The Black Ascot

by Charles Todd

  “I have spent my life keeping the secrets of others. One more won’t burden my soul.” He offered his hand, and Rutledge took it, then watched Ranson walk back the way they’d come.

  It was odd, he thought, as he saw Ranson open his door, step inside, and shut it without looking back, that a man’s reputation was what put him above suspicion. It was very possible that Strange had allowed a murderer to use the Sandwich house, and no one the wiser.

  Hamish said, “If he loved yon woman, why would Strange give aid and comfort to her killer?”

  16

  Rutledge reconnoitered the street where the house Strange had bought was located. They were not as grand as those where Strange Senior lived, but still fine enough to suit a partner of Broadhurst, Broadhurst, and Strange, if he chose to bring a bride here. Two-story, with columns inset by the door and black iron railings to either side, attached to the house at each end of the property, No. 27 had been renovated in the late 1700s or early 1800s. More Georgian than medieval now, like most of its neighbors, it had been recently painted a pleasing cream.

  Without appearing to loiter, Rutledge kept an eye on it. But it was almost four o’clock when a man with white hair came out of No. 27 and walked toward the shops. Rutledge followed him to a bakery and watched through the front window as the man bought bread and several small cakes for tea.

  Seeing him clearly in the well-lit bakery Rutledge judged that he must be closer to seventy than sixty, although his face was more or less smooth of wrinkles and his back was quite straight. Ex-military? He thought it likely.

  Rutledge kept his distance, while the man went from the bakery to the pub, bought a bottle of ale, and then walked home with his purchases.

  After the man had gone inside No. 27, Rutledge walked on to the quay. But The Saucy Belle was riding the tide in her usual place. He stayed in the shadows there for two hours, but there was no coming and going. Finally he turned away, dodging a Constable just coming through the Barbican to patrol the river.

  Hamish warned, “You ken, it’s a matter of time before a Constable stops you. Wandering about the streets as you’ve done.”

  “In for a penny, in for a pound,” Rutledge answered absently, his mind on what he’d learned so far.

  “Ye havena’ any authority.”

  “Yes, well, it’s better not to get caught.”

  But when he made his way back to No. 27 and began to cast about for access to the rear of the house, Hamish was there in the forefront of his mind, arguing against taking the risk. “There isna’ any proof that Alan Barrington has used yon house.”

  “Which is why I have to look into it. If I can show that Barrington has been in that house at any time, then we know for certain that he’s still alive. And could well have come back to England, just as Wade told me.”

  “Ye canna’ be sae foolish.”

  “Not if it isn’t absolutely necessary.” But he’d already found the narrow, dank passage that ran along back gardens, most of them walled with a postern gate of sorts opening onto the passage. By counting the gates, he found the one belonging to No. 27, and he was able to open it with a minimum of noise. But a dog began to bark across the way, and he crouched in the shadows until it had lost interest.

  Hamish, seething with disapproval, was an undercurrent in Rutledge’s mind as he tried to concentrate on what he could see from the shelter of the small shed halfway down the garden.

  Most of the windows of the house were inaccessible, he realized. In the front, they were visible to anyone passing or looking out of windows from across the street. There was no safe way to attempt to open one. At either side, the houses abutted against each other, with no windows at all. And even here in the back, trying to reach an upper story without a ladder would be impossible—with one, he’d alert anyone in the well-lit kitchen.

  He had to be satisfied with peering into the kitchen windows, where the couple—Mr. and Mrs. Billingsley—had already sat down to their own dinner. She was shorter than her husband, weighed at least two stone more, and wore her graying hair in a knot at the back of her neck.

  There was bread on the table beside them, but no wine.

  Rutledge cursed the fact that he couldn’t see into the dining room, but twice Mrs. Billingsley got up to prepare a plate that her husband carried through a door. The last one held one of the cakes Billingsley had bought at the bakery.

  One plate . . .

  One diner.

  He stepped away, saw the door that must lead from the kitchen passage to the back garden, and crossed to test it. It moved under his hand.

  Ignoring Hamish’s warning, he opened it very slowly. He could hear the couple speaking to each other in the kitchen, but not the words. He stepped inside the passage and stood there for a moment. Using his hands to explore in the darkness, he found another door to his right. It was ajar, and he quickly realized that it opened to a narrow twisting staircase leading upward into more blackness.

  Hamish’s warning was strident but he began to climb, finding a handrail and slowly feeling his way. At the top of the stairs was another door, and when he opened it carefully, he found himself in a wide passage that was in stygian blackness save for the light welling up the main staircase from what must be the hall below. He could just make out closed doors to his right and his left. The silence here was profound.

  He crossed to the balustrade and carefully looked down. There was the main door to the street, and by the newel post was a tall walnut stand with a lamp on it. The walls appeared to be papered in a forest print, with exotic birds in brilliant plumage peering out from the dark, spreading branches. He realized that the flickering flame of the lamp caught flecks of paint in the birds’ eyes, and they glittered with touches of gold and blue and silver.

