The Red Door

Chapter 29

It took some time to arrange matters. The two women were shut up in the pantry by the kitchen door, where the windows were too small to allow either of them to escape. Satterthwaite was left to guard them while Cobb and Rutledge went back to Thielwald to bring back help.

On the way, Cobb said, “How did you know?”

“Betsy wouldn’t throw a handful of earth on the coffin. You left her a rose.”

“You knew then?” Cobb asked in disbelief.

“No. But it occurred to me on the way to the Blaine Farm. You said yourself Mrs. Blaine was like a magpie. The gold knob for a rainy day. The letter box in the event a deed was in there as well. Jake, in the event he could name her daughter. If Betsy had been glad someone else had killed Florence Teller, she’d have wished her to rest in peace. And to leave you in peace.”

“I’d told her I’d kill her if she hurt Florence.”

“She was in a fury that day. She must have thought you and Mrs. Teller had had words. That you’d come to the front door of the house like a suitor, and Mrs. Teller had taken her husband’s cane to you.”

“If she’d turned me out, why would Betsy kill her?”

“For fear, I think, that you’d go on begging Mrs. Teller, and one day she might be lonely enough to relent and let you live with her. Or sleep with her.”

“My God.” Cobb took a deep breath. “I thought I’d hang. I thought that the evidence was so strong I was going to be convicted. Satterthwaite was damned good in his reasoning. And he would do his best to see me hang as well. I think there was some jealousy there.”

“I’m sure there was. But he tried to be fair as well.”

But Cobb was silent, as if he disagreed.

They were coming down into Thielwald when Cobb spoke again.

“I’m not sorry to hear Teller is dead. If it was by his own hand, do you think it was because Florence told him to go away and not come back?”

Rutledge thought no such thing. But he said only, “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

It was late afternoon when Rutledge had finished his last duty in Hobson.

Satterthwaite bought him a drink in Thielwald and said, “I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Neither could I.”

“What was it about Florence Teller that attracted men like Cobb—and me—to her? And yet she couldn’t keep her own husband. I think you felt a little of it too.”

“It was her strength, I suppose,” Rutledge said, considering it. “And her loneliness. I wanted her murderer caught. As much as you and Cobb did.”

Satterthwaite nodded. “Cobb’s going to live with his uncle for now. Did he tell you?”

“I think they’ll deal well together.”

Sighing, Satterthwaite said, “Well, I for one could use a night’s sleep.”

“I’ve to deal with the Teller family. And then there’s a pressing inquiry in London.”

“Was it accident or suicide? Teller’s death.”

Rutledge didn’t answer for a time, and then he said quietly, “I wish to God I knew.”

He should have slept, he knew that, but he circled around after leaving Hobson, and went back to the house with the red door.

Letting himself in, he walked through the empty rooms. Standing by the chair where Florence Teller had sat so many days and nights, waiting, he wondered if she was at peace now.

The police from Thielwald had searched the Blaine farmhouse and failed to find the rosewood letter box. Nor had they found either a deed or any other private papers belonging to Mrs. Teller.

He walked on, looking out at the garden behind the kitchen, at the flowers that had been so important to the lonely woman, and then turned and went up the stairs.

There was no way to know what the Teller family would do with this house now. Something, surely. He had a feeling Cobb wouldn’t go back to the farm he’d shared with his wife. But he might end here. He had the money to buy Sunrise Cottage if he chose. And keep it as Florence Teller’s shrine. All the small, painfully important memories of a woman’s lifetime would be lost otherwise. Already the house felt as if she was no longer there, even in spirit.

In the bedrooms there was already a light film of dust collecting on the tops of tables and the windowsills.

He walked into her room.

There was Timmy’s photograph where she could see it every night. Waiting for her to come up to bed.

He crossed to the table and picked it up, looking at it again.

It shouldn’t stay here to be lost with the rest of Florence Teller’s life. It belonged with the family that had never acknowledged the little boy who would have been their heir, if he’d lived.

“Shall I?” he asked the silence around him.

And then after a moment, he put it in his pocket.

He would take it home himself. A last gift to a woman he’d never seen, except in death.

And then he left the cottage, shut the red door firmly behind him, and then the gate.

If he drove through the night, as long as he could count on staying awake, he could be in Essex in the morning.

As it happened, he stopped at St. Albans out of necessity, for petrol, and he realized that he couldn’t go any farther without endangering himself and anyone who got in his way. There was a room available in the inn inside the cathedral close, the sleepy clerk welcoming him and asking when he wished to have his breakfast.

Rutledge laughed. “When I’m awake,” he said and went up the stairs like a drugged man, to fall into the bed by the windows overlooking the river, and after that he could remember nothing until he awoke two hours later. It was still dark outside, but he got up, shaved, and dressed, and went to find a telephone in the town.

Clouds had come in during the night, and now intermittent showers were cropping up. He ran through one on his way to a hotel near the railway station, and dashed in. He was shown to the telephone closet, where he put a call in to the Yard.

Gibson answered and Rutledge gave him a brief summary of what had transpired in Hobson.

“I’m going now to Essex. I’ll be back in London as soon as may be.”

Gibson said, “You were supposed to be on the bridge last night.”

“Yes, well, a different murder took precedent.” And then he paused. “No one else was killed?”

“They sent the constables out again in your place. And nothing happened. The Chief Superintendent was not best pleased.”

“I don’t suppose he was.”

