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Toby rattled angrily at the locked door of the village shop. Closed. Why would the store be closed at this time of day? The store doubled as a post office, and surely it was illegal for a post office to be closed during business hours. What if someone wanted to send a telegram? He rattled the door again and his anger gave way to concern. Had something happened to Carol? She lived alone behind the shop, and she could be sick, or she could have been attacked. Someone could have broken in to steal from the cash register. Another thought sent shivers down his spine. Alderton, Tierney, Sam Ruddle; they had all been attacked.
“Mr. Whitby, excuse me, Mr. Whitby.”
A uniformed chauffeur was leaning his head out of the window of the Southwold Bentley. Toby recognized Price, the driver who had driven him to Southampton to meet Mr. and Mrs. Harrigan.
He shook his head to clear his brain. Somehow he had walked right past the Bentley in his rush to find Carol and ask her what on earth was going on. Was she the redheaded woman who had given birth in a stable in Dorking? Was she the mother of the child that Vera Malloy had taken to America?
“They’re closed, Mr. Whitby.”
Toby walked toward the Bentley. “Why?”
Price turned his head to consult the passenger in the back seat. “Illness in the family,” he said with finality, and wound up the window.
The Bentley pulled away from the curb. Toby caught a quick glimpse of a shadowy figure in the back seat before the car gathered speed, leaving him alone in front of the locked door.
He raked his hands through his hair in frustration. He had asked Miss Clark to give him some time, and she had agreed, but how much time did he really have? How long before someone came to find him, or before Mr. Champion discovered that his protégé was dragging his feet, disobeying instructions, and becoming personally involved?
He turned back to his car. Where should he go now? He was expected at the Hall, where he would prepare a sworn statement for Vera Chapman Malloy. She would swear that she had been given the wrong child at the clinic in Brighton, and Lady Sylvia would swear that the deceased Nurse Tierney had admitted the error. In the ensuing legalities, Anita Malloy would become Celeste Harrigan, daughter of the Countess of Southwold and heir to the Harrigan millions. Everyone would be happy, and all he had to do was keep quiet.
He jangled his keys angrily in his pocket. He thought about Mrs. Chapman and her anguished insistence that Vera had given birth to Nick Malloy’s child. She had brought the birth certificate to him as final proof, but it had proved nothing and raised even more doubts. He opened the car door and dropped into the driver’s seat, the keys ready in his hand. Where was he going? He had no idea.
He slipped the car into gear and glanced into his rearview mirror. He waited while a large black car drew closer and then passed him by. A Wolseley; a police car. He put the gear lever back into neutral and watched the police car as it turned into the narrow lane in front of Mrs. Chapman’s cottage. A heavyset man in a rumpled raincoat emerged. As the man trudged up the path to the front door, he saw that the right sleeve of the raincoat dangled forlorn and empty. Detective Sergeant Slater.
Toby pulled on the handbrake and climbed out of his car. For better or worse, he had agreed to help Terry Chapman, even if it meant running afoul of Slater. Terry was his client, and he had the right to ask questions on Terry’s behalf.
He was relieved at finding a momentary sense of purpose and an enemy he could identify. He would put all the other questions on hold and throw himself into defending Vera’s brother.
He locked the door of his car and made his way across the sodden grass of the village green. By the time he reached the sagging garden gate, Slater had already entered the cottage, leaving the gate open behind him. The front door also stood open, and he heard voices from inside. Slater’s voice was slow and measured, and Mrs. Chapman was responding with high-pitched excitement. Obviously, something had happened. Had Sam Ruddle recovered consciousness, or had he died?
As he approached the front door, he saw Mrs. Chapman on the threshold. She was struggling into a raincoat. Slater was a dark shape behind her.
“I’m here to help you, Mrs. Chapman,” Toby said reassuringly. “You don’t have to say anything to the police. Let me deal with this.”
“Deal with what?” Mrs. Chapman snapped. “You don’t have to deal with anything.”
“I agreed to help you. We made an arrangement.”
Mrs. Chapman was busy knotting a headscarf under her chin. “Don’t need your arrangement.”
“It would be best to let me take care of things,” Toby insisted.
“Nothing to take care of. They’re letting him go. No thanks to you.”
Toby stepped back. “Letting him go?”
“Yes, letting him go. Sergeant Slater is taking me to the jail. He’s going to be released into my care.”
“Well, that’s very good,” Toby said. “Have you arranged bail, or what have you done?”
Slater pushed past Mrs. Chapman. “What are you doing here, Mr. Whitby?”
“Terry Chapman is my client.”
“Is he really?” Slater paused as if trying to find a place in his mind to file the information. “Terry Chapman is your client,” he repeated.
“Yes, he is. Has bail been set?”
Slater shook his head. “No bail. He’s a free man. He didn’t do it.”
The words were out of Toby’s mouth before he could stop himself. “How do you know?”
