A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  The man took a last look at Betty Turnbull’s body lying there. “Yes. All right, then.”

  “And this is an order. Don’t spread the news on your way, do you hear me? No one but the Constable is to be told.”

  But Waggoner was already hurrying away. Rutledge heard his boots clattering down the steps. He was out the front door, banging it shut behind him. Rutledge winced.

  He stayed where he was. The tidiness of the murder was unexpected. Most killers left the body as it lay, any overturned furniture where it had fallen. Someone had taken time to look around him—or her—and removed all traces that anyone else had been there. Except for that pillow still across the face.

  In spite of the curtains, the morning sun was bright in the room, casting pale squares of light across the floor. Warming the room, giving it life.

  The fittings were cheap, the bed brass, the curtains white with purple tulips splashed across the broad hem in a clumsy but pretty enough pattern. The bedspread was lavender with a scalloped edge in white, not always even, and the covered chair in the corner was the same shade as the tulips. He’d noticed a sewing machine in the vacant room, and he wondered if she had made the curtains, spread, and slipcover herself, to create what she saw as a charming bedroom.

  Then, leaving her there, he quickly went to the third door at the top of the stairs, and found what must have been the room taken by Sam Milford. No one would have thought to look for him here, in this run-down street.

  It too was tidy, the bed made, the top of the tall chest empty of personal belongings like purse, watch, or cuffs. No shaving gear on the table by the bed, nothing in the wardrobe but a single shirt that looked as if it might have fit a larger man.

  “He didna’ truly live here,” Hamish commented.

  “No. It was simply a place to spend the night. Then why did she have to die?”

  “Ye ken, a woman might think of tidying the room after killing her. No’ a man.”

  And the set of the mind behind that tidying worried Rutledge. Steady, organized . . .

  In many ways, the same kind of thinking that had gone into Milford’s death. Just the right distance above the River Dee to make certain the body would fall into the water. And the coolness of the mind that risked the possibility that a flailing man about to plummet to his death might take his killer with him as he was pushed off the horse trace.

  But what drove it, that mind?

  Too soon to make a guess at that, he told himself, and set about a swift but methodical search of the room.

  If anything had been there, Sam Milford—or Mrs. Turnbull’s killer—had taken it.

  He remembered that the bedroom light had remained on, while he stood on the road and looked up at it. Was the killer searching even then? Or finishing his neat arrangement of the room?

  He felt a wave of regret. He had seen the light—he should have knocked. Even if Mrs. Turnbull was already dead, at least it might have shaken her killer into making a mistake.

  He heard the street door open and close, and stepped out to the head of the stairs. Waggoner was following a uniformed Constable up them, a thin man with a long thin face and bony nose.

  He didn’t speak until he was on a level with Rutledge, looking up at the man from London from beneath the brim of his helmet. “Sir,” he said. “Constable Drew. You’re Scotland Yard?”

  Rutledge took out his identification and held it up. “Yes. I’m in Oswestry on other business, and called on Mrs. Turnbull yesterday. She was alive and well then, and not under duress of any kind. I’d say she was killed around ten last night. At any rate, after she’d retired to bed. In there.”

  He gestured toward the bedroom, and Constable Drew stepped in there. “There’s no doubt she’s dead,” he commented, “but why didn’t he take away the pillow to be sure?”

  “Perhaps he did, and then decided to put it back in place. Not on the floor. Nothing appears to be disturbed, but I have a feeling the room was thoroughly searched.”

  Drew had stepped to the side of the bed, lifting the pillow and looking down into the dead face. “Why was that, sir?” He gently put the pillow back where he’d found it.

  “Because the room is neat. Not even the bedspread is disturbed. She might have hung up her clothing, but her comb and brush are too perfectly placed. The chair is in the same position it always was, in the small dents in the carpet it had made through years of someone sitting there. Look at her bedroom slippers. Side by side just under the bed. The lamp is just where it must have been. And yet a struggle must have taken place. I met her, I can’t picture her dying quietly.”

