Proof of Guilt

Chapter Twenty-four

Rutledge stopped briefly at a country hotel on the border with Sussex for lunch. He’d missed his dinner the night before, was up before breakfast this morning, and was very likely to miss his dinner again. He had made some effort before joining Chambliss at the lock to remedy his appearance, paying the desk clerk’s wife to press his coat and trousers. He was still well below the standards of a hotel. He smiled wryly when the waiter led him to the corner table nearest the service door to the kitchen.

On his way to the dining room, he’d discovered that the hotel possessed a telephone.

He put in a call to London while waiting for his meal to be brought to the table, and he caught Sergeant Gibson just coming on duty after a long night hunting for a murderer in Islington.

“I’ve run into a small problem concerning the drowning in Kent,” Rutledge told him. “There’s a link to Surrey, and I’m on my way there now.”

“I’ll pass along the word, sir. Meanwhile, there’s a message for you. Marked urgent. It’s from Mr. Belford. Came in last evening, late. If you remember, he lives on the street where the first body in the Gooding inquiry was found.”

Rutledge thanked him and put up the receiver. Still standing there in the small telephone closet, he considered going to London first to see what Belford had to say, but there was the time factor. The later he reached the Bennett household, the less likely he was to be there before news of Rawlings’s death preceded him.

Belford would have to wait. And it was possible that his information was already outdated.

Rutledge set out for Surrey as soon as he’d finished his meal. A watery sun was shining when he reached the village just before the Bennett house, but clouds had moved in before he turned in to the long drive through the park.

There was no immediate answer to his knock, and then one of the staff came to the door.

“Mrs. Bennett is resting,” Rutledge was told. “I doubt she’ll be receiving visitors before tomorrow.”

“It’s urgent.”

But he was adamant that Mrs. Bennett couldn’t be disturbed.

Rutledge left his motorcar halfway down the drive, out of sight of the house, and went in search of Afonso Diaz.

It was possible, just, that Diaz had gone to Kent with Rawlings, to keep him to his purpose. But Rutledge wasn’t convinced of that.

“Ye canna’ count on the men who work here to tell a policeman the truth about the ithers. It’s like the Army, they’ll no’ talk to an officer.”

That was very true. A brotherhood, and he was the outsider.

He went first to the place where the fire had been burning.

Diaz wasn’t there. Rutledge began a systematic search of his usual haunts: the gardens, the orchard, and finally the barn. They were all empty.

A time or two he suspected he was being watched from the house. The men there knew who he was, possibly even knew why he was there, but there was no way he could avoid being seeing from upper windows. Still, no one came out to challenge him.

Rutledge had left the park until last. Under the canopy of the trees, where sunlight dappled the ground, a now-aging collection of rhododendrons and azaleas had been planted. Exotic and very popular, their spring blooms gave an airy beauty to a woodland, and Jean had always admired that.

Walking quietly through them now, he kept watch for Diaz, remembering too well that pruning knife. It had a long reach, it could strike him before he saw it coming. But as he swept the area, moving steadily back toward where he’d left the motorcar, Rutledge had the strongest feeling that he was alone in this part of the park.

That changed suddenly, and he stopped walking to listen. The wood was silent. There wasn’t so much as the patter of rain on the leaves overhead. The mist was too light. And then he glimpsed the dark red of a man’s coat some forty feet away, and he knew he’d found his quarry.

The question was, had Diaz found him first?

Rutledge walked on, cutting the distance between them in half, then stopped.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he called.

The red coat took on the shape of a man as Diaz stepped out from behind a shrub.

“You seem to have nothing better to do than to haunt me,” he said levelly. “There’s a story, you know, about the voices of dead shepherds coming from the cliffs above the sea. In Madeira. You can hear them at night. I have done this. My father took me there as a boy. It’s a very high cliff, the highest on this side of the Atlantic, and seabirds nest there at night. It’s their voices that sound like the shepherds. I was quite frightened. Are you a dead shepherd?”

It was a long speech for Diaz.

