“She’d already stabbed me when Markham came out. I shouted to stop him, but he wasn’t listening. And she got to him before I could. You saw his wound, damn it, with that blade in his back. How could he have been able to stab me? He never saw her, his back was to her all the time.”
“There’s this. He’s not come to. They sedated him after the surgery.” He sighed. “I wish he was here to sort this out. They’re sending someone from the Home Office. Or they might have Jameson back. We’ll have to take her up on charges, sir. Attempted murder. Himself will expect that. Very well, sir. I’ll find Chief Inspector Murray.”
He left Rutledge standing there. Ten minutes later, Murray came striding down the passage, frowning.
The Chief Inspector was older than Leslie, a quiet but steady man with years of experience.
He took Rutledge into a vacant office and said, “I haven’t arrested her yet. She was in no state to be questioned last night. But it will have to be done. You know that and so do I.”
“That isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. When you searched Leslie’s house earlier, did you find letters to him from France? This is important.”
“Letters? No. We weren’t looking for letters, we were looking for anything that might be used at the trial. I have the list of what we found. It’s short. Leslie had covered himself well.”
“We need to find them. Trust me on this.”
Murray was no fool. “Does this have to do with the woman Leslie killed?”
It took Rutledge a quarter of an hour to plead his case. It would have been simpler if he could have told Murray everything. But the letters to Karina hadn’t come out at the inquest. Rutledge had seen to that. He didn’t want them to come to light now.
Finally Murray nodded. “Very well. We’ll both go. You to identify these letters, and I’ll be there to take them in charge.”
They didn’t see Mrs. Leslie, when they called at the house. The Constable who answered the door told them that she had finally been persuaded by her sister to go up to one of the guest rooms. Matron was there with her.
“In her state of mind,” the Constable was saying, “we thought it best.”
When he’d gone back to guarding the door, Chief Inspector Murray said, “Where do we look? There’s no need to duplicate the earlier search. These letters aren’t likely to be in the kitchen, are they?”
“His bedroom.”
They went quietly up the stairs and Murray opened the door to the master bedroom.
They searched it thoroughly, even lifting the mattress on the bed and looking on top of the wardrobe. But there was no sign of letters. On the table by the window was an old, well-used correspondence box, more decorative than useful, fashionable in the days when travelers carried a small, portable desk with them, something that could rest in their laps in a coach or on a table, when in use. This one was black lacquer with a hunting design in gold paint.
Rutledge went over to rummage through it. But the small square bottles of ink had long since dried up, the sealing wax crumbling in his fingers. The sheaf of paper was dry and stained with age. The place for the stamps was empty. Clearly decorative, not used since the days of coaches.
“Wild goose chase, Rutledge,” Murray said. “I thought it was, from the start.”
“Mrs. Leslie’s room and dressing room. He knew we’d search in here. He would have had to put them somewhere.”
They moved on and began their search all over again. Murray was clearly finding it distasteful, but Rutledge said, “They won’t be anywhere that she could find them. Look for the most unlikely place.” He began to take out drawers, looking behind them and under them, while Murray watched. Stretching out on the floor, he felt under the wardrobe. Still nothing.
Murray, standing in the middle of the room, said, “Give it up, Rutledge.”
Rutledge, his arm aching enough to distract him, looked around the room, the wardrobe, the dressing table, the bedside table, the chair by the window, anyplace that might have been missed. He kept his expression neutral. “I want to go back to Leslie’s room.”
“What the hell for? We searched every inch of it.” But he followed Rutledge back there and waited, arms crossed over his chest. “All right. Five minutes, and I’m calling this off.”
Rutledge went to the desk, considered it carefully, and then opened the drawers, one by one.
“You’ve looked there.”
They searched the wardrobe again, to no avail, and then Rutledge turned to the curio cabinet that held small treasures.
“Not likely to be there,” Murray was saying. “I gave it a look.”
“The writing box, then.”
Rutledge opened it again, fitted the sloping top with its faded blotter into the slot made for it, and looked at the row of small cubicles for the ink, sand for blotting, nibs, sealing wax, and a tiny candle for melting it.
Murray, standing now at Rutledge’s shoulder, said, “It probably belonged to his grandfather. He was an officer in the Guards, I think. All right, close it up.”
But Melinda Crawford had had such a box, very like this desk, and Rutledge had remembered something. Hers had a secret compartment in which to keep correspondence. She had shown it to him when he was six or seven.
He bent forward, feeling along the sides. And there they were, two tiny rectangles of black ribbon. He grasped both of them, and gently lifted.
The entire section came up, revealing the lower level.
There were papers inside, filled with writing. He drew them out, and the two men spread them out on the bench at the foot of the bed.
“Leslie’s handwriting,” Murray said. “I’ve read enough of his reports.”
Rutledge was shuffling through the pages. “Look here. Someone has been practicing. See—this sentence—that one—there are others here. Words repeated. Capital letters. Lowercase. I don’t think this is Leslie’s work. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that someone was trying to copy his handwriting.” He was beginning to recognize sentences too. Familiar phrases. Practiced over and over until perfect.
The letters that Leslie had written were still in Rutledge’s possession, the ones that Karina had kept.
But there were no return letters in the compartment. Nothing from France to Chief Inspector Leslie.
He looked at Murray. “Dear God.”
“What is it?”
Had Karina written only once? And Leslie answered only once? And someone else had kept up a correspondence in his name for a year or more. But Karina had never responded, until that last letter telling her that Leslie was dying. The letter that had finally lured Karina to England.
Running through some part of Rutledge’s mind was a memory, and the thought, From the time I held out those lapis beads, there in Yorkshire, Leslie must have known for certain who had killed Karina. If not before.
He was a Chief Inspector at the Yard. Surely he’d have brought her in? Wife or not? After all, he was charged with the inquiry. And he had loved Karina.
In God’s name, why had Leslie chosen to defend his wife, over justice for Karina?
He made an effort to collect his thoughts. “I think we’ve got this wrong. Dreadfully wrong.”
Murray stared at him.