by Charles Todd
“No. That’s the trouble, you see. We know so little.”
“Yet you pretended to be him.”
Rutledge considered his answer. “If you hadn’t known her, I could leave and ask someone else, no harm done. It was better not to start rumors.”
“Yes, I see that.” Reluctantly she handed the photograph back to Rutledge. “I can’t believe—” She searched the pocket of her brown jumper and found a handkerchief. “Are you sure she didn’t suffer?”
“The doctor assured me that she hadn’t.”
“Who took the photograph? Was it you?”
“No. The Rector’s wife took it, in the event someone came looking for her. A photograph makes identification so much easier. They cleaned her clothes, dressed her in them, and buried her in the churchyard. It was done well.”
“Who killed her? Why was she killed? I don’t understand.”
“We don’t know. Not yet. That’s why I’m here.”
“She was so lovely. I don’t mean her features, I mean the person she was. In spite of all she’d witnessed, she wanted to help others. There were some who just wanted to forget. How could I blame them? And the world was tired of war, I don’t think anyone had the stomach for more, and most of the Armenians were already dead. In Paris, at the talks, we tried to make a difference. But it is never enough, is it?”
“Can you tell me anything about the officer who took her to hospital?”
“You don’t think—no, I can’t believe he would harm her. Most people would have hurried on by, leaving her there in the street, but he stopped to see what was wrong.”
“Do you think she confided in him? That he knew more than you learned about her? Was it possible he fell in love with her?”
“I have no way of knowing. She mentioned him a time or two, that’s all.”
And yet she had come to England.
“She had no husband, no children?”
“Sadly, I don’t know. She said her family was killed, she had no one to turn to. I didn’t ask—I should have, I should have asked her—but it wasn’t something she found it easy to talk about, and I never pressed her.”
“You said she wanted to help others.”
“She did speak about what she’d seen. Bodies in the streets, people forced to march whether they were ill or not, the abuse by the soldiers. No food for the children.” She shuddered. “Safe here in my home, I think about that sometimes. How very lucky we are.”
Rutledge left soon after. Mrs. Brooke-Davies had confirmed what Haldane had told him. She had added little more, except to identify the woman in the photograph.
He went back to the hotel where he’d used the telephone before, and he called Edwards at the War Office again.
“I need a little more information,” he began, when they were connected.
He could hear Edwards groan. “I thought I’d given you what you asked for.”
“This is about a serving officer. I need to know if he was on leave in Paris in the spring of 1916. On leave or convalescing.” He’d asked Haldane, but there hadn’t been an answer.
“Is he dead?” Edwards asked.
“No.”
“Why can’t you simply ask him?”
“He’s a person of interest in an inquiry. I’d rather not.”
“Oh, very well. Who is he?”
Rutledge told him.
There was a long silence at the other end of the line. He was beginning to think they had been disconnected, when Edwards spoke again.
“Ian. I know him. We served together for six months. Before I was invalided out and sent to fight at a desk.”
Rutledge swore.
“You can’t tell him about my query. You do understand that?”
“Yes, but—Ian, I can’t think why you couldn’t ask him? For God’s sake, he’s an officer at the Yard. I don’t feel right, doing this behind his back.”
Rutledge hesitated, then said, “Here’s the problem. If I go to him, I place him in a worse situation than yours. The thing is, he’ll know what it is I’m after, and he’ll know why. And it won’t be at one remove.”
“If it’s someone he served with, I can find that out for you. And leave Leslie out of it.”
“It isn’t that simple, Edwards.”
There was another long silence. Finally, Edwards said, “Look. I’ll do this. But you must keep me out of it. Do you hear? I don’t want to be involved.”
“Yes. I understand that.”
“Call me back tomorrow morning. But not before nine o’clock.”
“Thank you.”
But Edwards had already broken the connection.
There was more rain in the night, and fog was drifting up from the river as the temperature warmed slightly.
He hadn’t slept well. Hamish had been at him from midnight to almost dawn. And beneath the soft Scottish voice, his own thoughts kept him awake. Why had Leslie told him that he knew Karina?
Soon after dawn, he’d come awake with a start from dreaming about the Long Barrow, being shut in there with whatever it was that he’d felt, no torch, and no way out.
It was too much like coming to in the trenches after the shell had dropped on his position, and his company had died around him. The still-warm body of Hamish MacLeod above him, and the pocket of air between them dwindling. He’d known he was about to die, and it wasn’t the way he’d expected to go. Not a soldier’s death.
And yet he had also been ready, for in the blackness all around him, he could see nothing but Hamish’s eyes as he lay dying, waiting stoically for the coup de grâce, unable to speak, then finally whispering one word just before the revolver fired. Fiona . . .
He was still shaken later, as he left his motorcar on a side street and walked on to the hotel, mists swirling around him, dampening the sounds, making it impossible to see more than an arm’s length away.
He found the hotel’s doors, stepped into the sudden brightness of Reception, voices everywhere, people moving past him to the doors he’d just come through.
