The Confession

Chapter 12

Russell turned a little, to see him better. It was then that Rutledge realized that one side of the man’s head was slightly misshapen, as if the skull had been damaged. His hair nearly concealed the difference.

“Do I know you?” he asked, frowning as he studied Rutledge’s face. With a nod, the sister walked away.

“I don’t believe we’ve met. I was on the Somme.” He gave his rank and regiment.

“Were you? Patient here, are you?”

“No. I’m presently an Inspector at Scotland Yard. Someone came to my office not long ago, and I believe he knew you. Ben Willet, lately of Furnham, Essex.”

“Cynthia’s pet. What did he want?”

“He was concerned about Justin Fowler. In fact, he rather thought that Fowler was dead.”

“He is. Died during the war as I remember. What about it?”

“Do you have any recollection of where he died?”

“I’m not in my dotage,” Russell snapped irritably. “In 1915 or thereabouts.”

“In France?”

“How do I know? I was busy as hell trying to keep myself alive, and my men.”

“There was some mention of the fact that he might have been murdered.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me. He was a self-centered bastard. Probably shot in the back by one of his own men. I never cared for him, you know.”

“I understand you were married just before you went to France.”

“I was. She died in childbirth. My son with her.” He shook his head. “Do you know, I can hardly remember her face. I try sometimes. There’s a photograph in my room, but I don’t know if it’s my wife or someone else.”

Rutledge reached into his pocket and drew out the locket. “I believe this may have belonged to your mother?”

Major Russell put out his hand and touched the locket dangling from its gold chain. But he didn’t take it or open it. “Never saw it before. Are you sure?”

“The maid, Nancy, appears to think so.”

“Nancy. The quiet one. I can’t quite bring back her face either.”

“How recently were you in London?”

“Last week? No, it must have been earlier than that.” He tried to think, his brow furrowed. “I’m sorry. I’m sometimes confused about dates.”

“Do you remember walking along the Thames?”

“No, I don’t. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t. Or that I did.”

“Perhaps you were walking east of the Tower, rather than nearer Westminster Bridge?” It was east of the Tower that the watermen believed Willet had gone into the river.

“Yes, thank you, I remember now. There was an accident on Tower Bridge. It was blocked by a lorry that had overturned, spilling marrows all across the road. I remember the blood. The driver was bleeding. You couldn’t see his face for the blood. I walked away. I’d watched enough men die.”

“Was Willet there as well?”

“Ben Willet? No, he was waiting for me on the other side of the bridge. I didn’t want to watch him die, either.”

“Why should he be dying? Was he involved in the accident?”

“Damn it, I told you he was on the far side of the bridge, waiting.”

“Did you have your service revolver with you?”

“I always carry it with me. Every officer does.”

“But the war is over.”

“Damn it, are you calling me a liar?”

“Not at all. I’m trying to establish a clear picture of events. It’s my duty, although I grant you it can be tiresome at times. You had your service revolver with you, then. Did you use it that night?”

“I’d have liked to shoot that wretched lorry driver and put him out of his misery. His head was bleeding, all down his face. I know what that means. Doesn’t stand a chance, poor bastard. They drilled holes in my skull. Did they tell you? Because the brain was swelling.”

“Ben Willet was suffering from a cancer,” Rutledge went on, trying to bring Russell back to that night on the bridge.

“That’s right. He didn’t want a slow death. But he couldn’t bring himself to finish it. His father was strict, you see. A religious man.”

“He wanted you to help him die?”

It wasn’t an answer Rutledge had considered.

“Yes, didn’t I tell you? I was to meet him that night. On the far side of the bridge. I’d run into him in Piccadilly, he was on his way somewhere, someone was waiting. But he asked if I would mind having dinner with him. There was something he wished to ask me. I had to rid myself of my minder-”

Only half aware of what he was doing, Russell’s fingers had been fiddling with the locket, which was still dangling from Rutledge’s outstretched hand.

And then it opened without warning, swinging around to face him. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Rutledge.

“What the hell are you doing with her photograph? You’ve been lying to me all along, haven’t you? My mother’s locket be damned.” His face was suffused, rage flashing in his eyes, turning the blue almost incandescent.

Surging to his feet, he overturned his chair. The crash startled the others in the room, and they looked up in alarm.

“I thought this talk of London and Willet was nothing but a trick. You stay away from her, do you hear me? She’s worth ten of you.” And before Rutledge could stop him, he’d flung the locket across the room and strode swiftly out the door.

One of the card players was on his feet as well, shouting at Rutledge.

