Proof of Guilt

Chapter Nineteen

Rutledge was kept busy for what was left of the day, finishing three reports on cases coming to trial. His mind was half on what he was doing and half on the possibilities tumbling over themselves in his head.

And Hamish too was there, arguing first one side and then the other, a distraction he couldn’t escape.

It was nearly eight o’clock when he left the Yard. The days were growing shorter, the long hours of sunlight dwindling toward autumn. He had hated the long days in the trenches, the sun beating down, bringing up the stinking miasma that was always there, until he could smell it even when he’d left the front lines, as if it had been absorbed by his pores. Hot, unable to escape the heat, helmets seeming to burn straight into the brain, thirsty, never enough water, never mind fresh water, and then the final agony, charging across No Man’s Land. No chance to bathe, shaving only because the gas mask had to fit, even a fresh uniform filthy before it could be enjoyed, and always the knowledge that if rain came, it would be worse, and sometimes the low-lying mists afterward hiding the deadly gas. He was never sure that winter was any better, the helmet cold, the strap chafing chapped skin, and half-frozen fingers on the trigger of his revolver.

He shook himself, walked to the motorcar, and drove to the flat, grateful to have time to think.

But it wasn’t to be.

Frances was there, waiting for him, asking him to take her to dinner.

“All my friends are out of town. Let’s go somewhere jolly, shall we, and pretend we’re having fun.”

He laughed. “It’s too late for dinner.”

“Well, I haven’t eaten, and I’m sure you haven’t either. Come home with me, and I’ll find something to cook. We can talk.”

He had got to the bottom of it. Something was wrong.

“All right. Give me five minutes to clean up and change.”

She waited restlessly in the parlor, walking about, touching things, moving them a little this way or that, in constant motion, it seemed to him in the bedroom, listening to her footsteps as they crossed the polished floorboards, then the carpet, back to the floorboards again.

When he came out of the bedroom, she turned, relief on her face, and then managed to smile.

“You’re looking remarkably handsome. I like that tie.”

“You should. You gave it to me for Christmas.”

“Did I? I have good taste.”

He took her out to the motorcar, and they drove in silence to the house where they had both lived as children and that now belonged to Frances.

She said as she walked in the door, “Does it ever seem to you that the house echoes when you’re the only one at home?”

“I’d never thought about it that way. I suppose it does.”

Leading the way through to the kitchen, she began to open cabinet doors and peer into the pantry.

“I’m not particularly hungry,” he said after a moment.

“Well, there’s soup left over from my lunch and some roast beef, I think. Pickle. Apples. Cheese. Will you make the tea?”

He picked up the kettle, rinsed it, and then filled it with fresh water.

Frances put down the bread she was starting to slice and then said, “Ian. Peter Lockwood? Do you remember him? You were in school with him.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I do,” he answered as casually as he could.

“He was a pilot in the war. Came back home to marry the girl he loved—and she had already married someone else. He was quite bitter about it. He left England and went to Kenya. But that didn’t suit, apparently, because he’s back now. I’ve run into him quite a lot recently. His father’s dead and he’s taken over the farm. I think it suits him.”

Lockwood’s father had been a gentleman farmer. No title, no great estate, but land that had been in his family since the Armada if not the Domesday Book. Old money, a long tradition on the land, and deep roots there.

“Yes, I should think it would.” He braced himself for what was to come.

“He’s asked me to marry him,” she said baldly.

“And what did you say?”

“I told him I wanted to think about it. And I do. Ian, there was someone in the war, someone I cared for very much, but it was impossible. There were . . . impediments, and we agreed not to start something we might both regret.”

He’d always suspected it. He even believed he knew who the man was and what the impediment was. And that the man hadn’t lived to see the end of the war.

He said, choosing his words carefully, “I shouldn’t be surprised. That you’d met someone. For a time I thought Simon might make you happy. But it didn’t seem to last.”

“No. I like him very much. I really do. But he’s—he’s not considerate. The way he kept his sister’s illness from everyone. He could have said that family affairs had called him away. Instead he simply disappeared from time to time to be with her through the worst of it. I admired that. I felt a little selfish, to tell you the truth, for wanting to know where he was, if there was someone else, if he cared at all. He could have thought of that, couldn’t he? A little thing, really, but I wondered if life with him would be full of little things. And if in the end, I could be happy, always waiting for him to tell me what was on his mind. What worried him. What was important to him.”

Frances was the least selfish person Rutledge knew. He felt suddenly angry with Simon for making her feel she was.