  Constable Drew followed Rutledge’s pointing finger around the room, taking in what the other man had noticed. And what he himself had not. He shot a quick glance toward Rutledge, then went back to the exhibits before him.

  “What was he looking for, sir? If he was searching?”

  “That I don’t know. There isn’t much here that would entice anyone bent on theft, and the rest of the house is tidy as well. But there on the mantelpiece are several cheap plates with pretty pictures on them. To someone desperate for money, they might possibly bring in a little. What’s more—see there—she’s still wearing her wedding ring. If I’m not mistaken, that’s gold. It would bring in much more.”

  “Mr. Waggoner tells me she was a widow, sir. He and his wife have known her for a number of years. Said she was quiet, a good neighbor. And that she’d recently taken in an occasional lodger. In fact he believes there was a man staying here in the past week or so. Could he have done this?”

  “That man, sadly for my own inquiry, is already dead. He was killed a fortnight ago. His room is just there.”

  The Constable went to see, and came back to the bedroom. “Didn’t leave much behind.”

  “No. He had personal business in Oswestry, and I think he was concerned about spending more than he could afford, while here. And Mrs. Turnbull was happy to have the money.” No Oswestry hotel bills to explain to Ruth or her cousin and husband, he added to himself.

  “If he wasn’t the killer, sir, could he have been the cause? Someone came here looking for him, and she was in the way?”

  “Possibly, unless of course her killer already knew that the lodger was dead. Or it could have been someone else altogether, also looking for the lodger.”

  Waggoner, hanging back during the discussion between the two policemen, said, “I don’t care what you think—he couldn’t have come to kill Betty. It has to be the lodger, one way or another. I’ve told you, we’ve known her for years, and there was nothing in her life that would have led to this.”

  “I’ll have to report this to the station,” Constable Drew said, turning to Rutledge. “Unless you wish to lead the inquiry, sir?”

  “No. Treat it as a local matter for the moment. Until we have more to be going on with.”

  Drew left then. Waggoner, lingering near the stairs, said, “I can’t believe this has happened. Yes, there have been fights on the road, mostly young layabouts who have no work and no one to manage them. My neighbor two houses down is nasty when he’s got a skinful. Still, it’s a quiet enough place on the whole.”

  “Did you ever meet her lodger?”

  “No. Saw him a time or two. Little man. Carried himself well, kept himself to himself.”

  “How did he get around?”

  “Walked. Like the rest of us. I have a bicycle, but I don’t like leaving it in town and having it pinched.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “Me? Stevedore before I met my wife. Carpenter now. She’d come to Liverpool to visit her granny, and I lived next door.”

  Liverpool. That was where Roddy’s mother had come from.

  Waggoner wiped his hand across his mouth. “Must we stand here where we can see her? It’s obscene, her lying there with the pillow on her head.”

  An Inspector Preston came back with Constable Drew, a doctor, and two other Constables who were already knocking on neighboring doors.

/>   Rutledge repeated what he’d told Drew, and let them get on with it. From the doorway of the bedroom, he heard the doctor confirm that Mrs. Turnbull was deceased, and that the time of death was the previous evening. “Nine? Ten?”

  Waggoner volunteered that she had a brother living nearby, saving Rutledge from having to explain how he’d found the farm.

  When the formalities were finished, Rutledge said to Preston, “I have other business in Llangollen. But I’d like a copy of your report sent to Sergeant Gibson at the Yard. In the event what happened here has any bearing on the death I’m investigating in Wales.”

  The two men walked out together, and out of hearing of the men busy in the room upstairs, Rutledge gave a brief outline of his search for Milford’s killer. He carefully omitted details that he was not ready to share. Tildy’s parentage for one.

  Preston didn’t speak until he was finished, then asked Rutledge, “Why should this missing child be on my patch? If she was abducted by someone who had seen her in the pub, she might be anywhere. Wales. Ireland. Scotland.”

