The red door ir-12

by Charles Todd

  He asked, "Would this lead Mr. Teller to harm himself?"

  "That's unfortunately a strong possibility. I think he willed himself to die. And when that didn't happen, he came to the conclusion that other measures would be necessary. I'd keep a watch on the river, if I were you."

  Rutledge thanked him and left. Sergeant Biggin was just coming in the clinic door as he was walking out, and he stopped to speak to Rutledge.

  "We've found no sign of him, sir. I've had men searching the streets for the past hour or more and we're circulating Mr. Teller's description and that of the clothing he was wearing as well. Mrs. Teller was kind enough to help us there. You wouldn't think that a man who had been as ill as Mr. Teller was said to be could disappear so quickly. We've even had a man walking through the rooms at the museum, on the unlikely chance that he wandered in there."

  "Are you also watching the river?"

  "I've put out the word, sir. But that's some distance away. Do you think he could have got that far, ill and on his own?"

  "I think he could do whatever he put his mind to. Keep me informed, Biggin. There is nothing more I can do here. Did you meet the rest of the family?"

  "Yes, sir, I did. They were angry. Well, you'd expect that. But it seemed to me they were as angry with Teller as they were with the clinic. Though that's an odd thing to say."

  "All the same, I'll keep it in mind."

  The next morning, Rutledge returned early to the clinic. He found Mrs. Teller in Matron's small sitting room, and again she was alone except for Matron. She was on her feet and asking him for news as soon as he stepped through the door, but he had none to give her. He found himself apologizing, as if it were his fault that her husband hadn't been found.

  To distract her, he asked if her family was with her this morning.

  Jenny Teller sighed and shook her head.

  "They came back close to eight o'clock and they weren't at all satisfied that the police were doing everything they could to find Walter. I told them you'd come to see me, but they were still upset. And then this morning, Amy-she's Edwin's wife-came to tell me that Edwin and Peter weren't convinced that Walter is still in London. And so they have each gone to look for Walter where they felt he might be. I know that Susannah, Peter's wife, went to Cornwall, because his family often summered there when he was a boy. I think it's nonsense, but they're as worried as I am." She turned away, so that Rutledge couldn't see her face. "I asked Amy if she could stay here with me. But she wanted to drive down to Witch Hazel Farm on the off chance that Walter might have decided to go home to heal. He knows I'm here in London-he wouldn't go to Essex, knowing that."

  "He might have awoken to find you weren't here, and he may have gone to Essex to seek you," Rutledge pointed out.

  "But he knew I wouldn't go that far. As for his family, I feel let down, somehow. As if his brothers are more worried about Walter than about me. That sounds selfish, doesn't it? But they were here last night, badgering the police, and I could see that they could hardly sit still."

  "Do you think they might know something they haven't told the police? About your husband's illness or his disappearance?"

  "What could they know?" She considered that for a moment, and then said, "Walter is a good man, he's tried to live up to his calling, and he takes his responsibilities seriously. He's kind and considerate, and not the sort of person who has secrets. He wouldn't leave me to worry like this if he were in his right mind. I'm sure of it. I don't believe for a moment that he knew what he was doing yesterday, and that's what's so frightful to think about-that he's ill and not able to judge things properly and can't care for himself."

  "I understand." Rutledge glanced at Matron, to see if she had anything more to add, but she was watching Mrs. Teller with concern for her distress. Feeling his gaze, she turned to look at him.

  "I can add very little to that, except to say that Mr. Teller was very depressed by his illness. I had wondered if he feared his condition was permanent."

  "Then when it changed for the better," Rutledge pointed out, "it should have been very reassuring. And it was not. Which leads me to believe that something else was on his mind." He turned again to Mrs. Teller. "Where would he be likely to turn, if he were troubled?"

  "Why should he turn anywhere? He only needed to ask one of the sisters where I had gone. They would have told him." She blinked back tears. "It was the first and only time I left him. I hadn't slept at all-I was so afraid he would die."

  Matron said, "When Sister Agnes looked in on him shortly before three o'clock, he appeared to be asleep. When she returned at twenty past four, he was gone. In little more than an hour, he recovered the use of his limbs and dressed himself. It seems hardly possible."

  "Someone might have helped him dress. Helped him to leave."

  "Who? To what end?" Jenny Teller put in quickly. "Everyone was at Edwin's house-they were all there."

  Hamish said, "Did he wait for her to go?"

  It was a good point. Jenny herself had just said that she had never left her husband's side. And he could hardly dress and slip away with her there in the room.

  Rutledge left Mrs. Teller in Matron's care and searched the clinic himself, as the staff and then the police had done the night before.

  Sister Vivian accompanied him and answered his questions. But it was clear that a patient would have found it difficult to slip out the staff entrance or the door where supplies came in and the dead were carried out.

  One fact was certain. Walter Teller was no longer in the Belvedere Clinic.

  "Aye," Hamish said. "But for his grieving wife, it's as if he never existed at all."

  Chapter 8

  As Rutledge was leaving Teller's room, he found Sergeant Biggin looking for him.

  Biggin said, "I didn't want to disturb the wife. But there's a body. You'll have to come and see."

