Proof of Guilt

by Charles Todd

  Gooding frowned. “This is most unusual. When he’s away, Mr. French is always careful to tell me precisely where he will be at any given time—within reason, of course—so that I can reach him if there is an emergency. If he says he’s in Essex, then he is in Essex.”

  “Unless of course he’d dead.”

  Gooding’s face paled. “Don’t even say that. There is no one to take over the English half of the firm if something happens to Mr. French.”

  “There’s his sister.”

  “Sadly, I don’t believe she knows enough about the business to make sound judgments.” He studied Rutledge’s face for a moment. “You aren’t— You had Mr. French’s watch. He is never without it. Is there something you haven’t told me?”

  Rutledge said, “Before I go into that, there’s something else I need to discuss with you. I’m told that Mr. French’s father had a second family, one that his wife and children were not aware of. Is this true?”

  If he’d suggested that the late Mr. Laurence French had possessed two heads and was born a Hottentot, Gooding couldn’t have looked more astonished.

  “If the Mr. French I served was engaged in such an affair,” he said after a moment, “he would not have confided in me. If you are after such details about his private life, I suggest you speak to his solicitors. The firm of Hayes and Hayes.”

  But the Mr. French the clerk had served was an older man—and a junior clerk would have been the last person he’d have confided in. Still, this meant that there was no gossip in the firm about the man. He had been very discreet. Not surprising if he was expecting his son and his nephew to come into the business at some future date.

  “I had reason to believe that Mr. French was killed last week in a motorcar accident,” Rutledge said. “Miss French went this morning to identify the body. She didn’t know the man.”

  “Then it wasn’t her brother. I should think she knows him better than anyone.”

  “Will you go with me to look at the body?”

  “No,” Gooding said firmly. “If I disagreed with her for any reason at all, whose word would you take?”

  “I should be forced to take hers. But I should continue to search for Lewis French.”

  “Then my word would be superfluous.”

  And Gooding wouldn’t budge from that position.

  In the end, Rutledge went to the Inns of Court and found the street where Hayes and Hayes had their chambers. The elder Mr. Hayes agreed to see him. Rutledge said nothing about the dead man. Instead he began with the late Mr. French’s will.

  “I should like to know if he made any provisions for a second family, one that his wife and children knew nothing about.”

  Hayes regarded him with what Rutledge could only describe as hooded eyes, although the impression came from the second fold of skin that age had deposited on the lids. His eyes were a cold gray, deep set. Bristling gray brows like an overgrown thicket jutted out above them. Rutledge found himself thinking that such a fierce scowl would be a very effective weapon in a courtroom.

  “I could of course show you a copy of the will,” Hayes said finally. “But I can assure you that there was no mention made in it of a mistress or children born out of wedlock.” Rutledge was about to speak, but Hayes held up a blue-veined hand. “Nor was there a codicil setting out such an arrangement. Why should you believe that such a provision existed?”

  “Miss French went with me this morning to look at a dead man I believed to be her brother. It was very difficult for her. I was already fairly certain that it was Lewis French. She assured me it was not. And she told me later that her mother had been very concerned about the elder Mr. French’s fidelity. It would account for a resemblance I’d noticed between the dead man and a portrait at the wine merchant’s, if the victim had been her father’s child by a mistress.”

  “Then she is greatly mistaken. Her father as far as I know was faithful to his wife. It was his father, Mr. Howard French, who had an affair before he was married with a young woman who died in childbirth. The child was adopted by one of his father’s servants. We have no other information about that child. Presumably he was never told of his true parentage.”

  Which would explain, Rutledge thought, why a nervous and rather insecure wife might imagine her own husband had strayed.

  He said, pursuing that thought, “Was Lewis French’s mother wealthy?”

  “She was very wealthy. Her father had made a fortune in shipping, and with the marriage came a very satisfactory arrangement for the French and Traynor wines to be carried around the world in that firm’s bottoms.”

  Small wonder the woman was insecure, more especially if she had been as plain as her daughter.

  “Then the man in the mortuary could well have been a descendant of Howard French’s—er—indiscretion.”

  “It is entirely possible. Although highly unlikely.”

  But how did he come by that watch? And where was Lewis French?

  “Do you know the name of the family that was given the child to foster?”

  “There is no record to my knowledge. Mr. Howard French provided for them at the time, and no bequests were made at his death or that of his son. Lewis French’s father.”

  It was the ideal way to handle such a youthful indiscretion. The servants would be given a tidy sum to move elsewhere and take the child with them. A gamekeeper, a groom, a coachman, a head gardener. No one would think anything about a family suddenly coming into a small inheritance from a distant relative and deciding to move to the cottage in Wales or Kent or Cumberland that had been left to them. And it would be surprising to find anyone who remembered such an obscure event so long afterward.

  “The baptismal record? Was there one?”

  “The child would have been baptized in whatever village the family chose. Or not, as the case may be.”

  If the servants were Chapel, then it would be almost impossible to find any record at all.

  A dead end. And Rutledge disliked dead ends.

  “If the man in the mortuary is not Lewis French, then where is he? And why is he not in Essex or in his London home?”

