Proof of Guilt

by Charles Todd

  “We’ve had no luck in Aylesford. I’d have reported to the Yard if we had. The fool’s gone to ground. He could be in Chatham or Rochester. Or anywhere else. He knows he’ll be safer in custody, but he’s too frightened to come in. And if the dead man is who you tell me he is, he’s got nothing to do with our little problem.”

  “London had no choice but to investigate. And I should have been in that fish pass, not Rawlings.”

  “Yes, yes, I see that. And there was no way of knowing how bad that storm would be, was there? I don’t like my turf used for a spot of revenge. What sorts of cases have you been dealing with, then, that you’ve made enemies like this one?”

  Chambliss didn’t expect an answer. He turned and began to issue orders, then said to Rutledge, “Are you staying? Until the body is brought out?”

  It was the next morning before they could try to reach Rawlings’s body, and it was difficult at best, even with the river down, to hook the clothing and bring the body up the steep walled slope onto the earthen bank above.

  Rutledge was interested to see that their first efforts had brought up an old Army greatcoat. He squatted beside it, looking at the sleeve. It would have been easy for anyone seeing it to think a man had fallen in. Had Rawlings tossed the coat in for verisimilitude? Something to catch Rutledge’s eye when he arrived and make him believe that the summons had been real? After all, as Chambliss had said, no one had expected the storm’s fury, and Rawlings had had to find some way to draw his attention away from the figure lurking in the shadows, waiting for him.

  Such careful planning was, Rutledge thought, more a hallmark of Diaz’s plotting than of Rawlings’s methods. And rather diabolical.

  One of the constables shouted, and Rutledge turned to see the pale, dripping body coming up over the lip of the wall, heavy with water. One arm flopped, almost in a macabre greeting, and the men fell back.

  But once laid out on the ground, the body was small and very dead, the face and hands scraped from their battering against the grating of the fish pass.

  “Sure of your identification?” Chambliss asked, coming up to stand beside Rutledge.

  “Yes. Robert Rawlings. Late of Surrey, the household of a man called Bennett and his wife. She collects men just out of prison. They serve as her staff.”

  “Foolish business, that. You owe me, Rutledge. But from the look of you, you’ve already paid. Get that lump on your forehead seen to.”

  “I will,” he replied. He hadn’t known it was there or even that it had happened until he’d taken a room at a hotel close by the police station, and realized why he had had to show his identification to the clerk before he was allowed to sign the register. His clothing damp, wrinkled, filthy, blood in his hair, he looked like anything but a representative of the Yard. “Can you see to the body? I want to go directly to the Bennett house before news of Rawlings’s death reaches them.”

  Chambliss considered him. “If you’ll give me what I need to write my own report.”

  “Done,” Rutledge answered.

  He looked down at Rawlings’s body.

  What role did you play last night? he silently asked the dead man. A surrogate for Diaz? You fought too hard, you went too far. What had I done to you to make you stand there waiting in that storm for me to come? It wasn’t for him that you wanted my blood. Why?

  Hamish said, “He was tricked. As ye were tricked.”

  Rutledge thanked Chambliss and his men, then walked away up through the trees to where his motorcar was waiting on the main road.

  Half an hour later, he was well on his way to Surrey.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Rutledge stopped briefly at a country hotel on the border with Sussex for lunch. He’d missed his dinner the night before, was up before breakfast this morning, and was very likely to miss his dinner again. He had made some effort before joining Chambliss at the lock to remedy his appearance, paying the desk clerk’s wife to press his coat and trousers. He was still well below the standards of a hotel. He smiled wryly when the waiter led him to the corner table nearest the service door to the kitchen.

  On his way to the dining room, he’d discovered that the hotel possessed a telephone.

  He put in a call to London while waiting for his meal to be brought to the table, and he caught Sergeant Gibson just coming on duty after a long night hunting for a murderer in Islington.

