Odd Partners

by Mystery Writers of America

  The evening before I waited in the cold dawn outside a fine building on East 79th Street, the Glock pistol deep in my coat pocket, I cut a particularly beautiful silhouette. Dreamy eyes. Parted lips. Ripples of long waves that drifted off the paper into memory.

  “A self-portrait, Simone?” my son-in-law asked.

  “Or a portrait of someone else?” asked my granddaughter, her eyes teasing me.

  In a world where truths struggle to breathe—and not all of them should—I realized that I held two.

  “Yes” was all I said.

  Blood Money

  An Inspector Rutledge Story

  CHARLES TODD

  London, 1920

  Inspector Ian Rutledge walked out of his flat into May sunshine. He’d just reached his motorcar when Hamish MacLeod, the voice he’d carried in his head since the Battle of the Somme, said, “Ware.”

  He turned to look toward the corner of the quiet street just as an older woman, her hair in some disarray, called to him.

  “Inspector Rutledge? I’m so glad I caught you. Will you come, please? There’s a cat up the tree in front of my house and her crying kept me awake all night. Can you bring her down?”

  Groaning inwardly, Rutledge went to join her beneath one of the plane trees that lined Melbourne Avenue. Mrs. Gregg had lived alone since her husband’s death in early 1919, and every able man in the street had been called upon to help her in one way or another. Since his return from the trenches, he himself had dealt with a chimney clogged with a bird’s nest and a jammed window rope.

  He could hear the soft, piteous mews of the cat now. Looking up, he could just see her, white with splashes of bright orange, half hidden among the leaves. She was very small, even accounting for her long fur. She peered down at him, her amber eyes pleading with him to do something.

  But the lowest limbs of the tree were beyond his reach. He turned to Mrs. Gregg. “It’s best to call the fire brigade—” he began, just as Constable Harris turned the corner.

  Mrs. Gregg had also spotted him, and she hurried over to beg his help as well.

  The constable touched his helmet to Rutledge, looked up, and sighed. “I’m a good deal heavier than you, sir, and not as tall. But I’ll give you a boost to that branch, if you like.”

  There was nothing for it but to accept, although Hamish reminded Rutledge that he had a meeting with Chief Superintendent Markham in an hour, and needed to be presentable. “A torn cuff or a broken leg willna’ do.”

  He handed his hat to Mrs. Gregg, glancing ruefully at his polished boots.

  The constable cupped his hands, and Rutledge was able to catch the lowest branch, and with a grunt, swing himself up into the tree. He hadn’t climbed since he was twelve, in his parents’ back garden. Apparently, the knack of it hadn’t been lost in the intervening years.

  He got himself from branch to branch until he was just under the small cat. She’d nervously watched his approach, pacing up and down her own limb, and Rutledge had the distinct feeling she was about to go higher, beyond his reach.

  But when he put out a hand to grasp her scruff, she didn’t struggle, and he was able to lower her against his chest. She began to purr softly as he tucked her inside his coat and began his careful descent. Below, Mrs. Gregg clapped her hands in delight.

  He got himself and the cat down the tree with only a few scrapes to his hands and face. The next problem was how to make those last ten feet without breaking an ankle. He managed it somehow, lowering himself by his arms until he could safely drop to the ground.

  He could feel the cat’s sharp claws dig through his shirt into his chest, but she made no effort to leave the safety of his coat, and when he landed, he lifted her—still purring—out.

  Constable Harris backed away. “Cats make me sneeze.”

  Mrs. Gregg pointed. “She lives just there. With Sergeant Johnson.”

  Two houses down from hers, white with a dark green door. Rutledge had seen the occupant a number of times but had never spoken to him.

  Leaving Mrs. Gregg with Harris, Rutledge carried the cat up the short walk to the door, but no one answered his summons. He went round to the rear of the house, taking the narrow service alley, and opened the gate that led into the back garden. Like those of the other houses on the street, it was shallow, with a shed to one side and a flowering tree by the back wall.

