The Kidnapping: An Ian Rutledge Original Short Story With Bonus Content Read online

  “Why your wife, if it was a shooting camp?” Rutledge asked as they crossed the square.

  “I expect it was because her father never really liked Elston. He was a troublesome child and grew into a troublesome man.”

  They had reached the Lowery house. Rutledge knocked, but it was several minutes before the door opened. A thin, balding man stood there in his dressing gown. His brows rose in surprise.

  “I say, Dunstan.” His glance moved on to Rutledge.

  “Andrew, Cecily has been kidnapped,” Dunstan said before Rutledge could speak. “We’re trying to find her.”

  “May we come in?” Rutledge asked.

  Lowery stepped to one side. “Yes, of course. Are you serious, Dunstan? Cecily? What in God’s name has happened?” He led them into the drawing room and lit the lamp. “I don’t understand.”

  “How many people knew you’d invited Mr. Dunstan and his daughter to dinner?”

  “How many people? Good God, I have no idea. I never made a secret of it.” He looked up as his wife came into room. “My dear, it’s distressing news—something has happened to Cecily.”

  “But she was just here,” she exclaimed. “I don’t understand.” She was a fair woman, attractive and slim.

  Dunstan told her what had happened. “And we’ve just found the cabbie, across the square. He’s on his way to hospital. The police haven’t been able to question him.”

  Mrs. Lowery’s gaze moved to Rutledge’s face. “But the Yard is doing everything that’s possible, surely!”

  “Can you give me a list of the other guests this evening?” he asked. “And tell me whether they left before or after Dunstan and his daughter?”

  “But of course.” She went to the small desk by the door and sat down to write.

  Rutledge said, “The Dunstan house was ransacked. Whoever took Cecily Dunstan didn’t find what he was looking for there, nor on Mr. Dunstan’s person. That could well explain why his daughter was taken.”

  “Holding her—but that’s diabolic!” Mrs. Lowery said. “Is it money?”

  “There have been no demands for ransom,” Dunstan said, the beginnings of panic in his voice.

  “Early days,” Rutledge pointed out. “They’ll wait until you are ready to do anything to retrieve your daughter.”

  “They needn’t wait. I’ve already reached that point,” Dunstan answered.

  Mrs. Lowery finished the list and passed it to Rutledge.

  There were two other couples and a single woman, Dunstan making up the numbers. Mr. and Mrs. Carson, Mr. and Mrs. Frey, and Miss Abernathy. Two men and three women. There had been three men in the attack on the Dunstans. If Carson and Frey were involved, then Lowery himself would have had to be a party to the kidnapping of Cecily Dunstan. Was Dunstan mistaken or had he lied about his attackers? Or were those three men unconnected with the dinner party?

  “The Carsons are old friends,” Mrs. Lowery was adding. “We met the Freys six months ago. They’d been in Kenya for some years and have just returned to England. Miss Abernathy is traveling with them, at the request of her parents.”

  “Thank you.” Rutledge studied the short list. “Why were they in Kenya?” he asked.

  “Something was said about growing coffee,” Lowery replied. “Miss Abernathy told us her father is the doctor in Nairobi.”

  Mrs. Lowery smiled. “She’s quite charming, kept all of us laughing with tales of her life out there. Her story about trying to stalk and shoot a springbok in Ngorongoro Crater had us all laughing.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I can’t believe that our guests—it’s not likely that they’re involved with this,” Lowery said. “To what end?”

  “It’s what they may have seen as they left your house that interests me.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Rutledge asked for their direction and was sent to a hotel near Kensington Palace.

  Dunstan said, “I’m sorry to pull them out of bed,” as he and Rutledge took the narrow elevator to the third floor. “But for Cecily’s sake, we have no choice.”

  Miss Abernathy was in Number 307 and Rutledge knocked at her door first.

  A sleepy voice called, “Who is it?”

  “The police, Miss Abernathy. There’s been a thief in the hotel. I need to make certain that you’re all right.”

  “Yes. Yes, I am.”

  “Could you come to the door and verify you are not being held against your will?”

  Dunstan said, “What the hell—” but Rutledge silenced him with a raised hand.

  “I’m in bed,” the voice behind the door said plaintively. “Must I?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Rutledge answered.

  There was a long silence, and then Miss Abernathy came to the door, her long red hair spilling down the back of her dressing gown.

  “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine,” she told him. “Now am I allowed to return to my—” At that moment she recognized Dunstan, over her shoulder.

  With an angry cry, she shouted, “Tom!” and made to slam the door in Rutledge’s face. But she hadn’t reckoned with his quick reflexes.

  Rutledge’s shoe was in the crack, and his shoulder hit the door in the same instant, propelling her back into the room where she stumbled and fell against the bed. She was still calling for Tom, and Rutledge wheeled as Dunstan shouted, meeting the man as he charged into the room.

  “Police,” Rutledge warned him, but he didn’t stop. They grappled, Tom driven by fury. Rutledge was slowly getting the better of him when the woman from the bed threw herself on his back, and another woman ran into the room, her hands out like claws, attacking Dunstan. He swore as her nails raked his face, then beat her fists against his chest.

