“What if they came looking for her, and she wasn’t in her room?”
“I doubt that ever happened. Mr. Wyatt was a deep sleeper. As for Miss Farraday, she never was one to need pampering. An independent little thing from the first time I saw her. I was told she was accustomed to her parents going away and leaving her with the servants.”
“Did you like her?” he asked, hearing an undertone in her voice.
“Not to say didn’t like her. She was such a pretty child, everyone liked her. Still, she wasn’t one to come down to the kitchen and beg a treat, or ask me to sew her ribbons on for her. Little things, but they endear a child to you. She lacked that quality.”
“Why did Justin Fowler have nightmares?”
“I asked Mrs. Russell, and she told me that he had been ill in hospital and I was not to worry, it would pass when he regained his health. But I always wondered, you know, if his father beat him. He had such fearsome scars. Not to speak out of place-but Mrs. Russell told me she was pleased that he had more of his mother in him than his father. I had the feeling Mr. Fowler had a dark past.”
“What sort of past?”
“She never said as much outright, but I gathered Mr. Fowler had been involved with a woman of the streets. It was a reflection on his character.”
“Did he marry this woman? Or live with her?”
“He couldn’t have married her, could he? She already had a husband and a child. It didn’t stop him from taking up with her.”
It was the first he’d heard of a child. Harrison, the solicitor, had assured him there was no issue in the bigamist marriage.
“A child of his? Or by her husband?”
“I should think her husband’s. Which made it all the more shocking that Mr. Fowler should have anything to do with her.”
“A boy or a girl?”
“I don’t think Mrs. Russell knew. You must understand, Mrs. Russell never confided in me, but sometimes she’d be distracted and say things, and I had eyes, I could see some things for myself. When Miss Cynthia showed a partiality for Mr. Justin, she worried that he might break her heart. Then he was off to university, and it all blew over. But sometimes the seed doesn’t fall far from the tree, as they say.”
He was reminded of something. Something Inspector Robinson had said while reviewing the terms of the Fowler wills.
It came back to him then. That Mr. Fowler had supported a charity school in London over the years. An odd choice of interest for a young bachelor reading law.
“Did you keep in touch with the family after the house was closed?”
“Mr. Russell wrote to me once or twice, and Mr. Justin wrote to me before he was sent to France. They were young men, I wasn’t surprised that there were no more letters after that.”
“Did you know Mrs. Broadly was dead?”
“Yes, sadly, her sister wrote to me.”
“Did Harold Finley survive the war?”
“I don’t believe he did. He wrote to me quite a few times. Very pleasant letters they were too. He came to see me in early summer, 1915. He’d been wounded- when the caisson he was in charge of was blown up, it crashed into his leg, breaking it. I thought he looked tired and still in pain, with a nasty limp. He said he was eager to get back to France. I wished him well. That was the last I heard from him.” She picked up her pen and put it down again. “I was very fond of him. If I’d been blessed with a son, I would have wished to have one just like Harold.”
“Where did he come from?”
“He was from Norwich, I believe. You haven’t told me why you are reopening the inquiry into Mrs. Russell’s disappearance. Or why Scotland Yard should take an interest in it.”
He decided to tell her the truth, about Ben Willet and his visit to the Yard as Wyatt Russell.
“That’s Ned Willet’s boy, isn’t it? The fisherman. But why should he do such a thing? I can’t believe it.”
“He was found dead a fortnight later, and he was wearing this.” He handed her the locket.
After looking at it, she raised her eyes to his. “It’s Mrs. Russell’s. But that’s not the photograph she kept in it.” She was silent, then she said, “He couldn’t have killed her. He was only a boy .”
“A gold necklace must have been tempting even to a boy, when his family was struggling to keep food on the table.”
“But he kept it, didn’t he, he didn’t buy bread with it.”
When Rutledge said nothing, she added, “If he’d killed her, then Mr. Wyatt or Mr. Justin would have killed him, if they discovered it. What I don’t understand is, if it was one of them-Mr. Wyatt or Mr. Justin-why did they leave this locket on his body when they knew how much it meant to her?”
Hamish spoke for the first time. “Because,” he said, his voice so clear in Rutledge’s mind that it seemed to come from just behind his shoulder, where the young Scot had stood so often during the long watches in the night, “he knew the police would gie it back to him.”
Chapter 20
Calling on Mrs. Dunner had been profitable. Rutledge drove to his flat, unpacked his valise, and sat by a window, watching the moths dance futilely around the lamp on the table at his elbow.
He could feel another storm building, and it suited his mood.
The housekeeper’s words echoed in his mind.
What I don’t understand is, if it was one of them-Mr. Wyatt or Mr. Justin-why did they leave this locket on his body when they knew how much it meant to her?
There was another possibility, that the body had gone into the Thames before the locket could be removed. Someone could have come along just after the killer had emptied the dead man’s pockets, and the only choice was to let the locket go.
Had Justin Fowler accused Willet of the murder? If so, Willet had had to kill him. And then he had attempted to clear his own name before dying of his cancer by putting the blame squarely on Wyatt Russell.
That at least would go a long way toward explaining the false confession.
Cynthia’s pet…
Wyatt Russell’s words. Was Willet cold-blooded enough to kill Cynthia Farraday’s foster mother as well as the man she had grown up with, and still faced himself in the mirror after all Miss Farraday had done for him?
Hamish said, his voice almost inaudible in the rumble of distant thunder, “Sandy Barber killed him to spare his father and sister.”
It could be true, if Willet had changed so very much. Kill him before he could come home to Furnham and reveal his true character.
That begged the question of who had tried to kill Wyatt Russell.
Perhaps it wasn’t Sandy Barber who had killed Willet. Jessup was fond enough of Abigail to have done the deed to spare her. He too was in a position to intercept any message from the prodigal son. And he could have known more about the book published in France than he’d told anyone.
Whichever way he turned what he knew, Rutledge found that one piece always failed to fit into the puzzle.
Hamish said, “If Willet’s murder was blamed on Wyatt, then someone wanted revenge.”
And that made sense.
But Rutledge wasn’t satisfied.
He watched the storm break over London, watched trees along the street bend before the sudden wind as lightning shattered the darkness and thunder rolled like cannon fire.
There was enough evidence to make an arrest, and Superintendent Bowles would argue that it was the role of the court to sort it all out.
