Search the Dark

by Charles Todd

  For some reason the old man must have thought the ghosts of the Wyatts were walking their farmland again, unable to rest in peace. Peering out a window in the night, seeing the shadowy figure crossing the moonlit yard, he wouldn’t have questioned it, he would have accepted its right to be there.

  The farmhouse was dark, save for a single light—a lamp—in a back room that must mark Jimson’s bedchamber. The barn too was empty save for the animals that belonged there. No one challenged Rutledge as he moved about. And the only sounds were those that belonged to the night, not to restless spirits.

  Turning the other way, back toward Charlbury, he drove through the town and slowed, peering beyond his lights into the fields, trying to pin any tall, manlike shadow against the sky. He’d been good at that, in the war, as Hamish reminded him. Spotting scouts or the first wave of a silent attack coming across no-man’s-land. Swift vision sometimes made the difference in surprise….

  He was close to where he’d seen the dog earlier when he realized that a tree in the middle distance had what appeared to be a double trunk. Rutledge pulled off the road and left the car, crossing the fields with swift, long strides. The figure didn’t move. It wasn’t leaning against a tree, it was simply standing beside it, as if in conversation with it Talking to trees…

  “He’s mad, no better than you are,” Hamish was saying tensely.

  Rutledge ignored the voice. As he slowed his pace and moved silently nearer, the figure didn’t look up or show any sign of awareness. It simply stood, a black line against the horizon, as if put there by a sculptor’s hand.

  Rutledge was now within five yards. He said, “Wyatt?”

  Nothing. No response at all.

  He came within reach, he could have put out a hand and touched the still, straight shoulder. It was uncanny. The silence went on, unbroken except for the sound of their breathing.

  Unnerving. He’d spent too many nights on the Front, listening to the sound of breathing as men waited. But what was this one waiting for?

  “Wyatt?” He spoke gently, firmly, trying not to startle the other man.

  Nothing. Except Hamish, growling a warning.

  Undecided, he stood there, observing, peering into the darkness at the expressionless face, the rigidity of the body. Simon Wyatt was oblivious to his surroundings. Wherever he was in spirit, he neither heard nor saw anything.

  After a time Rutledge touched the man’s arm, lightly, undemandingly, no more than one man would touch another in the way of acknowledgment, comfort.

  Simon stirred.

  Rutledge said quietly, without fuss, “It’s Inspector Rutledge. From Singleton Magna. Can I give you a lift to Charlbury? I’ve got my car. Over there.”

  The sentences were short, the tone of voice neutral.

  Simon turned to look at him, but even in the starlight Rutledge was sure the blank eyes were not actually seeing him. Wherever Simon was, it was a very long distance from here.

  Then he said, unexpectedly, the strain intense in his voice, as if his throat were tight with fear or some inner conflict. “Major? They aren’t firing tonight.”

  Rutledge felt a jolt of shock but kept his voice level. “No. It’s over for tonight. It’s time to go back.”

  Simon said only, “Yes.” And when Rutledge turned tentatively, to walk back the way he’d come, Simon silently fell into step behind him.

  When they reached the car, Simon spoke again, this time in a perfectly natural, if rather tired, voice. “Nice of you to give me a lift back, Rutledge.” As though he’d gone walking after his dinner and nothing else had happened.

  “My pleasure,” Rutledge answered, and turned the crank.

  They were halfway to Charlbury when Simon added, “I wonder what time it is.” When Rutledge told him, he said, surprised, “That late? I must have walked farther than I realized. Aurore will be worried.”

  “Walk often in the evening, do you?” Rutledge said, as if making conversation and not caring whether the question was answered or not.

  “No. There’s so much to do, readying the museum. No time for country pleasures. As it is I’m behind schedule. The invitations have already gone out, I can’t change the date now. Elizabeth and Aurore between them are already handling the arrangements for the catering.”

  It was as if Simon Wyatt had no memory of where he’d been—or why.