And then he was driving through the last of the darkness toward Witch Hazel Farm, chased the last five miles by a shower. As he came down the wet drive and his headlamps swept the front of the house, splintering into fragments of light against the mullioned windows, he had a premonition that all was not well.

He couldn’t have said why, except that Hamish, in the back of his mind, was as moody as the weather, his voice as depressing as the rain.

As he stepped out of the car, he realized that the rain had brought a chill with it. He splashed to the door as the shower grew heavier.

He lifted the knocker and let it fall. Even though it had been draped in black crepe to mark a house of mourning, its sound echoed through the silence, startling birds taking shelter in the greenery below the windows.

No one came.

And then the door was flung open and a frantic Walter Teller cried, “Come quickly, for God’s sake—”

He broke off, staring at Rutledge in bewilderment. “How did you get here so soon? The doctor isn’t even here.” Then looking over Rutledge’s shoulder, he exclaimed, “Here he is now. Let him in, will you? I must go—” And he ran back into the house, leaving the door standing wide.

The doctor’s motorcar was barreling down the drive, pulling up smartly behind Rutledge’s.

“This way,” Rutledge said, and Fielding nodded, preceding Rutledge into the house and taking the stairs two at a time.

Rutledge followed. On the first floor, the passage ran to the right and to the left. The doctor turned right, entered a room two doors down, and disappeared from view. Rutledge could hear someone crying.

He reached the doorway, and the first thing to meet his eyes was the great four-poster bed from another era, its bedclothes scattered and some falling onto the polished floorboards in a wild tangle.

Jenny Teller lay on the bed in her nightdress, her fair hair tumbled and uncombed, her feet bare.

Walter Teller was stepping aside to let the doctor work with her.

Fielding bent over the bed, his hands quick and sure. But after only a matter of minutes, he straightened and said, “There’s nothing I can do. She’s gone. I’m so sorry, Walter.”

“But she was alive when you got here!” he exclaimed. “I could tell.”

“I don’t think she was. And if she had been, it was too late, far too late. The laudanum had done its work. She must have been dying when you found her.”

“She can’t have been. I won’t believe it.” He leaned over his wife, touching her face, calling her name, begging her to wake up. The doctor watched him for a time, then caught his shoulder and pulled him away. “There’s nothing more you can do, man. Let me make her decent. She shouldn’t be left like this.”

It took some time to convince Teller to go out of the room. He reached the doorway, his face wet with tears, his mouth open in a silent cry of grief, then stumbled into the passage, going as far as the stairs, where he sat down on the top step, his head in his hands.

Shutting the door, Rutledge began searching the room from where he stood, his eyes roving from the armoire to the tall dresser, to the smaller chest of drawers on the far side of the bed, a desk by the windows, and a long mirror.

“There was a glass verra’ like that one in Lancashire,” Hamish said.

And so there was. Very like it. Even to the carved roses at the top of the oval frame. It must have come from the same manufacturer to be so alike.

Odd that both women owned the same mirror. He wouldn’t have accused either of them of vanity.

He brought himself up sharply and continued to search for anything out of the ordinary.

Finishing his inspection of the room, he waited without speaking.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” the doctor demanded as he turned to see Rutledge still by the door.

“I got here not five minutes before you. I was called away before I could finish that business of Captain Teller’s fall.”

Fielding nodded. “I thought he might have called you. Walter, I mean.” He gestured to the woman on the bed. “Well, since you’re here, help me lay her out. The bed’s in a state. Where’s Mollie?”

“The maid? I don’t think Teller summoned her.” He crossed the room and helped the doctor with his work, smoothing out the bed-clothes, laying the dead woman back into the center of the bed, and pulling a sheet up to her chin. He worked impersonally, and when the body had been made presentable, he could say with certainty that there was nothing unusual here, no signs of violence.

He said, when their work was done, “What happened?”

“An accidental overdose of laudanum at a guess. I prescribed it some time ago. I can’t tell you why she was taking it now. Worry over that business with her husband? Or the boy going away to school? I know she took it very hard when Captain Teller fell here. She said something to me Sunday evening about not knowing how she was to sleep. She kept seeing him lying there at the bottom of the stairs.”

“And you prescribed nothing then?”

“No. She wasn’t asking for medical advice. I just asked how she was bearing up. I’d come back because I was worried about her and the Captain’s widow. Susannah Teller. She was quite distraught. She should have been allowed to go back to London straightaway, but she said you refused to hear of it. Then the police from Waddington came back, and they told everyone they were free to go. Edwin Teller and his wife took Susannah back to London. They were concerned about his grandmother and how to break the news to her.”

“And the sisters? Miss Brittingham and Miss Teller?”

“They left as well. Miss Brittingham asked the rector to keep Harry for the night, thinking it for the best. Miss Teller was very upset and had words with her brother Walter. Then she left.”

Rutledge said, “The Tellers didn’t share a room?”

“The master bedchamber is just through that door. This room is where Jenny stayed for her lying-in with Harry. It was where she always slept when her husband was away.”

“If Walter Teller had been sleeping in there, would he have heard anything?”

“I doubt there was anything to hear. Certainly no violent death throes if that’s what you mean.”

