Wings of Fire ir-2

by Charles Todd

  It read, “If you aren’t doing your job, you’re needed here. If there’s something happening, I want to know about it.”

  “No answer,” Rutledge told Trask, and went back to what he was writing.

  Explaining to Bowles would be the same as emptying the Sahara with a teacup. There was not enough time for it. Not today. Tomorrow might be different.

  Finally he sat back and looked at the sheets of paper on his desk.

  How weak was the evidence?

  Damned weak at the moment.

  Without statements, without the voices of people and their written words, evidence was always thin.

  And yet, it was there. It was there. Waiting to be culled.

  He felt satisfied.

  Rachel had driven straight to the Hall and left the car there before walking back into the village. She came into the inn as Rutledge ran lightly down the stairs, and he knew the instant he saw her face that he’d got what he wanted.

  “You’ll have to get it out of the car yourself. Susannah says if you damage the frame at all, she’ll have you up before the courts. It took two grooms to load it safely.”

  “Thank you!” he said, smiling, and she felt a deep sense of foreboding as she watched it light his eyes. He seemed to have lost five years over night, a man who had changed so much that she was afraid.

  And then the smile was gone, and with it the strangeness. He was himself again, the thin face, the lines. The bone-tiredness. But she thought that that might have been a sleepless night, not the weariness he’d seemed to bring from London with him.

  Rachel opened her mouth to say something, then decided against it. “Come on, then,” she said instead. “It shouldn’t be sitting out there in the sun.”

  They walked in silence to the house, and Rutledge was grateful for it, for the lack of questions in spite of the doubts that he knew were seething just below the surface in the woman at his side.

  She was spirited. She’d have made someone a very good wife. But not for Peter, who had valued his peace. In the long run, Rachel would have needed more than a book-filled house in the country and quiet evenings by the fire discussing Roman ruins. And not for Nicholas. Because the Nicholas she’d seen and loved was a figment, a falsehood built on lies that he couldn’t do anything about. The man who cared for Rachel, the man who’d done his best to send her away, was there inside, but for reasons Rachel herself would never willingly grasp.

  Rachel’s tragedy, he thought, as they came out of the woods and turned up the drive towards the house, was that love had seemed so real and so possible because she had wanted it too much.

  Just as he had wanted to believe Jean loved him as deeply as he believed he’d loved her. Jean, who hadn’t had very much courage, who turned from him because she couldn’t accept any other dream but the shiny, perfect one that had been shattered in 1914. Four years of war hadn’t changed her. And it had changed him-their lives-beyond recognition. Had he wanted her so much because he’d thought she could restore what was gone? Or had it really been love? He didn’t know any more.

  “Which may be an answer of sorts,” Hamish reminded him.

  In the back of the car, now sitting below the steps at the front door of the Hall, was a large object wrapped in heavy brown paper.

  It took him fifteen minutes, with Rachel offering unsolicited advice, to gently dislodge it from its cocoon of surrounding blankets and cushions, then lift it out onto the drive. Between them they got the package up the steps and then, unlocking the door, into the hall and across it to the drawing room.

  Another fifteen to find a small ladder and carry it there too. But in the end, stepping back to see the results, he was satisfied.

  Rosamund Trevelyan smiled benignly down from her proper place above the hearth, her face turned slightly, her cheek smooth and creamy against the background of light, her eyes full of life and love and hope.

  An extraordinary woman, mother of another extraordinary woman. As full of goodness and joy and beauty as the Gabriel hound had been full of darkness and destruction.

  23

  Rutledge was just returning from the kitchen, where he’d left the ladder, when the bell rang loudly in the emptiness of the house and brought Rachel, frowning, out of the drawing room.

  “Who is that?” she demanded.

  “Dawlish,” he said, and opened the door to the constable, who had Mrs. Trepol at his heels. The elderly housekeeper was staring over his shoulder, her eyes moving nervously from Rachel to the London policeman.

  Before Rachel could say anything more, Rutledge closed the fingers of his right hand around her arm to silence her, and nodded to Dawlish. “The drawing room. You’ll see the chairs and a table. Use them where they are.”

