“What sort of books?”
“I have no idea. I do know he borrowed a Bible once. I said to him, ‘Don’t you have a Testament of your own?’ And he said he’d never had one. I thought that was very strange.”
There were voices in one of the passages behind her. She said hastily, “I must go.” She shut the door firmly and left him there on the steps.
Hamish said, “It wasna’ a verra’ profitable journey.”
“In some ways it was. For instance, was it his illness that brought the man back to England? Or had he been here all this time?”
“How did he live?” Hamish, ever practical, asked.
It was a good question.
By his craft-or had he fallen on hard times and turned to blackmail?
Chapter 10
At the end of the Laughtons’ drive, Rutledge debated whether to spend the night in Thetford or go back to Furnham. And then he decided to go directly to London.
There had been no way to reach Sergeant Gibson until now, and with any luck there would be answers to his questions concerning the whereabouts of Wyatt Russell and Cynthia Farraday.
By the time he’d reached the outskirts of London, the first pale rays of the sun were brightening the eastern sky. He was in need of petrol and found a garage a few miles farther along the road. Making his way through the early morning traffic into the city, where street cleaners were busy and men and women were on their way to open shops and offices, he was caught behind a milk van making deliveries, and it was another half an hour before he reached his flat.
Two hours of sleep, a shave and a change of clothes, and he was ready to go to the Yard.
He had to run Sergeant Gibson to earth. A body had been found in St. James’s Park, and the sergeant was trying to trace a member of the man’s family.
He looked up as Rutledge called to him on the stairs, and said, “The Chief Superintendent has been wanting you.”
“Did you tell him I was in Essex and out of reach?”
“Yes, sir. It didn’t seem to do much good. By the bye, I’ve found the information you asked for. It’s on my desk. Shall I bring it up when I’ve finished here?”
He knew better than to tell Gibson that he would find it for himself. They had always had a very uneasy relationship, ever since Rutledge had returned to the Yard. What drew the two men together was a distinct dislike of the Chief Superintendent, and Gibson as a rule would happily spite the man in any way he could. Helping Rutledge was one of the surest ways to do that. But he did so on his own terms.
Rutledge went on to his own office and shut the door. The long night’s drive had been tiring, and he stood for a moment, looking down at the street below, not really seeing the activity there as he considered what he’d learned about Ben Willet.
Small wonder he didn’t fit into the village where he was born. The position as footman had only been a beginning, a first step.
What had possessed him to decide to be a writer of books? He’d been a great reader, yes. But what had triggered that leap of imagination that said, I can do this too? Had it begun as boredom and quickly become an aspiration? Or like those afternoons off in Thetford, had writing been another means of escape from a life he’d thought he wanted and found was not to his liking?
Was Paris just another escape?
A large colony of writers and poets, musicians and painters, had converged on Paris after the war. Many of them were former soldiers, restless and in need of whatever they couldn’t find at home. Or were too lost to try. A good many drank away their dreams, and others sometimes found disillusionment. A few met with success. How had Willet fared?
There was a tap at the door, and Sergeant Gibson entered rather quickly, shutting it quietly behind him.
“Old Bowels is on the warpath,” he said. “The body in the park has Connections.”
Bowles was always one to sniff out opportunity. A man with no connections of his own, he had an eye for the main chance. And it just as often eluded him, souring his disposition for days afterward.
Gibson held out a sheet a paper. “This is all I could find, given the time I had to pursue the matter.”
Rutledge took it and scanned Gibson’s dark scrawl.
“Wyatt Russell is in a clinic? War injuries?”
“So I was told by MacDonald at the War Office.”
Of all the results that Rutledge had anticipated, this was not one.
He read on. “Ah, Cynthia Farraday. Well done, Gibson.” In his mind’s eye he could see the newspaper cutting of Miss Farraday at the flower show. A photographer’s delight, finding a pretty girl admiring a prizewinning blossom. And she had appeared to enjoy having her photograph taken. Had this been her one excursion into the city with Harold Finley? Finding her ward’s photograph in a newspaper would have given Mrs. Russell a very good reason for curtailing such visits.
“I’ve another task for you. See if you can find out which doctors in London one Benjamin Willet saw in the past six months for a stomach cancer that was inoperable. I’d like to know where he was staying during that time. He was in London at the end of May. And then a matter of a fortnight ago. That’s all the information I have.”
The sergeant made a note of that. “Anything else?”
“Yes. See what sort of records the Tilbury police can find on the disappearance of Mrs. Elizabeth Russell, August 1914.”
“Where will I find you?”
“I’ll be in London this morning, and then I’m off to this clinic in Oxfordshire. Then back to Essex, I expect. I’ve a funeral to attend.”
“If you’re leaving, now’s the time,” Gibson warned him. “Else you’ll be taken off the Gravesend death and put to work on the St. James’s Park murder. Sir.”
The man pulled from the Thames had had no Connections, after all. Bowles’s only concern had been to put his opposite number’s nose out of joint.
“I’ll take your good advice,” Rutledge said and reached for his hat.
He made it out of the Yard without encountering Bowles, and drove to a street in Chelsea, not far from where Meredith Channing lived. But she was still out of the country, as far as he knew, and he made a point of avoiding her house. The fewer reminders of her the better, he told himself. Out of sight, out of mind.
Hamish snorted derisively. “You tell yoursel’ that, but it does no good.”
Rutledge ignored the voice. But he knew that Hamish was right. It had been hard these last weeks to know what to feel.
He found the street number. It was a very good address, and the house was handsome, the sort that would suit a woman like Cynthia Farraday. Large enough for comfort, small enough not to require an army of servants to maintain it. He remembered that someone had told him she had inherited it from her dead parents.
He walked up to the door and was amused when he saw the knocker. It was in the shape of an orchid. He let it fall and waited until a maid appeared to ask his business.
“Mr. Rutledge to see Miss Farraday,” he said briskly.
Apparently the young woman hadn’t been warned to turn him away. Instead she asked him to wait in the hall while she went to see if Miss Farraday was at home.
He did as she asked.
There was a small table to one side of the door, and above it hung a rather good watercolor of the marshes. On the opposite wall, a gilt-framed mirror reflected both. He thought Cynthia Farraday must have been telling the truth when she said she liked the marshes at River’s Edge.
Several minutes later, a door opened down the passage and Miss Farraday herself came out to greet him.