Fielding stood there, looking down at Jenny Teller. “I can tell you, I wouldn’t have been surprised to be summoned because Walter Teller was dead of an overdose. In his case, deliberate.” He shook his head. “He’s been under a terrible strain. They’d warned me at the clinic that this might be a consequence of his illness, and when I was here Sunday to pronounce the Captain dead, I was stunned to see the change in Teller. The attending doctors at the clinic felt that his recovery would depend on finding a solution to his distress.”

“I thought he’d decided not to return to the field. That he was going to tell them that he had done enough.”

“Yes, well, he might have been vacillating,” Fielding said. “I didn’t know the senior Teller very well. Walter’s father. But he was a martinet, you know. Planning his children’s lives without a thought to what they might like or might choose to do with themselves. Walter is a stickler for doing what’s right. And it may have been more difficult than he imagined to step away from the path he’d been intended to follow all his life.”

“How do I view this death?” Rutledge asked.

“I expect, like the Captain’s, a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened.”

Rutledge nodded. And yet he wasn’t satisfied. Not yet.

And he heard Hamish saying in his ear, “She doesna’ look as peaceful as the other lass . . .”

Fielding turned to the door. “I’ll let Teller come back. Then I’ll see to it that he has something to carry him on. There’s his brother’s funeral. And now this. I understand he’s not delivering the eulogy for his brother. Susannah Teller was adamant that it be the eldest brother. Edwin. Now we must concentrate on the living. The husband. The child. Someone ought to notify the family. I don’t think Teller is up to it.”

“I’ll see to the family.” Rutledge followed the doctor to the door and then went back into the room to look down on the woman lying on her pillow, her face pale and already losing that quality that made people real.

There was a glass on the bedside table. Milk, he thought. And a bottle that had come from a doctor’s dispensary. There was no label on it.

He walked to the only other door in the room and opened it.

A dressing room, and then on the other side, as Dr. Fielding had said, the door into what must be the master bedroom. He crossed to open it, then looked back into the room where Jenny Teller lay.

“Why was she sleeping in there tonight?”

But Hamish had no answer for him.

Walter Teller’s bedchamber was high-ceilinged and spacious, handsomely furnished, and with a newer bed, more modern in style than the four-poster, and a low bookcase beneath the double windows that faced the front of the house. A part of the original building, it had the wider floorboards and a prie-dieu against one wall that looked very old, a vestige of the Catholic owners before the Reformation. Someone had kept it for its beautiful lines and decorations, and it was well suited to the room.

Walking back to where Jenny lay, he closed the dressing room door. And at almost the same moment, Fielding returned with Walter Teller.

Teller crossed the room, looked down at his wife, and collapsed to his knees beside the bed, taking one of her hands in his and burying his face in it.

Fielding gestured for Rutledge to leave him there, and they walked out into the passage together.

Rutledge asked, “Did Walter Teller ever tell his wife where he was when he disappeared?”

“I’m not sure. She brought Harry in to visit the dentist on Thursday, and I was just coming out. I asked her how her husband was, if I should stop in and see him, perhaps keep him under observation for a while. And she told me he had fully recovered. I asked if he’d said anything to her about where he’d been while he was missing. I was curious, and it was important as well to add that to his file in the event it happened again. She replied that he hadn’t confided in her. I could see she was unhappy about that. I suggested that she should give him a little space. That perhaps he himself was in need of time to understand his behavior. Harry had gone to speak to the vicar’s son, who was coming down the street with his mother. Mrs. Teller watched him for a moment and then said that she wondered if her husband’s family knew more about what had happened than she did, that they’d left her and gone in search of him, as if they knew something she didn’t. I tried to make her understand that staying occupied was one of the best ways to weather a worrying time. That if they were at all like their brother, they couldn’t have sat still and just waited, as she had done. That seemed to relieve her mind a little.”

“Could that explain sleepless nights? Women worry about their families—if they are ill or hungry or frightened or hurt. It’s their nature to care.”

“I doubt it. It could be as simple as still not forgiving her husband for sending Harry away so soon. Or her guilt over her brother-in-law’s fall. After all, he came down for her birthday celebration.”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Her death is consistent with overdose. There were no signs of struggle, only the disarrangement of the sheets while Teller strove to revive her. She drank her milk—if that’s where she put the sedative—of her own free will. No marks on the lips to indicate that she was forced to swallow it.”

Rutledge let it go. He went to rouse the maid, snoring deeply in her room in the attic, and asked her to prepare food for what was to come. She burst into tears when he told her that her mistress was dead, and he left her to grieve as she dressed.

His next duty was plain—to summon the police from Waddington and finally to put in a call to Edwin Teller’s London residence. He got through there, and as he told an incredulous Edwin that his sister-in-law was dead, he could hear Amy’s voice in the background saying, “Edwin? My dear, what is it? What’s wrong?”

And Edwin shushing her as he listened to Rutledge’s voice.

Leticia said, after Rutledge explained his calling her, “Don’t disturb Susannah. She’s been through enough. I’ll deal with her later.”

His call to Mary Brittingham’s number rang and rang. The operator warned him that no one was at home. And then a very sleepy voice answered, “Do you know what time it is, Leticia? What could you possibly want at this hour?”

Rutledge said, “It’s Scotland Yard, Miss Brittingham. I think you ought to come to Witch Hazel Farm straightaway.”

Her voice was now crisp and alert. “Is it Harry? Is Walter all right?”

“It’s your sister. I’m afraid she’s dead.”

The silence went on so long that he thought she’d hung up. Then she said, “She can’t be dead. I was just there. Today. Yesterday. She was all right then. Is this Inspector Rutledge? Where are you, in London?”