“I might have been, at the Allington Lock. I’ve come to report to Mrs. Bennett that Bob Rawlings is dead. In my place.”

If this was news, Diaz showed no sign of it.

“A pity. He was very good on the two-man saw. Mrs. Bennett will be upset.”

“Why did he try to lure me there?”

“Who knows? I was not in his confidence. But his brother is missing. He has been for some time. I expect Bob heard me thinking aloud one evening. Wondering if you were the one who had consigned the body to a pauper’s grave.”

“He doesn’t have a brother. According to Somerset House.” And according to Mr. Belford.

“You are misinformed. The boy was taken in by Bob’s mother when his own mother died. No one bothers much with the arrangements of the poor. No lawyers come to smooth the way. But they grew up as brothers, and it was enough.”

Rutledge remembered the scowl on Rawlings’s face coming back from the village only a few days ago. What had been in the letter he’d received? News he didn’t want to hear?

Was it Baxter who had been found dead in Chelsea? Had he been the man hired to kill Lewis French? It must have seemed to be an easy way to earn the money on offer, attacking an unsuspecting target.

But how did Baxter come to die? And where was French?

Who had made the decision to leave the body in Chelsea?

There was no time to consider whether Diaz was lying or telling the truth about Rawlings.

Rutledge said, “Did Rawlings go to the rooming house in London before he went to the Allington Lock? He must have done, to be so angry. He waited for me to come, you see. In spite of the storm. He didn’t want to miss his chance. But he wasn’t clever enough to impersonate a Maidstone Inspector on the telephone. Someone else did that. Still, it was sheer luck that I went to Kent, that someone else wasn’t sent instead. How did he persuade Mrs. Bennett to allow him to leave the estate?”

Diaz smiled. “She has a soft heart.”

Or hadn’t been told.

“How many other brothers did Rawlings have?”

“I have no idea. You could have asked him, if you hadn’t let him die.”

There had to be at least one other person at Diaz’s beck and call. Because if Baxter had been killed in Essex, who had brought his body to London and then hidden the motorcar in the quarry? Who had struck MacFarland on the back of the head and then taken a shot at Rutledge? Who had been watching to see if Rutledge left the Yard and headed for Kent? If it wasn’t Diaz himself, who was it?

Perhaps Belford knew. That would explain his urgent message.

Watching him, Diaz said, “You claimed you were my match. I have proved you are not.”

“I was Rawlings’s match,” Rutledge replied grimly.

“As you say, I have had trouble with underlings. But that has been . . . remedied.”

And Rawlings was dead; whatever he knew or had been a part of had died with him. Baxter was very likely dead. Rutledge was certain Diaz wouldn’t mourn his tools. If they knew too much, he might even be grateful to be rid of them. But would their loss make it more difficult to hire others?

With a nod, Diaz walked off in the direction of the orchard, angling away from Rutledge rather than moving past him.

Rutledge started toward his motorcar. Diaz had come to gloat. From some vantage point he’d seen Rutledge searching for him and must have guessed that Rawlings was dead. But he had been in the shrubbery for several minutes before he’d come forward into view.

Why?

Rutledge skirted one of the larger rhododendrons and was about to round the second when he heard a soft chink!

And in the same instant, Hamish shouted “’Ware.”

Rutledge stopped where he was.

Diaz had not taken the last opportunity to kill Rutledge with the pruning knife. Had he regretted that, and today taken advantage of the new chance Fate had unexpectedly provided him?

Rutledge looked around, saw nothing, and then moved his foot very gently forward.

There was that sound again, like a chain . . .

He could feel the cold sweat on his body.

Somewhere here there was a mantrap. And he had accidentally nudged part of the chain that held it in place. If he hadn’t heard that slight chink . . .

He saw a short stick under the azalea beside him, squatted with great care, and reached for it, swearing as he almost lost his balance.

Getting to his feet once more, he poked gently on either side of where his feet were planted, then nudged the stick ahead a few inches.

Nothing.

He dared not move.

