A Lonely Death

by Charles Todd

  “Did you by any chance look into Edna Stallings?”

  “I did that, sir, when I discovered who her father was. Matthew Edgeworth Stallings. She’s a little younger than Summers, at a guess, and was a nurse in a clinic in Bedford during the last two years of the war, before going to live in Hertfordshire with an aunt until she came of age this past spring.”

  Matthew Stallings, it seemed, had made his modest fortune in footwear, and the Army contract for boots had sealed it. He’d died of a stroke six months after the Armistice, leaving a large sum to the National Trust and another to a fund for war widows. The bulk of his estate went to his only child. His daughter, it appeared, was an heiress.

  “Well done,” Rutledge told Sergeant Gibson. It was praise well earned. There was more he wished to say to Gibson, but not with half the brewery office staff listening with one ear.

  Putting up the receiver, he thanked Starret and left the brewery.

  Constable Walker was not in the police station when Rutledge stopped there. And so he drove on to Hastings with all the speed he could muster.

  He caught Inspector Norman just as he was leaving his office and said, “There have been developments. I need to speak to you.”

  “Not now,” Norman told him. “I’ve just been informed that Inspector Mickelson is showing signs of coming to his senses again. And I’m not letting this opportunity slip through my fingers, I can tell you. Your developments can wait.”

  And he got into the motorcar waiting for him, one of his constables at the wheel.

  Rutledge watched them pull out into the afternoon traffic, then returned to his own vehicle.

  For the next six hours, he called at every hotel of any size between The White Swans and the town of Brighton.

  And as he searched, he tried to think through this swiftly evolving situation.

  So much was explained now. How Summers could afford to live at The Swans as Daniel Pierce. How he had been able to reach Eastfield and disappear at will. How in fact he had managed to learn the details of his victims’ lives, where he could find them when he was ready to kill them. And how he had been invisible, because the lowly school groundskeeper who kept to himself roused no interest in the village.

  There was always a social hierarchy.

  A groundskeeper at the school was in effect a laborer. The farmers and their wives, the tradesmen and their wives, would have nothing in common with him, and people like the brewer and Mr. Kenton, who felt they had risen above both classes, would hardly be aware of his existence, though they would know where he worked. It was that which gave him his place in the village, not his face or his qualities or his hopes and dreams. The rector would be kinder, the doctor would treat the man and whatever family he had, and the Mrs. Farrell-Smiths of this world would see that he was paid but barely know his name.

  At each hotel he came to, Rutledge requested the list of guests, scanned them for any name that was familiar—Stallings, Summers, Pierce, Hartle, Jeffers, Roper, Ottley, Gooding, even his own—and each time drew a blank.

  But of course Summers could have used his wife’s mother’s maiden name, or that of his sergeant in France, and Rutledge would have no way of connecting it with the man he was seeking.

  Hamish said, “Go back to what ye know. It’s the only way.”

  All right, then.

  Summers had left a forwarding address of Brighton. But was he telling the truth? There were still men alive who went to school with him. He couldn’t have finished his work. Surely he wouldn’t have gone much farther than Brighton. He had too much invested already in his revenge.

  Where then?

  Rutledge thought about the case that Chief Inspector Cummins had never solved, and how misdirection had served a different purpose there. It had almost seemed that Cummins’s murderer had wanted to leave something behind, for the sake of his own conscience if not for the police.

  But this Sussex killer had no conscience. If he had, he’d have stopped with William Jeffers’s death.

  Rutledge looked up at the exotic lines of Brighton’s glory, the Prince Regent’s Pavilion, almost foreshadowing that his niece would one day be Empress of India.

  Why would Summers leave such a message?

  The most logical answer: to buy time.

  To send Rutledge on a wild-goose chase in the wrong direction while he went in another.

  Rutledge was already sprinting toward the hotel he’d just left, oblivious of the stares of strollers along the promenade, his mind keeping pace with his feet.

  He’d been outfoxed, and it angered him. Hamish, pointing out his failure, was like a demon at his shoulder.

  Could Summers still be in Hastings New Town, in another fine hotel? Or had he turned east instead of west? Or north? It was impossible to guess.

  And what was the man telling his bride, how could he explain cutting their wedding journey short—or flying off in an entirely different direction?

  Would he suggest that now his friends had caught up with them, they’d play a trick of their own?

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, he left her alone at night. He used a false name at yon hotel. Would she no’ grow suspicious after a while?”

  Rutledge felt a surge of apprehension.

  Is that what had happened? Had there been unexpected difficulties over his behavior? What had prompted that marriage in the first place? Was it a love match—or was it the fact that Summers needed his new wife’s money? He hadn’t held a job in months, and The White Swans was one of the most elegant—and expensive—hotels along this stretch of seaside towns.

  Rutledge reached the Regency Hotel and slowed his pace, striding into Reception and waiting impatiently as an elderly couple spoke to the woman behind the desk about the availability of rooms.

  Yes, they had a telephone, the woman told him when the couple had left. For the use of their guests. “This is an urgent police matter,” he told her curtly, and reluctantly she pointed to a door just past the desk.

