Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

Burgess stared at him. “Are you, indeed. Well, come in, then. We’ll see whether you’re right or I am.”

Rutledge followed him into a comfortable sitting room. It was clearly kept tidy for visitors, but in the passage leading to it, there was the lingering odor of stale whisky. Hamish said, “It’s no’ good whisky. He canna’ afford the best.”

Taking the chair that Burgess casually pointed out, Rutledge said, “I’m not particularly interested in the health and well-being of your patients. What I should like to ask is whether without Mrs. Bennett’s knowledge you have carried messages or made telephone calls for any one of them.”

“For one thing, I’m not on the telephone. And for another, I am not employed to deliver the post. I deal with the physical needs of my patients. Their connections with anyone outside the walls of the Bennett house are not my concern.”

“But they are mine,” Rutledge told him flatly. “Afonso Diaz had an altercation with two male members of a prominent family. He was carrying a knife at the time, and used it on one of the men in the room before he was disarmed. The son of that man has disappeared—since Mr. Diaz was released from the clinic and given employment with Mrs. Bennett. Mr. Diaz has the best motive to harm the son—now an adult—and it’s my duty to find out if he is indeed responsible. Mrs. Bennett tells me that Mr. Diaz has not left the premises. Still, I’m of the opinion that he could very well have engaged someone else to carry out his revenge for him.”

“Diaz, is it? Odd little man.” Burgess frowned thoughtfully. “I can’t tell you whether he’s responsible or not. I most certainly haven’t been a go-between for him and anyone else. I’ve carried no messages, made no contacts.”

“Then who in that household could have done so?”

“Ah. It’s Mrs. Bennett’s belief that there is ultimate good in all of us. And that given a chance, a man will choose the right path as opposed to the wrong. It’s an admirable belief. I don’t subscribe to it myself. I’ve seen the best and the worst of human nature during my years as a doctor. I’ve seen depravity and despair and outright cruelty. I served in the trenches as a regular soldier until His Majesty’s Government in its greater wisdom decided that medical men might be more useful in caring for the wounded. And I came home with nothing to help me forget but a bottle of spirits. Followed by a second and a third until I have lost count. There are one or two of Mrs. Bennett’s staff who could probably cut her throat without hesitation. And Diaz—when he chooses to speak English—is so devious he exhausts me when we talk. I strive to keep them healthy enough to do the tasks assigned to them. Beyond that, I am neither a father confessor nor a policeman, and most certainly not a nanny.”

“Mrs. Bennett told me that this arrangement of hers was the solution to the problem of finding suitable servants. Is that true?”

“As far as I know, it is. She’s an invalid herself, as you may have noticed, and requires assistance.”

“I didn’t meet Mr. Bennett. What can you tell me about him?”

“There’s little to tell. He apparently adores his wife, for he does whatever she feels is right, and he’s probably writing a treatise on the entire enterprise.”

“She was expecting a photographer when I called.”

“Good lord. The woman’s run mad. It’s one thing to convince herself that this foolish premise of hers works, but quite another to broadcast it to the world.”

“Perhaps she still needs to convince herself.”

Burgess considered that. “God help us,” he said and rose to indicate that the interview was finished. “But I am not her keeper. I bid you good day, Mr. Rutledge.”

Outside in the motorcar once more, Hamish said, “He’s no’ the first doctor to seek solace in whisky.”

It was true enough. But what concerned Rutledge more than the doctor’s mental collapse was his rather cavalier attitude toward Mrs. Bennett and his patients. He treated them as needed, but washed his hands of any responsibility. He knew that some of the men could be dangerous, and he ignored that.

But on the whole, Rutledge thought the doctor hadn’t been involved in carrying messages between Diaz and someone else. He would make a point not to involve himself, not because of any moral scruples but because his own pain demanded all the energy and resources he had.

“No’ so verra’ different from your ain life,” Hamish told him bluntly.

But Rutledge knew that his sense of duty and his responsibility to a victim—however good or bad that person might have been in life—outweighed hiding. Or he would never have had the courage to return to the Yard.

The question now, he reminded himself on the road north toward London, was what to do about Afonso Diaz. If the man was indeed innocent, then Rutledge could not in good conscience take him into custody without a great deal more evidence than he now possessed. Evidence that could link Diaz directly to Lewis French or evidence that he had persuaded someone else to carry out his acts of revenge.

The question was, how would Markham view this new development?

Rutledge was to find out sooner rather than later.

Markham had left word with Sergeant Gibson to send Rutledge to his office as soon as he came in.

Rutledge made his report as objectively as he could, bringing in what he had learned about Diaz, what he’d discovered in the French motorcar, and what conclusions he’d drawn from the facts available to him.

Markham listened without interrupting, his face unreadable. When Rutledge had finished, the Acting Chief Superintendent leaned forward in his chair and said, “I told you that motorcar of yours would lead you down the primrose path. Here you’ve been haring all over England, and there’s nothing to show for it but an old man with a past. What about the woman in St. Hilary whose handkerchief you found under the seat of the motorcar? That’s a great deal more damning than this nonsense about the mental patient.”

“I can’t see how she could have killed the man we found in Chelsea, put him into Lewis French’s motorcar, driven him to London, and then left the motorcar in a quarry in Surrey before making her way back to Essex.”

“There’s an invention called the bicycle, man. She could have made her way to the nearest railway station or even into London for that matter, taken a train north, and got off a station before her own. Have you looked into that?”

Rutledge had not.

“Well, then, be about it. Put Gibson onto it or Fielding, or one of the other men at your disposal. It’s critical to learn if she was on that train or not. If she was, she’s damned.”

“I’ll see to it at once,” Rutledge told him, “but meanwhile, I’d like to check the prison records of the men who live in Mrs. Bennett’s house. Diaz couldn’t just hire a killer from a costermonger’s wares. He has to have someone who could point him in the right direction. Who knew someone who would be willing to kill.”

“Precisely why we investigate the trains first, Rutledge.” Markham lifted a file from the five or six at his elbow. “Report to me as soon as you have.”

Dismissal.

Rutledge left with a nod, walking down the passage to his own office, listening to Hamish rampant in his mind, listening to his own doubts.

Gibson was busy. Rutledge went to Fielding, a steady man with long years of experience in deploying people to search out information. For it would take a contingent to do what Markham wanted.

Fielding listened to Rutledge’s information, taking notes, rubbing the top of his bald head as if it would help him plan, then finally looked up with a nod.

“Yes. I agree that she’s not likely to take a train in Surrey, not if that’s where she left the motorcar. A small station, never very crowded? Someone is likely to remember her, especially if she’s young and pretty. London is bigger, people everywhere, the stationmasters and their minions busy. She could slip through unnoticed. And you’re right, it’s some little distance from Surrey, on a bicycle. But men who drive lorries will take pity on a damsel in distress, trying to arrive home before her mother knows she’s been out with a young lad. Or perhaps she claimed her mother was ill, and she had to go to her. Finding this lorry driver will be needle and haystack work. My suggestion is, we begin in London, and if we can spot her here, then we’ll worry about the lorry driver later. Now then, experience leads me to believe it would be helpful to know the name of the dead man. We could cast a wider net.”