Proof of Guilt

Chapter Twenty-three

Rutledge found the turning for Flatford Mill and stopped up the hill from the river as he had before.

Valerie Whitman, alarm in her eyes, asked, “Why are we here? I thought you were taking me to London.”

“I am. We can afford a few minutes of grace. I shouldn’t worry if I were you. Let’s walk, shall we?”

He had to persuade her to go with him. They had reached the farm when he heard another vehicle stopping where he’d left his own. He thought it might be a motorcycle.

Someone had been following him at a discreet distance ever since he’d left Dedham behind, and he was worried. He had felt the presence, seen flashes of sunlight on metal, and yet no one caught up with him whether he slowed or sped up. He hadn’t expected Diaz to act so quickly. Not when there was a witness in the motorcar with him.

He urged her across the bridge and to the far side of the river, where there was a little more protection. The way they had just come was in the open. The reflection of the brick mill and the miller’s cottage was so perfect that it might have been a photograph. Not a ripple stirred it, and despite the age of the building and the need for repair, it was still a scene Constable would have recognized. But Miss Whitman ignored it.

They had just reached the trees when she stopped and refused to go on.

“What is it? I won’t go another step until you tell me.”

“The trees just there,” he said harshly, taking her arm and forcing her ahead of him. She turned on him, ready to struggle against his grip, when he saw something—someone—move to the top of the slope across the stream. But he had reached the shadows now, no longer a target for anything short of a rifle.

“Someone has been following us. I don’t know who it is. But I have made enemies during this inquiry. And I don’t want to drag you into my trouble.”

She stared at him, then turned to look back toward the slope they had come down. It had twisted and turned, shaped by oxen and drays and wains, but she could see no one.

“Are you certain?” Turning back to him, she studied his face. “I don’t see anyone. Is he waiting by the motorcar, do you think?”

“It’s possible.” He was still holding her arm, and he released it, stepping back.

“How did you make enemies?” she asked. “On my grandfather’s account? Or on mine?”

“I was looking into Howard French’s past. There was the possibility of an illegitimate child, and that was worth pursuing. But it led nowhere. And so I began to look at the other relationships in the family. That led me to something quite unexpected. One night a stranger came to the house and threatened French and his son. It was quickly covered up, the man taken away. I explored that link through MacFarland, and learned that the man not only was still alive but had been released from the asylum where he’d been locked up. I had little to work with, a hunch, the nature of the man himself, the feelings he must have harbored against the French family.”

“I’d never heard anything about this. Not from the family, not from my grandfather, no one,” she said. “Why haven’t the police arrested him, questioned him?”

His eyes still on the road, Rutledge gave her the briefest explanation, adding, “The problem is, whatever I want to believe, I can’t prove any of it. And the Yard requires proof. Evidence. Something to be going on with. In the eyes of the police, this man has not done anything wrong, and what’s more, there’s no real proof now he ever threatened anyone. Twenty years has seen to that.”

“Would what you believe clear my grandfather . . . and me?”

“Very likely. Yes, I think it would.”

Sunlight, filtering through the leaves, brought out the honey gold in her hair, and he found himself thinking that she should be painted this way.

Clearing his mind of anything but Hamish’s voice, he said, “Stay here. I’m going back to the motorcar. If no one is there, if the motor hasn’t been tampered with, I’ll come back for you.”

“No, I don’t want to stay here alone.”

“He couldn’t have reached the outbuildings over there without being seen. He’d have had to cross that patch of open, sunlit ground.”

“I know. But if you can circle around him, whoever he is, then he can circle around you. I’m safer if I go than if I stay.”

“If I give you an order at any point, you’ll obey it instantly, do you understand?”

“I do. I promise.”

“Then stay behind me.”

“He must know I’m here.”

“I’m sure he does. But any shot at me could hit you instead.”

“He’s armed?” That shook her, but she said stoutly, “I’ll stay clear.”

He walked briskly back around the millpond and over the bridge toward the clearing, his shoulder blades twitching as he waited for the shot that miraculously didn’t come. And then they began to climb the sloping, rutted track that led to the high ground where he had left the motorcar.

And still there was no challenge, no shot being fired.

Nor was there anyone there when they came in sight of his motorcar. It stood alone on the knoll. And although he looked the motorcar over carefully—tires, under the bonnet, and even under the frame—it appeared to be untouched.

Valerie Whitman, watching him search, asked, “Was it because of me? Was that the reason whoever followed you went away? After all, I should think that killing me would make the police wonder if my grandfather was guilty or not.”

Rutledge dusted off his knees, straightened his coat, and went to turn the crank. “I think he was here to verify certain information. That MacFarland was no longer able to testify to the past and that you were being taken to London.”

