The Confession - Charles Todd [111]
He was led down a quiet passage to a small office filled with bookshelves and rows of ledgers.
Waring offered him a chair. “I should like first to ask you why you are inquiring about one of our boys.”
“As I understand it, his mother died of consumption and his father died in prison. I don’t know that he was ever at the school, but there is circumstantial evidence that he was. We are attempting to find him because he may have been a witness to a crime some years ago. Whatever information he can provide will help us in our inquiries.”
Waring gestured to the array of ledgers. “If you will tell me the name of the boy and when he might have been in our school, I’ll be happy to look for him.”
“I have his mother’s name. Gladys Mitchell. And an approximate date. What leads me to Baldridge School is the fact that a man with a possible association to this boy was also a benefactor of your school. His name was Fowler.”
Mr. Waring’s face reflected his recognition of the name, but he said only, “And the possible dates?”
Rutledge had made his calculations.
There were only two ways that Gladys Mitchell could have claimed that her son had been fathered by Fowler. He had been conceived after a brief affair with Fowler that had been resumed at a later date. Or he had been conceived just after the relationship had ended. There was a space of ten years between Fowler’s relationship with Gladys Mitchell and his marriage to Justin’s mother. The murders occurred when Julian was short of his twelfth birthday. The boy—if it was indeed a male child—could have been as young as twenty-two or as old as twenty-four at the time. Add another twelve years since then, and the killer could be as young as thirty-four today. Which would make him close to Harold Finley’s age. Or even thirty-five or thirty-six. He gave Waring the possible dates.
“Was he in the war, do you think?”
If it was Finley, the answer was yes.
“Possibly.”
“In our small chapel we have an honor roll of boys who died in the war. His name may be there. But first let’s have a look at”—he ran his finger along the spines of the tall ledgers on the third shelf—“this one, I should think. Mitchell, you said?”
“Yes.” And then as an afterthought, “It could be Finley.”
Half an hour later, Waring closed the ledger and shook his head. “I’m afraid you must have been mistaken. I don’t find him at all.”
“Could it possibly be Fowler?”
Waring looked up at him sharply. “Are you saying this boy could have been Mr. Fowler’s son?”
“He was not, to my knowledge. But the boy’s mother could have used the name. Er—to honor him for services to the family.”
“There wasn’t a Fowler, either, I would have noticed.”
There was nothing more to say. Rutledge had used every variation he could think of. There was one other, but he didn’t know the woman’s name. She was Gladys Mitchell’s sister. And he would have to return to Somerset House to ferret her out. Or speak again to Mr. Harrison.
He thanked Waring for his assistance, and he rather thought the man was glad that the search had drawn a blank. For the sake of the school if not his own.
At the Yard, Rutledge put in a call again to Mr. Harrison, only to be told that the solicitors had no record of Mrs. Mitchell’s sister’s name.
“I recall that you told me she had arranged the services.”
“Indeed she did. However, we were billed directly by the undertaker. We had no correspondence with the sister.”
In short, the solicitors had not thought it advisable to trust Mrs. Mitchell’s sister with any sums, although Harrison had not directly said so.
“And this was true of care at the sanitarium as well as a headstone for the grave?”
“Precisely.”
Rutledge had just put up the receiver when Sergeant Gibson walked by.
“What news do you have of the Chief Superintendent?”
“He’s been allowed to sit in a chair for the first time. But it’s a long road ahead for the Chief Superintendent, and he’s not one to be idle.”
Rutledge agreed with him. But there had been a subtle difference