  19

  Aurore, watching for them from the windows of the museum, came out to greet them on the front walk. Her manner was interesting. She neither touched her husband nor asked him, as a worried, frightened wife might do, what he’d been thinking of, where he’d been. Only her eyes mirrored her distress.

  She said, “You must be tired.”

  “I am, rather. I think I’ll turn in, if you don’t mind.” He nodded to Rutledge.

  She shot a warning glance at Rutledge and said, “Yes, do that.” Then stood silently beside the man from London as her husband walked toward the house and went inside alone. Rutledge could hear her unsteady breathing.

  “Where did you find him?” she asked in a low voice. “You’ve been gone for nearly an hour!”

  “I went to the farm but I don’t think he’d been there. There were no lights in the house, except in the room the caretaker uses. And the barn was empty as well. I decided I should go in the other direction, out the Singleton Magna road. I found him in a field beyond the town. Standing there like a pillar of salt. He neither saw nor heard me coming, and he didn’t know who I was, until we started back to Charlbury.” He stopped, not wanting to tell her about their brief exchange in the field. And Simon hadn’t been talking to a tree—he had simply been standing, as far as Rutledge could see, in its shelter.

  She nodded. “That’s how it happens. He seems completely lost to his surroundings. It isn’t wine, it isn’t a drug. By this time surely I’d know if it was those things!”

  Rutledge said only, “No. He hadn’t been drinking, and his eyes were blank, but the pupils were normal. As far as I could tell he wasn’t sleepwalking either.” He paused, then added, “Mrs. Wyatt. That man is under intense stress. Do you see that? Have you spoken to a physician?”

  She smiled wryly. “What can I say to a man of medicine? How could I persuade Simon to believe he needed to see such a one? If I say he suddenly loses awareness of where he is and what is happening around him, they will say oh, he is in excellent health, I assure you. Perhaps with so much on his mind, he is forgetful—”

  She broke off as Elizabeth Napier came out of the house, walking toward them with swift, intent strides. “He’s home, he’s perfectly fine, Aurore! Whatever was all this alarm about? Oh, good evening, Inspector. Did she summon you as well, in her distress? How silly! All for naught.”

  Aurore said nothing, as if Elizabeth’s words had put a seal on what she had just been telling him. Rutledge said, “I was driving down the Charlbury road and happened to see Mr. Wyatt there. I gave him a lift.”

  “Ah! His father often took walks after his dinner. He said it cleared his head wonderfully. It’s not surprising Simon feels the same way just now, with the opening so near.” It was meant to be reassuring but managed to point out at the same time that Aurore wasn’t a part of the Wyatt legend, couldn’t be expected to know such things, wouldn’t remember—as Elizabeth did—what ran in the family. “Well, it’s late. I must go to the inn and to bed myself. Did Inspector Hildebrand tell you? I’m staying in Charlbury for the next week. Will you see me safely to my door, Inspector?”

  “With pleasure.” He turned to Aurore. “I’d like to speak to you—”

  But she shook her head. “As Miss Napier says, it is late and I am tired. Whatever you wish to tell me or to ask me, please, tomorrow will be soon enough.”

  Upstairs a light went out. Seeing it, Rutledge wondered if Simon Wyatt was sleeping in his own bed—or making his way down to that cramped room in the back of the museum. Elizabeth Napier took his arm and said good night to Aurore, then let Rutledge lead her to the gate,
closing it after them.

  Aurore stood where she was, on the front walk. Light from the house windows framed her hair like an aureole but shadowed her face. He wondered what she was thinking and found himself distracted by Elizabeth Napier’s comments.

  “I shouldn’t have said what I did! It’s just that I’ve known Simon for so long I feel exasperated sometimes when Aurore fails to understand him. And that’s my own failure, really, not hers. I’d worry about my husband too, in her place; the strain of this museum opening is telling on both of them!”

  He wondered suddenly if she was rattling on because she knew more than she wanted him to see. Then he decided it was merely a matter of covering her tracks. They walked down the quiet street, nodding to several men passing by but to all intents and purposes they were quite alone.

  “Do you think so?”

