Proof of Guilt

Chapter Twenty-two

When Rutledge arrived at the gates to the Bennett property, he pulled over before reaching the house.

Diaz was usually at work in the grounds, and while Surrey was overcast and promised rain, Rutledge rather thought that Diaz preferred his own company to that of his fellows. He would be outside, away from the happy games Mrs. Bennett seemed to enjoy devising or the men’s conversations in the servants’ hall. Diaz had little in common with any of them. Indeed, he must tolerate Bob Rawlings only because the man was useful to him.

Rutledge found Diaz in the back of the property, wrapped in an old cape of some sort and tending a fire burning the wood the two gardeners had been busy clearing out of the orchard and the park. The scent of applewood was strong, and watching from a distance as the man tossed new fuel on the blaze, he realized that Diaz was far more vigorous than anyone thought, given his age and his wiry build. He had had a way of appearing shrunken, a man who had been defeated by years in an asylum with no expectation of ever seeing Madeira again.

In fact Diaz reminded Rutledge strongly of the painting he’d seen in the French house of a shepherd on a high, windswept hill, watching a flock of sheep.

But here there was no loneliness, no despair. Just a formidable need that had fed on itself for decades. And a mind clever enough to do something about that need.

The thought gave Rutledge his opening, for he hadn’t prepared for the encounter, uncertain what the circumstances of their meeting would be.

“Senhor Diaz?”

The man whirled, dropping into a crouch as if to protect himself from attack.

As soon as he saw Rutledge, he slowly straightened, and with that curious stillness that he must have cultivated in the asylum in the face of the madness around him and that was part of his very nature now he waited.

“I’ve just come to tell you that you’ve won.”

“I don’t understand.”

Rutledge kept his distance, for he could see as he took another few steps forward the wicked-looking pruning knife for high branches that lay at the man’s feet.

“It’s an expression,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what it means. What does matter is that you have succeeded beyond your wildest dreams. French is dead, and although we haven’t found his body yet, so is Matthew Traynor. Gooding is sitting in a prison cell awaiting trial for their murders. His granddaughter will be taken into custody this afternoon as an accomplice in those murders. For my sins, I’ve been ordered to see to it as soon as I can reach Essex. The House of French, French and Traynor is in serious disarray, left in the hands of a woman who is unfit to take it over or run it properly. Give her five years—if that—and it will be worthless. She will be destitute.”

He could see the gleam in those dark, unfathomable eyes.

“The only person still alive who witnessed your visit to the French household all those years ago is very likely to be so severely brain damaged that he will be no threat to you. You’ve wiped the slate clean, and I daresay your English is good enough to appreciate that idiom.”

Diaz simply stood there, hands by his sides.

“There is nothing I can do to change what you have accomplished or to save Mr. Gooding, who didn’t deserve to be dragged into his employers’ troubles. But I must admit, it was quite cleverly done, even though I abhor it. I salute you. You have even bested Scotland Yard.”

Without moving, Diaz searched the trees through which Rutledge had had to come.

“No, I left no listeners there. We’re quite alone. I didn’t relish having anyone hear what I came to say.”

Rutledge made to go, then appeared to think better of it.

“It was my inquiry from the start. Still, I wasn’t sure myself where the truth lay. Whether it was Gooding wanting power or a falling-out of the two partners that resulted in the death of one or both of them. Or even if Miss French had disposed of her tiresome brother. I couldn’t find any proof of your guilt, no matter how hard I tried.”

He met Diaz’s gaze. “That is to say, until one of your underlings made the very serious mistake of firing at me as I drove Mr. MacFarland to the doctor’s surgery. I can’t believe that either Miss French or Miss Whitman is good enough with a revolver to come so close to hitting me. That was when I saw your hand in these events.”

Rutledge smiled for the first time. “And so, you see, I have come to congratulate you on a superbly perfect plan. But I am also here to tell you that I will hound you until the day you die, and if I am lucky, I will find the proof I need. However long it takes. I do not care to be made a fool of, Mr. Diaz, and you have made a deadly enemy. In the end, I’ll prove to be more clever than you. I live for that moment.”

He saw, quick as a flash, those dark eyes flicker toward the pruning knife and back toward the fire. And then they were impassive once more, waiting for Rutledge to finish and leave. Tempted though Diaz was to kill him here and now and burn the body along with the deadwood in the bin, he was unwilling to risk it. He might well kill Rutledge, but this was sanctuary, this position with the Bennetts, and too valuable to lose.

Rutledge laughed. Intentionally. “I’m a match for you, old man,” he said with contempt. “The Germans couldn’t kill me and neither can you.”