  "I can't recognize Teller. And I won't put Mrs. Teller through this until I know whether or not you've found her husband."

  "Fair enough."

  "Wait here."

  Rutledge went back into the sitting room where Mrs. Teller was just joining Matron in a morning cup of tea. It was painful to see hope flaring in her eyes at the sight of him, then watch it dashed again.

  "Mrs. Teller, would there be a photograph of your husband at your brother-in-law's house that the police could use to help them search for witnesses, anyone who might have seen him? I'll be glad to send someone around for it."

  "A photograph?" She opened her purse and brought out a small velvet case. "I have this. But it's very precious-"

  "I'll see no harm comes to it," he promised, and took out the silver frame inside the case.

  "He was younger, then," she warned him. "He gave me this before we were married."

  Looking down at the likeness of Walter Teller, Rutledge saw a strong face, marked by something he couldn't define. The years in the field? Possibly. It was there in the eyes, a shadow that belied the smile for the camera.

  He thanked Mrs. Teller, and went back to where Biggin was waiting.

  "Let's go," he said.

  "He's not wearing the clothing Mrs. Teller described for us when he first went missing," Biggin told him as they walked out to the motorcar. "But the physical description fits. Height, weight, coloring."

  "What happened to him?" Rutledge asked.

  "He was stabbed. On Westminster Bridge. He was found shortly after dawn."

  Rutledge's heart sank. Had Billy killed him? Bowles would have an apoplexy if the boy's first victim was Walter Teller.

  They drove in silence to the morgue, where the body had been undressed and the man's clothing had been put in a cardboard box.

  "Do you care to examine his belongings first?" the attendant asked.

  "Was he robbed?"

  "I expect he was. No watch or rings. No money."

  "Then I'll see the body now."

  He was accustomed to looking at the dead. Sometimes he was surprised at how much he could read in t
he dead face. At other times there was nothing but a blankness. As if the substance of the living being had been wiped away with his death.

  Biggin was right. The victim was of the same general height and build as Walter Teller, his fair hair parted on the left side. But one look told Rutledge that this was not Teller. Even given the changes over the years, it was not. In fact, the dead man resembled Rutledge in size and weight, as well.

  Rutledge asked that the body be turned so that he could examine the wound in the man's back. The knife had been shoved in hard, just where Rutledge had felt the faint prick of the blade against his own skin. He'd found, after he left Lonsdale, that small blood-encrusted spot in his own back.

  He had had the boy pinned against the parapet. He should have brought him in, in spite of the constable's interference. He should have stopped him before he killed.

  Now it was too late.

  Nodding to the attendant to cover the body again, Rutledge said to Biggin, "It isn't Teller. But I can probably identify the person who did this. If you bring in a suspect, send for me."

  "Fair enough," Biggin said.

  Rutledge left the morgue in grim spirits, and after dropping Biggin at his station, he drove back to the Belvedere Clinic.

  Mrs. Teller had gone again to her husband's empty room, and he found her there, staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

  She turned as Rutledge stepped through the door. He could see the worry in her face, and he wondered again at the family's abandoning her at such a time.

  It didn't make sense.

  He said nothing about the dead man, smiling instead and telling her, "No news, I'm afraid, but the police have been bringing me up-to-date on their activities." He had spoken to Biggin at length in the motorcar. "The search has been expanded to include the river-"

  She cried out at that, but he said, "Mrs. Teller, we must be realistic. Your husband has been under some stress. He may have left the clinic with the intent to do himself a harm, and if we're to find him in time we must try to understand his state of mind."

  "No," she said forcefully. "Walter wouldn't kill himself. I know my husband, he has no reason to want to die and every reason to want to live. I won't listen to this."

  He spent another ten minutes trying to make a dent in her certainty.

  Finally he asked, "If we knew what had caused your husband's extraordinary illness, we might be better able to judge where he has gone and why. What happened to him between the bank and your house that changed him and brought on his paralysis?"

  "Don't you think I'd have told Dr. Fielding-or the doctors here-if I had any idea at all?" She was angry with him. "My sister was here earlier this morning. I asked her if she knew anything that would help. Sometimes Walter talked to her about his mission work. Mary has always strongly supported missions, and she has no illusions about the hardships people in the field endure. She couldn't think of any reason either. And I could see that she was as worried as I was. So I didn't have the heart to ask her what I really wanted to know. I wondered if someone could have cursed Walter out there. I've heard about such things. I mean, I don't really believe in them, and I'm sure Walter doesn't either. Still, you never know-"

  Her voice broke and she put her hands over her eyes, partly ashamed of her fears and partly afraid to speak them aloud, to give them a reality.

  Rutledge had nothing to say in response. It had hardly been twenty-four hours since her husband left, but irrational fears were already supplying answers to questions that had none.

  He summoned a nursing sister to come and sit with her, then left.

  Chapter 9

  Rutledge found the London addresses for Edwin and Peter Teller, and drove to each house, but he was informed by the maids who answered the door that the family was away.

  Wherever they were searching, he had a feeling that they were having no better luck than he had had in finding their brother.

  The second day of Walter Teller's disappearance brought no new information. It was as if he'd never existed.

