by Charles Todd
“Ah, yes. Yes, here we are. A room booked by a telegram from London. Late arrival on the London train. Karina Leslie.”
He found it nearly impossible to hide his surprise. “So she kept the booking?”
“Yes, indeed. Paid in full, and transportation from the station. It’s all here. Including the relevant telegram.”
Rutledge said, “Does it indicate when she arrived?”
“It says ‘Hold for late arrival.’ It would have been waiting for her at any time after six in the evening.”
And the London train was several hours later than six. It fit.
“You’re quite sure she arrived?”
“Yes, certainly. I do see she didn’t have breakfast here. It was included, of course.”
“Please be sure. She did arrive to take that room that night.”
“It was paid for, sir. She had only to sign the register and take her key.” He pulled out the register, opened it to the date in question, and ran his finger down the names there. After a moment, he looked up, concern in his gaze. “There must be some mistake, sir. I don’t—see for yourself. She appears not to have signed in.”
Leaving Marlborough behind, he drove on to Avebury. The night was quiet, the pub had closed, and there was no one about when he took the stairs to his room, his own valise in hand.
Five minutes later, he went down again and brought back Katherine Smith’s.
Shutting the door, he lit the lamp, put it on the table by the bed, and looked at the note again. It had been scribbled in haste. That was all it could tell him.
Why had Karina decided to leave her valise at the railway station? Assuming he was right, and this was her valise. Had she brought it, expecting to go to the hotel, and there had been a last-minute change of plans?
She must have done it quickly and quietly, shoving it inside the station waiting room while the hysterical woman from the train was being dealt with. After that, she’d disappeared.
Hamish said, “It’s no’ wise to leap to conclusions. Ye canna’ be sure it’s no’ Katherine Smith’s.”
“Then she shouldn’t have left it there in the closet for all this time,” he replied, already examining the case.
He tried the locks. First one and then the other opened, and after the briefest hesitation, he lifted the lid of the valise.
Her clothing was scented by a very feminine perfume, the small vial wrapped in a handkerchief to prevent it from breaking and spilling.
Spreading each item out carefully on his bed, Rutledge lifted out three changes of clothing, undergarments, a pair of shoes, a nightgown and robe, stockings, hand lotion and face powder, three more handkerchiefs, and a small silk purse for jewelry.
There were earrings, a bracelet, and a locket. He opened the locket. A small child’s face looked back at him from the photograph inside. A boy, smiling shyly. It was hard to judge his age when this was taken. Two? Three? The edges of the photograph were yellowing slightly, as if it had been cut from a larger one, to fit into the locket. Dark haired, like his mother, and the face oval, like hers.
Rutledge stared at it, trying to see if the child favored Leslie at all. But if he were honest, there was nothing to indicate who the father was.
He had no doubt now. This was Karina’s valise. He put the jewelry back in the little silk purse, and lifted out the last item, in the very bottom, under everything else.
Wrapped in another handkerchief, it was a packet of letters.
Rutledge whistled under his breath.
There were eight of them, and they were addressed to Karina Larchian, with a street address in Rouen.
KL. The initials he’d seen on the compact in her purse.
He felt like a voyeur, but he took one of them out and stared at it.
The handwriting was familiar. He recognized it. Hell, how many times had he gone over the handwritten report that Chief Inspector Leslie had turned in about the Avebury inquiry? And the return address was his as well.
Rutledge had chosen one at random, and now he opened it and began to read. It was dated from August of last year.
My darling Karina,
I have been traveling across England, as you can imagine, and so I’ve had very little time to write. But I am well, and hope there will be a letter from you waiting for me on my return.
There is very little news, I’m afraid. Work occupies much of my time. And I’m grateful for that. It helps me forget. It has rained heavily here. My wife and I took a holiday to Cornwall, and we were kept indoors for most of it. She has friends in Truro, and she stayed three days with them, leaving me to fend for myself. I didn’t mind. The cottage had a small library, and there was a Kipling and a Conan Doyle to keep me company. Of course I had with me my little volume of French verse, the one you gave me. It’s a constant reminder of you, and it goes wherever I go.
Are you safe, there in Rouen? Is there anything you need? My darling, I’d do anything for you, anything to keep you safe, as you must surely know.
I was walking in the garden last evening, thinking of you, and the nightingale that sings from the pear tree was awake and addressing the moon. I stood there and listened to him for quite some time, then went in and got ready for bed. But I couldn’t sleep, remembering Paris. Have you been back there to visit? A few of your friends must be there. Still, it must be very lonely for you now. I wish I could do something to make you happier. I’d come to you if I could, you know that. But leave is impossible, and how would I explain myself? It would break her heart, and so I must break my own instead. I don’t know how our lives turned out this way. I never expected to love you. I try to be a good husband, I try to forget.
With all my love,
Brian
Rutledge sat there, looking at the letter in his hand. This was a side of Leslie he’d never seen.
