Proof of Guilt (19 page)

The hooded eyes considered him. “We have handled no such case for the French family.”

Again that twist of words that solicitors could offer so easily in place of whatever truth they possessed.

Perhaps there was no love child.

But then again, Hayes could be right. Howard French’s father had dealt with the matter on his own, and quite successfully, leaving no records for the future to find. Was that how French himself had learned to deal equally successfully with Afonso Diaz?

“I’ve a dead man and the motorcar that ran him down. But he isn’t French. Who is he? I wish I knew. When I do, I’ll know whether Gooding and his granddaughter or Afonso Diaz is responsible for his death. It would save time—and a great deal of misery for everyone—if you would deal honestly with me,” Rutledge said. He rose and walked to the door.

Hayes made no move to stop him.

R
utledge left his motorcar and walked through the City, aimlessly for the most part.

He had stepped out of bounds, speaking to Belford. And he had more or less coerced Hayes into finding out what he wanted to know. But he’d meant what he said to the solicitor. That going through channels would take six months. He didn’t have six months. Hayes could find the answer in a matter of days. He’d dealt with the solicitor in Funchal before, and while a request to know the contents of the elder Diaz’s Will would appear to be rather odd, Rutledge was sure that Hayes could couch it in terms that seemed reasonable.

And if Rutledge found that Diaz could pay, that murder for hire was possible, then how he had obtained the information was less important than its impact.

Turning, he retraced his steps to the motorcar, the sun warm on his back, his mind clearer. Except for Hamish, whose Covenanter soul was never comfortable with supping with the devil.

Chapter Sixteen

H
is forty-eight hours at an end, Rutledge presented himself at the door of Markham’s office and, after the briefest hesitation, resolutely knocked.

“Come,” the Acting Chief Superintendent said, his tone of voice indicating that he was busy.

Rutledge stepped inside the door. “Inspector Rutledge reporting, sir,” he said when Markham didn’t immediately look up.

When he did, he pushed back his chair and gestured to the one opposite. “That business in Staffordshire? The police there found the murderer this morning, just before dawn. He was asleep, mind you. Soundly asleep after what he’d done. I can’t fathom it, can you?”

As he knew next to nothing about events in Staffordshire, Rutledge could offer only “No, sir.”

“Well,” Markham said, setting aside the papers in front of him. “What are we to do about Essex?”

“I’ve told you my feeling on that score, sir. We should investigate Diaz.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve made that clear. But I think we must act on what we know, rather than speculate about an old man’s dreams of vengeance. I looked over your interview of the doctor at the clinic. He saw no reason to keep the man locked up. And he’s the professional viewpoint. I don’t hold with all this mumbo jumbo from Austria, delving into a man’s mind. But the good doctor has dealt with Diaz for what? Years? And I should think that by now he’d know Diaz better than his own mother and possibly more objectively. We must accept his opinion and go forward from there.”

He reached for a file, opened it, and went on. “Did Gibson tell you? The trunk in Portsmouth is empty of bodies. It contained the clothing of a gentleman traveling home. But that was good thinking on your part. A clever way to take a body off the ship without being noticed. But I’d like to know. If Traynor had been in that trunk, who killed him? Gooding was on shore, mind you. He couldn’t have done it. Would you lay the killing at Diaz’s door?”

“He hasn’t left Surrey. But I should think he could have had murder done.”

“If that had been the case, I’d be forced to agree with you. But Traynor was not in that trunk, and he isn’t aboard the ship. And Gooding was intending to meet him when he arrived in England.”

“Put that way, I must agree with you.”

“Yes. So here we are. Mr.Traynor missing. Gooding very likely the last person to see him alive. And once Traynor is quietly out of the picture, Gooding can turn his attention to ridding himself of French, if he hasn’t already. What we don’t know is how involved the granddaughter is. Certainly it appears that she had driven French’s motorcar at some point. To the quarry, most likely. And then she went home with her bicycle, only she was clever enough not to claim it at the other end of the line. She could walk home if need be. Less likely to be noticed, I should think.”

