by Charles Todd
“I don’t see how it’s pertinent to Kent, sir. With all respect.”
“Nor do I. But I’m hoping I’ll find what I’m looking for once I’ve read it. And, Sergeant? Not a word of this to either Inspector Martin or Penvellyn. And most particularly not Chief Superintendent Bowles.”
“Mum’s the word, sir,” Gibson said, doubt still large in his voice.
When Rutledge returned to the sitting room, Melinda took one look at his face.
“You’re leaving tomorrow for London.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, there’s a file I must read for myself.”
“Will you be returning to the inquiry here in Kent?”
“I don’t know. I expect I shall have to.”
“Well. I have enjoyed your company, my dear. And Ian. You know my door is always open.”
With a smile, she said good night and left him there.
Rutledge watched her go, affection in his gaze. She was a remarkable woman, and he was very fond of her.
Without waiting for breakfast the next morning, Rutledge was on the road a little before six, making his way toward London. Traffic was fairly light at first, and then it picked up as he neared the city.
Sunlight filled the air, but there had been a red dawn when he set out, brilliant and blazing. If the old saw about red skies was true, then there would be storms before the day was out. It had been a remarkably fine summer, with very few breaks in the weather.
He reached the Yard before Bowles had appeared, and walked quietly through the passages to his office. There he’d had to search for the file that Sergeant Gibson had promised him, finally discovering it in a stack of innocuous documents that Rutledge had been meaning to return to the files. He wondered briefly if this had been a hint from Sergeant Gibson, or if the man had tried to conceal the file from casual searches for one of Rutledge’s court documents.
He’d shut the door behind him, and now he sat down in his chair, his back to the room, and opened the file.
First he scanned Inspector Penvellyn’s reports. The Cornish Inspector had got nowhere. Part of the problem was his lack of experience in dealing with Northumberland. But the local man had not been thorough in his interviews before Penvellyn arrived.
A Northumberland schoolmaster, living just outside Alnwick, had been found dead in his sitting room by his wife, who had come downstairs after waking shortly before four in the morning to find her husband hadn’t come up to bed.
In the beginning, there had been no mention of a glass of milk. Inspector Martin had discovered there had been one during a third interview with the victim’s wife after the postmortem had revealed the death was caused by an overdose of laudanum. The local man had failed to note it.
The initial view was suicide. Mrs. Stoddard had sworn to the police that her husband had had nothing on his mind, but it was soon discovered that he had been very worried about the future of the small boarding school. The history master and the French master had tried to cover up the school’s problems, until Penvellyn had had a discussion with Stoddard’s bank manager. There he’d learned that Stoddard had been using his own money in a desperate attempt to shore up the school for another term.
Nothing had been stolen from the house nor had it been searched, reinforcing the belief that Percy had killed himself while despondent over the future.
At that stage the doctor had suggested that Stoddard had surprised a housebreaker, and then in order to sleep, had taken some of his wife’s laudanum without properly measuring the dose. It was even suggested that Stoddard had come downstairs in the first place because he was having trouble sleeping, and walked straight into the housebreaker, who had fled empty-handed.
Inspector Martin, arriving to replace Penvellyn, soon realized that the doctor had tried to protect Mrs. Stoddard from the stigma of suicide by describing the death as accidental.
Martin was a straightforward man who brooked no interference with the facts. He ascertained that the laudanum had indeed been prescribed for her after surgery and that she had kept the bottle upstairs in the drawer of the table by her bed.
The glass was finally discovered when Martin took over the inquiry. It had been set in one of the drawers of the desk, and he began to suspect the dead man’s wife.
A neighbor had heard arguments about the money from his personal funds that Stoddard was using to prop up the school, and Martin surmised that Mrs. Stoddard had killed her husband to stop him from bankrupting them.
The servants had indicated that the Stoddards were not the most devoted of couples, and it was Martin’s opinion that household often knew more about what was going on in a marriage than either the husband or wife realized.
Try as he would, Inspector Martin couldn’t shake Mrs. Stoddard’s testimony that she had not killed her husband and had in fact supported his use of personal funds to help the school. And there was no record that Mrs. Stoddard had purchased more laudanum than her physician had prescribed. Nor could he prove that she had been hoarding her supply in order to kill her husband.
He did suspect from a comment that the doctor’s nurse had made, that Mrs. Stoddard used any excuse she could think of to visit the doctor’s surgery, and he wondered if there was any relationship between them. But it appeared that he was not her lover but rather the source of the laudanum that she needed.
Martin spent nearly a week in Alnwick, tracing every possible thread.
All he could elicit was the fact that Mr. Stoddard had been born in Bristol, owned property there, and had moved to Alnwick when he had been appointed headmaster of Riverton School.
Laudanum and Bristol. A glass of milk.
There it was again. And in a case not his own.
What the hell was in Bristol? Rutledge asked himself.
It was not the size of London. And yet four dead men had lived or worked in the town or its environs. They had moved in different social circles, and had left there at different times in their lives. Furniture maker, man of independent means, gentleman farmer, and now a schoolmaster.
