Authors: Charles Todd
“I’ll see to the family.” Rutledge followed the doctor to the door and then went back into the room to look down on the woman lying on her pillow, her face pale and already losing that quality that made people real.
There was a glass on the bedside table. Milk, he thought. And a bottle that had come from a doctor’s dispensary. There was no label on it.
He walked to the only other door in the room and opened it.
A dressing room, and then on the other side, as Dr. Fielding had said, the door into what must be the master bedroom. He crossed to open it, then looked back into the room where Jenny Teller lay.
“Why was she sleeping in there tonight?”
But Hamish had no answer for him.
Walter Teller’s bedchamber was high-ceilinged and spacious, handsomely furnished, and with a newer bed, more modern in style than the four-poster, and a low bookcase beneath the double windows that faced the front of the house. A part of the original building, it had the wider floorboards and a prie-dieu against one wall that looked very old, a vestige of the Catholic owners before the Reformation. Someone had kept it for its beautiful lines and decorations, and it was well suited to the room.
Walking back to where Jenny lay, he closed the dressing room door. And at almost the same moment, Fielding returned with Walter Teller.
Teller crossed the room, looked down at his wife, and collapsed to his knees beside the bed, taking one of her hands in his and burying his face in it.
Fielding gestured for Rutledge to leave him there, and they walked out into the passage together.
Rutledge asked, “Did Walter Teller ever tell his wife where he was when he disappeared?”
“I’m not sure. She brought Harry in to visit the dentist on Thursday, and I was just coming out. I asked her how her husband was, if I should stop in and see him, perhaps keep him under observation for a while. And she told me he had fully recovered. I asked if he’d said anything to her about where he’d been while he was missing. I was curious, and it was important as well to add that to his file in the event it happened again. She replied that he hadn’t confided in her. I could see she was unhappy about that. I suggested that she should give him a little space. That perhaps he himself was in need of time to understand his behavior. Harry had gone to speak to the vicar’s son, who was coming down the street with his mother. Mrs. Teller watched him for a moment and then said that she wondered if her husband’s family knew more about what had happened than she did, that they’d left her and gone in search of him, as if they knew something she didn’t. I tried to make her understand that staying occupied was one of the best ways to weather a worrying time. That if they were at all like their brother, they couldn’t have sat still and just waited, as she had done. That seemed to relieve her mind a little.”
“Could that explain sleepless nights? Women worry about their families—if they are ill or hungry or frightened or hurt. It’s their nature to care.”
“I doubt it. It could be as simple as still not forgiving her husband for sending Harry away so soon. Or her guilt over her brother-in-law’s fall. After all, he came down for her birthday celebration.”
“Yes, I see that.”
“Her death is consistent with overdose. There were no signs of struggle, only the disarrangement of the sheets while Teller strove to revive her. She drank her milk—if that’s where she put the sedative—of her own free will. No marks on the lips to indicate that she was forced to swallow it.”
Rutledge let it go. He went to rouse the maid, snoring deeply in her room in the attic, and asked her to prepare food for what was to come. She burst into tears when he told her that her mistress was dead, and he left her to grieve as she dressed.
His next duty was plain—to summon the police from Waddington and finally to put in a call to Edwin Teller’s London residence. He got through there, and as he told an incredulous Edwin that his sister-in-law was dead, he could hear Amy’s voice in the background saying, “Edwin? My dear, what is it? What’s wrong?”
And Edwin shushing her as he listened to Rutledge’s voice.
Leticia said, after Rutledge explained his calling her, “Don’t disturb Susannah. She’s been through enough. I’ll deal with her later.”
His call to Mary Brittingham’s number rang and rang. The operator warned him that no one was at home. And then a very sleepy voice answered, “Do you know what time it is, Leticia? What could you possibly want at this hour?”
Rutledge said, “It’s Scotland Yard, Miss Brittingham. I think you ought to come to Witch Hazel Farm straightaway.”
Her voice was now crisp and alert. “Is it Harry? Is Walter all right?”
“It’s your sister. I’m afraid she’s dead.”
The silence went on so long that he thought she’d hung up. Then she said, “She can’t be dead. I was just there. Today. Yesterday. She was all right then. Is this Inspector Rutledge? Where are you, in London?”
