Charles Todd

by Ian Rutledge 12 - The Red Door (v5)

  And then they moved to the churchyard, watching the plain coffin being lowered into the ground. Next to the open grave was the small patch of grass, slightly lower than its surroundings, that marked her son’s resting place. A rosebush bloomed where a stone should have been, the small pink blossoms reminding Rutledge of one very much like it he’d seen in Florence Teller’s garden.

  Beyond Timmy’s grave was a third, the sod flat and untouched.

  No one stepped forward at first to throw in the first handful of earth until the constable came up, did his duty, and said under his breath, “I hope you’ve found peace, now.”

  Edwin walked up, stared for a moment into the grave, as if he were praying, and then took a firm handful of earth and scattered it gently. It dropped like the first sounds of a heavy rain on the roof as it struck the wooden coffin. Amy Teller followed him, and others came up as well, among them Mrs. Greeley and then Sam Jordan. Lawrence Cobb, watched by his uncle, paused for a moment looking up at the cloudless sky, then gently dropped a yellow rose into the grave. It landed at the broadest part of the coffin, and he nodded, as if that was what he’d intended. Without a word, he walked on, ignoring the red-haired woman just behind him. Rutledge could see her resemblance to Mrs. Blaine, but Betsy was slimmer, prettier. Her mouth was drawn tight now, and he noticed that she didn’t look into the grave or reach for a handful of earth. Instead her eyes were fixed on her husband.

  Hamish said, “He’ll no’ spend a restful night.”

  Rutledge was the last of the mourners to step forward. Mr. Kerr gave the benediction, and then Florence Marshall Teller was left to the attentions of the gravediggers and the sexton.

  Rutledge stood there for a moment longer, then went to join Edwin and Amy Teller as they walked back to their motorcar.

  “I’m glad we came,” Edwin said with conviction. “It was the right thing to do.”

  “A very simple service,” Rutledge said. “But I think it suited her.”

  “I’ve always liked that psalm,” Amy said. “ ‘I will lift mine eyes unto the hills . . .—”

  Edwin said, “The curate spoke of a child. A boy. Were there any other children?”

  “Only the one son. I’m told he died of illness many years ago.”

  “But you told me—I thought you said he was still alive,” Amy accused him.

  “I said I was unable to ask his views,” Rutledge answered her.

  “How sad,” Edwin Teller said. The words sounded sincere, rather than a conventional expression of sympathy. “For her.”

  “Was she your sister-in-law?” Rutledge asked without emphasis.

  Edwin Teller stared at him. “This is neither the time nor the place,” he snapped.

  Rutledge replied, “Where then is the proper place?”

  But there was no answer to that. Even Amy Teller looked away, her face pale.

  They had nearly reached the Teller motorcar. Before he could press the issue, Rutledge was distracted by a boy running toward the churchyard, in the direction of Constable Satterthwaite. Rutledge excused himself and left the Tellers standing there.

  By the time he’d reached the spot where Satterthwaite was standing listening to the boy, the constable looked up.

  He said in a low voice, “A message from the police in Thielwald. They’ve found a walker who admits to being in the vicinity around the time Mrs. Teller was killed. He can’t be sure of the exact day, but it fits well enough. He’s being held there. Are you coming, sir?”

  “Yes. My motorcar is at Mrs. Greeley’s house.”

  “I’ll meet you there in five minutes,” Satterthwaite said. He thanked the boy and turned to speak to the curate, commenting on the service.

  Thielwald had ancient roots, but the town itself looked as if it had been born in the last century and had no recollection of any past before that.

  Rutledge had only seen it in late evening, the night he and Constable Satterthwaite had called on Dr. Blake, whose surgery was in a side street before they had reached the High Street.

  He could see now that Thielwald’s gray stone houses were crowded along the main road, which was bisected by a few cross streets. In the town center there were the usual shops and a busy pub called The Viking’s Head. The church was just beyond the center, as plain as the one in Hobson but slightly larger, its churchyard clustered around it like lost souls on the windswept rise.

