Charles Todd - Proof of Guilt

He found the sheet he’d been working on, crumpled it, and tossed it aside.

Taking out another, he began to draw diagrams.

He could see before him the evidence against Gooding and his granddaughter, very solid, except for the missing bodies.

He heard an unexpected sound in the corridor—the mew of a cat.

Gibson tapped on his door, then opened it, carrying a young white cat in his arms. One eye was pale blue, the other a pale green. Under the sergeant’s elbow was a sheet of paper.

“What are you doing with a cat?” Rutledge asked, amused. He hadn’t pictured Gibson as an animal fancier.

“She was up a tree, and a constable brought her in. The owner will be here in half an hour to claim her. She was in Fielding’s office but set him off something fierce. His eyes are red and weeping, and he’s sneezing every breath. I volunteered to take her away. Here’s what I’ve discovered so far about your Mr. Bennett.”

Rutledge came around the desk to take the sheet from him, and for good measure smoothed the cat’s fur.

He stopped, his hand in midair.

“Not you as well?” Gibson said, turning quickly toward the door. “I’ll take her away.”

“Yes, go on,” Rutledge said absently, his mind elsewhere. “Thank you.”

He was scanning the sheet as he spoke. It was almost exactly the same information that Belford had given him. Except for the last line.

According to the constable whose rounds included the Bennett property, Mr. Bennett had not been well after his return from internment. He’d finally been reduced to being pushed about in an invalid’s chair for weeks. The constable hadn’t seen him for some time and assumed that he was now bedridden.

The eyes of the police—constables walked their rounds and filed away information that was often invaluable when a crime occurred.

Still, what if no crime had occurred here? What if Mr. Bennett had finally died of the injuries incurred in Germany while he was making good another escape attempt? And his wife, for unknown reasons, had kept his death a secret?

So that she could hire a staff, even without the money to do so? If her husband hadn’t returned to his position in the Bank of England, what had they lived on? A good many families with lofty bloodlines back to the Crusades were nearly penniless . . .

And the cook could answer the telephone as Mr. Bennett, just as he had pretended to be Inspector Chambliss.

Mr. Bennett hadn’t been a party to anything that had happened, because he hadn’t been there.

Rutledge left in a hurry, driving as fast as he could back to the house in Surrey. It was after the dinner hour when he arrived, the late summer evening already drawing to a close.

Mrs. Bennett wouldn’t bury her husband in the orchard or under the compost pile. She would find a way to honor him.

Rutledge took out his torch, shielded it, and set off for the gardens. There was the terrace above the croquet pitch, with formal borders boxing in a broad, sloping lawn, at the bottom of which was a narrow pond. Pretty, open, offering a handsome view from any of the formal rooms that overlooked it. The beds had been planted to reflect three seasons with maximum effect.

Here? He thought not. Too open, too public, not somewhere to grieve in private. Where, then?

On the far side of the house, Rutledge found what he was after. The main bedroom wing looked down on a more or less private garden, set behind a wall some four feet high but not solid, the bricks forming a lacy diamond pattern that offered light and air as well as seclusion. At the far end, an allée of shrubbery protected it from storms, with access through an ornate wrought-iron gate. Above the garden was a small balcony, and a light showed in the room connected to it.

The master suite?

He found a place where he could climb the wall and let himself down easily on the far side.

Even in the darkness it was lovely. An old garden, old as the house, very likely, but given new life and color. Roses and other flowers formed patterns that led to the center of the garden. There only white flowers had been planted, and they gleamed in the ambient light like sentinels, marking the circle where a small statue of an angel in white marble held pride of place.

No churchyard could have provided a more touching memorial to the dead. Looking out from the balcony above, Mrs. Bennett could find her husband’s grave even in the dark of night, and be comforted. In the mornings she could see it when she sat on the long terrace outside her private sitting room, or in late afternoon when she took her tea there.

Had Diaz done this? If so, it showed a side of the man that no one else had seen. A thoughtfulness, a kindness, a sense of beauty and compassion.

Rutledge stood there for a moment, staring up at the serene face of the angel.

Mrs. Bennett was not the person to question about this. But he thought he could find out what he needed to know from Somerset House.

He left the garden in the same fashion as he had come in, over the wall, then threaded his way back to the drive. He walked down it and out the gates, to where he’d concealed the motorcar.

Hamish was saying, “Ye canna’ know for certain the woman’s husband is under yon statue. No’ until ye dig it up.”

“I will stake my reputation on it.”

“Aye, ye may verra’ well have to do just that.”

Strike Bennett off the lists of those in league with Diaz.

By morning Rutledge would know more.

Somerset House was quiet when he arrived. He found the clerk he usually turned to for information. There was, as he’d expected, no will for Bennett. He was not officially dead.

But Bennett’s father’s Will was there.

The house, surprisingly for such a small property, was entailed. The implication was, once it had been far larger.

It was left to Mrs. Bennett’s husband as the only son of Henry George Albert Bennett. If he should predecease his father or have no living male heirs, the house went to a distant cousin.

Rutledge stared at the name.

It wasn’t Gerald Standish. It was his father, William.

And a swift search showed that William had died in 1902, leaving one son, Gerald.

Gentle God. Early on, Rutledge had investigated the disappearance of one Gerald Standish of Norfolk.

That was why Bennett’s death had never been made public. The house and property would have gone to Standish, and unless he was a compassionate man, Mrs. Bennett, crippled though she was, would have only the money her husband left her in his will. And if the estate had already fallen on hard times, to the point of having to let her previous servants go, Rutledge could understand how Mrs. Bennett had tried to find a way to keep the house staffed by turning to the likes of Afonso Diaz and Bob Rawlings.

“Did they also hasten the husband to his death?” Hamish asked. “If he didna’ care to have such men in the house?”

“I doubt it,” Rutledge answered silently, only just catching himself in time. “If he was also ill, there was no need. But I’ll lay you odds that Standish is dead.”

He thanked the clerk and left Somerset House, of two minds about what he ought to do next.

A brief stop at Galloway’s produced unexpected confirmation.

“I just posted a letter to you,” the jeweler said, looking up from a tray of diamond rings he was about to put away. “I found the artist. The one who painted that exquisite miniature. His name was Mannering. Henry Westin Mannering. The subject was his neighbor’s young daughter. She married a Standish and disappeared from the record. He painted her on her sixteenth birthday as a gift. I shouldn’t be surprised that he was in love with her. He never married, went on to fame and fortune, and died of cholera before he was forty-five.” Galloway reached into a private drawer and brought out the miniature. “You’ll want to return this to the owner. I’m glad I saw it. Such a beautiful piece.”