Proof of Guilt

by Charles Todd

  Back to Gooding.

  Rutledge rose, went to the door, and called. The clerk came out of one of the other offices and said, “Did you reach the Yard?”

  “They confirmed your account. What I don’t understand is why anyone would wish to kill both partners. I can see that one might wish to be rid of the other; it happens. Still, the two men serve very different purposes. One manages London, the other Madeira.”

  “You haven’t found the body of either man,” Gooding pointed out quietly.

  “Not yet,” Rutledge agreed.

  “Until you do, I refuse to give up hope.”

  “Can you continue to manage the firm without them?”

  “Not for an extended period, no.”

  “What about Miss French? Does she have any authority to act on behalf of her brother and cousin?”

  “I don’t know, sir. The question has never arisen. She’s never been to Madeira. She knows nothing about that side of the business, or how the wine is made.”

  “There must be managers there. Otherwise Mr. Traynor couldn’t have left.”

  “There are. But Mr. French and Mr. Traynor were body and soul of the firm, like their fathers before them. It’s different, their roles. It’s what’s kept this firm alive since the time of Mr. Howard. He was a very unusual man, Mr. Howard. It’s his legacy, you see. And he laid it out for his heirs to follow.”

  Listening to the clerk, listening for any indication that he was capable of taking over French, French &Traynor, Rutledge heard only a man’s concern for something he’d given his own life to. But then he’d be stupid to crow too soon . . .

  It was the nature of his business, Rutledge thought, to be suspicious. To weigh every expression and every word, to watch the eyes and the way the body betrayed itself. To listen to the voice, a change of tone as a person lied. And still, he would have sworn that Gooding was sincere.

  But this had been a very clever scheme, whoever was behind it. And he found himself thinking that Gooding had to be a clever man, intelligent and capable, to have kept his place at French, French & Traynor for so many years.

  He said, filling the silence that had fallen, “There’s no more we can do tonight. I’ll drive you home.”

  Gooding took out his ring of keys and began to lock the door to his office. He said as Rutledge watched, “My granddaughter has written to me.”

  “Indeed?”

  “She has told me about the handkerchief. While many were made for her, I’m sure Miss Delaney used the same patterns for others.”

  “She’s dead,” Rutledge said baldly. “And the woman in the shop didn’t seem to think it was likely, as these were particular clients—ones who regularly ordered their favorite patterns. There were other choices available to those who came in off the street.”

  He saw Gooding glance at the portraits as they made their way to the outer door. The man said, as he turned the last key, “She isn’t a murderer. But I suppose now, with Mr. Traynor missing as well, you will consider me one as well.”

  “Tell me where else I should look,” Rutledge answered him, his voice sharper than he intended it to be.

  “I don’t know. I would have said that the partners had nothing to fear from anyone. But I see too that this business is hard on the heels of Mr. French deciding not to marry Valerie. It smacks of revenge. The truth is, I was glad he changed his mind. They wouldn’t have suited. She might have been happy with Mr. Michael. He was a good man. But not with Mr. Lewis.”

  “Why?”

  Gooding got into the motorcar as Rutledge turned the crank. His words were nearly lost as the motor turned over and caught.

  “Mr. Lewis wanted someone like his sister, compliant, willing to remain in the background when not required to act as hostess. I’m afraid Valerie has more mettle. Still, she was the granddaughter of a clerk in his firm, regardless of the fact that her father was a Naval officer and came from a very fine family. Miss Townsend is the daughter of a doctor. She has been under her father’s thumb and will accept Mr. French’s will as her own.” He gave Rutledge directions to his house in Kensington, then said, “If you take me into custody, what will become of the firm? I have to ask. The junior clerks are not— They don’t have the experience to deal with unexpected problems.”

  “There appear to be no other suspects. According to you, the Medea came in on a Saturday morning. You could have met the ship and dealt with Traynor without anyone suspecting that he’d landed. Unless you have someone who can vouch for where you were that morning.”