“I’m at the farm. I’m sorry to break such news over the telephone, but I don’t have time to come to you. It’s more important that you come here.”

He could hear a hiccuped breath, as if she were fighting tears. “Yes. All right.” And then she was gone.

In the study, where he’d gone to wait until the police arrived, Rutledge discovered Walter Teller already sitting there with a brandy in his hand.

“Doctor’s orders. It’s supposed to give me the strength to cope,” Teller said. He looked at his glass, holding it up to the light. “I doubt it will. I doubt anything can.” He studied Rutledge for a moment and then asked, “How did you know to come? Was it Fielding?”

“I was here before I knew there was anything wrong,” Rutledge said. “I’ve just come from Hobson. It’s too late to tell your brother what happened there. But you should know. We found Mrs. Teller’s murderer. It wasn’t your brother. It was Mrs. Blaine’s daughter. Betsy. A neighbor.”

Teller repeated the name. “Betsy. Why?”

“Jealousy. She thought her husband would leave her for Florence Teller. It’s a long story, and this isn’t the time for it. But I felt you ought to know that your brother’s name has been cleared.”

“Too late for him,” Teller said. “But thank you.”

“When your elder brother arrives, I’ll need to speak to him about disposal of the house in Hobson. I don’t know that he wishes to leave that to Peter’s solicitors. I don’t know if they are even aware of the property.”

“Leave it to me. I’ll see to it. It’s what Peter would have wished, I think. Edwin will have enough on his plate, with Peter dead. I’m told our grandmother took the news very hard. And now there’s . . .” He cleared his throat. “Well.”

Rutledge gave him time to recover, then said, “I must do my duty, however unpleasant it may be for me and for the family at such a time. The inquest will want to consider your wife’s state of mind.”

“Her state of mind? My God, I haven’t even told my brother or sister—I haven’t spoken to Mary—much less found words to tell my son his mother is dead—and you’re talking about the inquest. Damn it, man, have you no decency?”

“It isn’t a question of decency. Have I your permission to look into your wife’s state of mind?”

“Do whatever you need to do. Just leave me alone.” He got up to refill his glass, looked at the amber liquid, and put it down again with distaste. Rutledge could see that he was remembering his brother Peter’s drunkenness.

Rutledge said, “Did your brother always drink as much as he did in the short time I knew him?”

The change of subject brought an irritated frown. “I—the level of pain he has—had—to endure must have been unimaginable. But no. He was more careful. What difference does it make now?”

“Would you say he drank in excess after he came back from Hobson?”

“Look, he’s dead, you can’t arrest a dead man. What difference do his drinking habits make now?”

“He was the catalyst for Florence Teller’s death. Some of this will have to come out at the inquest into her murder. I’d like to know why he went to see his wife after such a long silence, and what she said to him when he was there that made him rush off in such a hurry that he left his cane behind. It became the murder weapon.”

It was clear Walter Teller hadn’t considered an inquest in Hobson or what it might reveal.

“Dear God, will it never be finished? Get out, Rutledge, do you hear me? I’ve lost my brother and my wife. Just leave me the hell alone.”

Rutledge left him there and went in search of Mollie. She was in the kitchen, and as he came down the passage, he heard her singing hymns in a low tearful voice as she rattled the pots and pans preparing breakfast.

He made a fuss over opening the door into the kitchen, to give her time to recover.

She turned quickly, then said, “I thought it was Mr. Teller. I don’t know what to say to him. First the Captain, and now Mrs. Jenny. I don’t see how the poor man will survive this blow. And what will Master Harry make of it all, poor lamb? He adored his mother. It’s such a tender age. Have you sent for his aunt? Miss Brittingham? She’ll have to stay awhile. He’ll need her. She should have stayed after the Captain’s fall. Mrs. Jenny needed her then.”

“Why did she leave?”

“They were all at sixes and sevens. Quarreling and slamming doors. This was after you’d left. Miss Brittingham said she’d had enough and went home. Mrs. Jenny went to bed with a headache. So she said, but I think it was an excuse to leave them to it.”

“What rooms did Mrs. Teller most often use for her own purposes?”

“She liked the bedchamber where Master Harry was born. It’s bright and cozy, she said, and sometimes when Mr. Teller wasn’t here, she’d sleep in that room. And of course the nursery. She spent a good bit of her time there. When the nanny left two years ago, and Master Harry went to the local school, she would sit with him there and help him with his studies. The nanny’s old room she made into her sitting room, with her desk and things about her. She could rest there and hear Harry playing or working. Or listen to him sleep. She said she found that the most peaceful sound in the world, a child’s soft breathing.”

Mollie had been working as she talked, her hands busy preparing tea and boiling eggs, making toast. She looked up now, and said, “Nobody has told me how she died.”

Rutledge said, “An overdose of laudanum, apparently. In a glass of milk.”

“Ah, that explains it then.”

“Explains what?”

“There was a little milk spilled last night. Someone was warming it. I’d just wondered. She must have been having trouble sleeping. It just seemed odd that she’d leave the milk and the pan for me to clear away. She’s—she was so tidy about things like that. She liked a gleaming kitchen, she said. It made her feel good that what Harry ate was prepared in clean surroundings.” She bit back another round of tears. “Would you care for a cup of tea, sir? It has steeped long enough.”

He thanked her and left, unwilling to intrude on her grief.

