A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge waited.

  “Last summer she was back again. I saw her a time or two, and that’s when I was told about her. I kept an eye open, in the event she needed help, but she never consulted me. I told myself she might have been recovering from tuberculosis, and the mountain air was good for her.”

  When he paused again, Rutledge said, “Go on.”

  “We have heavy mists sometimes. Thick white cloying mists. They come down in the night, and sometimes don’t lift until midday. It was about ten o’clock on such a morning when I was summoned to the police station. Constable Jones is a good man, but this was beyond his ability to cope. I arrived at the station to find him dealing with a frantic woman. She was barefoot, cuts on her face and arms. She had come flying into the station, screaming for him to find her child. That the child was missing, and she couldn’t find her in that mist. I realized as soon as I saw her who she was, the woman from the little house.”

  He got up to stir the fire. Standing at the hearth, his back to Rutledge, he said, “She kept repeating her story. That she’d awakened this morning, started down to prepare breakfast, only to find the front door standing wide. She couldn’t see the path, much less the road beyond. Closing the door, she went on to her kitchen, and when the porridge was ready, she went to call her small daughter. But the child never answered her, and when she went up to her room, it was empty. The bedclothes were dragged off the bed, but no sign of the child. She began to search the house, then remembered the open door. Terrified that the child had got up in the night, gone out into the mists, and lost her way, she ran out to the road, calling for her. There was no response. She ran down the slope toward the river, searched along the water, and then climbed up again to the road. A van coming down the hill narrowly missed her—someone at the hotel recalled hearing brakes and shouting. But the woman ran on, arriving at the station, banging on the door, begging Jones to hurry.”

  “And did you search for this child?”

  “My first thought was to calm her down—until then we’d heard only a garbled version of the story, piecing it together as best we could. I tried to make her swallow something, but she kept pushing the glass away, telling me she had to keep looking, pleading with us to send out search parties. The child was still in her nightclothes, no coat, and the woman had no idea how long she’d been outside. I told Jones to summon all the men he could, that we needed to search.” He shook his head. “There was no child, Rutledge. When Jones went to the house, he found it just as she’d said. But there was no sign of a child. No clothes, no dolls, nothing to indicate there had ever been one there in that house.”

  Caught off guard, Rutledge said, “You mean she was alone in that house all along?”

  “Apparently.”

  “What happened?”

  “Jones got his wife in there—into the station—and she gave the woman a cup of tea that I’d put something in. It was the only thing we could do. She slept for nearly ten hours. By that time, we’d conducted a search, but we’d found nothing. When she woke up, she began to scream for the child again. And I had no choice, I had to give her something. Two days later, she was finally calm enough to be questioned. I think she was afraid we’d give her more sedatives if she didn’t cooperate. That’s when she told us that she had lost a child, and was still suffering from the shock of it. That she would wake up and find herself back in that moment, and have to relive it.”

  When Rutledge said nothing, the doctor looked away.

  “The thing is, she’d never had a child. It was all a delusion. Start to finish. I tried to find out if there were friends—relatives—someone who could look after her. Failing that, I tried to find a place that would take her in and help her. Before I could do more, she went away. Just packed up what she wanted and walked away from here. We haven’t seen her since.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Ruth Middleton, or so she said. War widow. But I don’t think any of it was true. Several things in her possession had initials on them. We discovered them when we searched the house. A leather handbag, handkerchiefs in her drawer. A pin in the jewelry case. Even her valise. SEM. When I tried to ask her about that, she told me I had no right to search her things, and got quite angry. But she told the Constable that the items were hers, that the initials stood for Serena Ruth Edmonds Middleton, but she didn’t care for Serena and had always used Ruth. We couldn’t prove or disprove that. My mother never liked her first name, she never used it. I could hardly fault Mrs. Middleton.” He paused. “Whether she was actually married or not, I thought it best to leave that alone.”

  SEM could also stand for Susan Elizabeth Milford . . .

  “And the child’s name?”

  “Gwennie. Gwendolyn.”

  “Has anyone lived there since then?”

  “No. And local people tend to avoid it.”

  “Is it possible to go into the house without attracting unwelcome attention? I’d like to have a look.”

  “There’s nothing to find. It was furnished with what was left by the previous tenants.”

  “Still.”

  They left the pub to walk back up the long hill. The sun had gone behind the dome of the cliff, casting dark shadows here and there, although overhead the sky was still blue. As they came in sight of the hotel, Rutledge noticed the smaller house in the trees.

  Shepherd led the way to the door, opened it, and they stepped inside. It was dim in the entry, and cold. Any life or laughter that had been in the house had left.

  Rutledge stood there, listening to the nature of the silence. But it told him very little. “Is the door always unlocked?”

  “I don’t think any of us lock our doors here.”

  “All right. Let’s begin.”

  And with Shepherd trailing him, Rutledge went through the house room by room, searching carefully and thoroughly.

  Someone had removed the burned porridge from the cooker, but the smell lingered. That was the only indication that anyone had ever lived here.

  He went up the steps, his boots echoing on the treads, and into the two bedrooms at the top of the stairs.

