The Red Door

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge could see the police station just beyond the herd and waited patiently for the last of the cows to pass. Constable Satterthwaite had just come out the door and was standing there on the point of filling his pipe.

  He was a heavyset man of middle years, with an air of knowing his patch well. As Rutledge pulled up, he greeted him. “Inspector Rutledge? You’ve made good time, sir. The light’s still good. Would you like to go on out to the Teller house, or wait until morning?”

  Rutledge considered the sky. “Now is best. I’ll drive.”

  Constable Satterthwaite shoved his pipe back into his pocket and got in, giving directions to the scene of the crime. Then he settled back and said, “I’m that happy to see you, sir. This is a puzzle I can’t fathom. Florence Teller is the last person I’d have expected to find murdered. We’re a quiet village, not a place where there’s been much in the way of violence over the years. We know one another fairly well, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. If someone is in need, we try to help. No one needs to go stealing from his neighbor.”

  “Murder isn’t always to do with need,” Rutledge told him. “There’s passion and greed and anger and jealousy—and sometimes just sheer cruelty.”

  “I understand, sir. But I don’t know how any of those things might touch Florence Teller. Why someone would come to her door, and then strike her down and leave her for dead where she fell is beyond me. The doctor says it would have done no good if she’d got help straightaway. The damage was done. But how was her killer to know that? She might have lain there suffering for hours. And no one to help her. That was a cruelty.”

  “She lived alone?”

  “Yes, sir. The aunt who brought her up when she lost her parents died about fifteen years ago. Maybe more. And her son died some twelve years back. Then her husband didn’t come home from France. That took the heart out of her, though I never heard her complain. And she more or less kept to herself afterward. Gardening was always her joy, you might say, and even that couldn’t make a difference.”

  Rutledge glanced his way. “You seem to know her well.”

  “I know all my people well,” Satterthwaite said with dignity. “But yes, I kept an eye on her. To be sure she didn’t fall ill or lack for anything.”

  He could hear the pain in the other man’s voice as he tried to keep his feelings in check. Not love, precisely, but a protective fondness all the same.

  “She would do anything for anyone,” Satterthwaite went on, when Rutledge made no comment. “She stayed up three nights with the Burtons’ little girl when she had typhoid, and the mother was too ill to nurse her. All of us knew what sort of person she was. So where was the need to kill her?”

  “What was her maiden name?”

  “Marshall. Her parents lived in Cheshire. The father was originally from Cheshire as I recall.”

  The village had straggled along the High Street and then, as if tired of trying to grow any larger, it simply stopped. Beyond Hobson, the land spread out in a carpet of early summer green, rising a little to show where plowed fields and pastures intersected, and flocks of shorn sheep cropped the grass.

  Save for the sheep and a man on a bicycle passing them, there was no other sign of life. Yet the emptiness was friendly, not like the great haunted barren sweeps of the Highlands. Rutledge could hear Hamish making the comparison in his mind.

  “Where is Mrs. Teller’s body?”

  “Over to the doctor’s surgery in Thielwald. It was a single blow, he says, delivered with some force from behind. Looking at her face, you’d never guess she’d been killed. I was that surprised to see a peaceful expression, as if she had been put out of her pain, like. That’s an odd thing to say, but it was my feeling.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  They made two more turnings and came up a slight rise to meet a hedge that surrounded the front of a two-story white house. The land continued to rise about fifty yards behind it but sloped away from the road at the front, giving a long view across a high stand of grass down toward what to Rutledge appeared to be a distant line of the bay.

  “That’s the cottage,” Constable Satterthwaite told Rutledge. “You can see how isolated it is, from the point of view of finding any witnesses. There’s a farm just down this road a bit, but the owner was trying to save a sick ram, and he doesn’t know if anyone passed this way or not. And just over the shoulder of the rise is where the Widow Blaine lives. Mrs. Blaine still keeps the farm but has given up running sheep and planting corn. A small dairy herd is all that’s left. She’s short and square, with a temper to match her red hair. If the killer had gone there, she’d have taken her broom to him. Or her.” He smiled at Rutledge. “Village gossip says she’s twice the man her husband was.”