  Hamish said, "If he were wandering about-truly lost-someone would ha' noticed him and brought him to a hospital or the police."

  It was what had been on Rutledge's mind all morning.

  "He might not wish to be found," he replied. "An alternative to suicide."

  "There's that, aye," Hamish agreed.

  It made a certain kind of sense. If one can't face the nightmare, one can try to avoid it. But what sort of nightmare haunted a man like Teller?

  He went back to question Teller's doctors.

  They had failed to unlock their patient's secrets.

  He said, "Teller's wife has been casting about for answers as well. She has even considered a curse on her husband, from his time in places like West Africa."

  "Curses are interesting things," Dr. Davies replied. "They work when people believe that they will work. In short, the curse is effective because the victim accepts that it will happen, and that nothing can be done to prevent it from happening as foretold. In my view, Teller was far too intelligent-and knowledgeable about the people with whom he worked-to be taken in by such a threat. I've talked to several other missionaries who told me that a curse had been put on them by a tribal shaman, a way of discouraging competition, one might say. And of course it failed, which caused no end of trouble for the shaman. His power was seen to be weak."

  "What would be a modern equivalent of a curse?" Rutledge asked.

  "Ah," Davies answered him. "That's an even more interesting question. I expect it would take the form of something happening once and the fear that it could happen again. If one finds an intruder in one's house on a dark night, it might well be something one would fear, coming into that same house on another dark night." He smiled. "Guilt can produce irrational fears as well."

  "Was Teller likely to die of his illness? Was that on his mind?"

  "At a guess, no, it wouldn't have killed him. The fact that he recovered so quickly points to the same conclusion."

  Dr. Sheldon put in, "I can tell you this. Walter Teller wasn't afraid of dying. When he turned his face to the wall, it was his acceptance that death was preferable."

  "Preferable to what?" But they had no suggestions in Teller's case.

  He said, "Do you have any reason to think that Walter Teller was being poisoned?"

  "No. We considered poisoning. We found no evidence of it. Is there any reason to believe-"

  Rutledge cut in quickly, "No. It's something a policeman must bear in mind."

  Hamish said as they left the clinic, "It isna' likely that he went away to die. He could ha' hanged himself in his room while his wife was resting at his brother's house."

  "He didn't want his wife to find his body."

  Rutledge spent much of that day and well into the early evening going to police stations all across London, showing the photograph he'd been given to each shift of constables coming in or going out.

  They studied the photograph, but no one had seen anyone resembling Teller. And as a rule, constables on the street could be counted on to remember the faces of people not normally seen on their patch, keeping an eye out for troublemakers and strangers alike. Even a well-spoken, well-dressed man like Walter Teller would be noted for future reference.

  One constable, shaking his head, said to Rutledge, "It's more likely that he found a cab soon after leaving the clinic, well before the search began. He could be anywhere now. He could have taken an omnibus, a train, or cadged a lift from someone."

  But Rutledge had already sent a man from the Yard to speak to any cabbie who had taken up custom near the clinic at four o'clock on the afternoon in question. No one remembered seeing Walter Teller or even someone who looked like him.

  "Ye're searching for a needle in a haystack," Hamish told Rutledge.

  "Or for one man when there might well have been two, if someone had come for him, or was there to help him dress and leave."

  The clinic had had no record of visits to Walter Telle
r, other than the immediate family. Still, it was possible to use another patient's name to pass the porter and gain access. But that led him nowhere, either.

  Rutledge had even driven to Essex, to the house of Dr. Fielding, arriving there just as Fielding was preparing for his first patient of the afternoon.

  The man reluctantly put aside the pipe he'd been smoking and addressed himself to Rutledge's questions about Walter Teller.

  "I can give you a brief sketch of his background. Missionary for many years, and then he married Jenny Brittingham. Rather than returning to the field, he chose to write a book about his experiences."

  "And this was…?"

  "Just a year or so before the war-1911? 1912?"

  Rutledge thought how the war had defined time-before the war-after the war. As if that great cataclysmic event that had interrupted and ended so many lives was still with them like a personal watershed.

  "And of course there is Harry, the son. Quite a nice child, and not at all spoiled, as you'd expect with doting aunts and uncles surrounding him. Jenny-Mrs. Teller has seen to that. She's a very good mother."

  "Did Teller serve in the war?"

  "As a matter of fact he did. Chaplain. But he was struck down with malaria in that rainy spring before the Somme and was sent home to recover. It was decided not to send him back to France, and so he worked among the wounded here."

  "Was there anything in his war years that might have affected what happened to him last week?"

  Fielding raised his eyebrows. "Not to my knowledge. In fact, I remember Teller commenting that he'd seen death in so many guises that he'd lost his fear of it long before going to France. There was something about a famine in West Africa-people dying by the droves. And of course in China death was as common as flies, he said. No, you're barking up the wrong tree there."

  "Then what caused his illness?"

  "That I can't tell you. Which is why I sent Teller to the Belvedere Clinic. And the last progress report I received was rather grim. He was showing no improvement, and in fact was beginning to feel paralysis in his arms and hands as well as in his legs."