“Ha!” Mrs. Chapman darted forward and poked an accusing finger into Toby’s chest. “You didn’t believe me, did you? You were pretending to help me so I would tell you what I knew, but all the time you were thinking he was the one what done it. Well, he wasn’t.”
Slater raised his eyebrows inquiringly. “What did Mrs. Chapman tell you?”
Mrs. Chapman was fairly dancing with impatience. “It don’t matter. It were something else; something to do with my Vera. Can we go now?”
Toby blocked the path. “I would like to know what has happened to change your mind about my client.”
“The victim, Mr. Sam Ruddle, has recovered consciousness,” Slater said. “He’s not clear on everything that happened to him, but he is very clear that his attacker was a woman.”
Mrs. Chapman pushed past Toby, almost running down the garden path toward the waiting police car.
Slater stood in the doorway. “Aren’t you going to lock the front door?”
“What?”
Mrs. Chapman turned back, and in that unguarded moment, Toby saw pure joy on her face. He thought that it had been many years since Vera’s mother had felt joy. Her husband was dead, her daughter had disappeared into America, and her son was a broken man, but for this moment at least, she was able to find joy.
Mrs. Chapman pushed back past him, gestured to Slater to get out of her way, and closed the front door with a definitive slam. As she came back past Toby, she looked up at him, her lips pursed defiantly. “I’ll want that paper back. You know the one. I want it back. You’ve not done anything to earn it.”
“Mrs. Chapman,” Toby said, “that paper doesn’t prove what you think it proves. I went to Dorking and talked to the registrar, and—”
Mrs. Chapman poked his chest again. “Stop talking nonsense and get out of my way.”
Slater eyed Toby speculatively. “I’ll need you to come down to the station and answer a few questions about—”
“About what?” Toby snapped. “Terry Chapman is my client. I will not answer questions about him, and I will not permit you to ask questions unless I am present. Is that clear?”
Slater grinned. “Oh yes, crystal clear.”
He followed Mrs. Chapman out through the gate and into the waiting car.
Within moments Toby was alone again on the deserted village green, with even more questions demanding answers, and an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach. The attack on Sam Ruddle had not been the random act of a shell-shocked soldier; it had been a deliberate attempt by an unknown woman to silence him. Sam Ruddle knew something. In fact, Sam Ruddle had told everyone in the pub that he knew something.
Toby thought back to his first meeting with Lady Sylvia, now the Countess of Southwold. She had told him a deceptively simple story, a marriage to an American officer, a baby taken by mistake in the chaos of war, records gone astray but replaced with certified copies. Seated in the ancestral hall, with the tacit approval of the Earl and the unswerving loyalty of Mrs. Pearson, Lady Sylvia had built up a solid wall of evidence. Toby slipped his hand into the inside pocket of his suit coat and felt the stiff paper of the birth certificate. This was the loose brick that was going to bring down the entire wall. Lady Sylvia, the late Nurse Tierney, and Vera Malloy had all been willing to testify that little Anita had been born in Brighton, but the birth certificate said otherwise, and the birth certificate was in his hands.
Toby thought of Lady Sylvia’s aristocratic confidence. She was the Countess, and therefore, she must be believed. Robert Alderton had investigated her claim and taken notes, and now his file was in Lady Sylvia’s hands, and Robert Alderton and his notes were history. Nurse Tierney knew too much and she had been bludgeoned from a cliff. The Earl had sounded skeptical of Nurse Tierney’s story. In his own clumsy way, he had even threatened Toby with the loss of his job if he asked any more questions, but the Earl was gone now. His death had been expected, but not so soon. Sam Ruddle had spoken like a garrulous old fool, but the story he told was not to Lady Sylvia’s liking. The fact that he was not dead was just a matter of luck.
The Harrigans were here now. Mr. Harrigan was assessing the property and was ready to part with large sums of money. Vera had actually come by plane and had arrived far sooner than anyone would expect. Someone was in a hurry. Someone was becoming desperate.
Carol! Fear clutched at the pit of his stomach. Carol represented the greatest threat. Other people might suspect, but Carol knew. He thought about the Southwold Bentley parked outside the village shop. He remembered the shadowy figure in the rear seat, the Closed sign on the door, the chauffeur telling him that there was illness in the family. Carol had no family.
Toby took a deep breath. Lady Sylvia’s carefully constructed wall of lies was collapsing around her, but he knew she would never back away. She would never change her story. She was the Countess. The world must arrange itself to please her, and anyone who stood in her way would not stand for long.
He looked back at the village shop, the door locked and bolted. Perhaps Carol was inside. She had not hesitated to close the shop when she wanted to show him Vera’s letter. He should try again. He should go around to the back of the shop. He should find the back door.
He stepped out into the road and jumped back at the blaring of a car horn. The Bentley nosed its way out from the alley behind the shop and passed him by with a swish of tires and the hum of a well-tuned engine. He stared into the window, trying to get a glimpse of the interior. This time he saw the shadowy outlines of two passengers before the Bentley gathered speed and disappeared around the corner behind the parish church.