The Confession (18 page)

It was a measure, he thought, of the village attitude toward him. Indeed, he'd been surprised that Sandy Barber had sought him out. Hamish reminded him that Barber was a force to be reckoned with in Furnham and made up his own rules. But Rutledge had a feeling that the encounter had gone beyond curiosity. A fishing expedition, then?

He was just stepping into the motorcar when the inn's clerk came to the door.

“Are you leaving, then?” he asked hopefully. “I'll fetch your valise for you.”

Rutledge shook his head and drove off toward River's Edge, leaving the clerk looking after him with frustration writ large on his face.

A
s far as he could tell, after he'd left the motorcar and walked up to the gate, nothing had changed there. The chain was still looped between the pillars, and the high grass showed his passage but not, he thought, that of someone else.

Unless someone had walked in his tracks.

He made his way up the drive to the house, remembering last night and his care not to be seen until he was ready to show himself. And that had been wise, given the weapons he'd found in the study. Now he went boldly toward the house across the open ground, and around to the terrace. It was one thing to shoot an intruder in the dark, and quite another to fire on him in the light of day.

Instead of mounting the steps, he scanned the river for any sign of watchers. Where, for instance, had Cynthia Farraday met Ben Willet?

“Ye canna' tell. You do na' know the coves and inlets. Ye'd require field glasses to be sure.”

Rutledge turned to study the margins of the lawns, that line where the cultivated grass ended and the marsh began. How much draining had it taken to rip this estate out of the marsh's grip? Or had this been a naturally higher stretch of land? He could see for himself that there were half a dozen places that might be the beginning of a track through the reeds, but striking out into one of them would be foolish at best, unless one knew what he was about. And how often did the tracks shift? Would Russell have been able to find his way after all this time? Rutledge was reminded, in fact, of a maze, with its artificial twists and turns intentionally leading the unwary down blind alleys.

There was the river, of course, to help keep one's bearings, but as the ground rose in hummocky patches and dipped into small wet pockets, even that guide could disappear.

He was beginning to understand how Mrs. Russell could vanish so easily. But was she alive—or dead—when she did?

Turning to climb the steps to the terrace, he debated whether or not to go inside. If Russell was there, walking in uninvited could be considered trespass. And laying siege, in the hope to see him come out of his own accord, was wasting time.

What was the man's state now? He'd left the house in Chelsea after slapping Cynthia. Not hard, but enough to shock both of them. His body was battered from the motorcycle accident, and he knew he was being hunted. Did he see himself as a man with a damaged mind who had burned his bridges?

There was a good chance that Russell had never intended to stay here, and every intention of dying here by his own hand.

Rutledge crossed to the door and tried it. It was still unlocked, just as he'd left it. But when he swung it wide, the morning sun fell across a muddy footprint on the floorboards just inside.

He hadn't risked turning on his torch, and there was no way of knowing if it had been there last night before he'd seen the man out by the landing, or not. Squatting beside it, he touched the rim of mud. It was hard, dry. And the shape didn't match his own boots; it was longer and wider. He cast about for any indication that the wearer of the shoe had gone out again.

Two or three crumbles of mud were caught in the threads of the carpet a stride away, but after that he could find nothing.

Straightening, he called, “Russell? Major Russell, are you here?”

The words seemed to echo through the house, loud enough to be heard by anyone inside, but even though he called again, no one answered.

Hamish was reminding him that he was here, where the Yard couldn't reach him if new developments occurred in London. Or, for that matter, if something happened to him out here on the Hawking.

But he took his chances and walked into the garden room, taking care not to destroy the footprint or add his own.

He went directly to the study, to look at the gun case. If Russell was here and armed, he wanted to know it before encountering the man.

He opened the glass door. The shotguns were just what he'd expected, used for hunting. Below were the revolvers. And he would have sworn last night that there were only two in the case.

Now there were three.

