by Todd,Charles
He found Mrs. Grant holding court with a number of neighbors.
After greeting the women, Rutledge asked if he could speak to Mrs. Grant alone, and her guests reluctantly said good-bye, promising to return.
When the door had shut behind them, he asked, “How are you holding up?”
She wiped away tears and said, her voice husky, “I can’t stop thinking of him lying out there, not all that far away, and me, here, saying terrible things about him.”
“How much money is missing?”
“I had saved up thirty-five pounds.”
A goodly sum for a poor family.
“How did you earn it?”
She looked away. “Doing mending and washing and cleaning houses in East Dedham. I never told him. He was sometimes gone a few days at a time, depending on how far he had to travel to make enough for us to live on. I knew Tim; if I told him what I had, he’d say we could live on that for a bit, or it would tide us through the winter. But I wanted to keep it for a time when he couldn’t work any longer.”
Rag-and-bone men scraped a precarious living, but it was work suited to some who preferred the freedom it also offered. Still, it had its hardships. Searching through rubbish and knocking on doors, asking if there was anything to collect, these men were out in all weathers, bags over their shoulders, stick in hand, walking miles in a day. Sometimes being paid a pittance for what they brought in to the merchants who used the scavenged goods in their own professions.
“Why do you think he took this money?”
“I was sure he had. Tim was gullible in some ways. Easily talked into any scheme that promised to make him rich. But where did it go? Who took it? That’s what I want to know.”
He couldn’t be certain whether she was telling him the truth—or was incensed that Tim had taken her own hard-earned pounds and now she must wait for the authorities to find them and return them to her.
If Grant had had them on him when he was killed, surely Wright wouldn’t have pocketed them. It was out of character. But so was murder, and taking the motorcar. What had gone wrong in the Rector’s life to turn him around so completely?
“Who were your husband’s friends?”
“And how am I to know that, pray, when he was off to Eastbourne for days at a time, or even over to Pevensey?”
“Where did he stay when he was away overnight?”
“Slept rough in good weather, or found himself a doorway or the like out of the cold.”
“Where did he sort his finds?” He looked around at the tidy cottage. Certainly not here. Not a collection of dirty rags, greasy bones, or unwanted bits of metal.
“He’d do it along the strand, if the constable didn’t see him. Or in an alley. It was too far to bring it home, then take it back again to a buyer.”
“Could he afford lodgings, in Eastbourne?”
“He claimed not. Always complaining about how hard he had to work to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.”
“What about the women you thought he was courting with his tales of travel? Did he stay with any of them?”
“How should I know? Do you think he was likely to tell me? His wife?” Then she ruined the effect of her denial by adding, viciously, “No better than whores, most of them.”
“The one who smelled of gardenia scent, who lasted two years. What was her name?”
“I never found out.” Her voice was suddenly bitter.
“Surely if you knew that much about her, you discovered her name.”
“Well, I didn’t. I just knew when he no longer smelled of gardenia. The next one preferred sandalwood.”
He tried another tack. “There was one who came to your door. She must have been in love with him to do something so brazen. Who was she? Perhaps we could begin with her name.”
“I don’t know who she was.”
He took a firm grip on his patience. “I think you do.”
Cornered now, she said, “Oh, very well. She called herself Delilah. What decent woman would use a name such as that? Likely she was having me on. She was a barmaid at The Jolly Sailor. Tim told me that. But he might have been lying as well.”
Now that her husband was dead, no longer philandering, Rutledge thought Mrs. Grant had begun to prefer the role of bereaved widow to that of betrayed wife.
He thanked her and left. Driving on to Eastbourne, he searched for the pub, and found it on a backstreet in a shabby part of town that summer visitors seldom saw. It was busy at the lunch hour, workmen for the most part, looking for a cheap meal. The patrons turned to stare when he walked through the door in his London coat and hat. The decor followed a seafaring theme, with nets slung low from the ceiling, wooden cutouts of fish and lobsters, and even a whale or two vying with dusty models from rowing boats to galleons to clippers. Some of them had been carved by a sure hand. The atmosphere was dark and dingy.
Rutledge made his way to the bar and ordered an ale. The barmaid was fair, slim, and pretty. “I’m looking for Delilah,” he said with a smile as he paid for his glass.
“And what would you be wanting with her, if you found her?” she asked, considering his London manners and his educated voice.
“There may be money coming her way,” he said.
“And where would it be coming from?” she demanded, suspicious.
“Ah, that’s for Delilah to know.”
“She’s not here,” the young woman answered reluctantly.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Sure,” she answered. “There was a death in her family. She said.”
“Indeed? Do you know where I could find her?”
The woman glanced around, making certain she wasn’t overheard. “She’s gone to her mother’s. She said she was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
She silenced him with a gesture, adding in a low voice, “Don’t cause trouble. Just go.”
He pushed his ale toward her with a few more coins. “Where can I find her?”
She gave him the address, her words fast and almost incomprehensible. Then she scooped up the coins and turned away to serve another customer, ignoring him.