All the same, he was watchful on their way back to the main road, and most of the way to London.

Valerie Whitman was quiet the last twenty miles, her face pale and set.

“I’m frightened,” she said finally as the traffic grew heavier and the streets of London led inexorably closer to her incarceration.

“I’m sorry,” he said inadequately, and wished Markham at the very devil.

He stayed with her through Magistrate’s Court, where she was remanded to Holloway, and the last things he saw were her wide eyes as she was led away, half hidden by the prison matron who had taken her in charge.

It was a long night, spent with Hamish’s voice in his head and a glass of whisky, untouched, in his hand.

Who had followed them to Flatford Mill? It was far too soon to expect Diaz to have orchestrated an attempt on his life. And so someone had simply had a watching brief. Had Rutledge himself led the man to MacFarland? Quite unintentionally? Or had that ex-soldier passing through already made certain where the tutor lived?

There was a telephone at the inn in Dedham. If someone had been waiting for further instructions, it would have been easy to reach him. Rutledge wished he’d set the Dedham police to find out, but it would have required too much time, too many explanations, and no certainty of success in finding the contact. At least Miss Whitman was safely in Holloway, and the goat could confidently expect to hear again from the tiger.

Hamish said finally as Rutledge managed to fall into a restless sleep, “Ye claimed ye were his match . . .”

He reported to the Yard the next morning, told Markham that his orders had been carried out, and watched the man nod enthusiastically.

“Well done. Write up your report and see that it’s on my desk by the end of the day. Any trouble?”

“Someone followed us out of Dedham. I didn’t recognize the motorcar. It stayed with us even when I pulled off at Flatford Mill. And then it was gone.”

“Does Miss Whitman have any friends who might take exception to your bringing her in, hoping for a chance to intervene?”

Rutledge thought of the curate, but the man had only a bicycle.

“None that I’m aware of.”

“And you weren’t followed to London.”

“No. I made certain of that. It prolonged the trip, but I believed it to be a wise precaution.”

“Then I should think it was coincidence. Or mere curiosity.”

But Rutledge had spent four years in the trenches. He had smelled danger there at the mill. He had known that the shadowy figure had come most of the way down the steep slope of the track, before changing his mind and turning away.

Coincidence be damned.

He finished his report and set it aside to be picked up and carried to Markham’s office.

Restless, he looked out the window at the gathering clouds and the rise in the wind, lightly touching the leaves on the trees, then beginning to shake them in earnest.

Hamish was worrying the fringes of his mind, trying to bring back a memory that was elusive, almost imagined rather than true.

Rutledge tried to ignore it, but it was persistent, and he found himself going over every step of his arrival in Dedham, from the doctor’s surgery to Agnes French’s house, thence to the cottage where he’d taken Valerie Whitman away. And still whatever it was eluded him.

There was a knock at the door, startling him, and Gibson came in. “It’s dark enough out there to light a lamp,” he said, and Rutledge realized that he had been unaware of the gloom. As he reached over to turn on the lamp, Gibson went on. “A call from Maidstone. The Allington Lock on the River Medway. A body washed up against the fish pass. There’s a knife still in it. Markham wants you to go there. He thinks it could well be the man we’ve been searching for upriver at Aylesford.”

“I thought that was MacDowell’s case.”

“So it is, but he’s in Gloucester, and you’re in London.”

Any excuse to get Rutledge away from the Yard until his attitude toward the closed case had changed . . .

He said, “What else did Maidstone tell you? Am I to swim down and bring him up?”

“Just that their man is already on the scene. He’s asked for ropes and men to haul in the body, and Inspector Chambliss thought the Yard would wish to be present when they did. You can identify the man. You saw him before MacDowell did.”

“For my sins,” Rutledge answered. He picked up his hat and his umbrella and followed Gibson out of the office and down the passage.

“Do you need a map?” Gibson asked.

Rutledge knew the Lower Medway, where the river widened enough for boats to come down to this final lock and sail out into the Thames Estuary.

“Thanks, no. I can find it.”

The storm suited his mood as he stepped out the door of the Yard and walked toward his motorcar. The wind lashed him with rain, but he couldn’t open the umbrella, holding on to his hat as he ducked his head against the sting of the raindrops.

He thought as he got into the motorcar, relieved at being inside, that he was just in the mood for something, anything, taking him out of the claustrophobic Yard.

Moving slowly through the downpour, his eyes scanning the road in front of him, he made his way across the Thames and turned to pick up the road to Rochester, Canterbury, and Dover. The storm followed him, lightning flashing and nearly blinding him a time or two. He considered pulling over, then decided to keep up a slow but steady pace, watching darkness overtake him before he got to his destination.

