The Confession

Chapter 16

He stood there for a moment, thinking. Remembering how the cold metal had felt as he touched the handguns in the dark.

Yes, just the two last night, he was sure of it. He couldn’t be mistaken. Not with weapons.

The third was a service revolver, and it was the same caliber as the one that had been used to kill Ben Willet. It appeared to have been cleaned recently, no way of knowing when it had last been fired. The science that could tell him was in its infancy, and not always trustworthy.

Taking out his handkerchief, he examined the other revolver. Fired, but not cleaned since then.

He set it back where he’d found it.

More to the point, how had this third handgun magically appeared in less than twenty-four hours?

Did it mean Russell had finally come home?

What did this have to do with the man he’d seen last night? He’d been upstairs in the master bedroom, after searching the ground floor and then the first floor. Could the man have come in and set the revolver in the gun case? The house was large enough that neither man would necessarily have heard the other’s movements. What had taken him to the water’s edge before he left? Did he think he was safe enough that he could take his time about leaving? Or was he looking for signs of a boat along the riverbank? If the tide was out, there could have been a rowboat riding low in the water.

No answers to any of his questions.

Rutledge listened to the house. The maker of that footprint could still be here, and for all he knew, the revolver could have been used here.

He remembered that Timothy Jessup had mentioned seeing him at River’s Edge, and asked if he intended to buy the property. But Rutledge, as aware of his surroundings as any man of his experience could be, had not seen Jessup.

Frances was right. One could conceal a battalion out there in the grass.

There was nothing for it but to search the house again, and then the grounds.

But they yielded nothing. Save for the footprint and the revolver, he would have been prepared to swear that he’d been the only living soul inside River’s Edge last night.

Closing the terrace door behind him, he walked down to the water’s edge. No sign of a boat here, but at the second landing, while he couldn’t find any proof that anyone had come in here, he found the faint imprint of a man’s boot in the damp earth just above the high-water mark.

He squatted there, studying it. It appeared to belong to the same foot as the one in the house, but the soft earth hadn’t preserved it as well as the hard surface of the wooden floor.

Standing again, he looked back at the house, beyond the kitchen gardens and the few outbuildings, and felt a rising frustration with Major Russell. Where the hell was the man?

Halfway back to Furnham, just beyond the turning that led to the Rectory and the churchyard, Rutledge saw Constable Nelson pedaling toward him on his bicycle. Rutledge slowed.

“Looking for me?” he asked.

Nelson stopped. Rutledge could see that he was sober, although haggard, as if he had finished the last of his stock. “No, sir. But I will ask. Did you see a loose mare back the way you’ve just come?”

“A mare? No, I haven’t.”

“One of the villages upstream reported her missing. Jumped the pasture fence. She’s a valuable beast, and I was asked to keep an eye out for her.”

“When did she go missing?” Rutledge asked quickly.

“The owner’s not sure. He went to St. Albans for a few days, and when he came back, she was gone. He doesn’t believe she got this far, but he sent word by the ironmonger’s son, who went to the dentist in Tilbury.” He gestured to the dusty, unmade surface of the road. “No tracks that the boy could pick up on his way home, and none I’ve seen so far. But I said I’d look.”

A pretense of doing his duty? Or was there more to this? Had he been asked to look for Russell? Rutledge was nearly certain that Matron wouldn’t have contacted the police, but the owner of the Trusty might well have wanted his pound of flesh. It was even possible Nelson was keeping a watch on the troublesome Londoner’s movements for someone.

Testing the waters, Rutledge said, “How well do you know Timothy Jessup? He was Ben Willet’s uncle, I’m told.”

“Jessup? You don’t want to tangle with that one,” Nelson said, alarm in his face. “A nasty piece of work. Never in any trouble with the law, you understand, and I thank God for that. All the same, nobody ever crosses him.”

Rutledge heard overtones in the man’s voice that made him wonder if Jessup and not Sandy Barber was the leader of the smugglers.