He changed his mind about leaving, took his glass, and found himself a chair at a table for two in a corner where he could watch the room. No one showed any interest in his conversation with the barmaid, and he noticed that most men coming up to the bar flirted lightly with her. Satisfied, he rose and left The Jolly Sailor just as two large men came in and hailed friends across the room.
Nor did anyone show an interest in his departure, with an eye to following him.
He walked toward the water, where he stood looking out at the rough sea, and once he was certain that he wasn’t being followed, he went to find the address he had been given.
It turned out to be a row of terrace houses, their front gardens littered with odds and ends lying among the dead stalks of straggling plants. He knocked at the door of number seventeen and watched the curtains at the window next to him twitch as someone looked out.
After a moment the door opened.
A white-haired woman in a frumpy black dress said, “What is it you want?”
“I’ve come to see Delilah,” he said. “I think she’s in trouble. I want to help.”
“She’s not here. She took the train to London three days ago.”
“I don’t believe you,” Rutledge said. “I believe she’s still here, and frightened.”
“You know nothing about my daughter,” she told him, her voice cold. “She’s got an aunt who is ill. She’s gone to care for her.”
“Tim Grant sent me.”
The woman stared at him, then shut the door sharply in his face.
Rutledge stood his ground, raising his hand to knock again. And keep on knocking until someone came back to the door.
And then it opened. Delilah was plump, pretty, with strawberry-blond hair and a pert nose. Rutledge, in his swift assessment, thought she must be closer to thirty than twenty. Her eyes were red f
rom crying, and she looked as if she’d slept in her clothes.
Too frightened to prepare properly for bed?
“Who are you?” she asked, keeping to the shadows inside the door.
“My name is Rutledge. I’m a policeman, Scotland Yard. I think you may be in trouble.”
“Show me.”
He took out his identification and held it up for her to see. Satisfied, she reached out, caught his sleeve, and quickly pulled him inside the house.
“Is it true? Is Tim dead?” she asked.
In the close space of the dimly lit passage, Delilah standing there, back to the door, and her mother on the other side of him, he felt a surge of claustrophobia. “Where can we talk?” he asked, and was relieved when her mother opened a door to her left and pointed.
“In here.”
He followed her into the front room and stood by the hearth while the two women took the only chairs. A gray-and-white cat was asleep on the couch.
“I’ve come down from London to look into the death of the Rector of St. Simon’s in East Dedham.”
“It’s true, then? He’s dead as well? But what about Tim?”
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we discovered his body at Belle Tout light. We think it had been there since last Friday evening. Mrs. Grant had reported him missing, but the local constable was under the impression that he might have left her for another woman.”
She caught her breath on a sob as he spoke, and fumbled in her pocket for a handkerchief. Her mother got up and put an arm around her.
“You’d better not be lying,” she said, glaring at Rutledge.
“It’s true,” he said. “Why else would I be here looking for Delilah?”
“Her name’s Ivy,” her mother snapped at him. “Ivy Brown. She only used that in the pub, to keep men from knowing who she really was.”
“It was the only name I’d been given,” he said quietly. “What was your daughter to Tim Grant?”
“He was going to marry her. There was a position opening in Canterbury, groundskeeper at the cathedral. It was all arranged. They were going to live there.”
“He already had a wife.”
“That’s not true,” Delilah said angrily, lifting her face from the handkerchief. “They were never truly married. He told me how it was. He wanted a better life, but she held him back. He’d traveled, seen the world, but she only wanted him to stay in the Gap.”
It wasn’t the right time to contradict her. “When did you last see him?”
“A Wednesday, my day off at the pub. Must have been the Wednesday—just before . . .” Her eyes welled again, and she was unable to say before he died. Her voice was husky as she went on. “He was excited, and he told me a chance had come his way to make a little money, enough to see us set up in Canterbury. What’s more, he said, that woman was keeping other sums from him, money that was rightfully his. And he intended to have it. He said chances didn’t come his way very often, not like this, and he was doing this for us.”
“What sort of chance?” Rutledge asked.
“He wouldn’t say. Only that it was a little fiddly, and I mustn’t be surprised if we had to leave Eastbourne suddenly.”
“Surely that worried you?”
“Well, of course it did. I tried to talk him out of it, I told him that I had a bit put by as well, and we’d manage. But Tim said he’d done worse on his travels and come to no harm, and I was not to worry.”
“And you had no idea what it was? He didn’t tell you what he was planning to do?”
“No. He said he couldn’t tell, that it wouldn’t be right. He’d made a promise not to say anything to anyone. There was extra money, if he kept his mouth shut.”
“Shut? About what?”
“I’ve just told you,” Delilah said, her voice rising. “I didn’t know.”
“And yet you’ve been afraid of something. Or someone.”
“There was nothing more from Tim. He didn’t come, he didn’t send a message. Nothing. And then this past Thursday, Betty, the other girl at the pub, found a note under a dish when she cleared a table. It had my name on it, so she handed it to me. She thought it was a love note from a customer, I hoped it was from Tim. Some of the other ragmen come in now and again, they might have brought it for him if he couldn’t get away. But I didn’t recognize the handwriting. There were only two words: ‘You’re next.’”
