A Fatal Lie

by Charles Todd

  “It’s what I do. Find people.”

  Hastings rose, went to the cabinet against the interior wall, and opened it. Reaching for what he wanted, he carried the box back to his desk, and there he took out a sheaf of papers.

  “The tragedy of Susan Milford,” he said, laying these out on the blotter. Sifting quickly through the various sheets, some of them clipped together, others only single, he began, “She was in care in Ludlow. For two years. One day she walked away from there, and although the police searched”—he glanced pointedly at Rutledge—“they did not for some time find her.” He turned over another sheet. “She was discovered a year later in Betws y Coed, in Wales. That would be late summer 1917. She was brought up before the magistrate there for an unhealthy interest in the child of a neighbor.”

  “Unhealthy?”

  “The mother believed she had designs on the child. She hovered over it, questioned her care of it, told her that she was not fit to be the mother of one so bright. But Susan told the magistrate that the mother was neglectful and uninterested in the child’s well-being. As it happened, the child’s maternal grandmother confessed to the magistrate that she herself had had words with her daughter over just that issue. And the case was dismissed, after the magistrate placed the child in the grandmother’s charge. Shortly after that, Susan left the village. That was three and a half years ago.”

  “And you don’t know if she is still in Wales or has gone elsewhere?”

  “I have made inquiries. Her brother was in France, it was my duty to keep an eye on her. But as I’ve told you, these led nowhere.”

  “How much does she know about her brother’s life?”

  “Since the war? I have no idea. When he was married, she refused to be in the wedding party, and if she was in the church, no one saw her there. She came to the reception, but before she could do whatever mischief she’d intended, she was quietly taken home. She was inebriated. Or so everyone believed. I was never convinced of that, I thought it was to be her excuse afterward for her misbehavior.”

  “And you have no information beyond Betws y Coed?”

  Hastings glanced at the papers again. “We were never sure, you see. She very likely changed her name, possibly even her appearance. There was a woman in Aberystwyth who moved on before we could make a determination. Some time later, a woman was doing clerical work for a slate mine. We couldn’t be sure why she was doing such menial work, whether this meant she had run through her inheritance or simply liked what she was doing. But she too slipped away before we could be certain.”

  Hastings played with the letter opener for a moment. Rutledge was beginning to realize that this was a habit, a tactic, while he considered how much or how little to reveal.

  “Please understand. Susan can be quite charming—she can make people like her, trust her, protect her, even, by alerting her to the fact that someone has been coming around, asking questions about her. Then they deny ever having seen her, in the misguided belief that they are helping her elude her pursuers. We couldn’t prove it, of course, but we thought it was very likely that this was the case, every time we got close. God knows what tales she spins of persecution, but this is no raving lunatic, wild-eyed and wild of hair, mind you. You could pass her on the street, and take her for a young woman of good family quietly going about her own affairs.”

  “How does she live?”

  “Her money was in trust until she was twenty-five. She gained full control of it two days later. Emptied her accounts, save for nominal sums that allowed them to remain open. How much or little is left of that trust only she knows.”

  Hamish said, “Ye ken, yon sister is devious enough to plan a murder.”

  Rutledge tried to ignore him, but Hamish was right. She had to be found.

  “The very last time you had certain word of her was in Betws y Coed?”

  “Yes. Nothing since then. Just—silence.”

  “Then why do you believe she might be dead?”

  There was the play with the letter opener again. Then Hastings opened a desk drawer, drew out several letters, chose one of them, and put the rest back where he’d found them.

  “This was after the trouble with the young woman and her baby.”

  He handed over an envelope. It was addressed to the solicitor and had been posted in Betws y Coed. That date matched the date on the folded sheet inside.

  There was no greeting or signature. Just the dark scrawl of angry words.

  Why anyone would think I could harm a child, when I was once the child harmed, I can’t imagine. I am tired. My bones ache with it. There’s the river here, but it’s not deep enough. I’ll have to find another way. Better to end it now than go on suffering. Tell Sam I didn’t hate him. I just hated that they didn’t love me as much as they loved him. I wasn’t so different, was I? I wasn’t ugly or misshapen or short or fat or even evil. I just wasn’t what they’d wanted. Try living with that. It makes one bitter, it sours life after a while. So why go on with it? If I’d had any sense, I’d have done it long ago, while they were all still alive. Maybe the dead child would have been given a little affection, a candle in the church on my birthday or a thought for me at Christmas. Wouldn’t Susan have loved the tree? Look, the first snow—Susan loved sledding, didn’t she? Oh, how she loved wading in the sea! I might have been someone then. Now I’m just dead, and might as well finish that and make it true. Nobody wanted me alive. I’ll see nobody finds my body. I’d rather the crows have it than my family. I’m not going to lie quiet in the family plot. I promise you that.

  For the first time, Susan Milford seemed real to Rutledge. The black splash of ink on the page was rife with anger and pain and something more, a loneliness so deep it couldn’t be measured.

  He read it a second time, then passed the envelope back to Hastings, who put it carefully away. Not looking at Rutledge. How much was dramatizing her situation, and how much was sincere? He wasn’t able to judge.

