by Charles Todd
“The killer wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with it in his possession.”
“But if he brought it here—”
“Yes, that’s the point. But it only became a weapon once Florence Teller was killed. Before that it was simply someone’s cane.”
He looked around. The tidy bit of lawn, the flowers on the path, the step and the street door . . . They hadn’t been disturbed.
Hamish said, “The step.”
It was a long, rectangular slab of stone, smoothed to serve the doorway. Rutledge walked over to it and ran his hands along the edge. Someone could have shoved the head of the cane under the slab, and with the force of anger or of fear, managed to snap it off. Brush the earth back again, where the head had dug in, and who would notice what had been done. If the police hadn’t found the cane, the slab of step would hold no significance. Someone, having just killed, had taken the time to think through what to do with the weapon.
That was an interesting look into his state of mind, whoever he was.
Rutledge began to sift the earth very gently through his fingers, moving aside a plant and reaching down under the stone. The head of the cane wasn’t there. He hadn’t expected it to be, but he’d had to be sure.
He was just smoothing the earth back into place when Hamish said, “There!”
Rutledge stopped. There was nothing he could see at first, and then he recognized what was caught in the roots of the pansy.
It was not as big as a toothpick. Just a fine splinter of wood, like the proverbial needle in a haystack. It was, in fact, more like a needle than anything else, one that had been held to a flame and tarnished.
He dug it out carefully, blew away the earth that smothered it, and put up his hand for the broken end of the cane that Satterthwaite was still holding.
There was no match, of course, but there was no doubt that it was the same wood.
Satterthwaite said, “It was savagely done.”
“He’d have liked to hit her a second time, I expect. One blow was not enough to satisfy him. I wonder why? Because she died so easily? Or would her battered head give him away?”
“The walker. Larkin.”
“I doubt it. The only thing taken was a box of letters.”
“I wonder where the head of the cane might be? Was it valuable, do you think? Larkin indicated he had no money to speak of, this summer.”
“He might have found the cane here, and stolen the head. But that would be after the murder, and her body would have been lying here in plain sight. Still—” Rutledge turned to stare beyond the gate, in the direction of Thielwald. “It’s just as well we’re keeping an eye on him.” He returned to the cane in hand. “It will be a miracle if we ever find the rest.” It must have been distinctive, he thought, this head. They were usually ivory or gold, with initials or a figure that could easily be identified and therefore was equally damning. He wondered if Edwin Teller would be willing to describe his brother’s cane.
Teller’s motorcar? Teller’s cane? But none of these was proof of murder. Only that he was here on the day that Florence Teller died. Or one of his brothers was here . . .
“The man in the motorcar. He didna’ have a cane when he left,” Hamish pointed out.
“But we don’t know if he carried one with him when he arrived. For all we know, he found the body and panicked.”
He’d spoken aloud.
Satterthwaite said, “The man in the motorcar? That could be. He didn’t have the casket of letters either.”
“What if he’d already put them in the boot? He might have returned to the house to destroy the cane.”
“True enough. I’d sworn we’d searched that hedge carefully.”
“I’m sure you did. But not the ground below it. Only for something caught in it.” Rutledge put the splinter of wood carefully away in his handkerchief and then dusted his hands.
Looking up at the sky, at the heavy dark clouds drawing closer, he said, “We’ll be caught yet.” Turning to Satterthwaite, he said, “Did you sift the ashes in the stove? In the event anything was burned in there?”
“We did. And nothing came to light. Of course, it might not have, if there were no hinges on that box. Or clasp. It’ud burned right up. But that would take time. In my mind, he took the box with him.”
“All right then. I think we should be on our way to Hobson, before that storm gets here.”
As it happened, they had only just reached the police station when the dark clouds, heavy with rain, rolled in on their heels. Satterthwaite thanked Rutledge, and said, “You’re staying the night?”
“I want to take the cane to London as quickly as I can. I’ll see that you know what we found out.”
