There were few enough of them, and only one good suit among them. Rutledge shut the armoire and turned to the table that served as a desk. On it were meticulously kept accounts, receipts for goods and spirits, and a box of menus and recipes for various dishes.
He’d already switched the beam of light in the direction of the stand by the bed, when he realized he’d seen his own handwriting—
Moving round the table, he looked again, and there it was, under the accounts, only an edge showing. He lifted the ledger and found one of the sheets he’d written in Hensley’s office, laying out in detail his evidence against Mary Ellison. It was water stained, and there were sooty fingerprints across the top, as if someone had rescued it after yesterday’s fire and only then noticed what had been written on it. A pair of uneven creases showed that it had been hastily folded and shoved into a pocket.
That was how it had got here. Before he could consider the implications of why, he heard a voice in Reception, shouting his name.
Moving swiftly, he reached Reception and shone his light straight into the frightened face of Grace Letteridge.
“Inspector?” she exclaimed, surprise in her voice. “I’ve looked everywhere for you! You must come at once, there’s trouble!”
“How did you know to find me here?”
“I didn’t. You weren’t in Constable Hensley’s house, and I was desperate, I came here for Frank Keating.”
“Mrs. Channing is upstairs—”
“There’s no time! It may already be too late. Someone has broken into Mary Ellison’s house—the door is standing wide, and all the lamps are lit.”
Hamish said, “ ’Ware!”
For there was something in Grace Letteridge’s voice, an undercurrent of excitement that didn’t ring true.
He had no intention of leaving Meredith Channing alone in The Oaks.
Taking the stairs again, he went to her door and called out, “I can’t find Keating. But he’s armed and may be suicidal. Now there’s trouble at Mrs. Ellison’s house, and I must go. I don’t think you should stay here alone.”
“No!” There was the scrape of something heavy being shoved aside, and then the sound of the key being inserted into the lock. She opened the door, her voice breathless. “I think of myself as brave but not foolhardy.”
She was at his heels on the stairs, and together they hurried after Grace Letteridge, down the walk and along the road into Holly Street.
Hamish was saying, “I wouldna’ trust the lass. Nor the ither.”
They reached the corner of Whitby Lane and looked up at the Ellison house.
Grace had been right, lamps were lit in every room.
Rutledge left the two women in the lee of the constable’s doorway and went up the steps into the Ellison house.
The first thing he saw were splatters of blood on the walls of the entry, bright in the light of the lamp hanging there.
“Mrs. Ellison?” he shouted.
There was no reply.
“It’s Inspector Rutledge. Can you come to the door? Are you all right?”
Silence greeted his words as they seemed to echo through the house.
“Keating?” he called. “Are you here? Don’t do anything foolish, man, I may’ve been wrong in my conclusions.
That report was only one of many possibilities.”
He listened to the silence now. Sometimes it was possible to tell if a house was empty, just by the feel of it, as if the air itself had more room.
“If she’s no’ here, where did he tak’ her?”
“Frith’s Wood.”
Rutledge ran down Whitby Street, along Church Street, and into the tower of St. Luke’s.
With his torch in one hand, he climbed the stone steps to the first level and illuminated the bell rope.
Setting the torch on the wooden flooring, he reached for the rope and began to pull down with all his strength.
There was a disjointed clang, and then he found the right rhythm on the rope: a strong pull down, let the rope slide through one’s fingers, and when it had reached its apogee, another strong pull down.
The bell in the tower began to toll, a cadence that echoed over his head and filled the tower with its resonance.
He pulled it five times, and then silenced it. And a second five times. And a third.
Then he left the tower, racing down the uneven stone steps and out the door.
Men were beginning to gather, most in clothes pulled on hastily over their nightclothes, buttoning coats as they walked.
“Mrs. Ellison may be in Frith’s Wood,” he called to them, his voice carrying as it had on the battlefield, against the noise of the guns. “We need lamps, as many as you can bring, and hurry!”
They stood there for a moment, staring at him.
These were local men, who wouldn’t venture into that wood in daylight, much less in the dark of night.
“I’m not asking you to go alone,” he told them. “Take a partner, keep together. But I need you to search. There isn’t time to send to Letherington. And there may be someone with her—someone armed.”
But he thought they were more likely to find her body, her killer long away.
He went back to Hensley’s house, intent on taking Grace Letteridge with him to the wood. If anything was amiss, he’d be able to put his hand on her.
She was there, shivering in the doorway, her gaze on the house across the way.
“Where’s Mrs. Channing?”
“She went inside. There. She had a feeling someone must be hurt. She wanted to help.”
“Damn the woman!”
Had she seen the blood in the front hall and jumped to conclusions, or had she gone down to the Ellison cellar to look for bodies?
He turned and went back to the Ellison door, calling,
“Mrs. Channing?”
She answered him quietly, her voice carrying a warning that something was not right. “Ian? Could you come into the kitchen, please?”
34
Rutledge stood there in the doorway, considering his options. But there were none. The only other choice was the door from the back garden, but it would plunge him too quickly into the midst of whatever was wrong in the kitchen, with no time to judge the situation.
There was nothing else he could do but trust in Mrs.
Channing’s warning.
Hamish was hammering in the back of his mind, urging him not to trust anyone.
He stepped inside the house, walking steadily through the dining room and down the passage to the kitchen, making no effort to conceal his movements. And then he was opening the passage door and about to step into the kitchen itself.
Mrs. Channing stood there, her back against the cooker, her face turned toward the cellar stairs. She didn’t look at him. Her attention was on something he couldn’t see.
Rutledge swung slowly toward the cellar door and found himself staring at Frank Keating, holding a kitchen knife at the throat of a white-faced Mary Ellison, her eyes large and desperate.
One of her hands was bleeding, as if she had tried to shield herself. Someone—Meredith Channing—had given her a tea towel to wrap around the wound. Blood was beginning to soak through.
There had been a woman in Belton, Kent, stabbed and held hostage in her own kitchen. But he’d been well prepared for that, the local inspector knowing the people involved, suggesting what to expect and how to approach the angry man inside. Useful tools indeed. Here he was on his own.
Frank Keating wasn’t angry. There was a coldness about him that was far more dangerous. He reeked of alcohol, the kitchen awash in the smell of stale beer and too much whiskey. But if he had been drunk, he wasn’t now.