  Rutledge was watching two small boys who were examining his motorcar with awe, touching the body, peering into the driver’s side to look at the dials. Beyond them in the road, a cluster of neighbors, drawn by the arrival of the police, silently stared at the two men.

  “That’s what we don’t know. If Milford found anything here—even believed he might have done—he kept it to himself. For one thing, he wouldn’t have wanted to raise his wife’s hopes. For another, he might not have known where to place his trust. He paid Mrs. Turnbull for a room. Someone might offer to pay her more to betray him. She was a convenience, in a sense, not a co-conspirator.”

  “There’s that,” Preston agreed. “All right, then. I’m needed upstairs. Keep me informed as well.”

  “I shall.”

  He watched Preston stride back inside and shut the door, then walked on to the motorcar.

  Why had Betty Turnbull had to die?

  If Sam Milford had indeed kept everything close to his chest, then his secrets had died with him. She should have been safe enough.

  Had her killer taken anything? Or was he afraid of something she knew, or may have guessed?

  He stood by the motorcar, staring up at the house. He’d watched that light in the bedroom window go out. The killer was very likely still there, seeing to the room. And afterward, searching Milford’s.

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, her death might ha’ no connection wi’ yon lodger. She could ha’ been killed for ither reasons entirely.”

  And that was quite true. He had to keep that in mind. It was one of the reasons he hadn’t wanted to take over the inquiry. Preston appeared to be a good man. Let him ferret out Mrs. Turnbull’s secrets, and see what he uncovered.

  Still, the niggling feeling that he’d overlooked something wouldn’t go away.

  He stood there, head down, staring at the withered grass beneath his feet. In his memory he examined both rooms again.

  Betty Turnbull had made curtains and a chair cover and a coverlet for the bed. They weren’t worn, they were fairly new. Where had she come by the money to buy the fabric? Was it the rent she had been paid?

  And suddenly he knew what he’d missed. Very likely what he was looking for was in neither her room nor Milford’s.

  He went back to the house, took the stairs two at a time, and before Preston had even realized he was there, stepped quietly out of sight.

  8

  The spare room offered nothing in the way of a hiding place, except in the rolled-up mattress on the bed, and someone, Preston most likely, had already flattened it, and the drawers from the chest against the far wall had already been examined—one of them hadn’t been completely closed again, a space of about half an inch showing someone had pulled it out after he himself had looked into this room.

  Preston too was searching . . .

  Not a man to underestimate, he warned himself as he crossed the room and lifted the pretty cover, shaped like a tea caddy, over the head of the sewing machine. It was the same dark purple cloth as the chair in her bedroom.

  And there it was.

  A small square of paper. Hardly noticeable among the packets of needles and pins, scissors, bobbins, and thimbles there.

  He pocketed it, his back to the door, and then replaced the cover.

  As he turned, Preston stepped into the room.

  “You’re back,” he said, stating the obvious in a querying tone of voice.

  “I hadn’t searched the sewing machine. It was the only place I hadn’t looked,” he said truthfully. “It’s a woman’s, and a man might not have thought to look there as a hiding place. I hadn’t. You?”

  Preston said wryly, “No. I didn’t. Any luck?”

  Rutledge smiled and lifted the cover a second time. “Thimble, needle packet, a cotton reel—”

  “Any other clever ideas?”

  “Sadly no. But I’d noticed that she’d taken pride in her handiwork.” He shrugged, a slight lift of a shoulder. “Worth a try.”

  “Next time, ask me to try instead. I’d appreciate it.”

  “Point taken,” Rutledge answered, and as Preston left the doorway, he nodded to the Constable, then took his time going down the stairs and out to the motorcar. And all the way, he could feel Preston’s eyes boring into his back from the bedroom window. Still wondering.

  He made a point of turning the crank and driving away. The growing crowd opened their ranks to let him through, but in his mirror he saw that Preston had sent a Constable down to guard the now closed door.