“You think the answer is in London then? One of those brothers.”
“I don’t know,” Rutledge told him. “But you and I have run out of suspects here. Let me try in London.”
Satterthwaite grinned. “You’ll drown before you get there.” And he made a fast dash for the door of the station just as the first heavy drops of rain became a raging downpour.
Backed with wind, it was a cold rain for June. And it followed Rutledge nearly as far as Chester. He ran out of it there and considered staying the night another fifty miles down the road. But his mind was busy with new directions, and he was in a hurry to test them.
Chapter 22
Edwin Teller drove through the night after leaving Hobson, intent on getting as far from Hobson as possible. They had discussed stopping halfway, as they had done coming up. And he had overruled the idea. London was home, it was sanctuary. It was not on the north road, where every mile was a reminder. At home he could forget.
Amy was asleep in the seat beside him, and he felt more lonely than he could ever remember feeling in his life.
He had done the right thing, attending the services for Florence Teller. They had all tried to dissuade him, Amy and Susannah and Peter. He hadn’t asked Walter’s opinion. It wasn’t important to him.
Given the circumstances, he wasn’t sure why he had felt such an urgent need to be there. She wasn’t what the others called her—the woman. As if she had no identity that mattered, someone who had caused more trouble with her death than she had ever caused in her lifetime.
Florence Marshall Teller. He whispered the words, and the night wind whipped them away. Florence Marshall Teller.
He recalled reading somewhere that as long as someone living still remembered one’s name, one was never truly dead.
Florence Marshall Teller.
Beside him Amy stirred, then settled herself again without waking. He envied her.
He thought that of all of them Inspector Rutledge had understood his need. A member of the family—even if she had no family to call her own and was only a Teller by marriage. There was a dignity in that. And something in the policeman’s face as he stood by the graveside reflected what he himself was feeling, that she had deserved better.
He didn’t want to remember that plain house on its windswept knoll. He didn’t want to think about the plain wooden coffin, and the plain little churchyard. It had made him want to lash out at all of them, and tell them the truth. But it would have hurt too many people. And so it had had to be buried with her, next to the boy she must have loved beyond bearing, alone as she was.
Edwin shook his head, trying to clear it and concentrate on the road ahead. His duty to the family.
That meant all of them. Divided though his loyalties were, the duty remained, and he would say nothing. He would go to his grave in silence if need be. But if he did, he would carry it on his conscience beyond his last breath.
God bless you.
Florence Marshall Teller . . .
Chapter 23
Rutledge reached London in the small hours of the night and went to his flat to sleep.
He was in a quandary over the cane. Peter Teller, of course, would deny any knowledge of it. But Edwin would have made the journey back to London in easy stages and would reach Mar
lborough Street tomorrow at the earliest.
Walter Teller, then.
Leaving London for the trunk road, he caught sight of Charlie Hood again, this time walking briskly along the pavement, head down and buried in his thoughts. Rutledge pulled over and called to him.
Hood turned around, stared at Rutledge for a moment, then placed him. Reluctantly he came toward the motorcar, saying, “You don’t have that man’s murderer in custody, do you?” There was a mixture of emotions in his voice. Fear uppermost.
“Not yet. I don’t think he’s killed again.”
“No. He’s lying low somewhere, I’ll be bound. He didn’t expect to stir up a hornet’s nest, now did he?”
“Do you know a Walter Teller?” Rutledge asked, still trying to place that vague sense of having seen Hood before.
“Teller? Should I? Is that what you’re calling the boy?”
“We still don’t have a name for him. I have a feeling the one he gave me was not his.”
“Stands to reason. He was committing a crime, wasn’t he?”
“Is your name Charlie Hood?” Rutledge countered.
“It’s as good a one as any.” Hood straightened up. Then he said, “Watch yourself, mate.”
With that he walked off, ignoring Rutledge, who called to him to come back and finish the conversation. Turning a corner, Hood was quickly out of sight.
