The Confession (16 page)

“He has a temper?”

“That was the problem. I'd never seen him so livid. At least not before the war. I've had very little contact with him since then. He hasn't encouraged visitors at the clinic.”

“It would seem that he's still in love with you.”

“He has an odd way of showing it,” she retorted with a semblance of her old spirit. “And for all I know, he could have believed that I'd killed his mother.”

R
utledge had intended to leave as soon as possible and go after Major Russell, but Cynthia Farraday was still uneasy. He went down to the kitchen and made tea for her, then waited with her until Mary, her maid, and the cook returned later in the morning.

He saw the alarm in her eyes when she heard someone coming through the servants' door into the hall, and then as she recognized Mary's footsteps, the alarm faded.

When Mary reached the sitting room, Miss Farraday said, “Ah. Mary. Mr. Rutledge is just leaving.” And turning to Rutledge, she said coolly, “Thank you so much for coming to my rescue.”

And then as he was about to follow Mary out, she added quickly, “Will you try to find Wyatt?”

“I have no choice,” he answered her.

“And you'll keep me informed? I should like very much to know more about that locket.”

He thought, as he left her house, that she had been embarrassed by her own weakness. The danger passed, no longer alone, her natural resilience had returned, and she was determined to show him that it had.

Driving to Scotland Yard he reviewed part of a conversation he and Cynthia Farraday had had earlier. She hadn't wanted to be left alone, and so she had gone with him to make the tea. To distract her as they sat together in the tidy kitchen, he had said, “Tell me about coming to live at River's Edge.”

She made a face. “It was River's Edge or a boarding school for girls. Young as I was, I told our solicitors that I would run away if sent to one. I couldn't bear it. I wanted so badly to stay at home. Instead they wrote to Elizabeth Russell and asked if she would consider becoming my guardian. She replied that she would, and she came herself to fetch me, which I thought was very kind. I didn't meet Wyatt until I arrived at the house. He was a few months older, but we got on well together until I was seventeen and he decided he was desperately in love with me. I told him not to be silly.”

“Did he listen to you?”

“I thought he had. But when he came down from Cambridge, he informed me that while he would say no more about it, I must understand that his feelings hadn't changed. You have no idea how that confused my comfortable and safe world. When I went to Aunt Elizabeth and asked her what to do, she told me that I was far too young to think about love, and she didn't expect to see me married until I was past my twentieth birthday. It was such a relief. But I could tell she was pleased that Wyatt cared, and as I told you once, I didn't know how to interpret that. When she disappeared, I wasn't eager to live under Wyatt's roof without her. Still, I told everyone that I longed for the excitement of London and convinced my solicitors to open the house here. It made leaving easier for all of us.”

He said, “You had no feelings for him?”

“As a cousin and a friend, of course I did. I just wasn't in love with him. Yes, he was handsome, he wasn't a dancing master, and he was great fun. I wanted everything to stay the way it had always been.”

He smiled at her reference to the dancing master. “How did you feel later when he announced his engagement to be married?”

“Happy for him. Relieved, as well. And perhaps just a tiny bit jealous.” She made a face. “So much for his vows of undying love.”

“He needed an heir for River's Edge, in the event he was killed.”

“I wondered once or twice if he was happy. Content, perhaps, but not outrageously, gloriously happy.”

Rutledge couldn't help but think how that had described his engagement to Jean. Only he hadn't recognized it then or even later. Only with time.

“And what about Justin Fowler?”

Her face didn't change, but there was something in her stillness that was different. And then in spite of herself, she said, “I think I could have loved him. I knew he liked me. But he was so—so remote. I never knew why.”

And by her admission, she had just unwittingly given Wyatt Russell a motive for murdering Fowler, and possibly even Ben Willet as well.

I
t was too late to overtake Major Russell before he reached Essex. If that was where he was going. Rutledge made a detour to drive by the house Russell had inherited from his late wife, and even knocked at the door. As he listened to the sound echoing in the hall beyond, he knew that the house was empty.

