The Confession

Chapter 2

London, Summer 1920

Sergeant Hampton had brought the man to Rutledge’s office, saying only, “Inspector Rutledge will help you, sir,” before vanishing back down the passage.

The visitor was a walking skeleton, pale except for his dark hair and his pain-ridden dark eyes. Sitting down gingerly in the chair that Rutledge offered, he seemed to feel the hardness of the seat in his bones, for he moved a little, as if hoping to find a more comfortable spot.

“My name is Wyatt Russell,” he began in a voice thinned by illness. “I’m dying of cancer, and I want to clear my conscience before I go. I killed a man in 1915 and got away with it. I want to confess to that murder now. There won’t be time to try me and hang me, but at least you’ll be able to close the file and I’ll be able to sleep again.”

Rutledge considered him. People confessed for a good many reasons, not the least of which was to salve their conscience before facing a more lasting justice than that of the Crown. Sometimes they confessed to protect someone else.

“I was in France in 1915,” he said after a moment. “If this is where the murder occurred, you should speak to the Army, not to Scotland Yard.”

“It isn’t an Army matter,” Russell replied shortly.

“Perhaps we should start at the beginning, if I’m to make use of your confession. Where do you live, Mr. Russell?”

“I have a house in the Essex marshes. I’ve lived there all my life, until the war. I have money of my own and have never needed to seek employment.”

“Was the Yard called in to investigate this murder, or was it handled by the Essex police?”

The man smiled. “I really can’t say. I didn’t hang about to see.”

“In that case, can you be certain you killed this man? He could have been wounded and recovered.”

“Yes. I’m absolutely certain. You see, he’s my cousin. I’d have known if he’d cropped up again later. His name is-was-Justin Fowler. Not to speak ill of the dead, but we had our differences, he and I, and in the end they were serious enough that I had to make a decision. That doesn’t excuse killing him, I realize that. I’m simply trying to set the record straight.”

“Was a woman involved?”

Russell was disconcerted. “A woman? Ah. A love triangle. Sorry to disappoint you, but it wasn’t that simple. And I’m not prepared to go into any more detail. Suffice it to say, I killed him and got rid of the body. It was during the war. People were enlisting, going to work in the factories. A time of upheaval, change. No one noticed when he went missing.”

“The more we learn about a murder, the sooner we can determine who is guilty and who isn’t. Establishing motive is an important part of an inquiry.”

“But I’ve just told you-I’ve confessed to killing him. I can show you how and where, and what became of the body. I can’t believe you need any more than that.” His face had flushed, adding ugly blotches of red to his gray complexion.

“You’ve come to the police,” Rutledge said, wondering what was behind the man’s sudden anger, “of your own free will. Now it’s necessary for the Yard to look into your confession and draw its own conclusions. A motive will tell us to what extent you are guilty of this crime. What role the victim played in antagonizing you-”

“Damn it, man, dead is dead.” He glanced around, as if expecting to find answers in the plain walls and dusty window glass. Or was he searching for a way to retreat from what he’d confessed to? Rutledge thought it likely, and Russell’s next words proved him right. “I shouldn’t have come. It was selfish of me. I just didn’t want to die with this knowledge on my soul.” His gaze returned to Rutledge. “If you can’t help me, I’ll leave and we can forget I ever walked through your door.”

“You’ve admitted to murder-” he began.

“Have I?” The man’s mouth quirked. “My doctor will tell you it’s just the morphine speaking. I have hallucinations, you know. It’s difficult sometimes to tell true from false.” He rose to go. “I’m sorry to have taken up your time, Mr. Rutledge. Dying is not something to relish. It is something to endure. No matter what the poets may tell you.”

He reached for the back of the chair to steady himself, then said, “I doubt we’ll meet again.”

He went out the door without looking back, a man in great pain, walking upright by an effort of will, Rutledge thought. Pride was sometimes the last vanity to go.

After a moment, Rutledge stood up and went after him. “Is there somewhere you must go? Or will you have lunch with me?” he asked as he caught Russell up.

“Lunch? I can hardly swallow a mouthful of tea without nausea.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’d like your company.”

Russell considered him. “Why should you wish to sit across a table from this gaunt wasteland of a man? If you think you’ll convince me to change my mind about coming here, you’re wrong. I have a strong will. It has kept me going longer than my doctors thought possible.” He smiled at that, transforming his face to a shadow of what it might have been before his illness.

“I was in the war,” Rutledge said simply. “I have seen death before.”

After a moment Russell nodded. “I’m at The Marlborough. They do a decent roast lamb with mint sauce. I can enjoy the sauce still.”

The Marlborough would not have been Rutledge’s choice. He had gone there last with Meredith Channing. It wasn’t a memory he cared to revisit. But he had a feeling that if he suggested another restaurant, he could well lose Wyatt Russell.

