A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  But it was too late to begin when he pulled into the silent, empty streets. Too late, even, to find his dinner. Rather than stay in the town, he drove back to a small inn he’d noticed on the outskirts, roused a sleepy owner, and took a room.

  That was the last he remembered, for what was left of the night and most of the day that followed it.

  The first order of business the next morning was to question Banner again, in the hope there was more he’d been able to recall.

  Banner looked up as Rutledge stepped into the shop. “Good day, sir. I’ll be with you in five more minutes.”

  And then he went back to the work he was doing.

  When his client was satisfied with his sleeve length, Banner promised to have the coat pressed and ready for him by nine the next morning. He accompanied the man to the door, saw him out, then turned to Rutledge.

  “Did you find the man you were looking for?” he asked.

  “The man himself was a murder victim. I found his family. I’m now searching for his killer.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it. She didn’t deserve to be unhappy.”

  “There was the officer who waited for her outside. He never came into the shop. But you deal with men’s clothing every day. With their measurements. What else can you tell me about him?”

  “As far as I know, I’ve told you everything. After all, that was some years ago.”

  “You told me he was in uniform. What insignia did you see?”

  “I can’t recall noticing. I was occupied with the woman, you see. Choosing cloth, considering measurements, picking out buttons.”

  “It’s second nature to notice,” he said again. “Just as I notice how people walk or stand. How they are dressed, whether they’re nervous or anxious or angry. If they have something to hide. Do you have something to hide? Is that why you won’t help me?”

  Banner led the way to the tiny room where he kept his files. “I told you. I was reminded of my wife, talking to the young woman. I didn’t want to know about the man in the street, waiting.”

  He hadn’t wanted to think ill of the woman who reminded him of his wife.

  Rutledge said, “Whether he was a friend accompanying her on an errand or her lover, I need to find him.”

  But whatever direction he tried, Rutledge couldn’t shake Banner’s belief that he couldn’t recall any other information.

  There was a hotel down the long hill from Banner’s shop, The Broadstairs, and it offered a fine dining room.

  That was busy today, and Rutledge had to wait in the lounge for the manager to spare him a few minutes.

  When the man finally came in search of Rutledge, he looked harassed, as if this was the proverbial last straw. Straightening his coat, brushing back what was left of his thin white hair, apologizing for keeping the gentleman waiting, he led the way to his office. As soon as Rutledge crossed the threshold, the man shut the door, peering out as it closed, as if to be sure no one had seen them. “It’s the busiest time of the day,” he said, taking the chair behind his desk. “I do hope this won’t take very long.”

  Rutledge told him why he was there and precisely what he wanted, using the date on Banner’s bill as a starting point.

  “The ledgers? From January to March 1917?” He was still holding Rutledge’s identification, as if uncertain it was genuine. “I don’t know what the law has to say about this sort of thing. Privacy of others, and all that.”

  “I must remind you, this is a murder inquiry.”

  “The class of person we host here—”

  “—could be the very reason he chose this hotel. One would be less likely to find him here.”

  “Yes, yes, I see that.” He seemed to realize he still held Rutledge’s identification and passed it back to him. “Of course we wish to give the police every assistance.”

  There was a light tap at the door. “Come,” the manager said.

  A waiter poked his head around the door. “Table seven would like another of the wine bottles?”

  “Let him have it. But not a third.”

  The waiter disappeared.

  “The ledgers?”

  Looking as if he’d been cornered by a stoat, the manager got up and unlocked a cabinet across from where Rutledge was sitting. Inside were shelves of ledgers, a date on each spine under the hotel’s insignia. Finding the dates he was after, the manager pulled out two of the long, slim black-bound volumes and carried them back to the desk.

  “This is one January 1917 through February of the same year. And this is March and April.” Hesitating, he added, “I shouldn’t leave you with these”—taking a deep breath, he finished—“I shall return as soon as possible.”

  And then he was gone. Rutledge moved behind the desk, opened the January ledger, and began to scan the names of guests.

  It was slow, tedious work, deciphering the variations in handwriting, some names clearly written, others scrawled. He turned on the lamp sitting on the desk, but it helped very little. By the time he’d come to the end of January, he was beginning to think that Ruth Milford had chosen not to stay in such a public place after all, or that the officer had a house in the town.

  He was halfway through February when a familiar name leaped out at him. Roddy MacNabb’s grandmother had come in to Llangollen and spent a night at the hotel. He found her name again in the middle of March. What had brought her here?

  Hamish, who had seemed to lurk over his shoulder as he went down the columns of names, said, “Escaping her daughter-in-law.”

  But he thought not. She wouldn’t leave her grandson to the mercies of his stepmother unless she had a very good reason.

  By the time he’d reached the end of March, he’d drawn up a list of fourteen names. Each was a married couple, and each gave an officer’s rank for the man. He read them over again, and still was none the wiser. All they had in common was that they bracketed the date in question.

  But on the day that Ruth Milford had ordered clothing for her husband, 10 March, 1917, there were only four couples. Lieutenant and Mrs. Davis, Captain and Mrs. Thornton, Captain and Mrs. Griffith, Lieutenant and Mrs. Williams . . .

