The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  Bramley was a quiet backwater, older, well kept, with a surprisingly good-size church and a Rectory just down from the churchyard. There had been money here once, to build the church, but the Rectory was a rather plain early Victorian house with a clutter of children’s toys and two bicycles scattered across the lawn and the porch. A large gray dog lay on the top step.

  The board outside St. James listed the Rector as one Dorian Alders.

  Rutledge approached the dog casually, speaking to it, but while it opened its eyes to stare at him and lifted its ears, it made no effort to move. With some trepidation he walked past it and knocked at the door. But it still didn’t stir.

  Through the curtains at the oval glass window of the door he could see someone approaching. The door opened and a woman in a kerchief and apron smiled at him.

  “Are you looking for Rector?” she asked.

  “I am. I’m—doing a little family research, and I wondered if he might be able to help me.”

  “Well, he’ll be happy to do that, I’m sure. But he’s down at the home farm at the moment. There’s sickness there. You’re welcome to come in and wait for him. It’s too cold to sit on the veranda.”

  The long porch that wrapped itself around the front of the house had several chairs of indeterminate age, two of them with the seats nearly worn through. The woman glanced at them wryly and said, “We have a large family. I’ll even offer you a cup of tea, if you’re brave enough. I’m Mrs. Alders.”

  She opened the door wider and he stepped inside.

  The entry was dark, mostly consisting of dark paneling and stairs that rose to his right. As he followed the woman down the passage, she added over her shoulder, “The twins—the little twins—have been sick, I’m afraid, but it’s not catching.”

  He stepped over a spilled bowl of what appeared to be porridge, and went through the door at the end of the passage into a bright and sunny kitchen.

  “This is my favorite room. Well, it ought to be, I seem to spend most of my time here.”

  A cat sat on the table, drinking from a cup of milk, and twin boys lay in makeshift beds, sound asleep. They looked to be about two years old, and smelled of sour milk and sickness.

  She moved a board where she had been ironing pillow slips, and pulled out a chair. “I’ll just put the kettle on. I was nearly finished here.”

  “Go ahead with your work,” he said, swiftly inspecting the seat before sitting down.

  “Do you mind? I’ll just do these last three slips while the kettle heats.”

  She went back to the iron, testing it before putting it down on a damp pillow slip. “They were sick in the night, poor dears. The others are at school. That’s why Jasper is asleep on the porch. Waiting for them.”

  “A large family indeed,” he said politely as the cat came over to sniff at his fingers.

  “Well, three sets of twins and a single. The oldest girl. We’ve been blessed.” He looked up, thinking she was laughing, but she was quite serious.

  “A good deal of work for you,” he said.

  “Ordinarily I have help, but it’s her mother who is sick at the home farm. The new doctor mumbles, but I think she’s got pleurisy. I’ve seen it before.” She sighed.

  Finishing up the slips, she folded them lightly and set them to one side, then put the iron back on the cooker. He rose to help her unfold the board and put it in a closet, but she shook her head. “Thank you, but I’m used to the weight.” Once it was in the narrow cupboard, she added, “I don’t think you gave your name.”

  “My apologies. I was too taken up with the dog and the large family,” he said with a smile. “It’s Rutledge.”

  Surprised, she said, “I don’t believe we have any Rutledges in this part of the county.”

  “It’s not my father’s family I’m looking into,” he answered. “My mother’s connection. Maitland?”

  “Well, we have those. Or rather we did. They’re all gone now.”

  “Gone?”

  “John and his wife are dead, of course. They died of typhoid in 1915. And Clive never came home from the war. That’s to say, he survived, but he asked Dorian to close up the house and see to things. His wounds didn’t allow him to travel far from London.”

  “He lives in London?”

  “He did before the war. Well, soon after the war started, I think it was. I haven’t heard that he’s left there since coming home again.” The kettle boiled, and she turned to it. “I expect Dorian has kept his direction. He’ll know.”

  “Tell me about the family.”

  “There’s not much to tell. It’s been here for ages. They owned land, given to them by John Churchill. That’s what the records say, a farm of his. But they’ve been solicitors for several generations now. There’s a new man in the firm, of course, although it’s still Maitland and Son. Meaning Clive’s father and grandfather, you see. The Barnards bought the goodwill of the firm, and kept the name. They bought the Maitland house too. It was a good business decision. We’ve quite become accustomed to the Barnards.”

  “You know a good deal about Bramley and its people.” She brought him a cup of tea, inspected the milk pitcher for cat hairs, then handed it to him. He poured it gingerly.

  “I should. I was born here. Dorian and I began walking out soon after he took over from Old Rector, Mr. Seton. I kept him dancing attendance for two years before I said yes.” She smiled again, her blue eyes crinkling at the corners. Rutledge had a sudden image of a younger Mrs. Alders, with the fair hair peeking out of her kerchief done up in a more fashionable style, leading Mr. Alders a merry chase before she was ready to settle down. He rather thought Mr. Alders must have been besotted.

  “Tell me more about Clive. I had no idea someone from my mother’s family might be living in London.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Yes. Well, the outskirts.”

