The Red Door Part 27

Or just a simple, horrible, unbelievable accident because the man's leg was weak and his cane lay in the boot of Rutledge's car?

"Why did he no' buy anither one?" Hamish asked.

Rutledge answered, "It would have drawn attention to the missing one. If it had a special head, that would have to be ordered. Time wasn't on his side."

There was no immediate solution to the problem of Captain Teller's death, he decided finally. It could wait until he returned from Hobson.

He had a fairly decent idea of why Satterthwaite had summoned him in such haste. A simpler solution, that. The head of the cane had been in the gardens after all. He hadn't looked long enough. Or Cobb had stumbled on it.

Satterthwaite was waiting in the station for him, late as it was. He could just see the glow of lamplight through the window. He walked in, pulling off his driving gloves. The single lamp on the constable's desk guided Rutledge through the outer office and down the dark pa.s.sage.

A Thermos of tea stood on the desk in front of Satterthwaite, and in the lamp's flickering glow, he appeared to be bone tired, as if he hadn't slept, the deep hollows and bony ridges of his face stark as he looked up to greet Rutledge.

His own fatigue forgotten, Rutledge studied the man. He was under great strain.

"I'm sorry, sir, for the abrupt summons," Satterthwaite began. "But I didn't know what else to do, given the circ.u.mstances."

"What circ.u.mstances?"

"I thought it best you didn't take Peter Teller into custody tomorrow. And I wasn't ready to tell the world and his uncle what I believed you ought to hear first." He gestured to the Thermos. "There's a clean cup just behind you on that shelf. It's likely to be a long night."

Rutledge found the cup and filled it with the steaming liquid. He drank half of it to clear the rest of the cobwebs out of his head, and then set it aside.

"All right. Where's the cane's head?"

Satterthwaite smiled. "You do take all the wind out of a man's sails," he said grimly. But he reached into his drawer and pulled out a round object wrapped in a clean handkerchief. He pa.s.sed it to Rutledge with distaste, handkerchief and all, as if he couldn't bear to touch it.

Rutledge glanced at him, then looked down, unwrapping the linen to reveal a gold k.n.o.b that caught the light and flashed dully in his hand.

It was indeed the head of a cane, broken off the Malaccan stick.

With one finger he rolled the k.n.o.b toward the light, and sat there for a moment, absorbing what it represented. Satterthwaite said nothing, watching him.

d.a.m.ning was the best word for it. Small wonder Walter Teller had lied, telling Rutledge the cane was of ivory.

Embedded in the heavy gold head was an enameled b.u.t.ton or plaque. A black sc.u.m obscured part of the design, but even so, Rutledge knew what it was.

He glanced at Satterthwaite.

"Captain Peter Teller's regimental badge," he said. "It leaves us in no doubt. Very likely a gift from his father or his wife. Such things often are. We can find the maker-there should be a record of such an expensive item." The k.n.o.b winked as he turned it again in the light. "And there's still a little blood pooled at the edge of the enamel."

"Yes." Satterthwaite stirred. "I didn't like to look at it. Put it away." He took a deep breath, then said, "It's what you wanted. I wouldn't have given any odds that it would ever turn up."

Rutledge rewrapped it and set it aside, then finished his tea.

"I should be heading back to London. There's a small problem. Peter Teller fell down the stairs early this morning at his brother's house and died on the spot. We'll never know now why he came north or why he killed her."

"Accident or suicide?" Satterthwaite asked, watching Rutledge's face closely.

"Hard to say."

"Yes, well, in that case, perhaps you ought to hear where this came from."

Rutledge realized that with his mind already on Peter Teller and the problems he faced resolving the issues of the man's guilt and the cause of his death, he'd accepted this last bit of evidence without the enthusiasm it deserved.

Good police work on Satterthwaite's part, even though the cane's head was almost moot now. Still, there must be an inquest into Florence Teller's death. And her killer must be identified. She deserved that.

He dragged his thoughts back to the present. "Well done. Finding this." He couldn't put his finger on what was bothering Satterthwaite-the blood on the cane's k.n.o.b or something else. He thrust the handkerchief holding the k.n.o.b into his pocket, out of sight. As he did, his gaze locked with the constable's.