It was possible too that after his encounter with Cynthia Farraday, Russell had realized what he had done and returned to the clinic of his own volition.

Given George Hiller's affection for the Trusty, the man would be out for his blood. If word of the accident had even reached him by now. Russell would have to face his anger as well as Matron's.

He decided to make a telephone call to the clinic from the Yard and establish whether or not Russell was there, before making the long drive to the River Hawking.

Rutledge found a place to leave the motorcar and walked the short distance to the Yard, his mind still on Russell.

Stepping through the door, he felt the change in atmosphere almost as a physical blow.

The sergeant at the desk was grim-faced, his greeting a curt nod. And as Rutledge climbed the stairs, he heard the silence.

The Yard was never quiet, with men going in and out of offices, doors opening and closing, telephones ringing, typewriters clicking, footsteps loud on the bare floorboards, voices in the corridors. Sounds that Rutledge had become so accustomed to that he hardly noticed them. Except now, when they were missing.

He was on the point of entering his own office when he saw Sergeant Gibson step out of another room down the passage, closing the door quietly behind him.

Rutledge stopped, his hand on the knob, waiting for Gibson. He couldn't read the Sergeant's face. For once it was blank, without expression.

“What is it?” Rutledge asked. “What has happened?”

“You haven't heard, then?”

“No,” Rutledge answered, Hamish's voice sounding a warning in his mind.

“It's Chief Superintendent Bowles. He's in hospital. A heart attack.”

Rutledge was stunned. “Bowles?”

He'd thought the man was indestructible.

“What's the outlook?”

“Grim,” Sergeant Gibson replied. “Sir. We're to go on about our duties as if he were here and in charge. Meanwhile, upstairs they're making a decision about his temporary replacement.”

As long as it wasn't Mickelson, Rutledge was comfortable with whatever choice his superiors made. Not that the man had the seniority for such a promotion. Still, stranger things had happened. And he and Mickelson had a long history, none of it pleasant.

He thanked Gibson and went into his office.

Trying to imagine the Yard without Bowles was impossible, Rutledge thought as he sat down at his desk. The man had been his nemesis almost from the day he arrived here, jealous of the new wave of men replacing those who had risen from the ranks. Rutledge himself had done his duty as a constable, and walked the streets in fair weather or foul. But he came from very different roots, and what's more he'd been well educated. Bowles appeared to believe from the start that Rutledge had an eye to his position, true or not, and had done everything in his power to prevent it. Consequently Rutledge had been passed over for promotion more than once. The reasons for denial had been true, as far as they went, but couched in terms that reflected on Rutledge's ability.

Rutledge also had a feeling that Bowles had used his authority as a Chief Superintendant to search his background for any flaws. And he had wondered more than once if Bowles had somehow discovered just where his newly returned Inspector had been from the day of the Armistice in 1918 to the date of his official return to the Yard, 1 June 1919.

Indeed, his very first inquiry after the war was one where the chief witness was a shell-shocked man. And Bowles had not told Rutledge that. He'd had to discover it for himself when he reached Warwickshire.

If Rutledge's shell shock became public knowledge, his position at the Yard would be untenable. He knew that. And as for Hamish MacLeod—it was unthinkable that anyone should learn about him. The shame would be unbearable.

Rutledge went cold at the thought.

Hamish said, “Aye, but Dr. Fleming is no' one to talk.”

But there had been others in the clinic, nurses, orderlies—visitors.

Unable to stand the close confines of his office, he glanced through the papers awaiting his attention, dealt with them swiftly, and remembered his promise to the woman who had seen the Triumph crash.

He wrote a brief note indicating that against all odds, the cyclist had survived the accident without serious injury and had been released from St. Anne's hospital in a matter of hours.

It would do. It was all she needed to know.

