The Gate Keeper

by Charles Todd

  And then he found himself wondering how the war poet O A Manning would have addressed the peace. She had seen the war finished before she had taken her own life, she had been granted that one gift.

  There was a line he remembered from Wings of Fire, her most famous collection of poems.

  The scars of war go deep . . .

  He himself could attest to that.

  Although he knew there was no likelihood of Haldane calling him back straightaway, he stayed in the bookshop for almost another hour, searching it more thoroughly this time. The desk in the tiny office held only business correspondence, orders, payment records, and other matters relating to the bookshop. He persevered, even turning the desk drawers upside down to see if anything had been taped to the bottoms.

  But Stephen Wentworth apparently had no secrets, no guilty conscience.

  Rutledge went out to the back of the shop to look at the dustbins, but they had already been emptied. He came back inside, and on impulse he went to the comfortable chair where Wentworth could sit and read when there was no one in the shop browsing or if he preferred this to the emptiness and memories at home.

  Lifting the cushion, he ran his hand down the side of the chair. His searching fingers came up with the two halves of a pencil snapped in two, a shilling, and a ha’penny. Moving to the other side, he found only a crumpled piece of paper. Smoothing it out on the table that held the lamp, he realized that it was nothing more than a scribbled list. There were titles of three books, and he remembered seeing them on a sheet of orders sent to the publisher Collins.

  Turning it to the other side, he saw that Stephen Wentworth had written the words Gate keeper over and over again with increasing ferocity, the last time so deeply that he realized that the crossing of the t had nearly perforated the scrap of paper.

  He looked at the broken pencil, and wondered if it had snapped at that point.

  Not the title of a book, surely?

  Rutledge went back to the desk and scanned the orders again. And didn’t find it. He remembered seeing an inventory of the books on the shop shelves, took it out from under the counter where Wentworth dealt with queries and purchases, and went through that by title, searching first for the words, then under A and after that, The.

  Nowhere was it listed.

  He looked again at the words and the jagged edges of the broken pencil.

  Here was the first sign of a deep anger in Stephen Wentworth, a part of him that no one else seemed to have recognized in the very nice young man they had described.

  What—or possibly even who—was the gate keeper?

  12

  Rutledge locked up the bookshop and walked back to his motorcar, still thinking about the words he had seen on the back of the list of titles. He had taken the list with him, folded carefully into his notebook.

  Who among Wentworth’s acquaintances would know what the words meant? To whom would he have confided such anger? Even after it had cooled? Who would have been trusted with this particular secret? For it must have been just that. Something that mattered to him so deeply that he would write the words with increasing fury, then crumple the scrap of paper and shove it into his pocket, out of sight. But it hadn’t stayed there. It had fallen out.

  If he remembered it at all, Wentworth would have assumed he’d lost it somewhere. Would that have worried him? The titles on the other side might have told the finder the scrap had come from the bookshop.

  Mrs. Delaney? Probably not. He turned to her for many things, many needs, but Rutledge wasn’t convinced Wentworth would have shared this particular secret with her. And if he had, she would have mentioned it, would have told the police what had troubled him. She might even have known why.

  Evelyn Hardy, then. It was less likely that Wentworth would have confided in her, but there was her brother, Harry. But before he could leave Wolfpit, there was one other matter.

  School was being dismissed. He watched at a distance as Miss Frost and Miss Dennis walked home again. They had an easy way with the children they taught, without endangering discipline, and he thought they must be well liked. When they had closed their door, he turned back to The Swan.

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, they do na’ live alone. He wasna’ looking for them.”

  Rutledge agreed with him. But he had wanted to be sure. Whoever it was, he had been too close to their house to ignore the possibility.

  That done, he set out for Wickham.

  Miss Hardy was just coming from the milliner’s, a pretty bandbox swinging from its ribbons as she walked toward him. Then she recognized the man standing by her door, and her expression changed from happiness to wariness.

  “What has happened?” she asked quickly. “Why have you come?”

  He smiled. “Your maid told me you were out. I thought I’d wait. There are always more questions in an inquiry like this.”

  Relieved, she went to the door and unlocked it with her key. “Come in quietly. My mother is resting. She was down with a migraine last evening.” Drawing off her gloves and setting them on a table by the door, she led him down the passage to his left.

  She opened a door into a small, very feminine morning room, with birds and flowers in the wallpaper giving it a sense of being out in a garden, especially with the winter sunshine spilling across the floor from the pair of windows.

  “This is really my mother’s room,” she said, “but it’s also my very favorite in the house.” She gestured to a chair and sat in one across from him. “I try to forget what happened to Stephen, and then something brings it all back rather forcibly. Is there a time set for his funeral?”

  “Not yet. There’s an inquest to be held first. And I’m not ready to call for one. I’m still investigating Wentworth’s life, and speaking to his friends. And that’s why I’ve come. In the bookshop I came across a reference to something that appeared to be important to him. But it makes no sense to me. I thought perhaps he’d mentioned it to you or perhaps to your brother. Just two words. I discovered it by the chair he kept in the bookshop for reading in his spare time.” He had done his best not to make the words seem as ominous to her as they had to him. “‘Gate keeper.’ Nothing more. But they were repeated several times.”