He didn't need Hamish's soft warning. Fully alert now, he waited.

Satterthwaite spun the cap back onto the neck of the Thermos and set it aside. "First, to give you a little news. I don't think you were here when it happened."

"All right."

"After an altercation with a cooking pan, Lawrence Cobb walked out on his wife, Betsy, and took your old room at Mrs. Greeley's for the time being."

"Yes, I met him coming into town just as I was leaving that day. I tried to persuade him to rethink his decision. To see if the marriage could be saved. I don't think Florence Teller would have liked being the root cause of the breakup. Although having seen Betsy Cobb, I could understand the battle ahead. She appears to be as domineering as her mother."

"Worse, from all reports. She likes her way. Well, Lawrence Cobb would have done better to listen to you."

Rutledge saw that the conversation wasn't taking the direction he'd expected. "What happened?"

"Betsy Cobb came in to see me very early this morning. She couldn't sleep after their quarrel on Friday, she said. So she began clearing out her husband's belongings, putting them in a pile in the pa.s.sage-tools, clothes, watch, everything she could lay hand to that he'd not had time to s.n.a.t.c.h up in his haste to go. This morning before first light she even went out into the barn, where he'd been working. And she tossed the contents of the tool chest into a wooden crate. She said the chest had belonged to her father."

Rutledge knew now where this was heading. He waited for Satterthwaite's strained voice to finish the account.

"To make a long story short, as she was sorting through to make sure he got only his things, she shifted a pair of working gloves, and this k.n.o.b fell to the barn floor. She didn't know what it was at first. And then she realized it was gold and that Lawrence had purposely hidden it where she wouldn't find it. So to make trouble for him, she brought it in to me. She was still furious with him, you could see it in her face."

"What did you do?"

"I told her I'd look into it. And after she left for the farm, I went to Mrs. Greeley's, rousted Lawrence Cobb out of his bed, and confronted him. He swore he knew nothing about the k.n.o.b, but you could read in his eyes that he knew how it had been used. He's not slow, is Cobb. I told him to dress and come with me to the station. He argued, but I wouldn't take no for an answer. Some of Betsy's anger had rubbed off on me. I was looking for an opening, so to speak."

He started to get up, as if he needed to walk, then he sank back into his chair, defeated. "By this time, Betsy Cobb had gone straight to her mother. You'll recall Mrs. Blaine had found Florence lying there in the doorway. She came into the station looking like the wrath of G.o.d, telling me I must take Cobb into custody, to protect her daughter. That he'd do her a harm for telling the truth. And she swore he'd been working there at Florence Teller's house that day. I thought Cobb was going to strike her. He called her a liar, and there was a shouting match you wouldn't believe. Mrs. Blaine reached for the paperweight, and I had to push Cobb back to the only cell and slam the door."

Rutledge could picture the scene.

"I came back to speak to the two women while Cobb was shouting something at them and at me. Mrs. Blaine claimed he'd read too much in Mrs. Teller letting him help her about the gardens. He must have said something to her, and Mrs. Teller told him he was a married man and she wanted nothing to do with him." Satterthwaite paused. "So he killed her." He examined the Thermos as if it had just appeared on his desk and he'd never seen it before, avoiding Rutledge's eyes. "I'd have liked five minutes alone with him. It would have been worth it." Then he looked up. "I could never understand Peter Teller walking away from her at the war's end. That's if he wasn't dead. She was sure he was. We all believed it. So it made sense that he'd come back, finally, to make his peace and tell her his reasons. His lame leg, for one. And she sent him away with a flea in his ear, because she had a pride of her own, did Florence Teller."

He set the Thermos aside and moved a little in his chair.

"She must have told Cobb when he came to do a little work what had happened between herself and Teller. And he killed her then, because he knew that whatever she was saying now in the heat of anger and hurt, in the end Florence would go back to her husband." Looking away at the square of window, seeing the darkness no longer pitch-black, he went on. "I didn't want her killer to be one of us. I wanted it to be Teller. But it wasn't."