Sealing the envelope, he set it to one side for the constable who came round to collect letters for the post, then thought better of it. Pocketing it, he walked out of the building. No one stopped him or asked where he was going.

He found a postbox on a corner just beyond where he'd left his motorcar and then continued to The Marlborough Hotel, where he could use a telephone.

The clinic, he was told by an operator's disembodied voice, did indeed have a telephone, and he was put through after several minutes.

When Matron came on the line, he knew at once that Russell hadn't returned.

Giving her a brief account of events, including the whereabouts of the Trusty, he added that he was still searching for the Major.

She listened to him, then said, “A moment, please, Inspector.”

When she returned to the telephone, she said, “I'm so sorry. But a man has just come. He has already spoken to Mr. Hiller, he tells me. I appreciate your message, Inspector.”

“Have you looked for Russell at his house in London?”

“I have. That's to say, I asked one of our former orderlies who is now at St. John's to go round and see if anyone was there. That was at ten o'clock this morning. The house appeared to be empty. What's more, a neighbor confirmed that he hadn't seen the Major for some time. I think we can safely say he isn't there. The question is, where do we look now? Should I have Jacobson look at hotels?”

“I'm on my way to Essex,” he told her. “I shan't be able to reach you, but I have a feeling that Russell is returning to River's Edge.”

“My understanding is that the house is closed, the staff dismissed,” she said, doubt in her voice.

“That's true. But given his present state of mind, he may not care.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Inspector. I shall look forward to hearing from you again.”

“And should he turn up meanwhile, will you call Sergeant Gibson at the Yard and leave a message for me?”

She promised, and he rang off.

After a brief stop at his flat, he drove out of London. It would be dark well before he reached his destination, and given his lack of sleep the night before, he ought to wait until morning. But in Essex, he would also be out of reach of recall.

“He doesna' have his revolver with him,” Hamish said some time later. “If he didna' go to yon house.”

“Not unless he stopped at the London house before he went to see Miss Farraday. But I don't think he would risk that. Not before he spoke to her. The question is, what weapons are in the Essex house?”

“Ye ken, his father was in the Boer War.”

“He was buried in South Africa. There's no way of knowing whether his service revolver was sent home in his trunk.”

“Or if he kens where it is.”

“It's too bad that Willet—when he was confessing to the murder of Justin Fowler in Russell's place—didn't tell me how the victim was killed.”

Some miles outside London Rutledge stopped for petrol, and then realizing that he hadn't eaten for nearly two days, he drove on to a pub overlooking the Thames and ordered his dinner. It was slow in coming.

Darkness was falling by the time he was on the road again, the sun a deep red ball behind him, the last of its rays reflected in the Thames, flickering on the current. Ahead, over the North Sea, the sky was a luminous purple.

Hamish said, “It's best to wait until daylight.”

“But safer in the dark,” Rutledge answered aloud. “He won't see me coming.”

He stopped briefly for a cup of strong tea when the food he'd eaten made him drowsy. Then he drove on, the night air warm in the motorcar and adding to his drowsiness. At length he picked up the pitted road that followed the Hawking east toward Furnham, where there was only starlight to guide him, and his headlamps tunneled through the darkness, marking his way. The wheel bucking under his hands was enough to bring him fully awake again.

The gates of River's Edge were ghostly as the glare of his headlamps picked them up just ahead, alternately white and shadowed.

He drove past them some little distance, and then stopped the motorcar, turning off the headlamps. Taking out his torch but not flicking it on, he walked down the middle of the road as far as the house gates, guarding his night vision.

Reaching the gates, he stood for a moment, listening to the night. The marsh grasses whispered to themselves, and he could hear scurrying as small creatures hunted and were hunted. Insects sang in the warm darkness, or perhaps they were frogs of some sort.

But there was no sound of a man moving on the overgrown drive. It wasn't likely that Russell was just ahead of him, but there was no way of knowing how successful the Major had been finding transportation. Rutledge knew he couldn't afford to be careless.