by Charles Todd
With a nod he left. When the door shut behind him, Rutledge went to the chest and opened the top drawer. It held a variety of maps. Closing it, he went to the next drawer. It held stereopticon photographs and a collection of unframed watercolor sketches. Photographs littered the bottom drawer.
He brought over one of the chairs from the desk and began to sort through the photographs.
Gardens in various stages of bloom, the servants lined up in front of the house waiting to greet the family or guests. Shooting in Scotland, visits to Paris and London, the south of France, various friends and dogs and outings. A cricket match at Lord’s. Family photographs from Barrington’s parents’ lives and of Alan in various stages of childhood. None of these seemed to fit the mood evoked by the Thorne family outing at Beachy Head—more a formal record of an only child growing up in the center of attention. And nothing from Oxford. He’d hoped at least to find another print of the photograph that Blanche had kept, to see who else was in it.
Swearing under his breath, he sifted through the photographs again, but he hadn’t missed anything of importance. Putting them back in the drawer and closing it, he took out the watercolors.
They were quite nice but didn’t demonstrate a true talent. A child on a pony, a churchyard, a garden in bloom—the sort of things Mrs. Barrington must have painted for pleasure and the memories they evoked for her. Her husband, much younger than the portrait Rutledge had seen earlier, asleep in a chair on the terrace overlooking the lawns and the lake. A gray kitten curled in a basket, a liver-and-white spaniel on a hearth rug, as well as a dozen or more scenes in France, possibly during a wedding journey. Vistas from various windows of the house, including views of the lake in summer. A miniature black-and-white Jacobean-style house set in an enormous oak tree. And a small boy’s face at the diamond-paned window next to the door.
The tree house was the only sketch in the collection that was even close to what he’d been hunting for. And it was just the sort of place that would have appealed to Alan Barrington’s mother. After all, Charles II had hidden in an oak tree when he was being hunted by Cromwell’s men, a story that every schoolboy learned early on. And the child at the window would have been old enough to remember the house . . .
But where the hell was it?
He turned the heavy paper over. Our little house in the tree.
Not very helpful.
Then he realized what this must be. It was far too large for a child’s house. The interior room must be of a size that adults could have tea or an alfresco luncheon there. With cushions and pillows scattered over the floor, one could even sleep there on a fine summer’s evening. A folly, then. The eighteenth century had seen the building of dozens of these in estates across Britain and even in France. Frivolous garden or landscape buildings with no real purpose other than their exotic appearance. Many were shells, others intended as pavilions. Gothic towers, Greek temples, Chinese teahouses, Egyptian pyramids—the range of designs was endless, and quite a few were well known.
But not this one. A Jacobean tree house?
He shook his head as he studied it. There was nothing in the sketch to indicate where this might be.
On one of the Barrington estates? He hadn’t come across it in his dark-of-night visit here. What’s more, it would be safer for Barrington to live in the main house, not in a tree house, where meals would have to be brought out to him. That would be impossible to conceal from the gardeners and tenants and the tenants’ children. Someone would be curious enough to have a look.
“Wherever it was, it might no’ be there now,” Hamish pointed out, the voice seeming overly loud in the quiet room. “A tree is no’ going to last forever.”
There was that too. But it was the only lead this visit had produced.
One person might be able to tell him more. His godfather, David Trevor, an architect himself.
He took another long look at the watercolor, then put it back with the others, where he’d found it, in the event Livingston or anyone else looked to see if anything in the drawers had interested him.
He’d just shut the drawer, was moving the chair back where he’d found it, when there was a tap at the door. He strode quickly and quietly to the shelves, took out a book at random, and opened it before calling, “Come in.”
It was the housemaid, with a tray for his lunch. He thanked her and ate the soup and sandwiches she had brought, finishing the tea in the pot before ringing the bell again. When she came to remove the tray, he told her he’d finished his business in the house for the moment, and she escorted him to the main door, where his hat and coat were waiting.
The gates were standing open. He looked back and saw a gardener step out of the trees and close the gates behind him after he’d passed through them.
Rutledge smiled. With any luck, he’d found what he wanted.
But Hamish was not as sure of that.
Rutledge set out to find a telephone. He hadn’t wanted to risk using the one at the house, and he wasn’t certain how far he might need to go. Meanwhile, his mind was busy with the puzzle of the tree house.
Safety was the first issue. Where would Barrington feel safe today?
“Ye’re building hope on a sketch,” Hamish reminded him a second time.
“Yes, but it was the only sketch of a place. Not flowers or kittens or the staff or France. She drew her small son’s face in the window. It meant something to her.”
“Aye, but did it mean something to him?”
“A child and a tree house? He’d remember it. Worcestershire?”
“It doesna’ have to belong to the family.”
Rutledge considered that. Who would trust a murderer? Who would allow a man accused of murder to stay anywhere on his property, never mind in the family’s folly? An inquest had found probable cause to try Barrington for the death of Blanche Fletcher-Munro. Would the women in the house find that tolerable? Or the staff charged with preparing his food or washing his sheets?
