The Red Door

by Charles Todd

  He thanked Mollie, picked up the receiver, and waited until she was out of earshot. Then he said, “Rutledge,” and waited for Gibson to speak.

  The voice traveling down the line was Gibson’s. He said, without preamble, “It’s Lancashire, sir. You’re to go there at once. If you need someone in Essex to deal with the situation there, the Chief Superintendent will send someone else from the Yard.”

  “It’s stable at the moment,” Rutledge answered, unwilling to turn the inquiry into Peter Teller’s death over to anyone else at this stage. There were secrets here that he would have to get to the bottom of before the final verdict on Peter Teller’s fall was handed down. And he wasn’t prepared for anyone else to muddy the waters.

  “That’s good news, sir. You’ll be leaving from there?”

  “As soon as I speak to Inspector Jessup, the local man.”

  “To be sure,” Gibson agreed. “A very wise decision, if I may say so, sir.”

  Rutledge swiftly translated that to mean that avoiding London at the moment was a good thing.

  “And Mr. Rutledge, sir?” Gibson was saying, his voice lowered and barely audible.

  “Yes? What is it, Gibson?”

  “Inspector Mickelson has just informed the Chief Superintendent that he feels the trap cannot be sprung by anyone else. Just a friendly warning, sir.”

  Chapter 27

  Sunday evening had been nearly insupportable. Leticia, complaining of a headache, had excused herself early and gone up to bed. But not to sleep.

  She lay awake, her windows open, the cries of an owl in the distance loud in her ears. She had always disliked owls. Their haunting calls spoke to her of grief and sadness and something to be feared. As a child, she’d run to her nanny’s bed and flung herself under the covers, to shut out the sound.

  Her mother had always maintained that Leticia must have overheard one of the servants claiming that owls were omens of ill fortune. Leticia herself didn’t know if it was true or not. She just knew she had always felt that way.

  And, of course, with Peter only newly dead, the cries of the owl were particularly appropriate. She got up once to close the windows, but the room still held the heavy closeness of the day and she could hardly breathe in the resulting stuffiness.

  She couldn’t stop herself from thinking about her brothers. They had always been a close family. Edwin’s illness had brought them all together in a pact to keep him safe. When their parents died, it had fallen to her lot to watch over Edwin while Peter went off to the Army and Walter had gone into the mission field.

  Now Peter was accused of cold-blooded murder, Walter had been different ever since his mysterious disappearance, never satisfactorily explaining it to anyone except perhaps to Jenny. And Edwin was withdrawing even from her.

  She turned to one side, trying to shut out the sounds from the wood in the distance.

  It was odd that now there was still a conspiracy to protect Jenny. The mother of the heir. The youngest of them. They hadn’t told her about Florence Teller. It had seemed the right thing to do. But it would all come out at the inquest anyway. Someone would have to tell her before the questions of the police aroused her suspicions, before she found herself hearing in public what Peter had been accused of and why.

  And there was Susannah as well. Something would have to be done about her. Her distress and anger were understandable—natural. But she couldn’t be allowed to upset everyone by involving the Yard and trying to clear Peter’s name. She’d stood by him, even when Leticia had told her what the man from London had said about the evidence. All the same, Leticia had had the sneaking suspicion that Susannah was already worried about Peter. Something in her eyes . . .

  She sighed, and turned over again, and finally got up to walk to the window, defying the owls.

  She was the eldest. It was up to her to straighten out this tangle. Damn Edwin for going to the funeral. Damn Peter for losing his head. Damn Susannah for not keeping her mouth shut so that all this could be smoothed away. And damn Jenny, for being naïve and for walking into rooms at just the wrong moment, never mind that it was her house. Every time the rest of them had tried to confront Peter, he was either drunk or he was protected, unwittingly, by Jenny’s presence.

  She had another thought. If it hadn’t been for Jenny, Peter might not have died. They could have cleared the air, got through to whatever it was that was tormenting him, and come up with a solution.

