The Red Door Part 4

"Wait here."

Rutledge went back into the sitting room where Mrs. Teller was just joining Matron in a morning cup of tea. It was painful to see hope flaring in her eyes at the sight of him, then watch it dashed again.

"Mrs. Teller, would there be a photograph of your husband at your brother-in-law's house that the police could use to help them search for witnesses, anyone who might have seen him? I'll be glad to send someone around for it."

"A photograph?" She opened her purse and brought out a small velvet case. "I have this. But it's very precious-"

"I'll see no harm comes to it," he promised, and took out the silver frame inside the case.

"He was younger, then," she warned him. "He gave me this before we were married."

Looking down at the likeness of Walter Teller, Rutledge saw a strong face, marked by something he couldn't define. The years in the field? Possibly. It was there in the eyes, a shadow that belied the smile for the camera.

He thanked Mrs. Teller, and went back to where Biggin was waiting.

"Let's go," he said.

"He's not wearing the clothing Mrs. Teller described for us when he first went missing," Biggin told him as they walked out to the motorcar. "But the physical description fits. Height, weight, coloring."

"What happened to him?" Rutledge asked.

"He was stabbed. On Westminster Bridge. He was found shortly after dawn."

Rutledge's heart sank. Had Billy killed him? Bowles would have an apoplexy if the boy's first victim was Walter Teller.

They drove in silence to the morgue, where the body had been undressed and the man's clothing had been put in a cardboard box.

"Do you care to examine his belongings first?" the attendant asked.

"Was he robbed?"

"I expect he was. No watch or rings. No money."

"Then I'll see the body now."

He was accustomed to looking at the dead. Sometimes he was surprised at how much he could read in the dead face. At other times there was nothing but a blankness. As if the substance of the living being had been wiped away with his death.

Biggin was right. The victim was of the same general height and build as Walter Teller, his fair hair parted on the left side. But one look told Rutledge that this was not Teller. Even given the changes over the years, it was not. In fact, the dead man resembled Rutledge in size and weight, as well.

Rutledge asked that the body be turned so that he could examine the wound in the man's back. The knife had been shoved in hard, just where Rutledge had felt the faint p.r.i.c.k of the blade against his own skin. He'd found, after he left Lonsdale, that small blood-encrusted spot in his own back.

He had had the boy pinned against the parapet. He should have brought him in, in spite of the constable's interference. He should have stopped him before he killed.

Now it was too late.

Nodding to the attendant to cover the body again, Rutledge said to Biggin, "It isn't Teller. But I can probably identify the person who did this. If you bring in a suspect, send for me."

"Fair enough," Biggin said.

Rutledge left the morgue in grim spirits, and after dropping Biggin at his station, he drove back to the Belvedere Clinic.

Mrs. Teller had gone again to her husband's empty room, and he found her there, staring out the window, lost in her own thoughts.

She turned as Rutledge stepped through the door. He could see the worry in her face, and he wondered again at the family's abandoning her at such a time.

It didn't make sense.

He said nothing about the dead man, smiling instead and telling her, "No news, I'm afraid, but the police have been bringing me up-to-date on their activities." He had spoken to Biggin at length in the motorcar. "The search has been expanded to include the river-"

She cried out at that, but he said, "Mrs. Teller, we must be realistic. Your husband has been under some stress. He may have left the clinic with the intent to do himself a harm, and if we're to find him in time we must try to understand his state of mind."

"No," she said forcefully. "Walter wouldn't kill himself. I know my husband, he has no reason to want to die and every reason to want to live. I won't listen to this."

He spent another ten minutes trying to make a dent in her certainty.

Finally he asked, "If we knew what had caused your husband's extraordinary illness, we might be better able to judge where he has gone and why. What happened to him between the bank and your house that changed him and brought on his paralysis?"

