The Confession - Charles Todd [83]
“Good work. And keep trying with Fowler, if you will.”
“Sir, I’ll try. We’re at sixes and sevens with the Chief Superintendent in hospital.”
Rutledge noticed that Gibson had used Bowles’s title rather than what he and the rank and file called him: Old Bowels. It was not a good sign. Nor was the fact that it appeared that no one had yet been asked to fill in either temporarily or permanently. Much as he himself disliked the man, it was hard to picture the Yard without him.
“Someone’s been looking for the file on the MacGuire trial. By any chance, do you know where that is?”
“I sent it along to the Chief Superintendent. Look there. If it isn’t in his box, it may have been given to someone else.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that. And the Weatherly case?”
Rutledge felt a twinge of conscience. “On my desk. The constable who discovered the body hasn’t finished his report.”
“I’ll get on that, then.” Gibson paused, then added quietly, “There’s been some question about what to do. One rumor says Chief Inspector Cummins might be called back.”
That meant that there had been some discussion in the upper echelons after all, and no one’s view had prevailed. In point of fact, the Chief Superintendent would be hard to replace for the simple reason that he had never groomed a successor for fear of being overshadowed—or shown lacking.
Rutledge rang off and stood there for a moment in the telephone closet. He ought to go back to the Yard. But the last thing he wished to do was enter into the speculation and carping that must be going on, much less the ruthless undercurrents as some tried to benefit from Bowles’s crisis. He’d become a policeman for very sound reasons, and political intrigue was not one of them. He’d been pleased when Cummins, who had retired earlier in the summer, had suggested that he be promoted as his replacement. It had been a measure of Cummins’s respect for a junior officer.
But subsequent events had left a bitter taste in Rutledge’s mouth. He’d realized that promotion would leave him vulnerable to attack where he could least afford to tell the real truth about the war. He’d been decorated for bravery, but the stigma of shell shock—regarded as cowardice—would negate that.
He realized that someone was standing outside the door, waiting to use the telephone, and he left the hotel with every intention of going back to Essex. But he actually went to his flat and paced the floor for over an hour, Hamish loud in the back of his mind, his temporary exile from the Yard and the inquiry at hand driving him to physical action.
There was something missing in the case, and he didn’t know what it was. Yet.
Why had Ben Willet, facing his own death, come to Scotland Yard to accuse Wyatt Russell of a murder committed during the war? The only connection between Willet and Russell, besides the river that connected River’s Edge and the village of Furnham, had been Cynthia Farraday. Had Willet known how she felt about Fowler and as a last gift tried to end her uncertainty over what had become of the man?
He could just as easily have been trying to protect her from the police by pointing them elsewhere. But if the police knew nothing about Fowler’s death to start with, why bring it to their attention?
And who had found it necessary to kill Ben Willet when he was already dying? Or had the killer known that? Major Russell had said that Willet wanted to be killed rather than face the indignity and excruciating pain of waiting for the end. But this didn’t smack of a mercy killing. Shooting him hadn’t been enough—his body had been stripped of identification and shoved into the Thames for good measure. It should have disappeared for good or else have been so badly disfigured by the water, the fish, and the passing ships that any identification would be impossible. But luck had not been on the killer’s side.
A third possibility was that someone had discovered that