“And Peter?” he asked after a moment.

“I’m so comfortable when I’m with him. When I’m not, he’s still a part of my day, and when he comes to take me to dinner or to a play or just to walk in the park, I feel as if the sun is shining, whether it is or not. Isn’t that odd? I haven’t felt this way since—since the war. I feel safe when he’s with me.”

The kettle was ready and he made the tea, keeping his back to her, letting her talk.

“Then I don’t see a problem,” he said finally.

She was busy with the bread again, cutting slices, the knife clinking against the plate in the silence. He waited until the pot was ready and then poured her tea, placing it on the table beside her.

Setting the bread aside, she said, “I don’t want to leave you alone in London.”

Surprised, he could only stare at her.

“I know how you suffered when you came home from France. Dr. Fleming didn’t tell me a great deal—he said it was better for you if I didn’t know the whole of it—but he was worried about you, and I’ve been as well. You’ve come back to the Yard and done brilliantly. But you aren’t happy, Ian, and you haven’t found anyone since Jean. I don’t know that you’ve tried. I understand that—I know how Peter felt about the loss of his fiancée, you see, and how long it has taken him to get over her desertion. He told me that it was his fault, he’d spent four years dreaming about a woman who didn’t really exist. He just hadn’t realized that when he went off to France. He’d come home to her, not to the woman who had already married another man without bothering to tell him.”

Rutledge didn’t know what to say. He’d never told her that Jean had been terrified by the man she’d seen in hospital, and that somehow he’d had the good sense to set her free, however much it had hurt at the time. He’d never told Frances what he’d felt for Meredith Channing, either. It had been too personal, too unexpected, too soon. Too difficult, even to admit to himself that he’d cared.

In a way, he realized, Meredith had deserted him as well.

“I’ve been too busy to fall in love,” he said, striving to speak lightly. “It was hard, returning to the Yard after four years in the trenches. I’ve had to catch up. And there have been times when I didn’t feel very much like going out in the evening. That’s the nature of being a policeman.”

She knew him too well to be satisfied with that.

“Ian—”

“You needn’t worry,” he said, summoning a convincing smile. “I’ll be all right. When I meet the right person—as you’ve clearly done—then I’ll be as happy as you are now.”

He could hear Hamish in the back of his mind. He looked down, busy stirring his tea, so that she couldn’t read his eyes.

“Peter is a good man,” he said after a moment. “I could see how you would suit.”

“Truly?”

“Truly.” Ignoring the wave of loneliness that was sweeping him, he added, “Now that we’ve settled this between us, do you think you could finish those sandwiches?”

She laughed and leaned across the table to kiss his cheek, then picked up the bread again.

Rutledge didn’t know if he’d convinced her that he was all right or if she wanted so much to believe it that she would.

The next morning, after a night of little sleep, Rutledge drove down to the coast, to Dungeness Light.

It took him the better part of two hours to find the fisherman who had first discovered the body on the long stretch of stones that passed for a beach.

The man was suspicious at first, facing an Inspector from Scotland Yard.

“What is it you want from me?”

They stood there looking out toward the sea, the Lighthouse behind them.

“We think we may have stumbled on his identity. The question is, could he have come off a passing ship?”

“It would depend, wouldn’t it, on how well he could swim.” The man turned to squint up at Rutledge. “The sea takes what it wants. If he could fight it and not tire, he could reach a point where he would wash ashore here. Dead, he’d float for a time, bloated and all, then sink to the bottom. This ’un could have made it, I’m thinking, because he was fit enough and the light would guide him the right way. It was just a bit farther than he had the strength to make. Tides are funny things. Predictable as night and day, but the current, see, the current’s another matter. It’ull catch a body and spin it, and take it the wrong way, then capricious, it will turn it another direction. This one hadn’t been in the current too long.”

“His pockets were empty. No identification. Not even a coat.”

The fisherman looked out to sea again. “If I were to want to kill a man, I’d do it quiet, just squeezing the back of his neck until he blacks out, then empty his pockets before heaving him overboard. No signs of harm done, see, no way to identify him. And hope that far out, the sea wants to keep him.”

Rutledge smiled. “You’d make a good murderer.”

The fisherman didn’t return the smile. “I killed men in France. Any way I could, so’s they wouldn’t kill me first. And I didn’t hate those I killed. That’s the odd thing. I just did it, to be sure I was the one who saw the next day’s sunrise. I wasn’t proud of it.”

“I meant no offense.”

“None taken. But I’ll never kill again. Not even to save myself. If that’s all you wanted, I’m off.”