After a while he saw the turning he was after, left his motorcar at the top of the low ridge, and walked down the long slope to the path along the River Medway. Behind him he heard a tree groan and then begin to fall. He whirled, expecting to see it crush the motorcar, but it landed with a whoosh, jarring the ground, not twenty feet behind the boot, blocking the track out to the main road. He swore. What if Maidstone had already retrieved the body and gone home, thinking he might not come in the teeth of this storm?

The Medway was popular with boaters along this stretch, and the lock was a fair size, allowing access upstream for pleasure craft and even the occasional rowboat. A few barges moored along this side offered a different way of life for those who preferred to live on the water, leaving the less accessible far bank open for boats coming into or out of the lock. Ahead of him across the river was the lockkeeper’s house, all but invisible in the pounding rain. There were lamps on inside, a beacon against the storm.

Hamish said, “It’s na’ use, the river’s in spate. Best to wait out the storm.”

But Rutledge was wet to the skin already, and watching the trees overhead bend and sway, he thought his chances were better going toward the river than sitting in the motorcar just as uncomfortable, waiting for the next tree to come down. “I can at least judge if the body is still there, and if it isn’t, I’ll go directly to Maidstone. It will save time.”

He kept to the path that led to the small dam. The roar of water from the sluices was deafening. The fish pass was on this side, and must be a whirlpool by now. Anyone caught in that had no chance, and the body would be battered before it could be brought out. He hoped like hell that it had been retrieved, or the identification would be all that more difficult. And he wanted a look at the knife.

There was no sign of the constable on duty. Either he’d gone, as Rutledge expected, or he’d taken shelter with the lockkeeper while he waited to report to whomever London was sending. But Rutledge glanced into the small gray stone building he was passing, on the off chance that the local man was in there. Somewhere among the trees upstream, another tall one came down, and Rutledge could feel it rather than hear it hit the ground. He was grateful the worst of the lightning had passed.

Moving on toward the dam, he fought the wind gripping him, and he kept well away from the water already lapping at the stones that set off river from land.

There was a steel bridge over the dam, and he went up the steps with a hand on the rail, trying to look down into the debris that had collected by the fish pass. If he saw nothing he would cross to the lockkeeper’s cottage. The man would know what had been happening on his turf.

Even Hamish’s voice was shut out by the roar of the sluices, and Rutledge cast a glance up at the bridge above them, searching for the constable.

Then leaning over as far as he dared, he pointed his torch down into the maelstrom that was the fish pass, where limbs and branches, leaves and whatever other flotsam the storm had picked up tried to get through the grating and into open water beyond. But there was no outlet for anything of any size, and the debris simply launched assault after assault against the immovable iron.

Something was down there.

He could see what appeared to be a sleeve, but he couldn’t tell as it rolled and went under and then surfaced again whether there was a hand in it. The beam from his torch struggled to penetrate the thick tangle, and he leaned out farther, pointing the light directly at the last spot he’d seen the sleeve tossed. The wind twisted and pushed at him, and the beam bounced badly.

Looking again to the top of the stairs, Rutledge thought there might be more shelter from the buffeting if he stood up there. He climbed to the walkway, but there wasn’t much relief to be had, for here the wind tried to spin him around. He made one more attempt to direct the beam of the torch into the water below, and he was rewarded with another look, better this time, at the sleeve.

A coat, there was no doubt about that. Waterlogged, it still tumbled about like a mad thing. He had yet to glimpse the man. But the coat was enough to tell him that the body was probably still down there, that the storm had prevented any attempt to reach it.

He was on the point of turning to cross the bridge and walk to the lockkeeper’s house when a flash of something white stopped him. A face? Or a piece of the flotsam of the river? Impossible to say.

He leaned out as far as he could, braced against the railing, the torch pointing to where he’d last seen the white object. It had been brought to the surface once. It could still be in the top layer of the tangle. He was too far away to hope to identify a face, but if that’s what it was, it would solve the problem of what to do next.

Concentrating on the small, round circle of his torch beam, he waited.

“ ’Ware!”

The word appeared to be hardly more than a whisper against the sluices and the storm’s wrath. But Rutledge heard it.

There was movement on the bridge at his back, he could see it out of the corner of his eye, and his first thought was that the constable had spotted him and come out to meet him.

Then he realized that the man wasn’t wearing a helmet or even a hat, in spite of the rain.

Whoever he was, he wasn’t a policeman. Surely the lockkeeper hadn’t ventured out this far just to see what Rutledge was doing.