  Hamish, who had been quiet during the service and the drive here, said, “It’s no’ a place I’d like to live.”

  Rutledge had been thinking the same thing—no character to set it off, no natural features to make it more attractive. A small town with no pretensions.

  Seeing the post office set in a corner of an ironmonger’s shop, Rutledge said, “Ah. I’d like to make a brief stop here before we see this walker. I want to ask the postmistress a question.”

  “Can it wait?”

  “No.” He halted the motorcar, and leaving it running, he said to the constable, “Wait here. I shouldn’t be more than five minutes.”

  Striding into the ironmonger’s, he turned to the left and found the tiny square of space that was Thielwald’s post office. The middle-aged woman behind the counter smiled as he approached and said, “What can I do for you today, sir?”

  Rutledge identified himself and asked if she handled the mail for Hobson as well.

  “Oh, yes, sir. It’s carried up to the village once a day and delivered. Not that there’s much of it, now the war’s over. Business was quite brisk then, you know, everyone writing to a soldier son or father or brother. Quite brisk.”

  “Do you recall mail for Mrs. Florence Teller?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s Florence Marshall that was. She got the most exotic packets sometimes, covered with foreign stamps. I always wondered what was inside, you know. Mrs. Greeley told me once there were silk pillow slips from China. I hardly know where to find China on the map, and here’s silk pillow slips coming to my own post office.”

  “It must have been quite exciting,” he agreed. “Did Mrs. Teller write to her family or her husband’s family in England?”

  “Letters, you mean.”

  “Yes. Was there an exchange of letters with members of her husband’s family? We’re trying to locate them. It’s the matter of her will.”

  “I don’t believe she ever did. No, nothing like that. She wrote to Lieutenant Teller and he wrote to her. And that was the end of it.”

  “Where did she send the letters to Lieutenant Teller? What regiment? Do you remember?”

  “But they didn’t go to his regiment, sir. They were mailed to an address in Dorset. Lieutenant Teller had told her it was faster than waiting for the Army to send them on. Still and all, it was sometimes many months before a reply came.”

  “Where in Dorset? Do you remember?” He tried not to sound eager.

  She frowned. “A place called Sedley, I think it was. Peter Teller, in care of A. R.—no, I believe it was A. P. Repton, Mistletoe Cottage, Sedley, Dorset,” she finished triumphantly, and smiled at him. “I rather liked Mistletoe Cottege.”

  Repton was the name of the village outside Witch Hazel Farm, where the Teller family had lived for generations. In Essex, not Dorset.

  He thanked her and left.

  So much for the theory of blackmail.

  “Any luck, sir?” the constable asked when Rutledge came back to the motorcar and they drove on.

  “Another dead end, most likely. At least there was no correspondence between Mrs. Teller and her husband’s family.”

  Satterthwaite said, “Just there,” and pointed out the police station, which looked as if it had once been a shop itself, the front window overwhelming the door set to the side. Inspector Hadden was waiting for them with a scruffy-looking young man who was, Rutledge thought, an undergraduate student somewhere.

  He was introduced as Benjamin Larkin, who stood to shake hands with Rutledge and the constable. His voice, when he spoke, was educated, and he said at once, “I w
as in a pub south of Morecambe when I heard there was a murder over by Hobson. A woman in an isolated farmhouse. So I got in touch with the police. It appears to be the same one I passed several days back. I was going to stop in and ask to refill my water bottle, but there was a motorcar on the far side of the hedge, and so I moved on.”

  “A motorcar? Did you see anyone in it?” Hadden asked.

  But Rutledge said, “Start at the beginning if you will.”