  He put in a call to the Yard, silently cursing the delay as someone went in search of Sergeant Gibson. While he waited, Rutledge was already scanning the map of Sussex and of Kent in his head.

  There was an isolated church, St. Mary’s, out in the marshes near Dymchurch. One could hide a body there. But of course in time it would be found, and if it was identified, then the police would begin to look for Summers.

  That was true almost anywhere else. Corpses had a way of returning at the most inconvenient of times, whether left in marshes or the sea. Besides, if the man wanted his wife’s money, he’d have to keep her alive until he could persuade her to make a will in his favor.

  But what if Summers had already worked out a contingency plan? Leave his work unfinished until the hue and cry had died down, disappear into France meanwhile, and return at a later date? The southern parts of France along the Mediterranean Sea had been untouched by war, though strongly affected by the state of the French economy in general. Still, it was warm, lovely, expensive, and increasingly popular. And his wife might find such a suggestion exceptionally attractive.

  Dover, then, and the ferry across the Channel. And he, Rutledge, was already six hours too late.

  If the Kent police could find Rutledge himself after he’d left Melinda Crawford’s house, they might be lucky enough to find Tommy Summers for him.

  He told Sergeant Gibson what it was he wanted, and then went in search of his motorcar, several streets away.

  The motor almost misfired as he turned the crank, and he had to start again. Once behind the wheel, he made a looping circle through the streets and drove as fast as he dared through the holidaymakers, heading east. Behind him the clouds were gathering and far out to sea, the wind had picked up. He could feel the cloying heat that presaged a storm.

  The road ran along the coast for the most part, one seaside community after another, the congestion at its peak at this hour. The storm was catching him up as he drove, bits of paper and little swirls of dust marking its progress,
and before very long, the sun was half hidden in the haze. Before he’d reached Hastings, the sky was dark, and the rumble of thunder followed him.

  Hamish gave him no peace, seeming to gather strength with the storm.

  He paused at Hastings just long enough to leave word with Inspector Norman, and then turned toward Eastfield.

  The rain found him just before he got there, huge wind-driven pellets, and the lightning was fierce.

  At the police station, Constable Walker listened to what he had to say, then handed him a framed photograph that Tyrell Pierce had left at The Fishermen’s Arms.

  Rutledge looked at it, and damned the man. The sun was behind the subjects, and he could just recognize Anthony Pierce, smiling beneath his officer’s cap, one arm around his brother’s shoulders. Daniel’s face was harder to make out, and Rutledge had to be satisfied with his general build.

  Pierce must have spent an hour or more searching through photographs to find one that was so useless.

  He handed it to Walker. “I should have the man arrested for obstruction.”

  And then he was gone again, driving through the pelting rain and the early darkness.

  He stopped for petrol in one village, and to have a tire inspected in another, praying that the Dover police had found their man.

  Hamish reminded him, “It’s no’ certain that he’s even there.”

  Summers might as easily have chosen London or Southampton and taken ship anywhere. But France was closer, and the man knew the country. It made sense.

  In the predawn hours when he reached the Dover police, the skies were clearing. The fishing fleet had put out to sea, their sails tiny dots on the horizon, and the first ferry to France was just pulling out.

  But Dover had nothing for him.

  The inspector he spoke with said, “You realize he could have sailed before you reached us.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s very likely. I was hoping that we’d been in time.” He rubbed his face, hearing the scrape of beard on his chin. “All right, keep looking. I’ll be at the hotel. Did you reserve a room?”

  “Yes. The Nancy Bell. It’s run by a retired policeman. We try to give him a little business now and again.”

  Rutledge found it, a small inn at best, almost at the outskirts of town, but Sergeant Bell greeted him, took one look at him, and said, “Go up, then, top of the stairs, I’ll bring hot water and hotter tea.”

  He was as good as his word. A bluff, graying man, his shoulders still broad and the line of his jaw firm, he carried the tray in one hand and a pitcher in the other, setting them down on the table. “You’ll want to sleep,” he told Rutledge. “If there’s word, they’ll send for you here.”

  But after shaving and drinking his tea, Rutledge was restless, unable to settle, and he left The Nancy Bell and went out to walk.

  Dover sat at the foot of chalk cliffs and was divided into two parts. Beneath the towering bulk of the castle was the port with the residential area south of it. The war had not dealt well with the town, for it had seen thousands of men and ships coming and going, expanding almost faster than the town could absorb the dramatically increasing population, and then the war had ended after four hard years, and Dover had had to shrink into itself again, finding the fit difficult.

  Eventually he reached the strand and walked down on the shingle hard packed from the heavy rains of the day before. There were others doing much the same, enjoying the morning air, fresh and cool off the water. This was not a bathing center, like the towns along the southern coast, but he, like the others out this morning, enjoyed the smell of the sea, the wind buffeting his face, and the sun just warming his skin. He thought that Darwin had not been too far off the mark—men must remember coming from the sea, whether they realized it or not.

  He noticed a dog racing along the strand far ahead, running to greet the handful of hardy souls walking just above the tide line. He watched it for a time, and then it began to strike him as odd that the dog showed no interest in chasing the gulls scavenging for food and starting up in a fluster of wings as humans approached. Instead, the little dog seemed frantic, dashing up to someone, racing around, then moving on to the next walker.

