by Charles Todd
Hildebrand returned with a small glass of brandy. Elizabeth sipped it carefully, wrinkling her nose in distaste. But it brought a little color back to her face, if only because of its bite.
“I’ll see to driving you back to Sherborne, Miss Napier,” he was saying. “You’ve had a nasty shock, and I’m sorry. I hope you’ll feel better when you’re at home again. I ask your pardon for subjecting you to this ordeal. It wasn’t, as I told you before, any of my choosing!”
She nodded, and somehow the chair seemed to envelop her protectively as she leaned back and closed her eyes. After a moment she handed the brandy glass to Rutledge and then stood up tentatively, as if expecting the room to dip and sway. She said to Hildebrand, “Inspector Rutledge put my case in the boot of his car. If you could arrange to have it brought to my room? I think it’s best if I stay in Singleton Magna tonight. It’s already quite late, isn’t it?”
The Swan’s manager was delighted to provide a room for Elizabeth Napier, offering to send the bill to her father. She waited patiently while the formalities were completed and then allowed herself to be led to the stairs. As they reached the graceful sweep of marble steps, she touched her temple with her fingertips, as though her head ached. Then she said, “Um-I-don’t suppose anyone’s called Simon? No, of course not, you still aren’t quite ready to believe me, are you, Inspector Hildebrand?” She started up the first flight before he could answer her. Without looking back she added quietly, “Dear Simon, he’s known Margaret nearly as long as I have. It would be better for all of us if I were wrong. But there’s no way to undo what’s happened, is there? If it should turn out that I’m right?”
Hildebrand said nothing, trailing her in silence.
Watching her, Rutledge was reminded of something his godfather had told him once about Queen Victoria: “Small as she was, she moved with majesty,” The same could be said of Elizabeth Napier.
She knew, perfectly, what power was, and how to wield it. Few men could boast the same profound understanding. Rutledge wondered if she’d inherited her skill from Thomas Napier, or if it was natural, as instinctive as the way she held her head, as if there were a diadem balanced in her hair. It gave her, too, a semblance of the height she didn’t possess.
“I must telephone my father. He’ll want to know what’s happened. But not tonight-I couldn’t bear to go into it tonight!”
Behind her, Hildebrand grimly shook his head. Stubbornness was his shield. And in the end, it might prove to be enough.
The Swan’s manager was fumbling through the keys in his hand to find the one he wanted, oblivious of the currents of emotion around him. In the passage outside her door, he offered Miss Napier everything from a maid to help her unpack to a tray of tea, if she felt so inclined. She accepted the tea with touching gratitude and was bowed into her room as the door was unlocked for her.
Leaving Hildebrand and the manager to see to her comfort, Rutledge went down to his car. Hamish had nothing to say.
By the time he’d delivered the small overnight case to her door, Hildebrand was also preparing to leave, and they walked down the stairs in a silence that was ominous. Rutledge braced himself for the storm that was certain to break as soon as they were out of earshot of the inn’s staff.
Hamish reminded him that it wouldn’t do to lose his own temper a second time. Rutledge told him shortly to keep out of it.
The storm was apocalyptic. After a cursory glance around the quiet, empty lobby, Hildebrand launched into his grievances in a tight, furious voice that carried no farther than the man opposite him. Among other things he wanted to know why Rutledge had seen fit to go to Sherborne on his own-and why the bloody hell the Napier name had been dragged into this sordid business without Hildebrand’s permission. “I don’t know where you learned of this Tarlton woman, or why you thought she was in any way involved, but I can tell you now Miss Napier is mistaken! My God, she was too shocked to know what she was saying!” he ended. “And when her father learns what’s happened, do you know who will be to blame for this-this exercise in futility? My people! We’ll be damned lucky if none of us is sacked! Thomas Napier, for God’s sake! He makes or breaks far more important men than either of us, any day of the week!”
“Do you realize it will take an order from the Home Office to have that body exhumed?” Rutledge demanded harshly as soon as Hildebrand had paused for breath. “And now that there’s doubt-”
“Whose doubt? Yours and whatever confusion you’ve sown in that young woman’s mind? I hardly call that a positive identification, damn you!”
