Proof of Guilt (9 page)

“I’m sure it won’t take more than five minutes of her time.” Rutledge’s voice was polite, but it left no doubt that he was not to be put off.

Lessor looked at him again, decided that the Londoner intended to have his way, and, with a sigh, called to his wife.

She was a little flustered when she came to the door. A trim woman in her middle years, she was still wearing her apron, and she seemed to remember it only after she stopped by her husband’s side.

“Um, Constable,” she said. “Is anything wrong?”

Rutledge took charge. “I’m sorry to delay your tea, Mrs. Lessor.” He smiled, and went on to show her his identification and to ask his question.

She looked at her husband, and he nodded. “Well. I don’t believe Mr. Standish has received more than two or three letters in all the time he’s lived in Moresley. I make a point not to look at anything but the name on the front of the envelope. It’s a small village, and I have to be careful, you see. Everyone has secrets . . .”

It was an admirable attitude, but hardly helpful.

“He never said, as you handed him his mail, ‘Ah, that’s from my aunt—my brother—a friend from France’?”

“He did mention when the first one arrived that it was the deed to the cottage. He seemed to be very happy about that. He never said anything about the others.”

Rutledge was getting nowhere.

“Does anyone in Moresley have a connection with a family called French?”

Mrs. Lessor shook her head. “I’ve never heard anyone speak of such a connection. Do they live in Norfolk? You might ask in the town. The Inspector there might know of them.”

Rutledge tried another direction.

“What about his grandmother? She lived here. What does local gossip remember about her?”

Mrs. Lessor glanced again at her husband, as if to be sure she could speak freely. Whatever she read in his expression, it was reassuring. She turned back to Rutledge.

“Mrs. Standish lived alone. She said once that she’d had a falling-out with her son’s wife. My mother told me that she remembered when Mrs. Standish first came here. She was still quite pretty at fifty, with the loveliest hair. We didn’t know until she’d died that there was a grandson. She left a handwritten will leaving the cottage to him. But he was still in France and it was a while before he could be reached. Didn’t Constable Denton tell you?”

He hadn’t. But then Rutledge hadn’t asked about the grandmother, and he doubted if Denton would have remembered the details that Mrs. Lessor had given.

Lessor cleared his throat. His tea was waiting.

Rutledge thanked the man and his wife, and with Constable Denton at his heels, he went to the motorcar.

“Where’s the cottage? I’d like to have a look inside.”

Denton said, “I don’t know if it’s proper. We can’t be sure yet anything has happened to Mr. Standish. He could come home tomorrow.”

“But he hasn’t in a good many tomorrows. If the Yard is investigating his disappearance, then the Yard can have a look at his house.”

The cottage was just down the street, set back under a large tree, rather a pretty place in its day but sadly untended now, the front garden a tangle of late flowers and weeds.

“Mr. Standish wasn’t much of a gardener,” Denton said as they walked to the cottage door. “His grandmother, now, she had a way with growing things.”

The door wasn’t locked, and inside it was quite dark, now that the sun was setting. What’s more, the tree’s shadow prevented the last rays from reaching the front room’s windows. At length Rutledge found a lamp and lit it. As the light bloomed he could see that the cottage was furnished in a style at least a generation earlier, Victorian and rather heavy. But it wasn’t cluttered, save for books scattered everywhere, as if the owner had begun one, then stopped reading that one and picked up another in its place.

A pattern, Hamish was telling him, of a restless mind. For in the month between his release from the clinic and his return to the Yard, Rutledge had done much the same thing, unable to settle to anything.

He felt a coldness as he looked around the cottage. As if he could sense the despair in the owner, and a darkness that wouldn’t lift even when the sun rose.

Hamish said, “Ye’ll find him deid. Whoever he may be.”

And Rutledge thought it was very likely.

