was another village beyond the house where he could stop for the night. But if there was, he couldn’t pick out lights through the wood that extended in that direction.

  A large scrolled F adorned the graceful wrought-iron gates, and griffins stood watch on the tall stone posts, their wings folded.

  The gates stood open, and he drove up the long, looping drive until he came to the house. It was not as large as he’d expected, but the size was perfect for the proportions. The dark red brick, faced with white stone, was illuminated by his headlamps as he swung into the loop of the drive. Lamps were lit on either side of the door, and the knocker he saw, as he got out and walked up the two shallow steps, was in the shape of a tropical flower. Hibiscus?

  He lifted it and let it fall. After a time, an older woman dressed in black opened the door to him and asked his business.

  Rutledge said, “I’ve come to speak to Mr. French. Mr. Rutledge.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve missed him. He returned to London ten days ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anyone else in the family in residence at the moment?”

  “Miss French is here. Shall I ask if she’s receiving visitors?”

  “Yes, thank you.” He smiled.

  She was not taken in and left him standing there, the door ajar.

  From where he stood, Rutledge could see part of a polished wood floor that ran down the left side of a staircase—the carved mahogany newel post was just visible. A painting graced the wall between two closed doors, and the table beneath it was Queen Anne, he thought. The painting itself appeared to be modern rather than the usual Italianate landscape. As in the style of the French Impressionists, the subject was not the French countryside but a vast grassy slope, grazing sheep in the distance, and in the foreground, an old man dressed in what appeared to be a hooded cape, leaning on a shepherd’s crook. There was something about the figure that spoke of such utter loneliness that Rutledge turned away.

  It seemed that Howard French and his descendants had not flaunted their newfound wealth by renovating and enlarging their country house. No grand lobby with marble floors and statuary
, to awe the visitor. He wondered if that indicated how little they used this house, or if they preferred to be comfortable here and entertained in London. An interesting insight into the man who had given his heirs a timepiece to be passed down to posterity. Solid, dependable, useful.

  The maid returned to tell him that Miss French would receive him in the sitting room.

  He followed her to a door down the passage. She tapped lightly and then opened it to announce him.

  And the sitting room showed that he’d been right about the house. It was comfortable and well used, although the carpet and furnishings were of the best quality.

  The woman standing by the hearth didn’t resemble the portraits he’d seen in London in any way except for her coloring. Her features were—he couldn’t be kinder than that—plain. And the dress she wore, a dark blue that made her skin appear sallow, did nothing for her appearance.

  She said, in a pleasant but cool voice, “Mr. Rutledge.” And waited for him to speak.

  “I apologize for coming to call at such a late hour,” he said. “I need to speak to your brother, Mr. French.”

  “As I think you were told, he left for London last week.”

  “Yes, which surprises me, as he wasn’t at the firm’s offices on Leadenhall Street.”

  “It was a private matter that took him to the city.” She waited again, but when he didn’t fill the silence, she added, “I was not best pleased, I can tell you. He left me with the final preparations for our cousin’s arrival.”

  “Was he expecting to meet anyone in particular?”

  “I have no idea.” He could read the annoyance in her eyes. “If you want the truth, he often leaves me to finish whatever needs to be done. He finds household matters infinitely boring. His words, not mine. I would not at all be surprised if his pressing matter was merely an excuse. May I ask what brings you all the way to Essex? You aren’t carrying news of our cousin’s instant arrival, I hope. We’ve not yet aired the beds.”