Hood had heard something, Rutledge thought. In that secretive telegraph system that tied the poor and the wanted and the running together, and no policeman knew the key.
Hamish said, “He answered the question aboot Teller wi’ one of his ain.”
“So he did. I’ll give you odds he and Teller crossed paths.” He considered that. “When he gave his account of the Bynum killing, he was coming from the direction of the Abbey. I wonder if Teller slept there. Or if it was in another church.”
And then he swore. In his pocket was the photograph of Walter Teller that Jenny Teller had let him borrow to help the police find her husband. He had carried it with him, first to use, and then to return to her. And he had not yet kept his promise. He could have shown it to Hood. Who knew what name—if any—Teller had been using while he was invisible in London?
People behind Rutledge were sounding their horns, telling him to move on. He did, for a moment, consider returning to the Yard, but by the time he could send anyone to search for Hood the man would have been lost to sight again.
He drove on to Essex, and found Teller deadheading his roses after the night’s rain.
Teller looked up when he saw the motorcar coming up the drive and straightened, as if preparing himself for what was to come.
Rutledge left the motorcar on the drive and walked across the lawns toward the roses. “They’ve done well this year,” he said.
“You haven’t come all this way to praise our roses.”
“No. But they reminded me that Lawrence Cobb had put one in Florence Teller’s grave. I think he was in love with her.”
Teller’s face tightened. “I don’t know a Lawrence Cobb.”
“No, that’s probably true. Did you know a Charlie Hood? No? Then can you describe the cane that your brother Peter uses for his leg?”
“His cane?” The swift change in direction caught Teller unprepared.
“Yes. Was it ash, by any chance?”
“As I remember,” Teller said, frowning, “it was Malacca. I’ve seen it so often, to tell you the truth I don’t heed it anymore.”
“The knob at the end?”
Teller was wary now. “Ivory, I think. A Gorgon’s head. Why?”
Was he lying? Or telling the truth? It was hard to read his face.
“We have reason to believe it was a cane that killed Florence Teller. We found part of it in the hedge surrounding the front garden. I haven’t seen your brother using his of late. Instead, he struggles to get around without one.”
“I suspect he’s trying to wean himself from the use of it.”
“I doubt that. From the type of wound he suffered, I should think he will need a cane for the rest of his life.”
“That may be—”
“It’s likely,” Rutledge said harshly, “that he used that cane to kill Florence Teller. His motorcar was seen outside the house that same day. We’ve found that cane. And we have a witness who can describe both the driver and the vehicle.”
Teller said, “Peter would have no reason to kill the woman. What’s she to him?” He went back to the roses, his face turned away.
“His first wife, very likely,” Rutledge said. “I think you’ve suspected that all along. She had a child, you know. A boy. If Timmy had lived, he would have displaced your son as heir.”
“This is arrant supposition. My brother was in love with Susannah, and it was three years before he could win the family’s approval to wed her. Why would he take another wife in the meantime?”
“Lawrence Cobb wanted to marry Florence Teller. I’ve told you. And when he couldn’t, he married Mrs. Blaine’s daughter. Your brother may have acted in haste and disappointment and then lived to regret it.”
The strain on Teller’s face was plain to see as he looked up. “Do you think I’d have countenanced that? Do you think I’d have let him wed Susannah, if I’d known there was an impediment to the marriage?”
“I don’t know. Did you attend their wedding?”
“I was in West Africa. I didn’t learn of it until months later.”
“And so you let it stand by default. But he continued to visit Hobson, in fact. Even after his marriage. I have witnesses to that too. After the war, when his leg was so badly damaged he couldn’t travel north, he let her believe he was dead. An easy solution.”
“I won’t listen to any more of this. It’s a hodgepodge of wishful thinking and make-believe. There’s not a grain of truth in it!” It was more a cry of pain than of denial.