“It might explain,” Rutledge retorted, “why we haven’t found the children. Because there are no children to be found.”
“They’re out there! Somewhere! And when I find them-mark me, I shall find them, with or without your help!-I’ll see to it that you’re ruined! Whatever you were before the bloody war, you aren’t half that man now. And it’s time you realized it!”
He turned on his heel and left. In his wake Hamish was asking “How was it Mowbray found her-yon Tarlton lass? How did she come to be walking on the road to Singleton Magna-the Wyatts would no’ send her to the station on foot!”
Rutledge had considered that himself. On the long dark drive from Sherborne. During the shorter wait in the Swan’s lobby. No answers had come to him. Not yet…
It had all gone wrong. He told himself that if his skills had slipped so far, he was better off out of Scotland Yard. That if he had seen what he wanted to see, and not the truth…
“Just because yon fine Miss Tarlton is na’ in London and did na’ arrive in Sherborne as expected does na’ mean she’s dead! What if she’s gone to Gloucestershire, to tell her family she was moving to Dorset?” Hamish reminded him again and again. The words echoed in his head.
“Without troubling to telephone Miss Napier? Who recommended her for the position in the first place? I don’t think it’s very likely.”
Rutledge could feel the dull ache behind his eyes, the sense of isolation and depression settling in. Fighting it, he walked out into the windy night, looked up at the stars pricking brightly through tide darkness.
Damn Hildebrand!
Let it go, he told himself. He’ll know soon enough if you’re right. And London will hear soon enough if you turn out to be wrong. Sufficient unto the day…
Turning, he walked a short distance up the street, realized it was the way to the churchyard, and stopped. He had enough ghosts of his own, without invoking the murder victim’s! Coming back to the inn, he looked up in time to see the curtains being drawn in the window of the top-floor room that Elizabeth Napier had taken.
She had brought her case with her because she expected to spend the night in Singleton Magna. What Rutledge hadn’t known-but she must have considered from the start-was that she might wish to stay longer than just overnight. He’d overheard her quietly speaking to the inn’s manager as she wrote her name in the register, asking if the room might be available for several days rather than just one night.
Whether she had really been sure that the dress and shoes belonged to the dead woman, only Elizabeth Napier could say with any truth.
But she was already looking ahead to anything useful that might grow out of her identification. Inside that fragile shell was a will as strong as steel. What Elizabeth Napier wanted, she was well accustomed to having, of that he had no doubt
And he thought he knew her target. Aurore Wyatt’s husband.
He’d have been willing to wager his life on that certainty.
10
In the early morning, before the town had begun to stir, Rutledge set out again for Charlbury, his mind occupied with how and what he wanted to say. And to whom. Clouds filled the sky, promising rain, and the heat had broken.
He arrived at the Wyatt home while the family was still at breakfast. The maid left him standing in the parlor, and he looked around him at the room. The furnishings were beautifully made and well polished, handed proudly from generation to genera
tion. They were for the most part Georgian, though two of the tables had skirts to the floor and phalanxes of photographs in frames, in the Victorian style of never is too much too much. There was a large portrait over the fireplace, a man dressed in early Victorian black, looking much like a slim and intelligent Prince Albert. At a guess, this was the first Wyatt elected to Parliament. Hinted at in the dark background behind him were the soaring pinnacles of Westminster, as if he’d been painted standing on the bridge at midnight. The inference was both subtle and powerful.
Aurore herself came out to greet Rutledge, a questioning look on her face. Before he could speak to her, she asked if he’d care to join them for a cup of coffee. “Simon is just finishing his breakfast. He’ll be happy to see you again.”
Rutledge had his doubts about that. “Thank you, no. I wanted to ask you-what was Margaret Tarlton wearing the day she left for London?”
Aurore’s face was a polite mask, as if another woman’s apparel was something she seldom gave thought to. Rutledge would have wagered she could have described everything Margaret Tarlton had brought with her. He could count on one hand the number of women he’d met who were oblivious to other women’s appearance and clothing.