  “And she saw nothing unusual here either.”

  “No, sir. She has to milk the cows twice a day, and muck out the milking barn, but she comes into Hobson once a fortnight, for whatever goods she wants. That’s how she came to find the body. She stopped to ask Mrs. Teller if there was anything she needed.”

  “There appears to be a good bit of fallow land around the cottage. Did Mrs. Teller farm it?” They had come to a white gate set into the hedge. It led up a grassy walk to a painted door, weathered a soft rose. Rutledge drew up just past the gate.

  “She hasn’t since the war years. No help. Not with all the men we lost. And probably no heart for it either. She didn’t need the money.”

  They left the motorcar and opened the gate.

  Rutledge noted the sign on the front of it, with the name: sunrise cottage. Then he stood there, looking up at the house. It was typical of farmhouses out in this rolling country, tall and square and open to the buffeting of the wind, as if daring it to do its worst. There were no trees to shelter it and no fuss about the architecture. Guessing the age of Sunrise Cottage was nearly impossible, built as it was to withstand whatever the seasons or the years brought. A hundred years old? Fifty?

  He followed the constable up the path, taking in the flowers that gave the walk and the door a little touch of color, a softness that belied what had happened here.

  “There was no indication of a struggle? Or that Mrs. Teller had tried to run from her killer?”

  “Nothing to tell us anything. She was just lying there, face to one side, as if she had decided to have a little nap. There wasn’t much blood. She must have died very quickly.”

  “And no sign of the murder weapon?”

  “He must have taken it with him. A walking stick? There are enough visitors in the summer on walking holidays. A hammer or tool from a motorcar?”

  “If it was a summer visitor, he had his walking stick with him. If the weapon came from a motorcar or a lorry, the killer carried it to the door with him, with the intent of committing murder.”

  “That’s very likely,” Satterthwaite agreed.

  They had reached the door.

  “It’s not locked. We never lock our doors.”

  “She might still be alive if she had.”

  The constable said, “She opened it to whoever was on the doorstep. She was never afraid out here. I’ve wondered, you know, if he had stopped for a drink of water or the like, and recognized her. But that would mean she had a past, and that’s not in the character of Florence Teller.”

  “What did she do before she married?”

  “She came here to live with her aunt when she was very young, and later taught school over in Thielwald. She was a good schoolmistress, by all accounts. But not two years after she’d begun teaching, she met and married Peter Teller.”

  “What about his family? Is there any? Is he by any chance related to the Teller family in London?”

  “I wouldn’t know, sir, but I doubt it. There was never anything said about family in London.”

  Rutledge remembered what Bowles had suggested, that this Peter was from the wrong side of the blanket.

  He reached out to open the door. It swung back on its hinges quietly, without distu
rbing the evensong of a robin somewhere on the other side of the hedge.

  “Who inherits the house?”

  “Now there’s a good question. I don’t know who her solicitor is. We haven’t come across a will.”

  The passage was narrow, a second door just beyond where they were standing, opening into the house itself. In this tiny hall, a small shelf of trinkets on one side faced a framed photograph of Morecambe Bay on the other. And only a small stain on the scrubbed wood flooring marked where a woman had died.

  Rutledge examined the walls and the floor, even glancing at the ceiling above his head. But there were no scuff marks, nothing to show that a struggle had taken place.

  “She must ha’ turned to go into the ither part of the house,” Hamish said.

  “Her back to him,” Rutledge said, too late to catch himself from answering Hamish aloud.