Going back to the bedchamber where Jenny Teller lay, he looked again at the room itself, and he could see what Mollie meant, that there was a warmth here that a woman might want to draw around her in times of great emotional need. A comfort that the master bedroom in its masculine formality lacked.

He went next to the nursery, opening doors here and there until he found what he was after. It was a large bright room filled with childhood, from a cradle to a rocking horse, a little wooden train that could be drawn about on wheels that clacked as they rolled, and a yacht that must have come from Harry’s Uncle Edwin, who designed such things. It would float wonderfully, Rutledge thought, on a pond, the keel deep and the superstructure well balanced for it. Harry was a neat child, most of his possessions in good condition and not thrown about wildly. An only child, Rutledge remembered, who needn’t worry that someone would snatch away his favorite toy.

The next room was his bedroom, with the narrow cot against one wall and a chair that rocked and a footstool for the one that didn’t. The armoire was full of clothes, but not excessively so for a boy still growing. There were no photographs here, and he realized there had been none in Jenny’s bedroom. But when he opened the next door, normally the nanny’s room in the nursery suite, he found them all.

The dark blue and rose carpet was strewn with more toys—a small stuffed giraffe with green glass eyes, a sled with a toy dog sitting on it, waiting to be pulled through the snow of the carpet, and a green ball.

A desk stood under the window, in the French Provincial style, with a matching chair, but what interested him was the round table beside it, covered with a long skirted brocade and adorned with a forest of silver frames.

He crossed the room to look at them.

He could identify many of them. Jenny and her sister, Mary, as children, at the seaside and again at the Tower of London. A couple who appeared to be Jenny’s parents. The three Teller sons, stair stepped beside their seated sister, shyly staring into the camera. Peter and Walter at university. Edwin with his wife just leaving the church after their wedding. Their parents with the three Teller sons and daughter sitting in front of a Christmas tree in the hall of this house. And more than a dozen photographs of a little boy, marking the various milestones of his life. A baby in his mother’s arms, eyes closed, long christening gown draped across her lap. Just walking and holding his mother’s hand, riding his rocking horse, playing on the lawns with the green ball Rutledge had just seen.

A record of a happy family, though seldom including the busy father.

Reaching for the Teller family grouping, he studied the senior Teller. He was tall, handsome, perfectly groomed. Not the sort to be found on a Sunday afternoon with rolled-up sleeves pruning the roses or racing his sons across the lawns in an impromptu game. His face was strong, rather more like Walter’s, Rutledge thought, than Edwin’s or Peter’s, and more than a little stiff, as if smiling for a camera was an unpleasant duty to be borne with the best grace possible. His wife, her face upturned to his, was also surprisingly strong, as if she shared her husband’s views and reinforced them. He could see where Leticia got her own strength of character. Gran, standing at her husband’s shoulder, was tall and elegant, with a whimsical smile, the only one in the group who appeared to be genuine.

He had borrowed a small photograph of Walter Teller from Jenny, and he’d made a promise to return it, because it was one she cherished.

Rutledge took it from his pocket and set it among the other frames, where it belonged. He was glad he’d remembered.

What struck him about this collection of family photographs wasn’t their number, nor the stages of a small child’s life that they’d captured, but the similarity of this boy to the one in the single photograph that had stood by Florence Teller’s bedside in Lancashire. Timothy was undoubtedly his father’s son. And he belonged here.

As he set the small frame down in the midst of the family groupings, he felt an overwhelming compassion for Florence Marshall Teller.

Hamish said, as he was about to turn away to examine the contents of the desk, “Look again.”

Rutledge did, frowning. At first there seemed to be nothing to see.

He’d been comparing Timmy to his cousin Harry, but now a photograph of the Teller sons taken with their sister caught his eye. In it Walter, the youngest, was about the same age Timmy was when he died. Almost Harry’s age now. And the likeness, as Rutledge held them side by side, was so striking he wondered he hadn’t seen it before. Harry had his mother’s gentleness to soften his Teller features, but Timmy was the image of Walter at six or seven, looking into the camera with the same expression, that mixture of shyness and warmth, the same set of the eyes, the same way of tilting the head. There was a family likeness to his uncles, but anyone comparing the two photographs would think that Timmy was Walter Teller’s son.

Rutledge pulled out the chair at Jenny’s desk and sat down. It wasn’t a trick of the light. It was there, he thought, holding the frames closer to the window so that even the dreary rain-damp natural light could reach them.

Walter Teller no longer looked like the child in the photograph with his brothers. Edwin still resembled his youthful self, but Peter too had changed. War and mission work had etched new lines where there had been none and honed down the soft fullness of a child’s face to the harsher bone structure of maturity. Edwin, sheltered of necessity, had changed the least.

The resemblance didn’t make Walter Teller Timmy’s father. But it opened avenues of thought that gave Rutledge a different perspective on what he thought he’d understood unequivocally.

After a time, he put the frames back where he’d found them, and searched cursorily through Jenny Teller’s desk. There was little of interest to him. A few letters, stationery and envelopes, stamps, and a clipped packet of paid household accounts for May.

Satisfied, he went downstairs to the study.

Walter wasn’t there. Rutledge locked the door, crossed to the desk, and methodically went through it.

Nothing there to shed light on what he was asking himself.

And then he found, among folders of mission travel records and other related material, a single folder marked simply wills.

