bound, as the present head of the family, to be there when she is interred. As a gesture. You may discover that her husband has no connection to my family. It’s what I expect. But I have a duty all the same.”
“Then be there day after tomorrow. If you are serious about this.”
“I’ve never been more so. But I shall also tell you in no uncertain terms that it is a duty on my part, entered into freely. And it has nothing to do with her life or her death. It is merely a show of respect.”
“I understand,” Rutledge said, and he thought he very likely did. But he thought there might be as well a measure of curiosity mixed in with that sense of duty.
And he wondered who else might decide to come to Hobson out of curiosity.
Rutledge was driving back to the Yard and was nearly there, when he saw a woman walking along the street and stopping at the next corner to cross over. She looked up at the same time, and he realized it was Susannah Teller.
Pulling over just beyond the crossing, he said, “Mrs. Teller?”
“Mr. Rutledge? I was just on my way to see you.”
“Let me drive you the rest of the way,” he said. “Or would you prefer to talk to me somewhere else?”
“Perhaps we could walk to the bridge. What I have to say is—rather private.”
He took her to the Yard, left his motorcar there, and then accompanied her to the river, where a slight, cooling breeze moved across the water.
She paused to look at the river, and he realized she was not more than five feet from where Bynum had been murdered.
“Shall we?” he said, and gestured in the opposite direction.
It seemed that whatever she had to tell him was weighing on her mind, but she was not certain how to begin, or possibly where to begin. He kept in step with her and let her take her time.
Finally she said, “My husband—Peter has told me about this poor woman—in Lancashire, is it? The one who was murdered. And he told me as well that you can’t seem to find her husband’s family. He was from Dorset, I believe?”
“Apparently, yes. It’s what we were told in Hobson.”
“Yes, well, I may have an explanation for this mystery.” She paused again and watched a small boat pulling upriver. “There was a young subaltern in my husband’s regiment. Burrows was his name, and he was from a good family. He had connections to Dorset, but I believe his family lived outside Worcester.”
She glanced up at him and looked away again.
“He was a very nice young man. We saw a good bit of him. And I’m afraid my husband and I made fun of him behind his back. It was unkind, but Thomas admired my husband no end. He had no older brothers, and I think he saw Peter as a role model, in a way. And he emulated Peter at every turn. When Peter showed an interest in golf, it became Thomas’s enthusiasm. When Peter bought himself a pair of matched blacks to pull his carriage, the next month Thomas sported a pair that was almost identical. Peter grew a mustache, and Thomas must have one as well. Peter shaved his, and soon after, so did Thomas. It would have been very trying, except for the fact that we knew it was harmless.”
“And what has this to do with the dead woman in Hobson?”
“I don’t know anything at all about Hobson,” Susannah Teller said. “But I should imagine it was a very small place, and that the dead woman—”
“Her name,” he said, “was Florence.”
“—Florence, then. That Florence was not from a wealthy, influential family, however nice she might have been?”
“If you are trying to say she wasn’t of his class, she was a school-teacher and not an heiress, although she had property of her own.”
“Oh.” Her face flushed. “This is difficult enough for me, Inspector. I’m not trying to disparage this—Florence Teller. But I wonder if perhaps Thomas fell in love with her and married her under a false name. Or perhaps felt obligated to marry her, and knew his mother and father would not approve of the match. In fact, they might well have cut him off without a penny. I have no way of guessing his reasons. But he might have been desperate enough to marry her not as Thomas Burrows, the nephew of a member of Parliament and the grandson of a