"Don't you think I'd have told Dr. Fielding-or the doctors here-if I had any idea at all?" She was angry with him. "My sister was here earlier this morning. I asked her her if she knew anything that would help. Sometimes Walter talked to her about his mission work. Mary has always strongly supported missions, and she has no illusions about the hards.h.i.+ps people in the field endure. She couldn't think of any reason either. And I could see that she was as worried as I was. So I didn't have the heart to ask her what I really wanted to know. I wondered if someone could have cursed Walter out there. I've heard about such things. I mean, I don't really believe in them, and I'm sure Walter doesn't either. Still, you never know-" if she knew anything that would help. Sometimes Walter talked to her about his mission work. Mary has always strongly supported missions, and she has no illusions about the hards.h.i.+ps people in the field endure. She couldn't think of any reason either. And I could see that she was as worried as I was. So I didn't have the heart to ask her what I really wanted to know. I wondered if someone could have cursed Walter out there. I've heard about such things. I mean, I don't really believe in them, and I'm sure Walter doesn't either. Still, you never know-"

Her voice broke and she put her hands over her eyes, partly ashamed of her fears and partly afraid to speak them aloud, to give them a reality.

Rutledge had nothing to say in response. It had hardly been twenty-four hours since her husband left, but irrational fears were already supplying answers to questions that had none.

He summoned a nursing sister to come and sit with her, then left.

Chapter 9

Rutledge found the London addresses for Edwin and Peter Teller, and drove to each house, but he was informed by the maids who answered the door that the family was away.

Wherever they were searching, he had a feeling that they were having no better luck than he had had in finding their brother.

The second day of Walter Teller's disappearance brought no new information. It was as if he'd never existed.

Hamish said, "If he were wandering about-truly lost-someone would ha' noticed him and brought him to a hospital or the police."

It was what had been on Rutledge's mind all morning.

"He might not wish to be found," he replied. "An alternative to suicide."

"There's that, aye," Hamish agreed.

It made a certain kind of sense. If one can't face the nightmare, one can try to avoid it. But what sort of nightmare haunted a man like Teller?

He went back to question Teller's doctors.

They had failed to unlock their patient's secrets.

He said, "Teller's wife has been casting about for answers as well. She has even considered a curse on her husband, from his time in places like West Africa."

"Curses are interesting things," Dr. Davies replied. "They work when people believe that they will work. In short, the curse is effective because the victim accepts that it will happen, and that nothing can be done to prevent it from happening as foretold. In my view, Teller was far too intelligent-and knowledgeable about the people with whom he worked-to be taken in by such a threat. I've talked to several other missionaries who told me that a curse had been put on them by a tribal shaman, a way of discouraging compet.i.tion, one might say. And of course it failed, which caused no end of trouble for the shaman. His power was seen to be weak."

"What would be a modern equivalent of a curse?" Rutledge asked.

"Ah," Davies answered him. "That's an even more interesting question. I expect it would take the form of something happening once and the fear that it could happen again. If one finds an intruder in one's house on a dark night, it might well be something one would fear, coming into that same house on another dark night." He smiled. "Guilt can produce irrational fears as well."

"Was Teller likely to die of his illness? Was that on his mind?"

"At a guess, no, it wouldn't have killed him. The fact that he recovered so quickly points to the same conclusion."

Dr. Sheldon put in, "I can tell you this. Walter Teller wasn't afraid of dying. When he turned his face to the wall, it was his acceptance that death was preferable."

"Preferable to what?" But they had no suggestions in Teller's case.

He said, "Do you have any reason to think that Walter Teller was being poisoned?"

"No. We considered poisoning. We found no evidence of it. Is there any reason to believe-"

Rutledge cut in quickly, "No. It's something a policeman must bear in mind."

Hamish said as they left the clinic, "It isna' likely that he went away to die. He could ha' hanged himself in his room while his wife was resting at his brother's house."

"He didn't want his wife to find his body."

Rutledge spent much of that day and well into the early evening going to police stations all across London, showing the photograph he'd been given to each s.h.i.+ft of constables coming in or going out.

They studied the photograph, but no one had seen anyone resembling Teller. And as a rule, constables on the street could be counted on to remember the faces of people not normally seen on their patch, keeping an eye out for troublemakers and strangers alike. Even a well-spoken, well-dressed man like Walter Teller would be noted for future reference.

One constable, shaking his head, said to Rutledge, "It's more likely that he found a cab soon after leaving the clinic, well before the search began. He could be anywhere now. He could have taken an omnibus, a train, or cadged a lift from someone."

