Charles Todd - The Confession

It was at a lay-by some two miles away that the transfer was made, the nursing sister settling the Major into the rear of Rutledge’s vehicle. It was painful work, but the Major took it stoically. Rutledge thanked the driver of the undertaker’s van, and an hour later, the Major was in Rutledge’s flat, lying exhausted in the bed while the sister took his vital signs.

Rutledge quickly packed a valise of whatever he would need for the duration and stowed it in the boot of his motorcar, then warned the nursing sister not to open the door unless she could see him through the window beside it.

And then he left, driving to Bloomsbury, and after asking a man walking a handsome English setter, he tracked down the lodging house where Ben Willet had stayed in London.

It was a small, well cared for, with a neat sign by the door advertising a vacancy. The woman who answered his knock was tall, with graying red-brown hair and a lined face, and when she spoke, he realized she was Irish.

“Hello, my dear, I’m that sad to tell you that despite that sign, we have no rooms to let just now. I’ve not had the time to change it. But I’ll give you the name of a friend one street away who does.”

“I’m actually here to collect Ben Willet’s boxes.” He smiled. “He seems to make a habit of leaving them behind. I hope you still have them?”

“Oh yes, of course I do, Major. He told me you’d be here sooner or later. Did he reach France safely? I was so afraid, you know, that ill as he was, he’d collapse on the journey.”

“I should think all is well. But I haven’t heard myself. What sort of lodger was he?”

“Neat as a pin, and such a gentleman. He’s a lovely man, and he could make me laugh until my sides ached, you know. Such a grand mimic, he was. What a pity that he took ill so sudden. I thought my heart would break. But there you are, we shouldn’t be questioning the Lord’s way, should we? All the same, I can’t help but think how his family must feel.”

“Did his sister or her husband come to visit him?”

“He didn’t want her to know, you see. I thought it wrong, myself, she sounded like such a lovely girl. He wrote to her, and I posted it for him myself. It was sent in care of someone else, to be given to her after he’d passed on. And then the man came to see him, and they left together.”

This was unexpected. “When was this?”

“It was the night he was to meet you at Tower Bridge. He said to me as they were walking out the door, ‘Good-bye, Mrs. Hurley. If the friend I was to meet comes looking for me, tell him I’ve gone ahead and will be there as promised.’ When Mr. Willet came back he told me there was a terrible accident on the bridge, and no one could come across. The next evening he left for Dover, and that was that. I held his room for a few days, just to be sure.”

“You’re very kind. Do you remember the man who came to see him?”

“I was in the dining room serving dinner and only caught a glimpse of him. It was Mr. Willet who told me why he’d be missing his dinner, and here I’d made his favorites. But I saved him a plate, in case, and when he got home he sat there in the kitchen with me and ate it.”

“Could you describe this visitor?” ”

“I had no reason to remember him, did I? I was only glad for Mr. Willet’s sake that he’d come, hoping he might persuade Mr. Willet to go home and see his father and his sister after all. I tell you I cried when he walked out the door that last time. I was that upset.”

“The other man didn’t come back with Willet?”

“Oh, no, he was alone. He told me the visit hadn’t gone as he’d expected, and I was sorry for that. But here I’ve kept you standing at the door. Come in, Major, my dear, and we’ll find those boxes.”

He followed her inside, and she led him to a tiny box room in the back of the house where there were odds and ends piled neatly to allow access, and to one side were two boxes marked with Willet’s name.

“In a way I’m that sad to see them go,” Mrs. Hurley told Rutledge. “As long as they were here, I’d hoped for a miracle, and that he’d come back the way he was before the sickness came on him. I couldn’t bear to hand them over to that constable who came for them. I was told to pass them to no one but the Major, and I keep my word when it’s given.”

And he was grateful for her insistence.

“There. I’ve said good-bye,” she said as he lifted them to carry them to his motorcar. And she turned and walked swiftly back into the house, shutting the door, so that Rutledge wouldn’t see her cry.

The Major was in Rutledge’s flat, so he took the boxes to his sister’s house. When he walked in carrying the first of them, Frances said, “Are you moving in?”

“Not precisely. I need to leave this and its mate with you after I open them. The study?”

“Yes, that will do very well.”

When he’d brought both boxes in, Rutledge set about opening each one.

Both contained sheets of paper neatly typed, and then others written in longhand.

“I wonder what became of his luggage?” he mused. “But I suppose it went into the Thames with him. I’d have done the same in his shoes.”

“Whose luggage? Whose shoes?” Frances asked.

“If I knew the answer to that I’d be ahead of the game.”

“Does this have to do with that awful village where you took me for tea? I still haven’t forgiven you for that.”

“Furnham? Yes, that was rather dreadful, wasn’t? In hindsight, I shouldn’t have taken you there.” He lifted the first hundred or so pages out of the box.

But the pages he held were drafts of Willet’s first two books, and he set them aside, disappointed. And yet he knew that to the dead man, these had been precious.

When he reached the bottom of the first box he retied the cords and set it aside.

It was in the second box that he found what must have been a draft of the unfinished third book. He took it out, sorted through the handwritten pages, and then came to the typed sheets.

A title had been written by hand above the first paragraph: The Sinners.

He began to read, sitting in a chair by the open window, his sister leaning her elbow on the back beside his head.

After half an hour she turned away.

“It’s Furnham he’s talking about, isn’t it? And it must be true. The inn is called The Dragonfly.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I wish you’d never taken me there,” she said, crossing the room, as if to put as much space as possible between herself and the pages in his hand. Rearranging a bowl of flowers, she said, “It was done, wasn’t it? Luring ships into rocks and the like, bringing them aground so that they could be plundered. In Cornwall, they were called the wreckers.”

“I expect the people along the shore had done well when ships wrecked themselves in a storm or on a foggy night. And then someone had a clever suggestion. ‘If we could bring in more wrecks, not waiting on natural causes, we could prosper.”

They had had to kill the survivors, or else what had happened would quickly reach the ears of the authorities.

Furnham had no rocks on which to beach ships. Only a sandbar at the outer edge of the estuary’s mouth that sometimes shifted in storms and caught an unwary pilot by surprise. As a rule ships were able to refloat with the next tide.

And so Furnham’s story was very different from Cornwall’s. They hadn’t lured The Dragonfly ashore. It had struck the sandbar in the night and was still there at first light. One of the fishermen had noticed something odd about her, and several men decided to board her and ask what was wrong.

They found the ship empty. No crew. No passengers. It was decided to take whatever was useful on board, and then refloat her, jam the rudder, and let her break up elsewhere.