The Red Door

Rutledge could read the unspoken words in his eyes—and it brings her closer, as if she were still alive and somewhere inside.

“I see nothing wrong with it,” Rutledge answered him. “A pity you weren’t out here working on the day she was attacked.”

“Don’t you think I dream about it at night?”

“If your wife hears of it, it will be on your head.”

Cobb said, “If I had been here, she might still be alive. But that’s hindsight. I hear you found that walker. Was he the man?”

“As it turned out, he was a witness and a very helpful one. He saw the motorcar by the hedge and the man who was driving it.”

Cobb dusted his hands, nodding. “I knew it. Someone from his family, most likely, with an eye to the property.”

“Someone from his family, yes, but I don’t think this property entered into it. I think he’d come to see her, and decide what to do about her. What I don’t know is whether or not she invited him in. It must have been a shock to her to see him there. She wouldn’t have known what to say.”

Cobb stared up at the bedroom windows, as if he could see the answer written there on the glass. “She stopped looking for him—waiting, listening for the door—over a year ago. She told me he must be dead, but you could tell she hadn’t really started to believe even then. I think she expected some miracle, and then when it never happened, she lost hope. The logic in her head told her one thing, her heart something else.”

“Was he good to her?”

Cobb brought his gaze back to Rutledge. “It depends on how you define good, of course. She never wanted for anything—food on the table, wood for the fire in the winter, clothes to keep her warm. He never struck her or called her names. This was the place she wanted to live in and bring up her son. Just as she’d grown up here with her aunt. And he made no objection. Of course, if he’d asked her to go wherever his regiment was sent, she would have, just to be with him. No matter what the hardships were. But the truth is, he wasn’t here as often as he should have been. There’s the Army, I understand that, of course I do. But I’d have moved heaven and earth to come home if she’d been mine. I’d left the Army and found other work to do, digging ditches if I had to, anything to be near her.”

“You knew her well,” Rutledge said quietly.

“I loved her. And so I listened to her, and read between the lines sometimes. But she saw me as her friend. And I was scrupulous about keeping it that way. I’d have lost her, otherwise.”

“I think you would have,” Rutledge said.

He rubbed his forehead with his gloved hand and left behind a long streak of rich earth. “I was here when Timmy died. Not in the house. I meant, in Hobson. I thought she’d lose her mind. She stopped coming into town, stopped eating, stopped looking out for herself. But some of us saw to it that she had whatever she needed. Mrs. Greeley. Satterthwaite. Others People would bring her food, for fear she wasn’t cooking. I chopped wood that winter and piled it outside the kitchen door there, within reach even on the worst days, and kept it covered with a tarp. When she didn’t milk the cow, because it reminded her too much of feeding the boy those last days, I took it down to Mrs. Greeley to keep until she was ready to have it back. I’ve never seen so much grief as she felt.”

“I saw the photograph of her son in her room.”

“That was the only photograph she had. And I took that for her. She said that Teller never cared for pictures set about. But she was glad of it. You’d have thought Teller would have understood something like that.”

“There was never a photograph of her husband? Not even a wedding picture?”

“There was a small one of the wedding couple. She kept it safe somewhere, out of sight and out of mind.”

With his letters very likely, Rutledge thought. And gone with them.

Cobb took off his gloves and swatted at an insect busy about his ears. “I want to know. Have you found her killer? Don’t lie to me, I want to know. I can’t sleep nights, sometimes, thinking about everyone who knew her, anyone who could have done such a thing, and I need to know. I come into Hobson sometimes and look at the faces of people I meet on the street or in a shop or sitting next to me on a Sunday. And I think, could that be him? Or that one? My uncle tells me I’ll drive myself mad doing that, but it’s the only way I’ll have any peace, finding him before the police do.”

“I can’t tell you how the inquiry is progressing. I will say that it’s possible that we know who it was.”

“And the bird? He’s been no help? My mother-in-law told me you’d taken Jake. I was glad. I thought she might do it a mischief with its squawking so loud she couldn’t sleep. And Betsy wanted no part of it.”

“The bird hasn’t said much. So far.” He hesitated, then said, “If you found something unusual—out of place—tell Satterthwaite, will you?”