  There was no one about, but the cat jumped out of his grasp and ran across the grass to the kitchen door. Brushing himself off, he was about to turn away when he realized his shirt front was streaked with what appeared to be rusty splotches. He looked back at the cat, and saw that her underbelly was the same shade—nowhere near as bright as the orange patches on her head and back.

  She was standing at the door, waiting to be let inside, her tail twitching from side to side. Rutledge went forward, tried the door, and it opened under his hand. The cat trotted inside, mewing, and after a moment he followed, stepping into the entry before moving to the half-open kitchen door. He pushed it wider.

  A man dressed in shirt and trousers lay on the floor in the shafts of sunlight coming through the tall windows facing onto the back garden. The back of his head was bloody—drying blood, not fresh. The cat trotted over to the man and curled up at his feet. The house was quiet around him as Rutledge crossed the room and knelt, feeling for a pulse, although it was clear enough that the man was dead.

  “It must be Johnson. Yon cat doesna’ fear him.”

  Rutledge moved the man’s head slightly. “Yes. Johnson.” He’d answered Hamish out loud, as he often did in times of stress. The voice had been there since 1916, although he knew the Scottish corporal was buried in France. They had all come close to breaking by that August, exhausted, their dead often underfoot. And then he’d had to order Corporal MacLeod shot for openly refusing to lead his men into heavy enemy fire one last time. Military necessity, but he’d felt the guilt even so, and he’d brought Hamish back to England in the only way he could, in his head.

  Looking around the room, he saw the poker from the hearth lying in the shadows of the table. “And that, no doubt, is the murder weapon. There’s blood on it.”

  Rising, he found a dish in a cabinet, filled it with water to lure away the cat, then stepped past the body to a door that was shut. The room beyond had been tossed with little concern for contents: a broken lamp lying in a pool of water from a cracked vase, the tulips crushed under foot, and chair cushions slashed with angry force. Even the carpet had been lifted and tossed aside. What had someone been searching for?

  The upstairs rooms were also ransacked, with increasing frustration. It was this, then, that had frightened the cat. But whoever it was had put her out. Why?

  He went down to the front door and called to Constable Harris. Leaving him in charge, Rutledge reassured an anxious Mrs. Gregg, then left to inform the Yard of the murder.

  * * *

  —

  Chief Superintendent Jameson frowned at Rutledge’s report. “Can’t have our inspectors climbing trees in such a respectable part of London. What will people think?”

  “If I hadn’t, it might have been days before the body was discovered.”

  “Then deal with it fast as you can,” Jameson told him, resignation in his voice.

  It was while Rutledge was out speaking with the doctor and the undertaker that Sergeant Gibson tracked down what he could about the late Alexander Hickson Johnson.

  When Rutledge returned to the Yard around six o’clock, the file on Johnson was on his desk. According to the doctor’s preliminary report, the victim had been killed toward midnight, the cause of death had been blunt force trauma to the head, and the weapon was likely the poker. The body had been transported to the morgue, autopsy still unscheduled. According to Constable Harris, who had spoken to the neighbors, Johnson had lived quietly, apparently within his means, and seldom had
visitors. But he often left the house on Wednesday evenings, ostensibly to attend evensong. The man had no hobbies nor vices, as far as the neighbors could tell, although he had enjoyed golf before the war, and had played once a month at a club in Surrey. But not, they thought, since the war. He’d come home a quieter man than he’d been when he’d enlisted, except for his Wednesday evenings. The cat appeared to be his only survivor.

  When Rutledge called on Gibson in his lair, a small room filled with reports and boxes of evidence, the sergeant took out a sheet of paper and handed it across the desk. Rutledge could almost feel Hamish standing at his shoulder, reading it with him.