Rutledge could find no fault with Markham’s reconstruction of events. And presented in such a way, almost in the same way a K.C. would open his remarks to the jury, it sounded imminently logical.

Rutledge found himself thinking that Markham should have read law. He would cut an impressive figure, summing up for the prosecution.

He said, “It is most certainly possible. But what if we’re wrong? What if this isn’t the way it happened? The killer could have met Traynor as he disembarked, told him that Gooding had sent him, and Traynor would have gone with him without suspicion. There are a dozen dark stretches of road or a small wood where the driver could have killed Traynor and disposed of the body. Everyone would assume that Traynor was still in Lisbon awaiting a ship sailing for London. As they did.”

“Are you suggesting that we should search Hampshire for his body?”

It was useless to argue about what Markham had already decided was the train of events.

“It would be prudent to discover if there were any unsolved homicides on the road north from Portsmouth.”

“As we have no body, I’m agreeable to that request.”

That was the only concession Rutledge could wring from the Acting Chief Superintendent.

Rutledge left Markham’s office with instructions to take Gooding into custody forthwith, on suspicion of the murder of the partners of his firm. And Miss Whitman was to be taken into custody as an accomplice.

Relieved—for if she was convicted on that charge, she would be spared hanging—he left the Yard and drove directly to French, French & Traynor.

When he was ushered by a junior clerk into Gooding’s office, the man rose from his chair and said, “I can tell by your expression. You’ve come to take me into custody.”

“I have no choice, Gooding. We are searching for Traynor’s body in Hampshire, and I have asked Hayes and Hayes to look into the Last Will and Testament of Afonso Diaz’s father, to see whether he was disinherited or not.”

“And Valerie? What’s to become of her?”

“She is to be taken into custody as an accomplice.”

Gooding sat down heavily. “No. She cannot go to prison. I won’t allow it.”

“There’s nothing you can do.”

“There is.” He reached into his desk drawer and drew out several sheets of paper. Taking up a pen, he began to write without hesitation, as if he’d already planned what to say. When he had finished and signed at the bottom of what he’d written, he passed it to Rutledge. “A full confession,” he said. “See for yourself.”

And it was. Gooding admitted to killing Lewis French, transporting him in his own motorcar to the quarry in Surrey, and, having struck a man walking along the road because it was late and he was very tired, deciding to use the man as a decoy. He also admitted to having killed Matthew Traynor, meeting his ship, taking him to a place where no one could hear his cries, and throttling him, as he had French. He ended the statement,
I have acted alone throughout. I did these things because I had worked very hard for this firm most of my adult life, and I felt when the partners got together here in England, they were planning to replace me and give the position to a younger man.

Rutledge said, “Is any of this true?”

Gooding smiled, but Rutledge couldn’t read it.

He thought,
Two old men, Diaz and Gooding. It would be easy enough to walk away, accept the statement at face value—

Hamish cried,
“ ’Ware!”
just as Gooding reached into the drawer a second time.

Rutledge was already across the desk, his left hand clamping down hard on Gooding’s right wrist and his other hand holding the drawer only half open.

Gooding cried out from the pain but fought hard. The door behind Rutledge burst open, the junior clerk who had admitted him rushing into the room.

“The revolver—in the drawer
. Get it,
” Rutledge ordered.

The clerk stopped short, staring at the two men, Rutledge awkwardly across the desk, Gooding struggling to free his hand and pull the drawer wider.

“Get it,”
Rutledge ordered again, this time in the voice that had commanded frightened men going into battle.

The clerk ran forward, came between them as Rutledge let go of the drawer, and reached inside. His face was white, his hand shaking, but his eyes went to Rutledge’s face as his fingers touched whatever lay inside.

