“I don’t know. It’s Frank Keating. He’s been drinking all day. Since the fire. He closed the inn, and I tried to talk to him, but he’d have none of it. I went to bed and left him there in the bar, still drinking. I thought, he’s had enough that he’ll fall asleep in his chair, and won’t wake up before late morning.”
“Is he still there?” Rutledge asked, his mind beginning to work with some clarity.
“That’s the trouble. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I might try a little hot milk. That was at two o’clock, and when I looked into the bar, he wasn’t there. But the door was standing wide, cold air filling Reception. I think he’s gone out.”
It had taken determination for her to walk this far in the night, not knowing where Keating was or what had sent him to the bottle.
Rutledge said, “Yes, all right, wait for me in the office. I’ll dress and come down to you.”
She was gone in a whisper of clothing, her scent, like jasmine, lingering behind her. He remembered the perfume that Elizabeth Fraser had worn and how it had suited her. Lily of the valley, very English and subtle. Jasmine on the other hand possessed a heady sweetness.
Dressing swiftly, he went down to Hensley’s office. The heavy odor of smoke still seemed to be caught in the very walls, acrid on the night air. Mrs. Channing was waiting there, her coat around her and her hands clasped together, as if she were cold.
“I thought about making us some tea,” she said, “but the fire appears to have gone out.”
“No, don’t touch anything in the kitchen. Stay here,” he told her, “while I search for Keating.”
“Oh, no, I’m going with you.” She looked around her and added, “I’ve never liked coming into this house. There’s something here—despair, fear. I don’t know. It took all my courage to walk in here, into the darkness. To search the house for you. If I hadn’t seen the motorcar outside, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
“You should have come sooner, if he’s been drinking all day.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, mocking him. “And where were you?”
He didn’t answer, saying instead, “I’ve brought my torch and Hensley’s field glasses. If you’re ready?”
She got up quickly, as if afraid he might change his mind. They walked in silence back to The Oaks.
Rutledge took her to her room. “Is there a key?”
She held it out to him. He went inside and made certain there was no one in the armoire or under the bed.
“Wait here, and keep the door locked. I’ll call you if I want you to open it, I won’t knock.”
“Yes, all right, I’ll brace a chair under the knob. Just to be safe!”
“Not a bad idea.” He waited for the sound of the key turning in the lock before going back down the stairs and into the public bar.
It was empty, as she’d told him it was. Still, he cast his light about the room, behind the bar itself, in the corners. One table held a nearly empty bottle of whiskey and a glass that had left rings on the surface, as if at the end Keating had been careless pouring from the bottle.
From there he began a methodical search of the house, beginning with the public rooms, the small parlor where he’d talked with Mrs. Channing, the dining room with table linens set out for use, serviettes folded with almost razor-sharp edges.
The kitchen was surprisingly tidy, pots and pans set out on a side table, the worktable well scrubbed, and dishes stacked by size and ready to hand. The light moved on, and next to a cabinet he found a drawer upturned on the floor, its contents scattered, as if they’d been kicked about in a search for something.
Hamish said, “Cutlery.”
Their blades flashed in the torchlight, their wood and bone handles worn with use.
Knives of every size and kind, blades sharp enough to cut through hide and muscle and even bone.
“Ye canna’ tell what’s missing.”
“No. He must have pulled out the drawer in a fit of temper, letting the contents fall, and then he took what he wanted, and left the rest.”
If it was Sandridge, and he’d thought that the dying Hensley might give him up, he might have decided to kill himself rather than go back to prison, this time to hang.
The question was, where would he do it?
Rutledge went up the stairs two at a time, ignoring a dart of pain in his ankle. There were three bedrooms on this floor, and Mrs. Channing’s made the fourth. He searched the others, then went up another flight of stairs to what had been the servants’ quarters. He had given that up and returned to the quarters behind the kitchen where staff took their meals. Beyond there were sitting rooms for female staff and male staff, as strictly separated as in a convent in the year when The Oaks had been built.