Was that what Diaz had been busy about? Smoothing the leafy ground so that the trap couldn’t be seen?

He leaned a little forward, poking again. And then a little farther still, barely twelve inches from where he was standing.

Seeming to leap out of nowhere, the mantrap sprang shut. The jagged row of steel teeth closed on his stick, biting it in half with a vicious metallic snap that made Rutledge wince.

One more step—and his foot would have been mangled or his ankle broken. Would anyone have come to his aid, or would his calls have been ignored? In the house, out of hearing, Mrs. Bennett would have gone on with her day, and the men who served her would have said nothing, for fear of becoming involved in something that could have sent all of them back to prison.

Rutledge doubted Diaz would return before morning, leaving his prisoner to suffer.

Let him come then, and find nothing.

Rutledge was about to move on when he thought better of it.

Diaz considered himself to be very clever. And expecting Rutledge to find the first trap, he might well have set another where an unsuspecting foot would step straight into it.

There was nothing for Rutledge to do but retrace his steps, where he knew the ground to be safe, and cut through the trees in a different direction, coming to the motorcar in a roundabout fashion.

He set out, tense, expecting to hear another trap close just as he put his foot down. There had been time for Diaz to set one trap, perhaps two. But no more than that. Still, he couldn’t put his trust in any logic when it came to Diaz.

Rutledge reached the low outer wall of the park, swung himself over it, and walked down the main road until he came to the gates by the drive.

And still he looked over the motorcar, fairly certain that it was all right, but again, putting no trust in the man who had set that diabolical trap.

As he drove toward London, he carried with him the feeling—indeed the certainty—that he had not heard the last of Afonso Diaz.

Rutledge went directly to Chelsea, calling on Belford.

When the man came into the room, he looked his guest over and said, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you went bathing in your clothes.”

Rutledge smiled, glancing down at the wrinkles in his coat and trousers. “I was caught out in that storm last night.”

“Were you indeed? No wonder I never heard from you. We lost a tree just along the street. A small one, but I’d have preferred not to be under it when it came down.”

Belford went over to pour two glasses of whisky, saying, “Once again, I think you need this. Unless you’re concerned about that blow to the head?”

Rutledge laughed as he accepted his drink. “I can’t tell you how I got it. It was just—there—this morning.”

Belford stared at him for a moment, then realized that he was joking.

“I’ve finally got a foot in the door, so to speak. Or a man into that lodgings. The address you gave me. The former occupant of the room hadn’t paid his rent this week, and nor had he appeared. The owner was quite happy to store his belongings in the cellar. Not much there—my man had a look. Clothing, a photograph of two boys, a few books.”

“This was Baxter?” Rutledge asked.

“Yes. There had been another man with him that first night, but he was gone the next morning.”

“You mentioned him before. An accomplice? Or someone who needed a bed for one night?”

“Mrs. Rush, the owner of the house, didn’t know. He had little to say for himself when he arrived, and she was still in bed when he left. She remembered that someone called him Ben.”

“Interesting. But so far not useful. Baxter, by the way, was a foster brother to Rawlings.”

“Was he, by God. There was no official record of adoption.”

“He was never officially adopted. His mother died and Rawlings’s mother simply took him in.”

“Well, well.” Belford emptied his glass and set it back on the tray. Standing by the hearth, he said, “Something has happened. You’d better tell me.”

Rutledge said, “It’s a long story.”

“I have the time. And the patience to hear it.”

Beginning with the decision to taunt Diaz, Rutledge gave Belford an account of the arrest of Valerie Whitman, how they were followed, and then the journey in the rain to the lock at Allington. Belford said nothing, but he frowned as Rutledge described what had happened on the footplate of the bridge. When Rutledge told him about the mantrap, Belford whistled.

“You’d best look under your bed at night.”

“Believe me, I shall,” Rutledge replied grimly.

“I don’t think my man can learn much more where he is, but I’ll leave him there a day or two longer.”