Chapter 16

H
e stood there for a moment, thinking. Remembering how the cold metal had felt as he touched the handguns in the dark.

Yes, just the two last night, he was sure of it. He couldn't be mistaken. Not with weapons.

The third was a service revolver, and it was the same caliber as the one that had been used to kill Ben Willet. It appeared to have been cleaned recently, no way of knowing when it had last been fired. The science that could tell him was in its infancy, and not always trustworthy.

Taking out his handkerchief, he examined the other revolver. Fired, but not cleaned since then.

He set it back where he'd found it.

More to the point, how had this third handgun magically appeared in less than twenty-four hours?

Did it mean Russell had finally come home?

What did this have to do with the man he'd seen last night? He'd been upstairs in the master bedroom, after searching the ground floor and then the first floor. Could the man have come in and set the revolver in the gun case? The house was large enough that neither man would necessarily have heard the other's movements. What had taken him to the water's edge before he left? Did he think he was safe enough that he could take his time about leaving? Or was he looking for signs of a boat along the riverbank? If the tide was out, there could have been a rowboat riding low in the water.

No answers to any of his questions.

Rutledge listened to the house. The maker of that footprint could still be here, and for all he knew, the revolver could have been used here.

He remembered that Timothy Jessup had mentioned seeing him at River's Edge, and asked if he intended to buy the property. But Rutledge, as aware of his surroundings as any man of his experience could be, had not seen Jessup.

Frances was right. One could conceal a battalion out there in the grass.

There was nothing for it but to search the house again, and then the grounds.

But they yielded nothing. Save for the footprint and the revolver, he would have been prepared to swear that he'd been the only living soul inside River's Edge last night.

Closing the terrace door behind him, he walked down to the water's edge. No sign of a boat here, but at the second landing, while he couldn't find any proof that anyone had come in here, he found the faint imprint of a man's boot in the damp earth just above the high-water mark.

He squatted there, studying it. It appeared to belong to the same foot as the one in the house, but the soft earth hadn't preserved it as well as the hard surface of the wooden floor.

Standing again, he looked back at the house, beyond the kitchen gardens and the few outbuildings, and felt a rising frustration with Major Russell. Where the hell was the man?

Halfway back to Furnham, just beyond the turning that led to the Rectory and the churchyard, Rutledge saw Constable Nelson pedaling toward him on his bicycle. Rutledge slowed.

“Looking for me?” he asked.

Nelson stopped. Rutledge could see that he was sober, although haggard, as if he had finished the last of his stock. “No, sir. But I will ask. Did you see a loose mare back the way you've just come?”

“A mare? No, I haven't.”

“One of the villages upstream reported her missing. Jumped the pasture fence. She's a valuable beast, and I was asked to keep an eye out for her.”

“When did she go missing?” Rutledge asked quickly.

“The owner's not sure. He went to St. Albans for a few days, and when he came back, she was gone. He doesn't believe she got this far, but he sent word by the ironmonger's son, who went to the dentist in Tilbury.” He gestured to the dusty, unmade surface of the road. “No tracks that the boy could pick up on his way home, and none I've seen so far. But I said I'd look.”

A pretense of doing his duty? Or was there more to this? Had he been asked to look for Russell? Rutledge was nearly certain that Matron wouldn't have contacted the police, but the owner of the Trusty might well have wanted his pound of flesh. It was even possible Nelson was keeping a watch on the troublesome Londoner's movements for someone.

Testing the waters, Rutledge said, “How well do you know Timothy Jessup? He was Ben Willet's uncle, I'm told.”

“Jessup? You don't want to tangle with that one,” Nelson said, alarm in his face. “A nasty piece of work. Never in any trouble with the law, you understand, and I thank God for that. All the same, nobody ever crosses him.”

Rutledge heard overtones in the man's voice that made him wonder if Jessup and not Sandy Barber was the leader of the smugglers.

“How well did he get on with Ben?”