Dark color spread into the enigmatic face, and Rutledge saw it before he turned away.

Over his shoulder, he added, “And don’t bother to send your underlings to find me. I’m more than a match for them as well. I’m your Nemesis, and there is nothing in the world you can do about it. Nemesis. That’s a classical term, one you no doubt studied at University in Portugal. I shouldn’t have to translate it for you.”

He kept walking, still avoiding the house, until he had reached the gates to the drive. His motorcar was where he’d left it, and he drove off.

He didn’t go far.

There was a farm lane just before the village, and he turned down it, following a track that led toward several outbuildings. The war had taken the horses, and their stalls were already in disrepair. At the far end, a new Fordson F tractor had taken their place, its great iron-spoke wheels thick with mud from the late summer plowing. Rutledge pulled his motorcar off to one side, where it couldn’t be seen from the road or the farmer’s house, marked by tall chimney pots on the far side of an orchard.

And then he walked back to the road, taking up a post behind the shed where the milk cans were left each evening.

It would be a long wait, he expected that. Diaz would have to write his letter and Rawlings would have to find an excuse to carry it to the village for posting.

Settling himself as comfortably as he could against the trunk of a tree, Rutledge tried to ignore the rumbling voice in his head arguing the comments he’d made to Diaz and finding holes in his arguments.

“He willna’ risk everything to come after ye. It would cost too much. He missed his chance by yon fire, and he kens it verra’ well. And ye’ll be faced with a man ye’ve niver seen. It will be when ye least expect it that he’ll strike.”

But this wasn’t the first time that Rutledge had set himself as the goat to draw out a killer. Once it had been necessary to protect the next victim. Another time he had seen it as the only way to bring a suspect back to where he could take him in. In Diaz’s case, the man had achieved what he had set out to do and was in the clear. Their relationship had had to be reduced to a personal challenge. Not hunter and hunted, but a test of nerve. Would Diaz choose the prudent course and rid himself of the last threat to his schemes? Or would he cut his losses and take the chance that there was nothing Rutledge could find in the way of proof, however long he might go on searching?

“I don’t think he’ll trust a surrogate. I believe Diaz would prefer to kill me himself to be sure nothing goes wrong.”

“He hasna’ put a foot wrong. Ye told him that.”

“Yes, but his underlings have. I think the man we found in Chelsea was intended to be French, but something went wrong, and another man died in French’s place. The mistake was rectified, and the other man became a decoy, complete with French’s watch.”

“Then where is French? Why has he no’ come forward?”

“Because he knows Gooding isn’t the killer. Either that or he’s dead.”

“The tiger ye’ve angered is no’ a man to toy with.”

“We’ll see.”

“And if he does come for ye, where is the proof that he ordered the deaths of the ithers? He willna’ speak.”

“No, but Bob Rawlings will talk, faced with the rope as an accomplice in murder. He’s arrogant. And behind that is weakness.”

“Then why not tak’ him up for murder and see what he has to say.”

“I have no reason to take him into custody. Only my suspicion.”

It was a vicious circle, and Rutledge had thought it carefully through.

The minutes turned into hours. He glanced at his watch several times, knowing he should be halfway to Dedham by now.

And then, coming down the road, whistling in a monotone under his breath, was Bob Rawlings. Frowning, apparently deep in thought, he was swinging the stick he was carrying rhythmically back and forth, back and forth in an unconscious counterpoint to whatever tune was in his head. In his left hand was an envelope, and as Rawlings got closer, Rutledge could see the stamp affixed to it and the black scrawl of a name.

He waited for Rawlings to come back again from the post office. And it wasn’t long before the man appeared, for he’d wasted no time in the village. The frown had deepened into a scowl, and he was wielding his stick like a scythe now, viciously whipping off the heads of the wildflowers along the verge of the road. Taking out on them the mood he was in.

Hamish said, “If he’s no’ a killer now, he’ll grow inta one.”

As Rawlings passed Rutledge’s vantage point, Rutledge could see the edge of an envelope sticking out of his pocket.

A reply to previous letters? Or one for Mrs. Bennett? Impossible to tell, but something had happened to infuriate the man.

Rutledge made certain that Rawlings was well out of hearing before cranking the motorcar and driving quickly toward the village.

The postmistress was reluctant to let him see the letter, but her feelings about the men at the Bennett house overcame her scruples once more, and Rutledge recognized the direction on the letter as the same one he’d seen on his last visit.

The postmistress glanced around, then leaned toward Rutledge.

In a whisper she said, “And I just handed him one from that same address.”

“Has he had replies before this?”