  He went back again, skimming this time.

  And Captain Alfred Thornton had stayed here three times. In mid-January, mid-February, and then in March. The first time, the room was in his name, and the other two times, he’d registered as Captain Thornton and wife.

  Rutledge had finished by the time the manager returned.

  “There was a Captain Thornton who stayed here several times that winter. Do you happen to recall him? Is he a regular who comes back from time to time?”

  “The name isn’t familiar. But there were convalescent homes in this part of Wales during the war. A number of officers came here to meet their wives, while they were recovering. Why? Do you think he’s your killer?” His voice rose.

  “That’s a matter for the Yard to decide. There’s a Mrs. MacNabb who stayed during that same period. Do you know her?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t. Well, if I saw her again—I don’t mingle with the guests that often. It’s not how I manage.”

  Rutledge believed him.

  He repeated the exercise in two other hotels, The Llewellyn and The Denbigh. And found in the last of the two, The Denbigh, that Ruth Milford had stayed there in January. But there was no record of her returning later in the winter. Nor was there a Captain Thornton listed in the ledgers of either hotel. But he had stayed at The Broadstairs on that same date in January. Alone.

  Sitting back in his chair at the manager’s desk in The Denbigh, Rutledge considered the implications of what he’d learned.

  Ruth had been to Llangollen before she had come to Banner’s tailor shop. At least once, possibly twice before. And as far as Rutledge could determine, those were the only three visits she had made to the town. But she claimed she had never been there.

  He referred to his notebook. The funeral she had attended in Oswestry was three weeks after her last visit to Llan
gollen—Captain Thornton’s last visit as well, at least under that name, when he’d stayed with his wife at The Broadstairs.

  Had Ruth Milford discovered that she was pregnant by the time she went to Oswestry?

  Rutledge tried to piece it together. Apparently Ruth Milford had gone to Llangollen when she had claimed she was in Shrewsbury. Had she become pregnant then? For the journey to London had come after she had stopped going to Llangollen, as far as he could tell. Shrewsbury police had discovered that her husband couldn’t possibly have been in London at that time, and so it was likely that Ruth had consulted a doctor in a town where she was sure no one knew her. Thus by the time she went to Oswestry, she must have been in a right panic over her situation. Somewhere in this time frame, she had told everyone that she had met with Sam in London. But of course that was too soon to announce a pregnancy from the visit as well. But she had had to tell Sam something before anyone mentioned the London weekend to him. Was it on her way to Oswestry that she came up with the story that she had been assaulted on the way home? She’d been fine when she was there, according to the grieving family. So the supposed attack had to have occurred afterward, as Fenton had suggested, when it was too dark to see the man’s face.

  If he was right, Rutledge told himself, there was no rape, because her daughter had been conceived in Llangollen, during her affair with Captain Thornton. By the time Ruth had gone to her friend’s funeral, she had already known she was pregnant.

  It made more sense that Thornton was Tildy’s father. Not some unknown assailant. But a caring husband would have pitied her when she wrote to him about her harrowing experience, and accepted the child as his own—for his wife’s sake. And Sam Milford, from all Rutledge had been told about him, was just that sort of man.

  He went back over the facts, setting them out in order in his notebook. Thornton and Ruth Milford had stayed at separate hotels on the first occasion. The beginning of the affair? When she had been uncertain just what to expect—or what she had wanted from that meeting? When she still had time to back out, to go home with nothing on her conscience but loneliness?

  Ruth Milford was nothing like Mrs. MacNabb’s daughter-in-law. She would have gone into any romantic encounter with trepidation. Uncertainty. But the pull of that encounter had been stronger than she’d expected, and in the end, the affair had begun. Two more visits, this time staying at The Broadstairs as Mrs. Thornton.

  And then it was over. But not finished . . .

  It appeared that she had never told Thornton about the child. Had the whole affair ended badly? Was that why she had gone to the tailor to order civilian clothes for her husband’s eventual homecoming? Guilt and uncertainty?

  Thornton must have known she was married. But how had they met in the first place? What had brought them together?

  Rutledge remembered the old adage that still waters ran deep. Ruth had kept her secret from her cousin and everyone else. She had had to find an explanation for the pregnancy, and she had endured the shame of being raped rather than confess to her affair.

  What had she told Sam Milford, even after he came home from France?

  Not the truth, surely. He hadn’t known the name of the father. Had never put a face to the man.

  And yet he had died not very far from the town where his wife had been unfaithful. What had led him to the narrowboats and his death, instead of to The Broadstairs Hotel in Llangollen?

  If it hadn’t been for the shirt his wife had ordered from Banner, Milford would have remained an unidentified body, buried in a pauper’s grave in a village with an unpronounceable name.

  And Betty Turnbull might still be alive. Had she wittingly or unwittingly bridged the gap between Oswestry and the Aqueduct, telling Milford a lie that she had been paid to give him?

  I’ve heard there’s a small red-haired child living up by the Aqueduct. Don’t know if she’s the one you’ve been hunting . . .

  Nothing would have prevented Milford from going there.