Rutledge nodded and walked back to his motorcar. He turned it and then drove back up the drive. When he was nearly out of sight of the rose bed, he glanced in his rearview mirror.
Walter Teller was bent over, his arms wrapped around his body, as if he were in pain, his head down. Rutledge was too far away to see his face, but he carried with him the image of a man in agony.
He decided to drive on to Leticia Teller’s house, and when he got there, he found that once more Mary Brittingham was ahead of him.
When the maid showed him into the garden, he realized that the two women had been having words. They hadn’t heard his approach.
Their faces flushed, their eyes bright, they were confronting each other, standing several feet apart, as if any closer might lead to blows.
As he stepped through the gate from the shrubbery, they turned to stare at him, as if he’d dropped down from the moon, a creature they had never seen before and dangerous.
Leticia forced herself to smile. “Inspector Rutledge,” she said. “Mary is just leaving.”
“On the contrary, I want to hear what he’s got to say.”
Leticia’s mouth tightened. “It’s nothing to do with you, this business. I’d be grateful if you leave.”
Mary said, “My sister is married to your brother. I’m here to protect her. She’s not as strong as I am.”
Leticia said through clenched teeth, “That can wait. Until we see what the Inspector has come to say.” Turning to him, she added, “I must assume we owe the pleasure of your company to Yard business?”
He said, “I’ve come to ask you what you know about Florence Teller.”
“Yes, that woman in Lancashire? I understand she was found murdered. It’s a tragedy, of course, but nothing to do with us. I don’t understand how we can help you,” Leticia said.
“Your brother felt it had enough to do with your family that he attended her funeral yesterday.”
The two women, their quarrel forgotten, were giving him their undivided attention now.
“Which brother?” Leticia demanded finally. “It’s the first I’ve heard of
this. Not Peter, surely?”
“Edwin Teller. As we haven’t yet been able to locate her husband’s relations, he felt it was his duty to represent the Teller family there.”
“Was Amy with him?” Leticia asked as Mary’s voice cut across hers.
“Duty?”
“There’s damning evidence piling up against Peter Teller,” he told them. “I have a shard of cane in my motorcar, part of the murder weapon, if I’m not mistaken. I have not seen your brother use a cane since I’ve met him. But I’m sure Sergeant Biggin in London will remember if there was one before I came on the scene. A witness saw what we believe was your brother’s motorcar in front of the victim’s house the day she died, and then watched a lame man matching your brother’s description hobbling out to crank it and drive away in some haste. He was angry—upset, according to the witness. And if we take a sample of your brother’s handwriting, I’m sure it will match the signature in the records of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Hobson, where Florence Marshall and Peter Teller were married. For that matter, I could bring a dozen or more witnesses from Hobson, who knew Teller well enough to recognize him if they saw him now.”
Leticia said, “Then why haven’t your arrested him?”
“There are one or two loose ends to tie up. For instance, when you were in Portsmouth looking for your brother Walter, where was Peter?”
“He was with Edwin,” she said immediately. “They went together. To share the driving, since both of them have had health problems. It was agreed.”
“But that makes very little sense. The four of you left Jenny Teller in London, at the clinic alone. Why didn’t Peter, since he found it so difficult to drive, stay with her and cope with the police? Cambridge was not so great a distance for Edwin.”
“We did what we thought was most useful. We might well have found Walter, if he’d left London. We were fairly sure we would. And Peter was there to spell Edwin, if he were too tired to carry on.” Leticia’s eyes were hard.
“Peter couldn’t have been in two places at once,” he pointed out. “I suggest to you that he went to Lancashire under cover of his brother’s disappearance, because he knew Walter would try to stop him. Whether Edwin knew at the time what it was Peter was intending to do, I can’t say. But it would explain, very well, why Edwin felt compelled to attend Florence Teller’s funeral. It wasn’t a kind gesture to another of his name; it was a guilty conscience because he lied to protect Peter.”
