The Red Door

“My God.” Cobb took a deep breath. “I thought I’d hang. I thought that the evidence was so strong I was going to be convicted. Satterthwaite was damned good in his reasoning. And he would do his best to see me hang as well. I think there was some jealousy there.”

“I’m sure there was. But he tried to be fair as well.”

But Cobb was silent, as if he disagreed.

They were coming down into Thielwald when Cobb spoke again.

“I’m not sorry to hear Teller is dead. If it was by his own hand, do you think it was because Florence told him to go away and not come back?”

Rutledge thought no such thing. But he said only, “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.”

It was late afternoon when Rutledge had finished his last duty in Hobson.

Satterthwaite bought him a drink in Thielwald and said, “I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.”

“Neither could I.”

“What was it about Florence Teller that attracted men like Cobb—and me—to her? And yet she couldn’t keep her own husband. I think you felt a little of it too.”

“It was her strength, I suppose,” Rutledge said, considering it. “And her loneliness. I wanted her murderer caught. As much as you and Cobb did.”

Satterthwaite nodded. “Cobb’s going to live with his uncle for now. Did he tell you?”

“I think they’ll deal well together.”

Sighing, Satterthwaite said, “Well, I for one could use a night’s sleep.”

“I’ve to deal with the Teller family. And then there’s a pressing inquiry in London.”

“Was it accident or suicide? Teller’s death.”

Rutledge didn’t answer for a time, and then he said quietly, “I wish to God I knew.”

He should have slept, he knew that, but he circled around after leaving Hobson, and went back to the house with the red door.

Letting himself in, he walked through the empty rooms. Standing by the chair where Florence Teller had sat so many days and nights, waiting, he wondered if she was at peace now.

The police from Thielwald had searched the Blaine farmhouse and failed to find the rosewood letter box. Nor had they found either a deed or any other private papers belonging to Mrs. Teller.

He walked on, looking out at the garden behind the kitchen, at the flowers that had been so important to the lonely woman, and then turned and went up the stairs.

There was no way to know what the Teller family would do with this house now. Something, surely. He had a feeling Cobb wouldn’t go back to the farm he’d shared with his wife. But he might end here. He had the money to buy Sunrise Cottage if he chose. And keep it as Florence Teller’s shrine. All the small, painfully important memories of a woman’s lifetime would be lost otherwise. Already the house felt as if she was no longer there, even in spirit.

In the bedrooms there was already a light film of dust collecting on the tops of tables and the windowsills.

He walked into her room.

There was Timmy’s photograph where she could see it every night. Waiting for her to come up to bed.

He crossed to the table and picked it up, looking at it again.

It shouldn’t stay here to be lost with the rest of Florence Teller’s life. It belonged with the family that had never acknowledged the little boy who would have been their heir, if he’d lived.

“Shall I?” he asked the silence around him.

And then after a moment, he put it in his pocket.

He would take it home himself. A last gift to a woman he’d never seen, except in death.

And then he left the cottage, shut the red door firmly behind him, and then the gate.

If he drove through the night, as long as he could count on staying awake, he could be in Essex in the morning.

As it happened, he stopped at St. Albans out of necessity, for petrol, and he realized that he couldn’t go any farther without endangering himself and anyone who got in his way. There was a room available in the inn inside the cathedral close, the sleepy clerk welcoming him and asking when he wished to have his breakfast.

Rutledge laughed. “When I’m awake,” he said and went up the stairs like a drugged man, to fall into the bed by the windows overlooking the river, and after that he could remember nothing until he awoke two hours later. It was still dark outside, but he got up, shaved, and dressed, and went to find a telephone in the town.

Clouds had come in during the night, and now intermittent showers were cropping up. He ran through one on his way to a hotel near the railway station, and dashed in. He was shown to the telephone closet, where he put a call in to the Yard.

Gibson answered and Rutledge gave him a brief summary of what had transpired in Hobson.

“I’m going now to Essex. I’ll be back in London as soon as may be.”

Gibson said, “You were supposed to be on the bridge last night.”

“Yes, well, a different murder took precedent.” And then he paused. “No one else was killed?”

“They sent the constables out again in your place. And nothing happened. The Chief Superintendent was not best pleased.”

“I don’t suppose he was.”