  “Yes, very likely,” Constable Satterthwaite agreed. “She might have known him, or if not, liked the look of him enough to invite him in. A good many of the university lads come walking hereabout, and some of them couldn’t be much older than her Timmy would have been if he’d lived. She had a soft spot for them. We’re a trusting lot, but not foolish. She wasn’t afraid of him.”

  “A priest. A schoolboy on holiday. A woman in distress.”

  “I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” Satterthwaite admitted. “But yes.”

  “What’s beyond this entry?”

  “There are three rooms downstairs, and three bedrooms above. Her aunt lived in one of them, the boy Timmy in another. I don’t think, from the look of them, that she used either room after they died.”

  Rutledge crossed the entry and went through the open door beyond. He could see the short passage continued, with the stairs to one side, the kitchen straight ahead, the parlor to his left, and a small dining room or sitting room to the right.

  As he walked through the rooms, he found himself thinking that the parlor appeared to be frozen in time, intended for the use of guests of another generation, who never came. A settee and two chairs, a worn but handsome carpet, small tables with little treasures on them. There was another framed photograph, this time from Keswick in the Lake District, surely a souvenir of a visit. A tall blue vase intended for summer flowers took pride of place on one table, beside it a well-thumbed book of verse with no inscription. Just above the table hung a sandalwood fan in a case, spread to show the lacquered painting on parchment and the carved sticks. Handsomely embroidered pillow slips with Chinese scenes of mountains rising about a misty river set off the plainness of the dark furniture.

  They were unusual pieces to find here in Hobson.

  “What did her husband do before the war? Was he a farmer?”

  “A career soldier. He was always sending her gifts from all over the world. I sometimes brought the packages out here, on my rounds. Her face would light up, and she’d smile as if it were her birthday.”

  The dining room had been turned into a sitting room cum workroom, with a tabletop easel. On it was a watercolor of a cat curled up on a windowsill. It was only half finished. There was also a book of accounts on the table, a low bookshelf of leather-bound classics by the chair that was obviously her favorite. The cushions were worn, and the padded back had taken on a comfortable shape.

  The kitchen was tidy, telling Rutledge that she had not expected guests, for the teapot and the cups and saucers were in their proper places in the cupboard.

  “Or ha’ been washed and put away again,” Hamish suggested.

  The square, footed dish on the table, covered by a linen handkerchief, held honey, and there was bread in the tin box by the stone sink. Looking out at the kitchen yard, he could see that flowers and herbs grew in profusion, turning the silvery wood of the shed into a backdrop for beauty and using the rough stone foundations of what must have been the ancient barn and other outbuildings as a sheltered place to grow more delicate plants.

  Upstairs the two unused rooms yielded nothing of interest. In one there were a boy’s playthings in a wooden chest, an armoire, a coverlet with appliqués of animals—a cat, a dog, a duck, a sheep, and a cow—against a forest green background. The animals were cleverly sewn, with cotton wadding behind the figures to give them a three-dimensional quality. On the wall were shelves with birds’ eggs, a cattail nearly gone to seed, and other small things that might catch a boy’s eye, including a conch shell. In the aunt’s bedroom, the bed was neatly made with a tufted coverlet and flowers embroidered on the pillow slips. The armoire, like the one in the boy’s room, was empty of clothing, as if these had long since been donated where they might do more good.

  Florence Teller’s bedroom was equally simple. But the same hand had embroidered a picture on the wall, entitled our happy home, with a house that looked remarkably like this one, save for the black door. On the bedside table was a single photograph of a small boy holding a football, his face tilted toward the photographer with a shy smile just touching his lips. A handsome child, but a frail one.

  The tall oval mirror standing in the corner was the only unexpected furnishing. Crossing to look at it more closely, he thought the dark wood was either cherry or rosewood, and it was finely made. At the top of the frame was a small bouquet of roses tied by a ribbon, carved in a piece with the wood of the frame itself.

  He could picture Florence Teller standing before it, admiring a new dress, smiling up at the man she’d married, pleased with the gift he’d brought her.