Gooding gave up the struggle then, leaning back in his chair, his eyes closed.

The clerk pulled out a revolver, an older one but just as lethal as if it had come from the Front. He was handling it so gingerly that Rutledge could see Gooding gathering himself to reach for it, his eyes flying open and almost black with his determination. Rutledge took the revolver out of the clerk’s trembling hand and flung himself back across the desk, nearly tripping over his own chair before he got his feet under him again.

Gooding said, rubbing his wrist where Rutledge could see the white marks of his fingers turn slowly to red, “It’s easier than hanging.”

Angry, Rutledge replied, “It is. You should have done it before I walked into the room.”

Smiling wryly, Gooding said, “I had hoped . . .”

He didn’t handcuff the man. He said, “You must come with me.”

Gooding took his statement, folded it properly, and asked the junior clerk to find him an envelope. He exchanged it for his ring of keys and slid the statement inside. Handing it to Rutledge, he said, “For God’s sake, let us go.”

He started for the door. The junior clerk, still standing by the desk, said to Gooding, “But, sir—please, sir!”

Rutledge said, “Put in a telephone call to Miss French. Tell her what’s happened.”

He followed Gooding down the passage and outside to the motorcar.

Without a word, the man got in and waited for Rutledge to turn the crank.

As they were driving through the City, Rutledge said, “You know that if you’ve lied, it will be found out—because the bodies are not where you tell us they are.”

“If I were dead, the police would assume that I’d taken their resting place with me. It was the way I’d planned it.”

Naïve, yes, but with the case closed, would the Yard continue to put men and time into the search for the dead? Miss French could of course keep up the pressure to find the bodies of her brother and her cousin, but in the end, it would be one of the unanswered questions of the Yard’s history.

Gooding alive could be questioned over and over again. Tripped and confused, he might inadvertently cast doubt on his granddaughter’s innocence, on what she could have known, and leave her increasingly vulnerable. He would have to keep a clear head, he would have to keep his wits sharp, and it would mean walking a very thin, dangerous line to convict himself and not Valerie.

Hamish said, “If he had shot himsel’, ye would blame yoursel’.”

And Rutledge would have done, because he didn’t have the evidence to clear Gooding.

“But are ye thinking o’ the lass, or the grandfather?”

Gooding said, “Will you speak to Valerie? The police will tell her terrible things and frighten her with threats. I don’t suppose they will let me see her. Tell her—tell her that I love her very much, and that I did what I did for the sake of the firm.”

“I don’t expect they will let me go back to Essex. If I do, I’ll tell her.”

“Yes. Well. It can’t be helped.” Scotland Yard was just ahead. “What will you do now?”

“Go where I am sent.” Rutledge debated, then said, “If you know where the bodies of French and Traynor are buried, tell them. Or they will use Miss Whitman as a lever. Is her father still alive?”

“Sadly, no. He died somewhere off the coast of Ireland a month before the war ended. And his brother died in France. He was a doctor. His heart gave out.”

There was no one, then, to help her.

“I’ll do my best,” Rutledge promised.

“She isn’t guilty. Whatever value you may give to the handkerchief as a clue, she did nothing.” Gooding was speaking rapidly now, trying to say what had to be said before the motorcar stopped. “She had no reason to kill Traynor.”

They were at their destination.

Rutledge got out and helped his prisoner out of the motorcar. He seemed to have aged in the time it had taken to drive to the Yard, his feet stumbling over the verge as he tried to put a good front on what was being done to him.

Rutledge made a note to ask for a suicide watch.

And then he opened the door, nodded to the Duty Sergeant, and began the process of charging Gooding with murder.

Chapter Seventeen

W
hen it was done, when Gooding had been led away, Rutledge went to his office and sat down to look out at the street.

He believed that Markham was trying hard, trying to clear each case as quickly and efficiently as possible. But the city of York was different from the city of London, where the Yard dealt not only with its serious crimes but with those of the country as well.

