The Red Door (28 page)

He had borrowed a small photograph of Walter Teller from Jenny, and he’d made a promise to return it, because it was one she cherished.

Rutledge took it from his pocket and set it among the other frames, where it belonged. He was glad he’d remembered.

What struck him about this collection of family photographs wasn’t their number, nor the stages of a small child’s life that they’d captured, but the similarity of this boy to the one in the single photograph that had stood by Florence Teller’s bedside in Lancashire. Timothy was undoubtedly his father’s son. And he belonged here.

As he set the small frame down in the midst of the family groupings, he felt an overwhelming compassion for Florence Marshall Teller.

Hamish said, as he was about to turn away to examine the contents of the desk, “Look again.”

Rutledge did, frowning. At first there seemed to be nothing to see.

He’d been comparing Timmy to his cousin Harry, but now a photograph of the Teller sons taken with their sister caught his eye. In it Walter, the youngest, was about the same age Timmy was when he died. Almost Harry’s age now. And the likeness, as Rutledge held them side by side, was so striking he wondered he hadn’t seen it before. Harry had his mother’s gentleness to soften his Teller features, but Timmy was the image of Walter at six or seven, looking into the camera with the same expression, that mixture of shyness and warmth, the same set of the eyes, the same way of tilting the head. There was a family likeness to his uncles, but anyone comparing the two photographs would think that Timmy was Walter Teller’s son.

Rutledge pulled out the chair at Jenny’s desk and sat down. It wasn’t a trick of the light. It was there, he thought, holding the frames closer to the window so that even the dreary rain-damp natural light could reach them.

Walter Teller no longer looked like the child in the photograph with his brothers. Edwin still resembled his youthful self, but Peter too had changed. War and mission work had etched new lines where there had been none and honed down the soft fullness of a child’s face to the harsher bone structure of maturity. Edwin, sheltered of necessity, had changed the least.

The resemblance didn’t make Walter Teller Timmy’s father. But it opened avenues of thought that gave Rutledge a different perspective on what he thought he’d understood unequivocally.

After a time, he put the frames back where he’d found them, and searched cursorily through Jenny Teller’s desk. There was little of interest to him. A few letters, stationery and envelopes, stamps, and a clipped packet of paid household accounts for May.

Satisfied, he went downstairs to the study.

Walter wasn’t there. Rutledge locked the door, crossed to the desk, and methodically went through it.

Nothing there to shed light on what he was asking himself.

And then he found, among folders of mission travel records and other related material, a single folder marked simply wills.

He took that out, opened it, and scanned Jenny Teller’s last will and testament. It was, as he would have expected, very straightforward. Money inherited from her family was to be held in trust for her son, her jewelry for his wife on their wedding day, and a sum for servants past and present, another for the church in Repton. The remainder of her estate went to her husband.

Rutledge set that aside and looked at Walter Teller’s will, though he had no right to do so. It too was straightforward. The greater part of his estate went to his son, with a sum set aside for his wife until she remarried or her death. Bequests to servants, to the Repton church, to the Alcock Society, and for the upkeep of the rose garden at Witch Hazel Farm in memory of his wife. But no mention of a woman in Lancashire or St. Bartholomew’s churchyard where she and her son lay buried.

Rutledge read the last bequest again. “For the perpetual upkeep of the rose garden at Witch Hazel Farm in memory of my wife.”

And in his mind he could hear the parrot, Jake, pleased with his new if temporary quarters in Frances Rutledge’s breakfast room, overlooking the garden.
Roses
. . .

He put the folder back where he found it, shut the desk, and unlocked the door.

Not a moment too soon. Mollie was there, telling him that breakfast was set out in the dining room, if he cared for any.

He walked with her into the passage. “There are lovely roses blooming by the drive. I’m surprised not to see them in arrangements indoors.” In fact, now that he was aware of it, there were no cut flowers in the house at all. None of the displays that country houses could produce in abundance from their own gardens.

“Mr. Teller wasn’t fond of cut flowers indoors. He said it reminded him of flowers for a funeral. He’d seen enough of them crowding the pulpits in churches where he preached.”