“I wouldn't say they were close. Abigail has always been Jessup's favorite. And he was against Ben going into service in Thetford. I overheard them quarreling once. Ben was trying to explain that he wasn't cut out to be a fisherman. Jessup wanted to know if he thought he was better than his father, and Ben said it wasn't that. He'd rather blacken another man's boots in a city than gut fish here in Furnham. Jessup knocked him down then and told him to stop daydreaming and get on with the life he was born to lead. And Ben said, ‘You don't want anyone to leave, that's all. For fear he'll talk about things he shouldn't.' ”

“What things?”

Nelson said uneasily, “It was just talk. A boy's talk. And he'd been up to River's Edge a time or two. He'd seen a different way of life.”

“The smuggling,” Hamish said. “Yon uncle was afraid the lad would tell someone.”

But was it only that? Had Furnham corrupted its only officer of the law just to protect a few bottles of brandy, a little tobacco, and whatever other small luxuries these men had brought in on their backs? The entire village seemed to be involved in the secret, not just a handful of rogue fishermen.

Constable Nelson was preparing to mount his bicycle again. “Someone told me last year that Ned Willet had written a book and it was published in France. I doubt Ned could put two words together on a page, much less a book. But I didn't believe that. Not for a minute.”

“Why not?” Rutledge asked, curious.

“I never knew anyone who wrote a book. And I'm not likely to. Not anyone from Furnham.”

And he was gone, pedaling along the road, seemingly the model of a village constable. Sober and responsible until the next bottle of French brandy was left outside his door. It was easy to see where his loyalties might lie.

France.

Rutledge was letting out the clutch, preparing to drive on, when the single word stopped him.

Ned Willet.

What was Ben Willet's full name?

Was it possible that on one of the runs to France, someone had asked Jessup if the old man had written a book? Jessup would have found that as amusing as the constable had. And on his next run, had the Frenchman produced such a book, to have the last laugh?

He reversed and turned into the road leading to the Rectory. How much did the rector know about what was happening in his own parish? Or was he as much Jessup's creature as Constable Nelson was?

Mr. Morrison was sitting in his study-cum-parlor when Rutledge stopped in the short drive. He got up and met his visitor at the door before he could knock.

“Come in, Inspector. I'm sick of my own company.”

The parlor was simply furnished, but a lovely old desk took pride of place, and Morrison saw Rutledge looking at it.

“My father's,” he said. “The only thing of his that I possess, actually. I was trying to think of a suitable subject for my next sermon.” He gestured to a shelf behind the desk. Rutledge could see that there were at least twenty collections of sermons there, bound in leather. He wondered if these were a relic of Morrison's father as well. “One would think,” he went on, “that every possible permutation of religious topics had been covered already. But one soldiers on, searching for inspiration.”

Rutledge smiled. “In point of fact, it's a book that's brought me here.”

“Sermons?” Morrison asked blankly, staring from the shelf to Rutledge's face.

“Actually, no. Do you have the old christening records for the church?”

“St. Edward's? As a matter of fact, we do, going back to the early 1800s. I can search for whatever you need to know. But it will take time. In some cases the ink is faded or the writing is illegible. My predecessors were not always thinking about posterity when they made their notations.”

“What I'm after isn't that old. I'd like to know Ben Willet's full name. Abigail Barber hasn't been told yet that he's dead. And I don't care to distress her at this stage.”

“Ben's name? I can answer your question without consulting the records. Edward Benjamin Stephen Willet. He was named for his father, his grandfather, and an uncle. He was called Ben to prevent any confusion.” Morrison smiled ruefully. “I was entering Ned's death, and looked up Ben while I was about it. He'd have been twenty-eight in September.”

“Edward Willet. Yes, he'd have used that name. Honoring himself and his father,” Rutledge said after a moment.

“You're releasing the body? Is that why you're interested? For the—er—forms?”

“Actually I was wondering what name Willet would have used if he'd published a book in France.”