  Her hands over her face, she pressed cold fingers against her closed eyelids.

  What could she do? What should she do? What would her father, who was never at a loss about anything, have done about an accusation of murder against one of his sons?

  She could almost hear her father’s answer.

  Protect Harry. Keep the family intact. Preserve the Teller name. At any price.

  She took a deep breath, pulling in the cooler night air until her lungs hurt.

  It was too bad Susannah hadn’t fallen down the stairs instead of Peter. It would have made her task easier. But there it was.

  And if Jenny’s innocence had to be sacrificed, so be it. Walter would just have to live with her decision.

  After a while she went back to bed. The owls had stopped. But she still couldn’t sleep.

  Chapter 28

  Rutledge drove to Lancashire without stopping, save for petrol.

  The misting rain kept him company, the windscreen wipers almost hypnotic in their sweep, clearing his vision and then blurring the landscape.

  What was the truth about Peter Teller’s death? he asked himself, coming out of St. Albans.

  Accident, suicide, murder?

  In spite of Susannah Teller’s angry claims, he could see no conceivable motive for murdering the man. To keep the family’s name from being dragged through a courtroom drama that would have London agog? A very poor reason for murdering one’s own flesh and blood.

  Suicide, then, to spare his family the onus of a convicted murderer turned over to the hangman?

  Or just a simple, horrible, unbelievable accident because the man’s leg was weak and his cane lay in the boot of Rutledge’s car?

  “Why did he no’ buy anither one?” Hamish asked.

  Rutledge answered, “It would have drawn attention to the missing one. If it had a special head, that would have to be ordered. Time wasn’t on his side.”

  There was no immediate solution to the problem of Captain Teller’s death, he decided finally. It could wait until he returned from Hobson.

  He had a fairly decent idea of why Satterthwaite had summoned him in such haste. A simpler solution, that. The head of the cane had been in the gardens after all. He hadn’t looked long enough. Or Cobb had stumbled on it.

  Satterthwaite was waiting in the station for him, late as it was. He could just see the glow of lamplight through the window. He walked in, pulling off his driving gloves. The single lamp on the constable’s desk guided Rutledge through the outer office and down the dark passage.

  A Thermos of tea stood on the desk in front of Satterthwaite, and in the lamp’s flickering glow, he appeared to be bone tired, as if he hadn’t slept, the deep hollows and bony ridges of his face stark as he looked up to greet Rutledge.

  His own fatigue forgotten, Rutledge studied the man. He was under great strain.

  “I’m sorry, sir, for the abrupt summons,” Satterthwaite began. “But I didn’t know what else to do, given the circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “I thought it best you didn’t take Peter Teller into custody tomorrow. And I wasn’t ready to tell the world and his uncle what I believed you ought to hear first.” He gestured to the Thermos. “There’s a clean cup just behind you on that shelf. It’s likely to be a long night.”

  Rutledge found the cup and filled it with the steaming liquid. He drank half of it to clear the rest of the cobwebs out of his head, and then set it aside.

  “All right. Where’s the cane’s head?”

  Satterthwait
e smiled. “You do take all the wind out of a man’s sails,” he said grimly. But he reached into his drawer and pulled out a round object wrapped in a clean handkerchief. He passed it to Rutledge with distaste, handkerchief and all, as if he couldn’t bear to touch it.

  Rutledge glanced at him, then looked down, unwrapping the linen to reveal a gold knob that caught the light and flashed dully in his hand.

  It was indeed the head of a cane, broken off the Malaccan stick.

  With one finger he rolled the knob toward the light, and sat there for a moment, absorbing what it represented. Satterthwaite said nothing, watching him.

  Damning was the best word for it. Small wonder Walter Teller had lied, telling Rutledge the cane was of ivory.

  Embedded in the heavy gold head was an enameled button or plaque. A black scum obscured part of the design, but even so, Rutledge knew what it was.

  He glanced at Satterthwaite.