“How well did he get on with Ben?”

“I wouldn’t say they were close. Abigail has always been Jessup’s favorite. And he was against Ben going into service in Thetford. I overheard them quarreling once. Ben was trying to explain that he wasn’t cut out to be a fisherman. Jessup wanted to know if he thought he was better than his father, and Ben said it wasn’t that. He’d rather blacken another man’s boots in a city than gut fish here in Furnham. Jessup knocked him down then and told him to stop daydreaming and get on with the life he was born to lead. And Ben said, ‘You don’t want anyone to leave, that’s all. For fear he’ll talk about things he shouldn’t.’ ”

“What things?”

Nelson said uneasily, “It was just talk. A boy’s talk. And he’d been up to River’s Edge a time or two. He’d seen a different way of life.”

“The smuggling,” Hamish said. “Yon uncle was afraid the lad would tell someone.”

But was it only that? Had Furnham corrupted its only officer of the law just to protect a few bottles of brandy, a little tobacco, and whatever other small luxuries these men had brought in on their backs? The entire village seemed to be involved in the secret, not just a handful of rogue fishermen.

Constable Nelson was preparing to mount his bicycle again. “Someone told me last year that Ned Willet had written a book and it was published in France. I doubt Ned could put two words together on a page, much less a book. But I didn’t believe that. Not for a minute.”

“Why not?” Rutledge asked, curious.

“I never knew anyone who wrote a book. And I’m not likely to. Not anyone from Furnham.”

And he was gone, pedaling along the road, seemingly the model of a village constable. Sober and responsible until the next bottle of French brandy was left outside his door. It was easy to see where his loyalties might lie.

France.

Rutledge was letting out the clutch, preparing to drive on, when the single word stopped him.

Ned Willet.

What was Ben Willet’s full name?

Was it possible that on one of the runs to France, someone had asked Jessup if the old man had written a book? Jessup would have found that as amusing as the constable had. And on his next run, had the Frenchman produced such a book, to have the last laugh?

He reversed and turned into the road leading to the Rectory. How much did the rector know about what was happening in his own parish? Or was he as much Jessup’s creature as Constable Nelson was?

Mr. Morrison was sitting in his study-cum-parlor when Rutledge stopped in the short drive. He got up and met his visitor at the door before he could knock.

“Come in, Inspector. I’m sick of my own company.”

The parlor was simply furnished, but a lovely old desk took pride of place, and Morrison saw Rutledge looking at it.

“My father’s,” he said. “The only thing of his that I possess, actually. I was trying to think of a suitable subject for my next sermon.” He gestured to a shelf behind the desk. Rutledge could see that there were at least twenty collections of sermons there, bound in leather. He wondered if these were a relic of Morrison’s father as well. “One would think,” he went on, “that every possible permutation of religious topics had been covered already. But one soldiers on, searching for inspiration.”

Rutledge smiled. “In point of fact, it’s a book that’s brought me here.”

“Sermons?” Morrison asked blankly, staring from the shelf to Rutledge’s face.

“Actually, no. Do you have the old christening records for the church?”

“St. Edward’s? As a matter of fact, we do, going back to the early 1800s. I can search for whatever you need to know. But it will take time. In some cases the ink is faded or the writing is illegible. My predecessors were not always thinking about posterity when they made their notations.”

“What I’m after isn’t that old. I’d like to know Ben Willet’s full name. Abigail Barber hasn’t been told yet that he’s dead. And I don’t care to distress her at this stage.”

“Ben’s name? I can answer your question without consulting the records. Edward Benjamin Stephen Willet. He was named for his father, his grandfather, and an uncle. He was called Ben to prevent any confusion.” Morrison smiled ruefully. “I was entering Ned’s death, and looked up Ben while I was about it. He’d have been twenty-eight in September.”

“Edward Willet. Yes, he’d have used that name. Honoring himself and his father,” Rutledge said after a moment.