And without waiting for an answer, the fisherman walked away, heading toward one of the little shacks where men kept their gear and sometimes lived when the fish were running.

Rutledge let him go, standing there alone, the wind whipping his trouser legs against his ankles, the whisper of the waves rolling in coming to him, calling to him. He went closer to them, after a while, his shoes crunching through the stones all the long way, trapping his feet in much the same fashion that heavy sand might, pulling at the muscles of the calves until they ached. The tide was out, hadn’t yet turned.

He could imagine a man making it this far, tired, almost spent, and then the struggle with the stones would defeat him, and before he could quite reach the safety of the tide line to fall down to sleep, he fell to his knees, and then was knocked over by a wave, drowning because he couldn’t lift himself out of the oncoming water.

Not a pretty way to die, within sight of living.

Rutledge stayed where he was a little longer, then turned and made his slow, laborious way back to his motorcar.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

There was some truth to that old adage, Rutledge thought as he crossed the Thames and headed to Essex.

He had left a note on his desk, saying that he was tying up a few loose ends. And that would have to do.

He reached Dedham finally and then drove on to St. Hilary.

This time Miss French was willing to see him.

She had, he could tell, much on her mind.

“All these years,” she said, “we trusted that man Gooding. Out of pity we gave his granddaughter freedom of this house, even allowed her to become engaged to my brothers, and that wasn’t enough. He wanted more, and look at the grief he’s brought us.”

“Are you so sure he’s guilty?” Rutledge asked with interest, taking the chair she indicated.

“The police say he is. That’s good enough for me.”

“What would it gain Mr. Gooding to kill your brother?”

“I expect he didn’t think he would be found out. He would go on running the firm, in the hope that eventually I’d have no choice but to make him a partner because I depended on him so. His granddaughter avenged, his own ambition satisfied. Now I must travel to London and try to salvage the firm. I don’t know anything about wine, I was never asked if I wanted to learn. It will serve my father and my brothers right if I botch it. But I can’t afford to, can I? It’s my own livelihood at stake too. And what I shall face on Madeira I don’t know. I can’t even speak the language. I was never encouraged to learn it.”

“Why should Gooding wish to harm Traynor? If it was revenge he was after?”

“How do I know what was going through his mind? He must have thought that Matthew would make choices about the London office that didn’t include him. One seldom promotes even a chief clerk to head of firm.”

It was a good argument, and would be telling if Miss French was called on to testify.

“I wondered why we’d had no news of Matthew’s arrival. So strange, so unlike the man to be so inconsiderate of us. And all this time, Gooding had kept it secret so that he could meet Matthew himself. Odd how things turn out. My father, I think, had hoped that I’d marry Matthew, but he became involved with some woman out there. Perhaps if my father had allowed me to visit Funchal, I’d have had a chance in that direction. Shortsighted, wasn’t it? And serves him right.”

The diatribe ended. Rutledge thought she was about to cry, but she mastered the urge—if there was one—and said briskly, “You didn’t come all this way to listen to me complain.”

“Do you remember that when you were a child someone came to the house looking for your grandfather? He caused such an uproar the constable had to be called to restrain him.”

“Is that true? Who told you such a thing? Was it Gooding?”

“I don’t know that Gooding was told. It was something your grandfather wanted to keep in the family.”

“How odd. Lewis had nightmares when he was a child. He said he saw Papa with blood all over his shirt. It was summer, not quite dark, late as it was. Papa was standing below the Nursery window, talking to the doctor and the constable, and Lewis thought they were about to take him away. They kept urging him into the doctor’s carriage, and he refused to go. Michael’s new tutor was here the next morning. Mama brought him up to meet us, not Papa, and Lewis was frightened that something had happened. Lewis began to cry and ask for Papa. Mama told him not to be silly, he’d see Papa at tea. After she’d gone downstairs again, Lewis asked the tutor if he’d come because Papa was dead. The tutor was quite shocked. He told Lewis that he’d spoken to Papa at breakfast. But we didn’t see him until the next afternoon at tea. Lewis refused to go to sleep that night and several nights thereafter, afraid the dream would come back again. I know because he was still in the Nursery and kept me awake as well. But I don’t think it did reoccur. Perhaps because it wasn’t a dream after all. But who came here? Was it someone we knew?”

“It was someone connected to the winemaking business in Funchal.”