  “I live alone.” Gooding took a deep breath. “Well. There is nothing to be done. But I will not let you touch Valerie. She has done nothing wrong. If I must choose between her and the firm, I will not hesitate.”

  “She was in St. Hilary when Lewis French disappeared. Were you?”

  Gooding opened his mouth, then shut it again. Which, Rutledge assumed, meant that there were witnesses who could answer that question—one way or the other—and the man was not going to give the Yard their names.

  Hamish said, “Ye’ve driven him into a corner. It’s no’ wise.”

  But Rutledge had already shown the clerk the forces arrayed against him. And that too had been unwise. He said, as they approached the street where Gooding lived, “If you do something foolish, you will not be here to protect her when the burden of guilt falls on her. And as an officer of Scotland Yard, I cannot.”

  “I have no wish to kill myself. I can still hope that one or the other of my employers will turn up alive and well.”

  “There’s still the dead man from Chelsea.”

  “Ah yes. But he cannot be laid at my door. Or Valerie’s. Not until you know who he is.”

  With that the man got out of the motorcar, crisply thanked Rutledge for bringing him home, and went inside his dark house without looking back.

  Lights bloomed in the entry and then in a room left of the door, and Rutledge, watching Gooding’s progress through the house, wondered if he was suddenly afraid of the dark.

  Acting Chief Superintendent Markham, weighing the facts at ten the next morning, shook his head. “There’s no alternative but to bring in both Miss Whitman and her grandfather.”

  “There appears to be none,” Rutledge agreed. “But we’ve got a body without a name or a past, while the two missing men haven’t turned up alive or dead. How do we charge Miss Whitman or Mr. Gooding, if there is no proof that a crime has been committed? At least not yet.”

  “On suspicion of murder. It may be that they’ll tell us what we need to know, if only to avoid the hangman.”

  Rutledge was once more fighting a rearguard action. But there was nothing else he could do.

  He said, “There’s Miss French. She has lived in the shadow of her brother and her cousin and the firm for as long as she can remember. She wouldn’t have been the only woman to decide that she would like to take charge of her future.”

  “She has staff. You’ve said as much yourself.”

  “I’ve yet to determine whether that staff is loyal to her or to her brother, who pays their wages.”

  “All right then, find out. But don’t dawdle over it. I’ll give you forty-eight hours.”

  “Meanwhile, if Sergeant Gibson could ask if any other unclaimed bodies turned up the weekend that Traynor landed in Portsmouth, or after French was reported missing, it might make our task easier.”

  “Fair enough. But that’s all the time I’m giving you. There’s a matter in Staffordshire that could well require an Inspector from the Yard. I want you available.”

  Rutledge thanked him and left.

  Markham was running the Yard as he had run his Yorkshire police, taking the lead in examining and solving each case. Without the personal contact with witnesses and suspects, depending on his own instincts to interpret what he read in reports.

  He was not likely to succeed in London for very long. But Markham wasn’t Rutledge’s immediate problem.

  Forty-eight hours. That would hardly see
him to Essex and back.

  He felt trapped.

  Hamish said as Rutledge walked into his own office and closed the door, “Ye ken, he didna’ give you any more time on purpose.”

  And that was very likely the case.

  Rutledge had warned Gooding. That was all he could do.

  Traynor’s disappearance put paid to any focus of attention on Diaz. The point could be made that Diaz had never threatened Traynor’s family and had had no reason to attack them because it was Howard French who had bought the Diaz property for his vineyards. The Traynors had come into the firm in the next generation.

  There was still Fielding and his search for the owner of the bicycle. Rutledge had stopped by the Yard the night before, after setting Gooding down, and left the photograph of Valerie Whitman on the sergeant’s desk.

  Unable to sit still, he got up and went in search of Fielding. He was told that the sergeant had come in early and then left again.

  With the photograph, surely.