  She nodded. “I remember Clive so well. A tall boy, all elbows and knees, and yet he grew into the handsomest young man you could imagine. Tall and strong and well mannered. He was sent off to school, and I only saw him in the summers and hols after that. My sister was head over heels in love with him, but of course he didn’t know it. I could understand why. Just a lovely young man. Then the summer of his last year in Oxford, he went to Scotland to climb with friends. They were separated when a mist came down, and he was lost. I mean, lost.”

  “But I thought you said he was living in London.”

  “They never found his body. But when he didn’t return to the inn where they were staying, the search went on for days. To no avail. Mr. Maitland went to Scotland and stayed there until all hope was gone. He came home a broken man. I saw him at services the next Sunday, and he looked like a ghost of himself. Clive was everything to his parents. Mr. Maitland had a stroke some months later, and it affected his vision, although with a clerk to help, he kept up his law practice.”

  “What happened then?” he asked, as she stood there staring out the window, seeing only the past.

  “That was the end of it. Or so we thought. A memorial service was held, and then a plaque put up in the nave. Then, in 1911, I think it was, there was a cable from France. A family friend had seen Clive Maitland’s name in a hotel register in Nice. Mr. Maitland went at once to Nice, and he came home to say his boy was alive but had no memory of his past or even how he came to be in France. That the fall had done something to his head. He’d come to and wandered away, been picked up somewhere as a vagrant, sent to hospital—I never knew all the story. The next memory he had was of begging on the streets of Paris. He found work sweeping out a bar, and by 1911, he owned that bar and another, and had taken a little holiday in Nice. It was a nine days’ wonder, let me tell you. Mr. Maitland was all for bringing him back to Bramley, but Clive kept saying he wasn’t Clive, and refused to come. The next thing the family heard, he’d returned to England and joined the Army in 1914. When his parents died of typhoid in 1915, he wrote to ask Dorian to see to things for him.
As I told you.”

  “It must have been hard on his parents, his refusal to come home.”

  “It was. I don’t think they fought too hard against the typhoid. My father was Doctor then, and he said they simply slipped away. Knowing Clive was alive yet knowing he didn’t intend to come home was terrible. I don’t think my mother ever forgave him for such cruelty.”

  “But the father was blind, you say. He couldn’t actually see his son.”

  “He recognized him. Of course he would. His voice. His ways.”

  How much was wishful thinking? Hope? Need?

  Rutledge sat there taking in what he’d been told.

  Out of nowhere Hamish said, “It was a verra’ cruel business.”

  The soft Scots voice seemed to fill the room, and the twins stirred in their sleep.

  Rutledge set down his cup with a click, and tried to cover his surprise.

  But Mrs. Alders was putting the cat out and seemed to not notice anything wrong.

  “There. My work done for the morning,” she said.

  “Were the Maitlands so sure? That this man was Clive?”

  “I know it’s hard for you to think he might have been sure. You don’t have any children, do you? No, I thought not. I’d recognize mine anywhere. Of course I would.” She reached out and brushed the hair out of the eyes of one of her sons. “I’d know them. But I’d pray they’d know me too. That’s what lingers in my mind. That Clive didn’t know his father. I asked my father about that, you know. About the brain injury or whatever it must have been. He said that such an accident might have made it impossible to connect one life to the other. And Clive had struggled to connect himself with a new life, a precarious new life that was all he could remember.”

  “But I should think he would have been glad of even the slimmest link to who he might have been before the fall.”

  “Mr. Maitland did all he could do. As he lay dying, he said to my father that if Clive ever remembered, ever came home wanting to find his rightful place, to tell him that his parents had believed in him and loved him, and would rejoice. He gave Rector a letter as well. I expect Dorian still has it.”

  Rutledge said, “I’d like to see that letter.”

  “He won’t let you see it. It wasn’t written to you.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “Clive has never wanted it. Never come here. But it has to stay here and wait for him. What if he fell in the street one day, and suddenly the past came back to him, but he lost the present? He’d come to Bramley, wouldn’t he? And he’d need that letter. My father is dead, of course. But I know what Mr. Maitland wanted done. I was told on his deathbed.”

  A sacred trust. They’d protect that letter out of a belief that it must stay where it was. Ready to hand for a time that might one day come.

  She looked more closely at him. “I shouldn’t have mentioned the letter. It was wrong of me. But we were talking, and I remembered it.”

  “No harm done,” Rutledge managed to say, covering his disappointment. He could get a writ for it. There were ways. But best not yet. Best not to start rumors flying and have someone write to London to Clive Maitland. Whoever he was or might have been.

  “It was wrong of me to ask,” he said contritely. “I was lost in the story you were telling, and the letter seemed to hold all the answers to the mystery.”

  “I don’t know whether it does or not. I expect it holds love and remorse and sadness.”

  She glanced at the small clock ticking away on a narrow shelf above the windows looking out at the winter-bare back garden. “I don’t think Dorian will be coming home anytime soon. More’s the pity. He’d be glad to speak to you, I’m sure.”

  It was dismissal. His cup was empty, and he could hardly sit there until the Rector came home. Surprised to see that it was nearly noon, he rose.