“It wouldn’t hurt.” Rutledge turned his empty glass one way and then another, catching the light in the deep cuts in the crystal, watching the prism effect. “Was this the urgent message you left for me? That you had put someone in the lodging house?”

Belford smiled. “After I left that message, I wasn’t sure whether or not I was ready to tell you. I’ve been searching for it on my own.”

“Searching for what?”

“Baxter had a motorcycle with him the night he arrived. He left with it early in the morning on the day he disappeared.”

“A motorcycle!” Rutledge exclaimed and nodded. “Yes, I’d been wondering—it makes much more sense than a motorcar. The question is, where is it now?” He stood, put down his glass, and said, “You have a telephone, do you not?”

Belford hesitated, then answered, “Yes, of course.”

“I’d like to use it.”

Belford took him into the study and showed him the instrument on the desk, then was about to leave the room when Rutledge said, “No, stay.”

He put in a call to the Maidstone Police and asked for Inspector Chambliss.

“He’s just been called away, sir. Is it important? Should I try to see if I can stop him?” asked the constable who’d answered.

“It’s urgent.”

“Very well, sir. Won’t be a moment.” The constable put down the receiver, and Rutledge could hear him hurrying out the door.

It was nearly five minutes before someone returned. The receiver was lifted, and Chambliss’s voice said impatiently, “This had better be important, Rutledge. I have another murder on my hands—domestic matter.”

“You searched the area around the lock, after I’d left?”

“We did and found nothing. By the way, they pulled your hat out of the water. I’ll send it to you.”

Rutledge ignored the comment. “Have you found a motorcycle?”

There was a silence. Then Chambliss said, “We found one down by the barges. It was chained to the posts on the gangway of the Lucy Belle. Appeared to belong there. The owner is away, we couldn’t question him. But the local constable tells me that he’d had houseguests over the weekend, and we think the motorcycle belonged to one of them.”

“It could have belonged to Rawlings. Will you send someone to bring it in and secure it?”

“I can. But if you’re wrong, I’ll take the blame from the owner of the Lucy Belle.”

“In which case I’ll apologize in person. But I think that’s how Rawlings got to Kent so easily.”

“I’ll send someone along. Right now, I’m needed elsewhere,” Chambliss said.

And he hung up.

Rutledge leaned back in the chair behind the desk, relaying the conversation to Belford.

“Very good. I hope it belongs to your man.”

“So do I.” Rutledge rose. “I must clean up and then return to the Yard. Thank you for your help.”

“My pleasure.”

But was it? Rutledge again wondered why Belford had been so helpful to the police in an inquiry. He’d claimed he hadn’t cared for a dead man showing up on his street, and that had been logical, an acceptable reason for involving himself. But was there something more?

Rutledge drove to his flat, changed his clothes, and went on to the Yard, closeting himself in his office to write a report. He did not link Rawlings to the Gooding case, but otherwise gave a full account from his arrival in Allington to his discussion with Inspector Chambliss on the telephone that morning.

He finished the report, handed it to a constable to put on Markham’s desk, and then took out a sheet of paper.

Where was the missing man? There had to be another man in the picture.

Who had watched the Yard while Rawlings was in Kent?

If Baxter was the dead man in Chelsea, who had driven him there and later left the motorcar in a chalk quarry?

Who had tried to kill MacFarland and, when the opportunity arose, had taken a shot at Rutledge as he drove the tutor to Dr. Townsend’s office?

It couldn’t be Diaz, even though he had masterminded all that had happened. The man was too foreign in his appearance to pass unnoticed in a place like St. Hilary. The xenophobic villagers would have reported him to the police straightaway, suspecting him of every unsolved crime within twenty miles.

The man Baxter had brought to the lodgings for one night?

Where was he now?

Hamish was silent, having no opinion to offer.

Rutledge stood, stretched his shoulders, and decided to walk down to the river. Action of any kind was better than being cooped up in this room, in the shadow of the Acting Chief Superintendent.

But the river failed him as well. He walked over the Westminster Bridge and back, and it wasn’t until he was within shouting distance of Scotland Yard that he made a decision.