“Willet? Good God, no, you're mistaken on that score. I heard the story going round about Ned. I'm not sure who started it. Jessup, perhaps, or one of the others. I don't often hear gossip, but there was talk in one of the shops one day. They were laughing, they had forgot I was there.”

“You don't have a copy of the book they spoke of ?”

“Hardly. It doesn't exist. Or at least I don't believe it does.”

“Then how did such a tale start?” When Morrison looked away, as if trying to choose his words, Rutledge added, “You needn't worry. I know about the smuggling. It's not what brought me here, and if it has no bearing on murder, I intend to ignore it.”

“Very wise of you,” Morrison agreed. “I shut my eyes as well. One can't help but notice that Constable Nelson drinks himself into a stupor on brandy one can't purchase at The Rowing Boat. Poor man, he isn't cut out to be a policeman. He came here just now, asking if I'd seen a lost horse. I never know whether these forays of his into duty are real or a way of salving his conscience. There was a band of Gypsies said to be camping out in the marshes, and before that a stolen bicycle. Um. Where was I?”

“Smuggling.”

“Yes, I was going to add that the veil Abigail wore at her wedding was French lace, handed down from her mother. And Ned, God rest his soul, Ned used to do the runs to France before the war. He took Ben with him once or twice when the boy was fifteen. While I sat with Ned after he injured his leg, he told me the story. How Ben was seasick when a storm blew up and they had to put into a different French port. He was so ill he was taken in by a French family, didn't know a word they were saying to him, but he walked about in a daze for weeks afterward, enamored of the daughter of the house. He got over it, of course, at that age boys generally do.”

But had he?

Rutledge remembered the copybook in a box in the Laughtons' attic, the description of the woman in
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
. Was she based on the girl Ben believed he'd fallen in love with as a boy?

“Did the French ever produce the book they talked about? On another run, perhaps?”

“I shouldn't think so. If they did, no one showed it to me. And Ned would have, he loved a good joke. Why is it so important?”

“Because it's possible the book does exist. And that the author's name was Edward Willet. But not the father, of course. The son.”

“I still don't see why this matters. What could it have to do with young Willet's death? For all we know it could be an entirely different branch of the family. Ned told me once that there are Willets in Derbyshire and Norfolk.”

“Nor do I see the connection. At the moment.”

Morrison shook his head. “How many books do you think the people of Furnham read in the course of a year? The Bible, perhaps. They've always lived hard lives, these villagers. They don't have the luxury of reading, nor the time or the money to buy books. The children go to school until they're old enough to help earn their keep. The war was particularly hard, with the sea cut off.”

“I understand.”

“Is there any other matter I can help you with? Other than Ben's full name?”

Rutledge said, “I have a puzzle on my hands. Three deaths, with seemingly no link between them. Mrs. Russell in 1914, Justin Fowler in 1915, and now Ben Willet's. You know these people better than I ever shall. Do you see a pattern that I have missed?”

Morrison frowned. “We don't know what happened to Mrs. Russell, do we? She may well have been in great distress over the coming war, as her family suggested. If that's true, I bear some of the blame for not seeing her need in time. As for Fowler, why should you think he's dead? Simply because he has cut his ties with the people who used to be close to him? A troubled man sometimes prefers to turn to strangers, rather than risk the pity of those he cares about. As for Ben, I'm afraid that in the end we'll discover that his death is more related to London than it is to Furnham.”

“You present a very reasonable case. I wish I could believe in it. When you've been a policeman as long as I have, there's a sixth sense about murder. The locket around Ben Willet's throat connects him to River's Edge, if nothing else does.”

“Ah yes, the locket. But that too has a reasonable explanation, doesn't it? I'm afraid Miss Farraday has left a trail of broken hearts behind her. I shouldn't be surprised if Ben was one of them. She was kind to him, after all.”

“It explains the photograph. Not the locket itself.”

“Are you so certain that it isn't the only one of its kind?”