  “Captain Peter Teller’s regimental badge,” he said. “It leaves us in no doubt. Very likely a gift from his father or his wife. Such things often are. We can find the maker—there should be a record of such an expensive item.” The knob winked as he turned it again in the light. “And there’s still a little blood pooled at the edge of the enamel.”

  “Yes.” Satterthwaite stirred. “I didn’t like to look at it. Put it away.” He took a deep breath, then said, “It’s what you wanted. I wouldn’t have given any odds that it would ever turn up.”

  Rutledge rewrapped it and set it aside, then finished his tea.

  “I should be heading back to London. There’s a small problem. Peter Teller fell down the stairs early this morning at his brother’s house and died on the spot. We’ll never know now why he came north or why he killed her.”

  “Accident or suicide?” Satterthwaite asked, watching Rutledge’s face closely.

  “Hard to say.”

  “Yes, well, in that case, perhaps you ought to hear where this came from.”

  Rutledge realized that with his mind already on Peter Teller and the problems he faced resolving the issues of the man’s guilt and the cause of his death, he’d accepted this last bit of evidence without the enthusiasm it deserved.

  Good police work on Satterthwaite’s part, even though the cane’s head was almost moot now. Still, there must be an inquest into Florence Teller’s death. And her killer must be identified. She deserved that.

  He dragged his thoughts back to the present. “Well done. Finding this.” He couldn’t put his finger on what was bothering Satterthwaite—the blood on the cane’s knob or something else. He thrust the handkerchief holding the knob into his pocket, out of sight. As he did, his gaze locked with the constable’s.

  He didn’t need Hamish’s soft warning. Fully alert now, he waited.

  Satterthwaite spun the cap back onto the neck of the Thermos and set it aside. “First, to give you a little news. I don’t think you were here when it happened.”

  “All right.”

  “After an altercation with a cooking pan, Lawrence Cobb walked out on his wife, Betsy, and took your old room at Mrs. Greeley’s for the time being.”

  “Yes, I met him coming into town just as I was leaving that day. I tried to persuade him to rethink his decision. To see if the marriage could be saved. I don’t think Florence Teller would have liked being the root cause of the breakup. Although having seen Betsy Cobb, I could understand the battle ahead. She appears to be as domineering as her mother.”

  “Worse, from all reports. She likes her way. Well, Lawrence Cobb would have done better to listen to you.”

  Rutledge saw that the conversation wasn’t taking the direction he’d expected. “What happened?”

  “Betsy Cobb came in to see me very early this morning. She couldn’t sleep after their quarrel on Friday, she said. So she began clearing out her husband’s belongings, putting them in a pile in the passage—tools, clothes, watch, everything she could lay hand to that he’d not had time to snatch up in his haste to go. This morning before first light she even went out into the barn, where he’d been working. And she tossed the contents of the tool chest into a wooden crate. She said the chest had belonged to her father.”

  Rutledge knew now where this was heading. He waited for Satterthwaite’s strained voice to finish the account.

  “To make a long story short, as she was sorting through to make sure he got only his things, she shifted a pair of working gloves, and this knob fell to the barn floor. She didn’t know what it was at first. And then she realized it was gold and that Lawrence had purposely hidden it where she wouldn’t find it. So to make trouble for him, she brought it in to me. She was still furious with him, you could see it in her face.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I told her I’d look into it. And after she left for the farm, I went to Mrs. Greeley’s, rousted Lawrence Cobb out of his bed, and confronted him. He swore he knew nothing about the knob, but you could read in his eyes that he knew how it had been used. He’s not slow, is Cobb. I told him to dress and come with me to the station. He argued, but I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Some of Betsy’s anger had rubbed off on me. I was looking for an opening, so to speak.”

  He started to get up, as if he needed to walk, then he sank back into his chair, defeated. “By this time, Betsy Cobb had gone straight to her mother. You’ll recall Mrs. Blaine had found Florence lying there in the doorway. She came into the station looking like the wrath of God, telling me I must take Cobb into custody, to protect her daughter. That he’d do her a harm for telling the truth. And she swore he’d been working there at Florence Teller’s house that day. I thought Cobb was going to strike her. He called her a liar, and there was a shouting match you wouldn’t believe. Mrs. Blaine reached for the paperweight, and I had to push Cobb back to the only cell and slam the door.”