  “It was mid-afternoon, I think. I was coming over the rise, taking in the view, and there was a house to my left. I saw a pump in the kitchen yard and I thought I might stop and refill my bottle. But no one was about, so I thought perhaps I’d come around the front and knock, rather than help myself. The view was rather nice, and I moved toward my right to see more of it, when I realized there was a road below the house, not just a lane. I didn’t remember that being on the rough map I had, so I stopped and dug in my gear for it, to be sure I wasn’t in the wrong place. I was walking and looking at the map when I saw a motorcar was stopped at the end of the high hedge surrounding the front garden. It seemed to me that the owner might have come up from Morecambe—it was that kind of motor, and it occurred to me that it would do no harm to ask for a lift. No one was around, so I sat down by a small shrub and ate the last of my biscuits, hoping he wouldn’t be long. I was just putting away my map when I could hear footsteps. And there he was, hurrying back to the motorcar. He was lame, finding it difficult to deal with the crank, but before I could collect my gear and hail him, the motor turned over, and he hobbled around to haul himself in. I didn’t like the look of the situation—he appeared to be angry or upset, not the time to ask favors. I just walked on, and thought no more about it, until I heard talk in the pub where I spent last night.”

  “Did he see you?” Hadden asked.

  “I have no idea. Probably not. I did notice that he glanced around, as if looking for something, but it all happened rather fast.”

  “Where did he go from there?” Rutledge asked.

  “He was driving east.”

  “What can you tell me about the motorcar?”

  “It was a black Rolls, well kept and quite clean. I hadn’t expected to see that out here.” He turned to Inspector Hadden, adding, “With no disrespect. But it was more the sort of vehicle you’d find in a city. It hadn’t been used to haul cabbages or saddles or hens.”

  “And the man?” Rutledge said. He had more or less taken over the questioning, Hadden deferring to him.

  “Lame, as I told you. Tall, slim. Darkish hair, military cut. Well dressed. Like the car, he seemed out of place here.”

  “Was there a quarrel, do you think? Was that what had upset him?”

  “I can’t say. I wasn’t close enough to hear if there was. But no one was shouting, if that’s what you’re asking. Still, not the time to be knocking on doors or asking for a lift.”

  “Did he have a cane? Or some sort of tool in his hand—did you see him toss anything into the motorcar, like a box?”

  “I don’t know—no, actually I do.” Larkin squinted, as if bringing back the scene in his memory. “He was empty-handed when he went to crank the car. But if I’d seen a cane, I wouldn’t have been surprised, given the problem with his legs.”

  “Describe the Rolls, if you will.”

  “Black, well polished, 1914 Ghost, touring car. Rather like the one you drove up in, save for the color.”

  And very like the one Edwin Teller had just driven away in.

  Hamish said, “Do ye believe the lad?”

  All things considered, Rutledge thought he did. Larkin needn’t have come forward, for one thing. He’d already disappeared into the landscape. But sometimes cases turned on unexpected evidence like this.

  “Where are you studying?” Rutledge asked, curious.

  “Cambridge,” Larkin answered and named his college. “Which is why this was a walking tour and not two weeks in Italy. I couldn’t afford it,” he added with a grin.

  “Did you see anyone at the house? A woman? Or notice that the house had a red door?”

  “I never saw the door. No one was in the kitchen yard. I don’t know about the front garden. There was the hedge, you see. Nearly as tall as I was.”

  Rutledge turned to Hadden and Satterthwaite. “Anything else?”

  They had no further questions. Rutledge thanked Larkin and told him he could go. And then he said as Larkin reached behind the desk and lifted his haversack, “Would you mind if I looked in that?”

  Larkin slung it off his shoulder and said, “Help yourself. Mind the dirty wash.”

  But there was nothing in the pack that could have been used for a weapon. And nothing that could have come from Florence Teller’s house. Only spare clothes, a tarp for wet weather, a hairbrush, a toothbrush, a comb, a block of soap, a razor, a book on English wildflowers and another on birds, a heavy bottle for water, and a small sack of dried fruit, biscuits, sweets, and a heel of cheese. Nothing, in fact, that a walker shouldn’t have, and everything he should.

  Hamish said, “He could ha’ left behind anything he didna’ want you to see.”

  It was true. But the very compactness of the haversack, intended to minimize weight and maximize comfort in a small space, didn’t allow for extras.

  Rutledge nodded, asked for his address at Cambridge, and when that was done, thanked him again. Larkin went out the door.