“Well then, I expect that was the end of it. Nothing was ever said about trouble with the Funchal part of the business. I’m sure Matthew would know—would have known if there was.” She dismissed the matter, returning to her earlier grievances. “I had a note from Miss Townsend. She wanted to know if I’d had news of Lewis. I had to be the one to inform her that Lewis was very likely dead and that Gooding had been taken up for his murder. If she really cared, she would have come rather than write. It would have saved me the trouble of having to explain such things on paper.”

He said, “Have you spoken to Miss Whitman again?”

“No, nor shall I.”

“If Gooding was Chief Clerk in London, why should he give it all up just because your brother preferred Miss Townsend to Miss Whitman?”

“He dotes on Valerie. Of course he does. Everyone always did. Even my father.”

Rutledge wondered, not for the first time, if Agnes French could have killed her brother and purposely prepared for Gooding and Valerie Whitman to take the blame. After all, it was a woman’s touch, to leave the handkerchief in the motorcar, to cast the blame on Miss Whitman.

That brought him full circle to the fact that her maid would know if she was away for more than a few hours. The cook, the maids—impossible.

He said, “How long has your maid been in your service?”

“Since I was ten. She was eighteen at the time, and my mother thought I would benefit from having someone look after me. I expect she felt that Nan would keep me out of trouble, but we were soon fast friends.”

And fast friends would lie for one another.

Not just childhood peccadilloes but murder as well?

Hamish said, “Did she kill her mother and father? She had the keeping of them, and could ha’ rid herself of them when they were too much trouble.”

She was just selfish enough that it was possible. And her brothers left the care of them to her. Surely the doctor would have caught anything unusual. Besides, they had been long dead, there would have been no way to prove that suspicion one way or another.

Still—it was an interesting argument. He decided to probe.

“You cared for your parents, in their last illnesses. It must have been very difficult for you.”

“It was. My father could have afforded the best nursing care. But he wouldn’t put out the money. He told me that I could take over the sickroom and care for Mama. It was very difficult. She was not always the best of patients. But it was my duty, and I did it.”

“Again, with your father.”

“Oh, yes, Michael and Lewis decided between them that it would be for the best. I was never very close to my father. It was rather nice in some ways for me to see him dependent on me.”

She was very open about her feelings. Would she be, if she had been guilty of their deaths?

He couldn’t be sure. She was so supremely certain that life had given her less than she deserved, that she might not see the pitfalls of being too truthful about all her emotions.

Rutledge left soon after, still no closer to an answer that satisfied him. All that he had was further proof of Afonso Diaz’s presence in the house.

He knew, when he’d chosen to see Miss French first, that he was using it as an excuse to put off calling on Valerie Whitman.

Driving on to her house, he tried to think what he could say that would help Miss Whitman through this dark time, with her grandfather facing murder charges and her own situation more than a little precarious.

But when he reached her door and knocked, he was no closer to an answer to that question.

As she opened the door narrowly, Rutledge could see for himself how stressful the past few days had been. There were circles under her eyes, and their color was less green now, more a dull brown. It wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t been sleeping well.

“Why have they done this to us?” she asked when she saw who was on her doorstep. “I have had enough of people coming to commiserate. Or so they tell me. Sometimes I think it’s more like gloating. Miss Townsend was one of the first, out of kindness. I felt so terrible for her. She was to marry Lewis. It must have been a shock to hear that my grandfather had killed him. She did say that she had come against her father’s wishes. He was upset, she told me, because he didn’t care to have his patients making comments to him about his daughter’s choice of husband.”

“He seems to be a rather hard man.”

“He’s a good doctor. That’s why people have tolerated his manners. Or lack of them.”

“Do you believe your grandfather murdered Lewis French?”

Her cheeks flushed. He couldn’t be sure it whether it was anger or something else.

“Do you wish to gloat too? I thought— You warned me.”

“The warning still stands. It’s believed he must have had an accomplice.”

She made to close the door. “I don’t need to hear this sort of thing.”

“I’m trying to get to the truth,” he said in self-defense, but she shook her head.

“Or hoping that I’ll blurt out something that will help you prove he’s guilty.” She glanced up the street and saw a neighbor watching her. Angrily she said to Rutledge, “Did it ever occur to you that the real truth is that Lewis wanted the whole business, not just the London half? And that he tried to kill Matthew himself? Or have him killed? And the reason you can’t find Lewis’s body is that he’s in hiding somewhere until my grandfather is hanged?”

And then, apparently wishing that she could take back her own cruel words, she went inside, shutting the door with a firmness that was little short of a slam.

As a defense for her grandfather, her argument was sound enough. It would explain both Traynor’s death and French’s disappearance.

