Rutledge had listened patiently, waiting for the most important information—the woman’s name. He said now, “It’s a beginning, yes. I’m grateful.”
Westin said, “I did ask where she’d come from, and I believe she said Paris. Or was it Rouen? France, anyway.” He glanced behind him toward the man sleeping in the chair by the window, his newspaper slipped to the floor in a heap. Lowering his voice, he went on, “A good many refugees find their way to Paris. Russians, Armenians, all sorts. Still, I don’t believe she was Russian. I wish I could recall her name. I tried all the way to the hotel, but I can’t bring it back. Or the ship—anything that would help me search the records.”
Making the best of it, Rutledge hid his disappointment, and asked instead, “Her given name. Was it a common French name? Marie. Françoise. Hélène.” He suddenly recalled another French woman, one he’d met in the course of an inquiry. Aurore. She too had been someone to remember. “Lily? Violette? Catherine?”
“By God, I believe it was Catherine, but with a K. No, that’s not quite it. But close enough. That’s what made me think of the Russians. Catherine the Great, and all that. Her lashes matched that dark, dark hair. But not Gypsy black, mind you. Her dark gray coat and hat were nice enough, but they struck me as drab on her.”
“Dark gray?” Rutledge asked, trying to keep the man’s flood of memory moving forward.
“Still, there was a nice pin in the hat. Now what was it?” He closed his eyes, concentrating. “A crescent moon, I think. I remember wondering how she would look in moonlight.” He flushed a little at the admission.
What had become of that hat?
“A last name?”
He shook his head. “Hopeless. Probably unpronounceable anyway. Most of those foreign names are.” It was a very English attitude. “Not as if I’d be in London and had any hope of looking her up.” Then he considered Rutledge. “You’re very good, you know. I can’t decide whether it’s how you listen or the questions you ask. I couldn’t have told you I knew all of this, when I sat down. In the war, were you? Intelligence?”
“Infantry.”
“Artillery, myself. It’s a wonder I have any hearing left.” He stood up. “I must get some rest. I’m on the day watch tomorrow. Today. If I remember anything else, will you be here?” He gestured around him. “This hotel?”
“I might not be. But Sergeant Gibson at the Yard will see that I get any messages that come in for me.”
They shook hands, then Westin said, almost against his will, as if he didn’t want to hear the truth, “She is dead, then? You said, but I didn’t want to believe what I was seeing in the photograph.”
“Murdered.”
Westin swore. “That’s even worse.”
With a nod, he was gone. Rutledge watched him walk through the lounge doors and disappear into the lobby.
Rutledge told himself he should be grateful. He knew more now than he had when he drove into Dover. And yet it was still so little.
If he’d learned nothing else about police work since he’d joined The Met in London, it was that answers never came smoothly, easily. If they had, the crime rate would have fallen off dramatically.
Standing there, Rutledge could smell coffee wafting from somewhere. He realized all at once that he was hungry. He went to the desk and asked that sandwiches and a pot of tea be sent to the lounge. Then he went back to sit down at the table where he’d spoken to Westin and reached for his notebook.
Hamish was asking how much credence Rutledge could put in the burst of memories.
“I have to begin somewhere. Until proved false, I’ll see where it could lead.”
A hat. A purse. A valise. What had become of them?
The sandwiches arrived with his tea, and he found himself considering that gray hat.
His sister Frances had a taste for fetching hats, and wore them astonishingly well. Like their mother.
If a port officer, looking at papers, remembered a hat, it must have been very becoming, gray or not. What had she done with it when she pedaled to Avebury with her killer? Even if she’d used her scarf to keep her hair tidy, surely she would have wanted to put the hat on again at the end of the journey.
He himself had borrowed a cap from Mr. Blake, and left his hat at the man’s house because he knew he was coming back there.
Had she expected to return as well? There was her valise—she couldn’t carry it with her on the tandem.
He went back over what he’d seen when he’d looked down into the ditch where the body had been found. Winter-dead fronds, briars and vines and the dried stalks of wildflowers, forming a thick, dark mat. A gray hat would have stood out—Henderson and Mason would have seen it. And they had both reported finding only her body in the ditch. That left the killer, carrying away with him anything that might be used to identify his victim.
A hat. A purse. A valise. The lapis beads?
But Leslie claimed they’d fallen out of his pocket.
A hat could be tossed in a dustbin miles away. An empty purse might find its way into another. A valise was harder to dispose of.
Where could you hide luggage?
With other luggage, where it would attract no attention for days, weeks . . .
He finished his sandwiches and went directly to his room, where he packed his valise except for what he would need for an early departure.
At first light, a boxed breakfast beside him, he set out for London.
His first stop when he reached the city was Victoria Station.
She would have come in there, on the train from Dover. Had she been met? It was a busy public place, he’d not have been noticed coming up to her. Or had she herself decided not to take her valise with her but to collect it afterward, when she had found lodging or met someone? It could be here, an off chance but at least a chance.
He spoke to the man behind the window where lost and unclaimed luggage could be retrieved.
The man shook his head, staring down at the photograph Rutledge was holding up.
“Never saw her before. But I’m only on duty during the day. There’s someone else at night.”
“Scotland Yard,” Rutledge said, replacing the photograph with his identification. “I’d like to have a look.”
“Help yourself,” the man said, gesturing to the door just beyond the window. “A good bit of it is left from the war.”
Rutledge stepped into a room where luggage was piled in every direction. Resigned, he took off his greatcoat and coat, rolled up his shirtsleeves, and set to work. He had no idea what he was looking for. The woman could have borrowed her valise from a friend, male or female. Bought it at Worth’s in Paris or a secondhand shop in the port of Calais.
It took him four hours to sort through each piece of luggage stacked in the room, setting aside trunks and heavy cases. Then he went through the smaller valises one at a time, opening those that were unlocked, briefly examining the contents. The locked cases he fiddled with until he could spring the latches. There was nothing remotely resembling the missing woman’s belongings, although he was surprised at how many women had their initials embroidered on their shifts. He found he could ignore garments that were clearly too large, out of fashion, for older women, or English made.