Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

“There is no record to my knowledge. Mr. Howard French provided for them at the time, and no bequests were made at his death or that of his son. Lewis French’s father.”

It was the ideal way to handle such a youthful indiscretion. The servants would be given a tidy sum to move elsewhere and take the child with them. A gamekeeper, a groom, a coachman, a head gardener. No one would think anything about a family suddenly coming into a small inheritance from a distant relative and deciding to move to the cottage in Wales or Kent or Cumberland that had been left to them. And it would be surprising to find anyone who remembered such an obscure event so long afterward.

“The baptismal record? Was there one?”

“The child would have been baptized in whatever village the family chose. Or not, as the case may be.”

If the servants were Chapel, then it would be almost impossible to find any record at all.

A dead end. And Rutledge disliked dead ends.

“If the man in the mortuary is not Lewis French, then where is he? And why is he not in Essex or in his London home?”

“I can’t answer that,” Mr. Hayes replied. “Not from any reluctance on my part. Simply the fact that we don’t know the answer. But if there was something he wished to do without his sister’s knowledge, then it’s his business and not that of Scotland Yard.”

Rutledge left soon after. His experience of dealing with solicitors had long been one of accepting that they would answer the questions put to them precisely and generally quite truthfully, with very little additional information volunteered, unless giving that was also to their advantage. For all he knew, Mr. Hayes held in the firm’s boxes the solution to his inquiry—but to unlock that bit of information would require a prodigious leap of imagination on Rutledge’s part to come up with the right question. He smiled to himself at the thought. Still, Hayes was not concealing information concerning the whereabouts of Lewis French. Of that Rutledge was nearly sure.

He carried this knotty problem with him to dinner, although he tried to hide his distraction from his sister. Frances was all too perceptive when it came to her brother, and she soon had him in a better frame of mind.

But as he drove home at the end of the evening, he had come to accept Miss French’s statement as the final word on the identity of the man who had been left on Huntingdon Street in Chelsea. Whether he was satisfied or not, there was no alternative.

The next morning Rutledge gave an oral report to the Acting Chief Superintendent.

Markham listened, nodding from time to time, until Rutledge had finished. Then he leaned forward in his chair, his brows drawn together in a frown.

“You’ve told me who our inconvenient corpse is not. You can’t tell me who killed him or why he possessed a watch he had no right to. What’s more, you’ve lost its lawful owner, Lewis French.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “French has a fiancée in Essex. I’d like to speak to her before Miss French returns from London. There was no reason to call on her during my first visit. French may have confided his intentions to her rather than to his sister.”

“They weren’t on good terms, the brother and sister?”

“I have a feeling that French imposed on his sister. She maintains the family home, and she was in the midst of preparing for a cousin’s arrival. She was rather angry with French for leaving when she could have used his help.”

Markham linked his fingers, stretched them, then uncoupled them. “The dead man’s not the cousin?”

“I should think Miss French would have recognized him. The wine merchant’s clerk is awaiting news of Traynor’s travel arrangements. He’s returning to England from the firm’s office in Funchal.”

“And what is Funchal when it’s at home?” Markham asked testily.

“The principal city on the Portuguese island of Madeira. It’s where French, French and Traynor have done business for three generations. Apparently before that, they were solely London importers of wines and spirits.”

Markham considered Rutledge with raised eyebrows. “You aren’t telling me you wish to travel there, are you?”

Rutledge smiled inwardly, remembering that Yorkshiremen were notoriously tightfisted. “I’m sure any information I need can come through the police there.”

Markham sat back in his chair, his face clearing. “Off to Essex with you, then. And bring back results, if you please.”

An hour later, Rutledge was on the road again, heading toward Dedham.

What results? he asked himself as he drove through London traffic and turned east, then north.

Hamish, restless in the back of his mind, reflecting Rutledge’s own unsettled mood, said, “Ye ken, ye canna’ return now withoot something.”

His first duty was to look for the nearest local police station and speak to the constable there. On his earlier visit, there had been no need to pay a courtesy call, but now there was, and Rutledge was hoping not to have to deal with the larger force in Dedham. Smaller police stations, often with a single constable on duty, generally knew the people in their villages better. Nor was there that tendency toward resentment of the Yard infringing on another man’s turf.

Passing the French house, Rutledge found the village of Stratford St. Hilary less than a mile beyond. There was no sign of the Dominican abbey, although a wide green could well have been the site of the order’s church and outbuildings. If so, then this had been no more than a satellite community rather than a major branch of the order. Clustered around the green were a number of rather handsome houses and shops, and a small, ancient building that was a pub now—The Tun and Turtle, according to the sign—which could have been here in coaching days. Too small for a hotel, it probably offered a room or two to visitors when necessary. He could just see a stream running past the back garden and winding away among a thin stand of trees. On the far side of the stream he glimpsed the chimney pots of another large house. He wondered if wool had built the small church or if it had been a private chapel in the days of the abbey, for without it the village was no more than large hamlet.

Rutledge found the police station sandwiched between a stationer’s shop and a narrow-fronted bakery. The bakery was already closed, but as he passed the door, the faint smell of yeast breads and cinnamon lingered in the warm evening air.

The constable was not in. But he’d left a message on a small board by the door for anyone who needed him. It read:

AT HOME

There was no indication where HOME might be.

Rutledge had counted on the constable to give him the name and direction of French’s fiancée. The other source for information was of course the rector.

He left the motorcar where it was and walked toward the church. It sat on a slight knoll, and in the churchyard that sloped down to the street he could see mossy and lichen-etched stones leaning crazily in front of much later ones that marched up the slope to disappear around the apse before reappearing at the far side.

The French family monument was ornate, and in the shadow of the tower. But there were a number of other grand mausoleums and weeping angels in the centers of family plots. As he stepped out of the motorcar, Rutledge could see TRAYNOR incised in the base of a stone, the shaft broken and draped with mourning in a very Victorian concept.

The Rectory was a modest house up a lane overlooking the churchyard.

Rutledge walked there as the sun dropped behind the yews that encircled three sides of the low wall.

A man in shirtsleeves was standing on a high ladder, painting the house trim.

Rutledge called to him as he came up the path, “Is the rector in?”