  “I can’t answer that,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Not from any reluctance on my part. Simply the fact that we don’t know the answer. But if there was something he wished to do without his sister’s knowledge, then it’s his business and not that of Scotland Yard.”

  Rutledge left soon after. His experience of dealing with solicitors had long been one of accepting that they would answer the questions put to them precisely and generally quite truthfully, with very little additional information volunteered, unless giving that was also to their advantage. For all he knew, Mr. Hayes held in the firm’s boxes the solution to his inquiry—but to unlock that bit of information would require a prodigious leap of imagination on Rutledge’s part to come up with the right question. He smiled to himself at the thought. Still, Hayes was not concealing information concerning the whereabouts of Lewis French. Of that Rutledge was nearly sure.

  He carried this knotty problem with him to dinner, although he tried to hide his distraction from his sister. Frances was all too perceptive when it came to her brother, and she soon had him in a better frame of mind.

  But as he drove home at the end of the evening, he had come to accept Miss French’s statement as the final word on the identity of the man who had been left on Huntingdon Street in Chelsea. Whether he was satisfied or not, there was no alternative.

  The next morning Rutledge gave an oral report to the Acting Chief Superintendent.

  Markham listened, nodding from time to time, until Rutledge had finished. Then he leaned forward in his chair, his brows drawn together in a frown.

  “You’ve told me who our inconvenient corpse is not. You can’t tell me who killed him or why he possessed a watch he had no right to. What’s more, you’ve lost its lawful owner, Lewis French.”

  Rutledge took a deep breath. “French has a fiancée in Essex. I’d like to speak to her before Miss French re
turns from London. There was no reason to call on her during my first visit. French may have confided his intentions to her rather than to his sister.”

  “They weren’t on good terms, the brother and sister?”

  “I have a feeling that French imposed on his sister. She maintains the family home, and she was in the midst of preparing for a cousin’s arrival. She was rather angry with French for leaving when she could have used his help.”

  Markham linked his fingers, stretched them, then uncoupled them. “The dead man’s not the cousin?”

  “I should think Miss French would have recognized him. The wine merchant’s clerk is awaiting news of Traynor’s travel arrangements. He’s returning to England from the firm’s office in Funchal.”

  “And what is Funchal when it’s at home?” Markham asked testily.

  “The principal city on the Portuguese island of Madeira. It’s where French, French and Traynor have done business for three generations. Apparently before that, they were solely London importers of wines and spirits.”

  Markham considered Rutledge with raised eyebrows. “You aren’t telling me you wish to travel there, are you?”

  Rutledge smiled inwardly, remembering that Yorkshiremen were notoriously tightfisted. “I’m sure any information I need can come through the police there.”

  Markham sat back in his chair, his face clearing. “Off to Essex with you, then. And bring back results, if you please.”

  An hour later, Rutledge was on the road again, heading toward Dedham.

  What results? he asked himself as he drove through London traffic and turned east, then north.

  Hamish, restless in the back of his mind, reflecting Rutledge’s own unsettled mood, said, “Ye ken, ye canna’ return now withoot something.”

  His first duty was to look for the nearest local police station and speak to the constable there. On his earlier visit, there had been no need to pay a courtesy call, but now there was, and Rutledge was hoping not to have to deal with the larger force in Dedham. Smaller police stations, often with a single constable on duty, generally knew the people in their villages better. Nor was there that tendency toward resentment of the Yard infringing on another man’s turf.

  Passing the French house, Rutledge found the village of Stratford St. Hilary less than a mile beyond. There was no sign of the Dominican abbey, although a wide green could well have been the site of the order’s church and outbuildings. If so, then this had been no more than a satellite community rather than a major branch of the order. Clustered around the green were a number of rather handsome houses and shops, and a small, ancient building that was a pub now—The Tun and Turtle, according to the sign—which could have been here in coaching days. Too small for a hotel, it probably offered a room or two to visitors when necessary. He could just see a stream running past the back garden and winding away among a thin stand of trees. On the far side of the stream he glimpsed the chimney pots of another large house. He wondered if wool had built the small church or if it had been a private chapel in the days of the abbey, for without it the village was no more than large hamlet.

  Rutledge found the police station sandwiched between a stationer’s shop and a narrow-fronted bakery. The bakery was already closed, but as he passed the door, the faint smell of yeast breads and cinnamon lingered in the warm evening air.

  The constable was not in. But he’d left a message on a small board by the door for anyone who needed him. It read:

  AT HOME

  There was no indication where HOME might be.

  Rutledge had counted on the constable to give him the name and direction of French’s fiancée. The other source for information was of course the rector.

  He left the motorcar where it was and walked toward the church. It sat on a slight knoll, and in the churchyard that sloped down to the street he could see mossy and lichen-etched stones leaning crazily in front of much later ones that marched up the slope to disappear around the apse before reappearing at the far side.

  The French family monument was ornate, and in the shadow of the tower. But there were a number of other grand mausoleums and weeping angels in the centers of family plots. As he stepped out of the motorcar, Rutledge could see TRAYNOR incised in the base of a stone, the shaft broken and draped with mourning in a very Victorian concept.

