by Charles Todd
“Josephine Priestley.”
“Do you remember how you came to fall?” the doctor asked again.
“Yes. He was here—the child’s uncle. And he bumped into me at the top of the stairs. At least I thought—but I’m sure I felt his hands against my back—I lost my balance then. I cried out, but he just stood there. After that I don’t remember anything.” Then she said restlessly, “There’s been so much blood. They’ve used my best towels, but it won’t stop.”
“Head wounds sometimes bleed fiercely,” Masefield said soothingly, already examining the cut. “I shouldn’t worry.”
“Constable. Her statement,” Rutledge said. “The doctor and I will witness it.”
“The child’s uncle. And who would that be, madam? Do you know his name?” the Constable asked, as the doctor went on with his examination.
“Yes, of course I do. His name is Blake, Donald Blake. I’ve been looking after the little girl since her mother died.”
But Donald Blake was in a cell in Shrewsbury.
Rutledge described Blake for the woman.
“That must be another uncle. This man is fair, lovely blue eyes. He was quite concerned about his niece. I thought he was very nice. Until now.” She was agitated again. “I can still feel his hands—and he stood there. Letting me fall. Oh, dear God.” She caught the doctor’s hands. “Where is Julie? They told me a stranger had taken her—? What’s become of Julie?”
Masefield answered her. “The child, yes? My wife is looking after her at the surgery. She’ll be all right, Mrs. Priestley. It’s you we want to worry about for the moment.”
But the worried crease between her eyes didn’t go away.
Rutledge asked quietly, “How long have you had the care of her?”
“Oh—for quite some time. She was no trouble.”
A little later, Rutledge gave his own account of finding the woman and taking charge of the child. Constable Hardy took it down word for word.
“Do you know who this man Blake is, sir?” he asked, looking up, his pencil poised for the answer.
And Rutledge explained.
“A solicitor, sir? I don’t know that I’ve ever had trouble with a solicitor before. Are you quite sure?”
“Inspector Carson in Shrewsbury can confirm Blake’s whereabouts. And I have other witnesses who can identify the solicitor. Right now, I must go. I don’t like leaving Mrs. Priestley here. See if you can get her into the doctor’s motorcar. I’d feel better if she’s at Masefield’s surgery. And there’s her nephew. The man in the wheeled chair. The villagers will have to see to him.”
“What about the child?”
“I must take her back to her mother. She isn’t dead. She’s waiting. Then I must travel to Chester to make an arrest. Still, guard this witness closely. Send to Ludlow, ask for additional men for a twenty-four-hour guard on the surgery. She can identify Alasdair Dale, and the other victims who could do that are dead.”
And he left, refusing to answer the questions fired at him by Mrs. Priestley’s neighbors. Promising answers and an arrest soon.
But when he reached Masefield’s surgery, and identified himself to Mrs. Masefield, who had blocked the surgery door with furniture, he could go no further.
Her face seemed to swim before him as he said, “The little girl?”
“She’s very upset, but she drank a little warm milk and ate some biscuits.” She looked at him. “You’re in no condition to drive, are you? Help me push this chest back in place, and you can sleep in the examination room. The child is upstairs, in my bedroom. And I have hidden the key to my door.”
“I have to go.”
“You aren’t taking that child with you. Scotland Yard or no, you aren’t risking her life. I can’t stop you. But I will not let you have her.”
He slept. But only for three hours. And then, over Mrs. Masefield’s protests that the doctor would most certainly wish to examine her as soon as he came back from Stockford, he installed Tildy Milford in his motorcar once more, and set out to find his own proof of her identity.
Rutledge pulled up at the surgery in Church Stretton at breakfast the next morning.
He had driven through the night, not pausing at Crowley but stopping halfway to give the little girl more of the milk that Mrs. Masefield had sent with him. He even persuaded her to eat several biscuits. Not the best diet for her, he thought wryly as she stared at him, silent and suspicious, her green eyes large with mistrust in the reflected glow of the headlamps. But she took the food because she was hungry. He’d talked to her all the way, telling her stories that he only half remembered from his own childhood, asking questions that she could answer, but didn’t, her green eyes filling her face, her lower lip always on the verge of trembling into tears. The sprinkle of freckles across her nose stood out against the fine, milky skin. Someone in her ancestry had bequeathed her these things. Now he was more worried about the future than the past.