One of the sitting rooms had been converted into a bedroom. It was almost monastic, the iron bed brought down from the servants’ floor, a stand beside it, two chairs, a table-desk, and a rag carpet over the floor. What had been a tall chest for the servants to keep their coats in had been converted into an armoire for Keating’s clothes.
There were few enough of them, and only one good suit among them. Rutledge shut the armoire and turned to the table that served as a desk. On it were meticulously kept accounts, receipts for goods and spirits, and a box of menus and recipes for various dishes.
He’d already switched the beam of light in the direction of the stand by the bed, when he realized he’d seen his own handwriting—
Moving round the table, he looked again, and there it was, under the accounts, only an edge showing. He lifted the ledger and found one of the sheets he’d written in Hensley’s office, laying out in detail his evidence against Mary Ellison. It was water stained, and there were sooty fingerprints across the top, as if someone had rescued it after yesterday’s fire and only then noticed what had been written on it. A pair of uneven creases showed that it had been hastily folded and shoved into a pocket.
That was how it had got here. Before he could consider the implications of why, he heard a voice in Reception, shouting his name.
Moving swiftly, he reached Reception and shone his light straight into the frightened face of Grace Letteridge.
“Inspector?” she exclaimed, surprise in her voice. “I’ve looked everywhere for you! You must come at once, there’s trouble!”
“How did you know to find me here?”
“I didn’t. You weren’t in Constable Hensley’s house, and I was desperate, I came here for Frank Keating.”
“Mrs. Channing is upstairs—”
“There’s no time! It may already be too late. Someone has broken into Mary Ellison’s house—the door is standing wide, and all the lamps are lit.”
Hamish said, “’Ware!”
For there was something in Grace Letteridge’s voice, an undercurrent of excitement that didn’t ring true.
He had no intention of leaving Meredith Channing alone in The Oaks.
Taking the stairs again, he went to her door and called out, “I can’t find Keating. But he’s armed and may be suicidal. Now there’s trouble at Mrs. Ellison’s house, and I must go. I don’t think you should stay here alone.”
“No!” There was the scrape of something heavy being shoved aside, and then the sound of the key being inserted into the lock. She opened the door, her voice breathless. “I think of myself as brave but not foolhardy.”
She was at his heels on the stairs, and together they hurried after Grace Letteridge, down the walk and along the road into Holly Street.
Hamish was saying, “I wouldna’ trust the lass. Nor the ither.”
They reached the corner of Whitby Lane and looked up at the Ellison house.
Grace had been right, lamps were lit in every room.
Rutledge left the two women in the lee of the constable’s doorway and went up the steps into the Ellison house.
The first thing he saw were splatters of blood on the walls of the entry, bright in the light of the lamp hanging there.
“Mrs. Ellison?”
he shouted.
There was no reply.
“It’s Inspector Rutledge. Can you come to the door? Are you all right?”
Silence greeted his words as they seemed to echo through the house.
“Keating?” he called. “Are you here? Don’t do anything foolish, man, I may’ve been wrong in my conclusions. That report was only one of many possibilities.”
He listened to the silence now. Sometimes it was possible to tell if a house was empty, just by the feel of it, as if the air itself had more room.
“If she’s no’ here, where did he tak’ her?”
“Frith’s Wood.”
Rutledge ran down Whitby Street, along Church Street, and into the tower of St. Luke’s.
With his torch in one hand, he climbed the stone steps to the first level and illuminated the bell rope.
Setting the torch on the wooden flooring, he reached for the rope and began to pull down with all his strength.
There was a disjointed clang, and then he found the right rhythm on the rope: a strong pull down, let the rope slide through one’s fingers, and when it had reached its apogee, another strong pull down.
The bell in the tower began to toll, a cadence that echoed over his head and filled the tower with its resonance.
He pulled it five times, and then silenced it. And a second five times. And a third.
Then he left the tower, racing down the uneven stone steps and out the door.