  Rutledge started to jog toward it, feeling a growing certainty that he recognized it. And as he grew nearer, and the dog looked his way, he realized that it was trailing a lead.

  What was the name on the dog bed he’s seen in The White Swans Hotel, in the room occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Pierce?

  Muffin.

  He whistled, and the dog stopped, ears pricked, listening. He whistled again and called its name. The dog stared at him uncertainly, and then came bounding toward him, only to stop, puzzled, as he drew close enough to pick up Rutledge’s scent on the errant breeze.

  Rutledge called to him again, and the dog came forward slowly, warily, as if half afraid. Head down, it begged for assurance and had no reason to feel any.

  Rutledge stopped, letting the animal come to him, and when finally it did, whimpering, belly dragging, he bent down to fondle its ears.

  It was the same dog he’d seen in the photograph of the bride and groom, nestling among the folds of the woman’s skirts. He was prepared to stake his life on it.

  After a moment the dog rolled on its back, and Rutledge scratched the animal’s chest. And then it leapt up, half afraid again, and looked past him down the beach toward another couple strolling some twenty yards behind.

  It had been abandoned here on the strand, he was almost certain of it, and he reached down to pick up the end of the lead.

  If this was the same animal, where was Mrs. Summers?

  21

  The dog refused to leave the shoreline. He struggled against his lead, and even growled as Rutledge lifted him into his arms.

  It took half an hour to make any progress with the animal, and even then he thought it was more a reflection of the dog’s growing despair than his own blandishments. The fact that Rutledge knew the animal’s name seemed to weigh, because when Rutledge made to move back toward the road, the dog stood there whining, torn between waiting and going, and finally he came forward, head down, and let Rutledge pet him again.

  Still, it was an uphill battle back to The Nancy Bell, and when Rutledge arrived on Sergeant Bell’s doorstep, both he and the dog were out of breath.

  Bell, staring at the two of them, said, “And what’s this?”

  Rutledge explained, and Bell got down on one knee, ruffling the dog’s ears, then led it to the kitchen, where there was a little roast beef left from the night before.

  But the dog was back at the door after wolfing down the beef, scratching the wood paneling and crying to be let out.

  “That’s pitiful,” Bell said, watching it. “It’s known only the one mistress, you can see, and wants none other.”

  “She may be dead,” Rutledge answered. “I don’t think he would have left her side otherwise. If she were alive, she’d have fought to keep him with her.”

  The sergeant scratched his chin. “If they took the boat over to France,” he said thoughtfully, “your man could have told her that the dog had to stay below. And she wouldn’t know, would she, until she landed and went for him that he was not there.”

  “Dear God, that’s precisely what he did. I need to speak to the port authorities, and ask them to contact France.”

  He left the dog with Bell and could hear it barking frantically as he drove away.

  After three hours at the port, being passed from office to office, he learned that Mr. and Mrs. Summers had indeed embarked for France on the channel crossing the preceding day. At first he was surprised that Summers had used their real names, and then it was clear why: there had to be a record of Mrs. Summers leaving England for France, for her solicitors to see later that all was aboveboard, the couple happy and still enjoying their wedding journey.

  The harbormaster said, “It was a rough passage, right in the teeth of the storm.” Grinning, he added, “There’d be decks to swab after that
one made landfall.”

  “While you’re at it, ask the French if there was a small dog with them. Long haired, black and gray, with some white,” Rutledge added.

  The harbormaster got in touch with the French authorities, and was told that Mr. and Mrs. Summers had landed safely, although both were the worse for wear from seasickness.

  The message ended, “Madame was very ill. Monsieur had given her something to help the nausea, and it was not working. We recommended an hotel in Honfleur, and he told us he felt he could drive there. No dog accompanied them.”

  Rutledge left the office, still worried. The fact that Mrs. Summers had landed in France surprised him—a seasick woman leaning over the rail needed only a small push to send her into the sea as the boat tossed and twisted in the storm.

  Something was wrong with the picture painted by the French authorities.

  “They didna’ see her,” Hamish pointed out. “They saw a verra’ distressed woman.”

  And that was true, Rutledge thought as he drove back to The Nancy Bell. She could have been drugged. Or she could have been anyone wearing Mrs. Summers’s clothing.

  But there was nothing he could do without authority from the Yard to have the couple taken into French custody. They had left the port by now, and were no longer under its jurisdiction. And they had broken no laws. There was not sufficient evidence to hold Summers at all.

  Misdirection. Summers was a master at it.

  Rutledge went back again to the Dover police and used their telephone to call the Yard. Explaining the situation to Sergeant Gibson, he added, “I want a watch on all ports for someone coming in under the name Summers or Pierce, or any other on this list.” And from the sheet of paper he’d made out, he read the names of anyone who was associated with this case. “He may return as a single person or as a couple—it will depend on how safe he thinks he may be with an ill wife.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Gibson pointed out. “Something will be said about the number of men required for that.”

  “Clear it with the Chief Superintendent. This man hasn’t finished. He’ll kill again.”