“Who left it? Do you know?”
“Betty wasn’t certain. The pub was crowded, we were run off our feet. There’d been a man at that table. He wasn’t a regular, she said. But a woman had been sitting there earlier, and several people before that. There’d been no sign of Tim all this week, you see, no word. I was frantic. I wanted to go to the Gap and confront that woman who called herself his wife. I’d done it once, I could do it again. But Mum here said it was foolish, I’d only put myself in the way of trouble, and like as not the blame would fall on me if Tim had left her for good. And him not here to tell me what to do.”
“What trouble?” Rutledge interjected into the frantic muddle of words. “Surely you must have some knowledge of what Grant planned. You said it was fiddly.”
She glanced at her mother, then turned back to Rutledge. “He said it wasn’t really blackmail. He told me it was just an opportunity, a once-in-his-lifetime chance to ask for a little more to keep quiet. He said the person wouldn’t know we were leaving for Canterbury anyway. It would mean starting out with enough money to do better.” She was suddenly angry. “Do you know what I believe? That jealous harlot he called his wife ruined our future.”
“How did she manage that? He wouldn’t have told her that he was planning to leave her. Surely not.” Not if he was intending to take his wife’s savings.
“I don’t know. She must have guessed. He always said she kept a sharp eye on him.”
Mrs. Brown stepped in. “How had she kept him all these years? By tricking him.”
“Even if she learned what he was up to, how would she have managed to find the person Grant was attempting to blackmail? And she would have had to discover that, if she intended to spoil his game.”
“He must have told her,” Mrs. Brown countered stubbornly.
Rutledge didn’t think he had. If Tim Grant was about to abscond with his wife’s money and Delilah/Ivy Brown, he would have held his tongue, if only out of a strong sense of self-preservation. Mrs. Grant had her suspicions, but she didn’t know the whole truth. He was willing to wager she didn’t.
That meant Grant’s attempt to blackmail his benefactor had somehow gone wrong and ended in his death.
Wright was dead. If he’d been blackmailed, if he’d killed Grant, he was no longer a threat to Delilah.
But if it wasn’t Wright?
“Grant told you nothing at all about this person he intended to blackmail?”
She shook her head. He thought she was lying. She knew more than she felt was safe. Otherwise the ambiguous note left on a table at The Jolly Sailor wouldn’t have frightened her so much.
“If you don’t tell me what you know, I can’t protect you. If I don’t know where the threat is coming from, I will be blindsided.”
But Delilah was adamant. She knew nothing at all that would help him—or her.
He left soon after, advising Delilah to take precautions. “If I found you so easily, someone else can do the same thing. I’d go to London if I were in your place. Or anywhere else you might have family to take you in. I’m quite serious.”
“Find him and stop him, then,” Mrs. Brown said. “You’re a policeman.”
“How am I to do that, if I don’t know where to look?” he asked, his question directed more toward her daughter. “If you can’t help me, who can?”
“You’re a policeman,” her mother said again, adamant that it was within his power to do something.
And Delilah turned away so that he couldn’t see her eyes. For an instant he wondered if she believed she could force the victim of blackmail to pay her instead. Whet
her she was an innocent party—or still saw her own main chance.
But Wright was dead.
If Timothy Grant had been blackmailing the Rector—and that could account for the quarrel on the Down that Mrs. Sedley had witnessed—then there was no one left to collect from. No one to leave that threatening message in The Jolly Sailor pub.
But Mrs. Grant was very much alive and it would have been like her to send a threatening message to Delilah. The problem there was that she had been surrounded by friends offering their sympathies ever since her husband had been found. And walking to Eastbourne and back would have taken long enough to make her absence noticeable.
Did this blackmail victim have nothing to do with Wright, except to muddy the waters for Rutledge’s inquiry? Someone Grant had encountered in the course of his work? It didn’t make this victim any less dangerous.
Still, two unconnected murders so close together in the tiny hamlet of Burling Gap beggared belief.
Was Grant involved in more than one scheme of blackmail? That was a distinct possibility.
Delilah’s intentions intrigued him. Rutledge wasn’t certain how much she knew—or thought she knew. Had the man who had left the note—he reminded himself that it might also be a woman—come in again? Was that why Delilah hadn’t gone back to the pub, because she had already made contact with Tim Grant’s victim and set in motion a train of events that would lead to a meeting? She would by nature be suspicious and not put herself in harm’s way by walking home from the pub alone late at night. Not after he’d threatened her. And that meant that Timothy Grant had mentioned a sum worth taking risks for. For a bereaved woman who had only just learned that her lover was dead, she had very quickly looked to the main chance.
There was no way to force her to tell him. He would have to come back in the morning and ask the local man to keep an eye on the Browns.
Mrs. Brown followed Rutledge to the door, and as he stepped out into the cold wind, she said, “Was there money on him when you found the body?”
“No more than a few shillings.”
She nodded grimly. “Then that bitch got it first.”