He went in search of Gibson.

“I need information on a Mr. Bennett, who lives in Surrey. The one who is married to the lame woman who takes in newly released convicts with nowhere to go.”

“Yes, sir. Meanwhile, Inspector Chambliss called while you were out. The motorcycle wasn’t there when he sent one of men to collect it.”

Rutledge thanked him, left the Yard again, and went to Chelsea, to beard Belford in his den.

“You look much better,” Belford said approvingly. “Sit down. It’s too early to offer a whisky, but there’s tea. Or coffee, if you prefer. I’ve come to like Turkish coffee.”

“Thank you, no. I need to know what you can find out about a Mr. Bennett.”

He explained the connection, then said, “It will take the Yard some time to discover what I want to know.”

“Come into the study.”

There, while Rutledge stood by the window, Belford put through two telephone calls. When he had finished the second, he turned in his chair and nodded to Rutledge.

“Very interesting. Percy Hargreave Bennett was in Berlin when war broke out. He was there to visit a friend in banking circles. And he was interned at the Ruhleben civilian detention camp just outside of Berlin. He tried twice to escape, and during the second attempt suffered internal injuries from a fall. He was repatriated at the end of the war, and resigned from his position at the Bank of England. He was rather bitter, I think, about Ruhleben. He felt the bank should have warned him in time to get out.”

“Was he one of your men?”

“Good God, no. But we had a list of the internees, you know. It was a rather odd time. The internees ran the camp themselves, even published a newspaper. Unless they tried to escape, they were left to themselves. We wanted to be sure there were no . . . Trojan horses . . . among them, someone put there to spy on them.”

“Did you find such a spy?”

“That’s not for you to know, Inspector.”

“Where is Bennett now?”

“Our last report had him at that house in Surrey. Inherited property, old family. A younger son even went to the New World on one of the earlier colonization attempts. Virginia, I believe it was. We were satisfied that Mr. Bennett was no threat to anyone.”

“Was it his own incarceration that led him to take on these ex-convicts with nowhere else to go?”

“Possibly. Who knows? It didn’t concern us, and so we left him alone.”

“I think it’s time to inform Mr. and Mrs. Bennett that one of their lambs has strayed from the fold. It will be interesting to see what they have to say.”

Rutledge thanked Belford and drove directly to Surrey.

This time he knocked at the main door and waited to be received by Mrs. Bennett.

“Good morning, Inspector. Or is it afternoon?”

“Only a little after twelve,” he told her.

“Then I haven’t missed my luncheon. You must stay and join me.”

“Thank you. But I’ve come on a sad errand.”

“Indeed?” There was alarm in her eyes.

“Bob Rawlings has drowned in the River Medway.”

“Bob? But he’s in the gardens as we speak, helping Afonso Diaz. You must be mistaken.”

“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I saw the body for myself. And I’d met Rawlings here. I recognized him.”

“I don’t understand. He’s been worried about his brother. I know he slipped away once to look for him. I didn’t say anything. I felt that his love for his brother did him credit. But his brother lives in London. Not Kent.”

“Nevertheless. Has anyone else gone missing? That’s to say, has anyone else been given permission to leave because of a family matter? An ill mother in Essex, a sister with a sick child in London?”

She smiled. “Inspector, I trust my staff, and they come to me with their worries. But Bob has been very steady, very conscientious. He’s even confessed to me that he was very much aware of how he’d ruined his life and how grateful he has been for this second chance. If he broke his parole to me, it was done out of love for his brother. I will not hold that against him.”

Her description of Rawlings was very different from Rutledge’s encounters with the man.

“She’s blinded by her good deed,” Hamish said. “She willna’ see that she’s been betrayed.”

“There’s another matter of some importance, while I’m here,” Rutledge said. “I’d like to speak to your husband, if he’s at home.”

“Alas, he’s in Glasgow. Something to do with a prize bull he was interested in buying. Could I help you?”

“Does he own a motorcycle?”

