The Red Door

“It was too dark. But he ran like a young person. Quick, and with ease. I thought he must be wearing padded shoes. He made almost no sound.”

Rutledge remembered how easily Billy had crept up on him. “Yes, that’s quite possible. Anything else? His size? His age?”

“He looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. Well set up. He was wearing a cap. I couldn’t see his hair. Dark?” He squinted, as if in thought. “I can’t remember anything more. It happened very quickly, and then I was more concerned for the victim.” He seemed ill at ease now, eager to be off.

“How long did he live after you got to him?”

“A matter of seconds? I couldn’t tell in the dark.”

“Then he wasn’t able to speak?”

“No. Who was he? Do you know?” The man glanced toward where the body had lain.

“They’ve just identified him,” Walker said. “One of the constables happened to recognize him. George Bynum. He’d stayed late to finish a paper he was preparing for debate in the next session. A bit of bad luck, that.”

“And your name?” Rutledge asked the witness.

“Hood. Charlie Hood.” The words were clipped, unwillingly given.

“Thank you for coming forward, Mr. Hood. If you’ll go with the constable now, someone will take your statement, and you can sign it.”

Hood hesitated. “I don’t have a regular place to live.”

“That’s all right. Just so we can find you, if we need to have you identify the man, once we have him in custody,” Rutledge told him.

Hood bobbed his head in acknowledgment, and turned to follow the constable.

Someone was calling to them again, and Rutledge went with Walker to see what the constable had found.

This was more promising—a small scrap of paper that had an address scribbled on it in pencil. It was off the Lambeth Road.

“We can’t be sure it’s his,” Walker said, examining it. “But it could have fallen from his pocket when he pulled out the knife.”

“Send someone there at once,” Rutledge advised Walker. “The sooner the better.”

Walker nodded to the constable who had found the scrap. “Right you are, son, see what you can discover.”

The constable hurried away toward the bridge.

Half an hour later, the search by the bridge was called off. Rutledge, his mind on the long drive to Suffolk and back, said, “I’ve got to go. If anything comes of the address, leave word with Sergeant Gibson at the Yard. He’ll see that I get it.”

Rutledge was halfway to his motorcar when he stopped short and swore.

Setting out at a dead run, he went back to find Walker, who was just leaving the scene of the crime himself.

“Where did your constable take Hood? The Yard, or the station?”

“To the station. Is anything wrong?”

“I hope to God there isn’t,” Rutledge responded and hurried in the direction of Trafalgar Square.

With any luck at all, he told himself, he’d reach the station in time.

But he didn’t. Hood had given his statement and gone. Rutledge asked for the address he’d used, and drove there next.

It was a stationer’s shop near St. Paul’s. Rutledge left his motorcar in the street and went inside. The woman behind the counter greeted him with a smile that faded quickly as he asked if she knew of anyone by the name of Hood. Charlie Hood.

But she didn’t. He described Hood, and she told him that such a person was not likely to be among the shop’s clientele.

Rutledge thanked her and left while the voice of Hamish MacLeod drummed in his head.

He drove back to the police station and circled the blocks as best he could, on the off chance that he could spot Hood again. But by this time the streets were busy, people hurrying about their business, and one man could be anywhere, coming out of a pub just after he’d passed, walking into a shop just before he arrived. It was a waste of time, but he gave it an hour anyway.

He couldn’t be sure. But something about the shabby, scruffy-bearded man had struck him, and he wanted to speak to him again. What had Walker said? That the man was coming from the direction of the Abbey, and that a constable had taken him to find something to eat.

He told himself it couldn’t be Walter Teller.

But there was a good chance that it might have been.

Rutledge drove on to Suffolk, to a small village not far from the Essex border. The house he was searching for was down a lane beyond the high steepled church, a winding stretch of road bordered by wildflowers that meandered another quarter of a mile before he saw the stone gates. The house itself was not as large as Witch Hazel Farm, but set among trees as it was, he could feel the country quiet and hear birds singing as he came to a halt by the door.

He was directed to the gardens by a housekeeper, and there he found Leticia Teller entertaining a small boy who was squatting by a pool watching pollywogs swim through the murky water.

“And there’s another one, Harry.” She pointed one out to him. “Just there, beside the lily pad. Oh—there it goes.”

Another woman sat in the shade, smiling fondly at the child.