  A case clock out of his line of sight struck eight, and he waited for the reverberations to end before he moved to the top of the stairs. But before he could start down, a door opened below, he heard someone speaking, and then a man’s voice nearer at hand wished someone a good night. Rutledge could hear footsteps coming his way, and he retreated quickly to the servants’ door and stepped inside.

  He left it open a bare crack, expecting the man below to go into a drawing room or study for a last drink before coming up the stairs to bed. Instead, whoever it was opened the door to the street and stood there for some time, staring out into the night.

  Tempted, Rutledge moved silently across the floor until he could just see a man’s dark head and broad shoulders in a dark suit of clothes.

  All at once, the man said without turning, “Who’s there? Is it you, Billingsley?”

  Rutledge froze.

  And then Billingsley’s voice said, “Mrs. Billingsley would like to know when you would like breakfast, sir?”

  “Tell her not to bother. Just tea will do.”

  “Very well, sir. Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  Rutledge had used the cover of the exchange to move back out of sight. The street door closed, he heard the latch turned, and then the man must have found a candle, because as he began to mount the stairs, a flickering glow preceded him. At the top he turned left, away from where Rutledge was watching. When a door opened and closed down the passage, Rutledge closed his door and made his way back down the servants’ stairs. The door to the kitchen was ajar, and through the narrow crack, he could see Mrs. Billingsley heating water to do the washing up, and her husband was just coming into view, a tray of dishes from the dining room in his hands.

  Talking over the clatter of plates and silverware, they didn’t hear Rutledge go out the passage door and close it behind him.

  Once in the back garden, he looked up to see whether the visitor’s room was on the front or the back of the house. But the back range of windows on the first floor remained dark.

  There was nothing more to be seen. He turned and followed the wall back to the gate, went through it, and started down the dark alley.

  That night Hamish kept him awake
for the better part of three hours.

  Early the next morning, when Rutledge went to check on The Saucy Belle, she had been moved. The rowing boat was tied up where she had been, and she had taken its place. But where she had been and how long she had been out, it was impossible to say. Surely not long enough to have gone to France and returned. Still, she might have been to Dover to drop off a passenger. Or to Folkestone, south of Dover along the Kent coast.

  The London train came to Dover . . .

  He swore.

  There was no way of knowing how long someone had stayed at No. 27 or where he might be now.

  Rutledge had—very likely—found another piece of the puzzle. A bolt-hole where Barrington could be safe. But he was no closer to catching his quarry. He couldn’t even be sure that the man staying that night at No. 27 was Barrington.

  Rutledge paid his bill at the inn, professed to be happy the quarrel with his father was over and he could return to the fold, and went out to the shed to his motorcar.

  He was just two streets away from leaving Sandwich when he saw a motorcar ahead of him. It had stopped in the middle of the street, and the driver had got out to inspect a tire.

  Jonathan Strange.

  Rutledge pulled to the verge, stopping beside a small stand selling hot meat pies. Fumbling for his money while keeping an eye on the other motorcar, he bought one. By that time, Strange had got back behind the wheel and was already pulling ahead. He hadn’t looked behind him. He wasn’t expecting to be followed.

  Rutledge let him go, then set out to keep him in sight.

  He nearly lost the other motorcar in Rochester, found it again outside the railway station where a man carrying a valise walked briskly out of the doors and joined Strange in the motorcar. It was too far to get a good look at him, for he was wearing a hat.

  Rutledge couldn’t have said why. But he would have wagered his own life that this was not Alan Barrington. There was something about the set of the shoulders, the way the man moved that was familiar.

  He worried at the memory for the rest of the way to London.

  Strange drove the motorcar into London, dropping his passenger off at the Barrington house before turning back toward the City.

  This time Rutledge got a better look at his passenger. It was Arnold Livingston, the steward of the Barrington estates.

  Now what the devil do those two have in common? Rutledge asked himself as he watched Livingston go around to the rear of the house instead of unlocking the main door and entering there as he must have every right to do.

  Oxford, where they’d met. The Barrington estates, which were in their charge in various ways. Certainly Blanche Richmond. But what was their personal connection to Alan Barrington now? Friendship? Loyalty? Or had ten years eroded those ties? Barrington’s possessions were a tempting reason to see that their rightful owner never returned to claim them.

  He waited, far enough down the street not to be noticed, but Livingston didn’t come out again.

  Finally, with no other reason for postponing his return to his flat, Rutledge went home.

  He had made an effort to put the attempt to kill himself out of his mind for a time. Still, it was there, just below the surface—lurking in the shadows like some ugly thing he didn’t want to recognize. Now as he opened his door, he saw again that brilliant flash of light. It was so real that he jerked his head to one side, knocking off his hat. But there was no searing pain, no blackness, and he felt foolish.

  Picking up his hat, he realized that there were several newspapers set to one side of the entry. The daily, who came twice a week, had collected them and put the post on the silver tray on the table.

  He took them into the front room, setting them aside on a straight chair, but they slid apart and fell to the floor.

  The headline on one of them was large and black.

  ten years later: where is alan barrington?