  “You should have shown me that in the beginning.”

  “I’d hoped it would never be necessary. I never showed it to Milford. It seemed somehow too—personal.”

  “Do you think that that’s how she truly felt?”

  “Yes. Oh, yes. Only I never knew how to put it into words. She did.”

  Rutledge left soon after.

  Betws y Coed was some sixty or seventy miles from Shrewsbury, he thought. Possibly farther, given the condition of the roads, and the fact that none of them save Watling Street—built by the Romans—ran straight. But before he could leave Shrewsbury, there was one more matter to attend to.

  He found the hotel in the center of town that had a telephone—he recalled it from another inquiry—and put through a call to Scotland Yard.

  Sergeant Gibson was closeted with the Chief Superintendent, and Rutledge was forced to wait for nearly three-quarters of an hour before the telephone in the little alcove began to ring.

  He answered it quickly, and was glad to hear the gruff voice at the other end give his name.

  “Sergeant. I need information. Are there any Yard inquiries in north Wales regarding a woman being taken up for anything to do with the abduction of a young child?”

  He gave the particulars he knew, well aware that these were scant and of little use to Gibson, who seemed to manage a wide correspondence with half of England and had more facts at his fingertips than any dozen other men at the Yard. Behind Gibson’s back, some of the men called it witchcraft, and were only half joking. It did appear to be uncanny at times, the way the Sergeant could recall a pertinent fact or a whispered hint or even a Constable in a far-flung village who had the right answer.

  “I’ll have to give it some thought, sir,” Gibson replied, sounding as if it might take him half the night to scour his memory.

  But Rutledge knew better than to push. He took a deep breath, hoping Gibson couldn’t hear that down the line, and said, “It would be very helpful. And I’d like to know if anyone in Wales—in the mountains or along the
coastline—has come across a female body in the last three and a half years.”

  He could almost read the silence. You’re wanting too much, you’re not the only Inspector clamoring for information, you know.

  Finally Gibson said with resignation, “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “And if you please, Sergeant. Could you leave a message with the Chief Superintendent? The dead man in the River Dee near the village of Llangollen has been identified. He may not have been alone when he was pushed from the Aqueduct into the river below. I’m having to trace a missing child now, to be certain she wasn’t with him. I’ll report again as soon as I have further information.”

  Interest picked up in the Sergeant’s voice. “Ah. The woman. Sir.”

  “Possibly. Yes. That’s why I must track her down as soon as I can.”

  “Nasty business when children are involved.”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t all quite true, not the way he’d told it to Gibson. But the point was to find the information as soon as possible. “Thank you. I’ll be at this telephone. The Prince Rupert Hotel, Shrewsbury.”

  And so he spent a day wandering Shrewsbury, exploring what was left of the great Abbey ruins that had once dominated the little town, along with the castle. It was truncated now, but still intriguing. He walked there for the better part of two hours, listening to his footsteps echoing on the stone, no one about. If the monks who once lived here had left any trace other than the worn seats in the choir and the worn treads on the stone steps, he couldn’t find it. Their voices raised in song and prayer had vanished with the Reformation.

  If he was searching for a measure of peace, he didn’t find it either.

  He came back to the telephone twice in the course of the afternoon, and then around five o’clock he was just stepping into the alcove passage when the telephone began to ring.

  It was Gibson.

  “Strange that you should ask, sir.” And he began to read from a Welsh police report.

  Gibson had found the Betws y Coed case that went before the local magistrate, in much the same detail as Rutledge had been given by the solicitor, Hastings. There had been no case against Susan Milford, after all, and the charge was dismissed without prejudice.

  Rutledge listened carefully to the report, but he heard nothing that was new or useful.

  As Gibson finished, he asked, “And that was all you’ve found so far?”

  “All there is to report. Sir. It was an unusual request. And there’s this, mind you, some matters aren’t passed on to London. They are dealt with locally, and if that’s successful, it’s not reported.”

  There was nothing to be gained—and much to lose—by annoying Sergeant Gibson for not finding the answers he was seeking. And for all he knew, Gibson was right, they hadn’t been reported.

  “Yes, I take your point. Sorry, Gibson, it’s just that I was looking for something more, and that’s not your fault.” He tried to lighten his voice, hoping that would travel down the wires to London. “And bones, Gibson. Have you found any bones for me?”

  “It took most of the day to find the report, sir. The bones will have to wait.”

  But Rutledge couldn’t wait another day in Shrewsbury. He wanted to reach Wales and hear for himself what Susan Milford had or had not done.

  “I’ll put through a call when I find another telephone. That will have to do.”

  “Suit yourself, sir.”

  And Gibson rang off.

  It was late on that night when he drove into Betws y Coed, a village lying in the Conwy River valley. He managed to find a room in a small hotel on the main street. Well before the railways came, the village had become a major coaching stop for the Irish Mail, traveling between London and the port at Holyhead, where ferries made the crossing. And soon it had begun to cater to summer visitors as well. Walkers, mostly, the sleepy clerk confided in him, come to see the Falls and take in the fresh air from the surrounding forest.