She said, considering his question, “I spent most of the morning at the farm, as I told you when you were here before. I didn’t return home in time to drive Miss Tarlton to Singleton Magna. She was wearing blue at breakfast, I remember that. It was very nice with her eyes, and there was a pleat of white in the skirt, to one side, like so.” She demonstrated, pleating the soft cream skirt she herself was wearing. He could see what she meant. “But she went up to pack as I was leaving, and to change. She said it had been terribly warm on the train coming down, she thought she might prefer something lighter for the journey. I didn’t see her after that. You might ask Edith. Our maid.”
To pack. Where was this woman’s suitcase? With her in Gloucestershire or buried somewhere in Dorset? Lost suitcases-lost children…
“How did she travel to Singleton Magna, if you had taken the only car?”
“I don’t know. I assumed that Simon would make another arrangement for her. He had several workmen here, and there’s the motorcar at the inn, belonging to Mr. Denton. Simon has borrowed it before. It wasn’t impossible to find someone to take her so short a way.”
“How many motorcars are there in Charlbury?”
“Simon’s of course, which I seem to drive more often than he does these days. And we have a little carriage we use sometimes. That of the innkeeper. And the rector had one; his widow uses it now.”
“No one else?”
“No,” she said, then added dryly, “but the horse is not dead in the countryside, you know. There are far more carriages and carts and wagons than there are motorcars in a ten-mile radius. Even Dr. Fairfield who comes to the village drives a buggy. That very fierce little man from Singleton Magna, with the face that looks as if he’s bitten into a very sour lemon. If transportation was a problem, anyone in Charlbury would have been glad to take her. If only to please Simon. Why do you ask these things? They have nothing to do with the day that Margaret arrived.”
She has a very clear memory for detail, Rutledge thought. What Margaret Tarlton might have seen, arriving on the same train as Bert Mowbray, had been his excuse when he had asked for her London direction.
“We don’t know where Miss Tarlton went from Singleton Magna. She hasn’t returned to her flat in London, and she failed to arrive at the Napier country home in Sherborne. They were expecting her there.”
Her gray eyes changed as he watched. Anger-or was it resignation?-stirred in their depths. “Ah. Why does that not surprise me?”
“Did you believe Miss Tarlton was sent here as a spy in your midst?” he asked bluntly. She had nearly admitted as much before. It hadn’t mattered then…
“But of course! Why did Elizabeth Napier all at once have no further need of her services? Why, after nearly eight years with the Napiers, was Margaret prepared to come here?”
“It’s the nature of women, sometimes, to look for a change. I don’t know that Elizabeth Napier has been an easy mistress. Or Margaret Tarlton may prefer work that reminds her of growing up in India.”
“But that’s exactly the point, Inspector. The nature of women,” she said. “Margaret is nearly twenty-nine years old. The age when a woman is reminded that if she’s to marry, it must be soon. How many eligible young men would you say there are here in Charlbury?”
He caught himself wondering how old Elizabeth Napier was, and as if she’d read his mind, Aurore said, “Elizabeth was to marry Simon in 1914. But he asked her to wait, until the war was over. And when he came home from France, there was an unexpected impediment-his French wife. She has wasted five years. She will be thirty next month.” The devastating honesty of the French.
Smothering a rueful grin, he said, “The point is, we appear to have lost Miss Tarlton. Possibly between Charlbury and Singleton Magna. It’s my task to find her, I’m afraid.”
“Then I cannot help you. She went upstairs to pack, and I went to the farm to see to the livestock. As I have already told you.”
There was nothing else he could say, except, “I’ve kept you from your breakfast long enough. I’d like to speak to your husband before I go.”
But Simon had already finished his meal and gone across to the museum, and it was there that Rutledge finally caught up with him. Looking up from the small sandalwood figure in his hands, Simon said, “I thought your business was with my wife? Look at this. Shiva dancing. Exquisite, isn’t it? Even if I don’t have the faintest idea who Shiva might be! I’ll leave such erudition to my assistant.”
“That’s what brought me here, actually. Your assistant. I need to ask you who drove Miss Tarlton back to Singleton Magna, to meet her train.”
