The Confession - Charles Todd [51]
They carried the boxes out to the nearest overhead bulb and set them down. Pulling forward a stool and a chair, Thompson took out his pocketknife and carefully cut the string.
“There you are, sir,” he said again.
Rutledge sat in the chair and took out the first layer of items, mostly shoes and clothing that Willet had worn in the course of his duties in the house. Below that were several newspapers, now yellow with age, reporting events leading up to Britain’s declaration of war against Germany. There were even half a dozen broadsheets setting out where men could go to enlist.
Replacing the newspapers and then the clothing under Thompson’s watchful eye, he set the first box aside and opened the next one. This seemed to include items that were in Willet’s room here in the Laughton household, and more clothing, of the sort he might wear on his half day off. There was a photograph of a fishing boat, presumably his father’s, framed in tarnished silver plate, and a cutting from a newspaper, also framed, showing a woman standing in front of a display of flowers. The caption beneath it read: MISS CYNTHIA FARRADAY, AND THE PRIZEWINNING ORCHIDS AT THE LONDON FLOWER SHOW.
The date on the newspaper, just visible at the edge of the frame, was April 1914.
She was as young as the face in the locket, smiling for the camera while one hand lifted a spray of orchids so that the photographer could capture it better.
Hamish said, “He knew her. Knew who she was.”
Silently agreeing, Rutledge replaced the contents as carefully as he’d lifted them out, and reached for the third box.
Inside it were several books—one was a volume of poetry, the other a one-volume collection of Shakespeare’s plays, and the last was a novel by an American writer, Henry James. Beneath these were a stack of copybooks, the sort that children used to practice their penmanship.
“I don’t know that you should look at those,” Thompson said as Rutledge took one and prepared to open it. “They may be private papers.”
But Rutledge had no choice. It was difficult to decipher the handwriting—it was close together and cramped, the better to fit more lines to the page. He thought at first that this was a sort of diary, and then he realized it was not. The heading on the first page he came to was CHAPTER SEVENTEEN, and there followed a paragraph describing a village in France.
It was, in fact, more fanciful than accurate, although the writing was very good. The next paragraph picked up a thread from what was presumably the preceding chapter, for a woman was looking for a particular house. She found it on a side street and stood for a moment in the rain, trying to decide whether to knock at the door or walk on.
Her internal monologue as she debated what to do was extraordinarily good.
Rutledge looked up from his reading. “Did you know about these? Did anyone?”
“Willet had a room to himself—there was only the one footman, you see—and he spent a good deal of his free time there. Especially in the evenings, when the family wasn’t entertaining or had gone out to dine. One of the housemaids accused him of being too good to associate with the rest of the staff in the servants’ hall, but he told her that he liked to read, and this was his only opportunity.”
Rutledge took out another of the copybooks and read a few pages. It was not as good as the work in the first one. Apparently Ben Willet was trying to write a novel, for there were only seventy-five pages here, and the writing broke off with a splatter of ink, as if he had been disgusted and thrown the pen down.
He had begun again in another copybook, and that one also stopped abruptly. His third attempt showed promise, and by the fourth he lacked the experience to tell the tale he had in mind—witness the incorrect description of a French village that was vaguely reminiscent of Essex—but his characters showed depth and maturity.
Thompson was growing restless, clearly eager to go back to his interrupted dinner. Reluctantly Rutledge put the copybooks back in