Charles Todd - The Confession

“None in prison, then?”

“If there were, the headmaster never saw fit to mention them.”

Rutledge thanked Mr. Harrison for his information and went to find the Jamison Baldridge Charity School for Boys.

It was in a respectable street near St. Paul’s Cathedral and had grown considerably since its founder’s day. The Victorian brick building was several stores high, with an arched stone doorway resembling a bishop’s palace, but rather than saints, the reliefs set into the stone ledge that ran across the front featured classical figures. As he rang the bell, Rutledge recognized Plato and Homer above his head.

A young man dressed in much the same fashion as a student at Harrow or Eton opened the door to him and politely asked his business.

“The Headmaster, if you please. My name is Rutledge.”

He was invited into a wide hall, the floor a checkerboard of white and black marble, and the young man excused himself. After several minutes, an older man with the look of a don greeted him and asked his business with Mr. Letherington.

“Scotland Yard. I’m here to inquire about a former student.”

“Indeed, Mr. Rutledge. My name is Waring. I can help you with that. Will you come this way?”

He was led down a quiet passage to a small office filled with bookshelves and rows of ledgers.

Waring offered him a chair. “I should like first to ask you why you are inquiring about one of our boys.”

“As I understand it, his mother died of consumption and his father died in prison. I don’t know that he was ever at the school, but there is circumstantial evidence that he was. We are attempting to find him because he may have been a witness to a crime some years ago. Whatever information he can provide will help us in our inquiries.”

Waring gestured to the array of ledgers. “If you will tell me the name of the boy and when he might have been in our school, I’ll be happy to look for him.”

“I have his mother’s name. Gladys Mitchell. And an approximate date. What leads me to Baldridge School is the fact that a man with a possible association to this boy was also a benefactor of your school. His name was Fowler.”

Mr. Waring’s face reflected his recognition of the name, but he said only, “And the possible dates?”

Rutledge had made his calculations.

There were only two ways that Gladys Mitchell could have claimed that her son had been fathered by Fowler. He had been conceived after a brief affair with Fowler that had been resumed at a later date. Or he had been conceived just after the relationship had ended. There was a space of ten years between Fowler’s relationship with Gladys Mitchell and his marriage to Justin’s mother. The murders occurred when Julian was short of his twelfth birthday. The boy-if it was indeed a male child-could have been as young as twenty-two or as old as twenty-four at the time. Add another twelve years since then, and the killer could be as young as thirty-four today. Which would make him close to Harold Finley’s age. Or even thirty-five or thirty-six. He gave Waring the possible dates.

“Was he in the war, do you think?”

If it was Finley, the answer was yes.

“Possibly.”

“In our small chapel we have an honor roll of boys who died in the war. His name may be there. But first let’s have a look at”-he ran his finger along the spines of the tall ledgers on the third shelf-“this one, I should think. Mitchell, you said?”

“Yes.” And then as an afterthought, “It could be Finley.”

Half an hour later, Waring closed the ledger and shook his head. “I’m afraid you must have been mistaken. I don’t find him at all.”

“Could it possibly be Fowler?”

Waring looked up at him sharply. “Are you saying this boy could have been Mr. Fowler’s son?”

“He was not, to my knowledge. But the boy’s mother could have used the name. Er-to honor him for services to the family.”

“There wasn’t a Fowler, either, I would have noticed.”

There was nothing more to say. Rutledge had used every variation he could think of. There was one other, but he didn’t know the woman’s name. She was Gladys Mitchell’s sister. And he would have to return to Somerset House to ferret her out. Or speak again to Mr. Harrison.

He thanked Waring for his assistance, and he rather thought the man was glad that the search had drawn a blank. For the sake of the school if not his own.

At the Yard, Rutledge put in a call again to Mr. Harrison, only to be told that the solicitors had no record of Mrs. Mitchell’s sister’s name.

“I recall that you told me she had arranged the services.”

“Indeed she did. However, we were billed directly by the undertaker. We had no correspondence with the sister.”

In short, the solicitors had not thought it advisable to trust Mrs. Mitchell’s sister with any sums, although Harrison had not directly said so.

“And this was true of care at the sanitarium as well as a headstone for the grave?”

“Precisely.”

Rutledge had just put up the receiver when Sergeant Gibson walked by.

“What news do you have of the Chief Superintendent?”

“He’s been allowed to sit in a chair for the first time. But it’s a long road ahead for the Chief Superintendent, and he’s not one to be idle.”

Rutledge agreed with him. But there had been a subtle difference in the Yard since Bowles’s heart attack. A quieter mood, men going about their business with an air of uncertainty about what the future held. Inspector Mickelson, sent to Northumberland to investigate a murder, had made a point of staying out of sight. Rutledge wondered if the man’s head would roll if Bowles was forced to leave for medical reasons. Mickelson had stepped on more toes than he could reasonably count, knowing he was protected by Bowles. The question was, would Bowles see to it that his successor also protected the man?

As far as Rutledge was concerned, Mickelson’s absence was a respite.

He went back to his office and made an effort to concentrate on a folder that Gibson had brought up earlier that morning. But his mind kept wandering to his dilemma.

Mrs. Dunner’s remark about the locket rang true.

And there was still the riddle of the charity school.

The elder Fowler’s support of it from such an early age must have some connection with his first disastrous liaison. Had he bought Gladys Mitchell’s silence about their annulled marriage by seeing to it that her son was properly educated? It wouldn’t have done for her to appear in a year or two with blackmail on her mind just as he was preparing to take another wife. The education of her son-but not his-would be the surest way of protecting his future. And a gift to the school, with the promise of more to come, as the boy’s education progressed, would keep him there.

But what did this have to do with murder?

It could be the connection that he had so far failed to find.

A bitter and forgotten child might look for revenge, if it had been fostered in him by a bitter and dying mother. First to kill the Fowlers. And when Justin survived, to look for him and destroy his new family.

Hamish said derisively, “Willet was no’ a member of the family.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “He had the necklace. That somehow brings him into the circle.”

“They were all there the day Mrs. Russell disappeared. He could ha’ killed them all. And finished wi’ the past then and there.”

“He would have been hunted down.”

“He was no’ hunted down when the Fowlers were killed.”

Unable to sit still, Rutledge left the Yard, walked over the bridge to the far side of the Thames, then turned and walked back again. The exercise didn’t help.

Rutledge went to his motorcar and drove to the hospital where Major Russell was recovering, and found him propped up in a bed in the men’s ward.