The Confession - Charles Todd [131]
A sergeant had meticulously made a list of all the personal correspondence found in Fowler’s desk in the six months before the murders, and another had been compiled of clients he’d dealt with in the past six months. The police had been meticulous, even to keeping a list of those who had called at the hospital in the first few days after Justin had been rushed to Casualty.
And there it was.
A name he recognized.
Rutledge sat back in the chair, telling himself it had to be a coincidence. A faint echo of memory awoke, something that Inspector Robinson had told him. What’s more, it explained why Mr. Waring hadn’t been able to find the right name when he’d been questioned at the school. Another discordant fact had fit well into the whole now.
And other odd pieces began to fall into place, making a pattern.
He just might have found the connection after all.
Armed with this new knowledge, Rutledge asked to use the station’s telephone and put in three calls to London.
When the last of these calls had been returned, Rutledge whistled under his breath.
Gladys Mitchell’s son had been adopted when he was barely a year old—just about the time she met the young man who would later become the father of Justin Fowler. Ridding herself of an encumbrance in the hope of impressing a rich man? But it hadn’t worked out the way she had planned. Meanwhile, the boy’s new parents hadn’t wanted to give him up. Still, they had sent him to the Charity School in London because he had had a scholarship there. They were too poor to do otherwise.
That much Rutledge had already worked out, but for the details.
What he had had no way of knowing was that Gladys Mitchell had become a matron at that same school, using the name Grace Fowler. Had the solicitor, Harrison, been aware of that? It was most certainly when she’d poisoned her son’s mind against the elder Fowler and his family. The boy grew up to follow in his adoptive father’s footsteps as a shoemaker, but he hadn’t prospered. His adoptive mother—Gladys’s sister—died soon after, followed within a year by her husband, and the boy, now a grown man, was penniless, unhappy, and in search of a new life. He had found it in an unexpected place.
Sitting down again at the table, Rutledge stared at the box of evidence in front of him. Hardly able to take it all in.
“Dear God,” he said aloud.
Behind him, Inspector Robinson replied, “He’s not available, but I am. What have you found?” When Rutledge didn’t answer straightaway, he said harshly, “It’s my case. I remind you of that. The Yard hasn’t charged you with this inquiry. You have your own.”
Rutledge turned as he collected the rest of the file and added it to the box. “Quite. I can’t connect my murder to yours. I don’t know why your killer should have shot my victim.” He rose and handed the box to Robinson. “I might add that your predecessor was a careful and thorough man. If anyone should have found this murderer, it was he. The only problem is, we aren’t omniscient, are we? It’s what gives the criminal an edge.”
Taking the box, Inspector Robinson said, “I don’t appreciate your examining this file without speaking to me. What were you looking for?”
“Any tangible evidence that could be useful. A name, a coincidence, an irregularity, anything out of order.”
“If an answer comes of what you’ve discovered, I want to know.”
“There’s no real proof, Robinson. Only a faint hope.” He was on his way to the door. “What I’m afraid of, if you want the truth, is that if I’m not careful, they will hang the wrong man. And even if I’m careful, that could still happen.”
Inspector Robinson was a zealot when it came to this particular crime, and there had to be some way of proving what he, Rutledge, suspected, without involving Justin Fowler or having him taken up for desertion. Rutledge didn’t approve of what the man had done, refusing to go back to France. But that was a matter for Fowler’s conscience.
He left then, faced with the dilemma