“Not one. But someone wrote this time, and when he tore it open, he didn’t like what he read. He went out of here looking like a thundercloud.”

And that, Rutledge thought, explained what he himself had witnessed.

What had been in that letter?

“I telt ye,” Hamish railed as Rutledge drove toward the Thames and the crossing for Essex. “He isna’ coming for ye himsel’. And you willna’ know the face of the man who will shoot ye.”

“It’s a risk I must take. And even so, that man will lead the Yard back to Diaz.”

“The tail of the tiger can be as dangerous as the teeth.”

Rutledge said, “It’s always possible for the goat to outsmart the tiger.”

“It doesna’ happen verra’ often,” Hamish said dourly, and blessedly fell silent for several hours, leaving Rutledge alone with his own thoughts.

It was very late when Rutledge reached Dedham, and a summer storm was breaking over the town, the flashes of lightning illuminating the stone face of the handsome church, the windows of the shops across from it, and the tall façade of the inn.

He found a room, slept hard, and in the morning, made his way to Dr. Townsend’s surgery.

It was three quarters of an hour before Townsend came in, late for his hours because of an early call from one of the outlying farms. He apologized to the patients waiting to see him, and then nodded to Rutledge.

“Will you come into my office, Inspector?”

Rutledge followed him, and as soon as the door was shut behind them, Townsend turned to him. “Mr. MacFarland has no recollection of what happened to him. He was sitting in the arbor studying something by Liszt, and the next thing he knew he was awakening in my examining room.”

“I had hoped for better.”

“I’m sure you had. It’s a wonder the man’s brain functions at all. He could have suffered irreversible damage.”

“That’s the other matter I came to discuss. It’s important for several days that you tell anyone who inquires that MacFarland has suffered just that. It will save his life. He knows something that has already proved dangerous once.”

“Miss French came to inquire, when she’d learned MacFarland was here. I told her he was still not stable, but I thought it possible that he’d make a full recovery.”

“Then let it be known that the man suffered a massive stroke as a result of his injuries.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t tell people he’s had a stroke, and then tell them I was mistaken, that he’s recovered completely. I’m a doctor—”

Rutledge remembered that Townsend had already been involved in a scandal because of his drunkenness and a missed diagnosis.

“Then tell them that you were asked to help the police in their inquiries. If you don’t,” Rutledge said, “someone will walk through that door determined to kill him, and you and your staff will be at risk with him.”

Alarmed, Townsend said, “Surely no one would carry this business so far?”

“Will you take that chance?” Rutledge asked. “Your wife and daughter are just next door. If there’s shooting and one of them comes running, what then?”

“Leave my family out of it,” Townsend answered, angry.

“I’m only saying—”

“Yes, I know what you’re saying. There has been enough unpleasantness for them to deal with already, and I won’t add to their troubles. People believe what they hear first, and don’t always accept what they’re told about it afterward.”

Rutledge thought it was more likely the father who was having trouble with the whispers. And he suspected that Miss Townsend might have accepted Lewis French’s proposal of marriage at her parents’ behest. She had been very concerned for him, but there had been none of the tearful pleas for information that usually followed a much loved fiancé’s disappearance.

Dr. Townsend was finally persuaded to see the advantages to himself of protecting the tutor, and then Rutledge went in to visit MacFarland. He was still pale and shaken, but he was quick to grasp what Rutledge had proposed. “I can’t think of any of my pupils who held a grudge. I don’t know what this is about.”

Rutledge made certain the door was closed and no one was listening outside it. Coming back to MacFarland’s bedside, he said in a low voice, “I think this has to do with the man who came unannounced into the house the evening you interviewed for the position of tutor.”

“But that’s decades into the past. I can’t imagine what it has to do with me.”

“You were there. You knew what had transpired. You could therefore point a finger at the man responsible.”

“Yes, but he is in an institution. Surely they knew why. There must have been some sort of treatment or the like. I’m not the only source of information. Am I?”

“They did know at the time why Diaz was there. But it wasn’t fully laid out in his records—perhaps to protect the French family. You are the last link with the truth. You could tell the police why Diaz came to St. Hilary and what he did that night that sent him to the asylum. You are not a member of the family, your evidence would be objective and accepted. And so you became a target.”

“Dear God. I’d not thought about it in years. It wasn’t until you came and asked questions that it popped back into my mind.”

“Do you remember anything at all about the attack on you?”

“Nothing. I seem to recall hearing a rustling in the high grass just beyond the arbor. I thought it was an animal foraging. We have quite a number of squirrels and other creatures that come quite close to the house. I sometimes watch them from my dining room window. And so I paid no heed,” he ended, regret in his voice.