“A motorcycle? Yes, of course, he used to race before the war. A very dangerous sport. I was happy when he gave it up. But he kept the beast, I think to pretend he might someday take up the sport again.” There was a sadness in her eyes. “Men seldom like to grow old, Inspector. Or infirm. That was his youth, that motorcycle. And so I said nothing.”

“I understand he was interned during the war. In Berlin.”

“Yes indeed. It kept him out of the war. He’s some years older than I, but he would have been one of the first to enlist. They took men of forty, you know. If they had a useful skill. And he spoke German, because he was sometimes there on business. Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I knew my husband was safe where he was, for the duration. The Germans didn’t mistreat their prisoners. Still, he never wanted to go back to Germany when the war ended and he was sent home. He said it had changed too much and he was afraid the changes boded ill for the future.”

“Do you have cows, Mrs. Bennett? I’ve never seen them.”

“Of course we don’t. That’s why he’s in Glasgow, to look into starting a herd.”

Rutledge was listening to Hamish, who for once was agreeing with him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Bennett. Could you call your staff together? I’d like very much to speak to them.”

“Whatever for? I can answer any questions you might have. They don’t care for policemen, which isn’t surprising.”

“Nevertheless.”

In the end she had him ring the bell, and one by one her staff appeared.

Rutledge waited until they were all present, even Diaz, before saying quietly, “It’s my sad duty to inform you that Bob Rawlings has died. I know this will come as a shock to you, and I’m sorry. But I know you would want to be told.”

Mrs. Bennett gasped, as if finally taking in the news. Then she said, “We must bring him here. To his home. He would want that.”

“How did he die?” one man asked, frowning. “He didn’t—he wasn’t here last night, but we didn’t know he was ill.”

The accent was Cornish.

Rutledge said, “He had gone to Kent on a private matter. Perhaps Mr. Diaz can tell you more about that. He was caught in the storm and drowned.”

Another man, this one very much a Londoner, said, “I didn’t know he knew anyone in Kent.”

Rutledge turned to the man, who had been pointed out as Mrs. Bennett’s cook when he had come here the first time. “Was he worried about anything? Not eating well?”

The man coughed and said hoarsely, “He ate well. Always.”

Rutledge thanked them and let them go.

As the door closed behind them, he said, “I don’t remember—what was your cook’s crime?”

“Harry? He was a junior clerk in a law firm. He told me he’d embezzled a sum of money to help pay for his mother’s care. Wrong of him, I know, but a man who has nowhere to turn can be tempted. He served his sentence in full.”

He had also most certainly been the voice of Inspector Chambliss on the telephone call to the Yard. Well spoken and convincing, however hard he’d tried to conceal that just now.

“Do you have a telephone?” Rutledge asked.

“Yes, we do. My husband had it installed after the war.”

“Perhaps Mr. Bennett could call me at the Yard and clear up the small matter I’d come to ask him about.”

“You must wait until he returns from Glasgow. And there’s poor Bob to see to. We have a responsibility, you see.” She reached for a handkerchief. Rutledge tried to see what was embroidered on it. Lilacs? “I can’t quite believe . . .”

“I understand.”

With that he took his leave.

Harry the cook might have made that telephone call, but he was not the third man in the plot. The household could do without a gardener, but the cook? Never.

The net was closing on Diaz. But not fast enough.

When Rutledge returned to the Yard, Gibson met him in the first-floor passage and said, “You should know. Gooding’s trial begins Monday morning.”

“So soon?” It was a shock.

“Mr. French was a prominent man in some circles. And the case against Gooding is strong. There appeared to be no reason for further delay.”

“The bodies of the victims haven’t been found.”

“The hope is, once he’s tried and convicted, he’ll tell us where they are. To keep his granddaughter from being tried as his accomplice. If he’s condemned, he has nothing to lose. He’ll do anything then to save her from the gallows.”

But if he hadn’t killed French or Traynor, then Gooding had nothing to bargain with for Valerie Whitman’s life.