The Red Door by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online Page A

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
    R utledge 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 competition, 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 shift of