  “I’ve run into a small problem concerning the drowning in Kent,” Rutledge told him. “There’s a link to Surrey, and I’m on my way there now.”

  “I’ll pass along the word, sir. Meanwhile, there’s a message for you. Marked urgent. It’s from Mr. Belford. Came in last evening, late. If you remember, he lives on the street where the first body in the Gooding inquiry was found.”

  Rutledge thanked him and put up the receiver. Still standing there in the small telephone closet, he considered going to London first to see what Belford had to say, but there was the time factor. The later he reached the Bennett household, the less likely he was to be there before news of Rawlings’s death preceded him.

  Belford would have to wait. And it was possible that his information was already outdated.

  Rutledge set out for Surrey as soon as he’d finished his meal. A watery sun was shining when he reached the village just before the Bennett house, but clouds had moved in before he turned in to the long drive through the park.

  There was no immediate answer to his knock, and then one of the staff came to the door.

  “Mrs. Bennett is resting,” Rutledge was told. “I doubt she’ll be receiving visitors before tomorrow.”

  “It’s urgent.”

  But he was adamant that Mrs. Bennett couldn’t be disturbed.

  Rutledge left his motorcar halfway down the drive, out of sight of the house, and went in search of Afonso Diaz.

  It was possible, just, that Diaz had gone to Kent with Rawlings, to keep him to his purpose. But Rutledge wasn’t convinced of that.

  “Ye canna’ count on the men who work here to tell a policeman the truth about the ithers. It’s like the Army, they’ll no’ talk to an officer.”

  That was very true. A brotherhood, and he was the outsider.

  He went first to the place where the fire had been burning.

  Diaz wasn’t there. Rutledge began a systematic search of his usual haunts: the gardens, the orchard, and finally the barn. They were all empty.

  A time or two he suspected he was being watched from the house. The men there knew who he was, possibly even knew why he was there, but there was no way he could avoid being seeing from upper windows. Still, no one came out to challenge him.

  Rutledge had left the park until last. Under the canopy of the trees, where sunlight dappled the ground, a now-aging collection of rhododendrons and azaleas had been planted. Exotic and very popular, their spring blooms gave an airy beauty to a woodland, and Jean had always admired that.

  Walking quietly through them now, he kept watch for Diaz, remembering too well that pruning knife. It had a long reach, it could strike him before he saw it coming. But as he swept the area, moving steadily back toward where he’d left the motorcar, Rutledge had the strongest feeling that he was alone in this part of the park.

  That changed suddenly, and he stopped walking to listen. The wood was silent. There wasn’t so much as the patter of rain on the leaves overhead. The mist was too light. And then he glimpsed the dark red of a man’s coat some forty feet away, and he knew he’d found his quarry.

  The question was, had Diaz found him first?

  Rutledge walked on, cutting the distance between them in half, then stopped.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” he called.

  The red coat took on the shape of a man as Diaz stepped out from behind a shrub.

  “You seem to have nothing better to do than to haunt me,” he said levelly. “There’s a story, you know, about the voices of dead shepherds coming from the cliffs above the sea. In Madeira. You can hear them at night. I h
ave done this. My father took me there as a boy. It’s a very high cliff, the highest on this side of the Atlantic, and seabirds nest there at night. It’s their voices that sound like the shepherds. I was quite frightened. Are you a dead shepherd?”

  It was a long speech for Diaz.

  “I might have been, at the Allington Lock. I’ve come to report to Mrs. Bennett that Bob Rawlings is dead. In my place.”

  If this was news, Diaz showed no sign of it.

  “A pity. He was very good on the two-man saw. Mrs. Bennett will be upset.”

  “Why did he try to lure me there?”

  “Who knows? I was not in his confidence. But his brother is missing. He has been for some time. I expect Bob heard me thinking aloud one evening. Wondering if you were the one who had consigned the body to a pauper’s grave.”

  “He doesn’t have a brother. According to Somerset House.” And according to Mr. Belford.