“And Mrs. Teller? Was she fond of roses?”

“I don’t know, sir. She never said. She did sometimes walk up to the garden by the drive. But for the most part she left the gardening to the gardener.”

He thanked her and let her go. And then he opened the drive door and looked out. Even in the rain, the heavy dew-wet scent wafting on the slight breeze was pleasant.

Closing the door again, he walked into the dining room. But Teller wasn’t there. A plate and silverware set to one side indicated that he’d come in and eaten a little, but the dishes were hardly touched.

Rutledge put food on a plate without thinking about what he had chosen.

He was remembering Captain Teller, when Rutledge asked about Walter Teller’s will during his disappearance, saying that it would be time enough to read it when they knew his brother was dead.

And Rutledge had never pursued the question, because Walter turned up alive and well.

He went to the telephone and gave instructions to the constable at the Yard who answered. He had just put up the telephone when there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive.

He waited outside for it to reach the steps. Leticia pulled up the hand brake, turned off the motor, and stepped out.

“You seem to bring trouble in your wake. I see Dr. Fielding is still here. Where is my brother?”

“I haven’t seen him this past half hour.”

“He’ll be with Jenny, then,” she said decisively and went briskly past him and up the stairs.

Fielding came down shortly afterward and said, “I asked if he’d like to speak to the rector. He said he’d prefer my company. He won’t let me give him anything. He said that God was punishing him, and he couldn’t escape that.”

“There’s breakfast in the dining room.”

“Thank you. It’s been a long morning for all of us. I could use some tea.” He nodded and disappeared down the passage.

Rutledge was standing very close to where Peter Teller had been found at the foot of the stairs. He looked at the spot, remembering the sprawled body and the family in distress. It had seemed to be genuine distress.

Amy, first to reach Peter, had said he had tried to speak her name.

Mee . . .

Rousing himself, Rutledge was about to walk back to the study when he heard another vehicle on the drive. It was the local police. Inspector Jessup said as Rutledge opened the door, “Dr. Fielding asked us to wait before coming. Who’s here now? I see the other motor.”

“Miss Teller, Walter Teller’s sister.”

Jessup nodded. “Was she here last night?”

“I telephoned her earlier. She arrived not five minutes before you.”

Rutledge led the way into the study. “It appears to be a straightforward case of accidental overdose.” He told Jessup what he had seen and about the spilled milk in the kitchen. “At this stage, I can’t see a case for suicide.”

“Or murder?”

“Not at this stage,” Rutledge repeated.

Jessup said, “Sometimes people aren’t careful enough counting out their drops. Are you comfortable with accidental death?”

“At the moment. I’ll listen to what other family members have to say.”

“There seems to have been a rash of them in this house. I hope this is the last. Bad things come in threes.”

“Teller and his sister are upstairs. To your right, second door. Or the master bedroom, farther along the passage.”

“Any marks on the body?”

“None that Fielding or I saw. He’ll know more later.”

Jessup nodded and went up the stairs two at a time.

Another motorcar came rapidly down the drive, and Rutledge opened the door to find a constable already standing there on duty, his cape wet with rain.

“Morning, sir.”

“Good morning, constable. I think that’s the deceased’s sister just arriving. Let her come in.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Rutledge went back inside and into the study, leaving the door ajar. He could hear Mary Brittingham speaking to the constable, then hurrying up the stairs.

A moment or two later, he heard a muffled cry as she must have reached her sister’s room.

It was sometime later that Walter Teller came down the stairs alone.

He walked into the study, nearly turned about as soon as he saw Rutledge there, then went to the window.

“The women are doing women things. I can’t think about what she’s to wear. I can’t face putting her into the ground. Tomorrow it may be easier. Jessup seems to be satisfied. He’s in the kitchen questioning Mollie. Something about milk spilled in the night.”

“Where did your wife keep her laudanum?”

He sat down, took a deep breath, and said, “Oddly enough, on a shelf in the kitchen. She was terrified that Harry might find it. I told her he’d have better sense, but she wouldn’t hear of keeping it anywhere else.”