  He was well outside Oswestry before he pulled to the side of the road, took the small square of paper from his pocket, and unfolded it.

  Inside were two postal stamps.

  Under them, in small, neat handwriting, was a name, Alyssa, and after that, Bed. The rest of Bed had been scratched out, as if the writer was uncertain of the spelling or even of the remainder of the word. Bedford? Bedbury? Bedcock? Beddes? Beddings? Beddoes? Beddesford? Beddingham? Bedwin?

  It was impossible to guess.

  He held the paper upside down, then looked carefully at the reverse. But nothing leaped out at him.

  Hamish said, “It could be the name of a woman she was sewing for.”

  True enough. And if so, it would have been left just where he’d found it, with the sewing machine.

  No use to the killer, no use to him.

  But he folded it again and put it safely in his notebook, before turning back to the road and carrying on toward Llangollen.

  He took the road that went around the Aqueduct, to the railway station in Trefor. It had been closed the last time he was here. It had been near enough to the noon hour for the stationmaster to go home to his lunch.

  He came down from the flyover and into the station yard. The platform was long and narrow, with a covering, and across the dual tracks, houses backed up nearly to the track fencing.

  The stationmaster was there, this late in the afternoon. He was graying and had lost an eye, but he looked up when Rutledge stepped into the tiny waiting room. “Afternoon, sir,” he said in a gruff voice.

  “Afternoon,” Rutledge replied affably. “I’m looking for a friend.” He’d brought in the photograph without its frame. “He and I were supposed to meet at the Aqueduct. He was going one way, I another, and it was a good chance for us to spend a little time together. Haven’t seen him since the war, you know. Good man in a fight. Glad to have him at my back.”

  Rutledge placed the photograph flat on the countertop. “His wife is worried about him. As am I. But there’s no trace of him after he left Oswestry. Did he by chance come up by train?” He gave the date, gambling that he was right. “A Thursday.”

  “There wasn’t a passenger that day, but there was the day before. The Wednesday. A short man got down. That’s a Bantam uniform he’s wearing in the photograph, I see. Could have been him. Nice enough, as I remember.”

  “Did he have a valise with him?”
/>
  “I expect he did. Most do, if they’re going to the quarry works. Or the firebrick works at Ruabon. We don’t run that many trains south. Unless the Family is coming up, of course.” He said the word as if Rutledge should know them.

  “Family?”

  “Aye, there’s a big house here. Handsome brick. Trefor House, it’s called, but the Family seldom comes, not since the war.”

  “Who are they?”

  A little affronted, the stationmaster said, “The Grants, of course. Bought the house in bad condition in the old Queen’s time, and restored it and the grounds. The heir was killed at Passchendaele. Sad, that. He was a fine young man.”

  “Who is the heir now?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps there isn’t one. Rumor says they might put the house up for sale again. Pity, if they do. But there you are, the lad’s gone, isn’t he? Like so many others.” He shook his head. “Flower of England, the newspapers called all those young men.”

  Rutledge brought the stationmaster’s attention back to the photograph.

  “My friend,” he said, touching the edge.

  “If that was your friend, aye. He went out and stood by the entrance for ten minutes or so, then came in again and asked if the branch line was running that day to the Aqueduct. But it wasn’t. He then asked how far it might be to walk. I told him roughly an hour and a half. He nodded, and set out.”

  “And you are sure it was this man you saw?”

  “I wouldn’t swear to it under oath, you understand, but if you want my opinion, it was him.” He regarded Rutledge for a moment. “Was it you he was expecting to meet him here?”

  “I was to meet him at the Aqueduct, but he could have hoped I’d drive up here for him, once I discovered there was no train that day. Are you sure of the date?”

  “Aye, that Wednesday. And you missed him?”

  Rutledge said wryly, “I don’t understand how I could have done. If you saw him setting out, he should have reached the Aqueduct a little before me. But then I don’t know what it was that brought him to the Aqueduct in the first place. It was just convenient for me as well to meet him there. That’s why I suggested it.”