The Red Door

“No, sir, I don’t. I’ve been given the task of collecting names. Others are seeing to the comfort of the injured.”

Another thought occurred to him. He pointed to the carriage still teetering on its neighbor. “There’s a dead man still in that one.” He described him. “My name is Rutledge, Scotland Yard. If you learn who he is, I’ll like to be told.”

The constable’s gaze lifted from the papers he was holding to focus on Rutledge. “Does the Yard have an interest in him, then?”

“No. It’s just—I thought I recognized him. That’s all.”

The man nodded and moved on. Rutledge stood there, still hearing in his mind the lie he’d just told.

Hamish broke his long silence. “It doesna’ signify,” he said again. “He’s deid.”

“The dead can live on,” Rutledge answered grimly. “Death is not always the end. I should know.”

Chapter 15

After settling Trevor and his grandson in their rooms to rest, reassuring Frances, and promising to send a telegram to Scotland informing the Trevor household that man and boy were safe and would come north again as soon as the line was cleared, Rutledge went home to change his own clothes. He thought that his godfather and the boy would sleep for a while, and cast about for something to amuse his namesake and take his mind off events. He’d been unusually quiet on the journey to London, leaning against his grandfather’s shoulder in the motorcar and reluctant to let him out of his sight.

Rutledge decided a river journey to Hampton Court might suit, and stopped in Mayfair again to tell his sister.

“What a lovely thought, Ian! Will you go with us?”

“There’s business at the Yard to see to. When I heard of the train crash, I simply walked out and drove straight to the site.”

“It must have been dreadful. You look as if you could use a rest as well.”

He laughed. “Sheer worry. It took some time to find David and the boy. I had imagined every catastrophe known to man by the time I saw them, safe and whole.”

She smiled with him, understanding that he was speaking lightly of something too frightful to contemplate. “I didn’t like to ask in front of David. Were many hurt?”

“Injured and killed,” he told her. And then before he could stop himself, he said, “Meredith Channing was on the train as well.”

“Dear God. Is she all right? Did you bring her back to London too?”

“She’d already been taken away by the time I found David. I expect the doctors were working on her shoulder. It was dislocated. I left a message for her to let me know if there was anything more I could do.”

“That was kind.” And then feminine curiosity took over. “Do you know where she was going?” She answered her own question. “Was it to Inverness?”

He hadn’t considered that possibility. She might have been traveling alone after all. He found he wasn’t as sorry as he ought to be that her journey was interrupted. “She never said. There was no time to talk about anything but finding help for the injured.”

“No, of course not. I’ll call on her later in the week.”

He left then and drove to the Yard.

But there was no news of Walter Teller, and no one had located Charlie Hood.

Frustrated, Rutledge shut himself in his office and turned his chair to face the window.

Walter Teller, he thought, had had to survive unimaginable difficulties in the field. He had had to be clever enough as well to deal with unexpected problems facing his flock, not to speak of coping with doubters and those who clung stubbornly to their own gods, even to the point of threatening him and his converts. The climate would have been against him, the long journeys in and out of his mission post would have been trying. He’d been responsible for the lives of his converts and would have had to keep their faith fresh in spite of tribulations and setbacks—a failed harvest, an infestation of insects, plagues and natural disasters, and war, even on a tribal scale.

Then what could possibly have frightened the man between his London bank and his house in Essex?

Hamish, his voice loud in the small office, said, “His son.”

And that son had been Walter Teller’s first concern when he finally reached his house. Yet he had walked away from Harry as well as his wife hardly more than a week later.

Had his dead father insisted that the heir go away to school at such an early age? Rutledge had been told that, but there was no proof. He wished he’d thought to ask Leticia Teller about it. Wanting to go against his dead father’s wishes was hardly reason enough to have a breakdown of the magnitude that had assailed Teller.

There was the letter from the mission society.

But Teller hadn’t got ill immediately after receiving it.

Rutledge turned and reached for his hat.

It was time to find the Alcock Society and ask a few questions.

He discovered through sources at the Yard that the Society had a small house outside of Aylesford, Kent, and he drove there without waiting for an appointment.