“I thought Aurore had. Why? Does it matter?” He replaced the carving on its shelf and stood back to see if it was dwarfed by the figures on either side. He picked up one of its neighbors, the fanciful figure of a large bird in flight.
“Yes,” Rutledge said, beginning to lose his temper. “Put that thing down and pay attention to me, man! There’s a woman lying dead in a pauper’s grave at Singleton Magna. I want to know if it could be Margaret Tarlton. And if it is, I want to find out who put her there.”
“In a grave? That’s nonsense!” He frowned. “Why should you think it’s Miss Tarlton?”
“Mr. Wyatt, we can’t seem to find Margaret Tarlton. She isn’t in London, and she isn’t in Sherborne, at the Napiers’. She was last reported to be here, in your house, on the point of leaving for her train. Nor have we located the Mowbray children, and that’s the crux of our problem. It raises questions about the identity of the murdered woman. There’s just a chance-an outside chance-that the body Hildebrand found in that field near Singleton Magna wasn’t the Mowbray woman after all. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to start all over again. And I intend to start here!”
Simon shook his head. “Margaret Tarlton took the afternoon train back to London. She’s most certainly not a murder victim!”
“Then, damn it, where is she now? And how did she get from Charlbury to Singleton Magna?”
“I’ve told you-I was busy in here, and it was already arranged for Aurore to drive her.”
Rutledge swore under his breath. He knew that Simon Wyatt wasn’t a stupid man. And yet he didn’t seem to hear what was said to him, or register the gist of it. “Are you telling me that your wife is a liar?”
He suddenly had Simon Wyatt’s full attention, clearly focused. “Aurore never tells lies,” he said curtly. “If she says she didn’t drive Margaret to the station, she didn’t.”
“Then who did? That’s what I’ve come to discover.”
The museum’s outer door opened and a woman walked in, calling Simon’s name. Rutledge, who could see the outer door from where he stood, recognized her at once. She’d been in the garden behind the inn, at the Women’s Insti
tute meeting. That white streak in her hair was distinctive.
“Hallo, Simon-” She stopped. “Oh, do forgive me, I didn’t know you had a visitor! I was sure this young man was calling on Aurore. I’ll come back later, shall I? Nothing important-”
“Inspector Rutledge, Mrs. Joanna Daulton. She’s the cement that holds Charlbury together. Her late husband, Andrew, was our rector. He hasn’t been replaced yet, and Mrs. Daulton has taken on his work as well as her own for nearly two years now. I don’t know what we’d do without her.” He smiled at her with more affection and awareness than he’d ever demonstrated when speaking of his wife.
Mrs. Daulton didn’t pretend to modesty. She said only, “Well, someone has to do it, while the bishops make up their tedious little minds! How do you do, Inspector? Mrs. Prescott, who lives next door to Constable Trait, has already met you, I think. I’ve been looking forward to that pleasure as well.” She held out her hand and he took it in his. A woman accustomed to social responsibilities and the burden of church duties that fell to her lot as the rector’s wife, she was clearly comfortable in any situation.
“Thank you. It must have been your son that I saw the other day. By the church. He told me his father had been rector here.”
Something moved in her face, a sadness that was beyond even her ability to deny. “Indeed? Henry was severely wounded in the last year of the war. But he’s making wonderful progress; we’re all quite pleased.”
Was it a polite social response, the “I’m quite well, thank you” that can mean anything from blatant good health to one foot in the grave? Because if Rutledge was any judge, Henry Daulton’s brain was permanently damaged. But then he was no judge of how far Daulton had come.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he responded with equal politeness, then added, “Did you see Miss Tarlton during her stay in Charlbury? In particular on the last day of her visit?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t-to speak to, I mean. As I was coming away from the Hamptons’, she was at the gate in front of this house, standing there as if waiting for someone. Later Henry told me she’d rung the bell at the rectory, searching for me to ask if I might drive her in to catch her train. But before he could fetch me from the garden, she called out that Mrs. Wyatt had come after all, and she would go with her.”
