Proof of Guilt

Chapter Fourteen

He drove as fast as he dared, but a storm broke just north of London, and he was forced to pull over. Wind tossed tree limbs, littering the streets of the village with leaves and puddles of heavy rain when it came. He could feel the shoulder of his coat getting wet and raced for the door of a tea shop while he could, watching the storm from its windows, then asking for a cup of tea until it passed.

Frustrated at the loss of a precious hour, Rutledge lost another where a tree had been blown down across the road, sent around on a detour that seemed to go on forever before it led him back to the main road.

Finally the outskirts of Dedham were in sight, and the sun came out. He drove on to Thetford, and at the station asked to see the bicycle in Left Luggage.

It was a lady’s bicycle, black and ordinary. He had wasted time coming to see it.

Thanking the man behind the grille, he turned back toward Dedham, then went on to St. Hilary.

He stopped first at the French house, and it was late enough that Nan answered the door herself.

He hadn’t considered how he would approach the maid. It was not something that he could simply walk in and ask. How loyal are you to your mistress? Would you cover up a murder for her sake? Would you go so far as to act as an accomplice? And where have you hidden the body of her brother?

With Hamish humming in the back of his mind, Rutledge smiled. “It’s late, I’m afraid, but it’s rather important—”

“Miss French has already gone up to bed, sir. Unless it’s urgent. She’s been that upset, hearing that her cousin is missing as well. Mr. Gooding informed her this morning.”

“I understand. As a matter of fact, it’s you I’ve come to speak to.”

“Me, sir?”

“Just a few questions that could help us in our search for Mr. French.”

“Anything I can do, sir.”

“Tell me again about the night Mr. French left.”

“There’s not much to tell. He came down to dinner as usual, and afterward he and Miss French had a few words in the study. I don’t know what it was about, but it ended with Mr. French going upstairs to change to his driving clothes, and then I heard the door slam behind him.”

“What did Miss French do?”

“She was in the sitting room, and she ran out after him. I don’t know what was said. The motorcar drove away, but she didn’t come in. I went out to look for her after a while, and she was in the little Greek temple, and she was crying. I asked her to come in out of the night air. She refused, said she thought he would come back and she wanted to wait. She dismissed me, but I got up again close to two o’clock, and she was in bed.”

“Asleep?”

“I couldn’t say, sir.”

Rutledge considered what Nan had told him. There had been enough time for Agnes French to kill her brother. If he had come home again and found her in the rose garden, if the quarrel had been renewed, she could have rushed to the motorcar and turned it in the heat of her anger and run him down as he walked away.

But then why had the bit of cloth he’d discovered under the French motorcar matched the dead man’s clothing, and not French’s?

There was the possibility that in his mad need to leave the house behind, French could have hit someone else on the road and suffered a seizure because of it. And his sister had let him die.

That would explain everything.

He said, intending to catch the maid unaware, “Who took the dead man to London, left him there, and then abandoned the motorcar in Surrey?”

She frowned. “I’ve never been to Surrey, sir. Are you meaning Mr. French? Is he dead, sir? Is that why you’ve come, to tell Miss French?”

“No,” he said, feeling the tension in his shoulders from the long drive and the weariness of knowing he had wasted more of his forty-eight hours than he could spare. “We haven’t located Mr. French.”

“I’m glad, sir. I didn’t want to be the one to wake Miss French and tell her.”

He changed the subject. “Did Miss Whitman have a bicycle? Do you remember it?”

“Yes, sir, she and Mr. Michael would go off together, pedaling their bicycles and stopping somewhere for lunch. Just an ordinary bicycle, sir. Nothing special about it. She rather liked it, because Miss French’s father had given it to her one Christmas.”

“Thank you, Nan. I don’t think we need to disturb your mistress after all.”

He turned to go, and she wished him a good night.

He drove as far as the dark churchyard and walked for a time between the gravestones. He couldn’t help but see that Miss Whitman must be awake because there were lights in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Standing there watching the light, he said aloud, “He’s going to have her taken up for murder. Markham. And her grandfather as well. Where the bloody hell is Lewis French? Or saving that, where in hell is his body?”

Hamish, who seemed to be standing just behind his shoulder in the soft darkness, said, “It’ull do no good to lament. Ye still have half your time left.”

But what to do with it?

Rutledge walked back and forth under the trees, barely missing some of the older, sunken stones as he paced.

Markham wouldn’t allow him to search for the connection between Diaz and a killer he could have hired.

But there might be a way to do it without prejudice.

The light in the upstairs bedroom finally went out.

Hamish said, “Ye’ve lost the distance a policeman must keep from his suspects.”

“I don’t know that I have,” Rutledge said. “It’s just hard to believe, that’s all. There’s been nothing—absolutely nothing—that points to her except circumstantial evidence.”

“And yon photograph,” Hamish said. “The van guard has said so.”

At that moment, the cottage door opened, and Miss Whitman, a shawl around her shoulders, came out and walked down the path to her gate.

He stood there watching her. Waiting to see where she might go.

But she crossed the street and came into the churchyard.

“Are you there?” she asked, peering into the darkness beneath the trees. “It’s you, isn’t it? I saw you from my window as I blew out my lamp. Are you waiting for morning to take me into custody? Is that why you’re come to St. Hilary?”

He walked toward her. “I came looking for something that would explain the unexplainable. French isn’t the only one who has vanished. Traynor has gone missing as well.”

She sucked in a breath. He could hear it.

“Dear God. And you think my grandfather and I have done these things.”

“No. I think—I thought I knew who was responsible. But there’s no way to prove it. And I’ve come to the end. I won’t be the one to take you into custody. They’re sending me to Staffordshire. But it will happen. I’m sorry.”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “It will happen.”

She stood there, a black silhouette against the starlight that lit the street and the front of her house.

And then without a word she turned and walked away.

Rutledge watched her until she had gone inside and closed the door behind her before turning toward his motorcar.

Apropos of nothing, Hamish said, “They burned witches.”

But Rutledge wasn’t to be drawn. This time he ignored the voice in his head and resolutely turned toward the London road.