  Evelyn Hardy frowned. “‘Gate keeper’?” she asked, looking up. “The title of a book he wanted to remember—or perhaps was trying to order?”

  “That occurred to me as well. I looked through his desk to see if he had placed an order for it. He hadn’t. Nor was it listed in his inventory of the books on the shelves. I thought perhaps it had to do with something more—personal.”

  “I hate that you must go through his things this way. He was such a private person.”

  “If doing so will bring me closer to finding his killer, I’ll go on searching.”

  “I know. I just find it hard to think about.” She looked away, going back through memories and her own recollections. After a moment she said, “Harry asked him once if he would write a book about his time in Peru. He answered that it was an interesting time but not necessarily a happy time. But he might change his mind one day. Could that have been a title he’d been considering?”

  Rutledge smiled encouragingly. “That’s one possibility.” And yet he didn’t feel it was likely. Not by the measure of anger he had seen.

  “I can’t think what else it might mean. Perhaps Harry would have known . . .” Her voice trailed off as she mentioned her brother’s name. “I feel wretched, not being able to help. Is it really that important?”

  “Perhaps not. But there’s no way to know unless one looks into it.”

  She said, “I don’t think I’d like being a policeman.”

  She hadn’t meant to hurt, but he felt it just the same. “I speak for the dead,” he said quietly. “Who else can?”

  Her face turned pink. “I had never thought of it that way. I shan’t take Constable Burke for granted ever again.”

  Rutledge laughed. Then he said, “If you think of anything else, will you sen
d word to me in care of the police in Wolfpit?”

  Evelyn promised, and he left.

  But while he was in the village, he called on three of the guests on the list he’d been given by the senior Mrs. Hardy. He hadn’t expected to learn much from them, and he was right. They had left early, returned home, and hadn’t heard about Stephen Wentworth’s death until late the next afternoon. In each instance he asked if there was anyone who could corroborate the time they reached their respective homes, and in each case there was someone on the staff who had had to wait for them to return from the party. In one house it was a nursery maid who wished to report that a child had begun to run a fever, in two others it was the lady’s maid who had stayed awake to put away the party gown and the jewelry that had been worn with it.

  Afterward, Hamish said, “It’s no’ likely they’ll cross their employers by telling the truth.”

  “That’s very probably the case. But until I have other reasons to question their statements, I’ll accept them. What’s more, they hadn’t heard about Templeton’s death, and their shock seemed genuine enough. I couldn’t find a clear motive for killing either man.”

  Hamish said, “Aye, but early days.”

  But it wasn’t. Time was moving on. Or had Hamish been sarcastic?

  The last set of names on the list was a Mr. and Mrs. Peterson, who lived only two miles from the house where the party had been held.

  They had heard about Frederick Templeton’s death, and Edgar Peterson was incensed. “We aren’t safe in our own homes. And the police seem to be doing little enough about it. I want to know when we can expect to hear this monster has been caught.”

  It took Rutledge three-quarters of an hour to calm them down to a point where he could ask questions. But the upshot was, he didn’t think they had been involved.

  Although afterward, Hamish was of the opinion that he would be satisfied if Edgar Peterson turned out to be the murderer. “But it’s no’ likely. He’s all bluster.”

  Still, the guest list had had to be looked into, however much a waste of time it had been. Rutledge could have assigned the task to Constable Penny and Constable Burke, but it would have taken longer, and he had wanted to see the guests for himself and hear what they had to say about both victims and how the evening had been spent.

  Where they were in agreement was the tenor of the party: all the guests had enjoyed their evening, and there had been no quarrels or upsets to mar Robin Hardy’s homecoming dinner, even if he wasn’t there in time.

  No one mentioned Mark Quinton’s angry departure. Either he’d had the good sense not to make his displeasure public, or Stephen Wentworth and Mrs. Hardy between them had seen to it that Evelyn wasn’t embarrassed.

  Back in Wolfpit, Rutledge went directly to the Templeton house. The staff, red-eyed still, and sniffing into handkerchiefs, seemed not quite certain what to do, or whether they ought to accompany him as he went through the house more thoroughly now, looking for anything that might offer a reason why its owner had been targeted by a killer. He examined the study again, and then Frederick Templeton’s bedroom. He began to know the man as he worked. The estate books were in meticulous order, on a separate shelf that was within reach of the desk. Correspondence was in a drawer on the left, and accounts in the drawer below. He got to know the small but clear script as he searched, but when he discovered in the last drawer on the right a bundle of letters tied in black ribbon, letters from Templeton’s wife, Rose, to him while he was in France, he put them back unread.