“You’re releasing the body? Is that why you’re interested? For the-er-forms?”

“Actually I was wondering what name Willet would have used if he’d published a book in France.”

“Willet? Good God, no, you’re mistaken on that score. I heard the story going round about Ned. I’m not sure who started it. Jessup, perhaps, or one of the others. I don’t often hear gossip, but there was talk in one of the shops one day. They were laughing, they had forgot I was there.”

“You don’t have a copy of the book they spoke of?”

“Hardly. It doesn’t exist. Or at least I don’t believe it does.”

“Then how did such a tale start?” When Morrison looked away, as if trying to choose his words, Rutledge added, “You needn’t worry. I know about the smuggling. It’s not what brought me here, and if it has no bearing on murder, I intend to ignore it.”

“Very wise of you,” Morrison agreed. “I shut my eyes as well. One can’t help but notice that Constable Nelson drinks himself into a stupor on brandy one can’t purchase at The Rowing Boat. Poor man, he isn’t cut out to be a policeman. He came here just now, asking if I’d seen a lost horse. I never know whether these forays of his into duty are real or a way of salving his conscience. There was a band of Gypsies said to be camping out in the marshes, and before that a stolen bicycle. Um. Where was I?”

“Smuggling.”

“Yes, I was going to add that the veil Abigail wore at her wedding was French lace, handed down from her mother. And Ned, God rest his soul, Ned used to do the runs to France before the war. He took Ben with him once or twice when the boy was fifteen. While I sat with Ned after he injured his leg, he told me the story. How Ben was seasick when a storm blew up and they had to put into a different French port. He was so ill he was taken in by a French family, didn’t know a word they were saying to him, but he walked about in a daze for weeks afterward, enamored of the daughter of the house. He got over it, of course, at that age boys generally do.”

But had he?

Rutledge remembered the copybook in a box in the Laughtons’ attic, the description of the woman in CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Was she based on the girl Ben believed he’d fallen in love with as a boy?

“Did the French ever produce the book they talked about? On another run, perhaps?”

“I shouldn’t think so. If they did, no one showed it to me. And Ned would have, he loved a good joke. Why is it so important?”

“Because it’s possible the book does exist. And that the author’s name was Edward Willet. But not the father, of course. The son.”

“I still don’t see why this matters. What could it have to do with young Willet’s death? For all we know it could be an entirely different branch of the family. Ned told me once that there are Willets in Derbyshire and Norfolk.”

“Nor do I see the connection. At the moment.”

Morrison shook his head. “How many books do you think the people of Furnham read in the course of a year? The Bible, perhaps. They’ve always lived hard lives, these villagers. They don’t have the luxury of reading, nor the time or the money to buy books. The children go to school until they’re old enough to help earn their keep. The war was particularly hard, with the sea cut off.”

“I understand.”

“Is there any other matter I can help you with? Other than Ben’s full name?”

Rutledge said, “I have a puzzle on my hands. Three deaths, with seemingly no link between them. Mrs. Russell in 1914, Justin Fowler in 1915, and now Ben Willet’s. You know these people better than I ever shall. Do you see a pattern that I have missed?”

Morrison frowned. “We don’t know what happened to Mrs. Russell, do we? She may well have been in great distress over the coming war, as her family suggested. If that’s true, I bear some of the blame for not seeing her need in time. As for Fowler, why should you think he’s dead? Simply because he has cut his ties with the people who used to be close to him? A troubled man sometimes prefers to turn to strangers, rather than risk the pity of those he cares about. As for Ben, I’m afraid that in the end we’ll discover that his death is more related to London than it is to Furnham.”

“You present a very reasonable case. I wish I could believe in it. When you’ve been a policeman as long as I have, there’s a sixth sense about murder. The locket around Ben Willet’s throat connects him to River’s Edge, if nothing else does.”

