Part 18 (1/2)
”But not last night's. Walter is in Ess.e.x, where he is supposed to be. The search for him is over. He did nothing during the period when he was missing that would interest Scotland Yard. You have no business here. I'll take this up with your superior, if you continue to hara.s.s my family.”
”Hardly hara.s.sment. I've come to ask if you could help me locate one Peter Teller.”
”You've met my brother,” Edwin said shortly. ”As far as I know, he's in Bolingbroke Street, where he lives.”
”This Peter Teller,” Rutledge said, ”is being sought because we can't find the last will and testament of one Florence Marshall Teller, his wife. Or I should say, his late wife. She was murdered several days ago.” Peter Teller,” Rutledge said, ”is being sought because we can't find the last will and testament of one Florence Marshall Teller, his wife. Or I should say, his late wife. She was murdered several days ago.”
Edwin opened his mouth and shut it again. After a moment he asked in a very different tone of voice, ”Where was she murdered? Here in London?”
”In Lancas.h.i.+re. Where she had lived almost all of her life.”
Teller was making quick calculations. He said, ”The day Walter returned to the clinic?”
”Two days before that. Someone came to her door and, when she answered it, struck her down and left her lying there. A pa.s.serby finally saw her lying there, and summoned the police.”
Edwin Teller said, before he could stop himself, ”My G.o.d.” And then he continued quickly, ”I don't see why any of us should know anything about this murder. Walter was missing. The rest of us were searching for him.”
”I wasn't suggesting that you might know anything that would help the police,” Rutledge responded mildly. ”Lieutenant Teller wasn't from Lancas.h.i.+re. He came from Dorset, or so he said. We're trying to trace his family. We've been unable to find Mrs. Teller's will. The police are always interested in who inherits property. Greed can be a powerful impetus to murder.”
”A pity we can't help you. My brother is the only person in the family whose Christian name is Peter.” Edwin was doing his best in a rearguard action, but he was not the strongest of the three brothers.
”We aren't sure that the murderer knew Mrs. Teller was dead,” Rutledge persisted. ”But it appears that all her husband's letters-which she kept in a box in her sitting room-were taken at the same time. He stepped over her once, walked into the house, and stepped over her again, on his way out. It suggests a rather cold-blooded person, in the view of the Yard.”
Teller cleared his throat. ”What-do you know what sort of weapon was used in the murder?”
Rutledge said, ”We aren't releasing that information at the moment.” Then, changing his line of questioning without warning, Rutledge asked, ”When was your brother promoted to captain?”
”I-as far as I remember, it was shortly before war was declared. They were bringing the regiment up to strength in the event the Kaiser caused any trouble over the situation in the Balkans. You said that Mrs. Teller's husband was in the war?”
”He never came home from France. So I've been led to believe. Which is why we must find his family. His wife's will could very well be among his papers or in the hands of his solicitor.”
”We would have no way of knowing who that might be,” Teller said shortly. ”A pity we can't help you,” he added a second time, as an afterthought.
”Which is why I was speaking to your grandmother, in the event she might know more about other branches of the Teller family.”
”You didn't tell her of the murder, did you? d.a.m.n it, she's nearly eighty years old.”
”There was no need to tell her about the murder. She understood that we were looking for information on the other Peter Teller, who is believed to have come from Dorset.”
”Make certain you leave it that way.” Edwin got up from his desk and came around it, standing face-to-face with Rutledge. ”Now if you will show yourself to the door, I have other matters to attend to.”
Rutledge crossed to the door and, with his hand on the k.n.o.b, he said, ”I understand that before the war you were often in Scotland building private boats. I wonder if in your comings and goings you might have stopped off in Lancas.h.i.+re or walked in that vicinity. It's said to be a very popular spot for walking.”
Edwin, alarmed, said, ”I have never been to Hobson in my life. In the first place I was too busy, and the second, because of my health, I always traveled by private rail carriage.”
Rutledge thanked him and went out, closing the door behind him.
Hamish was battering at the back of his mind, and as Rutledge cranked his motorcar to continue his rounds, he said, ”Ye never telt him yon woman lived in Hobson.”
Rutledge pulled the crank, listened to the motor turn over softly, and came around to the driver's side to open his door.
”Interesting, isn't it? That family knows about Florence Teller-I'll give you any odds you like. And who her husband is. But which of the brothers married her? And which of them killed her?”
Leaving London, Rutledge drove to Ess.e.x. The telephone could outpace him, but there was still the possibility that whatever the rest of the family knew-or thought they knew-about Florence Teller, their brother Walter had not been a party to it.
Hamish said, ”His brothers were fashed wi' him, when he came back.”
That was true. They had been very angry. For vanis.h.i.+ng, instead of playing his part in whatever was happening during those crucial days?
”Ye ken,” Hamish pointed out, ”yon doctors believed he'd had a great shock after leaving the bank.”
Was that it? Had he been drawn into something that he couldn't face?
But why now? Why had Florence Teller suddenly become a problem, if any of this speculation was true? She had not seen her husband since the war. She thought he was dead. She had lived for years, as far as anyone in Hobson could testify, perfectly quietly in Sunrise Cottage, making no demands on anyone. Who then had felt threatened by her?
”But ye havena' asked the person in the post office if there were ither letters.”
He hadn't. It was an important oversight. The only excuse was, at that early stage of the inquiry, he hadn't been sure who Peter Teller really was. A member of the family that Chief Superintendent Bowles had demanded that he treat with circ.u.mspection and courtesy, or an outsider who happened in a bizarre twist of fate to be christened with the name of Peter.
That rosewood box-what had it contained besides letters from a soldier on the other side of the world to a lonely wife waiting for him to be given another leave? A will? An exchange of correspondence of a different sort that had gone unnoticed in a tiny village like Hobson where the business of everyone was everyone's business? Hardly likely.
”There's the ither town . . .”
And Hamish was right, there was Thielwald. But how would Florence Teller have got there and back, to fetch her mail? It was too far to walk.
Still, the farmer with the sick ram might occasionally have given her a lift.
Rutledge couldn't accept that the woman he'd seen lying dead on a table in Dr. Blake's office was a blackmailer.
”Or ye do na' wish to believe.”
The main road forked, and Rutledge followed the sign to Repton. Not five miles on, he came to the turning into Witch Hazel Farm.
As the drive meandered toward the house, it pa.s.sed a bed of handsome roses just now in their prime that gave off a sweet perfume in the warm air and filled the car with their spicy scent all the way to the door of the house.
He lifted the knocker and let it fall. After a moment or two Mollie, the housekeeper, answered the door.
”Mr. Teller, please. Inspector Rutledge to see him.”
”Inspector.” She repeated the word cautiously. ”I'll see if he's in,” she said finally and disappeared, leaving him to admire the white roses in stone tubs by the door. They hadn't been here when last he called, he thought.
Mollie had come back, and she led him to the study, whose windows looked out toward the drive. Teller had seen him coming, Rutledge suspected.
Walter Teller was sitting in a chair, an open book in his lap, and he said as Rutledge came in, ”One of my brothers has disappeared?”
It was dark humor, not intended as a jest.
He offered Rutledge a chair and then went on, ”Do people always suspect the worst when a policeman knocks at their door? Or do you sometimes bring joy in your wake?”
”We seldom have the opportunity to bring joy. But yes, sometimes.”