Hamish said, “What if ye’re wrong, and Gooding is the man ye’re after?”

“There may be a way to find out.”

Rutledge rose and left the Yard, driving toward the southern outskirts, through Surrey, and to the Bennetts’ estate.

He found Mrs. Bennett in the house, the game of croquet long since over, whatever photographs taken and, for all he knew, presently in whatever newspapers had agreed to carry such a story. He himself had seen nothing about it.

She welcomed him, saying that he had come in time for tea and ringing the bell for it.

Rutledge listened once more to her philosophy of helping those who had paid their debts and deserved a second chance to make amends for whatever wrong they had done society and resume a proper role in it.

He said, “Most of these men have a criminal past. Mr. Diaz was in an asylum for attacking two men in their house, while children slept above. He chose not to take up his grievance with them through legal channels. Instead he came armed with a knife and demanded that they deal with him directly. In short, he wanted more than the two men could offer him. He wanted revenge, not justice.”

“I expect it was no better nor worse than the other cases. He couldn’t understand the language, you see, and was probably as frightened as they were when he confronted them. He’s gentle as a lamb now, he loves the gardens, he works so well with Bob. It’s time to put the past away and let him live out his years in comfort. I won’t allow you to hound him, make him confront the younger man he was.”

As if Diaz had done such things as a boy, too young to control temper or bad judgment.

Mrs. Bennett was completely blind to the truth, to what these men were and what they were capable of. Rutledge wondered how her staff viewed her—as a gullible fool they could manipulate or as someone who believed in them. She was counting on gratitude, and it was her bulwark against reality. Why her husband permitted her to go on with this program he couldn’t fathom, unless she controlled him as well.

He said, “I’d like to speak to Diaz once more.”

“No, I shan’t allow you to badger him. He is on my property, he is behaving himself, and I see no reason to bring back the past he’s worked so hard to live down.”

“I don’t wish to badger him, Mrs. Bennett. I should like to tell him that a man has been taken into custody for the crimes I thought he could have committed. It’s only fair that I do so.”

She frowned. “In that case, I’ll have him brought to the house.”

“I think I can find him myself. You needn’t disturb the rest of your staff.”

It took some persuasion, another five or six minutes, but in the end, she let him have his way.

And Rutledge went looking for Diaz.

Hamish said, “If he’s the gardener, ye ken, he could ha’ buried a dozen men in yon flower beds, and none the wiser.”

“God forbid! I shouldn’t like to ask the Acting Chief Superintendent for permission to dig them up.”

Hamish chuckled. “Ye willna’ have a choice.”

Diaz was working in the park leading up to the house, some distance from the drive.

He stopped as he saw Rutledge approaching. The heavy secateurs he was using to lop off dead branches were easily able to cut through the flesh and bone of a man’s arm. He lowered them and waited.

“Where is Bob today? I thought he was your hands,” Rutledge asked in greeting.

“He’s taken the first load of brush down to the fire.” Diaz looked up at the sky. “A fine day for burning. It will rain before dark, and finish the ashes. What is it you want?”

Here in the wood, with no one to overhear them, Diaz seemed to be having very little difficulty with his English. There was no gallery to convince, and Rutledge was sure the man had long since taken
his
measure.

“I came to tell you that we’ve made an arrest in the disappearance of Mr. French.”

Something stirred in those dark eyes. “Have you indeed?”

Hamish said, “He’s worried. Ye havena’ told him who it is.”

“Yes,” Rutledge said smoothly. “I thought I should inform you of this myself. I’ve already spoken to Mrs. Bennett.”

“She will be pleased.”

“She was, and she was glad that the Yard had come to apologize.”

“Yes.”

“There’s the small problem of where the body has been buried. But we’ll have that out of him in time. The Yard is very good at persuading people to talk.”

Diaz turned away to lay the secateurs in the barrow just behind him. “I have no interest in such matters. It is not my affair.”

