Free The Red Door by Charles Todd Page A

ask where?”
    “We’ve only just got back,” Amy answered for her husband. “I thought he might have gone to the house in Essex. I know, Jenny disagreed, but I did look. Edwin and Peter went to Cambridge on the odd chance Walter had gone to see someone there. Edwin seemed to remember being told that a colleague had retired there.”
    Jenny said, “I didn’t know that. Was it Percy? I thought he had gone back to Northumberland.”
    “As it turned out, Percy is there for the summer,” Amy told her. “He wasn’t at home when Edwin called, he was meeting with someone at the college.”
    Edwin said to Rutledge, “My brother was severely wounded in the war and is still recovering. He kept me company.”
    It was an unnecessary clarification, and Amy spoke quickly to cover it. Indeed, Amy Teller appeared to answer for her husband almost as if uncertain that he knew his lines on cue.
    “Susannah—she’s Peter’s wife, Inspector—drove to Cornwall, where the family often went on holiday. And Leticia, Edwin’s sister, was in Portsmouth, on the off chance that Walter might have”—she hesitated, glancing uncertainly toward Jenny—“where he might in his confusion have thought he was returning to the field.”
    Edwin said, “We didn’t find him, but it was better than waiting for the police to get around to looking beyond London. And we might have got lucky. There’s always that.” He sounded defeated but smiled for Jenny’s sake and added, “We could count on Jenny here at the clinic, if the police came through.”
    Jenny glanced from one to the other, and said, “Portsmouth was a waste of time. Leticia should have stayed here. Walter wouldn’t have left the country without telling me. He wouldn’t have left Harry without a word. No matter how confused he might be.”
    “Do you know for a fact that he didn’t try to contact his son?” Rutledge asked.
    “Well—no. But Mary would have sent word at once if he had.” Edwin replied.
    “You should have informed the police before leaving London,” Rutledge told them. “It would have been helpful.”
    “It wasn’t a Yard matter, then,” Amy answered. “And there’s something else. Jenny was just telling us that a watch is being kept on the river. Surely these men could be put to better use searching the city. None of us can believe that Walter intended to do away with himself.”
    Rutledge said, “I don’t think any of us can say with certainty what was in Teller’s mind when he left the clinic.”
    Jenny Teller said stubbornly, “I’ve told you. Walter won’t kill himself.”
    “With respect, Mrs. Teller, he hasn’t been seen for days. He hasn’t contacted you, he hasn’t come back to the clinic. Your husband’s family seems to feel he left London almost at once. I’d like to know why they were so certain of that?”
    Edwin said, “Because we know him. Because he’s our brother.”
    “And so you believed that he would visit a colleague—or his childhood holiday home—as soon as he came to himself again?”
    Edwin said shortly, “Don’t be absurd. That’s not what we believed. It’s just—look, we were clutching at straws. We drove around London searching for him that first afternoon, and then we tried to think where he might go if he needed to talk to someone or remember where he was happy as a child.”
    “You think, then, that he isn’t fully cured?”
    “Damn it, I don’t know,” Edwin told him. “You’re the policeman, what do you think?”
    “The evidence we have is circumstantial. He was able to walk out of the clinic. All well and good. He was able to dress himself presentably, so that he wouldn’t attract attention leaving with the afternoon’s visitors. That argues a certain awareness, an ability to think ahead. With respect, Mrs. Teller,” he went on, “he chose a time when no one was here to stop him or ask questions. That tells us he knew where he wanted to go and why, and perhaps it didn’t necessarily