The red door ir-12

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge examined the walls and the floor, even glancing at the ceiling above his head. But there were no scuff marks, nothing to show that a struggle had taken place.

  "She must ha' turned to go into the ither part of the house," Hamish said.

  "Her back to him," Rutledge said, too late to catch himself from answering Hamish aloud.

  "Yes, very likely," Constable Satterthwaite agreed. "She might have known him, or if not, liked the look of him enough to invite him in. A good many of the university lads come walking hereabout, and some of them couldn't be much older than her Timmy would have been if he'd lived. She had a soft spot for them. We're a trusting lot, but not foolish. She wasn't afraid of him."

  "A priest. A schoolboy on holiday. A woman in distress."

  "I hadn't thought of it in that way," Satterthwaite admitted. "But yes."

  "What's beyond this entry?"

  "There are three rooms downstairs, and three bedrooms above. Her aunt lived in one of them, the boy Timmy in another. I don't think, from the look of them, that she used either room after they died."

  Rutledge crossed the entry and went through the open door beyond. He could see the short passage continued, with the stairs to one side, the kitchen straight ahead, the parlor to his left, and a small dining room or sitting room to the right.

  As he walked through the rooms, he found himself thinking that the parlor appeared to be frozen in time, intended for the use of guests of another generation, who never came. A settee and two chairs, a worn but handsome carpet, small tables with little treasures on them. There was another framed photograph, this time from Keswick in the Lake District, surely a souvenir of a visit. A tall blue vase intended for summer flowers took pride of place on one table, beside it a well-thumbed book of verse with no inscription. Just above the table hung a sandalwood fan in a case, spread to show the lacquered painting on parchment and the carved sticks. Handsomely embroidered pillow slips with Chinese scenes of mountains rising about a misty river set off the plainness of the dark furniture.

  They were unusual pieces to find here in Hobson.

  "What did her husband do before the war? Was he a farmer?"

  "A career soldier. He was always sending her gifts from all over the world. I sometimes brought the packages out here, on my rounds. Her face would light up, and she'd smile as if it were her birthday."

  The dining room had been turned into a sitting room cum workroom, with a tabletop easel. On it was a watercolor of a cat curled up on a windowsill. It was only half finished. There was also a book of accounts on the table, a low bookshelf of leather-bound classics by the chair that was obviously her favorite. The cushions were worn, and the padded back had taken on a comfortable shape.

  The kitchen was tidy, telling Rutledge that she had not expected guests, for the teapot and the cups and saucers were in their proper places in the cupboard.

  "Or ha' been washed and put away again," Hamish suggested.

  The square, footed dish on the table, covered by a linen handkerchief, held honey, and there was bread in the tin box by the stone sink. Looking out at the kitchen yard, he could see that flowers and herbs grew in profusion, turning the silvery wood of the shed into a backdrop for beauty and using the rough stone foundations of what must have been the ancient barn and other outbuildings as a sheltered place to grow more delicate plants.

  Upstairs the two unused rooms yielded nothing of interest. In one there were a boy's playthings in a wooden chest, an armoire, a coverlet with appliques of animals-a cat, a dog, a duck, a sheep, and a cow-against a forest green background. The animals were cleverly sewn, with cotton wadding behind the figures to give them a three-dimensional quality. On the wall were shelves with birds' eggs, a cattail nearly gone to seed, and other small things that might catch a boy's eye, including a conch shell. In the aunt's bedroom, the bed was neatly made with a tufted coverlet and flowers embroidered on the pillow slips. The armoire, like the one in the boy's room, was empty of clothing, as if these had long since been donated where they might do more good.

  Florence Teller's bedroom was equally simple. But the same hand had embroidered a picture on the wall, entitled our happy home, with a house that looked remarkably like this one, save for the black door. On the bedside table was a single photograph of a small boy holding a football, his face tilted toward the photographer with a shy smile just touching his lips. A handsome child, but a frail one.

