Could Peter be the child she’d had earlier? That could explain why she’d come to England alone, without him. But who was the father? Leslie? Was a dead child the powerful tie between them?
And what if, in her replies, she’d been pressing him to come back to her? Threatening to come to England and expose him?
Was this what had changed his love? She could have destroyed everything he’d come home to. A divorce would have stopped his gradual rise through the ranks at the Yard. Chief Inspector . . .
Into the silence, Hamish spoke. “Ye ken, there’s Meredith Channing. She chose her ain husband, as Leslie chose his ain wife.”
“It’s not the same,” Rutledge answered him.
“Is it no’? Don’t be blinded too.”
Outside, a cold rain pelted the windows, and not long afterward, the sharp pinpoints of sleet danced against the panes for a time before turning back to rain.
In a way, hadn’t Markham been right? Wasn’t this a similar situation to the one he’d dealt with in Tern Bridge? Stripped of its names, looking only at the letters he’d just read, here was a married man who’d had a relationship of some sort with another woman, and in the end, he’d been forced to choose. And in both instances, the other woman had had to die.
The difference was, Dr. Allen and Miss Palmer had been strangers, he hadn’t known her for years. He had viewed the circumstances objectively, and in the end, found the guilty party. He knew the Leslies. He’d worked with and respected the abilities of a colleague. And that had clouded the inquiry from the start. Along with Leslie’s cleverness.
Brian Leslie had been reluctant to take the Avebury inquiry. He’d done his best to shift it to someone else. And in the end, he’d been the policeman investigating his own crime, and he’d managed the inquest with all the skill born of long experience.
Like Miss Palmer, perhaps Karina had cared more for her killer than he had for her.
Rutledge considered the letters before him. He needed to see the replies that Karina had written to Leslie. He needed to compare what he had seen in these with what she had said, how she had said it. He needed to ask for a search warrant to find Karina’s letters.
But would Markham agree to that? Very likely he’d be furious that a finger was pointing at the Yard.
His hands were tied.
Rutledge began to collect the letters and put them back as he’d found them. “I can build a case,” he said aloud to Hamish. “There are holes in the fabric of it, but it works. And Leslie had killed Radleigh in cold blood, a man who hadn’t done anything to deserve that death. It bars him for any consideration on my part. He should have left well enough alone, let Constable Benning think Mrs. Shelby was a busybody, seeing shadows where there were none.”
Did that mean Leslie believed Rutledge was coming too close?
Hamish said, “Ye ken, he had to outwit ye. There was the hangman.”
17
The rain was still coming down in the morning, but not as heavily as it had done in the night.
Rutledge had one stop to make after leaving Wiltshire. It was more than a little out of his way, but he knew he could make up the time, driving.
And it was urgent.
That done, he set out for Haldane’s house, where he was told the man had just finished his breakfast and was in his study.
Rutledge was taken there, and as Haldane looked up, his expression changed slightly.
“What’s happened?” he asked. Then, “You don’t need the name of Leslie’s enemy, do you?”
“The enemy of my enemy? No. I found letters instead. They confirmed that Leslie knew the dead woman.”
After a moment Haldane said, “I’m sorry.”
“I have only one half of the correspondence. I don’t have her letters to him. I may be reading too much into what he wrote to her.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“He’s an officer of the Yard.”
“It doesn’t matter what he does for a living. He’s a man. Is he capable of murder, do you think?”
Rutledge took a deep breath. “I don’t care to think it. But I do.”
Haldane opened a drawer in his desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, scanned what was written on it, then handed it to Rutledge.
Taking it, Rutledge began to read it.
A Sergeant Tiller had served with Major Leslie for the better part of two campaigns, and he had been questioned in 1916 by the police in Paris about an incident that he had witnessed while he was convalescing there.
I recognized him, of course I did. But that was afterward. He was walking down a side street near the Madeleine, and there was a spot of trouble ahead of him. I didn’t know who he was, I was hanging back, me with my knee only half healed. But he went for them when he saw what they was doing, and he damned near killed both of them. They couldn’t have been more than lads, but they was throwing stones at something lying in the street. When I saw the police coming, I was out of there quick. The two lads were down by then, I heard one of them screaming his arm was broke, but he paid no attention. He picked up whatever it was lying there, and walked on. I thought it was only some old rags. I didn’t know until later it was a person. A refugee, nearly dead of hunger. I’d have done the same, if I’d known. There’s a lot of them about, begging on the streets when they can, I’ve seen them. Sorry sights, I grant you, but what can one body do?
Rutledge looked up. “This is when Leslie found Karina.”
“The police never knew who it was, lying in the street. Leslie claimed he bought the man some food, it revived him enough that he was able to go on his way. But it wasn’t a man, was it? He must have known she was afraid of being discovered. As Mrs. Brooke-Davies must have confirmed. The police apparently let the matter drop, once Tiller gave his evidence. If they interviewed Leslie, there’s no record of it.”
“How did the police discover that Tiller was a witness?”
“An anonymous tip.”
“Leslie, do you think?”
“Yes. The lads—they were drunk, it seems—described their attacker, and the police put out a request for any witnesses. Tiller had been talking about what he’d seen. I don’t know how Leslie found out, but during the fight, he might have seen someone else on the street, a British uniform, and kept an ear to the ground.”
“How did you come by a copy of this?”
Haldane smiled. “I have my sources.”
“It’s odd that he saved her life, only to take it.”
“Murder, as you yourself must surely know, depends on what one has to gain from it—one way or the other. There would be consequences if she reappeared in his life now. It was different during the war. Back in England, with a wife and the respect of his position at the Yard, he had more to gain from murder.” Haldane took the paper that Rutledge held out to him, then said quizzically, “The question now is, what can you do about Chief Inspector Leslie?”
“Take him into custody as soon as I can,” Rutledge replied grimly.
As he drove away from Haldane’s house, his mind was on the next step to take, and he inadvertently turned the opposite way at the end of the street. Or was it, he wondered afterward, because it was so familiar, that turning?