The Confession - Charles Todd [77]
Did it mean Russell had finally come home?
What did this have to do with the man he’d seen last night? He’d been upstairs in the master bedroom, after searching the ground floor and then the first floor. Could the man have come in and set the revolver in the gun case? The house was large enough that neither man would necessarily have heard the other’s movements. What had taken him to the water’s edge before he left? Did he think he was safe enough that he could take his time about leaving? Or was he looking for signs of a boat along the riverbank? If the tide was out, there could have been a rowboat riding low in the water.
No answers to any of his questions.
Rutledge listened to the house. The maker of that footprint could still be here, and for all he knew, the revolver could have been used here.
He remembered that Timothy Jessup had mentioned seeing him at River’s Edge, and asked if he intended to buy the property. But Rutledge, as aware of his surroundings as any man of his experience could be, had not seen Jessup.
Frances was right. One could conceal a battalion out there in the grass.
There was nothing for it but to search the house again, and then the grounds.
But they yielded nothing. Save for the footprint and the revolver, he would have been prepared to swear that he’d been the only living soul inside River’s Edge last night.
Closing the terrace door behind him, he walked down to the water’s edge. No sign of a boat here, but at the second landing, while he couldn’t find any proof that anyone had come in here, he found the faint imprint of a man’s boot in the damp earth just above the high-water mark.
He squatted there, studying it. It appeared to belong to the same foot as the one in the house, but the soft earth hadn’t preserved it as well as the hard surface of the wooden floor.
Standing again, he looked back at the house, beyond the kitchen gardens and the few outbuildings, and felt a rising frustration with Major Russell. Where the hell was the man?
Halfway back to Furnham, just beyond the turning that led to the Rectory and the churchyard, Rutledge saw Constable Nelson pedaling toward him on his bicycle. Rutledge slowed.
“Looking for me?” he asked.
Nelson stopped. Rutledge could see that he was sober, although haggard, as if he had finished the last of his stock. “No, sir. But I will ask. Did you see a loose mare back the way you’ve just come?”
“A mare? No, I haven’t.”
“One of the villages upstream reported her missing. Jumped the pasture fence. She’s a valuable beast, and I was asked to keep an eye out for her.”
“When did she go missing?” Rutledge asked quickly.
“The owner’s not sure. He went to St. Albans for a few days, and when he came back, she was gone. He doesn’t believe she got this far, but he sent word by the ironmonger’s son, who went to the dentist in Tilbury.” He gestured to the dusty, unmade surface of the road. “No tracks that the boy could pick up on his way home, and none I’ve seen so far. But I said I’d look.”
A pretense of doing his duty? Or was there more to this? Had he been asked to look for Russell? Rutledge was nearly certain that Matron wouldn’t have contacted the police, but the owner of the Trusty might well have wanted his pound of flesh. It was even possible Nelson was keeping a watch on the troublesome Londoner’s movements for someone.
Testing the waters, Rutledge said, “How well do you know Timothy Jessup? He was Ben Willet’s uncle, I’m told.”
“Jessup? You don’t want to tangle with that one,” Nelson said, alarm in his face. “A nasty piece of work. Never in any trouble with the law, you understand, and I thank God for that. All the same, nobody ever crosses him.”
Rutledge heard overtones in the man’s voice that made him wonder if Jessup and not Sandy Barber was the leader of the smugglers.
“How well did he get on with Ben?”
“I wouldn’t say they were close. Abigail has always been Jessup’s favorite. And he was against Ben going into service in Thetford. I overheard them quarreling once. Ben was trying to explain that he wasn’t cut