Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

“Did Lewis know that they could have been Traynor’s fault?”

“I expect he did. He was the one who told his parents why he was riding the wrong horse.”

And if Lewis was anything at all like his sister, Agnes, he had blamed Traynor for the fall, whatever he’d told his parents.

Was it a strong enough motive for murder some twenty years later?

They went out of MacFarland’s room and were walking toward the door when it opened and Constable Brooks came striding in.

“I was told there was some problem. A neighbor saw a strange man putting Mr. MacFarland into a motorcar and summoned me. I found blood in the back garden and along the road where the motorcar had been standing.”

Rutledge said, “He’s here, in the surgery. I brought him. I’ll drive you back to St. Hilary and tell you what I know.”

“It was you, then, Inspector? Mrs. Foster doesn’t know much about motorcars. She was worried about Mr. MacFarland.”

“As she should have been.” Rutledge thanked Dr. Townsend, but Constable Brooks wanted to see the victim for himself. Rutledge left them to it and went out to secure the constable’s bicycle to his boot. By that time Brooks had been satisfied that MacFarland would live, and he came directly out to join Rutledge, eager to learn more.

“He said—the doctor—that MacFarland had been struck. If you found him, did you see anyone, notice anything?”

“Only that his assailant could have come from the French property without being seen. And disappeared the same way.”

“Why would anyone at the house want to harm Mr. MacFarland?”

Because, Rutledge answered him silently, MacFarland had been at the house when Afonso Diaz had arrived and created a scene. He might remember more than he should about that visit. And if Miss French had killed her brother and left Gooding to take the blame, she wouldn’t want anything to interfere with her victory over Valerie Whitman, in whose shadow Agnes French had lived all her childhood. But she knew nothing about Diaz’s visit. And why kill Traynor?

He had to come back to a single question. How would Diaz have known MacFarland’s name or even where to find him after all this time? He stood most to gain from the death of the tutor, it was true. The last witness . . .

Rutledge turned to Brooks, sitting stiffly beside him, eager to return to St. Hilary and look for MacFarland’s assailant.

“Have there been strangers in St. Hilary in recent months asking questions about the tutor? A man you didn’t know, who didn’t appear to be one of his former pupils?”

“About six months ago,” Brooks said slowly. “He told me he was an ex-soldier, looking for a MacFarland who had served with him in Egypt during the war. He thought he might have come home to live with his father. But our Mr. MacFarland had never married, he had no son, and so I told the man. He thanked me and went on his way. I did ask him how he knew we had anyone by that name living here, and he said he’d inquired in Bury, where he’d expected to find his friend, and someone had told him to try St. Hilary, that he might have got the direction wrong. He showed it to me, John MacFarlin, Bury St. Edmunds. I pointed out the difference in spelling.”

“You believed him?”

“No reason not to. He left, never came back again. He wasn’t the first down-and-out ex-soldier to pass through here since the war, looking for work, somewhere to go, a handout. I’ve fed one or two I felt sorriest for and sent them back on the road. There was nothing here for them.”

There was no way to follow up on the ex-soldier. Or prove that Diaz had sent him. Still . . .

When he had set Constable Brooks down outside MacFarland’s house, Rutledge drove to the spot where the shot had come from, got out, and walked to the wall. But there was nothing to be found there. And no way to connect that shot with the attack on the tutor—except for the timing.

Rutledge was tempted to go to the house and ask where Miss French and her maid had been all afternoon. But he would be met with lies if she was guilty and anger if she was not.

He had other business to see to. After that, he would know what to say to Agnes French when he next confronted her.

As he turned toward London, Hamish was there, just behind his shoulder, as he always was. Just as they had watched the enemy, night after night at the Front. But now the young Scot was not the trusted corporal intent on keeping men alive and fighting as efficiently as possible. Now he was the voice of guilt and turmoil, the vivid reminder that Rutledge himself was not yet whole.

Ten miles from London it was Valerie Whitman’s voice Rutledge heard, her challenge to him as he stood just outside her door. A reminder that he had not considered the relationship between the two partners. It had stung.

It was very late when he went to call on Mr. Belford.

The man had just come in from dinner with friends and was still dressed in evening clothes, a striking contrast to his coloring. He said, as Rutledge was ushered into his study, “Well met. I have news for you. Whether it is useful or not I can’t tell you. But it is interesting.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Rutledge said.

“Is that blood on your coat, man? Not yours, surely.”

“Not mine. I apologize for not changing, but I feared you might have gone to bed.”

“Sit down. Whisky? You look as if you could use it.”

“Thank you.”

Belford poured two drinks and handed one to Rutledge. “I’ve had to exert myself on your behalf. Still, it has been a rather interesting puzzle to work with. As a start, I’ve looked into Afonso Diaz’s years in the asylum. The doctors who initially treated him are dead, of course. The latest man thinks he’s clever and doing right by his patients. And there’s very little information in the files to connect Diaz’s reason for being there to the French family. That probably explains why no one was notified that he was being released. And why no one considered him a threat to them. Your visit set the cat among the pigeons, but the upshot was, their judgment for releasing him was still sound. Nor is there anything to indicate Diaz made friends with anyone who would be useful to him in future. I expect he was delighted to find himself among thieves at the Bennett residence. There was the language problem at first, but he’s intelligent, he overcame that. He can write in English—there was his request for release to prove it. The fact is, he probably had no expectation of a future, until Lewis French’s father died and French himself saw no purpose in continuing payments for the care of a stranger. He must have supposed it was a charity of his father’s. Something that could be continued or dropped. He chose to drop it. Two years later, Mrs. Bennett heard about Diaz’s imminent release through one of the welfare societies and took him on as gardener. Apparently she had been looking for some time to find a man who knew what he was doing in that direction. She had enough well-meaning pickpockets and forgers, if you like. A gardener, mind you, not simply a groundskeeper. And after all, Diaz comes from a long line of farmers. It isn’t surprising, is it, that this would turn out to be his skill as well.”

“Her gardens are quite amazing,” Rutledge commented. “She made a good choice.”

“Indeed. I also looked into the backgrounds of the men surrounding Diaz now in the Bennett household. Most of them had very ordinary criminal careers. Forgers, for instance, and two men convicted of breaking and entering, another who specialized in cheating lovelorn ladies of their funds, and one who had been embezzling from the man he worked for.”

“Hardly hardened criminals,” Rutledge said. “But then a murderer wouldn’t have been remanded to her care.”