“Ah yes, the locket. But that too has a reasonable explanation, doesn’t it? I’m afraid Miss Farraday has left a trail of broken hearts behind her. I shouldn’t be surprised if Ben was one of them. She was kind to him, after all.”

“It explains the photograph. Not the locket itself.”

“Are you so certain that it isn’t the only one of its kind?”

“With Mrs. Russell’s initial engraved on the face?

“There must be thousands of Englishwomen named Elizabeth, Emily, Eleanor, Eugenia-have you considered that?”

“I don’t like coincidence.”

Morrison smiled. “I’m afraid I can’t help you there. My business is to save souls, not to hunt killers.”

As Rutledge rose to take his leave, Morrison added, “If you find that Willet’s book exists, I should like to know about it. In fact, I’d like to read it myself.”

“I’ll be sure to tell you.”

They had walked as far as the door when Rutledge said, “This man Jessup. Is he dangerous, do you think?”

“Timothy? He’s a hard man to know. And he doesn’t care to be thwarted. By Ben going into service instead of to sea, or by an airfield being built in this parish. He nearly killed a man, coming to blows with him, after he discovered he’d come here to weigh the possibility of Furnham becoming a seaside town. I shouldn’t like to cross him.”

An unwitting echo of Constable Nelson’s words. And Morrison’s comment explained why he and Frances had been challenged by the man.

After leaving the Rectory, Rutledge spent three-quarters of an hour looking for any sign of a runaway horse. There was always the chance that Russell had taken it to speed him on his way to Furnham. But he had no more luck that Constable Nelson had. Someone had been along the road with horse and cart, that was clear enough, but a single horse-no.

He continued to London, his mind occupied with the problem of the three victims. While Morrison might believe there was no connection, he had a feeling there must be. It was one of the reasons he’d come looking for Russell.

He expected, when he reached Cynthia Farraday’s house, that she would refuse to receive him. But the maid, Mary, admitted him and led him to the small sitting room, where Miss Farraday was writing a letter.

“If you’ve come to see if I’m well, you’ve wasted a trip,” she said as he walked through the door. “I’m angry now. At Wyatt and at myself for being frightened of him.”

“I’m happy to see you fully recovered,” he countered, then asked, “Do you by chance still have a copy of the book Ben Willet is said to have written?”

“Said?” she asked. “I told you he’d had two volumes published. He was working on a third. I don’t suppose he finished that before he was killed. But there it is.” Rising from the desk, she went to the bookshelf under the window and retrieved two books. “Here. See for yourself.”

He thanked her and took the books. He looked at the name on the cover-Edward Willet. As he’d expected. Then he opened the first of the two books at random, reading a page here and there.

It was a war memoir as she had told him earlier. The title was A Long Road Home.

Beginning when Willet went to enlist, it was filled with stories of the men he’d trained with and then fought with. They were well realized and very human. And it brought the war back all too vividly.

“Have you read this?” he asked, looking up.

“The earlier part. I found the rest too disturbing. How awful it must have been to have these men come into one’s life, to get to know them, and watch as they are shot or blown up or grievously wounded by shrapnel. There was another Corporal he came to know very well, another young man in service in Thetford, and a month before the Armistice, the man was shot and died in his arms.” She shook her head, as if to clear it of the image she’d invoked. “I couldn’t bear it.”

He said, fighting to keep his voice even, “It was what we knew.”

