by Charles Todd
“Hmmm. Secrets take many forms, don’t they? From the sins of the flesh to the sins of the soul.” The doctor smiled, but without humor or lightness. “This one is terrible enough that the killer was willing to suffer horror himself-herself-in order to keep it safe. Until you’ve battered someone to death, Inspector, you can’t conceive of how much blood and flesh and bone are spattered about. Only a madman can relish that, or someone so deranged by emotion that the flecks are not even registered, until it’s over. Or someone grimly carrying on to the bitter end.” He turned out the light in the hall and led the way to the side door of his surgery. “Does what I’ve told you help at all?”
“Yes,” Rutledge said tiredly. “Unfortunately, I think it does.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” the doctor said, taking up his own coat and putting it on. “I’m late at a dinner party, and my wife won’t be happy about that. Hildebrand didn’t find my information useful. He’s a good man, Inspector, but he makes up his mind to suit the facts. If I took the same approach in medicine, I’d have filled the churchyard with my mistakes!”
Rutledge walked back to the Swan, thinking about what the doctor had said. Hamish, in the back of his mind, was reminding him that blindness could be worse than deafness. Rutledge ignored him as long as he could and then said, “It isn’t blindness. Human nature enters into it. I can’t see Aurore Wyatt beating anyone to death. You said as much yourself once.”
“Women,” Hamish said, “will kill to protect their bairns-and their man. Margaret Tarlton was Simon Wyatt’s past, returned to haunt him. She did na’ want that. And the woman wasn’t going away, she was staying.”
“Jealousy? No, I don’t see Aurore Wyatt being jealous of Margaret or anyone else.” Yet she was afraid of Elizabeth Napier.
“Who’s spoken of jealousy?” Hamish demanded.
Rutledge stopped, watching a carriage coming up the hill toward the inn. The streets were deserted, it was just the dinner hour. He stood still and could hear laughter coming from the house on his left, and people’s voices. The carriage rattled past and disappeared among the trees at the top of the hill. A cat stepped out of the inn’s yard, ears twitching, catching the distant sound of a dog’s raucous bark. Something fluttered overhead-a bat, he thought.
But deeper was another thought. Why had Simon Wyatt turned away from his future in Parliament? What was the real reason?
A foreign wife might not be an asset-but with the proper backing, even that might be overcome. If Elizabeth Napier’s father had turned against Wyatt for rejecting his daughter and putting in her place a French nobody, he was-by all accounts-an astute enough politician to know that you didn’t have to like the men you backed, you only needed to be sure of their support in the future. The Wyatt name had been magic in this part of Dorset for more than one generation. A safe seat for this constituency.
Simon and Aurore blamed his decision on the war. But what if there was something more than war weariness-or a devotion to his other grandfather-that made a very able and personable man choose seclusion over a brilliant career? A small museum without the resources to grow, hidden away in the Dorset countryside where visitors were few, where the exhibits would surely have a very narrow appeal, however interesting they were in their own right… It didn’t quite add up.
“It’s no’ what I was saying-” Hamish began.
But Rutledge cut him short. His eyes moved across to the police station where Mowbray still sat in his gloomy cell, watched day and night. “It’s a beginning, isn’t it?” he responded. “That’s all that matters!”
The station door opened and Hildebrand came out, then paused as he saw Rutledge looking toward him. An instant’s hesitation, and he walked on, as if the man on the other side of the street didn’t exist.
“You’ve spoiled his investigation,” Hamish pointed out. “He will na’ thank you for it.”
“Mowbray might,” Rutledge said. “Nobody else seems to care about him.”
After eating his dinner without being aware of what was on his plate or his fork, Rutledge went out to his car and turned it toward Charlbury.
It was late in the evening to be calling on police business, but often the unexpected worked more successfully than the routine.
The road was dark, nearly empty, except for a dog that trotted into the undergrowth as the car’s headlamps flicked over the crest of the rise. But Charlbury was brighter, and the Wyatt house looked as if it was expecting the King. There were lamps lit in most of the rooms, and in the museum wing. He left his car up by the church and walked back, making his way to the wing on foot. He thought: Curious… so much light and no sounds of voices, of people shouting or talking or laughing.