  There was a faint sound from the wardrobe behind him. Dunstan, hearing it, caught the woman by the shoulders, spinning her around with some force, and whipped the dangling sash of her dressing gown around her wrists before shoving her into a chair. Then he went at the door like a madman, flinging it open and saying something Rutledge couldn’t catch.

  Rutledge was able to put his shoulder into the next blow, and the man fell to the floor, dazed. He turned on Miss Abernathy and, without ceremony, snapped his handcuffs over her wrists and pushed her back down on the bed. He wheeled to where Dunstan was standing in front of the wardrobe, trying to lift his daughter out of the cramped space but his ribs wouldn’t allow him to shift her. She had been bound with cloths, and there was barely room for her to crouch. Rutledge stepped forward, lifted her out of the wardrobe and carried her to the only other chair in the room. Dunstan began to tear at the knots but Rutledge brought out a pocket knife and quickly cut them.

  The odor of ether was on her clothing, and in a black rage, her father turned on the man Miss Abernathy had called Tom. “You dined with us, you bastard, and when we left, you attacked us and used ether on my child.”

  Frey scrambled away from Dunstan’s fury, putting the bed between them, but that didn’t stop the outraged father. He launched himself across the bed, shoving Miss Abernathy out of his way, and caught the man by the throat. It was all Rutledge could do to pull him off Frey, as Dunstan’s hands tightened their grip.

  “Go downstairs,” he told the struggling, angry father. “Find a policeman and bring him here, then take my motorcar and drive to the Yard. We need help and we need it straightaway.”

  “I’m not leaving my daughter,” Dunstan said stubbornly.

  “She’s just regaining consciousness. Do as I say and bring a doctor back with you. She should be seen.”

  Dunstan turned to look at his daughter, her eyes closed, her mouth slack, and her face very pale.

  “Dear God,” he said, and was out the door, leaving it wide. Rutledge could hear his footsteps racing down the carpeted corridor.

  Rutledge turned to the three people eyeing him speculatively. “If you try something,” he said tightly, “it will give me great pleasure to use you as Dunstan would have done. In the name,” he added, “
of quelling an attempted escape.”

  Frey said, “We outnumber you three to one. Even with their hands tied.” He nodded toward his two companions.

  Rutledge smiled coldly. And waited. He watched the two women and one man weigh their chances against the tall, broad-shouldered young policeman, and then subside. Cowards, he found himself thinking, who would leap out at a man and kidnap his daughter but who were unwilling to try their luck with someone who was their match.

  After a moment Miss Abernathy said, “We covered our tracks well. How did you know?”

  He crossed to the door and swung it closed. “The fact that there were three assailants, and you were three to dine. That you left shortly before the Dunstans, with time to set up your trap. Three people dressed as men, to confuse the police. It was a well-prepared plan, and working it through the unsuspecting Lowerys was clever. But I was certain when I told Miss Abernathy here that a thief was on the loose in the hotel and she showed no concern. A woman alone in a strange city would have been frightened enough to welcome the assurance of a policeman making certain she was safe. But she couldn’t afford to have the police come into her room.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Miss Abernathy exclaimed. “I was glad you’d come to my door.”

  But she hadn’t been.

  That was all he could pry out of them. He went to sit beside Cecily, assuring her that she was safe as she sat up and stared with frightened eyes at her abductors. Finally Dunstan arrived with two men from the Yard and a doctor. As the constables took charge of the surly kidnappers, the doctor was bending over Cecily, examining her while reassuring her that all was well.

  A few minutes later, the doctor crossed the room to speak Rutledge. “She’ll be all right,” he said, “but ether is measured by drops according to weight, not just poured onto a handkerchief. They took a serious risk.”

  Dunstan said wearily, still kneeling by his daughter, “Whatever those people wanted, it must be valuable indeed.”

  “We’ll find out in due course,” Rutledge replied. “First we need to establish just who they really are, and where they came from. That could also tell us what they were after. They’ll be in prison, meanwhile. You and your daughter will have nothing more to fear from them.”

  He could tell that Dunstan was dubious. The night’s events had shaken him badly.

  It wasn’t until a cable to Canada was answered that they had what they needed.

  Roland Paley dead of heart attack ten months ago. Widow remarried to one Thomas Cochran Frey. Whereabouts unknown.

  Rutledge brought the news to Dunstan, who said, “But that doesn’t explain anything, does it? Unless they took Roland seriously, that he’d been cheated over that blasted hunting lodge.”

  “I sent a second cable to the Canadian Mounted,” he said. “It seems the hunting lodge that your father-in-law left to your wife is quite valuable now. The railroad wants to build a hotel on the property. They’re willing to pay huge sums for the lodge and the land. If you could be persuaded to make the deed over in Mrs. Frey’s name, she and her husband stood to make a fortune. The police are now looking at the post mortem results for your brother-in-law, to see if he died of natural causes.”

  “But I would have given them the deed, I knew nothing about Canadian railways,” Dunstan said as he and Rutledge sat down in his drawing room. Set to rights again, it was quite handsome. “They didn’t need to kidnap my daughter!”