Men were beginning to gather, most in clothes pulled on hastily over their nightclothes, buttoning coats as they walked.
“Mrs. Ellison may be in Frith’s Wood,” he called to them, his voice carrying as it had on the battlefield, against the noise of the guns. “We need lamps, as many as you can bring, and hurry!”
They stood there for a moment, staring at him.
These were local men, who wouldn’t venture into that wood in daylight, much less in the dark of night.
“I’m not asking you to go alone,” he told them. “Take a partner, keep together. But I need you to search. There isn’t time to send to Letherington. And there may be someone with her—someone armed.”
But he thought they were more likely to find her body, her killer long away.
He went back to Hensley’s house, intent on taking Grace Letteridge with him to the wood. If anything was amiss, he’d be able to put his hand on her.
She was there, shivering in the doorway, her gaze on the house across the way.
“Where’s Mrs. Channing?”
“She went inside. There. She had a feeling someone must be hurt. She wanted to help.”
“Damn the woman!”
Had she seen the blood in the front hall and jumped to conclusions, or had she gone down to the Ellison cellar to look for bodies?
He turned and went back to the Ellison door, calling, “Mrs. Channing?”
She answered him quietly, her voice carrying a warning that something was not right. “Ian? Could you come into the kitchen, please?”
34
Rutledge stood there in the doorway, considering his options. But there were none. The only other choice was the door from the back garden, but it would plunge him too quickly into the midst of whatever was wrong in the kitchen, with no time to judge the situation.
There was nothing else he could do but trust in Mrs. Channing’s warning.
Hamish was hammering in the back of his mind, urging him not to trust anyone.
He stepped inside the house, walking steadily through the dining room and down the passage to the kitchen, making no effort to conceal his movements. And then he was opening the passage door and about to step into the kitchen itself.
Mrs. Channing stood there, her back against the cooker, her face turned toward the cellar stairs. She didn’t look at him. Her attention was on something he couldn’t see.
Rutledge swung slowly toward the cellar door and found himself staring at Frank Keating, holding a kitchen knife at the throat of a white-faced Mary Ellison, her eyes large and desperate.
One of her hands was bleeding, as if she had tried to shield herself. Someone—Meredith Channing—had given her a tea towel to wrap around the wound. Blood was beginning to soak through.
There had been a woman in Belton, Kent, stabbed and held hostage in her own kitchen. But he’d been well prepared for that, the local inspector knowing the people involved, suggesting what to expect and how to approach the angry man inside. Useful tools indeed. Here he was on his own.
Frank Keating wasn’t angry. There was a coldness about him that was far more dangerous. He reeked of alcohol, the kitchen awash in the smell of stale beer and too much whiskey. But if he had been drunk, he wasn’t now.
“Keating. What is she to you? What does it matter what she’s done?”
“Have you been down in that cellar, Rutledge?”
“Yes. I have.” He kept his voice steady, his hands at his side. He could just see Mary Ellison’s expression as he answered Keating, a bleakness that was there and quickly smoothed away.
“Then you know what’s down there.”
“I think I know. Yes.”
“Don’t ask me what this woman is to me. You wrote that you had no proof. I’ve found it for you.”
“Keating—I have proof now. I went to Northampton to find it. You needn’t have done this.”
“Don’t lie to me. What proof is there in Northampton? They’re in the cellar, not in Northampton!” He moved the knife so that the sharp tip pricked at Mary Ellison’s throat.
“Tell him. Tell him what you did!”
“Keating,” Rutledge began. “I can’t use a forced con—”
“Tell him!”
But Mary Ellison stood there, the knife at her throat, and said nothing.
“There are witnesses here, Rutledge. You and Mrs. Channing. Myself. And the proof is down there.” He jerked his head toward the cellar. “If she won’t speak, by God I’ll see she dies anyway.”
“You’ll hang.”
“What difference does it make to me? I’m a dead man already. What difference can it possibly make to me!”
