The Red Door by Charles Todd

point.”

Chapter 11
    A s Rutledge was refolding the clothing and settling it into the box again, Jenny Teller said thoughtfully, “The mission station in West Africa was by a river. I remember Walter telling us that he couldn’t wear his English clothing there—the damp ruined everything. And so he put them in a tin box and left them behind. He didn’t have a tin box just now, but he left his clothing behind as he was accustomed to doing.”
    Edwin said, “Jenny—don’t.”
    “No, I think it’s true. It’s oddly—comforting, somehow. It means he’s still alive. I’ve said from the beginning that he was.”
    Edwin swore under his breath and cast a glance at his wife. She was watching Jenny, a look of anguish in her eyes.
    Rutledge set the lid back on the box.
    “We don’t know what he might be wearing now,” he warned them. “The search will be all that much more difficult.”
    “I understand,” Jenny said. She took a deep breath. “He’ll come back when he’s ready.”
    Rutledge was halfway to the door when Jenny called to him, “There’s something I should tell you. I hadn’t before. It was very—personal, and Walter has always been a very private man.”
    He turned and waited.
    “Matron very kindly had a cot put in my husband’s room for me, so that I might stay with him. The night before he disappeared, I woke up because I could hear him talking. It was only a murmur, I couldn’t make out the words, and at first I thought he must be talking in his sleep. But then I remembered another time when I’d heard him doing the same thing. It was when he was writing his book. And he had come to a chapter that disturbed him—he kept putting off working on it, and I told him that he should just write—you know, like getting back on a horse after it’s thrown you. It might not be the best material, but it would be a start, and he could revise it when he was finished. And so he did. And it was that night I heard him talking to himself. Or to someone. I never knew for certain what it was.”
    “And you think there’s a connection?”
    “Yes. I think Walter has made his decision. I think he’s decided he’s going back into the field. There must be something that he feels he’s left undone, and what’s sent him away is that he doesn’t know how to tell me. Edwin and Peter must have guessed. It’s why they went looking for him where they did.”
    I n the passage, Rutledge met Matron coming toward him. “There is no news?” she asked.
    “I’m afraid not.”
    “What do you have there? May I know?”
    “We’ve found Mr. Teller’s clothing. I brought it here for Mrs. Teller to identify.”
    Matron was silent a moment, and then she said, “But you don’t know yet that he’s dead? You haven’t found him ? Mr. Teller?”
    “No. As I’ve just explained to his family, if he’s wearing different clothes, it will make spotting him all that much more difficult. And we don’t know what other changes he has made. Unless finding these by the river is an indication that he took his own life.”
    She said, “I think he wanted to die while he was here. But wanting something and having the opportunity to achieve it can be two very different things.” She gazed down the passage, the way she’d come. “I must tell you that I had the oddest feeling that Mr. Teller had lost his faith. Perhaps that’s what he’s trying so hard to find.”
    “His wife feels he’s made the decision to return to mission work.”
    “Perhaps that’s why,” she said, and walked away.
    Rutledge looked after her, considering her words. He was turning to go when he nearly collided with a well-dressed man just stepping out of one of the doctors’ offices, pushing an invalid chair. The woman swathed in shawls and a motorcar rug looked up and smiled at Rutledge, her thin, illness-ravaged face still attractive and sweet. He smiled in return and held the door for the man.
    From the clinic, Rutledge drove directly to