  Rutledge could picture the scene.

  “I came back to speak to the two women while Cobb was shouting something at them and at me. Mrs. Blaine claimed he’d read too much in Mrs. Teller letting him help her about the gardens. He must have said something to her, and Mrs. Teller told him he was a married man and she wanted nothing to do with him.” Satterthwaite paused. “So he killed her.” He examined the Thermos as if it had just appeared on his desk and he’d never seen it before, avoiding Rutledge’s eyes. “I’d have liked five minutes alone with him. It would have been worth it.” Then he looked up. “I could never understand Peter Teller walking away from her at the war’s end. That’s if he wasn’t dead. She was sure he was. We all believed it. So it made sense that he’d come back, finally, to make his peace and tell her his reasons. His lame leg, for one. And she sent him away with a flea in his ear, because she had a pride of her own, did Florence Teller.”

  He set the Thermos aside and moved a little in his chair.

  “She must have told Cobb when he came to do a little work what had happened between herself and Teller. And he killed her then, because he knew that whatever she was saying now in the heat of anger and hurt, in the end Florence would go back to her husband.” Looking away at the square of window, seeing the darkness no longer pitch-black, he went on. “I didn’t want her killer to be one of us. I wanted it to be Teller. But it wasn’t.”

  “That’s a very good reconstruction,” Rutledge said after a moment. “It makes a strong case for Lawrence Cobb as the murderer. But it doesn’t explain the cane.”

  “That must have been what Cobb saw as he came up the walk. How he knew Teller had been there. Where Teller had dropped it when she cast him off. And she must have left it there, in the event Teller came back for it. She wouldn’t have to see him again.”

  “And what does Cobb have to say to this? Does he still deny he killed her, or has he admitted what he’d done?”

  “By the time his wife and her mother had left, he was in a state. He demanded I send for you, but I told him it was no use, the evidence was there, and we had to go forward. The truth was, I couldn’t bear the sight of him, I want
ed him out of Hobson where I couldn’t lay hands to him. I think he must have seen that in my face, because when I told him he was going to Thielwald, he came quietly and gave me no trouble.”

  A silence fell.

  Rutledge was trying to test the information that Satterthwaite had given him. Had all the evidence pointing to Peter Teller been circumstantial? The man was on the scene. He’d been spotted by an independent witness. His cane had been used as the murder weapon. But there was an equally strong case now against Lawrence Cobb. Furthermore, it fit the facts—that Teller had indeed come to Hobson and spoken to Florence Teller. His cane had been missing since then. And he’d left in a hurry, according to the witness, Benjamin Larkin. It also explained why Lawrence Cobb had possession of the cane’s knob.

  He knew the decision that Chief Superintendent Bowles would come to: charge Cobb and leave the Tellers out of it—they’d suffered enough, and Peter Teller was now out of reach of the law. Guilty or not. If a jury found Cobb guilty, then he was.

  But Florence Teller deserved to have her killer punished. And not a surrogate.

  Rutledge took a deep breath. Somehow he’d been very sure of Cobb’s innocence.

  As if the constable had heard his thoughts, he said, “Remember? Larkin heard no shouting, no one crying out when the Teller motorcar was there.”

  “Because by the time Larkin came down the hill, she was already dead.”

  “I never could understand why Teller broke up that cane,” Satterthwaite went on. “If he’d taken it with him, we’d been none the wiser. Two minutes under a pump or dangled in a stream, and it would have been clean. But I can see Cobb killing her and then destroying the cane afterward. The cane was Teller’s, and he’d have liked to break it over the man himself. But he couldn’t. So he took his frustration and anger out on Teller’s possession. And Cobb is strong enough, he could have snapped off that knob.”