  In the smaller of the two, the mattress was unrolled, the sheets on it were clean, and they were covered by a dark green blanket, one edge of it still trailing across the floor, just as the woman had described it to the police. But the little chest was empty, the table under the window bare, and there was nothing in the alcove where clothes could be hung on pegs.

  Moving on to the other bedroom, he could see the back of the hotel from the windows, and what appeared to be a kitchen garden just beyond. Again he searched, and again he came away with nothing, until the bottom drawer of the chest caught a little and he had to work at it to bring it all the way out.

  It was empty. But as he lifted it clear, something slid without a sound to the floor.

  “Wait,” Shepherd said, pointing.

  Rutledge put the drawer back into place and picked up what lay there.

  It was a slim bit of ribbon, silk, he thought, and it was a soft pale green. Just the color to thread through a small child’s reddish-gold hair and tie in a bow at the top of her head.

  Looking at it more closely, he thought he saw a single hair caught in the silk, but it slipped through his fingers onto the floor, and he couldn’t find it again.

  “Wishful thinking,” Hamish taunted as Rutledge tried to ignore the voice.

  “What is it?” Shepherd asked sharply.

  Rutledge shook his head. “A bit of trim,” he answered, holding out the ribbon.

  They left soon after, and on the steps as Shepherd was about to walk down toward the village, Rutledge asked, “That was no accidental encounter in the shop, was it?”

  Shepherd looked at him, then said, “All right. No. I saw you walking down the hill in your London clothes. I couldn’t ignore that. The shop owner is a friend, I can stop in. It seemed—simpler—to take a closer look.”

  With that he nodded and went briskly down to the road, t
he limp pronounced even as he tried to make it less so.

  Rutledge watched him halfway down the hill. Then he walked across to the hotel entrance.

  At first light next morning, Rutledge set out on his own, a walking stick borrowed from the ornate stand in the hotel’s lounge. He’d replaced his boots with his Wellingtons, wore a heavy jumper under a coat, and carried his torch from the motorcar.

  It was very dark under the trees, but quiet enough that he thought he could just hear the stream running at the bottom of the sloping hill. He went down the road, crossed the bridge, and turned left, soon finding himself in relatively flat meadows as the valley spread out. Overhead the sun was just brushing the sky with light, while below it was barely dawn.

  And then the light began to overspread the meadows, and he could see every tree and bush and stone sharply outlined.

  It took him some time to find what he was after. He’d nearly missed it.

  In an open space, he discovered what first appeared to be rubble, a scattering of stones where they were not a natural feature.

  And he thought this could be all that was left of a warrior’s grave.

  Someone had pulled down what might well have been a cairn in the distant past. Tossing the stones this way and that. Violently, smaller stones landing some good few feet away, as if thrown with angry abandon.

  How recent was this destruction? And who had done it?

  Hamish said, “Ye canna’ know if it was yon sister.”

  True enough, he thought, grimly looking at what was left.

  But he’d wager his pay for the next year that he’d guessed right. Idle hands hadn’t done this out of curiosity or a sense of mischief. This was destruction on a personal and malevolent scale.

  Turning away, finally, he set himself to consider Susan Milford’s current state of mind, and where she might be now. And how real that missing child might be.

  On the long walk back to the village and then up the hill to the hotel, he saw no one. Only a quarreling flock of crows, chasing each other through the trees, then climbing to the rounded top of the cliff and disappearing from his view.

  He was working out a timetable as he crossed the bridge.

  She could have taken Tildy. And she could have had her brother killed to stop him from searching for the child. Then finished what she’d begun by smothering Mrs. Turnbull in her bed and drowning Joseph Burton. There were spaces of time where she might have traveled anywhere.

  The woman’s face that had been seen in the narrowboat window . . .

  Was that Susan Milford? Or had the narrowboat owner taken a woman along with whatever cargo he’d been carrying, then got her out of sight fast, before anyone could even prove she’d been there? They were human, the boatmen. It had probably happened hundreds of times over the years. Those pretty lace curtains could conceal a multitude of people or things.

  By the time he’d reached the hotel he’d nearly decided that his best course of action was to drive back to the Aqueduct and make absolutely certain who the woman was. If he had to take every man there into custody until he found his answer.

  He was on his way upstairs when he stopped at the first landing.

  The hotel and the house. Next door.

  Swinging around, he went back down the stairs and into the bar.

  The young woman who had been on the Reception desk when he arrived was putting clean glasses in the racks, frowning in concentration as she handled the more fragile wineglasses.

  Taking a seat at the bar, he waited until all of the glasses were in their proper places. Then he said ruefully, “I went out walking this morning. And missed my breakfast. Is it possible to have something in here?”

  A little flustered by his smile, she said, “Well then, what is it that you’d like?”

  “Eggs, bacon. Toast. Tea.”

  “Let me ask in the kitchen.”

  When she returned, she was pink, and he thought she’d had to be rather more persuasive than she’d anticipated. “Yes, it’s all right. Would you like a table?” She glanced toward the dining room, with its windows looking out at the road and the trees that ran down to the river.