What’s more, not even Mrs. Barrington could simply walk up a drive and allow her small son to spend an afternoon in someone else’s folly. She would have had to know the family, been invited to visit. And therefore the family would have known the boy, Alan, as well, and allowed him to explore the tree house while she sketched him there in the window. That would have taken what? Several hours, at the very least. That would entail a lunch for the visitors . . . The staff would remember—or guess—who the now-grown man in the folly might be.
The tree house must be on one of the Barrington estates.
He found a telephone finally, in a hotel in the nearest town of any size. The staff was reluctant to allow him to use it, as he wasn’t a guest there. He showed his identification, and they gave way with poor grace.
The telephone call to the Trevor house in Scotland took several minutes to go through, but in the end he heard the housekeeper’s voice.
“Morag?” he asked.
“Mr. Ian? My good Lord, is it you?”
“Yes. I’m trying to find David. Is he at home?”
“He’s only just come in, with young Ian and Fiona. I’ll go and fetch him.”
There was the sound of voices in the distance, and then David’s baritone as he came into the telephone closet.
“Ian? Are you in London? Or Scotland?”
“I’m in between. Dealing with an inquiry. I need your expertise.”
There was disappointment in Trevor’s reply, although he tried to conceal it. “Of course, Ian, anything I can do.”
Rutledge told him what he was after.
“There’s only one tree house that I know of. I’ve seen the drawings, but I’ve never been there, of course. Rather an odd choice for a folly, but there you are. It was built around 1801 for the son of the house, as I remember, and for all I know it’s still standing.”
“Let’s hope it is.”
“But how does this help in your inquiry?”
“I can’t be sure it does. With luck, it will unlock a
mystery. Where is it?”
The answer startled him.
“Belmont Hall in Sussex. Do you know it?”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he responded slowly. “I’d have thought in a county more closely connected to Charles II and his oak tree.”
Trevor chuckled. “No such luck. It’s Jacobean in style, of course, but I don’t know that it has anything to do with the Stuart kings. In point of fact, that style lends itself to a tree house because of the weight. A castle or the like would have been difficult if not impossible to put up among the branches. It’s a large tree, I grant you, but stilts or other foundations to support the folly would have diminished the objective of setting it in a tree.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“If they let you in, ask to see the chapel while you’re about it. Original to the house, and unusual. It even has a priest hole. There’s said to be a secret passage, so that the priest could come and go unseen by the staff. Possibly. I don’t know if that’s legend or fact.”
Rutledge swore to himself.
He had stood beneath that priest hole, with the rope ladder up and not down. Had Barrington been hiding there all the while? Or was he out of sight in the oak tree?
He’d wondered why Miss Belmont had been so friendly, taking him to the house and showing him the chapel.
Showing him that she had nothing to hide, nothing to fear from the police.
And laughing all the while at her cleverness.
In fact, she had spoken first, there in the churchyard. He hadn’t approached her. Had she wanted to know why a stranger was there, wary because Barrington was already at Belmont Hall? And he had asked about Thorne’s grave, which must have worried her more. She had decided on the spot to satisfy his curiosity—and her own.
But for Trevor’s knowledge of the folly, he might have hunted in vain over half of England for the blasted tree house.
“Is it generally known that this folly—this tree house—exists?” he asked.
“The house isn’t open, it’s not in the best repair, and I’ve heard there isn’t the money for an endowment, which means the National Trust isn’t able to take it on. The only reason I’m aware of the folly is because when I was young and just starting out, I worked at Harriman and Ledger for several years, and one of their firm built the folly. I saw an old photograph of it and looked up the plans out of curiosity. I don’t think I’ve given it a thought since then.”
Harriman and Ledger had been one of the foremost architecture firms of the Georgian and Victorian years.
Rutledge thanked him for his information, promising to come back to Scotland for a holiday, knowing full well he would not, and rang off.
When he got to the village where Belmont Hall stood, it was pouring rain, and the roads were awash with puddles, concealing the worst of the ruts. In no good mood, he stopped for a few minutes in front of the churchyard gate. It was late for a call, and far too wet to investigate the folly on his own, although he was sorely tempted, in case he might catch Barrington there, unsuspecting.
Hamish said, “He’s no’ there. She must ha’ warned him off, after you came to the house.”
Rutledge answered, “Or she might have believed that it was now the safest place for him to hide. That I wouldn’t be back. Her mistake was taking me there in the first place. I wasn’t aware of the house, I wouldn’t have connected it with Barrington.”
“Ye were asking questions about Mark Thorne.”
“Still. She took quite a risk.”
There was nothing for it but to spend the night somewhere and come again in the morning. He was tempted to drive on to Melinda Crawford’s house, knowing that however late it was, she would welcome him.
Instead he drove on to the next village, took a damp and dreary room above a pub, and slept restlessly, listening to the busy mice in the walls where the pub’s marmalade cat couldn’t reach them.