“Did she take it often?”

“She only took it once before. When she’d hurt her back and couldn’t sleep. I’m surprised it hadn’t dried up long since.”

It made sense. Fumbling with the pan, spilling the milk, then miscounting her drops . . .

Rutledge said after a moment, “Why did she need them last night?”

“I expect it was Peter, the sound he made as he fell. She said she could still hear it. It was a shock for all of us. I don’t know how Amy held up. She watched him die.”

Rutledge let another silence fall. Then he said, “Do you think your brother’s death might have been intentional? Rather than facing trial and the publicity that will come in its wake, affecting the whole family. He couldn’t have foreseen he’d have been exonerated.”

“If Peter had wanted to escape anything, he would have gone somewhere quiet and private and shot himself. There are enough grounds here at Witch Hazel Farm for him to do that.”

“A good point. Who was Florence Teller? In truth?”

That brought Walter Teller out of his chair. “Now that Mary is here, we must break the news to my son. If you will excuse me?”

And he was gone.

Jessup came to say that he was ready for the body to be taken away. But Leticia Teller had asked him to wait until her brother and his wife arrived. Pulling out his pocket watch, he stood there considering time and distance. “Another hour, at best. I’ve told Dr. Fielding that he can leave.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

Jessup said, “You’re sure there’s not something more I ought to know?”

Rutledge answered, “There was an inquiry in Lancashire. As it happened, Captain Teller was an unwitting witness. He called on someone there, and shortly afterward, she was murdered. The woman who killed her is now in custody. We shan’t have his evidence at the trial, but I don’t think we’ll have any worries about a conviction. Two policemen heard the murderer confess.”

“I didn’t know he was recently in Lancashire.”

“It was during the time when his brother was ill.”

“I’m beginning to think there’s much I haven’t been told.” “Walter Teller’s disappearance was a London matter. The murder took place in Lancashire.”

“And I’ve got two deaths here.”

“So you have.”

“Fielding said something about Teller’s illness worrying his wife as well as her husband’s disappearance. What was the nature of his illness? Was there any diagnosis?”

“Worry,” Rutledge said succinctly. “His mission society would like to see him back in the field.”

“I’m sure they would. Good publicity for them, with Walter Teller back in harness, perhaps another book in the offing. What does Teller think?”

“You must ask him. He may be needed here now, with a motherless son.”

“True enough. I’m not one for traveling in places where I’m not wanted. I’ve never seen the good in telling other people how to live and how to believe. Still, I admire those who can do such things.”

Jessup was fishing, Rutledge thought, and knew his business.

“His role in the Lancashire affair didn’t prey on Captain Teller’s mind, did it?”

“It’s more likely that a bad leg and his refusal to use a cane killed him rather than events in Lancashire.”

There was the sound of new arrivals outside the study. Rutledge said, “Edwin Teller and his wife.”

Jessup stood. “Let’s be clear. Is this my inquiry or the Yard’s.”

Rutledge smiled grimly. “At this stage it’s yours. I’ll give your people a statement. I was here just before the doctor came. So far, I’m a witness. But I know this family better than you do, and you’ll find me useful.”

“As long as we understand each other.”

They went out into the passage in time to see Edwin and Amy walk in and then climb the flight of stairs. Behind then was the elder Mrs. Teller. Gran’s face was drawn, as if it had aged too fast.

“Who is that?” asked Jessup.

Rutledge explained, adding, “She’s a little vague, but I wouldn’t discount her information, if I were you.”

It was not long before Amy brought a weeping Gran down the stairs and took her into the dining room.

“Don’t fuss, Amy,” she was saying when Rutledge walked in. “I’m quite able to put milk into my cup on my own.” Looking up, she said, “It’s that handsome young man who walked by my window. I didn’t know you were invited for the weekend as well?”

He came to take her hand. “I’m sorry to meet you again in such sad circumstances.”

“Yes, there’s Peter dying, and now Jenny. I don’t know what to make of it.” Her face puckered again. “Two funerals. I thought the next might be my own.”

“You’ve many years ahead of you,” he assured her.