Still skimming, he stopped at the top of a page and read on. I hadn’t heard from home for some weeks, and then I saw an officer I recognized. He lived near my village. His shoulder was in a bad way, and he was being sent to England for further treatment. I asked if he would find out if my father and my sister were all right. I’d heard that one of my brothers had been killed, the one here in France, but there had been no news about the one in the Navy. Captain F- told me he intended to go to Essex as soon as he was well enough, and he promised to send me word. But he never did. I expect he must have died of his wounds, because as far as I know, he never came back to France. I’d asked around, hoping he was all right and they hadn’t had to take off his arm. All of us fear amputation more than death. My sister did write finally, and told me that Joseph was dead as well, and she begged me to come home safe. It was with heavy heart that I went back into the line that day, and I think I killed a good many Germans in Joseph’s name…

Rutledge was about to ask Miss Farraday if she’d read the chapter and if she thought Captain F- was a reference to Justin Fowler. He remembered in time that she had told him she could have loved Fowler. Instead he looked for the date of that passage, and it was in the spring of 1915. And as far as he could judge, reading on into September, there was no other reference to Captain F-. He’d have to read the book from cover to cover, to be sure of that.

“Have you found something of interest?” she said, watching him as he read.

“It brings back memories,” he said, evading her question.

She nodded. “I expect it would.”

He turned to the second book, thicker by far, and this time, fiction. The title was simply, Marianne.

It was set in Paris during the war, and the chief character, Browning Warden, was searching for a woman he’d met before the war while smuggling along the French coast.

Hamish said, “Ye ken, it wouldna’ make his family verra’ happy.”

Which was probably why Willet hadn’t told them about the books. Or perhaps he felt that he wasn’t ready to share this next part of his life, given the trouble he’d had over becoming a footman.

Rutledge said to Cynthia Farraday, “Have you read this one?”

“Yes, I thought it quite good.”

But had she known how much truth had gone into the story?

Skimming again, he looked for a chapter similar to the one he’d read in Thetford, and he found it. The description of the war-torn French village was astonishingly real now, unlike the poorly imagined village in the copybook. The odd thing was, the woman in the earlier version had been dark haired, dark eyed, the girl Willet must have recalled from his boyhood. In this version, she had light brown hair and sounded very much like Cynthia Farraday. Had she recognized herself?

The early pages, describing where Browning Warden lived, evoked Furnham, although Willet had renamed it and the river. The isolation, the marshes, the dark river where he learned to sail, the crossing to France, all spoke of firsthand knowledge. The first meeting with the girl he would seek during the war, her search later for the wounded soldier who had deserted to marry her, shadowed a fulfillment of the promise glimpsed in the Thetford notebooks.

Realizing that he’d been reading for some minutes, he set the book aside. “You’re right. Willet was quite a fine writer. Do you by any chance know what the third book was to be about?”

“Pure evil,” she replied. “That’s what he said once, that it was a study in man’s depravity. But I can’t tell you what story he was telling. I’m sorry. He didn’t want to talk about it very much. He said it was a reflection of what he’d seen in the war and what he knew of heroism and cruelty. Ambitious, that was his word for it. And Gertrude Stein, whoever she may be, thought what she’d read was splendid.”

“These first two books had roots in Willet’s life. His experiences in the war, this love for a girl he could never marry, based on the smuggling he knew so much about. I wonder if the third book did the same.”

“Are you saying that there actually was smuggling going on? In Furnham? That Ben was a part of it?” She shook her head. “You must be mistaken. He liked the way the past shaped the future. Nothing to do with reality.”

And he had lied to her. To protect her? Or to protect the people of Furnham?

There was nothing here, with the possible exception of the reference to Captain F-, to cause a man’s death. Or to support Willet’s claim that Russell had killed Justin Fowler.

With regret he set the books aside.

Cynthia Farraday was saying, “I’m not in a position to judge, not really, I know so little about writing. But I think the second book is much more mature than anything he’d written before the war. He’d seen the world. He understood far better what he was trying to say. The money I gave him was well repaid. Can you imagine what Paris must have been like after Furnham, or even Thetford for that matter?”

“You lived at River’s Edge. Did you feel that the village in the second novel was Furnham?”

“Well, of course it was. I mean to say, he didn’t use real names, but I recognized a few of the residents. Those I knew. There are probably more.”

“Reading these, I keep asking myself why he came to Scotland Yard and posed as Wyatt Russell. Was that the only lie he told me? Or have I been chasing shadows?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t told me if you’d found Wyatt. Are you saving bad news for the last?”