There was no private correspondence in the desk, and not much of anything else that would define the character of Gerald Standish or his grandmother. There were no pictures anywhere, but on the wall by the worn chair that stood under the window was a miniature, the ivory oval in its silver frame catching his eye. Rutledge brought the lamp nearer, and decided that the young girl who stared back at him must have been the grandmother, for the style of clothing was early Victorian. He thought she must have just put her hair up, and the occasion was marked by this likeness. She had dark hair, dark, smooth brows in an oval face, high cheekbones that gave him a glimpse of how she must have looked in maturity, and very dark blue eyes. She was too young for her face to show her character, only her loveliness. But whatever life had brought to her, it had ended in a lonely old age.

Rutledge wondered why she had had a falling-out with her son’s wife, but he suspected it very likely had to do with the woman’s marrying again. Looking around him, he thought the elder Mrs. Standish had only enough money to live comfortably in a small village. Or she had been frugal for reasons of her own.

“Sad,” Rutledge said aloud, more to Hamish than to Denton.

The constable came to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Is that Mrs. Standish? Her face was lined and her hair gray when I came to Moresley.”

“Only Gerald Standish can tell us who she is. But it’s likely, I should think.”

Rutledge spent another ten minutes looking through the cottage, upstairs and down. He discovered that the clothes in the cupboard in the bedroom were of good quality with well-known labels. He couldn’t be sure whether they were hand-me-downs or had been purchased new before the war. Nevertheless, Standish had seen to it that they were carefully maintained and well brushed. Denton, coming again to look over his shoulder, commented that Mr. Standish had taken time over his appearance.

“Not vain or anything. It was just the way he had. As if it mattered to him.”

In the end, Rutledge had learned very little, less of it helpful. He even looked at the flyleaves of books, to see if there were dedications.

An enigma, Mr. Gerald Standish. Rutledge returned to the miniature just as he was leaving.

Miniatures were an art. Painting a portrait on ivory with a brush that had only one or two hairs took skill and patience and a great eye for detail that could capture the subject in a few strokes. The artist might be known, although Rutledge could see only initials at the edge the sitter’s shoulder.

“I’ll give you a receipt for this, in the event Standish returns. But I’d like to find the artist. That might tell us the name of the subject.”

He crossed to the desk and began searching for paper and pen, writing out a brief message and signing it.

“But wouldn’t the artist be long dead, sir?” Denton asked.

“I’ve no doubt of it. But anyone this good will be known in art circles, and there’s nowhere else to look for information.”

They left the cottage as they’d found it, Rutledge putting out the lamp, and they saw as they stepped outside that night had fallen in earnest, dark clouds beginning to blot out the stars. The air smelled of thunder.

The village street was deserted save for a dog making its way home, trotting purposefully down the middle until it came to a bungalow. It went to the door, scratched on a panel, and was admitted by the time Rutledge and the constable had caught up with it.

Denton said, “It’s late, sir. If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off in the next village, I’d be obliged.”

Rutledge said after the constable had lashed his bicycle to the boot, “Do you have much trouble in this part of the county?”

“None to speak of, sir. Neither of my villages are rich enough to tempt trouble, and the poor are not destitute. The church and the Women’s Institute see that everyone has food on the table and a roof over our heads. Mind you, I don’t lack for occupation, there’s always keeping the hotheads amongst the young lads from doing something they’ll live to regret, but we don’t run to real crime. That’s why I contacted Norfolk when Mr. Standish went missing, and Inspector Johnson passed the report on to the Yard.”

“What’s your best guess about Standish? Will we find him, do you think?”

“I fear he may be dead, sir. By his own hand.”

I
t was very late when Rutledge reached Dedham, and he was glad to find a room at the Sun.

The next morning, he set out to find the St. Hilary curate. In most villages he would have paid a call on the doctor, but he rather thought Dr. Townsend would be less than helpful in any matter relating to the French family.

Williams had finished painting the trim along the front of the Rectory, and he was just now clinging precariously to his ladder with one hand as he tried to reach the corner on the west side.

Hearing the motorcar pull into the yard, he glanced over his shoulder, nodded in acknowledgment of a visitor, and put the last touches to the corner before coming down the ladder.

“Sorry. But I knew you wouldn’t mind waiting a bit,” he said in greeting.

“There’s something I want to show you,” Rutledge said and drew out his handkerchief with the miniature cradled carefully inside. “Do you recognize this woman?”

