by Charles Todd
Rutledge was on his way back to where he’d left his motorcar when he turned a corner and nearly collided with Inspector Gaines.
“Watch what you’re about—oh. Hallo, Ian. What are you doing in this part of London? I thought you were in the West Country.”
“I was,” Rutledge agreed. “Following a few leads.”
“I’ve got the evening off. My sister is here, staying in Blackmon’s Hotel. I’m to take her out to a play.”
Rutledge had just left Blackmon’s. “I hope you enjoy it.”
“I doubt it. But she will. If you’re heading to the Yard, a word of caution. Gibson isn’t in the best of moods.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
Gaines hurried on, but he had placed Rutledge in the position of having to call in at the Yard.
He found Gibson with a cluttered desk, a long list of requests from various officers, and a short temper.
Looking up as Rutledge appeared in front of him, he frowned and said, “I thought you were in Wiltshire, sir.”
“I was. I’m on my way back there now. I needed something from my desk.”
“I don’t expect it will have anything to do with your inquiry. Still. Have you heard? There’s been a report of a break-in at Chief Inspector Leslie’s country house near Marlborough. A local matter so far. Yard hasn’t been called in, but he’s gone down to have a look.”
“Where near Marlborough?” Rutledge asked, trying to tamp down his shock. “Have they caught the intruder?”
“I haven’t heard. But according to a neighbor, there was someone asking about the house only recently. Roused her suspicions. She also claims she’d seen lights in there one evening a few weeks ago. But neither Leslie nor his wife have been to Stokesbury since Boxing Day.”
Stokesbury.
“That’s closer to Avebury than I’d like. How did Leslie learn about this? I thought he was in Yorkshire.”
“The neighbor spoke to the local Constable, and he sent word to me. I passed it on to Denby. In Yorkshire. According to Leslie, it’s a quiet village, no troubles as a rule.”
“Any idea what was taken?”
“Not yet. Leslie told the Constable not to go in until he gets there.”
Rutledge’s mind was already racing. Was he the suspicious person asking questions? He’d had no way of knowing that the Stokesbury house was Leslie’s! His only interest had been the tandem belonging to the Nelsons.
He said, “I didn’t know they had a country house in Wiltshire. The Leslies.”
“Before your time, I should think. As I recall, a cousin died and left it to them. He thought they might wish to retire there someday. There’s the Marlborough railway station, not far away. It wouldn’t be too bad a journey if they chose to come into London from time to time. Not as close as Surrey, mind you.”
Gibson’s gaze was already straying back to the file in front of him. But Rutledge needed to keep him talking.
“Mrs. Leslie must be terribly upset,” he said, infusing concern into his voice.
“I hear the Chief Inspector doesn’t want her told until he’s had a look around. No sense in upsetting her before he knows what’s missing.”
“I can’t say that I blame him.”
With a nod, he went along to his own office, stayed there five minutes, and then left the Yard as quickly as he could. The only person he met on the stairs was Chief Inspector Murray, who nodded and kept on going, a sheaf of papers in his hand.
Rutledge was nearly out the door when he had second thoughts. Turning, he avoided Gibson’s office and went to Sergeant Richards’s desk.
The man smiled as Rutledge approached. “Evening, sir. I was just preparing to leave for the day.”
“I won’t keep you. I’m told that Chief Inspector Leslie is still assigned to that inquiry in Yorkshire?”
“I expect so, sir. There’s no final report come across my desk.”
“No matter. It can wait.” He made as if to turn away, then said, “Remind me. Where was he before the inquiry in Avebury? Was it Kent, by any chance?”
“That would have been Inspector Hayes, sir. He was in Maidstone. Chief Inspector Leslie was in Dartmouth. A pair of suspicious drownings upriver from the town. There was a possibility that they were connected to the Naval College there, which is why he was sent down. Turned out to be a matter of an inheritance that someone didn’t want to share. The guilty party was taken into custody and bound over for trial.”
“Difficult place to reach by train,” he observed.
“He drove, I believe.” Richards frowned. “He does, sometimes. Rumor had it he tried to find someone else willing to take on Avebury in his stead. He was that weary, from the long journey back to London.”
“Yes, he asked if I’d go in his place, but I had to appear in court. Thank you, Sergeant.”
“And you got Avebury after all. I call that a bit of bad luck,” Richards commiserated. “Shall I give him a message, if I see him? That you’re looking for him?”
“No. It will keep.”
Standing by his motorcar, his hand on the wing before turning the crank, Rutledge reviewed a map of England in his head. Coming back from Dartmouth down on the coast in Devon, Chief Inspector Leslie would have had several choices of route. He could have driven to Bristol and then across to London. Taken the coastal road to Southampton and turned north to London there. Or come cross-country to London, taking the back roads. If he’d come across from Bristol, it wasn’t all that far out of his way to go to Avebury.