The museum was empty. The masks leered at him in the brightness, mouths agape or dark slashes, eyes black with speculation or alarm, and the weapons, doubled with their own shadows, gave the rooms an air of tension. He walked through the three main areas, into the small, empty office, and then into the room across from it, hardly more than a large broom closet. He had never been there before. It held a bed with only a blanket, military in its folds, a chair, and a wooden table of indeterminate age, rescued from the attics or a jumble sale. A cupboard held a pair of shoes and some underwear, a clean shirt and a folded, freshly pressed pair of trousers.
Rutledge stood there in silence, not needing Hamish’s comments to tell him that this was where Simon Wyatt spent most of his nights.
A gasp from the doorway made him spin around.
Aurore was there, grasping the frame with fingers that were white. “For a moment I thought-” She stopped. “Were you looking for Simon?” Her voice had steadied, sounded nearly normal. “Couldn’t you have come to the door and knocked, as everyone else does?”
“-that I was Simon?” he asked, finishing her first, unguarded reaction. “I didn’t come to the door because I saw the lights here and thought he was in this wing. I preferred not to disturb the household, calling so late.”
“Simon… is out,” she said.
But her eyes were showing the strain of worry, and he said, “What’s wrong?” His words crossing hers.
She let the door frame go, then shrugged, that French expression of I wash my hands… “He doesn’t sleep well. At night. He hasn’t since the war. He rests here sometimes, when he doesn’t want to disturb me, moving about the house in the dark. Or if he’s very tired, sometimes in the afternoon. That’s why the bed is here. It doesn’t signify.”
It was an apology for her husband. Perhaps for the state of her marriage. And an attempt to distract him. But the tension in her was palpable.
He read her eyes, not her words. “What’s wrong?” he repeated.
“You misunderstand, there is nothing to worry you.” She looked away.
He stood there, watching her. In the end, she turned her face back to him and said, “It isn’t a police matter! Simon has gone somewhere. I was worried when he didn’t come to dinner. I waited, and finally I went to find him. But he isn’t in the house. Or in the grounds. I’ve looked. Elizabeth Napier took it upon herself to walk up to the church and to the Wyatt Arms. He won’t be there, but it gave her something to do.”
And took her out of my way… The thought if not the words hovered between them.
“How long has he been gone? Did he take the car or one of the carriages?”
“Since teatime. I think. The motorcar is still here, and the carriage.”
“Then he must be in the village-at the Arms or at the rectory, perhaps.”
After a moment she said, “It-this isn’t the first time he has gone without telling me. But not this long, before. That’s the only reason I worry.”
She stared at him, her eyes begging but saying nothing. Refusing to betray her husband.
The dead didn’t wander about in the night, talking to fence posts and trees, looking for their soul. Jimson’s words echoed darkly in his mind.
“Can I help? Mrs. Wyatt?”
Hamish was tel
ling him that it was not his affair, it was not police business. But Rutledge had an intense feeling that it might be. Men like Simon Wyatt didn’t walk out their door at teatime and disappear.
“You can help by returning to Singleton Magna and calling again in the morning. Everything will be well in the morning, I promise you!”
“Will it? Let me help you find him. Discreetly. People are used to a policeman prowling about. God knows, we’ve searched for days in every conceivable place for those children! Where shall I begin?”
“He hasn’t-” She stopped, then after a moment said, “Before this, he was always in the house or the gardens.” Yet her voice seemed hollow, even to her own ears. “Always.”
Again he read her eyes, ignoring her words. “But you aren’t sure of that, are you? If he often slept here, in this bed, or worked long hours in this wing, how could you be sure? Where he went-or when-or for how long! During the day or in the night.”
Aurore bit her lip. “The house-with Elizabeth Napier here, moving between the house and the museum, he must feel-I don’t know. Caught ”
“But he was proposing to hire an assistant. She would have been in the house and the museum day after day.”
She said angrily, “I don’t know! Explain it however you will!”
“Do you want to come with me?”
Aurore shook her head. “No. I’ll stay. In the event…” She let the sentence run into silence again. In the event he returns of his own accord… and needs me.
He walked past her, near enough to smell the fragrance of her hair and perfume. Lily of the valley… But she didn’t turn, she didn’t say anything more.
At first he quartered Charlbury, down toward the inn, up toward the church. He saw Elizabeth Napier speaking to someone by the church door and thought it might be Joanna Daulton. Nothing.
He went on to the motorcar and began to drive toward the farm, thinking that it was a logical place for Wyatt to escape to if he wanted peace from the two women who drew him first this way and then that.
Jimson had seen him in the night – it has happened before. Rutledge didn’t need Hamish to tell him. He had already gotten there on his own.
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 ti
me 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.