  The Rectory was a modest house up a lane overlooking the churchyard.

  Rutledge walked there as the sun dropped behind the yews that encircled three sides of the low wall.

  A man in shirtsleeves was standing on a high ladder, painting the house trim.

  Rutledge called to him as he came up the path, “Is the rector in?”

  The man looked down at him. “Sadly he is out. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “I’m looking for Lewis French. He isn’t at home. Nor is his sister—”

  The man spilled a great dollop of paint as he lifted his brush out of the jar without wiping it. “Drat!” he exclaimed. Then to Rutledge he went on: “Miss French isn’t at home?”

  “I believe she’s still in London.”

  “London? Is something wrong?”

  “Should there be?” Rutledge asked.

  The man came down the ladder. “She never leaves St. Hilary. Well. Only to visit the shops in Dedham.” He looked ruefully at his paint-stained fingers. “I can’t offer to shake hands. But we don’t run to rectors here. I’m the curate. Williams is my name.”

  He was fairly young, thirty perhaps, and he walked with a limp. When he saw Rutledge had noticed it, he grimaced. “The war. I was a soldier and then a chaplain after I was invalided out. But what’s this about Agnes French going to London?”

  “She was looking for her brother. She didn’t find him. I thought perhaps his fiancée might know where he went after he left the house nearly a fortnight ago. Apparently he hadn’t confided in his sister.”

  “He seldom does,” Williams replied with a shake of the head.

  “They don’t get on?” Rutledge asked with interest.

  “I wouldn’t put it that strongly. Both of the brothers—that’s Michael, who died in the war, and Lewis—were often in London with their father, being introduced to the firm. Agnes was a homebody. She never went anywhere.”

  “By choice or by lack of invitation?”

  “I don’t really know,” Williams said, considering the question, his head to one side. “I wasn’t here then, of course. I’ve been told that she looked after her mother throughout her last illness and then took care of her father after his stroke. It’s what daughters do. Unmarried ones, most particularly.”

  “Had the sons—Lewis and Michael—visited Madeira?” Rutledge asked.

  “Yes, from a very early age—twelve, I’ve been told. But Agnes never showed an interest in travel.”

  “Or pretended she had none,” Rutledge said, “after being excluded.”

  “She never gave the impression she felt excluded.”

  But then, Rutledge thought, she wouldn’t have shown how she felt, if it had hurt her. Her general disposition spoke volumes.

  “Lewis is responsible for the management of the London office, I understand.” When Williams nodded as he cleaned paint from his fingers with a cloth that was already saturated, Rutledge went on. “Would Miss French take a position in the firm if anything happened to her brother?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she wouldn’t. She’s had no training, you see. There’s the cousin, Traynor, of course. It’s not as if there’s no one at the helm.” He gestured over their heads. “The last time Traynor was in England he paid for the Rectory chimneys to be repaired. Before that the house was nearly uninhabitable for weeks, with smoke filling the rooms. I wasn’t here then, it was before the war, but my predecessor told me what we owed to his generosity. Sorry. I’ve wandered off the subject. Why should Miss French be looking for her brother?”

  “You must ask her when she returns. Meanwhile, I’d like to find Lewis French’s fiancée.”

  “Yes, of
course. Mary Ellen Townsend lives in Dedham. There’s a house not far from the church. You can’t miss it, there’s a plate on the door just before it—her father’s the local doctor and that’s his surgery.” He glanced up at his own house. “I’ve lost the light, haven’t I? Well, I can’t say that I’m sorry. I really can’t abide painting, but there’s no one else, is there? I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name?”

  He hadn’t given it. “Rutledge.”

  “I’ll bid you a good day, Mr. Rutledge. I hope you enjoy your stay in St. Hilary.”

  Rutledge walked back to the motorcar, listening to Hamish in the back of his mind.

  “Ye didna’ tell him the whole truth. Or who you are,” the soft Scottish voice said from behind Rutledge’s left shoulder, where he’d so often been standing in the trenches. He wasn’t there, of course. But Rutledge had never had the courage to look and see if he was when Hamish MacLeod was speaking.

  “Sometimes the whole truth is not the best choice,” Rutledge answered aloud and earned himself a stare from the man walking a small dog. He hadn’t seen them in the gathering dusk.

  He drove back to Dedham and quickly found his way to the surgery, avoiding construction in the square.

  It was located in a smaller brick building adjacent to the three-story house where Townsend and his family lived. Leaving his motorcar just down the High Street, Rutledge walked back to knock at the house door.

  A maid answered, and he asked for Miss Townsend.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Rutledge,” he said. “I’m looking for Lewis—Lewis French. He isn’t at his house, and it was suggested that he might be here or that Miss Townsend knew where he was going. It’s urgent that I find him. A matter of business.”

  “One moment, sir.”

  Two minutes later, a young woman came to the door. She was fair, with blue eyes—and quite pretty.

  “I’m told you’re looking for Lewis. I thought he’d left for London. Is something wrong?”

  He looked up the street where an elderly couple was strolling in their direction, enjoying the warm evening. “May I come in?” he asked.