But Rutledge had already sent a man from the Yard to speak to any cabbie who had taken up custom near the clinic at four o'clock on the afternoon in question. No one remembered seeing Walter Teller or even someone who looked like him.

"Ye're searching for a needle in a haystack," Hamish told Rutledge.

"Or for one man when there might well have been two, if someone had come for him, or was there to help him dress and leave."

The clinic had had no record of visits to Walter Teller, other than the immediate family. Still, it was possible to use another patient's name to pa.s.s the porter and gain access. But that led him nowhere, either.

Rutledge had even driven to Ess.e.x, to the house of Dr. Fielding, arriving there just as Fielding was preparing for his first patient of the afternoon.

The man reluctantly put aside the pipe he'd been smoking and addressed himself to Rutledge's questions about Walter Teller.

"I can give you a brief sketch of his background. Missionary for many years, and then he married Jenny Brittingham. Rather than returning to the field, he chose to write a book about his experiences."

"And this was . . . ?"

"Just a year or so before the war-1911? 1912?"

Rutledge thought how the war had defined time-before the war-after the war. As if that great cataclysmic event that had interrupted and ended so many lives was still with them like a personal watershed.

"And of course there is Harry, the son. Quite a nice child, and not at all spoiled, as you'd expect with doting aunts and uncles surrounding him. Jenny-Mrs. Teller has seen to that. She's a very good mother."

"Did Teller serve in the war?"

"As a matter of fact he did. Chaplain. But he was struck down with malaria in that rainy spring before the Somme and was sent home to recover. It was decided not to send him back to France, and so he worked among the wounded here."

"Was there anything in his war years that might have affected what happened to him last week?"

Fielding raised his eyebrows. "Not to my knowledge. In fact, I remember Teller commenting that he'd seen death in so many guises that he'd lost his fear of it long before going to France. There was something about a famine in West Africa-people dying by the droves. And of course in China death was as common as flies, he said. No, you're barking up the wrong tree there."

"Then what caused his illness?"

"That I can't tell you. Which is why I sent Teller to the Belvedere Clinic. And the last progress report I received was rather grim. He was showing no improvement, and in fact was beginning to feel paralysis in his arms and hands as well as in his legs."

"Do you think this paralysis was genuine?"

Fielding said, "Are you asking me if his illness was feigned? No, of course not! I'd take my oath on that."

"Then how would you account for the fact that three days ago, Walter Teller got out of his sickbed while his wife was resting, dressed himself, and walked out of the clinic?"

"He did what? You're saying there was a full full recovery? And what did his doctors make of that?" Leaning forward, Fielding stared hard at Rutledge. recovery? And what did his doctors make of that?" Leaning forward, Fielding stared hard at Rutledge.

"They had no better understanding of events than you do. But Teller is missing, and there's been no word from him since he walked away."

"My G.o.d. He's still missing? How is Jenny? She must be distraught."

"She's taken it very hard, as you'd expect. Now, I repeat my earlier question-can you shed any light on his illness? Or his miraculous recovery?"

"If that's what it was. I can't imagine-look, Inspector, the man was ill. I saw that for myself. It was all I could do, with Mrs. Teller's a.s.sistance and that of their maid, Mollie, to get him into their house, so I could examine him properly. He was a dead weight. And that's not easy to fake. I'd look on the road between his banker's and Ess.e.x for my answers. As for his recovery, someone else must have been there when he dressed and left the clinic. I can't see how it was managed any other way."

"Why should anyone help him leave the clinic, and not inform Mrs. Teller that he was safe and well elsewhere?"

Fielding said, "You aren't-do you think there was foul play? No, that's not possible." He shook his head. "Walter had no enemies. Except perhaps himself. Because if this illness is in his mind, the reasons must go deep into something none of us is aware of."

From Fielding's surgery, Rutledge drove on to Witch Hazel Farm, and knocked at the door.

The housekeeper, Mollie, answered the summons, and as Rutledge introduced himself, she said quickly, "Don't tell me something has happened to Mr. Teller!"

"Why should you think something has happened to him?" Rutledge asked, misunderstanding the direction of her question.

"Because you're a policeman. And he wasn't himself at all that day when he came home from London so ill."