Rutledge’s mouth tightened into a thin line. The beads he’d claimed as his wife’s. The house in Stokesbury with the Nelsons’ tandem. Leslie’s attempt to find someone to take his place in Avebury. In themselves they weren’t important enough to notice. But put them all together—
What if those beads weren’t Leslie’s wife’s after all? The jeweler had thought he recognized them, but he hadn’t given the name of the client, had he? Rutledge had only assumed they belonged to Mrs. Leslie—and Leslie himself had confirmed that. Or appeared to. The beads couldn’t be the only fine, graduated string in London.
Then why would Leslie lie?
Unless he’d taken them without his wife’s knowledge. Why would he do that? Unless he could be sure he put them back before she missed them . . .
He didn’t like what he was thinking. If it had been anyone but Leslie, he—Rutledge—would have had no hesitation in looking into the possibility that the man was somehow involved.
Hamish said, “There’s yon break-in. He wouldna’ break into his ain house.”
“No. But he might have been there. I need to find out what night that neighbor saw the lights.”
“Ye shouldna’ have given him yon necklace.”
“I didn’t know then what I know now.”
“Still. Ye could be wrong.”
Rutledge’s first inclination was to drive to Wiltshire at once. But if Leslie was there, determining what was missing from the house, this was not the time to run into him. Better to wait and find out what he reported to the local Constable. Have an early supper, he told himself, then leave.
There was a restaurant close by, within easy reach by motorcar. He found a place to leave it, just before The Wilton, and was about to step out of it into the street when a cabbie pulled in by the restaurant’s door, to set two people down.
A man got out, turned to give his hand to the young woman inside, and she joined him. Rutledge stayed where he was. The young woman was Kate Gordon, dressed for an evening event, and the man with her was an officer in the Household Cavalry, his uniform catching the eyes of passersby. He said something to Kate, and she smiled. And then he was holding the restaurant door for her, and they disappeared inside.
Rutledge was fairly certain neither the officer nor Kate had seen him. Driving away, he found he’d lost his appetite.
10
He was still thinking about Kate Gordon when he found himself not on the road to the western counties but in Ken
sington, two streets over from where Chief Inspector Leslie and his wife lived in a Victorian semidetached house. He’d been driving aimlessly.
Or had he? It would do no harm to find out if Leslie was back in London. The chances were, he kept his vehicle in a mews, but it would clear the way if he knew Leslie’s whereabouts.
He had just driven up the street and had turned to drive down it again when he saw the house door begin to open. Pulling quickly to the edge of the street, he waited, considering what he would say if Leslie spotted him.
But it wasn’t Leslie who was leaving. Two women stepped out of the door at number 30.
The taller of the two he recognized as Mrs. Leslie. She was dressed for the theater in a fashionable dark green velvet cloak, the hood perched carefully on her fair hair, the pin set in it reflecting in the glow of the streetlamps. Her companion, in a dark blue cloak, laughed with her over some comment, and the sound traveled to him. She was younger, and he thought she must be a relative, for she had the same fair hair and round face. There was something in the way they walked on, arm in arm, their heads together, that spoke of closeness, an accustomed intimacy.
He suddenly realized that they were coming in his direction. Mrs. Leslie would have no reason to recognize his motorcar, but she could very likely remember him. And then they paused in front of a house next but one to the corner where he was sitting.
As they did, another pair of women, accompanied by a man in evening dress, came out to join them. There were merry greetings, and Rutledge caught a glimpse of Mrs. Leslie’s face, wreathed in smiles and pink with excitement. The third woman turned toward her, and he thought she might be Inspector Hadley’s wife.
A motorcar, driven by a chauffeur, appeared at the corner, went down the street to reverse, returned, and stopped next to the party. The man began to help the four women inside. When the doors were finally shut, the motorcar began to move off.
If Leslie had been in London, surely he’d have joined his wife. Still, they could be meeting him at the theater.
As soon as they were out of sight, Rutledge got down, turned the crank, and slowly started after them.
He had met a number of the wives of the men he worked with. He didn’t know any of them well—as a single man he was usually talking to the other men while the women tended to sit together in another part of the room. He’d exchanged greetings, polite courtesies, but seldom more than that. One or two he knew by sight, like Mrs. Leslie, because he’d worked closely with their husbands.
Keeping his distance, he followed the motorcar through the increasingly crowded streets, and found himself, as he’d expected, in the theater district.
The motorcar stopped before one of the theaters, its passengers alighted and moved toward the entrance. Glancing up, he saw that a revival of a Shaw play was opening that night, and the street was jammed with carriages and cabs and vehicles.
Hamish was saying, “She’s no’ meeting her husband.” And it appeared to be true, he hadn’t come forward to join the party.
Rutledge extricated himself from the throng of theater-goers, got himself back out of the city, picked up the main road west.
Mrs. Leslie had appeared to be relaxed, happy. Almost lighthearted as she greeted her friends. No shadows on her world. He realized that Leslie still had not mentioned the break-in to her. Not yet, until he was sure what had been taken.
What else hadn’t he told his wife?
It was rather Edwardian, he thought, to protect women from the less savory world around them. The war had changed that—death and destruction had crept into everyone’s life. But then Leslie worked daily with the sordid business of crime and murder. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to bring it home with him at night—perhaps he’d wanted something else, this raven-haired other woman who didn’t remind him of a darker world.