No, they hadn’t simply lived there. They had owned property there. And they were all male.
Wary of jumping to conclusions, he went down a mental list of possibilities. And as he did, he realized that there was only one place where men of such varied backgrounds might have touched each other’s lives.
So ordinary as to be overlooked: serving on a jury.
He remembered that he’d even suggested as much to Cummins in the case of the blackened grave stones. And Cummins had shaken his head, considering it more far-fetched than the idea of a shared secret.
And it went beyond a simple matter of jury duty. These men hadn’t been brought together to decide a petty theft or an assault. Very likely not fraud or embezzlement. Not housebreaking or horse stealing. A capital case. Murder.
His office felt suffocating, too small, too hot on this warm day, too confining when he needed to think. Rutledge rose, putting the file back where he found it, and left, turning toward Parliament, as he so often seemed to do, his feet taking him in that direction out of habit. And as he walked, his mind was engaged in sifting all the facts at his command. He couldn’t go to Bowles with this until he was absolutely certain that he was right. And he wouldn’t put Chief Inspector Cummins in the middle by talking to him. Not yet.
Bowles was satisfied that they had Clayton’s killer in custody. He’d agreed that very likely Tattersall had killed himself for reasons he’d kept to himself. And Martin was certain Mrs. Stoddard had murdered her husband. It would take more than theory to overcome the Yard’s certainty.
This was a battle he would very likely lose, Rutledge was all too aware of that. He had a fine career ahead of him, and he was engaged to the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It would be wiser not to engage in such a battle in the first place.
But there was Mark Kingston. Rutledge could tell himself that the jury that tried the man would realize that Kingston couldn’t have murder
ed Benjamin Clayton and refuse to find him guilty.
What if they did?
He looked up at the tall spire of Big Ben, shading his eyes from the hazy sunlight. He could feel a storm in the air, but he catalogued that in the recesses of his brain, just as he noted the traffic over Westminster Bridge or the sounds of ships coming up from the river, without any of it entering his conscious thinking.
How in God’s name could he find out if these four dead men had served on the same jury? Much less those whose grave stones had been blackened. But the seven who lay beneath blackened grave stones could wait.
Rutledge had a good memory for names and faces. He went through the long list of barristers his father had worked with, many of them later becoming QCs and then KCs. One of them might know where he should begin.
Who was still alive, who could he turn to, to ask for information?
And then he came up with the answer.
Fillmore Montagu Gilbert. Famous in his day for his successes, but even more famous for the dramatic way he conducted his crosses, sometimes shaking the prisoner in the dock to his very boots. Gilbert knew people, and he had had an uncanny feeling for guilt, even when the evidence seemed to point in the other direction. And he could ferret out details that led the prisoner to contradict himself or stumble over a fact that was pertinent to the case.
What’s more, Gilbert was still alive. In his eighties if Rutledge’s math was correct.
Where was he now?
Rutledge turned back to the Yard, thought better of asking Gibson, and instead went to his motorcar and drove to the house he shared with his sister.
She was there, arranging flowers for the main rooms, a skill she’d inherited from their mother.
Surprised to see him, she said, “If you’re here to beg lunch, you’ll have to take me out to dine. Mrs. Holly has found ants in the pantry, and she says it’s a certain sign of heavy rain. Ants know, she says. And the kitchen is being given a scrubbing it probably hasn’t experienced in twenty years.”
He laughed. “God forbid that we should find an ant swimming for its life in the consommé. All right, if you can help me find what I need, I’ll take you anywhere you’d like to go.”
“Promise? You won’t go haring off to the Yard instead?”
“Promise. Besides, it’s a personal matter, not Yard business.”
But when he told her what he needed, she looked stricken.
“Ian. Everything was boxed up after the funerals. All the cards and letters and the names on the floral arrangements—everything. I can’t—I can’t do it.”
With a surge of guilt, he realized how thoughtless he’d been in his hurry to find what he needed. Taking her hand, he said, “Of course I can’t ask you to relive it. All I need is to know where to look.”
“Melinda had it all taken up to the attic. I didn’t ask—I didn’t want to know.”
“Then I’ll start there.”
“And still take me to lunch?”
“Yes, I’ve given you my word.”
But the grief he’d awakened hadn’t gone away.
He took the stairs two at a time, walked on to the attic door on the second floor, and went up the next flight of steps just as quickly, although they were narrower and shorter.
The attics of this house held memories for him as well. His rocking horse, the cradle where Frances had slept for the first few weeks of her life, the collection of walking sticks that had belonged to father and grandfathers, a chest full of his mother’s favorite hats, chairs and bedsteads and armoires and tables that had long since been replaced in fits of modernization, including the heavy Victorian table under which he’d played with his vast army of lead soldiers on rainy days. Its multiple branching legs had provided battlefield and barracks, parade grounds and cemeteries for fallen warriors.
He tried to shut out the past, searching for the boxed history of his parents’ untimely deaths. He found what he was looking for under the eaves, in a corner where the boxes were safe but not intrusive. And he recognized them because they were labeled in Melinda Crawford’s copperplate script.