“Yes, I understand. We’re having more luck with Mr. Traynor’s body. He was in the war, you see, and we can identify him by his scars. Mr. French wasn’t in France, which makes it more difficult. I’m afraid I can’t give you more details, but it’s enough to say that the Yard has matters in hand.”

“It is no surprise to me.”

“Well, then, I shall bid you a good day.” Rutledge looked up. The high boughs overhead crisscrossed and arched like the groins above the nave of a cathedral. The sky was dull, and where the two men stood was gloomy, giving an impression of privacy, of the rest of the world shut out. “Rain is coming? I’m glad to know that. I left windows open in my flat.”

He turned away, careful to do so in such a way that he didn’t directly show his back to Diaz, but the man kept his distance, and Rutledge walked on, until he was out of sight of the gardener.

He could have sworn that nothing was burning on the property. The wind was light and variable, but it had brought with it no whiff of smoke. Then where was Bob Rawlings?

He had almost reached the drive when he heard someone coming through the trees. Rutledge stepped behind the nearest large trunk, uncertain whether he was being followed or the walker was unaware of his presence.

Waiting patiently, he finally saw the red jumper of a man approaching him not from the direction of the orchard or the back gardens but from the front gates to the estate. He thought at first it must be the man who did the marketing, and then he realized that he was too short, the rhododendrons and other plantings swaying lower as he passed through them.

Rutledge worked his way around the heavy trunk of the tree, staying out of sight, expecting the man to head toward the house. Instead he veered toward where Diaz was working. The faint
snap-snap
of the secateurs could be heard echoing through this end of the park. Overhead a squirrel began to fuss, and Rutledge stayed very still.

He counted to ten, then eased forward to keep the red jumper in sight.

It was then he had a clear view of the man wearing it.

Bob Rawlings.

The man jogged the last twenty feet and called, “It’s done.”

“Be quiet. The policeman was here. Did you not pass him as you came in the gates?”

“No.” Rutledge could hear him thrashing about. “Which way did he go?”

He began to withdraw slowly, carefully, mindful of the secateurs that Diaz had been using. He wanted no part of a confrontation.

Rutledge had reached his motorcar in the loop of the drive before the house and was turning the crank when he heard rather than saw Bob Rawlings burst out of the wood very near where he himself had come out.

He didn’t turn but finished what he was doing and got into the motorcar.

As he started down the drive toward the gates, he met Bob Rawlings’s eyes and saw the expression in them. It was wariness mixed with anger and something more. A belligerence that seemed to be part of his nature.

Rutledge smiled and kept on going.

It’s done
. What was done?

He reached the gates and turned onto the road. Not toward London but in the direction of the village serving the Bennett house.

Diaz and his helper worked wherever they were needed to keep the grounds in good order. But that very freedom meant that Rawlings could leave the grounds and return without arousing suspicion.

Either he was meeting someone or he was sending a message to someone.

Rutledge had to ask a passerby where to find the post office. He had already ascertained that there were no familiar red postboxes in the center of the small village.

It was tucked inside a milliner’s shop, a tiny square of the British Government hidden away behind a tree of hats and a tall chest featuring gloves and handkerchiefs.

The middle-aged woman behind the grille looked up as his shadow fell across the book she was reading. Marking her place with a rule, she asked politely, “Stamps, sir?”

Rutledge cast a glance over his shoulder, but the proprietor was occupied with a young woman choosing laces, their heads together over a tray of samples.

He took out his identification and passed it through the grille to her.

“Scotland Yard?” She stared at him, her mind busy. He could see her considering and rejecting possibilities. “Is it about those men at the
house
?” The emphasis she put on the word all but identified the Bennett residence.

“I have reason to believe that a letter was posted here. I need to know if that’s true.”

It was her turn to look around, her voice lower as she said, “There’s only one today, sir.”

He couldn’t ask to see it. But he could ask who had brought it in.