  Gibson was giving a running commentary on his findings. “No police record that we can locate. Born in Gloucester, came to London at the age of twenty when his father died and left him a small inheritance. Wounded at Passchendaele in 1917, and again in late ’18. War record clean. A neighbor confided he was one for the cards, but Johnson’s bank manager informed the Yard his accounts seldom varied by more than twenty pounds over a year’s time. Either he was unlucky, or he kept his winnings elsewhere.”

  Hamish spoke, jolting Rutledge. “The way yon house was turned over, his killer didna’ find what he was after. The winnings?”

  He coughed to hide his reaction. “If not money, what about secrets?”

  Gibson shook his head. “If he had any, we’ve not uncovered them.”

  But Johnson had something that someone else had wanted badly—and believed to be in that house.

  Rutledge went back there, using his torch to find a lamp, then lighting it. There were still smears of blood on the kitchen floor, and the little cat was huddled forlornly under the table, anxious and uncertain. Rutledge found part of a roast chicken in the larder, and cut up a portion into a bowl. She went to it at once, purring as she ate. And what am I to do with her, he asked himself, when the inquiry is finished?

  He went to the parlor and began to sort through the wreckage.

  Hamish sighed. “No’ here.”

  He hadn’t expected it to be—not in such a public place—but he couldn’t be certain until he’d looked for himself.

  Rutledge climbed the stairs to the bedroom. It offered no insight into the murder, but showed him a solitary man’s life that reminded him of his own. Books from a bookshelf littered the floor, along with bedding and the contents of a slashed mattress tangled with shirts and underwear and stockings pulled from drawers. A small desk lay on its side, contents scattered. Golf clubs were tossed around the room, the bag empty.

  A military chest was overturned, uniforms and souvenirs spilling out. He could confirm what Gibson had learned, that Johnson had been a sergeant in a Wiltshire regiment, and digging deeper, Rutledge found medical discharge papers—Johnson had lost the sight of one eye and several toes, his war ending in September 1918.

  Looking at the books, Rutledge found that Johnson had an eclectic taste, from Dickens to Conan Doyle, biography to travel. A man of many interests…

  What was his killer searching for?

  The other two rooms on the first floor were less personal, but they too had been tossed, bedding dragged off and trampled underfoot, pictures taken down from the walls, even the window curtains pulled off their rods. The second floor, used as a box room, was in no better shape, the few oddments of furnishings stored there overturned, seats of chairs slashed, the lining of valises shredded, a trunk upended, the contents scattered across the floor.

  Returning to the bedroom and ignoring the chaos, Rutledge asked himself where he would hide something he didn’t want to be found. His own medical records, for one, showing shell shock…Dr. Fleming had destroyed most of them, but there must have been a few still locked in cabinets of clinic records. Testing the floors, he didn’t find any loose boards, nor did the wardrobes have false bottoms.

  His thorough search of the house had yielded no secrets, and trimming the lamp wick, he began again. It was nearly eleven o’clock when he stood in the center of the bedroom and cast a final glance around him, prepared to call it a night. A new man, Constable Turner, was posted at the front door to make certain no one else was allowed in. Tomorrow…

  His gaze paused at a box of playing cards barely visible in the top of one of a pair of army boots. Cards. Johnson was a gambler….

  He retrieved it, set an overturned chair back on its feet, and sat down to draw the cards from their water-stained box. They were Belgian, he realized, a souvenir from the war, and not likely to be used for general play. He was about to put them away when Hamish said, “Just there!”

  He turned the face cards over. Nothing. Fanning them in his hand, he realized suddenly that there was writing on the lower number cards. Crossing to the lamp, he stared at it. Names. Nine of them. In different fists. And beside each, a number.

  Now what the devil did that mean?

  The cat came upstairs to wind herself around his feet, then curl up on a half-torn pillow, preparing to sleep.

  Rutledge took out his notebook and wrote down each name and each number. Looking at them on the page, he could see that they appeared to represent an accounting of some sort. But of what?

  Hamish commented, “The box wasna’ hidden.”