He took that out, opened it, and scanned Jenny Teller’s last will and testament. It was, as he would have expected, very straightforward. Money inherited from her family was to be held in trust for her son, her jewelry for his wife on their wedding day, and a sum for servants past and present, another for the church in Repton. The remainder of her estate went to her husband.

Rutledge set that aside and looked at Walter Teller’s will, though he had no right to do so. It too was straightforward. The greater part of his estate went to his son, with a sum set aside for his wife until she remarried or her death. Bequests to servants, to the Repton church, to the Alcock Society, and for the upkeep of the rose garden at Witch Hazel Farm in memory of his wife. But no mention of a woman in Lancashire or St. Bartholomew’s churchyard where she and her son lay buried.

Rutledge read the last bequest again. “For the perpetual upkeep of the rose garden at Witch Hazel Farm in memory of my wife.”

And in his mind he could hear the parrot, Jake, pleased with his new if temporary quarters in Frances Rutledge’s breakfast room, overlooking the garden. Roses . . .

He put the folder back where he found it, shut the desk, and unlocked the door.

Not a moment too soon. Mollie was there, telling him that breakfast was set out in the dining room, if he cared for any.

He walked with her into the passage. “There are lovely roses blooming by the drive. I’m surprised not to see them in arrangements indoors.” In fact, now that he was aware of it, there were no cut flowers in the house at all. None of the displays that country houses could produce in abundance from their own gardens.

“Mr. Teller wasn’t fond of cut flowers indoors. He said it reminded him of flowers for a funeral. He’d seen enough of them crowding the pulpits in churches where he preached.”

“And Mrs. Teller? Was she fond of roses?”

“I don’t know, sir. She never said. She did sometimes walk up to the garden by the drive. But for the most part she left the gardening to the gardener.”

He thanked her and let her go. And then he opened the drive door and looked out. Even in the rain, the heavy dew-wet scent wafting on the slight breeze was pleasant.

Closing the door again, he walked into the dining room. But Teller wasn’t there. A plate and silverware set to one side indicated that he’d come in and eaten a little, but the dishes were hardly touched.

Rutledge put food on a plate without thinking about what he had chosen.

He was remembering Captain Teller, when Rutledge asked about Walter Teller’s will during his disappearance, saying that it would be time enough to read it when they knew his brother was dead.

And Rutledge had never pursued the question, because Walter turned up alive and well.

He went to the telephone and gave instructions to the constable at the Yard who answered. He had just put up the telephone when there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive.

He waited outside for it to reach the steps. Leticia pulled up the hand brake, turned off the motor, and stepped out.

“You seem to bring trouble in your wake. I see Dr. Fielding is still here. Where is my brother?”

“I haven’t seen him this past half hour.”

“He’ll be with Jenny, then,” she said decisively and went briskly past him and up the stairs.

Fielding came down shortly afterward and said, “I asked if he’d like to speak to the rector. He said he’d prefer my company. He won’t let me give him anything. He said that God was punishing him, and he couldn’t escape that.”

“There’s breakfast in the dining room.”

“Thank you. It’s been a long morning for all of us. I could use some tea.” He nodded and disappeared down the passage.

Rutledge was standing very close to where Peter Teller had been found at the foot of the stairs. He looked at the spot, remembering the sprawled body and the family in distress. It had seemed to be genuine distress.

Amy, first to reach Peter, had said he had tried to speak her name.

Mee . . .

Rousing himself, Rutledge was about to walk back to the study when he heard another vehicle on the drive. It was the local police. Inspector Jessup said as Rutledge opened the door, “Dr. Fielding asked us to wait before coming. Who’s here now? I see the other motor.”

“Miss Teller, Walter Teller’s sister.”

Jessup nodded. “Was she here last night?”

“I telephoned her earlier. She arrived not five minutes before you.”

Rutledge led the way into the study. “It appears to be a straightforward case of accidental overdose.” He told Jessup what he had seen and about the spilled milk in the kitchen. “At this stage, I can’t see a case for suicide.”

“Or murder?”

“Not at this stage,” Rutledge repeated.

Jessup said, “Sometimes people aren’t careful enough counting out their drops. Are you comfortable with accidental death?”

“At the moment. I’ll listen to what other family members have to say.”

“There seems to have been a rash of them in this house. I hope this is the last. Bad things come in threes.”

“Teller and his sister are upstairs. To your right, second door. Or the master bedroom, farther along the passage.”

“Any marks on the body?”

“None that Fielding or I saw. He’ll know more later.”

Jessup nodded and went up the stairs two at a time.

Another motorcar came rapidly down the drive, and Rutledge opened the door to find a constable already standing there on duty, his cape wet with rain.

“Morning, sir.”

“Good morning, constable. I think that’s the deceased’s sister just arriving. Let her come in.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Rutledge went back inside and into the study, leaving the door ajar. He could hear Mary Brittingham speaking to the constable, then hurrying up the stairs.

A moment or two later, he heard a muffled cry as she must have reached her sister’s room.

It was sometime later that Walter Teller came down the stairs alone.

He walked into the study, nearly turned about as soon as he saw Rutledge there, then went to the window.

“The women are doing women things. I can’t think about what she’s to wear. I can’t face putting her into the ground. Tomorrow it may be easier. Jessup seems to be satisfied. He’s in the kitchen questioning Mollie. Something about milk spilled in the night.”

“Where did your wife keep her laudanum?”