“When was it painted?” Williams started to reach for the ivory, realized his hands were spattered in paint, and hastily withdrew them. He leaned forward instead.

“Sixty years ago? Seventy?”

“Well, it’s not really possible to tell, is it? She’s what? Sixteen in this painting? And even if it’s an accurate likeness, her face would have changed as she aged.”

“Study it, all the same.”

The curate peered at it. “Lovely child, isn’t she? She would have been a lovely woman as well. But I don’t recognize her. Should I?”

Rutledge returned the miniature to his pocket. “No. Although I’d hoped you might. You’ve been a guest at the French house. You’ve very likely called on the Townsends in your pastoral capacity. And Miss Whitman, for that matter. If there was one portrait painted, there could have been another—or even a photograph.”

“Yes, I see. Of course. I’m sorry to say I can’t help you at all. I’ve seen nothing like that.”

“Is Standish a name that’s common in this part of Essex?”

“It’s not common, no, but there’s at least one family in Dedham. The youngest daughter sings in the church choir there. A very nice voice. What’s more, the family is quite fair with ruddy complexions. Not dark at all.”

“Any connection with the French family?”

“I don’t believe so. I’ve never heard one mentioned. And someone surely would have, I think. After all, they’re probably the wealthiest family around.”

Rutledge let it go. “Does Miss Whitman know how to drive?”

“Actually she’s a good driver. During the war, she volunteered. Mostly in the city of Norfolk, I was told.”

Norfolk. Not that far from Moresley. But Gerald Standish had been in France at that time.

Rutledge thanked Williams, asked directions to the house of the former tutor to the French sons, and made his way to a comfortable cottage overlooking the green.

Mr. MacFarland was older than Rutledge had expected. He must have been middle-aged when he taught Michael and Lewis French. White hair rose from a high forehead, but the skin of his face was still smooth, his blue eyes alert. His Highland accent was pronounced, and Rutledge had to suppress the memories it brought back in a surge of images. Faces of the men who had served under him, their voices soft in the quiet of the trenches before an attack, calling encouragement to one another as they charged through the German fire, begging him to hold their hands as they lay dying. Of Hamish, steadfastly refusing to lead his exhausted company into the teeth of the machine-gun nest, close to breaking but strong and determined to put his men first, no matter the cost.

MacFarland said, concern on his face, “Are you all right, man?”

Rutledge clamped down on the past, bringing all his will to bear. “A headache coming on,” he replied as calmly as he could and identified himself, explaining that he was interested in two of MacFarland’s former pupils.

“Come in, then, and have something cool to drink while we talk.” He ushered Rutledge into the front room, cluttered with books and compositions for the elderly harpsichord in one corner.

While he was fetching the water, Rutledge had an opportunity to recover, crossing to a window and looking out on the quiet, pleasant green. Behind the house, the wood closed in, thickening as it marched toward the walls of the park that surrounded the French house.

MacFarland came back with a tray and two glasses of water, saying, “Move those books from the chair and sit down.”

Rutledge did and took the glass held out to him. “How do you keep the instrument tuned?”

“They say the Elizabethans enjoyed the harpsichord, and their castles were damper and gloomier than my house. But I doubt we either of us hear it as it really sounds.” He grimaced. “But I persevere. I’ve always enjoyed music, and it’s the only instrument I learned to play, save for the pipes. And my neighbors aren’t too fond of them, I can tell you.”

Rutledge laughed. “Nor were the Germans.”

“I can’t imagine why you should be interested in any of my former pupils. They all grew up, as far as I know, to be upstanding young men. I lost seven in the war, sadly, but that’s what war is about—young men. Which ones brought you here?”

“The French children. Michael and Lewis.”

“Ah, yes. Michael was one of my seven. And the most promising of all.” He took a deep breath, his blue eyes focused on the past. “I can’t complain of either of my pupils. They were bright and well behaved. Lewis had seizures occasionally, but they seemed to become less frequent as he grew older. Still, he was as active as his brother.”

“Grand mal seizures?”