The Confession - Charles Todd [60]
“Perhaps you were walking east of the Tower, rather than nearer Westminster Bridge?” It was east of the Tower that the watermen believed Willet had gone into the river.
“Yes, thank you, I remember now. There was an accident on Tower Bridge. It was blocked by a lorry that had overturned, spilling marrows all across the road. I remember the blood. The driver was bleeding. You couldn’t see his face for the blood. I walked away. I’d watched enough men die.”
“Was Willet there as well?”
“Ben Willet? No, he was waiting for me on the other side of the bridge. I didn’t want to watch him die, either.”
“Why should he be dying? Was he involved in the accident?”
“Damn it, I told you he was on the far side of the bridge, waiting.”
“Did you have your service revolver with you?”
“I always carry it with me. Every officer does.”
“But the war is over.”
“Damn it, are you calling me a liar?”
“Not at all. I’m trying to establish a clear picture of events. It’s my duty, although I grant you it can be tiresome at times. You had your service revolver with you, then. Did you use it that night?”
“I’d have liked to shoot that wretched lorry driver and put him out of his misery. His head was bleeding, all down his face. I know what that means. Doesn’t stand a chance, poor bastard. They drilled holes in my skull. Did they tell you? Because the brain was swelling.”
“Ben Willet was suffering from a cancer,” Rutledge went on, trying to bring Russell back to that night on the bridge.
“That’s right. He didn’t want a slow death. But he couldn’t bring himself to finish it. His father was strict, you see. A religious man.”
“He wanted you to help him die?”
It wasn’t an answer Rutledge had considered.
“Yes, didn’t I tell you? I was to meet him that night. On the far side of the bridge. I’d run into him in Piccadilly, he was on his way somewhere, someone was waiting. But he asked if I would mind having dinner with him. There was something he wished to ask me. I had to rid myself of my minder—”
Only half aware of what he was doing, Russell’s fingers had been fiddling with the locket, which was still dangling from Rutledge’s outstretched hand.
And then it opened without warning, swinging around to face him. He stared at it for a moment, then looked up at Rutledge.
“What the hell are you doing with her photograph? You’ve been lying to me all along, haven’t you? My mother’s locket be damned.” His face was suffused, rage flashing in his eyes, turning the blue almost incandescent.
Surging to his feet, he overturned his chair. The crash startled the others in the room, and they looked up in alarm.
“I thought this talk of London and Willet was nothing but a trick. You stay away from her, do you hear me? She’s worth ten of you.” And before Rutledge could stop him, he’d flung the locket across the room and strode swiftly out the door.
One of the card players was on his feet as well, shouting at Rutledge.
As he listened to Russell’s boots pounding down the uncarpeted passage, Rutledge managed to find the locket where it had fallen among a collection of canes in a porcelain stand. He reached the door just as the nursing sister came rushing in, almost colliding with him.
“What did you do?” she demanded, and behind her Matron was saying, “I heard someone running.”
Rutledge pushed them aside. “It’s Russell. I think he left the house.”
Several other nursing sisters were coming from other parts of the clinic, and he had to dodge them as he ran.
Someone had thought to ring a bell somewhere, the clanging almost earsplitting. Reaching the door, he glanced up to see the bell hanging in a window above the door, and there was an orderly vigorously pulling on the rope.
“That way!” he shouted down to Rutledge, pointing toward the trees of the park.
Rutledge followed the direction he indicated, almost certain that he could hear someone crashing about in the straggling undergrowth. But he reached the road without finding the Major.
Hamish said, “He’s gone to ground.”
Rutledge swore. He hadn’t opened the necklace on purpose. It had