Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

He counted to ten, then eased forward to keep the red jumper in sight.

It was then he had a clear view of the man wearing it.

Bob Rawlings.

The man jogged the last twenty feet and called, “It’s done.”

“Be quiet. The policeman was here. Did you not pass him as you came in the gates?”

“No.” Rutledge could hear him thrashing about. “Which way did he go?”

He began to withdraw slowly, carefully, mindful of the secateurs that Diaz had been using. He wanted no part of a confrontation.

Rutledge had reached his motorcar in the loop of the drive before the house and was turning the crank when he heard rather than saw Bob Rawlings burst out of the wood very near where he himself had come out.

He didn’t turn but finished what he was doing and got into the motorcar.

As he started down the drive toward the gates, he met Bob Rawlings’s eyes and saw the expression in them. It was wariness mixed with anger and something more. A belligerence that seemed to be part of his nature.

Rutledge smiled and kept on going.

It’s done . What was done?

He reached the gates and turned onto the road. Not toward London but in the direction of the village serving the Bennett house.

Diaz and his helper worked wherever they were needed to keep the grounds in good order. But that very freedom meant that Rawlings could leave the grounds and return without arousing suspicion.

Either he was meeting someone or he was sending a message to someone.

Rutledge had to ask a passerby where to find the post office. He had already ascertained that there were no familiar red postboxes in the center of the small village.

It was tucked inside a milliner’s shop, a tiny square of the British Government hidden away behind a tree of hats and a tall chest featuring gloves and handkerchiefs.

The middle-aged woman behind the grille looked up as his shadow fell across the book she was reading. Marking her place with a rule, she asked politely, “Stamps, sir?”

Rutledge cast a glance over his shoulder, but the proprietor was occupied with a young woman choosing laces, their heads together over a tray of samples.

He took out his identification and passed it through the grille to her.

“Scotland Yard?” She stared at him, her mind busy. He could see her considering and rejecting possibilities. “Is it about those men at the house ?” The emphasis she put on the word all but identified the Bennett residence.

“I have reason to believe that a letter was posted here. I need to know if that’s true.”

It was her turn to look around, her voice lower as she said, “There’s only one today, sir.”

He couldn’t ask to see it. But he could ask who had brought it in.

“One of those ruffians,” she said, angry. “Walking into the shop bold as you please.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Short, fair, wearing a red jumper and corduroy trousers that looked as if he’d climbed trees in them, they were so scuffed and torn.”

In fact, Bob Rawlings had been climbing trees.

She went on, “I’m as good a Christian as the next woman, and I challenge anyone to say anything to the contrary. But I don’t hold with criminals walking the streets bold as brass. My son tells me they’ve paid for what they did, but I ask you, why do they have to come here, to my village? I saw one of them talking to my daughter, and it quite made me ill.”

“They have paid for their crimes,” he said.

“Then let them go and live in a city where no one cares who they are.”

Rutledge said, “I can’t ask you to show me the letter. But I need to know if it’s in Mrs. Bennett’s handwriting or someone else’s. Can you tell me that?”

“It’s not in hers. I know her fist when I see it.” She glanced around once more and then said, “I must step outside a moment. I’m feeling a little faint from the heat.”

Fanning herself with a sheet of paper, she left the post office confines, and as she did a letter caught in her skirts went spiraling the floor. She walked on, ignoring it. Rutledge waited until she had closed the shop door behind her. Then he retrieved the letter and slid it carefully back through the grille.

But not before he had managed to read what an untutored hand had scrawled across the front.

He left at once, and as he walked out the shop door, the postmistress said, “That one’s a murderer if ever I saw one. I hope he’s taken away from here as soon as may be.”

But Mrs. Bennett had assured Rutledge that she had taken in only men who could be rehabilitated. He rather thought she’d misjudged Rawlings.

Or perhaps she hadn’t; perhaps Diaz had found something in the younger man that he could mold toward his own ends.

Rutledge thanked the postmistress and walked back to where he’d left the motorcar.

There he took out his notebook and wrote down what he’d seen.

He stopped in Chelsea on his way into London and knocked at the door of the Belford house. He was told that Mr. Belford was not in.

Tearing the sheet out of his notebook, he handed it to the footman. “Would you see that he gets this as soon as he returns?”

“Yes, sir.”

Rain caught up with him as he drove down his own street and left the motorcar in front of the flat.

Later that evening, Rutledge went to the Yard. He had purposely delayed coming in because he hadn’t wanted to encounter Markham.

Fielding had left a note on his desk, telling him that the luggage van guard’s statement had been collected.

As you asked, I’m holding it until you have advised me to turn it over to the Acting Chief Superintendent.

Not good news at all.

Rutledge wrote a message thanking Fielding, then another asking Gibson for any information he could find on the name and direction he’d taken down from the letter he had seen in Surrey. He disliked depending too much on Belford. A man in his position might easily require the return of a favor down the road.

Finally, he put in for forty-eight hours of leave, setting the request on Markham’s desk, then drove through the night to Essex.

He reached it early in the morning, and found the side road that led down to the water meadows at Flatford Mill, where Constable had painted one of his finest works. It hadn’t changed much, and he crossed to the other side of the Stour first, moving through the scattered trees, looking toward the mill buildings that Constable had made famous. The village was tiny, hardly more than a hamlet, and he’d had to walk down to it, the way being almost impassable for his motorcar after the night’s rains.

The sun had come out, but there were mists still rising from the water, and in the early silence he could hear ducks calling near the weir. Peaceful. That was the word that came to mind. Timeless. He walked some distance before retracing his steps, watching the sun paint the old glass in the windows of the houses opposite a delicate gold. The mill was still there, a hundred years later, and Willie Lot’s cottage as well.

He crossed the river again, then went down the lane that led to the mill and the houses. Late flowers grew rampant in the gardens, and bees made a soft humming sound as they worked from blossom to blossom.

Looking back, he could see the angle from which Constable had painted another view, this time of Willie Lott’s house. And then the sun was warm on his shoulders as he walked up the long slope to where he’d left the motorcar.

It was time to do what had to be done.

What he hadn’t counted on, on his way to call on Miss Whitman, early as it was, was Miss French arriving on her doorstep before he could leave his motorcar close by the church, out of sight.

As he cut through the churchyard, Valerie Whitman had just opened her door to Miss French’s knock.