“I’m at the farm. I’m sorry to break such news over the telephone, but I don’t have time to come to you. It’s more important that you come here.”
He could hear a hiccuped breath, as if she were fighting tears. “Yes. All right.” And then she was gone.
In the study, where he’d gone to wait until the police arrived, Rutledge discovered Walter Teller already sitting there with a brandy in his hand.
“Doctor’s orders. It’s supposed to give me the strength to cope,” Teller said. He looked at his glass, holding it up to the light. “I doubt it will. I doubt anything can.” He studied Rutledge for a moment and then asked, “How did you know to come? Was it Fielding?”
“I was here before I knew there was anything wrong,” Rutledge said. “I’ve just come from Hobson. It’s too late to tell your brother what happened there. But you should know. We found Mrs. Teller’s murderer. It wasn’t your brother. It was Mrs. Blaine’s daughter. Betsy. A neighbor.”
Teller repeated the name. “Betsy. Why?”
“Jealousy. She thought her husband would leave her for Florence Teller. It’s a long story, and this isn’t the time for it. But I felt you ought to know that your brother’s name has been cleared.”
“Too late for him,” Teller said. “But thank you.”
“When your elder brother arrives, I’ll need to speak to him about disposal of the house in Hobson. I don’t know that he wishes to leave that to Peter’s solicitors. I don’t know if they are even aware of the property.”
“Leave it to me. I’ll see to it. It’s what Peter would have wished, I think. Edwin will have enough on his plate, with Peter dead. I’m told our grandmother took the news very hard. And now there’s . . .” He cleared his throat. “Well.”
Rutledge gave him time to recover, then said, “I must do my duty, however unpleasant it may be for me and for the family at such a time. The inquest will want to consider your wife’s state of mind.”
“Her state of mind? My God, I haven’t even told my brother or sister—I haven’t spoken to Mary—much less found words to tell my son his mother is dead—and you’re talking about the inquest. Damn it, man, have you no decency?”
“It isn’t a question of decency. Have I your permission to look into your wife’s state of mind?”
“Do whatever you need to do. Just leave me alone.” He got up to refill his glass, looked at the amber liquid, and put it down again with distaste. Rutledge could see that he was remembering his brother Peter’s drunkenness.
Rutledge said, “Did your brother always drink as much as he did in the short time I knew him?”
The change of subject brought an irritated frown. “I—the level of pain he has—had—to endure must have been unimaginable. But no. He was more careful. What difference does it make now?”
“Would you say he drank in excess after he came back from Hobson?”
“Look, he’s dead, you can’t arrest a dead man. What difference do his drinking habits make now?”
“He was the catalyst for Florence Teller’s death. Some of this will have to come out at the inquest into her murder. I’d like to know why he went to see his wife after such a long silence, and what she said to him when he was there that made him rush off in such a hurry that he left his cane behind. It became the murder weapon.”
It was clear Walter Teller hadn’t considered an inquest in Hobson or what it might reveal.
“Dear God, will it never be finished? Get out, Rutledge, do you hear me? I’ve lost my brother and my wife. Just leave me the hell alone.”
Rutledge left him there and went in search of Mollie. She was in the kitchen, and as he came down the passage, he heard her singing hymns in a low tearful voice as she rattled the pots and pans preparing breakfast.
He made a fuss over opening the door into the kitchen, to give her time to recover.
She turned quickly, then said, “I thought it was Mr. Teller. I don’t know what to say to him. First the Captain, and now Mrs. Jenny. I don’t see how the poor man will survive this blow. And what will Master Harry make of it all, poor lamb? He adored his mother. It’s such a tender age. Have you sent for his aunt? Miss Brittingham? She’ll have to stay awhile. He’ll need her. She should have stayed after the Captain’s fall. Mrs. Jenny needed her then.”
“Why did she leave?”
“They were all at sixes and sevens. Quarreling and slamming doors. This was after you’d left. Miss Brittingham said she’d had enough and went home. Mrs. Jenny went to bed with a headache. So she said, but I think it was an excuse to leave them to it.”
“What rooms did Mrs. Teller most often use for her own purposes?”