He strode through the guests toward the telephone, and found a woman in a dark blue walking dress already there before him. She looked up, glared at him, and turned away.
Trying to conceal his impatience, he moved back in the passage, to give her a little privacy.
The minutes ticked by. He’d arrived just after ten, but it was well after eleven before the woman put up the receiver, and as she walked past him, he saw angry tears glistening in her eyes.
Putting through the call to the War Office, he waited again before he was connected to Edwards.
The man’s first words were, “You’re late.”
“I can’t use the telephone at the Yard.”
“No, I see that.” He paused, the sound of rustling papers filling the silence. “It took me until midnight to find what you wanted to know. Leslie was wounded in the side, it healed, or so they believed, and then he ran a high fever, and the surgeons operated. He was sent to Paris to recover in the spring of ’16.”
“Spring? When in that spring?”
Edwards replied reluctantly, “March. Does it matter?”
“Yes. It damned well does.”
“All right, you have what you need now.”
“When in March?”
Silence. “Seventh March, to tenth April. The wound healed, but his return to service was delayed until he’d regained his full strength. Look, Rutledge, he was recuperating, and I don’t know how this could possibly be of interest now.”
“It’s possible he met someone during that stay in Paris. I need to know who it was.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” The relief in Edwards’s voice was palpable.
“It’s Yard business. I’m not at liberty to tell you anything more. You should know that. I shouldn’t have told you as much as I have. Consider yourself sworn to secrecy.”
“You can be a bastard sometimes, Ian.”
“I can’t conduct an inquiry on the front pages of
the Times.”
“I’m not the Times.” The connection was broken.
Rutledge put up the receiver. He hated the words circumstantial evidence. But that was still all he had.
He considered going back to Mrs. Brooke-Davies, but he knew she’d told him everything she could. The only other person who knew the truth was Leslie himself.
Karina was dead and couldn’t give evidence.
Mrs. Brooke-Davies. Edwards. Haldane. Even Radleigh’s sister. Pieces of the puzzle from all of them. But no one had the key to the whole.
He left the hotel and walked in the fog for more than an hour, trying to decide how to move forward. But by the time he’d circled back to his motorcar, he was no closer to an answer than he had been when he stepped from the bright lights of Reception into the gray world outside.
Hamish said, “Yon Constable in Avebury had no trouble declaring the deid soldier the murderer.”
As he turned the crank, Rutledge could see the face of Mrs. Underwood, Radleigh’s sister, refusing to believe Andy had died and left them with no hope.
He couldn’t leave that family thinking their son and brother had turned to murder.
Nor could he walk the passages of the Yard every day, meeting Leslie and knowing that the man was most probably a killer, and that he’d let him go free. He couldn’t face the quizzical look in Leslie’s eyes every time they met, wondering why he’d backed off from the truth.
He might as well tell Chief Superintendent Markham to take his letter of resignation out of his desk drawer and mark it Accepted.
And then—then, what would he do with his life?
16
Rutledge arrived at his flat to find a police Sergeant from the Metropolitan Police standing on his doorstep, just reaching for the brass knocker.
He left the motorcar, and as he started up the short walk, the Sergeant turned, considered him a moment, and then said, “You’re a hard man to find, sir.”
“I’m in the middle of an inquiry,” Rutledge answered, and left it at that.
“You didn’t mention to Constable Fuller that you were with the Yard.” It was an accusation, couched politely.
“I didn’t think it was important at the time. I was concerned for the woman. She died as we watched.”
“All the same, it would have helped us find you for your statement.”
“Yes, I apologize, Sergeant. But Constable Fuller failed to remind me when I encountered him some days later. Not that that’s my excuse. Have you found the driver?”
“No, sir, we have not. Just the motorcar. And the owner can prove he wasn’t driving it at the time of the accident. He doesn’t know who could have taken it from the mews, then abandoned it later. We have only the time that Mrs. FitzPatrick was struck.”
“The mews. Did you speak to the other owners who keep their motorcars there?”
“We have, and they swear they never touched the vehicle we know to be involved. We were wondering, sir, if you’ve remembered anything at all about the driver. Anything would be useful.”
“I’m sorry, the motorcar was moving fast when it suddenly appeared out of the mist.”
“A pity. Thank you, sir. And you’ll come down to the station at your earliest convenience to provide us with a formal statement.”
“I will. Thank you, Sergeant.”
He touched his helmet in salute and was just walking away when Rutledge called him back.
“Tell me, how many of the motorcars in that mews are alike?”
“Odd that you should ask, sir. There are three that are very similar. Small differences of course, but not at first glance. Well, it was a popular model, wasn’t it, just before the war? There’s no doubt we have the right vehicle. You need only look at the damage, sir.”
“I take your point, Sergeant. Just a thought.”
“Thank you, sir.” He nodded and walked on to where a bicycle stood against one of the plane trees.
But it was more than a thought. The mews was not watched, and if he himself had planned to do some mischief with a motorcar, he’d not use his own. It required nothing more than a familiarity with the crank.
