The Confession - Charles Todd [35]
He had no idea when she had discovered that he was following her—he had been damned careful!—but he thought it must have happened shortly before she turned into Belvedere Place, when his was the only motorcar in sight, even though he had stayed well back.
And that, he thought, must mean that she had a reason to cover her tracks.
When he reached the Yard, he set Sergeant Gibson the task of locating Cynthia Farraday and Wyatt Russell.
“I thought Mr. Russell was dead in Gravesend,” Gibson reminded him.
“So did I,” Rutledge answered grimly. “But it appears the man is actually one Ben Willet.”
“But he said—”
“I’m aware of what he said. The question now is, where is the real Mr. Russell? And was Willet even telling the truth about a murder in 1915?”
“It could explain why this man Willet was killed. He’d come to the Yard with what he knew. Even if it was muddled, like.”
But from what Rutledge had been able to discover in Furnham, it wasn’t clear whether the two men’s paths had ever crossed during the war. Then how had Willet learned about what Russell had done? More to the point, why should it matter to him? And why the charade?
“Find Russell, and we could have a few answers.”
He thanked Gibson and walked on down the passage to his own office. The Duty Sergeant had already informed him that Chief Superintendent Bowles was not on the premises, “his being called to a murder scene in Camdentown.”
It was a reprieve of sorts, offering Rutledge an opportunity to think through the problem before having to present it to his superior. Bowles was not noted either for patience or for understanding. He demanded answers without a thought given to the difficulty involved in finding them. And Rutledge had already had a taste of the man’s hasty interpretation of information brought to him.
He sat down at his desk and turned his chair so that he could look out the window, his view blocked by trees in leaf. They cast cool shadows across the pavement as the sun settled in the west.
River’s Edge was isolated and had stood empty for upwards of five years. A perfect site for a quiet murder. Perhaps it had already seen one. Mrs. Russell.
He thought again that it would have made more sense if Willet had come to the Yard to confess to murdering her.
The question was, had Ben Willet been killed because of the past—or for something else completely unrelated to his visit to Scotland Yard? He wouldn’t have been the first—nor the last—man to have a finger in too many pies.
Hamish said, “D’ye believe the woman, that she wished to purchase yon estate?”
“It was a sound enough reason to explain her trespassing. I’d have said yes, it was the truth—until she played that game in Belvedere Place. If she had nothing on her conscience, she wouldn’t have cared whether I discovered where she lived or not. But what does she have to do with a footman from Thetford who washed up in Gravesend?”
He set himself the task of finishing the paperwork waiting on his desk, but his mind kept coming back to the riddle of Ben Willet.
Mrs. Brothers had recognized his face but couldn’t put a name to it. That would say that Willet could have come home to Furnham from time to time, but not often enough for Nancy Brothers to know who he was. And the men in The Rowing Boat had been reluctant to identify Willet in the photograph. True, Barber’s father-in-law was dying, and the family had no wish to upset him with the news of his son’s death. But was that another convenient lie? One that the man from Scotland Yard could investigate for himself, and then accept at face value? If so, the people in that village held a poor view of the police.
The barkeep at The Rowing Boat had been ready to kill to keep the truth from coming out. But what truth? That Willet was dead? Or that someone in Furnham recognized him?
Hamish said, “Ye ken, verra’ likely it’s no’ the fact that Willet was dead but why he died.”
They had come full circle.
Signing the last of the papers in front of him, Rutledge rose and carried them down the passage to hand them over to Constable Benning.
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