How had he kept it from everyone, if there was another woman in his life?
Hamish said, “Ye canna’ know fra’ seeing his wife on the street what happens in yon house when they’re alone.”
It was true.
Of course, if she were suspicious, had felt the change in him without being aware of why he had changed, she might not be ready to confide in her friends, keeping up a good front.
The next question was, how had Leslie met the dead woman? In France, during the war? If it was she the port official Westin had remembered.
Rutledge still didn’t like what he was considering. Brian Leslie was an excellent police officer, intelligent, experienced, and absolutely trustworthy. Surely there was another answer.
He drove all night, finding himself on the outskirts of Marlborough and then searching out a back road to his destination.
It was pitch-black on the lanes he was traveling, but his headlamps picked out the landscape around him, the one or two scattered farmhouses, and empty fields waiting for spring.
He came finally to the end of the road on which the Nelson house sat, and leaving his motorcar there, he quietly moved forward until he could see it clearly.
It was dark, there was no motorcar in front of it.
Leslie wasn’t in residence.
He returned just as silently to his own motor, and reversing, drove back the way he’d come, finding an inn on the outskirts of Marlborough. He woke up the landlord, took a room, damp and with a bed like sacks of corn. Tired as he was, he slept until late afternoon.
In all the interviews he’d conducted in the immediate circle of villages surrounding Avebury, he hadn’t gone as far afield as Stokesbury, and when he was searching out tandem bicycles, he’d done his best to avoid the local Constables to avoid broadcasting his interest.
Now he arrived at four o’clock, sought out the local man, and found him just finishing his tea. If news of his appearance got back to Leslie, it was something he could understand: Rutledge hoping the new information might in some way help him in Avebury.
The Constable was a portly man with brown eyes and a receding hairline, but his straight gaze as Rutledge came through the door belied his friendly greeting. Rutledge understood. Late callers at a police station usually meant a problem to be dealt with.
“Evening, sir. Constable Benning. How may I help you?”
“Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. I was told by my Sergeant in London that there was a breaking and entering here, one that was only discovered recently. Apparently it happened close to the night that the murder I’m investigating in Avebury occurred. I’m hoping that there might be a connection between the two.” He gave the date but kept his expression bland when Benning nodded.
“Aye, I remember that murder.” Benning gestured to the other chair, across the desk, and asked if Rutledge cared for a cup of tea. “The kettle’s still hot,” he added.
“Thank you, no, I must return to Avebury.”
“The first I knew about the break-in was Mrs. Shelby coming by to tell me she’d had some misgivings when a man stopped by and offered a poor excuse to ask questions about the house. She keeps an eye on it for the Leslies and remembered seeing lights in the house one night not long before. It wasn’t until later, mind you, that we narrowed down that date. But neither of them had been down since the new year, and I went to have a look. I couldn’t see anything wrong, but I sent word to London, and they passed it on to the Chief Inspector. He came down to have a look inside. A pity he never went to the house while he was in Avebury about the inquiry there. We’d have had a better shot at catching whoever it was. But of course he couldn’t know that at the time.”
“He didn’t stay in Stokesbury on his way from London to Avebury?”
“I believe he was met in Marlborough when he came in by train.”
That agreed with Leslie’s report.
“What did he find, when he went to the house?”
“A back window had been forced. I couldn’t see that from where I’d been standing when I went round there. But he showed me afterward where the window’s lock had been broken. It’s in the pantry, just above the sloping ce
llar door. Easy enough to clamber up there—no one could see him, and he could take his time about it. Still, the Chief Inspector told me he saw nothing amiss until he walked into the kitchen and found biscuit crumbs on the table, and a wrapper beside them. That’s when he began searching from room to room and discovered the window. Whoever it was had also knocked over a pitcher kept there, as he climbed in. It was on the floor, smashed.”
“He?”
“The thinking is, an ex-soldier down on his luck might have been looking for food. Then he took what he thought he could sell without getting caught, and left before first light.”
“Have you had many ex-soldiers coming through?”
“Well, no. Not since the autumn.” Benning picked up his cup and saucer, and carried it back to the shelf above the little stove. Resuming his seat, he went on. “I do what I can for them, a meal, a few coins, and they move on. There’s no work here, no reason to stay. I had quite a time of it, assuring Mrs. Shelby she was safe enough, that he wouldn’t be coming back.”
“What did he look like? If she saw him?” Rutledge asked.
“She couldn’t describe him, not in any useful way. She kept saying he was menacing. He wanted to know if the Leslies had anything to sell.”
“And that’s the only sighting of this man?”
Benning took a deep breath. “As to that, we can’t be sure. The dogs on one of the farms west of here barked for about ten minutes on the night in question. A Tuesday night, that was. But they were shut up in the shed, to keep them from wandering. Their owner, Mr. Haskell, believes it was only another dog sniffing around. It could have been the vagrant, of course. There’s an old road by the farm, not much used these days.”
Had the Haskell dogs heard a tandem bicycle passing by?
“Where does that road lead?”
“Out to a farm that was sold off twenty years ago. House is gone, of course, but Haskell’s neighbor owns the land and grows mostly corn and beans.”