  “You are misinformed. The boy was taken in by Bob’s mother when his own mother died. No one bothers much with the arrangements of the poor. No lawyers come to smooth the way. But they grew up as brothers, and it was enough.”

  Rutledge remembered the scowl on Rawlings’s face coming back from the village only a few days ago. What had been in the letter he’d received? News he didn’t want to hear?

  Was it Baxter who had been found dead in Chelsea? Had he been the man hired to kill Lewis French? It must have seemed to be an easy way to earn the money on offer, attacking an unsuspecting target.

  But how did Baxter come to die? And where was French?

  Who had made the decision to leave the body in Chelsea?

  There was no time to consider whether Diaz was lying or telling the truth about Rawlings.

  Rutledge said, “Did Rawlings go to the rooming house in London before he went to the Allington Lock? He must have done, to be so angry. He waited for me to come, you see. In spite of the storm. He didn’t want to miss his chance. But he wasn’t clever enough to impersonate a Maidstone Inspector on the telephone. Someone else did that. Still, it was sheer luck that I went to Kent, that someone else wasn’t sent instead. How did he persuade Mrs. Bennett to allow him to leave the estate?”

  Diaz smiled. “She has a soft heart.”

  Or hadn’t been told.

  “How many other brothers did Rawlings have?”

  “I have no idea. You could have asked him, if you hadn’t let him die.”

  There had to be at least one other person at Diaz’s beck and call. Because if Baxter had been killed in Essex, who had brought his body to London and then hidden the motorcar in the quarry? Who had struck MacFarland on the back of the head and then taken a shot at Rutledge? Who had been watching to see if Rutledge left the Yard and headed for Kent? If it wasn’t Diaz himself, who was it?

  Perhaps Belford knew. That would explain his urgent message.

  Watching him, Diaz said, “You claimed you were my match. I have proved you are not.”

  “I was Rawlings’s match,” Rutledge replied grimly.

  “As you say, I have had trouble with underlings. But that has been . . . remedied.”

  And Rawlings was dead; whatever he knew or had been a part of had died with him. Baxter was very likely dead. Rutledge was certain Diaz wouldn’t mourn his tools. If they knew too much, he might even be grateful to be rid of them. But would their loss make it more difficult to hire others?

  With a nod, Diaz walked off in the direction of the orchard, angling away from Rutledge rather than moving past him.

  Rutledge started toward his motorcar. Diaz had come to gloat. From some vantage point he’d seen Rutledge searching for him and must have guessed that Rawlings was dead. But he had been in the shrubbery for several minutes before he’d come forward into view.

  Why?

  Rutledge skirted one of the larger rhododendrons and was about to round the second when he heard a soft chink!

  And in the same instant, Hamish shouted “’Ware.”

  Rutledge stopped where he was.

  Diaz had not taken the last opportunity to kill Rutledge with the pruning knife. Had he regretted that, and today taken advantage of the new chance Fate had unexpectedly provided him?

  Rutledge looked around, saw nothing, and then moved his foot very gently forward.

  There was that sound again, like a chain . . .

  He could feel the cold sweat on his body.

  Somewhere here there was a mantrap. And he had accidentally nudged part of the chain that held it in place. If he hadn’t heard that slight chink . . .

  He saw a short stick under the azalea beside him, squatted with great care, and reached for it, swearing as he almost lost his balance.

  Getting to his feet once more, he poked gently on either side of where his feet were planted, then nudged the stick ahead a few inches.

  Nothing.

  He dared not move.

  Was that what Diaz had been busy about? Smoothing the leafy ground so that the trap couldn’t be seen?

  He leaned a little forward, poking again. And then a little farther still, barely twelve inches from where he was standing.

  Seeming to leap out of nowhere, the mantrap sprang shut. The jagged row of steel teeth closed on his stick, biting it in half with a vicious metallic snap that made Rutledge wince.