  Rutledge put the cards in his pocket, closed his notebook, and went down the stairs.

  At the door, he said, “Good night, Constable.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Rutledge walked down the street to his own flat, and after a whiskey, took out the cards and the notebook again.

  Who were these men? No rank was given, but he had a feeling, given the fact that the cards were Belgian, that they had to do with the war.

  Hamish said, “Yon sums. What each man owed him?”

  “Owed? Gambling debts that he hadn’t collected?” Rutledge answered aloud.

  Hamish chuckled. “Ye’re the man wi’ Scotland Yard.”

  “Johnson must have served with them.” But why only nine? He got to his feet, collected his coat and hat, and, late as it was, drove to the Yard.

  Gibson was still in his little room. Rutledge had often wondered if the man had a home to go to.

  He showed the sergeant the list of names. “What can you find out about these nine men?”

  Gibson peered at them. “D’you think he served with them?”

  “It’s possible. Start there. They may be dead. Or missing.”

  He took the list. “Tomorrow,” he said, and Rutledge knew better than to push.

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, after stopping by Johnson’s house and sharing his tea milk with the little cat, Rutledge reported to the Yard and went to find Gibson.

  He was never sure how Gibson came by his information. Some of the other inspectors swore it was black magic.

  As Rutledge strode down the passage, Hamish said, “Ye ken, the cat was put out. No’ left in a house with a dead man.”

  “A woman? Yes, you’re right, it’s the sort of thing a woman might do. But the names appear to be male. A cat owner?”

  When the sergeant handed him the list without comment, Rutledge saw that there were addresses for each name. Alive, then. And they were all men in the ranks of a Wiltshire regiment, and from Johnson’s company.

  Hamish noted, “Yon corporal lives in London.”

  Rutledge went to find Corporal Thomas Tomlinson in Hounslow, but he had left for his job, running a small working-man’s café near Charing Cross railway station. Rutledge found it and ordered tea at the busy counter until he was satisfied that the shorter of the two men working behind it was Tomlinson.

  He beckoned him over, and without identifying himself, he asked, “Do you by chance know a Sergeant Johnson? Wounded at Passchendaele in 1917? I’m looking for someone who knew him in the war.”

  The man went still. “And who’s asking?” His gaze was
steady, cold.

  Rutledge told him then. About the murder. About the deck of cards. And watched the shock spread across the man’s face.

  “Here, you don’t think I did it?” Tomlinson demanded apprehensively.

  “If you didn’t, you’ll tell me why your name is on one of these cards.” He took them out and spread them so that Tomlinson could see his.

  The man hesitated, then said slowly, “It’s blood money. In a way.”

  “What?”

  Tomlinson looked over his shoulder and leaned toward Rutledge. “Lieutenant Mercer threw himself on a German grenade. If he hadn’t, we’d have all been killed. As it was, three men were wounded and sent home. Johnson lost an eye. But all of us lived, and we felt we owed the lieutenant’s widow for what he’d done. And so we get together and play a hand or two. Only we don’t gamble. At the end of the evening we just pay up what we can afford to lose. A set amount. It’s there, on those cards. No more, no less. Each month it’s collected and sent on to her and her two children. It was Johnson who saw to that.” He considered Rutledge. “My wife knows I play cards. Not why. We took an oath.”

  “Then who killed Johnson? It must be one of you.”

  “God knows.” But Rutledge thought the man did—that he must be able to guess. After all, he’d served with the others.

  He said, his voice grim, “Johnson was bludgeoned. He survived the war, and died in his own house at the hands of a vicious killer. Which one of the survivors wanted to stop these payments?”

  “None of us. It’s a debt,” Tomlinson said earnestly. “We wouldn’t touch the sergeant.” And then, avoiding Rutledge’s gaze, he added, “Well, there’s Private Burton’s wife. Since he was let go from the dockyards, she’s complained about what Jimsy ‘lost,’ playing cards. He might have told her about the lieutenant, just to shut her up.”