Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

“Someone has been following us. I don’t know who it is. But I have made enemies during this inquiry. And I don’t want to drag you into my trouble.”

She stared at him, then turned to look back toward the slope they had come down. It had twisted and turned, shaped by oxen and drays and wains, but she could see no one.

“Are you certain?” Turning back to him, she studied his face. “I don’t see anyone. Is he waiting by the motorcar, do you think?”

“It’s possible.” He was still holding her arm, and he released it, stepping back.

“How did you make enemies?” she asked. “On my grandfather’s account? Or on mine?”

“I was looking into Howard French’s past. There was the possibility of an illegitimate child, and that was worth pursuing. But it led nowhere. And so I began to look at the other relationships in the family. That led me to something quite unexpected. One night a stranger came to the house and threatened French and his son. It was quickly covered up, the man taken away. I explored that link through MacFarland, and learned that the man not only was still alive but had been released from the asylum where he’d been locked up. I had little to work with, a hunch, the nature of the man himself, the feelings he must have harbored against the French family.”

“I’d never heard anything about this. Not from the family, not from my grandfather, no one,” she said. “Why haven’t the police arrested him, questioned him?”

His eyes still on the road, Rutledge gave her the briefest explanation, adding, “The problem is, whatever I want to believe, I can’t prove any of it. And the Yard requires proof. Evidence. Something to be going on with. In the eyes of the police, this man has not done anything wrong, and what’s more, there’s no real proof now he ever threatened anyone. Twenty years has seen to that.”

“Would what you believe clear my grandfather . . . and me?”

“Very likely. Yes, I think it would.”

Sunlight, filtering through the leaves, brought out the honey gold in her hair, and he found himself thinking that she should be painted this way.

Clearing his mind of anything but Hamish’s voice, he said, “Stay here. I’m going back to the motorcar. If no one is there, if the motor hasn’t been tampered with, I’ll come back for you.”

“No, I don’t want to stay here alone.”

“He couldn’t have reached the outbuildings over there without being seen. He’d have had to cross that patch of open, sunlit ground.”

“I know. But if you can circle around him, whoever he is, then he can circle around you. I’m safer if I go than if I stay.”

“If I give you an order at any point, you’ll obey it instantly, do you understand?”

“I do. I promise.”

“Then stay behind me.”

“He must know I’m here.”

“I’m sure he does. But any shot at me could hit you instead.”

“He’s armed?” That shook her, but she said stoutly, “I’ll stay clear.”

He walked briskly back around the millpond and over the bridge toward the clearing, his shoulder blades twitching as he waited for the shot that miraculously didn’t come. And then they began to climb the sloping, rutted track that led to the high ground where he had left the motorcar.

And still there was no challenge, no shot being fired.

Nor was there anyone there when they came in sight of his motorcar. It stood alone on the knoll. And although he looked the motorcar over carefully—tires, under the bonnet, and even under the frame—it appeared to be untouched.

Valerie Whitman, watching him search, asked, “Was it because of me? Was that the reason whoever followed you went away? After all, I should think that killing me would make the police wonder if my grandfather was guilty or not.”

Rutledge dusted off his knees, straightened his coat, and went to turn the crank. “I think he was here to verify certain information. That MacFarland was no longer able to testify to the past and that you were being taken to London.”

All the same, he was watchful on their way back to the main road, and most of the way to London.

Valerie Whitman was quiet the last twenty miles, her face pale and set.

“I’m frightened,” she said finally as the traffic grew heavier and the streets of London led inexorably closer to her incarceration.

“I’m sorry,” he said inadequately, and wished Markham at the very devil.

He stayed with her through Magistrate’s Court, where she was remanded to Holloway, and the last things he saw were her wide eyes as she was led away, half hidden by the prison matron who had taken her in charge.

It was a long night, spent with Hamish’s voice in his head and a glass of whisky, untouched, in his hand.

Who had followed them to Flatford Mill? It was far too soon to expect Diaz to have orchestrated an attempt on his life. And so someone had simply had a watching brief. Had Rutledge himself led the man to MacFarland? Quite unintentionally? Or had that ex-soldier passing through already made certain where the tutor lived?

There was a telephone at the inn in Dedham. If someone had been waiting for further instructions, it would have been easy to reach him. Rutledge wished he’d set the Dedham police to find out, but it would have required too much time, too many explanations, and no certainty of success in finding the contact. At least Miss Whitman was safely in Holloway, and the goat could confidently expect to hear again from the tiger.

Hamish said finally as Rutledge managed to fall into a restless sleep, “Ye claimed ye were his match . . .”

He reported to the Yard the next morning, told Markham that his orders had been carried out, and watched the man nod enthusiastically.

“Well done. Write up your report and see that it’s on my desk by the end of the day. Any trouble?”

“Someone followed us out of Dedham. I didn’t recognize the motorcar. It stayed with us even when I pulled off at Flatford Mill. And then it was gone.”

“Does Miss Whitman have any friends who might take exception to your bringing her in, hoping for a chance to intervene?”

Rutledge thought of the curate, but the man had only a bicycle.

“None that I’m aware of.”

“And you weren’t followed to London.”

“No. I made certain of that. It prolonged the trip, but I believed it to be a wise precaution.”

“Then I should think it was coincidence. Or mere curiosity.”

But Rutledge had spent four years in the trenches. He had smelled danger there at the mill. He had known that the shadowy figure had come most of the way down the steep slope of the track, before changing his mind and turning away.

Coincidence be damned.

He finished his report and set it aside to be picked up and carried to Markham’s office.

Restless, he looked out the window at the gathering clouds and the rise in the wind, lightly touching the leaves on the trees, then beginning to shake them in earnest.

Hamish was worrying the fringes of his mind, trying to bring back a memory that was elusive, almost imagined rather than true.

Rutledge tried to ignore it, but it was persistent, and he found himself going over every step of his arrival in Dedham, from the doctor’s surgery to Agnes French’s house, thence to the cottage where he’d taken Valerie Whitman away. And still whatever it was eluded him.

There was a knock at the door, startling him, and Gibson came in. “It’s dark enough out there to light a lamp,” he said, and Rutledge realized that he had been unaware of the gloom. As he reached over to turn on the lamp, Gibson went on. “A call from Maidstone. The Allington Lock on the River Medway. A body washed up against the fish pass. There’s a knife still in it. Markham wants you to go there. He thinks it could well be the man we’ve been searching for upriver at Aylesford.”