  He closed his notebook, found the Denbigh hotel manager, and thanked him for the use of his office and access to the ledgers.

  His next stop was the village where Sam Milford had been found in the River Dee. But on the way, he made a detour to call at three clinics where officers had been sent to recover from wounds.

  They had been closed since shortly after the war’s end, records turned over to the Army. If Captain Thornton had been a patient in one of them, no one remembered him.

  15

  The MacNabb farm was a little out of his way, but he went there before driving into the village.

  Roddy was sitting against a tree in the yard, his face sullen, as Rutledge pulled in and stopped the motorcar.

  “Hallo,” he said, getting out.

  Roddy ignored him, and Rutledge walked on to the house.

  Mrs. MacNabb must have seen him—or was keeping a watchful eye on her grandson—for she came to the door and said, “I hope you aren’t bearing more unhappy news.”

  “I’ve come to arrange the inquest, so that the dead man’s family can bury him.” As he reached the door, she opened it wider and invited him inside, sitting down across from him in the little parlor.

  “You know his name, then. Who is he?”

  He told her.

  “And was it an accident, his fall?”

  “I’m afraid it was murder.”

  “How awful for his family.” Glancing toward the yard and her grandson, she added, “Please don’t tell Roddy. He’s only just able to sleep without nightmares.”

  “There will be talk about the inquest. He’ll hear it from others. You should prepare him.”

  “Yes, perhaps you’re right. Still. He’s so young.” She took a deep breath. “Have you found the person responsible?”

  “Not yet. But I’m closer than I was on my earlier visit.”

  “Not one of us?”

  “I don’t believe so.”

  “That’s a blessing, then.”

  She was on the point of rising when he said, “There is a question I must put to you. I was in Llangollen, looking at hotel registers. You stayed in The Broadstairs on two occasions. I’d like to ask what took you there.”

  Mrs. MacNabb rose, crossed quietly to the door, opened it quickly. There was no one in the passage. “Old habits die hard,” she said, coming back, this time leaving the door standing wide. “She isn’t here, she’s gone back to Liverpool.” He knew she was speaking of her daughter-in-law. “But I’m not persuaded that she will stay there. Very likely she will come home again, begging to be taken in. And I shall have to take her in, for my son’s sake. Even though she is doing great harm to Roddy.” She met his gaze. “I went to Llangollen to meet my solicitor. We talked, and I told him my wishes. I went again to sign the necessary paperwork. I have set up a trust for Roddy. This house is mine, much of our money is still safe and out of her reach. My son at least had the good sense to see to that. It is ironclad now. If anything happens to me, Roddy will be safe.”

  Something in the way she said it caught his attention. “Are you saying that she might harm you?”

  “I could fall down the stairs—trip in the kitchen—stumble over one of the hens as I’m feeding them. And so I’ve taken measures to ensure my future and his. She has been told that as long as I am alive there will be a small income for her. It will cease with my death or if I am unable to assure my solicitor that I am still of sound mind and wish the arrangement to continue. This was set up during those two visits. A week ago I also agreed to continue payments even if she returned to Liverpool. And so she did, thank God. I am Roddy’s guardian. She couldn’t take him with her—I don’t think it would occur to her to want him with her.”

  “You’re very brave. Is there anything that the police can do?”

  “No.” She smiled sadly. “It’s for the best, what I did.”

  “Why is your grandson upset today?”

  The smile warmed. “He wants a dog. I’m not sure he’s old enough to take pro
per care of one.”

  “A dog in the house might be all the protection you need, if she comes back and threatens you. And—Roddy needs a friend.”

  “I hadn’t considered that. Thank you.”

  They were already at the door when Rutledge asked, “Do you go to Llangollen often?”

  “I did on occasion in the past. But after my daughter-in-law came, it took all the joy out of any excursion. I simply didn’t trust her.”

  “Another name I came across in the hotel ledgers was Thornton. Captain Alfred Thornton and his wife. Is it someone you know?”

  “Are you telling me that he’s a suspect?”

  “No. Just—the name appeared on several different days. I would like to ask a few questions that might help me find the person I’m after.”

  “I don’t know a Captain Thornton. But there’s an Alfred Thornton out on the Chester road. He was our smith until the war, and after he came home, he opened a garage, lorry repairs his specialty. But he also maintains a motorcar service. One of the village lads took me to Llangollen in his father’s carriage. Only fourteen, Tommy Daniels was then, lived on his father’s farm a mile from us, and already motorcar mad. Later, when he went to work with the Sergeant, he persuaded him to set up a service for the villages around here. And now, I need only send Roddy into the village on his bicycle, and someone sends word to the Sergeant. It is a little more than I would like to pay but well worth it.”

  “Does this young man still work for Thornton?”

  “Yes, he’s one of the Sergeant’s people. The one I still like best.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “you’ve been very helpful.”

  He said goodbye to the boy as well, but got only a flash of sullen eyes for his trouble.

  Stopping just beyond Roddy, he said, “You’re the man of the house now. Look after your grandmother. She needs you.”

  Surprised, Roddy looked up.

  “Don’t let me hear that you’ve been ungrateful.” And he walked on.