He sat down, took a deep breath, and said, “Oddly enough, on a shelf in the kitchen. She was terrified that Harry might find it. I told her he’d have better sense, but she wouldn’t hear of keeping it anywhere else.”

“Did she take it often?”

“She only took it once before. When she’d hurt her back and couldn’t sleep. I’m surprised it hadn’t dried up long since.”

It made sense. Fumbling with the pan, spilling the milk, then miscounting her drops . . .

Rutledge said after a moment, “Why did she need them last night?”

“I expect it was Peter, the sound he made as he fell. She said she could still hear it. It was a shock for all of us. I don’t know how Amy held up. She watched him die.”

Rutledge let another silence fall. Then he said, “Do you think your brother’s death might have been intentional? Rather than facing trial and the publicity that will come in its wake, affecting the whole family. He couldn’t have foreseen he’d have been exonerated.”

“If Peter had wanted to escape anything, he would have gone somewhere quiet and private and shot himself. There are enough grounds here at Witch Hazel Farm for him to do that.”

“A good point. Who was Florence Teller? In truth?”

That brought Walter Teller out of his chair. “Now that Mary is here, we must break the news to my son. If you will excuse me?”

And he was gone.

Jessup came to say that he was ready for the body to be taken away. But Leticia Teller had asked him to wait until her brother and his wife arrived. Pulling out his pocket watch, he stood there considering time and distance. “Another hour, at best. I’ve told Dr. Fielding that he can leave.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Jessup said, “You’re sure there’s not something more I ought to know?”

Rutledge answered, “There was an inquiry in Lancashire. As it happened, Captain Teller was an unwitting witness. He called on someone there, and shortly afterward, she was murdered. The woman who killed her is now in custody. We shan’t have his evidence at the trial, but I don’t think we’ll have any worries about a conviction. Two policemen heard the murderer confess.”

“I didn’t know he was recently in Lancashire.”

“It was during the time when his brother was ill.”

“I’m beginning to think there’s much I haven’t been told.” “Walter Teller’s disappearance was a London matter. The murder took place in Lancashire.”

“And I’ve got two deaths here.”

“So you have.”

“Fielding said something about Teller’s illness worrying his wife as well as her husband’s disappearance. What was the nature of his illness? Was there any diagnosis?”

“Worry,” Rutledge said succinctly. “His mission society would like to see him back in the field.”

“I’m sure they would. Good publicity for them, with Walter Teller back in harness, perhaps another book in the offing. What does Teller think?”

“You must ask him. He may be needed here now, with a motherless son.”

“True enough. I’m not one for traveling in places where I’m not wanted. I’ve never seen the good in telling other people how to live and how to believe. Still, I admire those who can do such things.”

Jessup was fishing, Rutledge thought, and knew his business.

“His role in the Lancashire affair didn’t prey on Captain Teller’s mind, did it?”

“It’s more likely that a bad leg and his refusal to use a cane killed him rather than events in Lancashire.”

There was the sound of new arrivals outside the study. Rutledge said, “Edwin Teller and his wife.”

Jessup stood. “Let’s be clear. Is this my inquiry or the Yard’s.”

Rutledge smiled grimly. “At this stage it’s yours. I’ll give your people a statement. I was here just before the doctor came. So far, I’m a witness. But I know this family better than you do, and you’ll find me useful.”

“As long as we understand each other.”

They went out into the passage in time to see Edwin and Amy walk in and then climb the flight of stairs. Behind then was the elder Mrs. Teller. Gran’s face was drawn, as if it had aged too fast.

“Who is that?” asked Jessup.

Rutledge explained, adding, “She’s a little vague, but I wouldn’t discount her information, if I were you.”

It was not long before Amy brought a weeping Gran down the stairs and took her into the dining room.

“Don’t fuss, Amy,” she was saying when Rutledge walked in. “I’m quite able to put milk into my cup on my own.” Looking up, she said, “It’s that handsome young man who walked by my window. I didn’t know you were invited for the weekend as well?”

He came to take her hand. “I’m sorry to meet you again in such sad circumstances.”

“Yes, there’s Peter dying, and now Jenny. I don’t know what to make of it.” Her face puckered again. “Two funerals. I thought the next might be my own.”

“You’ve many years ahead of you,” he assured her.

Amy said quietly, “Go away. Let her drink her tea and cry a little, if that’s what she needs to do. Then I might persuade her to lie down for a bit.”

He ignored her. To Gran, he said, “You must be prepared to work with Harry. He will need your support and your care.”

“To be sure,” she told him impatiently. “What I don’t understand for the life of me is why Jenny took laudanum.”

“Captain Teller’s death unsettled her.”

“Oh, my dear, I could hardly bring myself to walk up those stairs. I can’t think what Jenny must have felt. But there are the arrangements for Peter. The flowers, the food, airing the beds. Who is to see to them now?” she demanded fretfully. “Why didn’t Susannah come with us? But I expect Leticia will know what to do.”

“Why would Jenny not have taken laudanum to sleep?” he pursued. “It must have seemed to her the sensible thing to do, so that she’d be rested.”

“But they gave her laudanum before,” Gran said, “and she didn’t like it. It made her so deathly ill.”

Amy started to speak, but one look from Rutledge and she held her tongue.

“When?”

“When I was here, of course. She’d hurt her back, and I came to stay. She found it hard to wake up. She felt all muzzy. She didn’t like it because of the baby.”

