The Confession - Charles Todd [1]
“Most likely whoever shot him shoved him into the water. Out of sight, out of mind.” The third man counted the wet notes a second time. “There’s almost a hundred pounds here!”
“Flotsam and jetsam,” the second man said. “We found it, we keep it. Like a shipwreck.” He gazed round at the desolate sweep of water and marsh and gray sky as if half expecting to see a ship’s hull half sunk in the deeper reaches beyond.
It was an unfortunate reference. They knew, all of them, what a shipwreck could lead to.
“What do we do with Mr. Fowler?” the first man asked dubiously. “If we bring him in, we’ll have to summon the police. Someone is bound to want to know what’s become of his money.”
“Tow him out to sea. Let him wash ashore somewhere else,” the third man said, scrabbling in the bottom of the skiff for a length of rope. This he proceeded to loop around the dead man’s neck, and then he ordered, “Pick up yon oars. I can’t row and pull at the same time, now can I?”
The first man sat where he was. “We’re towing him nowhere until there’s some understanding here. The money is evenly divided.”
“I saw him first,” the second man ventured. “Finder’s fee.”
“The hell with that,” the third man retorted. “Share and share alike, I say. And then there’s no room for one of us to feel denied and start trouble. We’re all in this together. If one must hang, we’ll all hang.”
“If I walk home today with this much money in my pocket, my wife will ask questions. What do I say, then?” the first man demanded. “She’ll start the trouble, mark my words.”
“Then don’t march home with the money stuffed in your pocket, you fool. Put it by, and use it a little at a time. You don’t go waving it about first thing. Think of your old age, or your daughter’s wedding, when a bit of the ready will come in handy. This poor devil doesn’t need pounds wherever he’s gone to, and it’s a sheer waste to let the sea have it. We’ve done nothing wrong, have we? We didn’t kill him, we didn’t leave him here to be found by a schoolboy looking to fish for his dinner, we just took what he’d got no use for. Simple as that.”
Half persuaded, the first man said, “Still, I’ve never kept a secret from my wife. That’ll take some doing.” He picked up his oar from the bottom of the skiff and put it in the water.
The third man laughed. “You’ve never needed to lie before. Now there’s a reason.”
They began to pull against the incoming tide, heading for the mouth of the inlet, towing the body behind them. The first man scanned the shoreline as they passed.
“I don’t see anyone about, looking this way. Do you think they can see what’s at the end of the rope?”
“It just appears that we’ve forgot to bring the rope inboard.”
“What if he comes back again?” the first man asked, glancing over his shoulder. He was finding it a struggle to row against the current with that sluggish weight pulling at the rope attached to it.
“He won’t,” the third man promised. “He hasn’t been in the water all that long. You can tell, the fishes haven’t truly got at him yet. But they will. And no one will be the wiser.”
But there he was wrong.
Chapter 2
London, Summer 1920
Sergeant Hampton had brought the man to Rutledge’s office, saying only, “Inspector Rutledge will help you, sir,” before vanishing back down the passage.
The visitor was a walking skeleton, pale except for his dark hair and his pain-ridden dark eyes. Sitting down gingerly in the chair that Rutledge offered, he seemed to feel the hardness of the seat in his bones, for he moved a little, as if hoping to find a more comfortable spot.
“My name is Wyatt Russell,” he began in a voice thinned by illness. “I’m dying of cancer, and I want to clear my conscience before I go. I killed a man in 1915 and got away with it. I want to confess to that murder now. There won’t be time to try me and hang me, but at least you’ll be able to close the file and I’ll be able to sleep again.”
Rutledge considered him. People confessed for a good many reasons, not the least of which was to salve their conscience before facing a more lasting justice