The war had changed all of them, he thought, in ways that none of them had anticipated. Leslie had been quieter since France, but then so had he. The burden of memory, for one thing, four years of one’s life spent in a place it was impossible to describe to someone who hadn’t been there. It was as if time had stood still for those who hadn’t gone to war, and speeded up for those who had. And the gap between was nearly impossible to bridge.
He himself seemed to have spent every waking hour struggling to conceal his shell shock from the world, and that battle had consumed him since June of 1919.
Had Leslie been haunted by a love affair that had had no future? Who could he speak to about Karina, who would understand how a man might find comfort on the brink of battle, or a few hours of forgetting after it, and been torn between the wife he’d left safely in England, and the woman who had given him a little peace when he desperately needed it?
How much had Leslie’s wife guessed? More to the point, why had Karina decided to come to England?
The next letter was dated in November 1919. The earliest letter, he realized, looking at the postmark.
My dearest Karina,
It has been nearly a year since I left France. It feels more like an eternity. Dear God, I swore I wouldn’t write, and then your letter came, and all my resolve failed me.
I’m so sorry you had to leave Paris, I know the memories it holds for both of us. But you’ll be happier in Rouen. I hope you’ll be safe there. The town has changed with the war. But Peter is buried there, and that will bring some comfort.
I must leave straightaway for Hereford and an inquiry there. Write to me if there is anything you need, anything that I can do. You have only to ask.
I am well, and so relieved to know that all is well with you. I’ve had nightmares of worry for you. Thank you for the new direction. I will keep it safe.
I don’t need to tell you how very much I’ve missed you. How much I’ve wanted to come back to you. But my place is here now, I mustn’t look back.
Always, always,
Brian.
This letter was different in tone from the first one he’d read. The ache of longing was tender, m
oving. As if he had meant what he said about still loving Karina.
The rest of the letters were very like the one he’d read first, from August 1920. And a slightly false note had crept in. As if Leslie was tiring of her letters, yet feeling he must answer. But then he had been back in England longer by 1920, back with his wife, back at the Yard, his life following the path it would have followed if the war had never happened. As if he’d found contentment in that and the intensity, the passion of his love for Karina, slowly fading into a past love. Almost as if he was already regretting replying to that first letter, yet didn’t quite know how to end the correspondence—or the relationship itself. And at the same time feeling some responsibility for this woman who had shared moments of his life that his wife would never understand.
It happened—wartime affairs were not uncommon. They were passionate and real at the time, and then a man came home to the sanity of peace, and the excitement faded, the feelings that had burned so desperately when death seemed to be waiting in the next dawn attack felt more like madness than love.
And yet the final letter, far from proving that point, was a cry of despair.
It was dated in January of this year.
My darling,
I am not well. I’ve tried to keep it from you, but that’s no longer possible. My doctor tells me there’s not much hope, and I don’t have a great deal of time left. I can’t bear to die, without seeing you a last time. I’m not well enough to travel to you. You must come to me. I’ll see that she doesn’t know. I’ll make it possible somehow. Trust me not to hurt her or you.
I am trying to work as long as I can. There isn’t much pain, thank God, and I have been able to keep my illness from the Yard.
Will you come? Oh, my love, will you come to me one last time?
Brian
And she had come.
Rutledge dropped the letter onto the bed with the others.
Was Brian Leslie ill—dying? Tired, yes, Rutledge had noticed that. But he had seen too many men who were dying. He found it hard to believe. Leslie hadn’t lost weight, or gained excessively. His color was good, his stride hadn’t changed, his conversations at the Yard had never given the impression that he was worried or brooding or even in pain. He’d spoken of the future with enthusiasm on several occasions, and it hadn’t been feigned. But then he’d successfully hidden a love affair too, hadn’t he?
Be careful. She wasn’t a whore.
And yet he’d killed her.
Had he lied, to lure Karina here? Not with false promises, but with a lie that he must have known would bring her to him.
Rutledge spread the letters out and read each one again. Nine in all, from November 1919, to seven throughout last year, the final one this year.
Why had she kept replying? She must have done, judging by his responses.
He tried to see the letters through her eyes. All alone in Rouen, with only memories and the grave of someone called Peter. She had kept replying because she had loved him so deeply that she’d read what she’d wanted to hear in his letters. And the last one had brought her to England, because she needed to say goodbye.
Could Peter be the child she’d had earlier? That could explain why she’d come to England alone, without him. But who was the father? Leslie? Was a dead child the powerful tie between them?
And what if, in her replies, she’d been pressing him to come back to her? Threatening to come to England and expose him?
Was this what had changed his love? She could have destroyed everything he’d come home to. A divorce would have stopped his gradual rise through the ranks at the Yard. Chief Inspector . . .
Into the silence, Hamish spoke. “Ye ken, there’s Meredith Channing. She chose her ain husband, as Leslie chose his ain wife.”
“It’s not the same,” Rutledge answered him.
“Is it no’? Don’t be blinded too.”
Outside, a cold rain pelted the windows, and not long afterward, the sharp pinpoints of sleet danced against the panes for a time before turning back to rain.