  “You were kind to invite me in and tell me about the Maitlands. I find I’ve lost my appetite to learn any more about them. A sad ending to my search. I’d hoped for happier news.”

  “You didn’t say how your mother was connected.”

  “Her grandmother was a Maitland.” He made it up as he went. “We thought perhaps the Lake area family, but they’re far too grand.” He smiled, and it reached his eyes, disarming her. “There was some tale about her branch of the family serving with John Churchill. That led me to Bramley.”

  “There are Maitlands in the churchyard. You could wander a bit and see if any of the names fit.”

  “Yes. Yes, I could,” he said with an enthusiasm he was far from feeling. “A good idea.”

  She showed him to the door, and he left. But he took half an hour to wander in the churchyard all the same. There was nothing there to help him in his search, except for the two lonely graves of Clive Maitland’s parents. He didn’t recognize any of the other family names. He had no reason to. When he thought his presence in the churchyard had assured Mrs. Alders that he was genuine and harmless, he went back to his motorcar and drove out of the village, slowing briefly to find the tall house where the firm of Maitland and Son still had its board affixed above the bell. He was briefly tempted to stop and go inside, but if the Barnards had bought the house and firm at sale and never knew the Maitland family, it would only cause comment.

  At the moment he didn’t want anyone, a worried Rector or his wife, writing to London to Clive Maitland, wherever it was he lived.

  “Ye should ha’ got the direction,” Hamish told him as the motorcar turned out of the village onto the main road to Worcester.

  “I’d have had to wait for Mr. Alders. And she told me he wasn’t coming soon after all,” he answered out of habit. “I could hardly ask her for it.”

  But Hamish was of the opinion that he’d failed.

  In the long drive back to London, Rutledge considered what he’d learned. He wasn’t as certain by the time he reached the city that Maitland maintained any more than a simple, inconspicuous flat where the post could be delivered and no one the wiser about who lived or didn’t live in the house.

  That, Rutledge thought, was how I’d go about it in Maitland’s shoes. I’d not live anywhere near there or go there or show my face in the street. I’d hire a firm to collect my post and see to any matters requiring my attention.

  Because the Mrs. Alderses of this world would remember the handsome lad her sister believed she was in love with, and she would know instantly whether the Clive Maitland of that London address was the same Clive Maitland she’d watched grow from gangly boy to manhood.

  He slept in his own bed that night, and spent some time the next morning considering whether to ask Gibson to poll the Met police for Maitland’s house, or let it remain in the shadows. On the whole, he rather thought it should be left untouched.

  A last resort, a last hidey-hole—and a last place for the police to look.

  Satisfied, he turned his attention to his next step.

  But where to start that next step?

  Barrington knew Europe and so did Clive Maitland. Denmark—Nice. Both men—the same man—it didn’t matter—could disappear as easily as he had been discovered.

  There was that to consider.

  In the opposite column was the fact that if he, Rutledge, did nothing, he lost the advantage he’d been given by that one initial bit of information. That Barrington had been seen returning to England.

  The gravest danger was that Miss Belmont had already told Barrington that someone was searching . . .

  Standing up from the table he’d used as his desk, Rutledge paced the floor, thinking through what he’d done, and what he still had the ability to do.

  Hamish said, “It’s naught more than a cluster of facts.”

  There was someone at the door. He heard the familiar sound of the knocker, and turned toward the front room of his flat. The post came at nine and again at three. Who then?

  He had an awful presentiment that Frances had come to ferret him out of his den and drag him off to lunch with her.

  It w
as the sort of thing she’d do, rallying him about avoiding her, about using his duties as an excuse not to see her.

  His second frantic thought was that he needn’t answer the door. But he realized how foolish that was—his motorcar stood out front, announcing to the world that he must be inside.

  The knocker struck the plate again, more forcefully this time.

  Best to face the situation and deal with it. Would a lunch with Frances be the end of the world? He’d always enjoyed dining with her. Her marriage couldn’t have changed that.

  He turned, picked up his coat and pulled it on over his shirt, straightening his tie.

  And then with a smile on his face, he walked to the door and pulled it open, ready to greet his sister.

  As the door swung wide in his hand, he realized in the split second left to him that Frances wasn’t standing there in the bright sunlight, smiling up at him.

  By that time, out of nowhere the revolver had fired, and Rutledge went down, the bright sunlight fading swiftly into blackness that welled up and overwhelmed him.

  14

  He lived on a quiet street—sedately handsome houses, plane trees lining the road—not a place where gunfire was heard at all, at any hour of the day.

  He didn’t know who first came to the scene. Or how he was bundled into an ambulance and carried off to Casualty.

  His first bleary memory was of white all around him, doctors and Sisters and a smell of ether and other medicaments. He lost that, back into blackness again, and as he felt the hands working with his clothing and his body, he drifted in and out of consciousness, unable to speak or hear or think. A sea of blackness, soft and moving and deep. He could feel himself rise to the surface twice more, and then there was nothing else.

  When he came to finally, it was in a dark room. He could see the spirit lamp by the door, where someone could look in on him, without disturbing him.

  He lay there for a time, unwilling to move. The bed was warm, he was warm, and the effort to think was too much.