by Charles Todd
“But he wasn’t, was he?” Rutledge asked gently. “He has never fully recovered. He never will.”
“No.” The word seemed stark and anguished, matching her eyes. “And I shan’t be there to care for him. He will have to go back to hospital now whether I want him to or not.”
“The next woman he was alone with was Margaret Tarlton, looking for someone to drive her to the train.”
She sighed. “I hate to say this about the dead, but Margaret Tarlton was worse than Betty. I knew, from something Richard Wyatt told me once, when he and Margaret had a stormy affair in 1913, that she had a way of getting whatever she wanted. I think she’d have married Richard, if he’d had enough money to satisfy her. And now she had the power of the Napiers behind her. She was hard, and very angry, very unforgiving. I didn’t have any money to offer her. She said she didn’t care what happened to Henry. She said it was what he deserved.” Joanna Daulton turned to Aurore. “I told her, You aren’t a mother, or you’d understand. But she said it doesn’t matter, he belongs behind bars, he isn’t stable. We argued again outside Singleton Magna. I was driving your car, Aurore, there wasn’t enough petrol in mine. I’d walked over to the farm and borrowed it, and all the way to the train Margaret Tarlton was insisting on going to the authorities in Singleton Magna. I couldn’t persuade, I couldn’t bribe—she made me stop the car and put her out. That’s when, God help me, I took that stone you keep in the back of your car and I killed her! And that poor man Mowbray took the blame, because to save him, I’d have had to destroy my own son!” Her voice twisted in anguish.
Aurore said, “Don’t—for God’s sake, don’t!”
Mrs. Daulton said, “I’m glad it’s over. I thought when I heard Elizabeth scream tonight, it will go on and on and on, until one day I can’t bear it anymore. But I love him, you see. I really wanted him to be whole again. I told myself that Simon was recovering—Henry could recover too. I told myself a hundred lies. I told myself that I could make Henry well myself, if I had time enough and peace enough. It was all so terrible. But I couldn’t harm Elizabeth. I’ve known her almost all her life. It was hard enough with people I barely knew. With Elizabeth—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t kill her, Aurore. I couldn’t do it. But I killed Simon, didn’t I? Inadvertently. I’d have liked to kill myself, but I haven’t that kind of courage. I suppose women generally don’t.” She smiled across the room at her son. “Henry, darling, I don’t think you’ve understood a word of what I’ve been saying, and just as well. Come along, let me put you to bed. And then I must go with the inspector for a while. It will be all right, you’ll see. You liked hospital, didn’t you …?”
Her voice trailed off as she held out her hand, dropping Margaret Tarlton’s hat on the steps. Henry came to take her cold fingers in his, and Rutledge watched, letting it happen. Henry looked across at Rutledge, and there was a strained smile on his face. He understood far more than his mother wanted to believe.
Mrs. Daulton turned and led her son up the steps. Aurore said quickly to Rutledge, “I don’t think she should go alone!”
“It’s all right. She won’t harm him. She won’t harm herself. I’ll take you home and then go to the rectory. By the time Henry is settled, Hildebrand will be here.”
“You believed her?” She followed him across the crypt, her candle flame shaking because her hand was shaking badly.
“Yes. I’ve been half certain, since that damned hat went missing tonight.” They had all made a connection between Henry and the dead women, and dismissed it. Shaw had more anger in him than Henry had ever shown. But Shaw had had no reason to kill Betty Cooper … while Simon or Aurore might have. Or Elizabeth Napier—
At the stairs, as he bent to retrieve the hat, Rutledge said, “I saw Henry once with a small bird in his hands. It was oddly childlike. He may have tried to stop these women from screaming and frightened them badly. Himself as well. But he wouldn’t have beaten them, on and on until they were dead. As his mother had had to do, to silence them. He’s not mad. It’s just that much of his mind is gone. Whatever abilities and skills he once had, he’s lost them.”