In a way, hadn’t Markham been right? Wasn’t this a similar situation to the one he’d dealt with in Tern Bridge? Stripped of its names, looking only at the letters he’d just read, here was a married man who’d had a relationship of some sort with another woman, and in the end, he’d been forced to choose. And in both instances, the other woman had had to die.
The difference was, Dr. Allen and Miss Palmer had been strangers, he hadn’t known her for years. He had viewed the circumstances objectively, and in the end, found the guilty party. He knew the Leslies. He’d worked with and respected the abilities of a colleague. And that had clouded the inquiry from the start. Along with Leslie’s cleverness.
Brian Leslie had been reluctant to take the Avebury inquiry. He’d done his best to shift it to someone else. And in the end, he’d been the policeman investigating his own crime, and he’d managed the inquest with all the skill born of long experience.
Like Miss Palmer, perhaps Karina had cared more for her killer than he had for her.
Rutledge considered the letters before him. He needed to see the replies that Karina had written to Leslie. He needed to compare what he had seen in these with what she had said, how she had said it. He needed to ask for a search warrant to find Karina’s letters.
But would Markham agree to that? Very likely he’d be furious that a finger was pointing at the Yard.
His hands were tied.
Rutledge began to collect the letters and put them back as he’d found them. “I can build a case,” he said aloud to Hamish. “There are holes in the fabric of it, but it works. And Leslie had killed Radleigh in cold blood, a man who hadn’t done anything to deserve that death. It bars him for any consideration on my part. He should have left well enough alone, let Constable Benning think Mrs. Shelby was a busybody, seeing shadows where there were none.”
Did that mean Leslie believed Rutledge was coming too close?
Hamish said, “Ye ken, he had to outwit ye. There was the hangman.”
17
The rain was still coming down in the morning, but not as heavily as it had done in the night.
Rutledge had one stop to make after leaving Wiltshire. It was more than a little out of his way, but he knew he could make up the time, driving.
And it was urgent.
That done, he set out for Haldane’s house, where he was told the man had just finished his breakfast and was in his study.
Rutledge was taken there, and as Haldane looked up, his expression changed slightly.
“What’s happened?” he asked. Then, “You don’t need the name of Leslie’s enemy, do you?”
“The enemy of my enemy? No. I found letters instead. They confirmed that Leslie knew the dead woman.”
After a moment Haldane said, “I’m sorry.”
“I have only one half of the correspondence. I don’t have her letters to him. I may be reading too much into what he wrote to her.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“He’s an officer of the Yard.”
“It doesn’t matter what he does for a living. He’s a man. Is he capable of murder, do you think?”
Rutledge took a deep breath. “I don’t care to think it. But I do.”
Haldane opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, scanned what was written on it, then handed it to Rutledge.
Taking it, Rutledge began to read it.
A Sergeant Tiller had served with Major Leslie for the better part of two campaigns, and he had been questioned in 1916 by the police in Paris about an incident that he had witnessed while he was convalescing there.
I recognized him, of course I did. But that was afterward. He was walking down a side street near the Madeleine, and there was a spot of trouble ahead of him. I didn’t know who he was, I was hanging back, me with my knee only half healed. But he went for them when he saw what they was doing, and he damned near killed both of them. They couldn’t have been more than
lads, but they was throwing stones at something lying in the street. When I saw the police coming, I was out of there quick. The two lads were down by then, I heard one of them screaming his arm was broke, but he paid no attention. He picked up whatever it was lying there, and walked on. I thought it was only some old rags. I didn’t know until later it was a person. A refugee, nearly dead of hunger. I’d have done the same, if I’d known. There’s a lot of them about, begging on the streets when they can, I’ve seen them. Sorry sights, I grant you, but what can one body do?
Rutledge looked up. “This is when Leslie found Karina.”
“The police never knew who it was, lying in the street. Leslie claimed he bought the man some food, it revived him enough that he was able to go on his way. But it wasn’t a man, was it? He must have known she was afraid of being discovered. As Mrs. Brooke-Davies must have confirmed. The police apparently let the matter drop, once Tiller gave his evidence. If they interviewed Leslie, there’s no record of it.”
“How did the police discover that Tiller was a witness?”
“An anonymous tip.”
“Leslie, do you think?”
“Yes. The lads—they were drunk, it seems—described their attacker, and the police put out a request for any witnesses. Tiller had been talking about what he’d seen. I don’t know how Leslie found out, but during the fight, he might have seen someone else on the street, a British uniform, and kept an ear to the ground.”
“How did you come by a copy of this?”
Haldane smiled. “I have my sources.”
“It’s odd that he saved her life, only to take it.”
“Murder, as you yourself must surely know, depends on what one has to gain from it—one way or the other. There would be consequences if she reappeared in his life now. It was different during the war. Back in England, with a wife and the respect of his position at the Yard, he had more to gain from murder.” Haldane took the paper that Rutledge held out to him, then said quizzically, “The question now is, what can you do about Chief Inspector Leslie?”