All too aware of how precariously he was stretched out, he made to turn, but the shadow was already leaping toward him, taking advantage of the chance to push him over. The man caught Rutledge’s ankle and viciously raised it, throwing him even further off balance.

There was only one move left to him. Rutledge swung the torch with all his strength in a backhanded arc that brought his body around as well. He couldn’t hear the torch strike flesh, but he felt the blow in his wrist, and the shadow staggered.

But the attacker recovered quickly, and with an openmouthed roar that was lost in the torrent of water under their feet, he rushed at Rutledge before he could shove himself clear of the treacherous rail.

Neither man could find a foothold on the wet decking as they fought in a silent and desperate pantomime. Rutledge held on to his torch, the only weapon he had, but it was a grave disadvantage.

It was touch and go, and then Rutledge’s boot slipped, and he fell against the rail. Before he could recover, the other man slammed into him, bending him backward toward the swirling water below. Unable to find purchase for his feet on the decking, Rutledge was losing the battle. A fist in the abdomen knocked the air out of him, and he lost his grip on the torch. He could feel the man’s hands drop to his ankle, grunting as he lifted Rutledge’s right leg, the rail hard against his spine and his weight inexorably shifting.

Hamish was shouting in his ear. Rutledge jerked his body hard to the left, managed to break the man’s grip on his shoulder, and felt his hand brush the torch as he went down, his knee crashing into the decking. He caught the torch up just as the shift in momentum went his way. The other man, still holding Rutledge’s ankle, was pulled forward and then shoved back as Rutledge flexed his leg. His opponent was thrown against the rail, letting go, and Rutledge was on his feet, swinging the torch a second time. He missed the man’s head, his wet fingers slipping as he brought the torch around, but it struck the man’s ear solidly.

At the same time the light threw his attacker’s features into high relief. In that split-second glimpse as the man reared back, a hand to his head, Rutledge recognized him.

Breaking free, Rutledge brought his left fist down on the side of the man’s neck.

He staggered, just as a strong gust of wind caught him, turned him, and spun him backward. Reaching wildly for the rail, he caught it and, as Rutledge came toward him, lifted his feet and lashed out at him. But he judged it wrong, overbalanced, and hurtled over the rail.

Rutledge caught at his wrist to stop him, but their hands were wet, and there was no real grip. The pull of gravity was too strong, and the man pitched down into the swirling water, nearly pulling Rutledge with him.

Wheeling the torch toward the water, Rutledge saw Bob Rawlings’s face, eyes wide with fear, mouth open in a soundless cry, as he tried to reach the side of the pool. And then Rawlings was sucked under.

Rutledge waited, but his attacker didn’t come up. He circled the small pool with the beam and finally saw Rawlings. He was no longer struggling, his eyes fixed now, even as the light swept across them.

Rutledge stood there, his chest heaving from the effort he’d made to hold on to Rawlings. And then he turned and walked across the bridge, hatless, the rain pouring down his face.

It was a long way to the house, across the bridge over the sluice gates, then down the lock and over a smaller bridge to the far bank, and another forty feet to the cottage.

He had to pound on the wood to be heard. The keeper opened the door, said, “Good God. Come in,” and slammed it behind Rutledge as soon as he was inside.

“I’m dripping,” Rutledge said as water ran off his hair and clothes to puddle around his feet on the polished floor.

“Wait here.”

The keeper came back with several towels, and Rutledge did what he could to dry off enough to walk into the front room.

“Sit down,” the man said, then looked around as if to find a suitable place to offer his unexpected guest.

“I can’t stay,” Rutledge said. “Is the constable here? Or did he leave when the storm broke?”

“Constable? What constable? There’s been no one here since the last boat came through at noon.”

Rutledge said grimly, “There’s a man drowned in the fish pass. I need to report to the nearest police station.”

“Wait until the storm passes. There’s nothing anyone can do now. I’ll make tea.”

Rutledge let himself be persuaded, but he hadn’t been in the cottage for more than twenty minutes when the wind dropped and the rain was reduced to light showers. To the west the sky was brighter. Toward the Channel and France it was still an ominous purple-black.

He stood at the window of the front room, thinking about Rawlings.

The man couldn’t have followed him here unless he had been waiting outside the Yard for Rutledge to appear. And that made no sense.

What did make sense was a false call to the Yard. Markham had leapt to the conclusion that it was in regard to an inquiry in progress, an inquiry that had been thoroughly covered in the local newspapers, giving MacDowell’s name, Chambliss’s, and even Rutledge’s.

A few words—This is Chambliss in Maidstone. That inquiry in Aylesford? I think your man’s dead. He’s in the fish pass at the Medway Lock with a knife in him. Better send someone to have a look. A constable will meet your man there. We’ve got ropes and hooks coming. I’ve got to go, they’re waiting for me.

