Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

Rutledge tried another direction.

“What about his grandmother? She lived here. What does local gossip remember about her?”

Mrs. Lessor glanced again at her husband, as if to be sure she could speak freely. Whatever she read in his expression, it was reassuring. She turned back to Rutledge.

“Mrs. Standish lived alone. She said once that she’d had a falling-out with her son’s wife. My mother told me that she remembered when Mrs. Standish first came here. She was still quite pretty at fifty, with the loveliest hair. We didn’t know until she’d died that there was a grandson. She left a handwritten will leaving the cottage to him. But he was still in France and it was a while before he could be reached. Didn’t Constable Denton tell you?”

He hadn’t. But then Rutledge hadn’t asked about the grandmother, and he doubted if Denton would have remembered the details that Mrs. Lessor had given.

Lessor cleared his throat. His tea was waiting.

Rutledge thanked the man and his wife, and with Constable Denton at his heels, he went to the motorcar.

“Where’s the cottage? I’d like to have a look inside.”

Denton said, “I don’t know if it’s proper. We can’t be sure yet anything has happened to Mr. Standish. He could come home tomorrow.”

“But he hasn’t in a good many tomorrows. If the Yard is investigating his disappearance, then the Yard can have a look at his house.”

The cottage was just down the street, set back under a large tree, rather a pretty place in its day but sadly untended now, the front garden a tangle of late flowers and weeds.

“Mr. Standish wasn’t much of a gardener,” Denton said as they walked to the cottage door. “His grandmother, now, she had a way with growing things.”

The door wasn’t locked, and inside it was quite dark, now that the sun was setting. What’s more, the tree’s shadow prevented the last rays from reaching the front room’s windows. At length Rutledge found a lamp and lit it. As the light bloomed he could see that the cottage was furnished in a style at least a generation earlier, Victorian and rather heavy. But it wasn’t cluttered, save for books scattered everywhere, as if the owner had begun one, then stopped reading that one and picked up another in its place.

A pattern, Hamish was telling him, of a restless mind. For in the month between his release from the clinic and his return to the Yard, Rutledge had done much the same thing, unable to settle to anything.

He felt a coldness as he looked around the cottage. As if he could sense the despair in the owner, and a darkness that wouldn’t lift even when the sun rose.

Hamish said, “Ye’ll find him deid. Whoever he may be.”

And Rutledge thought it was very likely.

There was no private correspondence in the desk, and not much of anything else that would define the character of Gerald Standish or his grandmother. There were no pictures anywhere, but on the wall by the worn chair that stood under the window was a miniature, the ivory oval in its silver frame catching his eye. Rutledge brought the lamp nearer, and decided that the young girl who stared back at him must have been the grandmother, for the style of clothing was early Victorian. He thought she must have just put her hair up, and the occasion was marked by this likeness. She had dark hair, dark, smooth brows in an oval face, high cheekbones that gave him a glimpse of how she must have looked in maturity, and very dark blue eyes. She was too young for her face to show her character, only her loveliness. But whatever life had brought to her, it had ended in a lonely old age.

Rutledge wondered why she had had a falling-out with her son’s wife, but he suspected it very likely had to do with the woman’s marrying again. Looking around him, he thought the elder Mrs. Standish had only enough money to live comfortably in a small village. Or she had been frugal for reasons of her own.

“Sad,” Rutledge said aloud, more to Hamish than to Denton.

The constable came to stand behind him, looking over his shoulder. “Is that Mrs. Standish? Her face was lined and her hair gray when I came to Moresley.”

“Only Gerald Standish can tell us who she is. But it’s likely, I should think.”

Rutledge spent another ten minutes looking through the cottage, upstairs and down. He discovered that the clothes in the cupboard in the bedroom were of good quality with well-known labels. He couldn’t be sure whether they were hand-me-downs or had been purchased new before the war. Nevertheless, Standish had seen to it that they were carefully maintained and well brushed. Denton, coming again to look over his shoulder, commented that Mr. Standish had taken time over his appearance.

“Not vain or anything. It was just the way he had. As if it mattered to him.”

In the end, Rutledge had learned very little, less of it helpful. He even looked at the flyleaves of books, to see if there were dedications.

An enigma, Mr. Gerald Standish. Rutledge returned to the miniature just as he was leaving.

Miniatures were an art. Painting a portrait on ivory with a brush that had only one or two hairs took skill and patience and a great eye for detail that could capture the subject in a few strokes. The artist might be known, although Rutledge could see only initials at the edge the sitter’s shoulder.

“I’ll give you a receipt for this, in the event Standish returns. But I’d like to find the artist. That might tell us the name of the subject.”

He crossed to the desk and began searching for paper and pen, writing out a brief message and signing it.

“But wouldn’t the artist be long dead, sir?” Denton asked.

“I’ve no doubt of it. But anyone this good will be known in art circles, and there’s nowhere else to look for information.”

They left the cottage as they’d found it, Rutledge putting out the lamp, and they saw as they stepped outside that night had fallen in earnest, dark clouds beginning to blot out the stars. The air smelled of thunder.

The village street was deserted save for a dog making its way home, trotting purposefully down the middle until it came to a bungalow. It went to the door, scratched on a panel, and was admitted by the time Rutledge and the constable had caught up with it.

Denton said, “It’s late, sir. If you wouldn’t mind dropping me off in the next village, I’d be obliged.”

Rutledge said after the constable had lashed his bicycle to the boot, “Do you have much trouble in this part of the county?”

“None to speak of, sir. Neither of my villages are rich enough to tempt trouble, and the poor are not destitute. The church and the Women’s Institute see that everyone has food on the table and a roof over our heads. Mind you, I don’t lack for occupation, there’s always keeping the hotheads amongst the young lads from doing something they’ll live to regret, but we don’t run to real crime. That’s why I contacted Norfolk when Mr. Standish went missing, and Inspector Johnson passed the report on to the Yard.”

“What’s your best guess about Standish? Will we find him, do you think?”

“I fear he may be dead, sir. By his own hand.”

It was very late when Rutledge reached Dedham, and he was glad to find a room at the Sun.

The next morning, he set out to find the St. Hilary curate. In most villages he would have paid a call on the doctor, but he rather thought Dr. Townsend would be less than helpful in any matter relating to the French family.

Williams had finished painting the trim along the front of the Rectory, and he was just now clinging precariously to his ladder with one hand as he tried to reach the corner on the west side.

Hearing the motorcar pull into the yard, he glanced over his shoulder, nodded in acknowledgment of a visitor, and put the last touches to the corner before coming down the ladder.