The hotel was not very far away, but Rutledge drove them there, and Russell sat beside him in silence. He got out of the motorcar with some difficulty, but Rutledge wisely stayed where he was, offering no assistance.

Inside, Reception was busy, but the dining room was still mostly empty, since it was early for a meal.

They were conducted to a table in a corner, and Russell sat down on the damask upholstered chair with a sigh of relief.

“I should take a cushion with me these days. Sitting on wood has become a trial for me. Will you have something to drink? It’s my treat, because I shall be able then to set the rules.”

“As you wish. I’ll have a whisky.” Hoping to loosen Russell’s tongue…

Russell nodded, gave the order for two, and looked around. “I don’t know half these people. Before the war, I could have put a name to most of them.”

“In London often, then, were you?”

“I was young, unmarried, just down from Cambridge. Full of myself. Full of the future. In love. Essex was dull, boring. London was busy, exciting. If I even thought about it, life seemed to stretch ahead in an endless golden haze, and I expected to be happy forever. Or at least, looking back on 1914, that’s how I recall it now. It may not have been such a blissfully happy time, but it does no harm to think so. Were you in London then?”

“I was. I seem to remember it in the same way. Were you in the war?”

“Oh, yes, rushing to sign up before it was over, chafing at the bit, afraid the Kaiser would fold before I’d learned how to fight him properly. Writing letters home from training filled with patriotism and an eagerness to kill a people I’d never met. Well, I did know a few Germans at Cambridge. Nice enough chaps, I didn’t picture them when I was hot to shoot the Hun. They weren’t the sort to bayonet Belgian babies and rape Belgian women. My cousin was fond of one of them, in fact, but the man was called home shortly before hostilities were declared, and we don’t know if he survived the fighting or not.”

“If you were in the war, how is it that you were in Essex to commit murder?”

“Yes, that’s a bit confusing, isn’t it? I was sent to London with dispatches. The house had been closed up, but I went down to have a look at it. Fowler was there, we quarreled. Opportunity presented itself, and temptation did the rest. There was a temporary airfield nearby. Zeppelin watch and night flights. The only risk was that if the body was discovered, one of the new chaps would be blamed for what happened. But apparently I was lucky. No one stumbled over him.”

“Were you married when you went to war?”

“Ah, too many questions.”

Rutledge’s whisky came. Still probing, he said, “I decided not to marry the girl I thought I was in love with. And a good thing-I think she loved the uniform more than she loved the man. The marriage wouldn’t have lasted.” And he was reminded again of Meredith Channing, whose marriage had lasted, on the cold ashes of duty.

Russell studied Rutledge for a moment over the rim of his glass. “Did it turn out well, your war?”

“Not at all well.”

“Yes, it seldom does, I expect. I found that killing people wasn’t to my liking after all. But I did my duty to my men and to my country. I was damned glad when it was over, all the same.”

“Did being a soldier make it any easier, killing your cousin?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. “The policeman again. Do you never leave him at home? It must be a bloody nuisance at dinner parties, wondering what subtle undercurrent of meaning there might be when someone asks you to pass the salt.”

Rutledge laughed.

“What made you decide to join the police? Why not become a lawyer, instead, if you were hell-bent on punishing evildoers?”

“My father was a solicitor. I considered his profession, and then decided against it.”

The waiter brought their lamb, and Russell inspected it. “I’m hungry enough to chew the table. But swallowing is another matter.” He sopped up a little of the sauce with a corner of bread and tasted it. “Ah yes. I remember why I always liked this so much.”

They spoke of other things during the meal, and Rutledge waited until they had finished their pudding before asking, “Why did you decide to come to the Yard in person, rather than to write a letter that would be opened after your death?” He had once known a murderer who did just that.

“The policeman is back, is he? We could have been great friends, save for him. All right, I suppose you deserve the answer to one question. It seemed rather cowardly to tell someone after the fact. I suppose I had a religious upbringing of sorts and realized that to confess was not enough. To admit wrongdoing and to show contrition while I was alive had more meaning somehow.”

“And do you feel better, for having unburdened your soul?”

Russell frowned. “Do you know, I thought I would. I’ve kept my secret for a very long time, or so it seemed to me. Screwing up the courage to come to the Yard while I could still manage the effort was a test of my intent. My strength of character, as it were. But it wasn’t quite-as I’d expected.”

“Would you have been happier if I’d clapped you in irons and taken you to trial? Would hanging make a difference?”

“I had rather not hang, although it would shorten a lingering death. And perhaps I felt, after a fashion, that my crime was not as horrific as it had seemed at the time. That’s the war speaking, of course. When one has killed thousands-well, hundreds, although it sometimes seemed like thousands-what’s one more life taken? But do you know, it does make a difference. I think it matters because I had a choice, you see. I could have not killed him. And yet I did. And so I have come to you to confess and set the record straight. Only,” he added, frowning at the remnants of his pudding, “it hasn’t been set straight, has it? Are you quite certain that you must know more about why I killed him?”