Breakfast was on a par with the accommodations, the eggs overdone and the toast cold. But the rain had stopped sometime before dawn and a watery sun was coming up as he set out once more for Belmont Hall.
The walls were streaked with rain, and a puddle the size of his motorcar blocked his way in to the house itself. Splashing through it, he thought about the father and daughter living in such a decaying pile. Had Barrington paid well for his safety there? Or had there been a connection that hadn’t come to light in the earlier reviews—and had only come to light now because of that sketch of the tree house?
Avoiding the worst of the rivulets running downhill from the doorway, he lifted the knocker and let it fall. There had been a bell pull here, the black iron ring still connected on the side, but very likely it was disconnected wherever it had rung inside.
He was examining it, wondering if he should use it after all, when the door opened.
12
Miss Belmont stared at him. Her fair hair had been plaited and arranged in a coronet on the top of her head, but tendrils had escaped around her face, giving her a vulnerable look. Her eyes were unfriendly.
“Inspector Rutledge.”
“Good morning, Miss Belmont,” he said, summoning a smile. “I’ve come to ask a few more questions about Mark Thorne. I did speak to his sister the last time I was here, but she’s bitter and unhappy. It wasn’t a very helpful interview.”
He could see her uncertainty about his motives warring with a temptation to invite him inside and see what it was he wanted.
Temptation won.
“I’m rather busy this morning, I’m afraid, but I can offer you a cup of tea.”
“That’s kind of you.”
She opened the door wider and led him to the lounge he’d seen before. Ringing for the housekeeper or a maid, she offered him a seat.
“How is your inquiry going, Mr. Rutledge?”
“Rather well,” he said affably. “I’ve made good progress on a number of fronts. I’m afraid I can’t discuss them with you—it’s against regulations, you see. But I’ve also drawn some conclusions.”
“Have you indeed?” she asked, taking the chair across from him just as an older woman came to the door. “Tea, Maud, if you please.” She turned back to Rutledge after the woman had gone. “And can you tell me what they are?”
“Mark Thorne was probably murdered.”
She stared at him. “Murdered?” she managed to say, keeping her voice level by an effort of will. “Can you actually prove that?”
“I’m convinced of it. I’d like very much to know who his killer was.”
“Mark was well liked. You couldn’t help but like him, really. I can’t think of any reason why he might have been . . . killed by anyone.”
“Nor can I. Unless it had to do with Blanche, his wife.”
“I’d not like to think that Blanche had anything to do with his death. Besides, she herself didn’t live very long after that.”
“That’s forgiving of you, since she appears to have taken Mark from you.”
She dropped her gaze. “I didn’t possess Mark. He was free to find happiness wherever he chose. Yes, I’d have been delighted if he’d looked in my direction. For a while it seemed—but of course, what we felt then, young as we were, couldn’t last. He went up to Oxford, and that was that.”
The door opened, and Maud came in with the tea tray, setting it on the table at Miss Belmont’s elbow.
“Thank you, Maud,” she said, dismissing the woman. Busying herself with the tea, she added to Rutledge, “I don’t see how I can help you, since you’ve already drawn your conclusions.”
“But I think you can. I’d like very much to have a look at the folly.”
She had lifted the teapot and was about to pour him a cup, but when he mentioned the folly, she stopped, the pot still raised in her hand. A few drops splashed in his saucer.
“Folly?” she said, setting it down and then filling the second cup and handing that to him instead. “I don’t follow you?”
He rose and came to take the cup she held out
to him, offering him milk and sugar, smiling at him with an air of confusion.
“There’s a folly on the grounds of Belmont Hall. I’d like very much to see it. A tree house, I understand. Jacobean in style.”
“Yes, yes, of course there is,” she said impatiently. “I don’t think Mark ever spent much time there—well, not after he was ten or so and lost interest in climbing trees. I can’t think why you’d like to see that. It’s in some disrepair.” She shrugged in apparent embarrassment. “Sadly there haven’t been the resources to see to its upkeep.”
“Yes, I expect that’s true. But I’m sure you can’t mind my having a look.”
“How did you learn of the folly? There have been no photographs of it taken since—” She frowned. “I believe it was 1880 or 1881. My mother made a record of it for the estate while it was still reasonably well kept. I played with my dolls there after I was old enough to mount the stairs safely, then lost interest in it. I doubt there are a dozen people who wonder if it’s still standing.” She sipped her tea, waiting for his answer.
“In the course of my inquiries, I came across a rather pretty watercolor of it. And there was a young boy standing by a window. I wondered if that might be Mark.”
She regarded him with interest. “I don’t recall any watercolors of the folly. With or without little boys. Friends of my mother’s, perhaps? That might explain why I don’t remember. I wasn’t allowed there until I was old enough not to fall and hurt myself. But we often had guests when she was alive, and what they did before I was born or while I was napping I can’t tell you.” She frowned a little. “I wonder why the watercolor wasn’t left here. I expect it would have pleased my mother to have it in the archives.”
“Perhaps the artist preferred to keep it, because there was her little boy in it.”
