Watchers of Time - Charles Todd [111]
Instead he met Mrs. Barnett coming up to find him. “There’s a telephone call from the Yard, Inspector. It’s urgent.”
He thanked her and followed her back to the narrow little office. “Rutledge here,” he said into the phone.
Sergeant Wilkerson’s voice came down the line with the force of a foghorn. “That you, sir? I’ve got a bit of bad news. Or it might be good news, depending on one’s point of view!”
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“That Iris Kenneth we found dead in the river, sir. Well, it isn’t her after all. Iris Kenneth just walked in her landlady’s front door and like to’ve given the old biddy apoplexy on the spot. Thought she’d seen a ghost, she did. But it was a very angry ghost, who was soon threatening to have her up for theft for disposing of her personal property. Which the landlady, if you recall, sir, had already sold.”
“Are you quite sure,” Rutledge said, “that the woman is truly Iris Kenneth? This time?”
“Oh, yes, sir. There was quite a row, and the local station sent a pair of constables along to see what it was about. All the roomers living there swear that it’s Iris, but of course Mrs. Rollings is fit to be tied, claiming she never clapped eyes on this woman in her life! Well, stands to reason,” he added, suppressing a gleeful note in his voice. “She’s likely to be taken up on charges.”
Rutledge thought, It must have been quite an entertaining scene. “Where has Iris been, did she tell you?”
“By the time I arrived, there was some semblance of peace, and she confessed she’s been staying with friends in Cardiff, hoping for a part in some production there. In my opinion, she was short of money and ruralizing until something came up. At any rate, I took the liberty of contacting the Cardiff police, and they just sent word she’s telling the truth.”
If she was Iris Kenneth—who was the woman in the river? And what did the corpse have to do with Matthew Walsh?
Hamish answered him. “Nothing at all.”
Rutledge asked Wilkerson if he’d questioned Iris Kenneth about Walsh.
“That I did, sir! And she tells me he’s a devious bastard who would strangle his own mother.” Wilkerson’s laughter boomed down the line, nearly deafening Rutledge. “She hasn’t had any decent work since he let her go, and if she could point to him being Jack the Ripper, she’d be happy to do it. It’s anger talking, in my view. Revenge. She doesn’t sound afraid of him, only furious with him. I asked her if he’d threatened her or hurt her in any way— showing his violent nature, so to speak. She swore he never touched her—she’d had a little knife to use on him if he had—but he’s a brute and a niggardly bastard, and selfish to boot.”
A woman scorned.
“If you learn anything about the other woman, let me know.”
“She’s gone into a pauper’s grave,” Wilkerson replied. “There won’t be any more interest in that one. More’s the pity, but still, she won’t be the last. If something does come up, I’ll make sure you hear of it.”
Rutledge asked for Sergeant Gibson, but was told that he was giving evidence in court for the next two days.
Blevins took Rutledge’s news with a shrug. “We’re not making much headway, ourselves. An old Gypsy who scratches his living sharpening scissors and tinkering is not likely to hold the police in high regard. They’ve moved him along too many times, and treated him like a pariah. He won’t forgive that. And he’ll lie like a sailor to get his own back! It won’t matter to him whether Matthew Walsh killed a priest or not.”
“Has this scissor sharpener—Bolton—ever been charged by the police? Other than rousting him as a public nuisance?”
“Nothing that could be proved against him.” In frustration Blevins added, “They’re worthless, that lot.” Deserved or not, it was the general view of Gypsies: thieves and liars and heathen, filthy and secretive vagabonds. “Inspector Arnold, who first interviewed this man, is of the opinion that he’s probably up to his neck