“It will have to come out. If there is an inquiry. You’ll be questioned. And if you fail to answer those questions satisfactorily, then we will go in search of the answers ourselves. It will not be pleasant.”

“I hadn’t expected it to be pleasant,” Russell told him. “I had just not anticipated that it would be so very personal. Or public. Least of all, that anyone else would have to be involved. With any luck, I shall be dead before it reaches that stage. Tell the policeman to mind his own business until then. I’ve no doubt you’ll not let this matter drop, but once I’m not there to answer your questions, you won’t be able to do any harm.” He signaled the waiter, and then said to Rutledge, “I’m very tired. It’s one of the curses of my condition. I shan’t be able to see you out.”

“Is there anything that I can do? Help you to your room?”

“Thank you, no. I can still manage that.”

Rutledge rose and held out his hand. “If you change your mind at any point, you know where to find me.”

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Inspector.”

Rutledge turned to walk away, and Russell said, “Actually-there is one thing you might do for me.”

Facing Russell again, Rutledge asked, “What is it?”

“Pray for my soul. It might help. A little.”

M otoring back to the Yard, Rutledge considered Wyatt Russell. If he’d been telling the truth, that he’d come to confess a murder that was weighing on his soul, why had he been so reluctant to tell the whole truth, and not just a part of it?

Was someone else involved?

And that was very likely the answer. But then why not simply continue to live with the secret, and die without confessing it? When Russell learned he couldn’t have it both ways, he had retreated from that confession.

Was that someone else a partner in the crime? Or the reason for it?

As he got out of his motorcar at the Yard, he was examining a map of Essex in his head. North of the Thames, north of Kent on the other side of that river, it was threaded with marshes, the coastline a fringe of inlets and a maze of tidal rivers that isolated the inhabitants in a world little changed with the passage of time. Until the war, the people of that part of Essex had known little about the rest of their county, much less their country, content with their own ways, in no need of modern conveniences or interference in a life that contented them.

As Essex moved inland, it was a different story entirely, with towns, villages, and a plethora of roads. Basildon, Chelmsford, Colchester might as well be the antipodes as far as the marsh dwellers were concerned, as distant to their way of thinking as London itself. And Rutledge, nodding to the sergeant on duty and mounting the stairs to his office, was certain that a murder in villages even in that part of the countryside wouldn’t go unnoticed. Unless, of course, Russell had been very clever indeed at disposing of an unwanted body.

Something had been said about an airfield.

Rutledge walked on past his office and went to find Constable Greene, who had served with a squadron based near Caen.

Greene, a spare, affable man with unruly fair hair that to his chagrin curled when the weather was damp, was thirty-three, coming late to police work. After the Armistice, he had decided to join the Metropolitan Police, and it wasn’t long before he had come to the attention of the Yard. Before the war he had owned a bicycle shop in Reading that had just begun to cater to motorcars when hostilities broke out. He had been mad to fly, but heights had made him ill, and so he had maintained and repaired the machines he loved. In the constant struggle to find parts to keep his pilots flying, he knew most of the other airfields in France. He might well know one in Essex.

Looking up as Rutledge came toward his desk, he smiled. “Afternoon, sir. What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to borrow your memory. From the war.” He described what little Russell had told him about the airfield and asked, “Can you possibly place it?”

Greene frowned. After a moment he said, “There were several out there. At a guess, I’d say you’re looking at Furnham. On the River Hawking. They had a good deal of trouble there. Not the least from locals wanting them out.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Wind, for one thing, and low-lying mists on the water. And then there was the burning of hay ricks, sending smoke across the field. Petty theft. Quarrels among the men posted there and their neighbors. Mind you, many of the local girls didn’t object to the newcomers. That may’ve had something to do with it. From what I was told, Furnham is fairly isolated. Change wouldn’t be welcomed.”

“What became of the airfield when the war ended?”

“I expect it was turned back to the farmer who owned it.”

Rutledge nodded. “Makes sense. All right, thank you, Greene.”

“Anything come up about Furnham? I can’t say I’d mind going there to see it for myself.”

“Some mention was made of the airfield over lunch. I was curious,” Rutledge said easily and went to his office.

He debated whether to initiate an official inquiry into the murder that Russell had confessed to, and then decided against it. He wasn’t completely certain about the man’s motive in coming to the Yard.

But his own curiosity had been aroused, and it would do no harm, he told himself, to look into it unofficially. If more information turned up, he could bring in the Yard.

Two hours later, the reports on his desk finished, he went to Somerset House to look up Justin Fowler and Wyatt Russell.