“I can’t find him. I thought he’d be in Essex, there was nowhere else to go. And I was wrong. Why did you tell me you wished to buy River’s Edge, if it were for sale?”

Color rose in her face. “To find the girl I once was, I suppose. Don’t you ever wish you could go back? It’s heartbreaking to see it standing empty. And I have a feeling Wyatt won’t ever live there again. He sees the ghosts that walk. I don’t.”

“Not even the ghost of Justin Fowler?”

“Justin was handsome, he loved sports-we had croquet and lawn tennis and the like, horses to ride, a boat. But he was-there was something about him, a darkness, I thought at the time, having read too many novels. Still, it was there. I thought at first he missed his parents. They were dead, like mine, but he never talked about them. Never, ‘My father and I did this,’ or ‘My mother loved roses.’ I wondered afterward if perhaps he wanted to forget them.”

“Why?”

She looked across at the window. “Perhaps it was too painful to remember. My parents died on holiday. There was a typhoid outbreak in Spain, while they were in Cordoba. They were there-and then they weren’t. Horrible for me, but I’d said good-bye when they went away, and when their luggage was returned, there were presents for me, ribbons and a cut-glass bottle for scent, some lace, and a collection of photographs they’d bought in famous places. I knew they’d been thinking about me, and I found it comforting. I don’t know how his died. Perhaps they were ill and had been suffering for some time. The sort of thing one tries to put behind one.”

It was an interesting possibility.

He thanked her and was preparing to leave when she said, “Wyatt didn’t come back. Not even to apologize. Do you think he ever will?”

For her sake, he lied once more. “I’m sure he will.”

S topping at The Marlborough Hotel, he used their telephone to put in a call to the Yard.

It was some time before Gibson could be found, and he sounded harassed when he finally answered.

“Sir? Where are you?” was his first question, after Rutledge had identified himself.

“What news do you have of the Chief Superintendent?” Rutledge countered.

“In hospital, sir, and the report is not good. Where are you?”

“Traveling,” Rutledge replied. “Have you learned anything about Justin Fowler? Or Benjamin Willet?”

“Nothing about Fowler. As for the other man, he had rooms in Bloomsbury but gave them up to return to France.” There was no real connection then with The Marlborough Hotel. Willet had lied when he claimed he had rooms there.

Gibson was saying, “Constable Burton, who located his lodgings, is very thorough. We also found the doctor who treated this man Willet. ” He gave Rutledge the address in Harley Street. “Dr. Baker.”

“Good work. And keep trying with Fowler, if you will.”

“Sir, I’ll try. We’re at sixes and sevens with the Chief Superintendent in hospital.”

Rutledge noticed that Gibson had used Bowles’s title rather than what he and the rank and file called him: Old Bowels. It was not a good sign. Nor was the fact that it appeared that no one had yet been asked to fill in either temporarily or permanently. Much as he himself disliked the man, it was hard to picture the Yard without him.

“Someone’s been looking for the file on the MacGuire trial. By any chance, do you know where that is?”

“I sent it along to the Chief Superintendent. Look there. If it isn’t in his box, it may have been given to someone else.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll do that. And the Weatherly case?”

Rutledge felt a twinge of conscience. “On my desk. The constable who discovered the body hasn’t finished his report.”

“I’ll get on that, then.” Gibson paused, then added quietly, “There’s been some question about what to do. One rumor says Chief Inspector Cummins might be called back.”

That meant that there had been some discussion in the upper echelons after all, and no one’s view had prevailed. In point of fact, the Chief Superintendent would be hard to replace for the simple reason that he had never groomed a successor for fear of being overshadowed-or shown lacking.