  “What do you think?” Inspector Hadden asked, echoing Hamish.

  “I’ll ask the Yard to be sure he’s who he says he is. But I expect he’s telling the truth.”

  “Was it Teller coming home?” Satterthwaite asked. “If it was, he has money now. I never thought he did before. He had enough that he wasn’t looking to live on Florence’s money from her aunt. But not rich.”

  “A good point,” Rutledge acknowledged. “Pass the word to keep an eye on Larkin while he’s in the district. He might be able to identify the driver, if we find him.”

  Turning to Satterthwaite, Rutledge said, “Did you look at that hedge around the front of the house? If I wanted to rid myself of a murder weapon, I might consider sticking it deep in there. It’s thick enough.”

  Satterthwaite said slowly, “No, we did not. Under it, yes. But we’d have seen anything in the branches, wouldn’t we?”

  “It won’t hurt to have another go at it.”

  By the time they reached Sunrise Cottage, clouds were building far out over the water, and Satterthwaite, scanning them, said, “Looks like this fine weather is about to break. I’m glad the service was dry.”

  Rutledge agreed with him. But he thought they had another hour.

  They searched the hedge carefully, together pulling at the thickest parts of it and then letting them fall back into place. Inch by inch, they worked one side and across the front. As they came round to the corner closest to the house, Rutledge had to step into the hedge to make it easier to part the thick branches there, and grunting, Satterthwaite pushed and shoved at them. Rutledge nearly lost his footing and caught the constable’s shoulder to steady himself. He turned to look down.

  The earth under the hedge was thick with last winter’s fallen leaves and possibly those of winters before that. They formed a light bed perhaps a good inch or so deep.

  Cobb, the schoolmaster, had told Rutledge that since the war, there had been no one but his nephew to help with the farm. And this was proof of it.

  “What’s the matter?” Satterthwaite asked as Rutledge knelt to run his fingers through the damp and rotting mass.

  He had to dig deep into the soil below, but it was loose enough and damp enough for him to wedge his fingers behind something there.

  He found what he was after and pulled it toward him. He could hear the constable’s indrawn breath as he realized what was coming to light.

  Not a walking stick as the doctor had first suggested, but the remains of a Malacca cane. Rutledge stood up with it in his hands.

  Although filthy, with leaves still c
linging to it, it was not an old and rotting thing. It had been hidden here fairly recently, buried just deep enough that a policeman searching among the sparse hedge trunks close to the ground would have seen only what he expected to see—the carpet of leaves. But someone had taken the sharp end and used it to thrust the length of the cane out of sight well below that layer.

  “If I hadn’t felt it under my sole, I wouldn’t have thought to dig,” Rutledge said, running his hands along the wood, gently brushing off the debris.

  “There’s no head,” Satterthwaite pointed out.

  The head had been broken off, and the smooth dark red shaft was still raw where the wood had been splintered.

  “It would match the wound in Florence Teller’s head—or at least the murderer thought it might.” He frowned. “It wouldn’t be easy to snap off the head. Rattan palm canes are very strong. There must have been a weakness—where the cane had dried and cracked around the knob that served as a handle.”

  “Why leave the rest? Why not take the cane and throw it off a bridge far from here?”

  “The killer wouldn’t have wanted to be seen with it in his possession.”

  “But if he brought it here—”

  “Yes, that’s the point. But it only became a weapon once Florence Teller was killed. Before that it was simply someone’s cane.”

  He looked around. The tidy bit of lawn, the flowers on the path, the step and the street door . . . They hadn’t been disturbed.

  Hamish said, “The step.”

  It was a long, rectangular slab of stone, smoothed to serve the doorway. Rutledge walked over to it and ran his hands along the edge. Someone could have shoved the head of the cane under the slab, and with the force of anger or of fear, managed to snap it off. Brush the earth back again, where the head had dug in, and who would notice what had been done. If the police hadn’t found the cane, the slab of step would hold no significance. Someone, having just killed, had taken the time to think through what to do with the weapon.

  That was an interesting look into his state of mind, whoever he was.