  Hamish said, “It’s no’ like the rest of the furniture.”

  And that was true. While everything from the dining room table to the high bed frames was of good workmanship, it was from another generation, late Victorian pieces, dark and solid, the polish deep enough to reflect the light. Inherited? He thought they might have been. The sort of pieces a young couple, just at the start of their marriage, might have been offered by an aunt or mother or cousin. Pieces stored in the attic until they were needed again.

  There was little of a personal nature here, and he wondered about the sort of life this woman had led. Had her husband written to her, his letters the high marks of her world? Although the constable frowned in disapproval, Rutledge opened drawers but found nothing to indicate that something was missing.

  Aside from her gardening, her needlework was clearly her main interest, but as one’s needle clicked in and out of the cloth, even following the most intricate pattern, what did her mind dwell on? Or as she pulled weeds and deadheaded flowers, what occupied her thoughts while her hands were busy?

  She must have been a woman of extraordinary patience, he thought all at once. Always waiting, like the faithful Penelope. Why had she accepted such a life? And what in the end had it brought her?

  But he thought he had found the answer to her acceptance in one small thing—there must have been a pet here at one time, something to keep her company. A cat, a small dog for safety and for friendship? From the upstairs window he could see a little graveyard with whitewashed headstones, four or five of them, as if over the years she had lost her companions as well as her son, and laid them to rest in a garden of remembrance. For around the stones grew pansies in profusion, and forget-me-nots.

  He went back down the stairs, feeling depression settling over him, and walked out to the little graveyard. Three cats, two dogs, judging from the names painted in dark blue script on the whitewash. And one marked only mr. g.

  “Do you want to speak to the farmer?” Constable Satterthwaite asked as Rutledge turned back to the house.

  “If he was busy with a sick animal, he’s probably right, he saw nothing. What about his family?”

  “His wife had gone to visit their daughter. The son is married and helps out at the farm on most days, but he walks over from where he lives.” He gestured toward the distance. “On the far side of his father’s land.”

  “Therefore, nobody from his household came this way. All right, let’s speak to Mrs. Blaine. If something is missing here, we have no way of guessing w
hat it is.” But downstairs again he paused long enough to flip the pages of the books by Mrs. Teller’s favorite chair, to see what might have been secreted among them. She had good taste in reading, he thought as he scanned.

  Nothing but an occasional starched and embroidered bookmark fell out.

  Rutledge stood in the passage for a moment, listening to the sounds of the house around him, trying to feel the presence of the woman who had spent most of her life here, and left so little of herself behind. But she was elusive, and he wished there had been a photograph of her in better times.

  Then he followed Satterthwaite outside. The sky was a bright rose fading to shades of gray and lavender as the sun crept over the far horizon, and in the east the lavender deepened to purple. They closed the door on the silent house and walked back to the motorcar.

  While the roof of Mrs. Blaine’s farmhouse could just be seen from the Teller house, the way there was not as direct. They turned down a rutted lane and bounced along it to the house nestled in the curve of the hill.

  It was very much like the one they’d just left, but the barns and out-buildings were still very much in use, and the yard was muddy with the hoof marks of cattle.

  They tapped at the front door, and it opened to a small, compact woman with dark red hair and a grievance.

  “There you are!” she said at once to Constable Satterthwaite, ignoring the man from London. Clutching the startled constable’s arm, she dragged him toward her kitchen, all the while complaining over the earsplitting screams of something in great pain somewhere in the house. “You’ve got to rid me of that thing, do you hear? She told me it was thirty years old, and I can’t even cook it, it’ll be stringy as an old shoe. I tried to shove him out the door, but he won’t leave. I can’t sleep for this racket. All day, all night. There’s no peace!”

  Rutledge had followed them to the kitchen and saw nothing as he crossed the threshold. But he nearly backed into the passage again to save his ears from whatever was shrieking with such high-pitched horror.