The Confession - Charles Todd [18]
“Yes. Yes, I did,” Morrison replied slowly, reaching for the locket, although it was clear he didn’t require a closer look. “She once lived nearby.”
“Could you tell me her name?”
“Where did you find this locket? May I ask?”
“In Gravesend,” Rutledge answered. When the rector said nothing more, his eyes on the photograph, Rutledge added, “The police found it around the neck of a body taken from the Thames.”
“Dear God!” The rector closed the locket with a snap, as if he couldn’t bear to look at it any longer. He turned his gaze toward the altar. “Who—has the body been identified?”
“We have reason to believe that it is, was, one Wyatt Russell.”
The relief filling in the rector’s eyes was almost painful to watch. Rutledge looked away. “Did you know him?” he asked.
“I—yes, I knew him. He lived not far from here.”
“At River’s Edge, in fact.”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“He came to see me shortly before his death. You haven’t told me who the woman is.”
“Was he a suicide?”
“He was murdered,” Rutledge replied shortly. “What is her name, Rector?”
“God rest his soul,” Morrison said fervently, crossing himself. “As to the woman in the photograph, her name is Cynthia Farraday. She came to live at River’s Edge when her parents died of typhoid. Her father and the late Malcolm Russell were cousins, I believe. She was too young to live on her own, and Mrs. Russell, his widow, was made her guardian. She was alive then. Mrs. Russell, I mean. Wyatt’s mother. And then one day in the summer of 1914—August, it was—Mrs. Russell simply disappeared. ”
“Were the police called in?”
“Yes, the police from Tilbury. When it was realized that she was missing, there was a frantic search for her by the family and the staff. And then someone was sent posthaste to Tilbury. Men were brought out from Furnham to help, because they knew the marshes so well. But she was never found. The inquest concluded that she had drowned herself, for fear her son would die in the war. She’d lost her husband in the Boer War. Her son remembered that when she was a girl, a gypsy had read her hand and predicted that war would take all she loved from her. Her husband’s death convinced her that the prediction was true.”
There had been a great deal of speculation that summer, after the Austrian archduke and heir to the Hapsburg throne had been assassinated in Sarajevo. Rutledge remembered it well. Would Austria demand a reckoning with the Serbs? And what would Germany do, if Russia insisted on protecting her fellow Slavs? Would France be drawn in, as an ally of Russia? Governments began to mobilize. And in the end, armies began to march. And Belgium, tiny Belgium with open borders and only a small army, had been overrun by the Kaiser’s forces on their way to France, in spite of Britain’s pledge to protect her. Britain had had no choice then but to declare war on Germany. And all Europe burst into flame.
No one had believed it would happen. And then everyone had believed that it would all be over by Christmas, that the heads of state would come to their senses.
Instead, the war had dragged on for four bloody years. Mrs. Russell had had every reason to be afraid for her son, although no one could have guessed it at the time.
“Was this a strong enough reason for her to kill herself ? Surely further inquiry would uncover a better motive for her disappearance? And I should think that if she had drowned, sooner or later her body would have surfaced?”
“You didn’t know her,” Morrison said wearily. “Elizabeth Russell was obsessed with the news, reading everything she could find. She had daily newspapers sent down from London by special messenger. She corresponded with a friend who’d married a Frenchman, and a telegram was sent telling her when the Germans had marched. And in spite of everything, her son joined the Army not a fortnight after she vanished.” He shrugged. “The local