When she was drowsy, he rested his head against the seat and let the silence soothe her. But he was alert, watchful. He had been since leaving Stockford and choosing a roundabout way to Church Stretton, staying clear of the main roads, sharing the night with her and the animals he passed along the way, their eyes glowing in the headlamps as they slipped away.
She was still asleep now, her head against the leather seat. He got out of the motorcar and walked to the surgery door. Yesterday’s squalls had given way to cold sunlight, but the wind had dropped, and it felt warmer.
He knocked at the door, and the woman he’d seen before answered. “Come in. We weren’t expecting you today.”
“How is the patient? Miss Milford?”
“Calmer today.”
“Is the doctor available? I’d like to have him look at someone else.”
She had tried not to look at the cuts on his face. “The doctor has his own patients—” she began, but he cut across her words.
“This is a police matter. Will you ask the doctor to see me privately in his office? And Miss Milford is not to know I’m here. Or why. Do you understand?”
She nodded. And while she went to find Dr. Matthews, he went out to the motorcar, bundled the child in her blankets, and carried her quickly inside, directly to the office where the nurse was holding the door wide for him.
“Good God,” Matthews said. “Is that a child?”
“It is. Asleep from riding a very long distance in my motorcar. Will you examine her, please, and tell me what you find?”
Matthews looked at him questioningly, then took the bundle from him and spread out the blankets. The little girl sat up, sleepy and disoriented. Her face puckered to cry, but the doctor handed her the first thing that came to hand, a glass paperweight, and she began to examine it as he examined her.
After several minutes, he straightened, and keeping his voice low, he said, “She’s fit. She doesn’t say much, I can’t speak to her frame of mind, but she’s healthy, hasn’t been mistreated, and seems to be a bright little thing.” He gently took the paperweight out of her hands. “Doesn’t she have any toys? Clothes? And she needs a fresh nappy. I’ll see what my wife can do.”
He left the room, and Rutledge took his place by the desk as Tildy searched for a new distraction. She saw a photograph and reached for it. He picked it up and held it for her to see.
“Dog,” she said. And it was, a retriever, standing next to Matthews.
He picked up a pencil, then a pen, paper, whatever he could find on the desk, and she identified each object, reaching out for each in turn.
Matthews came back, a rag doll in his hand.
“Baby!” she exclaimed, and reached for it as well.
He changed her into clean clothes, then said, “What are you going to do with her?”
“Could you bring Miss Milford in here, please?” Ruth hadn’t seen Tildy in months. It had only been weeks since Susan Milford had seen her, assuming that it was true that she’d had the child in her care.
“I don’t think it
’s wise,” Dr. Matthews began.
But Rutledge told him bluntly, “I don’t have any choice. How else can I be sure who this child is? The woman who was caring for her didn’t even know who had brought her there. Or where she came from. She’s been told lies. And if this is the wrong child, I’ve got to start all over again.”
“But there’s her mother. Don’t you even know who her mother is?”
“Her mother hasn’t seen her for a very long time. She’s likely to want to believe what she sees. Bring in Miss Milford. Or I’ll go in search of her.”
Matthews, lips drawn in a tight, grim line, left him there. And several minutes later he knocked twice at the door, then swung it open.
Susan’s expression was grim and angry, and she was arguing with the doctor. But as she turned toward the room before her, her face changed, crumpling into tears. She stood there in the doorway, her gaze fixed on the child sitting on the desk, talking to the rag doll.
“You found her.” She breathed, her voice husky, and then, “Gwennie? Gwennie, love.”
The child looked at Rutledge, then turned toward the door. Her face lit up, and she tried to scramble to her feet, nearly pitching headfirst off the desk. He caught her, set her on the floor, and she ran toward Susan, clutching at her knees, laughing and holding on to her clothes.