Rutledge left soon after.

He found Agnes French at home, and reported to her that MacFarland had had a stroke as a result of his injuries. “I’m told you got a favorable report this morning. A sad turn of events.”

“Well, in a way it’s Mr. MacFarland’s fault,” she replied. “I’ve mentioned to him several times that he should clear out some of the undergrowth beneath the trees and open up the section of his property closest to our park. He harbors stoats and hares and heaven knows what else there, and we have trouble on our side of the wall because he refuses to do as I ask.”

Rutledge smiled. He had learned to expect Miss French to feel that other people’s problems were of their own making.

She thanked him for his news, sad though it was, and he left, glancing up at the painting above the Queen Anne table. He thought perhaps it had been painted in Madeira, which explained its pride of place there by the door. And he was struck again by the strong emotions caught by the artist.

He had put off the reason for being here in Essex as long as he could. Turning the bonnet of the motorcar toward the church and the cottage where Valerie Whitman lived, he prepared himself for what had to be done.

Walking up the path to the door, he remembered how she had reacted to visitors coming out of curiosity rather than compassion. He would pay her the courtesy of taking her away without making it obvious that she was his prisoner, destined for a London prison.

Hamish said, “She willna’ care for that either.”

And Rutledge thought Hamish was right.

Knocking at the door, he waited patiently for Miss Whitman to answer his summons. When she didn’t, he knocked again, a little louder this time. She still refused to come to the door. He was reaching for the latch when it opened just the barest crack.

“Go away. I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

“Will you walk with me? I’ve left my motorcar on the far side of the churchyard, as usual. I’d like to talk to you where your neighbors can’t hear us.”

“Unless you’ve come to tell me that my grandfather has been released from prison and his name cleared, I don’t want to listen to anything you have to say.”

“Then let me in, and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”

“No!” Her voice was sharp. “Please, will you go away and leave me in peace?”

“I can’t, Miss Whitman. I’ll stay here on your doorstep until you agree to come with me.”

Her voice changed in an instant, low and hurt. “Have you come to arrest me?”

“Yes.”

“But why? I’ve done nothing. I can’t leave St. Hilary just now. If I do—if I do, I shan’t be able to face any of my neighbors ever again. Haven’t you caused enough trouble?”

“I’m sorry. I’m a policeman, Miss Whitman. I do what I have to do for the sake of the law.” Surprised at the depth of his apology, he added, “I don’t want to do this. But I’ve been given orders, and I must obey them.”

She made to close the door, but his boot was in the crack, preventing it.

“Give me time to pack a few things,” she pleaded.

“Once this door is shut, I can’t rely on its opening again.”

Suddenly angry with him, her eyes a blazing green in her pale face, she reached behind her for a shawl, then flung the door wide enough to step out in front of him before pulling it shut with a snap behind her.

“I’ll go as I am,” she told him, and set off down the path toward the churchyard.

“Miss Whitman—”

Catching her up, he walked beside her in silence until they had crossed the road and entered the churchyard. He wanted to take her arm and make her face him, to tell her that he was trying to free her grandfather and keep her out of prison. But he couldn’t do either of those things.

They were beside the church when she finally spoke. “I daresay they won’t let me have my own things in a prison, anyway. I’ve read about the way the Suffragettes were treated. It was inhuman. I don’t expect conditions have improved in ten years.”

“A little” was all he could say. The warders would be cold, distrustful, and inured to pleas of innocence, and the other inmates would be of a class she had surely never known.

The curate was coming toward them as they rounded the apse, a broad smile on his face. “Well met. I’ve just finished the painting. How does it look?”

And only as he finished his greeting did he realize that there was something wrong.

Rutledge said easily, “I’ve come to bring Miss Whitman to London. I’m afraid I can’t stop. But from here, it appears to be quite good workmanship.”

The curate turned to Miss Whitman. “Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Nothing has been right since my grandfather was accused of murder.”

“For what it’s worth, I can’t imagine that he— I mean to say, I don’t know him well, but it seems impossible . . .” His voice trailed off in embarrassment.

“Thank you. That was kind,” she rallied enough to say.

He walked with them the rest of the way to the motorcar and, with an expression of concern on his face, watched as Rutledge helped Valerie Whitman into her seat. As if mindful of his duty, he sprang forward to turn the crank. “Is there anything I could do? Please tell me.”

But she looked away, not answering him.

And then Rutledge was driving down the lane toward the main road, his face grimly set. Beside him, for the first time, Valerie Whitman’s calm cracked, and she began to cry, turning away to look out the window, so that he couldn’t see the depth of her despair.