  “Yes, there’s a distance between them, you can feel it. I think—I’m afraid she feels that this museum may come between them. But it won’t,” Elizabeth said positively, taking his arm as they crossed the dark street. “No, he’s doing this because he felt he owed something to the maternal side of his family. It’s an obligation he strongly believes in. I think the war made him realize that. Once it’s done, once he’s finished organizing it, someone else will be given the day-by-day responsibility of running this museum, and I see Simon returning to the world he was bred to.”

  “London. And politics,” Rutledge offered. Wondering if Margaret Tarlton had been sent here to take over the museum once its purpose had been served, allowing Simon Wyatt his freedom. And keeping Margaret out of London and Thomas Napier’s eye.

  “Of course. I don’t believe Aurore appreciates how strongly the tradition is in this family. To serve, to lead. To set an example for others. I know Simon far better than she does. I should do, I’ve known him most of his life!”

  “Have you told Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—what you believe his future may hold?”

  “Good heavens, no! That’s for Simon to do when the time comes.”

  “What do you think happened tonight?” They had nearly reached the Wyatt Arms.

  “Nothing. A lover’s quarrel, most likely, and Simon went out to walk it off. And it upset Aurore when he didn’t come back. She must be a very possessive woman. Well, politics will soon teach her that that isn’t wise!”

  “It wasn’t a misunderstanding with you—over his future—that Wyatt wanted to think about? Away from the house.”

  Elizabeth Napier pulled her hand from his arm and turned to stare up at him. “Whatever gave you that idea! Don’t tell me Aurore felt—or was it something Simon said, as you brought him home?”

  “This has nothing to do with Aurore Wyatt,” he said, opening the inn door and holding it for her. From the bar he could hear voices, Denton’s rising to answer someone, and then laughter, the chink of glasses and the smell of beer and smoke and sausages. “Nor with anything Wyatt said to me. I’m asking you for your observations of his mood. Since you know him so well.”

  She cocked her head to one side, her eyes on the sign swinging blackly against the stars above them. “Do you really want to hear what I believe? Or does Aurore have you so completely under her spell that you can’t view any of this objectively?”

  “She doesn’t—” he began, irritated, but Elizabeth cut him short.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said for a second time. “Aurore Wyatt is a very attractive—and very lonely—woman. Men find that an irresistible combination. It isn’t surprising. All right, I think she wants to keep him here, bucolic and safe. She may even have been the one who first put the museum idea into his head. I don’t know and I don’t actually care. The fact remains, you don’t understand what pressures she brings to bear in that household. You take her at face value, this lovely, foreign, exotic woman. You don’t sit across from her at the breakfast table, nor do you have to live with her every day. Simon does. Ask yourself what she’s truly like, and you may have some glimmer of what Simon’s life is like. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not speaking as the jilted woman here, I’m telling you what my observations are—today—now. If I wanted to compete with Aurore Wyatt for her husband, I’d hardly be likely to drive him to wander about the countryside in the dark, to escape me. Would I? There are a thousand more subtle ways of destroying his marriage and bringing him back to me. The question is, then, do I really need to scheme for him if his own wife has already estranged herself from him? Good night, Inspector!”

  And with that she turned, walked into the inn, and, without looking back, went up the stairs with that regal manner that had so impressed everyone at the Swan in Singleton Magna.

  As his eyes followed her, Rutledge became aware of movement at the corner table under the stairs. A very sober Shaw was looking at him with a grin on his face.

  “Yes, I heard all that. Women are bitches,” he said softly, “however well bred they may be and however blue their bloodlines are. Come in, and have a drink with me, before my uncle calls time. You look as if you could use one!”

  Rutledge took up his invitation and sat down. The rings on the table had either been wiped away—or they hadn’t accumulated this night. Shaw was nursing one pint that appeared to have gone flat long since. He called to his uncle, who brought another pint for Rutledge.

  “The lovely Aurore isn’t Simon Wyatt’s problem,” Shaw was saying. “It probably isn’t the lovely Miss Napier either. What’s bothering him is a guilty conscience.”

