Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

“I thought that was MacDowell’s case.”

“So it is, but he’s in Gloucester, and you’re in London.”

Any excuse to get Rutledge away from the Yard until his attitude toward the closed case had changed . . .

He said, “What else did Maidstone tell you? Am I to swim down and bring him up?”

“Just that their man is already on the scene. He’s asked for ropes and men to haul in the body, and Inspector Chambliss thought the Yard would wish to be present when they did. You can identify the man. You saw him before MacDowell did.”

“For my sins,” Rutledge answered. He picked up his hat and his umbrella and followed Gibson out of the office and down the passage.

“Do you need a map?” Gibson asked.

Rutledge knew the Lower Medway, where the river widened enough for boats to come down to this final lock and sail out into the Thames Estuary.

“Thanks, no. I can find it.”

The storm suited his mood as he stepped out the door of the Yard and walked toward his motorcar. The wind lashed him with rain, but he couldn’t open the umbrella, holding on to his hat as he ducked his head against the sting of the raindrops.

He thought as he got into the motorcar, relieved at being inside, that he was just in the mood for something, anything, taking him out of the claustrophobic Yard.

Moving slowly through the downpour, his eyes scanning the road in front of him, he made his way across the Thames and turned to pick up the road to Rochester, Canterbury, and Dover. The storm followed him, lightning flashing and nearly blinding him a time or two. He considered pulling over, then decided to keep up a slow but steady pace, watching darkness overtake him before he got to his destination.

After a while he saw the turning he was after, left his motorcar at the top of the low ridge, and walked down the long slope to the path along the River Medway. Behind him he heard a tree groan and then begin to fall. He whirled, expecting to see it crush the motorcar, but it landed with a whoosh, jarring the ground, not twenty feet behind the boot, blocking the track out to the main road. He swore. What if Maidstone had already retrieved the body and gone home, thinking he might not come in the teeth of this storm?

The Medway was popular with boaters along this stretch, and the lock was a fair size, allowing access upstream for pleasure craft and even the occasional rowboat. A few barges moored along this side offered a different way of life for those who preferred to live on the water, leaving the less accessible far bank open for boats coming into or out of the lock. Ahead of him across the river was the lockkeeper’s house, all but invisible in the pounding rain. There were lamps on inside, a beacon against the storm.

Hamish said, “It’s na’ use, the river’s in spate. Best to wait out the storm.”

But Rutledge was wet to the skin already, and watching the trees overhead bend and sway, he thought his chances were better going toward the river than sitting in the motorcar just as uncomfortable, waiting for the next tree to come down. “I can at least judge if the body is still there, and if it isn’t, I’ll go directly to Maidstone. It will save time.”

He kept to the path that led to the small dam. The roar of water from the sluices was deafening. The fish pass was on this side, and must be a whirlpool by now. Anyone caught in that had no chance, and the body would be battered before it could be brought out. He hoped like hell that it had been retrieved, or the identification would be all that more difficult. And he wanted a look at the knife.

There was no sign of the constable on duty. Either he’d gone, as Rutledge expected, or he’d taken shelter with the lockkeeper while he waited to report to whomever London was sending. But Rutledge glanced into the small gray stone building he was passing, on the off chance that the local man was in there. Somewhere among the trees upstream, another tall one came down, and Rutledge could feel it rather than hear it hit the ground. He was grateful the worst of the lightning had passed.

Moving on toward the dam, he fought the wind gripping him, and he kept well away from the water already lapping at the stones that set off river from land.

There was a steel bridge over the dam, and he went up the steps with a hand on the rail, trying to look down into the debris that had collected by the fish pass. If he saw nothing he would cross to the lockkeeper’s cottage. The man would know what had been happening on his turf.

Even Hamish’s voice was shut out by the roar of the sluices, and Rutledge cast a glance up at the bridge above them, searching for the constable.

Then leaning over as far as he dared, he pointed his torch down into the maelstrom that was the fish pass, where limbs and branches, leaves and whatever other flotsam the storm had picked up tried to get through the grating and into open water beyond. But there was no outlet for anything of any size, and the debris simply launched assault after assault against the immovable iron.

Something was down there.

He could see what appeared to be a sleeve, but he couldn’t tell as it rolled and went under and then surfaced again whether there was a hand in it. The beam from his torch struggled to penetrate the thick tangle, and he leaned out farther, pointing the light directly at the last spot he’d seen the sleeve tossed. The wind twisted and pushed at him, and the beam bounced badly.

Looking again to the top of the stairs, Rutledge thought there might be more shelter from the buffeting if he stood up there. He climbed to the walkway, but there wasn’t much relief to be had, for here the wind tried to spin him around. He made one more attempt to direct the beam of the torch into the water below, and he was rewarded with another look, better this time, at the sleeve.

A coat, there was no doubt about that. Waterlogged, it still tumbled about like a mad thing. He had yet to glimpse the man. But the coat was enough to tell him that the body was probably still down there, that the storm had prevented any attempt to reach it.

He was on the point of turning to cross the bridge and walk to the lockkeeper’s house when a flash of something white stopped him. A face? Or a piece of the flotsam of the river? Impossible to say.

He leaned out as far as he could, braced against the railing, the torch pointing to where he’d last seen the white object. It had been brought to the surface once. It could still be in the top layer of the tangle. He was too far away to hope to identify a face, but if that’s what it was, it would solve the problem of what to do next.

Concentrating on the small, round circle of his torch beam, he waited.

“ ’Ware!”

The word appeared to be hardly more than a whisper against the sluices and the storm’s wrath. But Rutledge heard it.

There was movement on the bridge at his back, he could see it out of the corner of his eye, and his first thought was that the constable had spotted him and come out to meet him.

Then he realized that the man wasn’t wearing a helmet or even a hat, in spite of the rain.

Whoever he was, he wasn’t a policeman. Surely the lockkeeper hadn’t ventured out this far just to see what Rutledge was doing.

All too aware of how precariously he was stretched out, he made to turn, but the shadow was already leaping toward him, taking advantage of the chance to push him over. The man caught Rutledge’s ankle and viciously raised it, throwing him even further off balance.

There was only one move left to him. Rutledge swung the torch with all his strength in a backhanded arc that brought his body around as well. He couldn’t hear the torch strike flesh, but he felt the blow in his wrist, and the shadow staggered.