  Rutledge rose early for breakfast. It was more than a fortnight now since the death of Sam Milford. And he was no closer to the man’s killer. As soon as he’d finished his meal, he walked across the green and the railway tracks to find the magistrate.

  He was in and willing to talk about the case against Susan Milford. “I remember it because it was unnecessary, you see. There were better avenues for protecting the child without frightening the mother. The police, the church. The grandmother, even.”

  “Would she have taken the child away from the mother? Physically removing her?” Rutledge asked.

  “I have no idea—it never came to that, of course. I sorted it out as best I could, given the flaring tempers, and from what I learned afterward, the child was better off with the grandmother in the first place. Felt rather like King Solomon, you know.”

  “And Miss Milford?”

  “Perfectly polite, of course, but there was something about the way she saw the matter. Black and white. Far too personally. Too intense, too set on having her way.”

  “Did you see her again after the case was dismissed?”

  “She was here and there in the village, I couldn’t very well have missed her. Always at a distance, of course. She never approached me.” He frowned. “And then she wasn’t here, and I noticed that too.”

  “Did gossip whisper any information about where she might have gone?”

  “I didn’t hear it if there was. My wife would have mentioned it, I think.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Does it matter? I can consult my records, if you wish.”

  “Possibly. Yes, it might well matter.”

  Rising, the magistrate ran his finger along a line of boxes on the shelf against the wall. The finger stopped, and he took down the box it was pointing to. He brought it back to the desk, began to search the contents, frowning as he worked.

  “Yes, here it is, I should think. Right. This was fourth September, 1917. Yes. It unexpectedly turned rather cold. The initial complaint was that the child was inadequately dressed to be out in the weather, and the two women—mother of the child and Miss Milford—had words outside a yarn shop on the main street. The next day the mother brought the child out in a sunbonnet and shawl. Flaunting her authority as parent. Miss Milford told her she was a fool and too stupid to be anyone’s mother.”

  He looked up. “Shall I go on? Yes? It escalated from there, another encounter nearly coming to blows on the green. Near the end of the month, a Constable was sent for, the child’s mother claiming that Miss Milford told her that the child would be better cared for by the town cat, and that she would personally see to it that the cat was given a chance to prove her words. The mother took this hyperbole as a threat, and began screaming. Very likely having seen the Constable nearby, because he was there at once and took Miss Milford into custody for endangering the life of the child in the pram.”

  He began to fold the papers and return them neatly to their proper place.

  Although Susan Milford hadn’t touched the child in question, had this confrontation stayed with her and eventually led her to take Tildy away from her mother? That, Rutledge thought, was a stretch, but then if Susan was disturbed, she might believe that Tildy would not be loved and cared for. That she was in need of rescue from a father who couldn’t accept her as his own. But Sam had accepted the child.

  Assuming, of course, that Susan was alive at the end of the war, when her brother came home to discover he was a father.

  “Did you feel in any way that Miss Milford was a threat to herself?”

  The magistrate considered him. “Are you asking me if I believed the young woman was suicidal? It never crossed my mind. She appeared to be satisfied by the resolution of the case.” He pursed his lips in thought. “But now that you bring it up. That intensity of hers . . . If the verdict had gone against her, if she had failed to save that child from its mother, if she believed that something might well happen to it because the mother was careless, perhaps she might conclude that suicide was a
more dramatic way of making her point. But that’s hindsight, isn’t it?”

  Rutledge was still mulling that over as he left the little courthouse shortly afterward. Was it worry about the child that had precipitated that despairing letter to Hastings? And then when the child was given to its grandmother, suicide was neither necessary nor useful to get her way.

  “It could have had verra’ little to do with the child,” Hamish pointed out. “Yon letter could have had different roots.”

  And no more than coincidental with the worry over the child.

  Bones or no bones, he’d have to keep looking.

  And then he had his very first bit of luck.

  Someone was calling to him, and he turned to see the magistrate hurrying after him, waving something.

  Rutledge walked back down the street to meet him.

  “I’m glad I caught you up. My wife reminded me. Well, I expect she’s just as happy to get this out of the house.” He shoved a slim book into Rutledge’s hand. “Susan Milford’s. She’d been reading it while she was waiting for the case to be heard. I expect she forgot it when the verdict was handed down. It sat there on the table in the public room until someone thought to look inside and saw her name. She could well have moved on by then.”

  Rutledge turned it over. It was a small, cheaply printed little book of Welsh legends. He found the name scrawled inside in the same heavy ink as the letter.

  “Thank you. If I find her, I’ll return it.”

  “I never asked. Why are you looking for her?”

  “She’s been missing for some time. Her family is anxious.”

  “Not terribly anxious. If they haven’t begun searching for her until now.”

  Rutledge smiled.

  “Well. I wish you luck.” And he was gone, trotting back toward the courthouse.

  He tossed the little book into his valise when he reached his room, and then stood at the long windows, looking down on the street. It was a pleasant little village, but he wasn’t seeing the view. He had come here, verified everything that Hastings had told him. Where to, now?