Rutledge rang off and stood there for a moment in the telephone closet. He ought to go back to the Yard. But the last thing he wished to do was enter into the speculation and carping that must be going on, much less the ruthless undercurrents as some tried to benefit from Bowles’s crisis. He’d become a policeman for very sound reasons, and political intrigue was not one of them. He’d been pleased when Cummins, who had retired earlier in the summer, had suggested that he be promoted as his replacement. It had been a measure of Cummins’s respect for a junior officer.

But subsequent events had left a bitter taste in Rutledge’s mouth. He’d realized that promotion would leave him vulnerable to attack where he could least afford to tell the real truth about the war. He’d been decorated for bravery, but the stigma of shell shock-regarded as cowardice-would negate that.

He realized that someone was standing outside the door, waiting to use the telephone, and he left the hotel with every intention of going back to Essex. But he actually went to his flat and paced the floor for over an hour, Hamish loud in the back of his mind, his temporary exile from the Yard and the inquiry at hand driving him to physical action.

There was something missing in the case, and he didn’t know what it was. Yet.

Why had Ben Willet, facing his own death, come to Scotland Yard to accuse Wyatt Russell of a murder committed during the war? The only connection between Willet and Russell, besides the river that connected River’s Edge and the village of Furnham, had been Cynthia Farraday. Had Willet known how she felt about Fowler and as a last gift tried to end her uncertainty over what had become of the man?

He could just as easily have been trying to protect her from the police by pointing them elsewhere. But if the police knew nothing about Fowler’s death to start with, why bring it to their attention?

And who had found it necessary to kill Ben Willet when he was already dying? Or had the killer known that? Major Russell had said that Willet wanted to be killed rather than face the indignity and excruciating pain of waiting for the end. But this didn’t smack of a mercy killing. Shooting him hadn’t been enough-his body had been stripped of identification and shoved into the Thames for good measure. It should have disappeared for good or else have been so badly disfigured by the water, the fish, and the passing ships that any identification would be impossible. But luck had not been on the killer’s side.

A third possibility was that someone had discovered that Willet had come to the Yard-or he had actually told someone what he’d done. But why bring up Justin Fowler’s death in the first place? What had driven Willet to make such a claim? He had seemed to have no place in either the village or River’s Edge, no one but a sister to mourn his loss, no one but that same sister waiting eagerly for news of him or for the closure that finding his killer could bring to those who had survived him.

And what about Willet’s writing? What role had that played?

Waiting for Gibson to find out what he needed to know could take days. It was better to drive to Colchester and see what he could discover for himself. That had been where Fowler’s parents had lived and died.

Hamish said, “There’s the room in Furnham.”

“They’ll be relieved when I don’t return,” Rutledge retorted, packing a valise.

But before he left London, Rutledge went to call on Dr. Baker.

He was an older man, his hair nearly white, his eyes a sharp gray.

“Murdered, you say? Willet? That’s startling news, indeed.” He regarded Rutledge for a moment. “But you’re here about his illness, not his murder. There was nothing I could do. We could have tried surgery, of course, but the cancer had spread too far, and Willet knew that.”

“What did he take for the pain?”

“I gave him morphine, but I don’t believe he took it very often. He said he had something to do before he died, and he wanted a clear mind.”

“Why should he come to Scotland Yard, give another man’s name, and in that man’s name, confess to a murder?”

“Willet did that? I’ll be damned. Medically, I can’t account for it.”

“How did he receive his diagnosis?”

“Quietly. He didn’t appear to be particularly religious, but I overheard him comment as he was dressing again that God was punishing him. He didn’t tell me how he’d incurred the Almighty’s displeasure. Perhaps I should have asked, but he wasn’t speaking to me, and I respected his privacy. Have you considered that his charade was intended to push the Yard into action? As he appears to have done?”

“It’s possible,” Rutledge answered neutrally. “Would Willet have paid someone to cut short his suffering? Rather than contemplate suicide?”