And if Rutledge hadn’t been sent, no harm done—it could all be put down to a vicious prank. A dead man in the fish pass? Just an old coat, and someone’s vivid imagination.

It could have been done. It had Diaz’s mark on it, simple, without a trace.

And it had almost worked.

It was a rather daring way to draw him out of London. But why was it Rawlings had been there, and not Diaz?

Rutledge set down his teacup, thanked the lockkeeper, and went back out into the rain, his clothes hardly dry from their earlier soaking.

He crossed over to the bridge above the sluice gates, and saw that the river was still in spate, the heavy rains upstream still rushing toward the sea.

Rutledge wasted no time searching for Rawlings’s body. His concern now was the downed tree blocking his motorcar. He discovered there was just—only just—enough room to drive out past the uprooted trunk. He walked around it, judging it, then went to the crank. His tires slithered and slipped in the torn, wet earth. Then the offside front wheel nearly came to grief, and for an instant he was certain he would lose control entirely. But the others stayed on firmer ground, and he shot up to the road in a spurt of speed that nearly took him across it and into a ditch.

By the time he’d managed to reach the main road, the rain had nearly stopped.

Just as Rutledge had expected, the Maidstone police knew nothing about a knifed man in the fish pass. Indeed, no one had telephoned the Yard.

Chambliss was furious that his name had been used in that connection, angrier still that he now had to deal with the aftermath of the hoax.

“We’ve had no luck in Aylesford. I’d have reported to the Yard if we had. The fool’s gone to ground. He could be in Chatham or Rochester. Or anywhere else. He knows he’ll be safer in custody, but he’s too frightened to come in. And if the dead man is who you tell me he is, he’s got nothing to do with our little problem.”

“London had no choice but to investigate. And I should have been in that fish pass, not Rawlings.”

“Yes, yes, I see that. And there was no way of knowing how bad that storm would be, was there? I don’t like my turf used for a spot of revenge. What sorts of cases have you been dealing with, then, that you’ve made enemies like this one?”

Chambliss didn’t expect an answer. He turned and began to issue orders, then said to Rutledge, “Are you staying? Until the body is brought out?”

It was the next morning before they could try to reach Rawlings’s body, and it was difficult at best, even with the river down, to hook the clothing and bring the body up the steep walled slope onto the earthen bank above.

Rutledge was interested to see that their first efforts had brought up an old Army greatcoat. He squatted beside it, looking at the sleeve. It would have been easy for anyone seeing it to think a man had fallen in. Had Rawlings tossed the coat in for verisimilitude? Something to catch Rutledge’s eye when he arrived and make him believe that the summons had been real? After all, as Chambliss had said, no one had expected the storm’s fury, and Rawlings had had to find some way to draw his attention away from the figure lurking in the shadows, waiting for him.

Such careful planning was, Rutledge thought, more a hallmark of Diaz’s plotting than of Rawlings’s methods. And rather diabolical.

One of the constables shouted, and Rutledge turned to see the pale, dripping body coming up over the lip of the wall, heavy with water. One arm flopped, almost in a macabre greeting, and the men fell back.

But once laid out on the ground, the body was small and very dead, the face and hands scraped from their battering against the grating of the fish pass.

“Sure of your identification?” Chambliss asked, coming up to stand beside Rutledge.

“Yes. Robert Rawlings. Late of Surrey, the household of a man called Bennett and his wife. She collects men just out of prison. They serve as her staff.”

“Foolish business, that. You owe me, Rutledge. But from the look of you, you’ve already paid. Get that lump on your forehead seen to.”

“I will,” he replied. He hadn’t known it was there or even that it had happened until he’d taken a room at a hotel close by the police station, and realized why he had had to show his identification to the clerk before he was allowed to sign the register. His clothing damp, wrinkled, filthy, blood in his hair, he looked like anything but a representative of the Yard. “Can you see to the body? I want to go directly to the Bennett house before news of Rawlings’s death reaches them.”

Chambliss considered him. “If you’ll give me what I need to write my own report.”

“Done,” Rutledge answered.

He looked down at Rawlings’s body.

What role did you play last night? he silently asked the dead man. A surrogate for Diaz? You fought too hard, you went too far. What had I done to you to make you stand there waiting in that storm for me to come? It wasn’t for him that you wanted my blood. Why?

Hamish said, “He was tricked. As ye were tricked.”

Rutledge thanked Chambliss and his men, then walked away up through the trees to where his motorcar was waiting on the main road.

Half an hour later, he was well on his way to Surrey.