The Confession - Charles Todd [28]
“How would you describe them?” he asked. And when she hesitated, he added, “There’s no photograph, as far as I know, of the family members.”
“Oh. Not even in River’s Edge?” Shyly offering him a seat, she asked, “What is this about, then?”
From behind her shoulder, Sandy Barber sent him a fierce frown.
“Alas, the house is closed.” He fell back on his recollection of his father’s methods of dealing with clients. John Rutledge had been a very fine solicitor, and his easy manner had belied his sharp mind. “A legal matter,” he told her. “To do with a certain piece of personal property that has been recovered. We don’t seem to know where to return the item.”
Reassured, she said, “Well, then. Mr. Russell was tall and fair. A friendly enough man. He’d touch his hat to us if he encountered my mother and me on the street or in a shop, and say ‘Ladies’ as he passed by. My mother always said he had good manners. But he wasn’t one to stop and ask after the children if one had been ill, or inquire how my father’s boat had fared after a high wind. Mrs. Russell, now, she would speak to my mother if she met her in a shop. She knew my father; he sometimes would take a choice bit of fish out to Mrs. Broadley, the cook at River’s Edge. ‘That was a fine bit of sole,’ Mrs. Russell would say. ‘Thank Ned for thinking of us.’ Sad that she disappeared the way she did.”
Rutledge caught Barber’s eye. The barkeep had left the impression that the Willet family had had very little to do with the Russell family. “What did local gossip have to say about her disappearance?”
“We thought she’d drowned herself. Well, it was what you’d naturally wonder about, isn’t it? Last seen walking down to the water’s edge?”
“People don’t drown themselves without a reason,” he responded quietly. “Was Mrs. Russell—unhappy?”
“Not precisely unhappy,” Abigail Barber answered, trying to remember. “I do recall my mother saying that she hadn’t seemed like herself in a while, as if something was on her mind. But then the war was coming, wasn’t it, and there was her son and Mr. Fowler, of an age to go.”
“I understand you had brothers about the age of Mr. Russell. Did they ever spend time together—go off on the river together?”
She laughed, her face flushing a becoming pink. “God love you, Mr. Rutledge, I don’t think I’d live long enough to see that day. But Ben had an eye for whatever Mr. Russell was wearing. He longed to be a footman, and someday a gentleman’s gentleman. Once or twice he went up to the house with my father, and he’d come back and say, ‘I wonder how he gets that polish on his shoes,’ or ‘He must have dressed in a bit of a hurry today. The back of his coat wasn’t properly pressed.’ He could mimic their voices too. It came natural to him.”
“Did he indeed? Was he hoping to be taken on as a footman in the Russell household?”
“Oh, no, sir, it wasn’t at all likely. Ben said he’d be best off where he wasn’t known. But what he learned would help him fit in, he said.” She glanced over her shoulder at her husband. “He was a fisherman’s son here. He said he could be anybody somewhere else.”
Ben Willet, so it seemed, was ambitious.
“How did your father take this desire to go into service?”
“He had other sons to go out in the boat with him. That was before the war, of course. Tommy and Joseph never came back from France. But Ben was always his favorite, and I think he was sorry not to have him want to go to sea.”
“Did you know Justin Fowler?”
She shook her head. “He was a cousin or some such, wasn’t he? But I never saw him, that I know of. He didn’t come to Furnham. We put it down to him being more of a snob.”
“Was there bad blood between Russell and Fowler?”
“I wouldn’t know, sir.”
He could hear a weak voice calling from another part of the house.
“My father,” she said, rising quickly. “He’s not well.”
Rutledge rose as well. “One more question. Did Miss Farraday come to the village on occasion?”
Her face hardened. “Oh, yes, I knew who she was. If you want to know, she