Charles Todd - A Fearsome Doubt

A visit to the stationmaster then, tomorrow morning, to follow up on this man Elizabeth Mayhew had seen.

They had reached Elizabeth’s house and she was thanking him for driving her. He saw her to her door, and then turned to go.

She called, “Ian.”

He turned again. “Yes?”

But whatever it was she was planning to say, she changed her mind. It was visible in her face, however much she tried to hide it. “Perhaps we can have lunch one day. While you’re here.” Brightly spoken.

“I’d like that,” he said. And watched the door close quietly before walking back to his motorcar.

The lobby of The Plough was empty when he came through, a night lamp burning by the desk and another by the stairs. But when he opened the door to his room, he found a sheet of paper slipped under it. One of the staff had taken a telephone message for him.

It was from Sergeant Gibson. In regard to the person you’d inquired about. He made it home from France and then ended up in the river. There’s a grave to prove it in Maidstone.

So much for tracking down Jimsy Ridger, Rutledge thought, as he shut his door and began to take off his coat. Yet someone was combing the countryside trying to run the man to earth. Someone without Sergeant Gibson’s resources-someone who hadn’t discovered the Maidstone grave.

But why was this same person killing men?

“You canna’ know it’s the same man doing the killing,” Hamish reminded him.

“That’s true,” Rutledge said, answering aloud from old habit when he was alone. The voice seemed so real then that he could almost hear it echoing around the walls.

Helford was a small village, with a tall spired church and a churchyard set behind a low stone wall that boasted the remains of wildflowers in the crevices, a pretty sight in the spring. The main street wound down a hill, houses and shops spread on either side of it, before curving away in the direction of Marling. The railway station sat on the northern outskirts, as if added as an afterthought. Which it had been, Helford itself predating the train by some four hundred or more years. Hop gardens and farms encircled the town, picturesque in the brightening morning light. Several very nice old houses faced the main street, one of them pedimented and the other boasting an elegant bay window. There had been money here, and an air of gentility lingered. The Tudor gatehouse of a sizeable manor house lay at the bottom of the hill, tall and graceful, with a battlemented facade and an assortment of shields announcing the proud heritage of the family within. Its aged stone church lay just up the hill, green lawns and half-buried tombstones visible beyond its wall.

After a courtesy call on Inspector Cawly, Rutledge went in search of the stationmaster.

The man was still at his breakfast.

“The next train isn’t due for another hour,” he told Rutledge when he’d been tracked down to a cottage not far away. “You can wait at the station, if you like. It’s open!”

Rutledge explained his interest in a traveler who had arrived from the coast one evening at the end of October, during a rainstorm. “He’s not a local man. He was looking for transportation to Marling,” he added.

The stationmaster, idly stroking his graying Edwardian beard, stared at the floor. “Heavy rain, was it? We had only one passenger on the nine-forty from the south, and the ten-ten was late by two minutes coming in from London. You’re asking about the nine-forty, then, because there was a lady here to meet the passenger on the ten-ten. I’ve seen her before, traveling to London on occasion.”

A lady. Elizabeth Mayhew…

“That would be right.”

“He was what you might call a turnip in velvet. And he made a right nuisance of himself!”

“Indeed.”

“After the train pulled out, he came into the station and told me he needed to reach Marling that night. I said I doubted he’d find anyone who would drive him at that hour, in that weather. ‘I’m willing to pay whatever is asked. All you have to do is send for someone.’ ‘Send who?’ I wanted to know. I wasn’t about to get wet through, running errands for the likes of him. He wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you. ‘I have to reach Marling,’ he said again, as if I was deaf, and finally I told him he’d have to put up at the hotel for the night, and in the morning have Freddy Butler send for one of the lads who regularly take the goods wagon over to Marling. Well, he wasn’t about to arrive in Marling with the chickens and cabbages, he said. He wanted a proper carriage.” The stationmaster chuckled. “If he’d been the gentleman he thought he was, I’d have told him the smith kept a carriage he could have in the morning. He left, cursing under his breath.”

Rutledge smiled. “Did he indeed go to the hotel?”

“He didn’t. My guess is he was smarter than he looked and knocked on the first door he came to. They’d have sent him to the smith.”

“Was there anything more that you noticed about him?”

“He had blue eyes. I’d not have remembered that, but Freddy Butler’s son John had eyes the same color, like the summer sky. John didn’t come back from Arras.”

“How would you describe him? Educated? A Londoner? From the Midlands?”

“And how am I to guess that? He’s not a Kent man, I can tell you. I know what a Kent man sounds like!”

“Had you seen him before that night? Or after?”

“He came back this way a day or two later, didn’t he, to take the train again. And he looked like the cat that supped on cream. Whatever his business in Marling, he was that pleased about how it went. Cheeky bastard!”

After some discussion with sergeant Burke and a half hour of searching, Rutledge ran to earth the agent who was handling the sale of the house in Marling that the Leeds merchant allegedly had his eye on.

Mr. Meade was alarmed to be faced with a policeman across his desk. And a policeman from Scotland Yard at that.

“For if there’s anything untoward about this man, the sale will not go through-” He fiddled with the papers on his desk, fastidiously edging them with one side of the blotter, before moving several envelopes in the other direction and adjusting the position of the inkwell.

Rutledge said blandly, “I’ve no reason to believe that he’s involved in any crime. On the contrary, I’m after information that will close doors, not open them.”

Meade was not reassured. “He doesn’t live in Kent. At least-he will, when the sale is completed. I can’t see how he could help you. And I hope it won’t be necessary to contact him. It could put him off living here, to find Scotland Yard on his doorstep about murderers loose in Marling!”

“All the same,” Rutledge persisted, “I need to know whatever you can tell me about him.”

With a sigh, Meade said, “Wealthy. He’s prepared to sign for the house, and on his behalf I’ve already spoken with a man in Helford who can begin renovations immediately, as soon as the paperwork is completed. And that’s not all-he wants to restore the gardens. The house was once noted for its gardens. But that’s in the spring, of course, when the weather-”

Rutledge said, interrupting, “Describe him, if you will.”

“Younger than I’d expected, considering the fact that he’s done as well as he has. Fair. Putting on the weight of prosperity, I’d say. I’m told he made his money up north, in Leeds or thereabouts.” Meade was clearly more impressed with the man’s money than anything else about him.

“Name?”

“Aldrich. Franklin J. Aldrich,” the agent responded reluctantly. “The firm originally belonged to his father-in-law, I believe. Mr. Aldrich lost his father-in-law and his wife to the Influenza, and has decided to sell up and move away.”