  The tall oval mirror standing in the corner was the only unexpected furnishing. Crossing to look at it more closely, he thought the dark wood was either cherry or rosewood, and it was finely made. At the top of the frame was a small bouquet of roses tied by a ribbon, carved in a piece with the wood of the frame itself.

  He could picture Florence Teller standing before it, admiring a new dress, smiling up at the man she'd married, pleased with the gift he'd brought her.

  Hamish said, "It's no' like the rest of the furniture."

  And that was true. While everything from the dining room table to the high bed frames was of good workmanship, it was from another generation, late Victorian pieces, dark and solid, the polish deep enough to reflect the light. Inherited? He thought they might have been. The sort of pieces a young couple, just at the start of their marriage, might have been offered by an aunt or mother or cousin. Pieces stored in the attic until they were needed again.

  There was little of a personal nature here, and he wondered about the sort of life this woman had led. Had her husband written to her, his letters the high marks of her world? Although the constable frowned in disapproval, Rutledge opened drawers but found nothing to indicate that something was missing.

  Aside from her gardening, her needlework was clearly her main interest, but as one's needle clicked in and out of the cloth, even following the most intricate pattern, what did her mind dwell on? Or as she pulled weeds and deadheaded flowers, what occupied her thoughts while her hands were busy?

  She must have been a woman of extraordinary patience, he thought all at once. Always waiting, like the faithful Penelope. Why had she accepted such a life? And what in the end had it brought her?

  But he thought he had found the answer to her acceptance in one small thing-there must have been a pet here at one time, something to keep her company. A cat, a small dog for safety and for friendship? From the upstairs window he could see a little graveyard with whitewashed headstones, four or five of them, as if over the years she had lost her companions as well as her son, and laid them to rest in a garden of remembrance. For around the stones grew pansies in profusion, and forget-me-nots.

  He went back down the stairs, feeling depression settling over him, and walked out to the little graveyard. Three cats, two dogs, judging from the names painted in dark blue script on the whitewash. And one marked only mr. g.

  "Do you want to speak to the farmer?" Constable Satterthwaite asked as Rutledge turned back to the house.

  "If he was busy with a sick animal, he's probably right, he saw nothing. What about his family?"

  "His wife had gone to visit their daughter. The son is married and helps out at the farm on most days, but he walks over from where he lives." He gestured toward the distance. "On the far side of his father's land."

  "Therefore, nobody from his household came this way. All right, let's speak to Mrs. Blaine. If something is missing here, we have no way of guessing what it is." But downstairs again he paused long enough to flip the pages of the books by Mrs. Teller's favorite chair, to see what might have been secreted among them. She had good taste in reading, he thought as he scanned.

  Nothing but an occasional starched and embroidered bookmark fell out.

  Rutledge stood in the passage for a moment, listening to the sounds of the house around him, trying to feel the presence of the woman who had spent most of her life here, and left so little of herself behind. But she was elusive, and he wished there had been a photograph of her in better times.

  Then he followed Satterthwaite outside. The sky
was a bright rose fading to shades of gray and lavender as the sun crept over the far horizon, and in the east the lavender deepened to purple. They closed the door on the silent house and walked back to the motorcar.

  While the roof of Mrs. Blaine's farmhouse could just be seen from the Teller house, the way there was not as direct. They turned down a rutted lane and bounced along it to the house nestled in the curve of the hill.

  It was very much like the one they'd just left, but the barns and out-buildings were still very much in use, and the yard was muddy with the hoof marks of cattle.

  They tapped at the front door, and it opened to a small, compact woman with dark red hair and a grievance.

  "There you are!" she said at once to Constable Satterthwaite, ignoring the man from London. Clutching the startled constable's arm, she dragged him toward her kitchen, all the while complaining over the earsplitting screams of something in great pain somewhere in the house. "You've got to rid me of that thing, do you hear? She told me it was thirty years old, and I can't even cook it, it'll be stringy as an old shoe. I tried to shove him out the door, but he won't leave. I can't sleep for this racket. All day, all night. There's no peace!"