  There were no surprises here or on the lines of leather-bound books that marched along the shelves. He scanned for Gate keeper, but there was nothing remotely resembling the words. A well-worn leather chair stood by the hearth, and on the table next to it was a decanter of whisky and a clean glass. The table on the other side of it held books that Templeton must have been reading, mostly to do with various aspects of farming. But there was also a handsome gramophone on a table by the window, and to Rutledge’s amusement, there were popular songs of the day as well as classic pieces stacked beside it. The record on the turntable at the moment was “Roses of Picardy.”

  Rutledge quickly turned away. There had been a young Scots private with a fine tenor voice who sometimes sang softly in the evenings, and one of his particular favorites had been “Roses of Picardy.” He’d been badly wounded in the second battle of the Somme, and died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. Often in the silence before dawn, Rutledge’s men swore he still sang. By that time Rutledge himself had already begun to hear Hamish in the back of his mind, and he was certain they were all on the verge of madness.

  Upstairs, in the master bedroom was a portrait of Templeton’s wife in a very becoming gown of silver and midnight blue, and Rutledge could see that she had been very attractive. And very loved. In her dressing room her clothes still filled the mirrored closets, and there were quite beautiful pieces of jewelry in the tall slim chest next to her dressing table.

  He was reminded of Evelyn Hardy’s comments about going through the belongings of the dead, and closed the drawer he had just opened.

  In Templeton’s dressing room he found country clothing as well as evening dress and half a dozen suits from London tailors in Oxford Street. And although he lifted the shirts and handkerchiefs and underclothing in the drawers, there was nothing that appeared to be hidden or, at the very least, kept out of sight. And then among the array of cuff links and shirt studs, at the very back, he found a photograph of a man in uniform. He was very young and very anxious, reminding Rutledge of the many raw recruits sent to the Front too soon. Turning it over, he looked for a name on the other side, but there was none. He went back to the photograph. A private in a Territorial Army that had been called up early in 1915, he looked nothing at all like Templeton. A nephew? His wife’s sister’s son? Rutledge put it back where he’d found it, and gave a last glance around the room before closing the door and walking out into the passage. And startled one of the maids hovering there in case he needed anything.

  He asked where Templeton’s Army trunk might be stored, and wound up in the attics, where it had pride of place at the top of the stairs. But it too held nothing of real interest. There was a small photograph of Templeton, six years younger, in the uniform of a Lieutenant, staring back at the camera with a serious expression. They had all had their photographs taken in uniform, officers and other ranks. Rutledge had given his to Jean in a silver frame. Templeton was older than most of the young men who had rushed to enlist. His was a mature face, early thirties, attractive in a way, with dark hair and a strong chin. What had this Lieutenant done in his war, to have risen to the rank of Major in four years?

  “Survived,” Hamish said bitterly, and it was true, so many deaths had offered rapid advancement to those who lived.

  Nothing here that would point to his dying two years after the war had ended, at the hands of friend or foe.

  Rutledge closed the trunk and latched it, then stood up to dust his hands and his knees. As he did, he glanced around the attic. The sun had gone in and there was very little light coming in the windows at either end. He noticed a plain wooden chair, silhouetted against the far window. Something about the way it stood there, in the middle of an open space, was sinister. Rutledge walked over to it, and looking up, saw that it was directly under one of the crossbeams of the roof over his head. In the chair, neatly coiled, was a length of rope, heavy hemp, the sort of rope that might be used to lash goods onto a wagon or tie up something in a barn.

  Or form a noose.

  It was Hamish who put it into words. “He didna’ use it. But he had it ready to hand. When his wife died?”

  “Yes. I think it’s likely.”

  But why hanging, when there was a well-oiled revolver in his trunk, and a box of cartridges beside it?

  Mrs. Cox found him sitting in Templeton’s study, staring at the shelves of books. Five minutes later she came back with a tray of tea.

  “You look like you could use i
t, sir,” she told him, setting it on the desk in front of him. “Have you found anything that would tell you who killed Mr. Templeton?”

  He thanked her for her thoughtfulness and added, “Sadly, no. Was anything worrying him, or was he angry with anyone? Had there been any trouble with the staff or a neighbor?”

  “He’d been different after the war. Not something you could put your finger on. But I expect it was rather terrible out there. He never spoke of it, at least not to any of us. And he wasn’t the sort of man to quarrel with anyone. Of course Mrs. Templeton’s death was a shock to him. He said once that he hoped it wasn’t his fault. But how could it have been? He wasn’t here when she took ill, although he managed to reach her before she died. That was a comfort to her. Such a lovely lady she was too. You’ll have seen her portrait? There in the master bedroom? It had hung in the drawing room, but he had it taken down and carried up to his room. He said he wanted it where he could see her the last thing before he closed his eyes at night and the first thing when he opened them in the morning. My only comfort has been that she went first. I don’t know how she would have borne his loss.”

  There were good men in the world, he thought, like Wentworth and Templeton. Quiet, steady, going about their lives without trouble. Many of them men who had created the Empire. Men who had mapped countries, built bridges and railroads, brought law and medicine in their wake, and sometimes found a nameless foreign grave as their reward. Others had stayed home and opened bookshops and bettered the yield of corn or sugar beets, improved the bloodlines of cattle or sheep.