The anguish in his voice was so overwhelming that Mrs. Channing took an inadvertent step forward, as if to offer comfort.
“Stay where you are!” he shouted, his grip on Mrs. Ellison’s arm tightening. She flinched but didn’t cry out.
Mrs. Channing stepped back. “I didn’t intend—” Then she fell silent, looking at Rutledge for guidance.
“Why are you a dead man?” Rutledge was already asking. The distance between them was too great. By the time he reached Keating and struggled with him, the knife would have plunged into Mary Ellison’s throat. He fell back on words instead, to talk Keating out of what he was intending to do.
The rector had called him a good listener. It would be words in this case that would make a difference. Must make a difference, as Hamish was busy reminding him. He had to choose them carefully.
Keating was shaking his head, unwilling to be lured into Rutledge’s trap.
Mary Ellison spoke for the first time. “This man,” she said, such loathing in her voice that even Keating appeared to feel it, “this man is under the delusion that he’s my son-in-law. Mr. Mason, Emma’s father.”
Stunned silence followed her announcement. Mrs. Channing uttered a little sound, half pity, half surprise.
Hamish said, “It canna’ be true. He died of a tumor.”
But so much of what Mary Ellison had told everyone was a lie.
“Are you Frank K. Mason?” Rutledge asked the man with the knife.
He spoke the name with authority, as if he possessed the knowledge to support it.
“You’ve asked London about me, haven’t you? Well, be damned to you! I served my sentence, I have a right to live as I please.”
It was beginning to make sense. Rutledge glanced at Mrs. Channing, then said to Keating, “Can she leave? The less she knows the better.”
“And have her go for help the instant she steps ou
t that door? She came of her own free will, I didn’t bring her here. But here she’ll stay.”
“Then let’s move into the dining room where the women can sit down. Mrs. Ellison looks ready to collapse.”
“Let her!” The two words were savage. And then he said, “I wasn’t guilty. But I couldn’t prove it. I’d been out looking for work, and a man promised me thirty pounds to help him break into a shop. I walked away. I had a family, I didn’t want any part of it, money or no. But when he came to trial, he told the court I’d planned the crime and carried it out. That he’d been persuaded against his will to help me.”
“Why should the jury have believed him?”
“I was a locksmith,” he said, with simple pride. “And a good one. He’d never been caught before, that’s the truth of it. He’d been too careful. And he spoke well, like a gentleman. They tell me he’d all but cried in the witness-box, out of shame for what he’d done. And those twelve bastards in the jury box believed him. He went free, I was taken up and sent to prison, leaving my family destitute. Beatrice would never have come home to Dudlington if I’d been there to feed her and the child.”
A locksmith married to the daughter of a woman with Harkness blood in her veins. It must have been a great comedown for Mary Ellison to learn that the daughter who had gone to London with such high expectations had married a working-class man. No wonder she’d told the world that he was dead. No wonder she’d taken in Emma, and then seen to it that the daughter who had disappointed her didn’t go back to London and her disgraceful life. Or worse, bring her unemployed husband to live in Dudlington when he was released.
Rutledge said, “And you came here, after you’d served your sentence, to watch over Emma.”
“I didn’t know she was alive. Mrs. Ellison had written to me in prison, to say that Emma and Beatrice had died in a fire in London. One day I came here, just to walk in the churchyard and stand at their graves. But there weren’t any. And when the rector saw me and came over to speak to me, I asked him if he knew where Emma Mason was buried, here or in London. He said I must be mistaken, she wasn’t dead, she was living here with her grandmother. I nearly broke down, but when he asked my name, I said it was Frank Keating. The next day I took every penny I could scrape together and bought The Oaks. It was languishing, but I was good with my hands, I could fix it to suit me. I couldn’t tell the girl she was mine. I’d have ruined her chances. But I could see her, speak to her from time to time. And I didn’t think Mrs. Ellison would have any reason to recognize me, if I stayed out of the village as much as possible. I could still look out for Emma.”
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