  Rutledge went back to his own office and sat there staring out the window, waiting for the sergeant to report.

  But it was after three o’clock in the afternoon when Fielding finally appeared. He was out of breath from taking the stairs two at a time, his face slightly flushed.

  “The man on the luggage van that night—when the bicycle was brought to him—was back in London today. I showed him the photograph. He was quite taken with it. He thought the woman in it had very likely left the bicycle. It was ticketed as far as Thetford, and no one has claimed it. It’s still there.”

  “He was certain—or thought it very likely.”

  “I don’t know. To tell you the truth, he’d said the woman’s hair was brown, he thought. And it looks brown in the photograph. He thought her eyes were brown. And they look brown in the photograph. She was pretty. And she appears to be pretty in the photograph.”

  “Her coloring is rather different. Her eyes, for one, are hazel.”

  “Yes, well, in a hurry in a poorly lit station, they could have seemed to be brown.”

  “He must see hundreds of people every week. Why should he remember her, that long ago?”

  “He says, because the bicycle fell and broke his Thermos of tea.”

  “I can see that that might stay in his memory. But the person, after the fact?”

  “Yes, I take your point. Still, he says it’s Miss Whitman, and there’s nothing to be done about it.”

  “And he’s willing to swear that he saw this woman, that she handed over the bicycle?”

  “I’ve sent a constable to take his statement.”

  “What was she wearing?”

  “Dark clothes. That’s all he remembers.”

  Rutledge took a deep breath. “You must give this information to Markham.”

  “Yes, I know.” Fielding frowned. “Is— I need to ask you, sir. Is this woman a friend of yours?”

  “I met her for the first time when I interviewed her in St. Hilary.”

  Fielding’s face cleared. “Well, then. I’ll be about my duty. As soon as Constable Dean brings me the van guard’s statement, I’ll take it directly to the Acting Chief Superintendent.”

  “There’s one other link I need to be clear about. Hold up that statement until I get back, will you?”

  “If you say so.”

  “What I intend to learn could reinforce the guard’s statement.”

  “Yes, of course. That’s sensible. I’ll hold off, then.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rutledge waited until Fielding had gone, then quietly left the Yard. He met no one in the passage or on the stairs, and felt like a felon slinking out to his motorcar. He had forty-three hours, and he intended to use every one of them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He drove as fast as he dared, but a storm broke just north of London, and he was forced to pull over. Wind tossed tree limbs, littering the streets of the village with leaves and puddles of heavy rain when it came. He could feel the shoulder of his coat getting wet and raced for the door of a tea shop while he could, watching the storm from its windows, then asking for a cup of tea until it passed.

  Frustrated at the loss of a precious hour, Rutledge lost another where a tree had been blown down across the road, sent around on a detour that seemed to go on forever before it led him back to the main road.

  Finally the outskirts of Dedham were in sight, and the sun came out. He drove on to Thetford, and at the station asked to see the bicycle in Left Luggage.

  It was a lady’s bicycle, black and ordinary. He had wasted time coming to see it.

  Thanking the man behind the grille, he turned back toward Dedham, then went on to St. Hilary.

  He stopped first at the French house, and it was late enough that Nan answered the door herself.

  He hadn’t considered how he would approach the maid. It was not something that he could simply walk in and ask. How loyal are you to your mistress? Would you cover up a murder for her sake? Would you go so far as to act as an accomplice? And where have you hidden the body of her brother?

  With Hamish humming in the back of his mind, Rutledge smiled. “It’s late, I’m afraid, but it’s rather important—”

  “Miss French has already gone up to bed, sir. Unless it’s urgent. She’s been that upset, hearing that her cousin is missing as well. Mr. Gooding informed her this morning.”

  “I understand. As a matter of fact, it’s you I’ve come to speak to.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Just a few questions that could help us in our search for Mr. French.”

  “Anything I can do, sir.”