"That's a very good reconstruction," Rutledge said after a moment. "It makes a strong case for Lawrence Cobb as the murderer. But it doesn't explain the cane."

"That must have been what Cobb saw as he came up the walk. How he knew Teller had been there. Where Teller had dropped it when she cast him off. And she must have left it there, in the event Teller came back for it. She wouldn't have to see him again."

"And what does Cobb have to say to this? Does he still deny he killed her, or has he admitted what he'd done?"

"By the time his wife and her mother had left, he was in a state. He demanded I send for you, but I told him it was no use, the evidence was there, and we had to go forward. The truth was, I couldn't bear the sight of him, I wanted him out of Hobson where I couldn't lay hands to him. I think he must have seen that in my face, because when I told him he was going to Thielwald, he came quietly and gave me no trouble."

A silence fell.

Rutledge was trying to test the information that Satterthwaite had given him. Had all the evidence pointing to Peter Teller been circ.u.mstantial? The man was on the scene. He'd been spotted by an independent witness. His cane had been used as the murder weapon. But there was an equally strong case now against Lawrence Cobb. Furthermore, it fit the facts-that Teller had indeed come to Hobson and spoken to Florence Teller. His cane had been missing since then. And he'd left in a hurry, according to the witness, Benjamin Larkin. It also explained why Lawrence Cobb had possession of the cane's k.n.o.b.

He knew the decision that Chief Superintendent Bowles would come to: charge Cobb and leave the Tellers out of it-they'd suffered enough, and Peter Teller was now out of reach of the law. Guilty or not. If a jury found Cobb guilty, then he was.

But Florence Teller deserved to have her killer punished. And not a surrogate.

Rutledge took a deep breath. Somehow he'd been very sure of Cobb's innocence.

As if the constable had heard his thoughts, he said, "Remember? Larkin heard no shouting, no one crying out when the Teller motorcar was there."

"Because by the time Larkin came down the hill, she was already dead."

"I never could understand why Teller broke up that cane," Satterthwaite went on. "If he'd taken it with him, we'd been none the wiser. Two minutes under a pump or dangled in a stream, and it would have been clean. But I can see Cobb killing her and then destroying the cane afterward. The cane was Teller's, and he'd have liked to break it over the man himself. But he couldn't. So he took his frustration and anger out on Teller's possession. And Cobb is strong enough, he could have snapped off that k.n.o.b."

And that was the irrefutable fact. As Hamish was pointing out, even if Teller had hated himself for what he'd done, even if he'd broken his own cane out of self-loathing, he'd surely have had the sense to take the head of the cane with him. Even the drunken Peter Teller was far from stupid.

"Ye said yoursel', it's d.a.m.ning," Hamish told him.

He should have been satisfied. But he wasn't.

"Why did Cobb leave the rest of the cane for us to find?"

"To protect himself, if suspicion fell on him." Satterthwaite stood up, collecting his own cup, intending to wash up. "I've had hours to think, waiting for you to come back. Hours."

Fighting a rearguard action, Rutledge said, "And the box of letters?"

Satterthwaite replied, "Cobb said he never touched them. He had no reason to do it, and he couldn't have taken them home with him. Teller must have put them in the boot. We'll have to ask Larkin if he could see the boot of the motorcar from where he was."

"No," said Rutledge. "If she'd been alive, she would never have allowed that. Not her letters. She'd have fought him every step of the way."

"Even if she was disillusioned?"

Satterthwaite scowled. "Then it was Cobb. Bound to have been. To hurt her more? Or maybe he wanted to read them. Who knows?"

"You said Cobb was in Thielwald?"

"I told you. I didn't want him here. He's safer there. And so am I."

"I want to see him."

"I know how much time you've given to this inquiry. I know how well you'd put together the case against Teller. I know how I'd said all along that no one here in Hobson would touch her. We were both wrong wrong."

Rutledge kept his cup, reached for the Thermos, uncapped it, and poured himself more tea. Then he said, "All right. I still must speak to Cobb. I want to judge him for myself. Let's go."

"Now? At this hour of the night?" Satterthwaite demanded as Rutledge drained his cup and handed back it to him.