“One of those ruffians,” she said, angry. “Walking into the shop bold as you please.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Short, fair, wearing a red jumper and corduroy trousers that looked as if he’d climbed trees in them, they were so scuffed and torn.”

In fact, Bob Rawlings had been climbing trees.

She went on, “I’m as good a Christian as the next woman, and I challenge anyone to say anything to the contrary. But I don’t hold with criminals walking the streets bold as brass. My son tells me they’ve paid for what they did, but I ask you, why do they have to come
here,
to my village? I saw one of them talking to my daughter, and it quite made me ill.”

“They have paid for their crimes,” he said.

“Then let them go and live in a city where no one cares who they are.”

Rutledge said, “I can’t ask you to show me the letter. But I need to know if it’s in Mrs. Bennett’s handwriting or someone else’s. Can you tell me that?”

“It’s not in hers. I know her fist when I see it.” She glanced around once more and then said, “I must step outside a moment. I’m feeling a little faint from the heat.”

Fanning herself with a sheet of paper, she left the post office confines, and as she did a letter caught in her skirts went spiraling the floor. She walked on, ignoring it. Rutledge waited until she had closed the shop door behind her. Then he retrieved the letter and slid it carefully back through the grille.

But not before he had managed to read what an untutored hand had scrawled across the front.

He left at once, and as he walked out the shop door, the postmistress said, “That one’s a murderer if ever I saw one. I hope he’s taken away from here as soon as may be.”

But Mrs. Bennett had assured Rutledge that she had taken in only men who could be rehabilitated. He rather thought she’d misjudged Rawlings.

Or perhaps she hadn’t; perhaps Diaz had found something in the younger man that he could mold toward his own ends.

Rutledge thanked the postmistress and walked back to where he’d left the motorcar.

There he took out his notebook and wrote down what he’d seen.

He stopped in Chelsea on his way into London and knocked at the door of the Belford house. He was told that Mr. Belford was not in.

Tearing the sheet out of his notebook, he handed it to the footman. “Would you see that he gets this as soon as he returns?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rain caught up with him as he drove down his own street and left the motorcar in front of the flat.

L
ater that evening, Rutledge went to the Yard. He had purposely delayed coming in because he hadn’t wanted to encounter Markham.

Fielding had left a note on his desk, telling him that the luggage van guard’s statement had been collected.

As you asked, I’m holding it until you have advised me to turn it over to the Acting Chief Superintendent.

Not good news at all.

Rutledge wrote a message thanking Fielding, then another asking Gibson for any information he could find on the name and direction he’d taken down from the letter he had seen in Surrey. He disliked depending too much on Belford. A man in his position might easily require the return of a favor down the road.

Finally, he put in for forty-eight hours of leave, setting the request on Markham’s desk, then drove through the night to Essex.

He reached it early in the morning, and found the side road that led down to the water meadows at Flatford Mill, where Constable had painted one of his finest works. It hadn’t changed much, and he crossed to the other side of the Stour first, moving through the scattered trees, looking toward the mill buildings that Constable had made famous. The village was tiny, hardly more than a hamlet, and he’d had to walk down to it, the way being almost impassable for his motorcar after the night’s rains.

The sun had come out, but there were mists still rising from the water, and in the early silence he could hear ducks calling near the weir. Peaceful. That was the word that came to mind. Timeless. He walked some distance before retracing his steps, watching the sun paint the old glass in the windows of the houses opposite a delicate gold. The mill was still there, a hundred years later, and Willie Lot’s cottage as well.

He crossed the river again, then went down the lane that led to the mill and the houses. Late flowers grew rampant in the gardens, and bees made a soft humming sound as they worked from blossom to blossom.

Looking back, he could see the angle from which Constable had painted another view, this time of Willie Lott’s house. And then the sun was warm on his shoulders as he walked up the long slope to where he’d left the motorcar.