  One more step—and his foot would have been mangled or his ankle broken. Would anyone have come to his aid, or would his calls have been ignored? In the house, out of hearing, Mrs. Bennett would have gone on with her day, and the men who served her would have said nothing, for fear of becoming involved in something that could have sent all of them back to prison.

  Rutledge doubted Diaz would return before morning, leaving his prisoner to suffer.

  Let him come then, and find nothing.

  Rutledge was about to move on when he thought better of it.

  Diaz considered himself to be very clever. And expecting Rutledge to find the first trap, he might well have set another where an unsuspecting foot would step straight into it.

  There was nothing for Rutledge to do but retrace his steps, where he knew the ground to be safe, and cut through the trees in a different direction, coming to the motorcar in a roundabout fashion.

  He set out, tense, expecting to hear another trap close just as he put his foot down. There had been time for Diaz to set one trap, perhaps two. But no more than that. Still, he couldn’t put his trust in any logic when it came to Diaz.

  Rutledge reached the low outer wall of the park, swung himself over it, and walked down the main road until he came to the gates by the drive.

  And still he looked over the motorcar, fairly certain that it was all right, but again, putting no trust in the man who had set that diabolical trap.

  As he drove toward London, he carried with him the feeling—indeed the certainty—that he had not heard the last of Afonso Diaz.

  Rutledge went directly to Chelsea, calling on Belford.

  When the man came into the room, he looked his guest over and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you went bathing in your clothes.”

  Rutledge smiled, glancing down at the wrinkles in his coat and trousers. “I was caught out in that storm last night.”

  “Were you indeed? No wonder I never heard from you. We lost a tree just along the street. A small one, but I’d have preferred not to be under it when it came down.”

  Belford went over to pour two glasses of whisky, saying, “Once again, I think you need this. Unless you’re concerned about that blow to the head?”

  Rutledge laughed as he accepted his drink. “I can’t tell you how I got it. It was just—there—this morning.”

  Belford stared at him for a moment, then realized that he was joking.

  “I’ve finally got a foot in the door, so to speak. Or a man into that lodgings. The address you gave me. The former occupant of the room hadn’t paid his rent this week, and nor had he appeared. The owner was quite happy to store his belongings in the cellar. Not mu
ch there—my man had a look. Clothing, a photograph of two boys, a few books.”

  “This was Baxter?” Rutledge asked.

  “Yes. There had been another man with him that first night, but he was gone the next morning.”

  “You mentioned him before. An accomplice? Or someone who needed a bed for one night?”

  “Mrs. Rush, the owner of the house, didn’t know. He had little to say for himself when he arrived, and she was still in bed when he left. She remembered that someone called him Ben.”

  “Interesting. But so far not useful. Baxter, by the way, was a foster brother to Rawlings.”

  “Was he, by God. There was no official record of adoption.”

  “He was never officially adopted. His mother died and Rawlings’s mother simply took him in.”

  “Well, well.” Belford emptied his glass and set it back on the tray. Standing by the hearth, he said, “Something has happened. You’d better tell me.”

  Rutledge said, “It’s a long story.”

  “I have the time. And the patience to hear it.”

  Beginning with the decision to taunt Diaz, Rutledge gave Belford an account of the arrest of Valerie Whitman, how they were followed, and then the journey in the rain to the lock at Allington. Belford said nothing, but he frowned as Rutledge described what had happened on the footplate of the bridge. When Rutledge told him about the mantrap, Belford whistled.

  “You’d best look under your bed at night.”

  “Believe me, I shall,” Rutledge replied grimly.

  “I don’t think my man can learn much more where he is, but I’ll leave him there a day or two longer.”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” Rutledge turned his empty glass one way and then another, catching the light in the deep cuts in the crystal, watching the prism effect. “Was this the urgent message you left for me? That you had put someone in the lodging house?”

  Belford smiled. “After I left that message, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was ready to tell you. I’ve been searching for it on my own.”

  “Searching for what?”