Susan bent down to pick her up, winced, then sank on the floor instead and buried her face in the child’s hair, talking to her.
Rutledge didn’t stop them straightaway. Finally he asked quietly, “Why do you call her Gwennie?”
“It was my grandmother’s name. Gwendolyn,” she said. “Hastings told me she was called Matilda. It’s an ugly name, I didn’t care for it.”
“Sam called her Tildy.”
The child laughed and said, “Tildy.”
It was a reminder. As he’d meant it to be.
Susan pulled her close. “You can’t take her back. Not to Ruth. Please, no.”
“I don’t have an answer,” he said. “But you have no legal right to her.”
“I adopted her. From an orphans’ asylum.”
“But she was not an orphan. She had parents then.”
“Legally she’s Sam’s daughter. I’m his sister. Why can’t I be her guardian?”
“A solicitor will have to tell you what rights you have.” It was a way out of the heartbreak he could see coming. “I have to take her to Crowley. It’s my duty.”
In the end, he had to take Susan with him. Dr. Matthews was adamant. “I can’t have her upsetting my patients. Screaming the house down the minute you remove that child. I don’t envy you what’s to come. But I’ve done what I could for her injuries. Her own doctor can take her in charge now.”
“I have three calls to make in Shrewsbury. If I promise to take her with me when I return, can I leave both of them here for a short period of time?”
“Yes. Yes, all right.”
Rutledge didn’t think Susan Milford noticed that he was gone.
He made his three calls. First to Carson, to be sure that Donald Blake was still in custody—he was. And then he went to Chester, to take Alasdair Dale into custody.
He found him in his chambers. He hadn’t expected that.
If Dale was surprised to see him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he rose from his desk and said, “The more I tried to erase the past, the bloodier it got. Did Ruth survive? Yes? I’m glad.”
“You know why I’m here.”
“Yes. I’ve put my affairs in order. In a way, I’m glad it’s over, Ian. I’m tired.”
“Was it worth it? The engagement cost you dearly.”
“When I came back from France, nothing was the same. I couldn’t settle to being a provincial solicitor again. Then I met Cecily. I thought I would do rather well in London. It was exciting, that prospect. But Hastings had mentioned a child when he asked me to look at the father’s war record. I hadn’t said anything then—but I suspected she was mine when I realized it was Ruth’s husband and the date I was searching for was early 1917. What’s more, Hastings had gone on about the little girl’s hair. And he was right, you know. She’s very like my grandmother, and my father has the same coloring. Still, she had a home, and I was certain Cecily’s family wouldn’t—they are sticklers for propriety, you see, I’d have lost her and everything that I wanted so badly. I asked Hastings what the father was after, and he thought Milford wanted to find the little girl’s father, for a paternity suit. To help pay for that wretched pub. I’d already sent Ruth a family heirloom. I thought he wanted more.”
Hastings’s hand again, twisting the truth. Or perhaps, given his own lies, he couldn’t recognize honesty in others.
“Sadly, Milford only wanted his daughter back. He was afraid her father had taken her.”
“Was he?” Dale asked skeptically. He sighed. “By this time, the child had already been kidnapped. I’d helped Hastings locate her, I had a fair idea where Miss Milford had taken her. I thought that if the child disappeared forever, it would be for the best. There were people who might remember how friendly Ruth and I were in Ludlow. And Elaine had been dead for over a year before the child was born. I couldn’t pass her off as ours. I had to do something, so I went searching for her, and took her. And I was right—she was the image of my father and my grandmother. She had been a great beauty in her day, there were people who still remembered that. All my relatives—there would have been no doubt. And so I took everything out of that house in Beddgwian—everything. It was a perfect plan. Even Hastings was caught off guard. But Milford was tenacious—he wouldn’t give up. I told myself that I only needed to stop him, and all would be well. I’d killed in France. I knew how. But I couldn’t bring myself—so I found someone who would, and paid him instead. And then he wanted more money, for his silence. Just as the Turnbull woman did. They were easier to kill, in a way. I didn’t like either of them. Only it didn’t stop there, did it? You were meddling, and there was Hastings. I was sure he would guess who was behind what was happening. People who could point a finger at me, and ruin everything.” He shook his head. “I can’t stomach any more killing. I’m not a murderer.”