  “Tell me again about the night Mr. French left.”

  “There’s not much to tell. He came down to dinner as usual, and afterward he and Miss French had a few words in the study. I don’t know what it was about, but it ended with Mr. French going upstairs to change to his driving clothes, and then I heard the door slam behind him.”

  “What did Miss French do?”

  “She was in the sitting room, and she ran out after him. I don’t know what was said. The motorcar drove away, but she didn’t come in. I went out to look for her after a while, and she was in the little Greek temple, and she was crying. I asked her to come in out of the night air. She refused, said she thought he would come back and she wanted to wait. She dismissed me, but I got up again close to two o’clock, and she was in bed.”

  “Asleep?”

  “I couldn’t say, sir.”

  Rutledge considered what Nan had told him. There had been enough time for Agnes French to kill her brother. If he had come home again and found her in the rose garden, if the quarrel had been renewed, she could have rushed to the motorcar and turned it in the heat of her anger and run him down as he walked away.

  But then why had the bit of cloth he’d discovered under the French motorcar matched the dead man’s clothing, and not French’s?

  There was the possibility that in his mad need to leave the house behind, French could have hit someone else on the road and suffered a seizure because of it. And his sister had let him die.

  That would explain everything.

  He said, intending to catch the maid unaware, “Who took the dead man to London, left him there, and then abandoned the motorcar in Surrey?”

  She frowned. “I’ve never been to Surrey, sir. Are you meaning Mr. French? Is he dead, sir? Is that why you’ve come, to tell Miss French?”

  “No,” he said, feeling the tension in his shoulders from the long drive and the weariness of knowing he had wasted more of his forty-eight hours than he could spare. “We haven’t located Mr. French.”

  “I’m glad, sir. I didn’t want to be the one to wake Miss French and tell her.”

  He changed the subject. “Did Miss Whitman have a bicycle? Do you remember it?”

  “Yes, sir, she and Mr. Michael would go off together, pedaling their bicycles and stopping somewhere for lunch. Just an ordinary bicycle, sir. Nothing special about it. She r
ather liked it, because Miss French’s father had given it to her one Christmas.”

  “Thank you, Nan. I don’t think we need to disturb your mistress after all.”

  He turned to go, and she wished him a good night.

  He drove as far as the dark churchyard and walked for a time between the gravestones. He couldn’t help but see that Miss Whitman must be awake because there were lights in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

  Standing there watching the light, he said aloud, “He’s going to have her taken up for murder. Markham. And her grandfather as well. Where the bloody hell is Lewis French? Or saving that, where in hell is his body?”

  Hamish, who seemed to be standing just behind his shoulder in the soft darkness, said, “It’ull do no good to lament. Ye still have half your time left.”

  But what to do with it?

  Rutledge walked back and forth under the trees, barely missing some of the older, sunken stones as he paced.

  Markham wouldn’t allow him to search for the connection between Diaz and a killer he could have hired.

  But there might be a way to do it without prejudice.

  The light in the upstairs bedroom finally went out.

  Hamish said, “Ye’ve lost the distance a policeman must keep from his suspects.”

  “I don’t know that I have,” Rutledge said. “It’s just hard to believe, that’s all. There’s been nothing—absolutely nothing—that points to her except circumstantial evidence.”

  “And yon photograph,” Hamish said. “The van guard has said so.”

  At that moment, the cottage door opened, and Miss Whitman, a shawl around her shoulders, came out and walked down the path to her gate.

  He stood there watching her. Waiting to see where she might go.

  But she crossed the street and came into the churchyard.

  “Are you there?” she asked, peering into the darkness beneath the trees. “It’s you, isn’t it? I saw you from my window as I blew out my lamp. Are you waiting for morning to take me into custody? Is that why you’re come to St. Hilary?”

  He walked toward her. “I came looking for something that would explain the unexplainable. French isn’t the only one who has vanished. Traynor has gone missing as well.”