As he listened to Russell’s boots pounding down the uncarpeted passage, Rutledge managed to find the locket where it had fallen among a collection of canes in a porcelain stand. He reached the door just as the nursing sister came rushing in, almost colliding with him.

“What did you do?” she demanded, and behind her Matron was saying, “I heard someone running.”

Rutledge pushed them aside. “It’s Russell. I think he left the house.”

Several other nursing sisters were coming from other parts of the clinic, and he had to dodge them as he ran.

Someone had thought to ring a bell somewhere, the clanging almost earsplitting. Reaching the door, he glanced up to see the bell hanging in a window above the door, and there was an orderly vigorously pulling on the rope.

“That way!” he shouted down to Rutledge, pointing toward the trees of the park.

Rutledge followed the direction he indicated, almost certain that he could hear someone crashing about in the straggling undergrowth. But he reached the road without finding the Major.

Hamish said, “He’s gone to ground.”

Rutledge swore. He hadn’t opened the necklace on purpose. It had been a fluke that it had clicked open at all.

He could hear Matron giving orders as the bell stopped clanging.

Rutledge crossed the road and went into the garden of the Dower House. He circled the house, then looked into the sheds behind the kitchen, swinging the doors wide, before turning back to the road.

“He couldna’ have got far on foot,” Hamish said.

“I should have been prepared.” But he knew, even as he said it, that there had been no warning. Whatever had stirred in the dark recesses of the Major’s mind, it had exploded into violent action.

“Ye ken, he mentioned the lass’s name earlier, and nothing happened.”

Cynthia’s pet…

But a name was very different from a photograph in the hands of another man.

They searched until the sunset colors faded into lavender, purple, and then deep blue, and there was no light to see under the trees. Matron, standing in the doorway, said, “I warned you that his mental state was uncertain.”

Rutledge said, “I take full responsibility. But he’s done this before, hasn’t he? And you failed to warn me of that.”

She said nothing, watching the last of the searchers trudging wearily back to the house.

One of the men said as he came close enough to be heard, “I think we should search the house again. In case he doubled back.”

But Rutledge didn’t think he had. Still, the staff and those of the patients who were ambulatory set about going from room to room.

“When did he disappear the last time?” he asked as Matron stood listening to the search going on over her head. “You can’t protect him now.”

“Yes, all right. A month ago. He was gone for three weeks. We searched for him, looked everywhere we could think of that he might have gone. I didn’t wish to ask the police to help. After all, he’d done nothing wrong, he wasn’t dangerous. And my faith was rewarded. One morning he was standing here at the door when we came down. Disheveled, hungry, in need of a bath, but he knew who he was and where he was, and he apologized for worrying us.”

“He gave no reason for leaving?”

“He told me he needed to think, that he couldn’t here. He needed to be alone.”

“Does he have access to his service revolver?”

“No, most certainly not. There are no weapons here, I assure you.”

“But he does have a house in London? Where he and his wife lived? Is it by any chance there?”

She hesitated.“The orderly saw to it that the revolver was put away. It was his first responsibility when they arrived in London.”

Although she was reluctant to give it, he got the direction of the London house.

“But it’s closed now,” she protested. “It generally is, when he’s in residence here.”

He thanked her and left. Then, as he was driving out the gates, a constable came peddling furiously up the road. Rutledge stopped the motorcar and asked, “What is it?”

He had to identify himself before the constable would speak to him.

“There’s been trouble in the village,” he said. “It must have been someone from here. He struck down George Hiller and took his Trusty.”

The Trusty Triumph had been the workhorse of the war. Dispatch riders found the motorcycle the best and fastest way to reach the Front and keep sectors in touch with HQ. They took weather, the shelling, and the rough and treacherous terrain in stride, and the silhouette of the goggled figure, head down and hunched over his machine, was a familiar one.

“Tell Matron, if you please. I’ll see if I can find him.”

Rutledge didn’t wait for an answer. He drove as fast as he dared, given the state of the roads, but he knew-as Hamish was busy telling him-that the Triumph had a head start and would reach London long before it could be overtaken.

But what had triggered Major Russell’s outburst?

Rutledge had assumed that it was the photograph of Cynthia Farraday. But what had he said next? Be damned to my mother’s locket. Had he recognized it earlier, even though he’d said he didn’t know it?

Or-was it the locket with Cynthia Farraday’s photograph in it? Had Russell thought then that she had had something to do with his mother’s death?

Was she in any danger?

He had to find Russell and George Hiller’s Trusty before the Major reached the Farraday house in Chelsea.