Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

He considered asking her for the names of other friends, and then she looked up and saw him through the glass doors.

She beckoned to him, and he went into the dining room to speak to her.

“Did you find Henry Jessup? Was Lewis there?”

“I located Jessup,” Rutledge answered, “but he hadn’t seen your brother in several weeks.”

“He must be lying. I can’t think why, except that Lewis was angry with me when he left, and he has probably told Mr. Jessup not to let on that he was there.”

“I rather thought he was telling the truth.”

She sighed. “It’s so typical. He’s left me to make all the decisions about our cousin’s visit. I don’t even know when to expect him or how long he’s to stay with us. It’s really unfair.”

Just then the waiter returned with her Scotch eggs. She inspected them closely and then nodded in resignation, as if she couldn’t expect any better of the cook.

Rutledge waited until the man had left and then asked, “Is there anyone else he might have visited?”

“How can I know? I told you, I haven’t met most of his friends. Michael at least wasn’t so selfish, he’d bring friends home from Cambridge sometimes.” That brought a shadow to her eyes, and she said sharply, “My breakfast is getting cold. Please leave me alone.”

He thanked her and was turning away when she added, “It’s not a friend, is it? He— There’s a woman somewhere. He jilted Miss Whitman for Miss Townsend. Not surprising, of course. Miss Townsend is the daughter of a doctor, after all. But he can’t seem to settle.” She viciously stabbed her Scotch eggs. “There must be someone else, and he doesn’t want anyone to know!”

“What will become of you, if he marries and brings a bride home?”

Tears stood in her eyes. “He’s not that mean. I’ll have a home. He’s told me so. For as long as I live.”

Rutledge left then, walking out of the dining room, through Reception and out to the motorcar.

Telling Miss French that she would have a home as long as she lived was tantamount to telling her she would very likely spend those years as a spinster, with no hope of marriage. And who would she meet if her brother never brought home any eligible men?

The information he was gathering about Lewis French did not paint a pleasant picture.

If there was indeed a third woman involved in the man’s disappearance, it would be impossible to track her down unless she was related to one of Lewis’s friends. She couldn’t be in St. Hilary, or in Dedham, surely, where gossip would quickly have found her out by this time. Lewis French was too well known.

Essex was wide, as was England. Rutledge sighed. Whatever Markham would have to say about progress, this inquiry wouldn’t be closed very soon.

There was nothing more to be gained by staying here. The Yard was patient, it could wait until Lewis French surfaced. Markham permitting.

Still, there was one more thing Rutledge wanted to do before he left.

The local man. He hadn’t spoken to him, and it would be just as well to have eyes here after he’d returned to London.

He went back to St. Hilary and the narrow little building that housed the police station.

This time the door was open, and Rutledge walked from the sunshine into the dim interior, almost colliding with a man coming out.

The man apologized and went on his way. Behind him at an old wooden desk that must have served the first constable here in St. Hilary was a man in uniform. The small board in front of him read CONSTABLE BROOKS. It was neatly hand-lettered in black.

“Good morning, sir. How can I help you? Directions, most likely.”

He smiled, an affable man with a black patch over one eye.

Rutledge presented his credentials. “Not directions, precisely. Information.”

He went on to outline the circumstances that had brought him here. Brooks listened carefully until he’d finished.

“I can’t tell you much about Mr. French. He’s hardly been here often enough for me to get to know him. And then I was gone for most of the war. He was a man when I got back, and generally in London. A well-spoken gentleman, polite, his main interest his work. It seems to absorb him. Or else he finds London more to his liking than St. Hilary.”

“Yet he found time enough here to become engaged twice.”

Constable Brooks frowned. “He’d known Miss Whitman most of his life. I had the feeling that he wanted to marry her because everyone thought she was to marry Mr. Michael.”

“And what did Miss Whitman think about that?”

“Gossip didn’t say. Still, she accepted Mr. French’s proposal of marriage,” Brooks replied, his voice deliberately neutral. “She could have done better ten times over, in my view.”

“It was comfortable, what she knew,” Rutledge suggested.

“As to that, I’m not sure it wasn’t her old grandfather who encouraged her there. The French family could give her everything, couldn’t it?”

“And then she broke off the engagement.”

Brooks nodded curtly. “So they say. But in regard to Mr. French, if he’s not here and not in London, where is he?”

“Is there any place around St. Hilary—or even Dedham—where a motorcar could be concealed for a long period of time?”

“Not the River Stour—it’s too busy, is it? And we’ve no bogs where it could disappear, like. Nor old sheds, derelict buildings, or thick woods.”

The constable would know, Rutledge thought, glad to be spared a long, muddy tramp along the river’s banks or through fallow fields.

“No, if it’s anywhere, it’s with Mr. French.” Brooks nodded in agreement with himself when Rutledge didn’t respond at once.

“Will you keep a lookout for the man—and send word to London at once if he reappears? And search for that motorcar. You know your patch better than we do.”

“Yes, sir, that’s not a problem. But are you thinking Mr. French has killed this man you found in the road? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Or perhaps the man has killed French, to take his watch.”

“I’d sooner believe that, sir, not that I want to.”

“I’ve met Miss Townsend’s father. What would he think of a black sheep suddenly appearing in St. Hilary?”

“Black sheep? Whose, sir?”

“For the sake of argument, let’s say someone the French family would wish to keep out of the public eye.”

“Well, he’s rather a stickler, is Mr. Townsend. But I don’t see the French family having anything to hide. And Mr. Lewis is not a devious man. That I can be sure of. If he set out for London, then he set out, intending to go there.”

Rutledge left the Sun Inn an hour later, heading toward London.

He’d asked questions—and yet the answers he was looking for had eluded him. Because he’d asked the wrong questions? Or because he hadn’t recognized the right answers?

Hamish said, “Aye. It smacks of failure.”

And for the rest of the journey Hamish seemed to hover just behind his shoulder, commenting on everything that Rutledge preferred to set aside. He could not conquer the past, the war. He couldn’t put it out of his mind. He had forced himself to come to barely tolerable terms with it, and the way that he’d forged was littered with deep pits of despair.

Only now, the war over, he couldn’t pray for a German bullet to put an end to the misery.

Which was why he had kept his service revolver locked away, beyond reach when the darkness came down.

Chapter Eight

When Rutledge made his report to Chief Superintendent Markham, the Yorkshireman gave him his full attention, then nodded as he finished.

“He can’t disappear forever, can he now? Not with French, French and Traynor to run. It’s a grand business, it’s where most people purchasing Port wine and Madeira for their cellars go to buy it. Half London wouldn’t know what to do with themselves without it. What’s more, the firm has never been scandal prone until now. What’s changed?”