Rutledge waited until the Sergeant had pedaled out of sight, and went back to his own motorcar.
The Metropolitan Police were pleased that he’d stopped in to give his statement in the death of Mrs. FitzPatrick. It took no more than half an hour. But Rutledge made it clear that the motorcar was traveling at a high rate of speed in poor visibility.
He reread what he’d written and then signed and dated it. The young Constable who had sat in the little room with him, observing him write out his statement, took it from him, then thanked him for doing his duty.
“Where is the motorcar now?”
“We have it still, sir. The owner’s asking for it to be returned, and I expect he’ll have his way sooner rather than later.”
“Could I see the motorcar? It might jog my memory.” It was what had brought him here.
The Constable hesitated, then said, “You’re at the Yard, sir. I wouldn’t let anyone else see it.”
And he took Rutledge to where the motorcar was being held. The wind had come up, shredding the mist as it brought in colder air.
Buttoning up his coat, he walked around the vehicle.
He could see why he’d thought it was Leslie’s. There was a dark green rug on the rear seat, matching the dark green paint of the exterior, and a slightly paler wood had been used in the interior paneling. Otherwise it could have been Leslie’s black chassis—or his own dark red motor. He examined the damaged wing, then shook his head. “Sorry. It doesn’t help.”
Leaving the station, he could smell the river as the wind shifted again.
He sat in his motorcar for several minutes, staring out at the pedestrians hurrying along, heads down, gloved hands holding on to hats.
He’d done what he could to track Karina’s movements in London. Looked at the left luggage at Victoria, and shown her photograph at Paddington. Visited the more likely small hotels for women traveling alone. Spoken to the stationmaster in Marlborough.
He was beginning to think he had run out of leads. And that would leave him unable to prove what he suspected.
Hamish said, “There’s yon valise.”
But he hadn’t been able to show that she had taken the train to Marlborough. And so he hadn’t questioned whether or not she had her valise with her. Or if she had left it there.
He would have to go back there and find out. If only to satisfy himself. And Markham’s eagle eye for any lapse.
It was late when he left his motorcar just by the station. The older stationmaster was again on duty. There were no trains expected for the next half hour, and he was sitting in the tiny office, finishing his dinner.
Rutledge tapped on the door when he had failed to find the man on the platform or in the waiting room.
After a moment he opened it, napkin in hand, a bit of food at the corner of his mouth. “Can I help you, sir?”
He began with the unidentified woman. “Do you have a room for left luggage?”
“Hardly a room, sir. A closet. What is it you care to leave?”
“I’d like to examine the other pieces of luggage, if you please.”
He took out his identification and handed it to the stationmaster. The man peered at it, frowned, and said, “If I’m not mistaken, you were here before. I can’t say that I remember why. I don’t know that I should let you look at what’s there. It’s rather irregular.”
“I’m searching for a valise that might have belonged to a woman who was murdered in Avebury.”
The stationmaster’s eyebrows rose. “Murdered, you say?”
“I’m afraid so.”
But the man didn’t move. “The left luggage?” Rutledge reminded him, and the stationmaster went back to his desk, took out a key from the top drawer, and said, “This way, then.”
The room was indeed no more than an overly large closet, occupied at the moment with a br
oom, a pail, and a feather duster.
And one valise. Brown leather, well cared for, of a size that a woman might carry for herself, rather than ask for a porter.
There was a torn piece of stationery wrapped around the handle.
Rutledge unwound it and read the words printed there.
Left luggage. Katherine Smith. To be called for.
Below that, a date had been hastily scribbled. He couldn’t make it out at first, but after holding the scrap of paper under a lamp, he deciphered it.
It was the night of the murder.
Who else could it be but Karina? he thought. But aloud Rutledge said, “This appears to be what I’m after. I’ll take it with me.”
The stationmaster said, “I’m not sure—you must sign a receipt for it.”
“Yes, all right.” He followed the man back to the tiny office, waited while he searched in a drawer for paper, and then pulled the inkwell and a pen past the tray with his dinner, and offered them to Rutledge.
He signed the piece of paper, noting the name on the torn bit of stationery, the date left, and the present date and time. “No one called for this valise?”
“No, sir. As you see.”
Finally satisfied, the stationmaster peered at the sheet, nodding in satisfaction, and was already back in his chair, tucking his napkin under his chin as Rutledge shut the door.
Valise in hand, he walked back to his motorcar and set it in the boot. Then he went to the hotel nearest the station. It was small, but popular with travelers coming in on the train.
The man behind the desk at Reception was not busy. Rutledge showed him his identification, gave him the date he was after, and the name, Katherine Smith.
“Let me see.” Flipping pages in the ledger kept under the desk, he ran his finger down several of them before he found what he was looking for. “No one by that name, I’m afraid.”
Rutledge tried to think. “Apparently Katherine used her friend’s name instead. Karina—I’m sorry, I don’t have her last name.”