  Interested, Rutledge said, “Guilt over what? Putting this museum before his father’s expectations of him?”

  “The war. What he learned about himself out there in France. Because you do. You soon know if you’re a coward or not. Most of us are, only we find ways to hide it, at least from other people.”

  It was something all of them had faced. The question of bravery. Of courage—and these two were not the same. Of mortality. Of what life was. And what death meant. He himself had brought Hamish home….

  Losing for an instant the thread of the conversation, Rutledge said, “You’re saying that he failed himself?”

  “No, I’m saying he didn’t like the man he turned out to be. I don’t suppose his father expected the war to last, and I don’t suppose Simon did either. Well, none of us did! Quick in and quick out was the idea. Only it wasn’t that way, and in the end, those of us who survived knew what kind of men we were. Some of us even learned to live with it, however little we liked what we saw. But Simon, told all his life that he was Jesus Christ, son of God, fell far below his own estimation and never recovered.”

  “That’s a very … sober … assessment,” Rutledge answered. He had nearly used the word cruel, and changed it at the very last.

  “I am sober. The pain isn’t so bad tonight. I saw Wyatt leave his house.”

  Without particular emphasis, Rutledge said, “Did you indeed? When?”

  “Tonight, damn you! I said good evening as we passed in the street. He never answered. He walked past me as if he hadn’t seen me. And I could have touched him, I was that close. Gave me the willies, I can tell you. His face was empty. As if his body was moving of its own volition.”

  “Sleepwalking?”

  “God, no. His eyes were open, he didn’t stumble or weave, he moved like a man with a destination. Only he was deaf and dumb.”

  “Your imagination,” Rutledge said. “He may just have been preoccupied.”

  “It wasn’t shell shock either,” Shaw said, ignoring him. “I recognize that when I see it, we had four or five men in our unit who were shambling wrecks before we got them out of the front lines. Pathetic, shaking, barely human.”

  Rutledge felt the sudden, unstoppable jolt run through him, jerking the glass in his hand until it spilled. He swore and looked down at his cuff, to conceal his face and Hamish’s swift response: Barely human…

  “So it has to be something else,” Shaw went on, oblivious, buried in his own feelings. “Something inside the man that he himself doesn’t see. Until it
manifests itself in sudden blackouts. Which tells me it’s some sort of deeply buried guilt, and he can’t face it. What other reason is there?”

  “It might be more recent than the war. It might be Miss Tarlton’s death.”

  Shaw laughed without any hint of humor. “Are you trying to say that he lapses into these states and commits murder? Or the other way around, commits murder and then lapses out of guilt? You must really be at a loss to find answers for all these bodies you’ve turned up!”

  Rutledge studied him. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you? Ever since you met Wyatt in the street? Or even before that.”

  “Oh, yes,” Shaw said bitterly. “That’s all I have left to me. An interest in my fellow human beings. We all walk with shadows. You’ve got your own, haven’t you, it’s there in your face and your eyes. I wonder what they are. And if they came out of the war, or from your work.” His eyes scanned Rutledge.

  Forcing himself to ignore the challenge, Rutledge waited.

  After draining his glass in one long swallow, Shaw said, “I wish I could have gotten drunk tonight—” After a time he picked up Ate thread of the conversation again. “I watch them all. Daulton, because he spoke to her just before she left Charlbury. Wyatt, her host and therefore responsible for her. Aurore, who should have gotten her to that train safely, and didn’t. And let’s not forget Elizabeth Napier, so busily using Margaret’s death to throw herself at Simon again. Or her famous father, who is conspicuous by his absence. If Margaret hadn’t meant anything to him, he’d have come storming into Hildebrand’s office long before this, making political mileage out of his righteous anger. No, they’re all on my list, and I’m just waiting for a single mistake that might tell me which one is guilty.”

  “You’ve left Mowbray out of your accounting.”

  “No, I haven’t. He’s my last resort, if I’m wrong about the others.”

  “Have you reached any conclusions yet?”