“She liked the bedchamber where Master Harry was born. It’s bright and cozy, she said, and sometimes when Mr. Teller wasn’t here, she’d sleep in that room. And of course the nursery. She spent a good bit of her time there. When the nanny left two years ago, and Master Harry went to the local school, she would sit with him there and help him with his studies. The nanny’s old room she made into her sitting room, with her desk and things about her. She could rest there and hear Harry playing or working. Or listen to him sleep. She said she found that the most peaceful sound in the world, a child’s soft breathing.”
Mollie had been working as she talked, her hands busy preparing tea and boiling eggs, making toast. She looked up now, and said, “Nobody has told me how she died.”
Rutledge said, “An overdose of laudanum, apparently. In a glass of milk.”
“Ah, that explains it then.”
“Explains what?”
“There was a little milk spilled last night. Someone was warming it. I’d just wondered. She must have been having trouble sleeping. It just seemed odd that she’d leave the milk and the pan for me to clear away. She’s—she was so tidy about things like that. She liked a gleaming kitchen, she said. It made her feel good that what Harry ate was prepared in clean surroundings.” She bit back another round of tears. “Would you care for a cup of tea, sir? It has steeped long enough.”
He thanked her and left, unwilling to intrude on her grief.
Going back to the bedchamber where Jenny Teller lay, he looked again at the room itself, and he could see what Mollie meant, that there was a warmth here that a woman might want to draw around her in times of great emotional need. A comfort that the master bedroom in its masculine formality lacked.
He went next to the nursery, opening doors here and there until he found what he was after. It was a large bright room filled with childhood, from a cradle to a rocking horse, a little wooden train that could be drawn about on wheels that clacked as they rolled, and a yacht that must have come from Harry’s Uncle Edwin, who designed such things. It would float wonderfully, Rutledge thought, on a pond, the keel deep and the superstructure well balanced for it. Harry was a neat child, most of his possessions in good condition and not thrown about wildly. An only child, Rutledge remembered, who needn’t worry that someone would snatch away his favorite toy.
The next room was his bedroom, with the narrow cot against one wall and a chair that rocked and a footstool for the one that didn’t. The armoire was full of clothes, but not excessively so for a boy still growing. There were no photographs here, and he realized there had been none in Jenny’s bedroom. But when he opened the next door, normally the nanny’s room in the nursery suite, he found them all.
The dark blue and rose carpet was strewn with more toys—a small stuffed giraffe with green glass eyes, a sled with a toy dog sitting on it, waiting to be pulled through the snow of the carpet, and a green ball.
A desk stood under the window, in the French Provincial style, with a matching chair, but what interested him was the round table beside it, covered with a long skirted brocade and adorned with a forest of silver frames.
He crossed the room to look at them.
He could identify many of them. Jenny and her sister, Mary, as children, at the seaside and again at the Tower of London. A couple who appeared to be Jenny’s parents. The three Teller sons, stair stepped beside their seated sister, shyly staring into the camera. Peter and Walter at university. Edwin with his wife just leaving the church after their wedding. Their parents with the three Teller sons and daughter sitting in front of a Christmas tree in the hall of this house. And more than a dozen photographs of a little boy, marking the various milestones of his life. A baby in his mother’s arms, eyes closed, long christening gown draped across her lap. Just walking and holding his mother’s hand, riding his rocking horse, playing on the lawns with the green ball Rutledge had just seen.
A record of a happy family, though seldom including the busy father.
Reaching for the Teller family grouping, he studied the senior Teller. He was tall, handsome, perfectly groomed. Not the sort to be found on a Sunday afternoon with rolled-up sleeves pruning the roses or racing his sons across the lawns in an impromptu game. His face was strong, rather more like Walter’s, Rutledge thought, than Edwin’s or Peter’s, and more than a little stiff, as if smiling for a camera was an unpleasant duty to be borne with the best grace possible. His wife, her face upturned to his, was also surprisingly strong, as if she shared her husband’s views and reinforced them. He could see where Leticia got her own strength of character. Gran, standing at her husband’s shoulder, was tall and elegant, with a whimsical smile, the only one in the group who appeared to be genuine.