And if that was true, it would mean that the body in Dungeness was Traynor’s. But what had she said? Or have him killed . . . It would be more consistent with the man French was to hire someone to see that Traynor never landed in England.

Rutledge nodded to the neighbor who had been watching the exchange with Valerie Whitman and drove back to Dedham. This time he found Miss Townsend alone in her father’s house.

“My father’s at a lying-in,” she said, clearly hesitant about inviting him in. And remembering how her father had behaved when he had called the first time, Rutledge could understand her concern as she added, “And my mother is calling on a friend.”

“Would you prefer to walk with me? This is police business, Miss Townsend. Your father can have no objection to your helping us in our inquiries.”

She smiled tentatively, hiding sudden tears, and invited him into the parlor.

“It’s true then about Lewis. And Mr. Gooding. I thought perhaps Miss French was being cruel. I wanted to go and speak to her, but my father felt it would only point up our connection with the family if I did. I even went to see Miss Whitman, taking my bicycle and hoping no one gossiped about that to my father.”

“We have every reason to think it could be true. But we have no proof that your fiancé is dead,” he said gently.

“I’m sure he must be,” she replied forlornly. “Why wouldn’t he try to reassure me that he was all right, if that were the case?”

Because, Hamish was pointing out, the man seemed to be as selfish as his sister.

Rutledge answered, “He may be frightened. It’s possible that Gooding killed the wrong man, thinking it was Lewis, and he’s now in hiding.”

“But Mr. Gooding is in custody. Lewis should feel safe now.”

“Have you met Matthew Traynor? How did he and Mr. French get on?”

“I was to meet him when he came to England. There was to be a party. But of course that’s not going to happen, either. The only comment I remember Lewis making about him was that he was Michael’s man and saw things Michael’s way still. They were of an age, you see. Matthew and Michael. As Lewis was in charge of the London office, the son of the founder, he felt he should be shown more—I don’t know—deference? Mr. Traynor was more isolated on Madeira and should have to change with the times. With Prohibition in the United States, new markets were essential.”

It was true, the Act had gone into effect in January of the current year. And exporters must be feeling the loss of revenue rather strongly, with much of Europe still in shambles. Rutledge could see that Lewis French had been discussing this situation with either Miss Townsend or her father. Was that what had been on his mind—the troubling problem he and Traynor would have to address?

Rutledge said, “I’m sorry that I have no information for you now, but I’ll send word as soon as I know what has become of Mr. French.”

“You’re very kind,” she said, tears spilling from under her lashes. “I’d even asked my father to speak to Scotland Yard, but he refused.” She bit her lip. “He has had one brush with scandal. He doesn’t wish to be connected with another one.”

“Will you tell me what that first one was about?”

The color rising quickly in her fair skin, she said, “He drank more, during an illness of my mother’s. And a patient nearly died. He claimed that he was overcome by worry, but I knew that it had been happening for some time, even before Mama became ill. It was so embarrassing for both of us. Friends turned away, I was taunted by other children. I had even seen my own father too drunk to stand, and that was horrifying. But I lied and told everyone that he had never been overcome by drink. When Mama recovered, he stopped. I was so grateful I’d have done anything for him.”

Her father had put her in a very untenable situation. And now, to avoid new scandal, he’d given his daughter none of the support she needed to help her cope with Lewis’s loss.

“It was rather awful.” She glanced uneasily at the clock, and he knew she was eager for him to be gone before her father came home unexpectedly and recognized the motorcar in front of his door, or her mother returned to find Rutledge in the drawing room. “And then to wonder if Lewis had deserted me as well.”

“It isn’t desertion, if it’s beyond his control.”

Thanking her, he left. She had none of the defenses of Valerie Whitman and wasn’t self-centered enough to stand up to what was happening, the way Agnes French would survive.

He could feel pity for her.

But desertion brought with it a memory of the night before. Of Frances’s confession that she was afraid to leave him to his own devices. Of the sweeping loneliness their conversation had evoked.

He wanted his sister to be happy, to have children and a marriage that was all she could wish for. It was important to him—they had always been close, and he loved her very much.

Using her as a shield against the darkness—someone who was always there when he needed her, someone who didn’t know the truth, who could cheer him up with a word or sweep him off to join her friends for dinner when he was in despair, who shared a childhood with him, safe ground they could revisit without shadows—perhaps he had lost sight of the woman his sister was.

It would be hard. But he would give her away when the time came and say nothing.

He had seen enough of jealousy in the last few weeks. It was not something he would ever let himself be guilty of.