Proof of Guilt (30 page)
Pausing there, he called, “Frances? I’m here—I’ll be back.”
Baxter was in Casualty ten minutes later, under the eye of a constable Rutledge dragooned into guarding him. He waited only long enough for Baxter to be examined.
“He’ll live,” the doctor said. “Broken ribs, possibly a punctured lung—”
“He is in charge and will have to stand trial. Make certain he lives,” Rutledge ordered.
Before the doctor could answer him, Rutledge was racing out of Casualty to his motorcar, driving at speed to the house, pulling up by the door, and dashing back inside, cursing himself for not having taken five minutes to find Frances. If she’d heard the fight and Baxter’s fall down the stairs, she would be frightened alone here.
It took more than five minutes. It took him nearly three quarters of an hour.
He began searching on the first floor. It was where Baxter had been waiting, and he would have been guarding his prisoner as well. But there was no sign of her in any of the bedrooms. In her dressing room, he saw at once that she must have packed several bags. They were missing as well. Spaces in her closets confirmed this.
Where had they taken her?
He went through the bedroom a second time. No signs of a scuffle, no overturned furniture, the bed showing only the indentations of the valises.
Who had packed them?
Was she still in the house, or had they already taken her away?
Frantic, he went downstairs, calling her name as he opened the door to the small drawing room.
And the first thing he saw was an envelope resting on the mantelpiece. His name, her handwriting.
He crossed the room in three strides, took down the envelope, and tore it open. He could feel the cold fist in the pit of his stomach as he unfolded the notepaper.
Ian, darling,
You’re away again, and Sergeant Gibson wasn’t there to tell me where. I’m off to spend the weekend with Peter and his parents. Wish me well.
Much love,
Frances
She hadn’t been at home.
They hadn’t found her here. But they’d taken the scarf to convince him they had.
Rutledge could feel himself shaking, first with relief, then with helpless laughter.
She need never know how frightened he’d been. She need never know what had taken place in the house she considered her home and her sanctuary.
Hamish said, “Can ye be sae sure she’s no’ under duress?”
The niggling doubt was there. Along with his need to hear her voice.
He told himself that if she’d been forced to write that note, she’d have given him Simon’s name, not Peter’s. A warning. All the same, he would think of an excuse tomorrow to call the Lockwoods.
He was turning away, the note still in his hand, when he saw the blood on his shirt. He had forgot that he’d been stabbed.
Going out to the motorcar, he retrieved his torch and spent the next half hour on his knees, making certain there was no telltale blood for Frances or her maid to find. He marked the few spots and scrubbed them out himself.
Finally satisfied, he left the house.
He spent another hour dealing with Baxter, then reported to the Yard that the man was in custody and asked Billings to see to the paperwork.
“Where is Diaz?” he asked the Inspector.
“He’s under lock and key. Not without a struggle. He told me you were a man tormented by ghosts. What did he mean by that?”
For an instant Rutledge could think only of Hamish. Not a ghost, but a haunting nevertheless of the living by the dead. And then he remembered the ghosts of dead shepherds calling from the edge of the cliff. The piping of seabirds coming in to nest at night. He said, forcing amusement into his voice, “It’s a legend of Madeira. Meant as a taunt. That I was chasing a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“He’s a nasty piece of work, I’ll say that for him,” Billings told Rutledge.
And then Rutledge went home.
The flat felt stuffy, but there was no lingering scent of applewood smoke.
He dressed the thin cut on his chest and went to bed.
L
ate in the afternoon of the next day, Hayes arranged for Miss Whitman to be released. Gooding was to remain in custody until Monday morning, when all charges would formally be dropped.
Hayes himself was present when she walked through the gate. Traynor had come with him, and he went forward quickly to greet her and lead her toward freedom and Hayes’s motorcar.
Rutledge was there as well, standing a little distance away from the lawyer’s motorcar.
She looked very tired; there were dark circles under her eyes, which seemed more brown than green from where he was watching. Her hair, usually so lovely in the sunlight, was dull, without life.
She saw him, stopped for a moment, and their eyes met. But she didn’t acknowledge him. After all, he hadn’t kept her out of Holloway.
He waited until Hayes’s motorcar was out of sight before walking back to his own and driving away.
Ahead of him still was the knotty problem of what to do about Mrs. Bennett and her household.
And whether to leave Mr. Bennett in peace in that quiet garden.
C
HARLES
T
ODD
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries, the Bess Crawford mysteries, and two stand-alone novels. A mother-and-son writing team, they live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively.
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www.AuthorTracker.com
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The Ian Rutledge Mysteries
A Test of Wills
Wings of Fire
Search the Dark
Legacy of the Dead
Watchers of Time
A Fearsome Doubt
A Cold Treachery
A Long Shadow
A False Mirror
A Pale Horse
A Matter of Justice
The Red Door
A Lonely Death
The Confession
The Bess Crawford Mysteries
A Duty to the Dead
An Impartial Witness
A Bitter Truth
An Unmarked Grave
Other Fiction
The Murder Stone
The Walnut Tree
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
PROOF OF GUILT
. Copyright © 2013 by Charles Todd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780062199362
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