  Rutledge picked it up. The blasted woman reporter had written her story after all. And not in the Times or Guardian. It was one of the lesser papers, one he didn’t subscribe to.

  The daily must have added to his own newspapers, thinking it might interest a policeman. She had a decided taste for scandal, and had done this once or twice before.

  This time he was grateful, and as soon as he’d shoved his driving gloves into his pocket, put away his hat and coat, he sat down to read what Miss Mills had written.

  There was little in the way of new information. She had clearly read all the past articles on Barrington and distilled them into her own story.

  But the last lines made him swear.

  If Alan Barrington is dead, why is Scotland Yard looking into his disappearance again? Is it merely routine, or is there something we haven’t been told? Something the Yard is secretly pursuing, hoping to redeem itself after losing this man before he could stand trial? Surely the public has a right to know. If there is a murderer in our midst.

  The woman had nothing to base her conclusions on. He was almost certain of that. Gibson and Jameson would never have spoken to her. He didn’t think Livingston or Strange would want the past raked up in this fashion.

  What she had done was give her rather slim account something at the end to stir the interest of her readers. To make them ask questions. She hadn’t stopped to consider what it would do to any real inquiry going on. She probably hadn’t cared. And the Yard couldn’t deny what she’d written without arousing more suspicion.

  He looked at the date of the newspaper. Two days ago.

  Was it this that had sent Jonathan Strange to Sandwich? Had he gone there to take out The Saucy Belle and get Barrington out of the country?

  Rutledge remembered what he’d overheard. Billingsley asking the guest in the house what he wished to have for breakfast.

  And the man had replied, Just tea will do.

  Because he knew he’d be on the Belle in a few hours’ time, and out to sea? The crossing was often rough enough to make seasickness a risk. Was that why Livingston had come down to the same part of Kent, bringing luggage or whatever else Barrington might need and not have with him?

  The Belle could have carried him to Dover, to meet Livingston, and then he could have taken a ferry across to Calais. Safely out of England. Just another traveler on his way to France.

  Rutledge balled up the thin sheets of newsprint and hurled them across the room.

  Damn the woman!

  Rutledge woke in the night with a thundering headache. He’d fallen asleep in his chair, tired of Hamish hammering at him, angry with the article on Barrington in the newspaper, all too aware that if Barrington had left England, any hope of bringing him in was lost for months if not years.

  He could see—almost as clearly as he’d done looking down into that hall in the house in Sandwich—the dark head of a man staring out into the night.

  Was that Barrington?

  What had taken Strange and Livingston to the coast at the same time? Then back to London together?

  What if he’d jumped to conclusions that were possible—but not likely? He got up and went to the kitchen for a glass of water, then changed his mind and began to pace the floor.

  But there was The Saucy Belle, leaving Sandwich’s harbor and returning to dock in a different place. Where had she sailed to?

  What if the man in the house in Delft Street wasn’t Barrington?

  What if Strange and Livingston had seen the same newspaper account he’d just read, and the wind up, they had gone to look for Barrington themselves? Or sent someone they trusted to where they’d thought he ought to be?

  He stopped short, remembering the Danish coin he’d found in the tree house at Belmont Hall.

  What if Barrington hadn’t told Strange or Livingston that he’d returned to England? And only Miss Belmont knew that he was here?

  Why did he trust her—and not men he’d known in the past? His solicitor and his steward?

  Rutledge changed clothes, picked up the valise from Sandwich, and was out the doo
r twenty minutes later, a Thermos of tea under his arm. The night drive to Belmont Hall cleared his head, and by the time he’d reached the village, the sun rose in a huge red ball that turned the early morning mist pink.

  Leaving the motorcar well outside the village, he walked the rest of the way, coming to Belmont Hall in a roundabout direction that took him into the wood where the tree house stood while avoiding the main house.

  Letting himself in, he looked around the once elegant room. As far as he could tell, no one had been here since he’d left with Miss Belmont. The bed was made up, the furnishings where he’d seen them last.

  He sat down to wait, finishing the last of the tea at four o’clock in the afternoon. As dusk fell, he lit one of the lamps in the room, then settled himself in a corner beyond the bed where he couldn’t be seen through the windows by anyone approaching. Two hours later it began to rain. He put out the light and prepared himself for a long night.

  It was well after seven and quite dark when he heard someone on the steps to the door. It opened softly, but no one came in. He could hear the rain, louder with the door wide.

  “Whoever you are, come out now. I’m armed.”

  It was Miss Belmont’s voice. Lower, a little frightened. Determined.

  He stayed where he was.

  “Come out, I say. Or I’ll fire.”

  He didn’t think she would. And then in spite of the rain, he heard the faint click as the revolver was cocked.

  “Come in and shut the door,” he said then. “I’m not armed.”

  There was a stunned silence. The door closed and he heard her footsteps move into the room. But she hadn’t seen him yet.

  “Rutledge?” she said at last. There was the scrape of a match, the brief smell of sulfur, and then lamplight spread through the room, temporarily blinding both of them.

  He stood up, ignoring the cramp in his leg. “Were you expecting to find a friend? Or a foe?” he asked.