Rutledge began with the labels, squatting there as he scanned them. He had told himself he could do this, but it was no less painful for him than it was for his sister.
Memories came flooding back.
Standing in the passage at the Yard as Cummins was walking toward him, a telegram in his hand, his face drained of all color. The feel of the telegram in his own hands as Cummins wordlessly passed it to him. The blurring of the type as he tried to read the message, and the wave of sheer disbelief that swept him, followed by shattering anger. Then the terrible realization that he would have to break the news to his sister.
Nearly two years had passed since the accident on the Isle of Skye that had killed his mother and father. They had been returning to the Kyle of Lochalsh on the small ferry that carried visitors, residents, goods, mail, and even the occasional Highland cow or sheep back and forth between the island and the mainland. It had been dusk, and there were no witnesses. It wasn’t until the ferry was overdue that those waiting at the Kyle realized that something was wrong.
When the bodies were recovered, Rutledge and his wife were clinging together, almost impossible for anyone to separate.
After, everyone had said that it was good that they had gone together. That they would have wanted it that way. But Rutledge had refused to believe there was any goodness at all in what had happened, what had been so suddenly taken from them.
Shaking his head to clear it of the past, he concentrated on the task at hand.
It was then he located the box marked CONDOLENCES and against his will remembered sitting at the desk in his father’s study, responding to each and every one of the many messages of sympathy that had poured in. How do you find the words to say at a time like that? And yet many people had found them. And he had had to thank them with a rote statement he’d written out to copy because it caused less pain than answering each message with an individual response.
Thank you for your kind words at this time in our lives. My sister and I are more grateful than I can express for your sympathy and your thoughtfulness in writing.
Brief, to the point, his duty to his parents handled to the best of his ability. But Melinda, a hand on his shoulder, had approved.
“No one expects an outpouring of your feelings, Ian. Only an acknowledgment of their offer of comfort.”
Shoving that memory aside as well, he sat down on the dusty attic floor and opened the box. With resolute fingers he began to lift out the stacks of cards, a few at a time, and then a handful. He told himself he needn’t open them or the emotions they evoked. He need only to look at the sender’s name.
Forty-five minutes later, he had what he wanted: the letter of condolences that Fillmore Gilbert had sent. He remembered the contents all too well, the references to his father’s infinite wisdom and experience in the law, and his mother’s grace in every circumstance. A rare woman, Gilbert had called her, and well suited to be the wife of such an extraordinary man.
He noted the address under Gilbert’s name, and then he carefully repacked the box, closing it up again with a sense of finality.
Brushing off his trousers, he followed his own footsteps back to the stairs and went down them.
Frances was waiting for him in the sitting room.
Looking up as he came through the door, she said, without really wanting to know, “Did you find what you were seeking?”
He took out his notebook to show her that he hadn’t removed anything from the boxes. “An address I couldn’t find anywhere else. I need information, and this was the best person I could think of to help me.”
“Yes, they knew so many people, didn’t they? It was a great comfort at the—the time.”
“Are you still hungry, or have you found something in the ant-ridden kitchen?”
She grimaced. “Mrs. Holly won’t let me through the door. I asked if she’d found mouse droppings too, but
she exclaimed ‘Weovils’ as if they were the devil himself.”
“Not surprising this summer.”
He took her to the Monarch Hotel with its famous restaurant, and enjoyed watching her greet friends and examine the menu. They talked of this and that, and finally Jean’s name came up.
“Her mother has written. Asking me to be one of the bridesmaids. I was so pleased. You didn’t put her up to it, did you, Ian?”
“I’ve never spoken to Mrs. Gordon about the bridesmaids.” It was the truth, and he was glad he could tell it with conviction. “I stay as far away from discussions about veils and slippers and church decorations as possible. It’s a foreign language no man can comprehend.”
Laughing at him, she said, “We’re to go to see the gowns they’ve picked out. I’m rather looking forward to it. It isn’t often your favorite brother is married.”
He smiled in return. “Melinda sends her love. I was in Kent on Yard business and stopped to see her. She’s worried about you.”
“I can’t imagine why. Because I haven’t decided to marry? I never lack invitations or dance partners. Early days, my dear Ian. I’m enjoying myself too much.” Then she was suddenly serious. “You’ll be the first to know when the right person comes along. And I dare you to tell me he’s not the right one for me.”
Yet she had done just that when he’d told her he’d proposed to Jean. A stir of worry suddenly wormed its way into his heart.
That was when he broached the subject of a companion for her.
There was fierce resistance. And that worried him more. Frances was one of the most sensible women he knew. But she was only twenty, not a great age for wisdom where the heart was concerned. He found himself wondering if she would have married before this, had it not been for the long period of mourning for their parents. Mandated by grief, not etiquette, it had taken some time for both of them to come to terms with that loss.
“Think about it,” he said. “And speak to Melinda. Between the two of you, you can surely find someone who would suit.”