  Rutledge had followed them to the kitchen and saw nothing as he crossed the threshold. But he nearly backed into the passage again to save his ears from whatever was shrieking with such high-pitched horror.

  Hamish, silent in the face of what could only be called a cacophony, was as speechless as Rutledge himself.

  He'd heard the Irish speak of banshees, but until now he'd never given these harbingers of death much thought. He found himself remembering what old Michael Flaherty, once a jockey, had talked about in his cups. "A sound beyond any other. It tears at the soul, it wails like a lost spirit, and it can't be seen except by someone in the family."

  And then something moved, and for the first time Rutledge could see the source of the incredible noise. It was a small dove gray parrot with a flash of red on its tail, and it was clinging to a plate on the top of the dresser against the far wall, almost invisible in the last rays of sunset outlining the open kitchen door. Its bright eyes were fixed on the newcomers as if expecting them to attack.

  "There, you see," Mrs. Blaine said, pointing excitedly. "All day, I tell you, and all night. I don't see how she stood it. I'd shoot it if it weren't for my best Staffordshire ware. He was always sending her gifts, Lieutenant Teller was, but what possessed him to send her that thing I don't know. They can live a hundred years, she said."

  Rutledge remembered the little pet graveyard, and the animals resting there. A hundred years-she would never have to weep over a lost love again. A lonely woman given something to talk to.

  The parrot shrieked again. Hardly talking, as Hamish was pointing out.

  "I couldn't leave it, could I?" Mrs. Blaine went on, her sense of injustice still strong. "She'd been dead for days, I could see that much, the flies on her face, and it hadn't been fed nor watered. So I took pity on it for her sake, little knowing quiet as it was, what was in store for me. I surely didn't bargain for this!"

  Rutledge stepped into the room, moving quietly, and went to the overturned cage that was on the floor on the far side of the kitchen table. He picked it up and held it high. Tall as he was, he could bring the cage nearly to the level of the bird. And to his own astonishment, after a long moment, it stopped squawking and hopped into the open door, made for one of the swings, and sat there bobbing back and forth, plucking at the feathers of its breast.

  He shut the door carefully, then reached down for the cloth covering Mrs. Blaine's kitchen table. She hurriedly caught the sugar bowl and the saltcellar before he pulled at the cloth, then lifted it over the cage, shutting the bird into darkness.

  Even the frantic creaking of the swing stopped, and a blessed quiet descended over the kitchen.

  "Well, I'll be damned," the constable said into the silence.

  Mrs. Blaine stared from the covered cage to the man from London.

  And then the bird said in a very human voice, "Good night, Peter. Wherever you may be."

  In a hushed whisper, Mrs. Blaine said, "That's her voice. For all the world. As if she were still alive."

  "You'd never heard it speak?" Rutledge asked.

  "Lord, no. Never in her house and not in mine, either. He was quiet as a lamb there, and here he's done naught but to scream like a creature in pain."

  "I didn't know you'd taken anything from the house-this bird," the constable was saying accusingly. "I asked if you'd touched anything."

  "It's a live bird, I thought it would be like a canary. I took it out of kindness," she said, defending herself. "You're not telling me it could name her murderer!"

  "No, it's just that you said-was there anything else?"

  "Did she ever ask you to burn some letters for her, if something happened to her?" Rutledge asked. "Or take a photograph and post it to her late husband's family? You were her nearest neighbor, she might have confided in you," he added, though he couldn't see a strong friendship springing up between two such different women. Still, needs must, and two widows alone on isolated farms could have turned to each other to carry out last wishes.

  Incensed, Mrs. Blaine said, "Look here, I never touched a thing in that house. I took pity on this creature, as I would on a stray cat. And look how it's repaid me, I ask you."

  "It could have been evidence," Constable Satterthwaite pointed out, trying to keep his own temper.

  "A bird's not evidence," she retorted. "I'll wring its neck and be done with it, and bury it up there in her little graveyard. See if I don't." She marched around the table toward the cage.