  “Greedy people,” Rutledge answered, “as a rule judge others by themselves. They wouldn’t have handed over a valuable property without a fight. Your daughter was insurance.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with that property now,” Dunstan said. “Let them have it if they’ll stay away from me and my daughter. It has caused nothing but trouble since my father-in-law’s death.”

  “One isn’t allowed to make a profit from a crime. Sell it to the Canadian Pacific Railway yourself and invest the money for your daughter. It will ensure her future if anything should happen to you. And I’m sure that’s what your wife would have wished.”

  “Yes, I’ll think about it.”

  Rutledge left him then, and went back at the Yard.

  Sergeant Gibson said as Rutledge came up the stairs, “It could have ended far worse. Kidnappings often do. You were lucky.”

  Rutledge thanked him and walked on to his office.

  Chief Superintendent Bowles came in five minutes later. “You took a terrible risk. You should have sent for a more seasoned officer.”

  Rutledge smiled. There was no possible way of satisfying his superior. But he said only, “Sergeant Gibson feels it was a matter of luck.”

  “Yes, well, don’t count on luck the next time. Send for assistance.” He left, and Rutledge sat down behind his desk.

  He hadn’t told Dunstan the whole truth. Or Bowles. For it had been good police work that had brought the case to a satisfactory conclusion.

  What had triggered his suspicion of Miss Abernathy—who had turned out to be Mrs. Frey’s sister, one Josephine Tanner—was a remark made by Mrs. Lowery, that Miss Abernathy had boasted of shooting springbok in Ngorongoro Crater while growing up in Kenya before the war. But the crater was actually in what was then German Tanganyika, not Kenya. And Springbok was native to South Africa, not East Africa. Miss Tanner had enjoyed being the charming Miss Abernathy, amusing the dinner guests, but she’d got her facts wrong.

  Pride had been her downfall.

  And Rutledge had a geography tutor at Oxford to thank for teaching him about Africa. His name was Pieter Roos and he would have enjoyed learning that his pupil had solved a crime with that knowledge. But he had died in Egypt during the war, and Rutledge hadn’t felt like explaining that to Bowles.

  About the Author

  CHARLES TODD is the pen name of the mother-and-son writing team Charles and Caroline Todd. The authors are best known for their New York Times bestselling series set in post-World War I England, featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge. Their books have won the Barry award; been nominated for the Dilys, Edgar, Agatha, John Creasey, and Macavity awards; and voted among the favorite 100 mysteries of the 20th century by the Independent Mystery Bookseller’s Association. The twelfth book in the series, The Red Door, is currently available in hardcover. The thirteenth book, A Lonely Death, will be published in the beginning of 2011. The Todds recently started a new series featuring World War I nurse and amateur sleuth Bess Crawford. Charles and Caroline Todd live in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively.

  Keep up with Charles Todd all year long. Visit their website at CharlesTodd.com, be their fan on Facebook.com/Charles-Todd, or sign up for AuthorTracker email updates at HarperCollins.com/CharlesTodd.

  Also by Charles Todd

  The Ian Rutledge Series

  A Test of Wills

  Wings of Fire

  Search the Dark

  Watchers of Time

  Legacy of the Dead

  A Fearsome Doubt

  A Cold Treachery

  A Long Shadow

  A False Mirror

  A Pale Horse

  A Matter of Justice

  The Red Door

  The Bess Crawford Mysteries

  A Duty to the Dead

  An Impartial Witness

  Other Fiction

  The Murder Stone

  Credits

  Image credit: istock

  A Lonely Death

  A Lonely Death

  Charles Todd

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A LONELY DEATH. Copyright © 2011 by Charles Todd. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of th
is text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  * * *

  Todd, Charles.

  A lonely death / Charles Todd. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-172619-4

  1. Rutledge, Ian (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Police—England—Fiction. 3. World War, 1914–1918—Veterans—Fiction. 4. Murder—Investigation—England—Sussex—Fiction. 5. Villages—England—Sussex—Fiction. 6. Sussex (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3570.O37L64 2011

  813’.54—dc22

  2010018279

  * * *

  11 12 13 14 15 OV/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Chapter One

  Northern France, Early June 1920

  The sod had grown over the graves, turning the torn earth a soft green, and the rows of white crosses gleamed brightly in the morning sun. Except for the fact that a fallen soldier lay beneath each wooden marker, it was pretty there under the blue bowl of the French sky, peaceful finally after four tumultuous years of war. Even the birds had come back, picking at the grass for seeds, insects, and worms.

  The man watched them, those birds, and was reminded of a line from Hamlet, that somehow had caught a schoolboy’s imagination and then lingered in a corner of his adult mind—that a worm may feed on a king. Had these fed on lesser dead?

  Many had been hastily buried where they fell, others in mass graves. Sorting the dead for proper burial had been gruesome at best. Many had never been identified. Walking down the rows now, looking at names, remembering burial details, broken bodies, bits of them, endless lines of them, he wondered if he was changed by them.