He took her arm to help her up the steep, crumbling steps. Her scent was strong in the cool air, a sign of her distress. He said, “Will you tell me now where you found this hat?”
“I took the shortcut to the farm the day after Margaret left. It was in the bushes there; Joanna must have dropped it. But I thought Simon had. And someone had started the car while I was in the barn—I heard it leave and come back. I was sure Simon had taken Margaret to Singleton Magna.” Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “He was desperate for money. I thought—I had so little faith left in him! I had seen his father’s letter. About the house in Chelsea. And he had insisted on hiring Margaret …”
There was no comfort he could offer.
She said as they reached the aisle and he blew out their candles, “If only Simon had waited for the morning!” There was infinite sorrow in her voice.
“I know,” Rutledge said quietly, but the stone took his words and gave them a haunting echo. “He was a good man, Aurore. He just lost his way. A lot of us did, in the war. And we weren’t all wearing visible wounds. That was the worst part of it. No one could look at us and say, ‘See what the war has done.…’ ”
“I loved him so much,” she said, tears coming at last. “I thought he didn’t love me.”
After a moment he said, “What will you do?”
She said, into the echo of his words, “I shall open the museum, if I can. And make it work. And after that, I shall go far away from here. We have all died, in a way—myself, and Simon, Henry and his mother, Mowbray, those poor women. I can’t bear to think about it.”
They had reached the door of the church. He handed her the key to the museum. She turned to him and said, “I shall go from here alone. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Whoever she is, this woman you have loved, she is not worth your grief, do you know that? Find a love of your own, and don’t lose it as I did!”
And she was gone, hurrying down the path toward her house, where he could hear cars arriving and voices raised in alarm. In the bright sky behind him, the barn and the house still burned out of control, flames leaping high, garishly, into the night.
He felt very tired, and very much alone.
Hamish said, “You’re a better policeman than you think you are.”
“Am I? I’d have saved him if I could.…”
“Aye. But he’d no’ have thanked you. He died for her; it gave his death a meaning. It was what he was after, and it was far better than dying a coward.”
Rutledge walked out of the shadows of the trees. He could see Aurore standing in the doorway of the museum, unlocking it. He braced himself and called to Hildebrand, stopping that surge of people toward the house long enough for Aurore to remove the note from Simon’s dead hand. There was no reason to cause pain where it wasn’t needful.
She paused as the museum door swung open and looked blindly back toward the church. But Rutledge was already standing among the policemen from Singleton Magna, handing the hat to Hildebrand, swiftly and clearly telling the staring faces what had happened. As he finished, a number of them went on to the museum; the others, led by Hildebrand, went toward the rectory.
Shaw, by the gate, stood waiting until they’d gone. He looked at Rutledge and said, “Is it true? What you just told that lot? Or a pack of lies? About Mrs. Daulton?”
“It’s true.”
Shaw rubbed his face, drawn and exhausted. “I wanted someone I could kill. I wanted it to be Napier. Or Simon. Or even Henry. I can’t touch that poor woman, even for Margaret’s sake. Hanging will be a blessing for her!”
“It will be an end, but not a blessing.”
Rutledge turned the crank, got into his car, and said, “Can I give you a lift as far as the inn?”
Shaw shook his head. “I need to walk awhile.”
Rutledge drew away
and in the night watched his two headlamps plow gaudy furrows down the dark road. He felt empty, drained. But Mowbray was still in his cell. The man deserved compassion, and help. Rutledge would see to it.
Hamish said, “You could na’ let Mowbray hang for murder. He never touched a soul. She’ll fare well enough. You must na’ fret.” It wasn’t clear whether he was speaking of Aurore or Joanna Daulton.
Rutledge said, “No.” But he knew he would remember Aurore’s face and her stillness, and the French way she had of shrugging, whenever he thought of Jean. They were inextricably linked, because he and Simon were linked. He could still see the pistol beside the chair, he could smell the powder and the blood.
There but for the grace of God go I.…
But Hamish said into the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind whispering through the open car, “Not now. Not yet.”