  Rutledge said, "Constable-"

  "I've got a cat," he said, as if that absolved him of all responsibility. Rutledge stepped forward. He could hear Hamish. It was clear that the voice in his head was trying to tell him something, but he reached for the cage and said, "I'll take possession of it. The bird may not have seen who killed her, or watched if the killer searched the house. But until we know differently, it's a ward of the court."

  Constable Satterthwaite turned to him as if he'd taken leave of his mind.

  Mrs. Blaine said, "Ward or not, I'll thank you to remove it from my house."

  "Did she have any enemies? Anyone who had had a falling-out with her, anyone who might have held a grudge against her?" he asked, gingerly lifting the bird-cage, cloth, and all.

  "I'll have my tablecloth back," she told him. "As for enemies, you might as well ask if I have any. She wasn't the sort to make people angry. She never asked for much, and it was just as well, she was never given much in this life but great sorrows to bear. She had nothing to steal, though she never lacked for what she needed. It was people who'd failed her. And I can't think why anyone would have wished to see her dead."

  Rutledge looked around the kitchen and saw nothing he could use to cover the bird. He set the cage down again and took off his coat, wrapping it around the cage in place of the tablecloth. The bird had his head tucked under his wing, and hardly stirred.

  "You're a right fool," Mrs. Blaine said to Rutledge as he handed her the tablecloth, "but I'll thank you all the same for ridding my house of this nuisance."

  "What can you tell us about Mrs. Teller's husband?" he asked.

  "Only that he never came back from the war. They said there was a collection being taken up in London for a monument to the men gone missing. I've no doubt Lieutenant Teller's name will be on it. I asked her if she was going to make a contribution, but she said that would be like walking over his grave. As long as she held him to be alive, he was. Though in the last months, I think even she had begun to give up all hope. She painted that door red to welcome him, and she'd set a dress aside for the day. Well, if he's in heaven, she's found him now and is at peace."

  She walked with them to the door. "She told me once that she'd read a story about a man who had gone on the crusades, and he lost his memory, and it was years before he came home again. She asked if I th
ought it was a true story. And I told her I did, because I couldn't say, could I, that some writer had made it up out of whole cloth to make women readers cry. I was never one for that sort of thing myself."

  "If you can think of anything that would be helpful," Constable Satterthwaite told her, "you'll let me know, first thing?"

  "I will. And I'm locking my door at night, and bringing in the dog. I don't want to be found dead like she was. How long do you think she lay there? It was a cruel thing to do, kill her and leave her to the flies."

  They thanked her and left. For a second, Rutledge didn't know what to do with the bird, standing there looking at the motorcar and unwilling to put it on the floor by what would be Hamish's feet. But the constable took it from him and set it there, saying, "Here's a travel rug. Shall I put it around the cage instead of your coat?"

  "Oh-yes, thank you." Rutledge took his coat back and pulled it on as he opened the door of the driver's side.

  As the constable cranked the motorcar, he said to Rutledge, "What will you do with that thing? You can't be serious about taking it to London."

  "Why not?" Rutledge asked. "For the time being at least. Who knows what else it might say."

  "Aye, and I'd give much to see the judge's face when you offer a parrot in evidence."

  Rutledge laughed. "What matters is whether or not someone else thinks the bird can talk. That could be interesting."

  The motor caught, and the constable got in. All color had gone from the sky now, and the first stars were growing brighter. "Shall we go and see the body, sir? I think the doctor would like it released as soon as possible for burial."

  "Released to whom?" Rutledge asked. "There's no family. You said as much yourself."

  "What else are we to do? I'll be there. And some of the village women, no doubt. She won't be put in the ground without someone by her."

  They drove through the dark streets of Thielwald, light from house windows making bright patches on the road. Satterthwaite pointed out the doctor's surgery, and they knocked at the door. Dr. Blake answered the summons himself, nodding to Rutledge and saying to the constable, "Another five minutes and I'd have gone up to my bed. But I'm glad you've come. Any word on her killer?" He was a short man, graying at the temples, perhaps fifty-five, with pale, heavy-lidded eyes.