Amy said, “But Harry was away last night.”

Gran took another slice of cold toast. “Is there any of that nice jam left, dear? The one I like so much.”

Amy brought her the pot of strawberry jam.

“Thank you, my dear.” She spread it across half a slice of toast. “Has anyone told Susannah we’re here? I don’t understand why she didn’t come down with us.”

“Mary is here. You’ve always liked Mary,” Amy pointed out.

“No, I haven’t. Just because she’s Jenny’s sister, she thinks she’s invited everywhere. I much prefer Jenny.” Frowning she began to cry again. “It’s so sad, you know. First Peter, and now Jenny. It’s very trying.”

Rutledge prepared to go. “Mrs. Teller?” he said to Amy. “I’d like to speak with you privately, if I may.”

“If it’s about Jenny and the laudanum—”

“No.”

With a glance at Gran, happily spreading jam on another slice of toast, Amy rose. He led her out of the dining room, but Leticia was in the study, sitting at the desk, making a list, and at the top of the stairs, he could hear Walter speaking earnestly to Mary.

As she answered him, Rutledge caught the words, “ . . . your fault, Walter. You must accept that.”

Rutledge said, “Will you find your coat? There’s no privacy here.”

“It’s raining, if you haven’t noticed it.”

“Your coat.”

She came back with it and said, “Edwin wants to know if I’ll be long.”

“Nothing will happen while we’re gone.”

Irritably, she handed him her coat to hold for her, and then together they walked out past the constable and into the rain. Rutledge opened the door of his motorcar for her, and then turned the crank. Reversing the vehicle, he drove past the rain-laden roses. Amy said, “I’ve just driven from London. Edwin wasn’t feeling well enough to take the wheel. I’m not in the mood for a tour of Essex.”

They had reached the gate, just out of sight of the house. There Rutledge stopped.

Without preamble, he said, “Florence Teller wasn’t married to Captain Teller, was she?”

Amy opened her mouth, then closed it smartly.

“What I need to know is why Walter used his brother’s name.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said, looking at the trees that overhung the road.

“Look. I’ve seen his will. That rose garden, the one we just passed, is to be a memorial to his wife’s memory. And interestingly enough the will doesn’t specify Jenny Teller. There’s been a conspiracy of silence from the start. You’ve known the truth all along, haven’t you? And helped to cover it up,” he accused her.

She had turned to look at him again. “Jenny loved roses.”

“No, she didn’t. But Florence Teller did. Do you remember the rose that Lawrence Cobb dropped into the grave?”

“Was that his name? Yes, I remember. I remember that day very well.”

“Peter didn’t kill her. Someone else did. Lawrence Cobb’s wife. But I rather think I’m to blame for Walter believing he did. And it’s possible that in revenge he killed his brother.”

“You mean Peter’s fall—no, that’s ridiculous.”

“What I don’t know is how much he loved his wife. Or if he cared anything for his dead son. And I need to know, or my judgment will be flawed.”

“It’s pathetic,” she said angrily. “You hounded Peter to his death with threats of taking him into custody. And so he drank too much. That meant he wasn’t steady on his feet, and with that leg, it’s not surprising he fell. If there’s any blame in his death, it lies at your door. All you’re trying to do is shift it to Walter. Well, I won’t let you.”

Rutledge had both hands on the wheel. Between them in the far distance, over the tops of trees, he could just see the tower of Repton’s church, floating like an island in the sweeping curtains of rain.

Hamish was there too, the Scots voice loud in his ears.

Rutledge turned to look at Amy Teller.

“You aren’t protecting Walter. I don’t think you’re even fond of him. And you let Peter take the blame without compunction. Well, Jenny is dead. Nothing can hurt her now. It’s the boy. It’s young Harry. It was always Harry.” He turned to look at her. “As long as Peter shouldered the blame for marrying two women, Harry was safe. Even Susannah, his wife, was willing to say nothing, for Harry’s sake.”

She refused to answer him.

“Why did Walter Teller use his brother’s name, instead of his own? Neither of them had married in 1903.”

And still she sat stubbornly silent. But Rutledge could see tears bright in her eyes, tears of anger, frustration, and helplessness.

“How long have you known? At a guess, not very long. Was it during Walter’s illness? Did something happen then?”

He waited, giving her a chance.

Finally he said, “Peter Teller died trying to preserve that lie. When you got to him, he said, ‘It was me.’ And instead, so that it wouldn’t arouse any suspicion, you told everyone that he had spoken your name.”

He thought for a moment she would fling open the motorcar’s door and run down the drive in the rain to get away from him.

“And Leticia, you and your husband, along with Mary, tried to pry the truth from Walter on Sunday after I’d gone north. Did Jenny overhear you? Is that why she took an overdose of laudanum?”

She broke down then, her face in her hands.

It had mostly been conjecture on his part, putting together what he knew with what he suspected, and holding the two together with a tissue of guessing.

He added as he prepared to let in the clutch and start down the drive, “Peter didn’t kill Florence Teller—but I tell you again it’s possible Walter thought he had, and killed him. That’s why I need to know how he felt about Florence Teller, and if he would avenge her when the chance presented itself.” He handed Amy Teller his handkerchief, adding, “I think you can see my dilemma. Inspector Jessup is already suspicious. If I walk away, and don’t do my duty, someone else will. And it will be worse. I’ll do my best to protect Harry. But I will need help.”