"I have to be back in London as quickly as I can. There's Teller's death."

They drove to Thielwald in an uncomfortable silence. Satterthwaite had said what he knew he must say. And Rutledge could think of no way to prove him wrong.

Hamish, a third in the motorcar, his voice at Rutledge's ear, was trying to make himself heard, but Rutledge shut him out.

Concentrating on the dark winding road ahead, Rutledge tried to find holes in Satterthwaite's arguments, weighing Teller against Cobb. He'd liked Cobb. He'd believed the man when he said that he couldn't have killed Florence Teller. But then Teller himself had denied touching his wife. And that had rung true as well.

The sky was just brightening as the rain clouds scudded away, already thinning enough to offer the promise of sun to take their place.

Satterthwaite broke the silence. "A fair day . . ." And then his voice trailed off as Rutledge brought the motorcar to a halt in front of Thielwald's police station. "I was thinking," he went on as they got out. "If Cobb hadn't walked out on her, I wonder if Betsy would have come to me. Even if she'd found a dozen b.l.o.o.d.y canes lying about in the barn. I think she'd have kept her mouth shut, and lived with a murderer, if it meant she could keep Cobb. After all, he'd rid her of her rival, whatever the reason behind it. Still, in the end, he'd have been brought under her thumb with the threat of exposure. That's in her nature, to want to rule the roost. And he might have killed her then, to escape."

"The only surprise is the fact that she didn't wait longer than she did, on the off chance that he might come back. Now he's out of reach for good."

Rutledge went to the boot and took out the pieces of cane, wrapped in an oiled cloth. Changing his mind, he left them there and led the way to the door.

The sleepy constable on duty picked up the lamp on his desk and showed them to the cell where Cobb was sitting on the edge of his cot, his head in his hands. From the drained, empty look in his eyes as the door swung open and he saw Rutledge standing there, it was evident he'd not slept since he'd been arrested. He got slowly to his feet, and in the light from the constable's lamp, Cobb's eyes gleamed like those of a trapped animal.

Rutledge had seen that look before-nearly as often in the innocent as in the guilty. That fear of things getting out of hand, of wanting to fight back when flight was no longer an option, and that blindingly helpless feeling of knowing the odds are set against you because the evidence is overwhelming.

He was prepared for argument, for Cobb appealing to him over Satterthwaite's head, expecting the man from London wouldn't know Hobson or its people as well as the constable did.

Instead Cobb said, "Am I to be taken to London, then?" The words came out more harshly than the man intended.

Rutledge said, "That hasn't been decided."

"You'll have to find another home for Jake, you know," he went on, striving to conceal the anxiety that had kept him awake.

"He seems to prefer women."

"There was no one else in the house with them year after year. It's not surprising. I'd have had to win his trust. Or not. But I'd have kept him," he added wistfully. Then with a spark of his old self, "He didn't get along all that well with my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law heard him speaking once and swore I was in that house somewhere. Florence told me that."

A thought struck Rutledge. Peter would have known the difference between Jake's voice and his brothers' . . .

"What do you have to say for yourself, Cobb? You swore to me you hadn't killed her. You told me you wanted to get your hands on the man who did."

"I never expected Betsy to turn against me," he said. "Not that I blamed her. But it was a stab in the back, all the same."

"You walked away from her and your marriage."

"After great provocation. It was that or strike her back. All I can do is wonder how long she'd have kept that cane's head hidden, if I'd stayed. Or begged to come home again." It was what Rutledge himself had wondered.

"Why did you keep the head of the cane?"

"I didn't. If I'd found it, I'd have come to the police."

"Then how did it wind up among your tools? Your wife has sworn in her statement that she'd found it there."

"I don't think it bothered her to swear to a falsehood. She was that angry. At a guess, the k.n.o.b came from Mrs. Blaine, Betsy's mother. She found the body. If she'd seen the cane and realized that the head was gold, she'd have taken it. She's like a magpie. Always had an eye for herself, or anything to her advantage. She'll offer to buy Florence's land. See if she doesn't. I hope Teller tells her to go whistle up the wind."