“I think not. Unless he’d finished whatever it was that drove him to eschew taking something for his pain, and it was growing unbearable. As it would have done. I’m sorry I can’t give you a more satisfying answer. I knew very little about his personal life, except for the fact that he’d recently lived in Paris and had come home to be seen by a doctor.”

Hamish reminded him of a last question.

Rutledge said, “You examined him, of course. Was he by any chance wearing a gold locket?” He took it from his pocket, holding it out to Dr. Baker.

“Quite pretty, isn’t it? And quite old, as well. But no, I’ve never seen it before.”

Rutledge thanked him and was about to walk out the door when Baker said suddenly, “I just remembered. He asked if I had any information on the plague. I gave him a book to read, and he brought it back on his last visit. He said he had found it very interesting. I asked him why he should want to study the subject, and he said that it was a hobby of his.”

“A hobby?”

“He must have seen my reaction-very much like yours, I’m sure-and he smiled and said, ‘The Spanish flu was a plague, was it not, killing thousands?’ I told him the effects might have been the same, the way it ravaged country after country, but that the pathology was quite different. It wasn’t spread by rats or fleas. And he said, ‘Yes, but you see, it’s the only comparison I can make.’ ”

C olchester had once been a Roman camp, the capital of Roman Britain until Queen Boudicca burned it to the ground during the Iceni revolt. It had also been a prosperous woolen center in the Middle Ages. It was very late when Rutledge reached his destination. The town was dark, quiet, only a few vehicles and fewer pedestrians on the streets as he made his way to the Town Hall with its handsome tower and then found the police station. Lights were on inside, but he knew that only a small night staff would be there. Tomorrow morning would suffice. There was a room available at the ancient hostelry, The Rose and Crown, and he fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. Hamish had been busy in the back of his mind from the time he’d left London, and he was glad to shut out the soft Scots voice.

After breakfast the next morning in one of the small half-timbered rooms off the main dining room, Rutledge left his motorcar in the inn’s yard and walked to the police station. The streets were busy, men hurrying to their work, women walking small children to school while older boys laughed as they took turns kicking a stone down the road. Shopkeepers were only just opening their doors, and the greengrocer was setting boxes of vegetables on racks in front of his window. He nodded as Rutledge passed, and then spoke to a woman just behind him, calling her by name and wishing her a good day. Rutledge could feel the warmth of the sun on his back and smell the summer dust stirred up by passing motorcars, the motes gleaming in the sunlight.

Not a day to speak of murder, he thought as he opened the door to the police station and stepped into the dim interior.

The sergeant at the desk looked up as he entered, and asked his business. Rutledge explained what he was after-any information that the local constabulary had on the family of one Justin Fowler, formerly of Colchester before moving to Essex.

He saw the expression in the man’s eyes change, although he gave nothing away.

“Scotland Yard?” he repeated. “It might be best, sir, if you speak to Inspector Robinson. I’ll find out if he can see you now.”

Robinson could, taking Rutledge back to his office and offering him a chair. The man’s desk was piled high with paperwork, but the room was tidy otherwise and Robinson himself was spare, neatly dressed, and curious to know why Rutledge had come.

He explained himself as well as he could, given the sparseness of information at his disposal, beginning with a report that had come to the attention of the Yard claiming that one Justin Fowler had been murdered during the war. His body had never been found, but because of another murder closely associated with that case, the Yard was interested in learning more about Fowler’s background.

Robinson considered him as he spoke.

“Fowler is dead, you say?”

“We can’t be sure. The man who told us about the murder has since died violently. We find ourselves wondering if the two events are connected.”

“Hmmm. Yes. What do you know about Fowler’s family?”

“Only that his parents died when he was eleven or twelve, and shortly afterward he was given into the guardianship of Mrs. Elizabeth Russell, of River’s Edge. Mrs. Russell is dead as well, and her son was gravely injured in the war. We’ve had no other information.”

“I see.” Robinson shifted papers on his desk, then looked up and said, “Then you may not know that Fowler’s parents were murdered.”