  “No need for any fuss. This will be fine.” Talking to her was the only reason he’d ordered breakfast.

  She seemed pleased. “You live in London? What’s it like, London?”

  “Busy. Crowded. Exciting sometimes.”

  “Have you ever seen the King?”

  “I have.” But that was when he’d been in France, and the King had stopped in one of the base hospitals to cheer the wounded.

  “And the Queen? Her pearls are so beautiful.”

  “I’m told she enjoys wearing them.”

  “It must be wonderful to go to plays and the opera. I’ve never been more than ten miles from where I was born.”

  A man poked his head around the door and handed her a tray with Rutledge’s breakfast on it. As she set the silverware and plates out in front of him, he used the opening she had given him.

  “You must know everyone in the village, then.” He smiled again. “Was the house next door once part of the hotel?”

  He’d picked the right person to question.

  Her face closed slightly, the forthrightness of the Welsh vanishing. “It was built for one of the hotel’s owners. Ages ago. Then a new owner didn’t care for it, and it was sold off.” She gestured toward Reception. “There’s a story about the hotel, framed and in the entrance. You might want to read it, if you’re interested.”

  “Did the hotel ever send meals across to the woman who had taken the house a year or so ago?” He deliberately set his question in the past.

  “Sometimes.” She turned and found a cloth, cleaning the top of the bar with it. Ill at ease.

  “Sad story, that. I heard someone talking about it in the village. Something about a child missing. Was it ever found?”

  “As to that,” she began, “I couldn’t say.”

  “Surely there was a search. It isn’t still missing? Or is it dead?”

  Her gaze flew back to his face. “I never saw a child when I took her dinner across. They asked me, and I had to tell them the truth. But there was always enough for two on the trays.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said quietly, in an effort to encourage her.

  Clearly uncomfortable, she said, “I didn’t know what to believe. But I’d spoken to her, she was quite nice. And then she ran into the village that morning, screaming for help—everyone heard her. Why would she make up such a story, if it weren’t true? Why would she claim that there was a child missing, if there wasn’t?”

  “Did she stop looking? When everyone else did?”

  “I don’t know—no—I’d see her walking at all hours. Once Dr. Shepherd stopped sedating her. They were trying to find a hospital—asylum—a safe place. I told her, I warned her. And then she was gone. In the middle of the night. I was afraid then that I’d done a wrong thing.” She looked thoroughly wretched. She must be all of sixteen, seventeen. Hardly more than a child herself.

  “Just—vanished?” Shepherd hadn’t told him that.

  The young woman flushed a dark red, glancing over her shoulder. “I don’t know. She gave me a letter. She asked me to put it in with the hotel post, so that no one would know.”

  “When was this?” Neither Shepherd nor the Constable had mentioned a letter.

  “Only four or five days before she went away.” She frowned, thinking.

  Which meant she could have killed her brother. But why?

  “Do you remember the name on the letter? Or the address?”

  “I think it might have been to her solicitor. Handler? Hampton? Something like that.”

  Damn the man! He hadn’t mentioned that letter! Why was Hastings playing a double game?

  Had he sent someone for her—known from the start that she was in Beddgwian and never said a word? Knew where she was now—and talked about suicide instead?

  “But where would she go, if this house
was her home?” He kept his voice gentle, mildly interested, yet concerned.

  “She told me she had to be sure. ‘I have to know.’ She said it twice. Then she told me ‘I was a stolen child, I know what happens to them.’ I asked her who had taken her, but she wouldn’t tell me. She just begged me not to tell anyone the things we’d talked about. And I didn’t. Still, it’s weighed on my conscience.” She bit her lower lip. “My mother says she was mad, that she ought to be shut away. But she didn’t sound mad to me. Just afraid.”

  He remembered the book of myths and legends. Stolen children seemed to figure prominently in such tales. Had she borrowed from that, to appeal to this young woman’s sympathy? Or had the stories fed her own delusions?

  “Much would depend on where she went from here. Whether she had a safe place to go.”

  “I asked her that. I was fearful for her. But she said she could always go back to one friend who had stood by her.”

  “But she didn’t tell you who that might be?”

  “I don’t think she trusted me with that. I’d not have told. It would—” She broke off as someone called to her from Reception. “Oh! I promised—” And she hurried away, leaving him to finish his breakfast alone.

  He took the bit of green ribbon from his pocket, smoothing it out on the wooden bar. Then put it safely away again.

  What to make of that?

  And where to go from here? Back to Hastings in Shrewsbury?

  “He’ll no’ tell the truth.”

  Rutledge agreed. It would be a waste of time.

  He left some coins on the bar for the young woman, and went to his room. Taking out his notebook, he went back through his notes. What had Hastings told him on that first visit?

  And there it was. It was suspected that Susan Milford, who had money in her own name, had, for reasons known only to her, worked at a slate quarry. But Hastings’s people hadn’t been able to verify that because when someone went to the quarry, the workers there had lied. They swore that no one of Susan’s description had ever been there. Apparently protecting her.