Rutledge looked at him. “Yet three people are dead because of you.”
“Only three?” Dale said wryly. “Well, they can only hang me once.” He moved the blotter on his desk this way and then that. “I broke off the engagement. I promised myself I would shoot myself before you came for me. The German pistol is in the drawer there. It would make matters easier for Cecily, at least. I found I couldn’t do it. Rather sad, isn’t it?”
He held out his wrists, walking around the desk toward Rutledge.
“I’ve made rather a mess of things, haven’t I?”
“Did you have no feelings for your daughter?” Rutledge asked as he brought out the handcuffs. Dale had avoided using her name.
“I am not a monster, Ian. I didn’t want to hurt her, just to make her disappear. She was all that stood between me and London. A few more months and I’d have been married, gone from here. All I needed was a little more time. I survived the war, somehow. I thought I could survive this as well. In the trenches, I was good at planning raids. It’s not all that different, planning what I had to do here. The point, in both instances, is not getting caught. I was good at that too. If it had been anyone but you, I’d have been all right.”
Rutledge led him out to where the Chester police were waiting. As soon as they had Dale in custody, he turned and walked away without a word. Sam Milford, he found himself thinking, had been worth ten of Alasdair Dale.
When he reached Shrewsbury, it was late, but he stopped at the Fenton house all the same. The man himself answered the door.
He watched tears fill the man’s eyes as he broke the news. They spilled over and ran down Fenton’s cheeks, but the man ignored them, unashamed.
“Well,” he said. “It’s true then. She’s safe, the wee one.” His voice was husky, and his gaze slid to the decanter of whisky on a side table. But he re
solutely turned back to Rutledge. “Thank you. I can shut that door now. My wife will be glad of it.”
He held out his hand, and Rutledge shook it.
The third call was to the solicitor Hastings. He was at home.
Rutledge spent more time there. He told the man what he thought of him, and what had happened. In that order.
“You’ve much to account for,” he ended. “If I could arrest you for your lies and misdirection, I would. But you’re a canny man, and you’d find a way out of it. The tragedy is that you haven’t learned anything from the pain and the grief and the deaths.”
Hastings met his gaze, but the man’s eyes were impossible to read. “Have I not?”
“I have found Tildy Milford. I’m going to recommend that she be made a ward of the courts, so that her future can’t be ruined by you or Susan or Ruth Milford.”
“A wise man.”
He couldn’t stop himself from asking the question that was still gnawing at him. He had to be sure, he already knew what he would soon be called upon to do. “Given what you knew about Susan Milford’s past, her instability, why did you trust her with a small child—and not any small child, her brother’s daughter?”
“I knew I could trust Susan not to talk. Where else could I have put Tildy with any guarantee of safety for the child and her protector?”
And yet he had shared that secret with the one man who should never have been told about Tildy.
“I have five inquests to arrange and see through to a finding. In Oswestry, in that village by the Dee, at the Aqueduct, at Crowley, and in Stockford. If I see your hand in any of them, I will have you disbarred.”
“You won’t see my hand. I have no reason to interfere.” He toyed with the letter opener beside the blotter. The one shaped like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. “I’m glad the child is safe. I was afraid he would kill her. Dale.”
“He didn’t. But he left her alone where no one knew her name, or where she’d come from, or what should be done with her. He abandoned her to whatever charity she could find. That was the ultimate cruelty.”
“Well. He was to marry another heiress. She has connections to the family at Trefor House. You won’t know where that is, of course.” His gaze traveled across the shelves of boxes against the room’s inner wall. “Dale’s first wife had money. More than his own family had had. It was a sound match. But he’s ambitious, and his fiancée could offer him money, social position in London, possibly a career in politics. I’d heard he was considering closing his chambers and joining a new one in the City.”