Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  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?”

  “No,” Shaw said, wincing as he moved too suddenly in his chair. “Except that Margaret’s death doesn’t seem to have left even the briefest mark on anybody’s life except mine. And possibly Thomas Napier’s, who knows?” He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “I don’t know whether I loved her or hated her, in the end. I might have killed her myself, if she’d hurt me again. Someone else did, and now I want to find him-or her.”

  “For vengeance? It doesn’t work out the way you think it might.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Shaw said wryly. “If I discovered her killer tonight, I don’t know what I’d do about it. Turn him over to you. Or batter the life out of him myself. It doesn’t matter, I’m dead anyway. Still-it frightens me, not knowing how I’ll feel. When I loved her so much. That’s why I’m sober, Rutledge. I’m suddenly afraid to drink…”

  20

  It was the next morning when Rutledge finally ran Simon Wyatt to earth in the museum, shut the doors to the room he was working in, and said curtly, “Sit down.”

  “I’ve got too much to do-”

  Rutledge cut him short “The museum can wait. The opening can wait. I want to talk to you.”

  Something in Rutledge’s voice broke through his wall of isolation. Simon reached for a chair that was filled with boxes, shoved them off the seat, pulled it to him, and sat down. “All right. Five minutes.”

  “There’s a very good chance that the murder of Margaret Tarlton can be laid at your wife’s door.”

  “Aurore? Don’t be stupid, man, she’s no more guilty of murder than I am! If this is what you want to say to me, I’ve got more important things to attend to!”

  Rutledge reached out and pressed Simon back into his chair. “You’ll listen to me until I’ve finished, damn it. And I’ll decide when that is!”

  He had spent a long sleepless night going over many things in his mind, but there was no one except Hamish he could have said them to.

  “The plan was, as I understand it, for Mrs. Wyatt to drive Margaret Tarlton to the train station at Singleton Magna. She tells me that she didn’t, that she was at the farm working with a sick heifer. All right, that means that Margaret Tarlton is still in this house, looking for a way to the station. Mrs. Daulton sees her at your front gate, waiting-wearing the clothes she had changed into. The dress, in fact, she was wearing when the body was found. Elizabeth Napier has told me that she’s quite sure the dress belonged to Margaret. I’m sure Edith could identify it as well. Or Mrs. Daulton.”

  “I haven’t heard about this-” Simon began, incensed. “Why hasn’t anyone told me?”

  “Because you’ve got your head buried in this museum and don’t hear what’s being said to you,” Rutledge told him in exasperation. “To go on. Your maid Edith, concerned that Miss Tarlton might miss her train, hurries down to the inn to ask Denton if his nephew Shaw can drive Miss Tarlton. But while she’s gone Miss Tarlton, for reasons of her own, walks down to the rectory and asks Henry Daulton if he or his mother can take her to Singleton Magna. He leaves Miss Tarlton on the steps while he goes to the garden to speak to his mother, but as he turns away she says, ‘There’s Mrs. Wyatt,’ and leaves, angry that she’s already running late. A woman who lives on the other side of the inn tells me that she saw the car leaving town soon afterward, that your wife was driving, and that she believes Margaret Tarlton was a passenger.”

  Simon started to speak but Rutledge cut him short. “Whether her evidence is reliable or not doesn’t matter; this places your wife in the car with Margaret Tarlton, heading toward Singleton Magna in time to make the train. Miss Tarlton’s on her way to Sherborne, where she’s to spend several days with Miss Napier.”

  There was a look of surprise on Simon’s face, but he said nothing.

  “According to the stationmaster, she isn’t one of the passengers on the train going north and certainly not on the train going south. She doesn’t arrive in Sherborne on fifteen August, nor on the following day, because Miss Napier and her chauffeur Benson have gone to meet her, Miss Napier herself on the fifteenth and Benson on the sixteenth. Meanwhile in London, her maid Dorcas Williams hasn’t seen or heard from her, nor have her cousins in Gloucestershire. Miss Tarlton, it appears, has vanished from the face of the earth. But we do have a body in Singleton Magna who is wearing what appear to be her garments. It would seem, then, that Miss Tarlton died on the road outside Singleton Magna sometime in the afternoon. And if your wife took her out of Charlbury in your motorcar, then your wife was most likely the last person to see Miss Tarlton alive. Do you follow me?”

  Simon Wyatt, frowning, said, “Yes, of course I do! I just don’t accept your reasoning. My wife is not a murderess, she’d never met Margaret Tarlton before the thirteenth, when she went to collect her at the station, and I can’t imagine any possible reason why Aurore would want to kill a comparative stranger!”

  “Miss Tarlton was very likely going to accept your offer of a position here.”

  “And what’s that got to do with murder! No, your theory is full of holes, man! Aurore may have taken Margaret as far as Singleton Magna, but it doesn’t tell me what Margaret Tarlton did once she got there! If Aurore set her down in the town, someone else could have as easily met her there. Have you thought of that? Have you made any effort to find out?”

  He hadn’t, as Hamish was busily pointing out.

  Shaw. Elizabeth Napier. Thomas Napier. Who else?

  “Does Miss Tarlton know anyone in Singleton Magna-or for that matter in Charlbury?”

  “God, no! She’s been here once or twice with the Napiers, but she’s not the kind of woman who likes the country very much. London is her metier, she’s at home in parlors and salons and theaters.”

  “All the same, she was willing to work here. To leave London.”

  Simon made a deprecating gesture. “She came to help me make a success of the opening, and then I hoped to attract a student of the East to come in and see to preservation of specimens, the proper cases, some sort of cataloging, all the trimmings of a proper museum. I don’t have the money for that, not at the moment,
but the quality of exhibits is quite high. I’ve already shown some of the better examples to Dr. Anderson in Oxford.” Simon grinned. “I expect he hoped I might contribute them to his own private collection. My grandfather was a skilled draftsman and has drawn birds in New Guinea and Sulawesi that created quite a fuss when Anderson showed them to specialists. Many of them hadn’t been described before.” As he spoke, his eyes flashed with more life and enthusiasm than Rutledge had ever seen him show.

  “And you told her this was short-term employment?”

  “Margaret herself said she wouldn’t stay-six months, a year at best. She spoke of other plans after that. I thought it might be marriage. The way she tilted her head when she said it, with a sort of pride.”

  “Any idea who the man might have been?”

  “No. But then I’ve been away for four years. Someone she met in the war, at a guess. I don’t see Margaret Tarlton winding up a spinster.”

  “Someone she met in the war? Not Thomas Napier?”

  Simon stared at Rutledge. “Elizabeth’s father? Good God, what put that idea into your head! I thought I was the only one who knew about that!”

  “Someone had helped Miss Tarlton purchase a small house in Chelsea. I thought it might have been her employer.”

  A cold look turned Simon’s face hard. “No. It wasn’t Thomas Napier. It was my father. She bought it through a trust fund he set up for her.”

  Surprised in his turn, Rutledge said, “Why? That’s an expensive gift.”

  “He didn’t see fit to tell me. And they weren’t lovers, if that’s the conclusion you’re jumping to! He said it was a business arrangement, that he’d done it because he’d known her father. Poppycock! Tarlton never came here, and my father was never in India. I’d wager Thomas Napier’s behind it!”

  “Are you saying Napier was in love with Miss Tarlton? If he’d wanted her to have a house of her own, why didn’t he buy it for her?” It was the first independent corroboration of that he’d had.