  Uneasy and uncertain, Dawlish glanced at Rachel, but Rut-ledge cut short any query. “See to it, man!” And he led Rachel towards the stairs, his eyes commanding her to wait. Not here. Not now. Her mouth was tight with suspicion and anger, and she moved ahead of him with the stride of a woman biding her time with a vengeance. Behind them, Mrs. Trepol followed Dawlish into the hall, their steps sounding loud and uncertain as they moved towards the drawing room.

  Once in the back sitting room overlooking the sea, Rachel rounded on him in a fury. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I won’t have it! This is wrong, this is trickery! Tell me what’s going on, or by God, I’ll find the nearest telephone and call London!”

  “Look,” he said earnestly, “I’m trying to get at the truth. Do you want me to walk away and leave this unfinished? I can’t. What I think has been done here-if I’m right, mind you-has to be settled. Now. It can’t be put off.”

  “What you think has been done!” she repeated. “But you haven’t told anyone what you think, have you? Not me, not the rector, not Inspector Harvey-”

  “I have told you. There have been a series of suspicious deaths starting with Anne-”

  “Yes, yes! Olivia killed them, you say. Or Nicholas. Dead people who can’t answer, can’t defend themselves! Well, let me tell you what I think! While I was at the Beatons, I made a telephone call. To a friend of Peter’s who knew you as well. He tells me that after the Armistice you spent months in a private clinic-a head injury, he said. Quite severe, he said, because you weren’t allowed any visitors. Nurses told him that for a time you didn’t even know who you were. Everyone was surprised when you returned to the Yard-they didn’t think you were well enough, that you’d recovered sufficiently to take on stressful work. He’s right, you aren’t capable of carrying out your duties! That’s why you aren’t in London, looking for that man-that’s why you were sent out to Cornwall, to get you safely out of the way, and why you’re searching out old, imaginary murders. You can’t do any better!”

  Shocked by her vehemence, he turned away towards the windows, looking out at the sea, his back to her, his face hidden from her angry eyes.

  “You sent for Scotland Yard,” he reminded her for a last time. “If I’m mad, if I’m imagining the need for this investigation, then some of the blame must be yours.” It was on the tip of his tongue to say more, and he caught himself in time, and added only, “I’m sorry, Rachel. More than you know.”

  His refusal to defend himself, the odd tone of his voice, brought her up short.

  They were a woman’s weapon, words. She’d deliberately wielded them to wound, to hurt him, to stop him. She’d telephoned Sandy MacArdle because he was a gossip, and she’d known he was a gossip, and she wanted the worst possible interpretation put on anything Ian Rutledge had done, to use that knowledge herself as savagely as she could.

  And suddenly, she felt sick, ashamed. “Oh, Nicholas,” she cried to herself with weary grief, “why did I have to love you so much!”

  Rutledge still had his back to her, the set of his shoulders betraying his own pain, waiting for her to go on.

  She found she couldn’t.

  “Why did you want the portrait?” she asked quietly, after a time.

  He wa
s watching the sea, but his eyes were blind to its beauty. Only the pain within him seemed real. And to his credit, he told her the truth.

  “Because I can’t close this investigation without taking statements from half the people in Borcombe. But you see, if I do that in the normal fashion, by the end of the day I’ll have taken down whatever embroideries they’ve devised between them to shield themselves and Rosamund’s family from scandal, and then we’ll never get at the truth. Because they all know bits of that truth, Rachel, whether they realize it or not. And I need to bring it out cleanly, bare and unvarnished. It occurred to me that sitting in that formal drawing room where each of them will feel desperately ill at ease, and watched by the one woman they all revered both in life and in death, I won’t get lies. I’ll have facts. And before anyone in Borcombe has quite understood where what they’re telling Constable Dawlish might be leading, the whole picture of murder and deception will be down in black and white. They can’t turn around then and deny it. They can’t pretend that they were misled or misinterpreted the questions. They’ll have to accept it themselves. And come to terms with it, however they can. But that’s the grievous cost of murder. We all pay it, along with the victims.”

  “What a very cruel thing to do.” Her voice was harsh with disbelief, her brief episode of sympathy washed away. He deserved to be savaged!

  He turned to face her again, his eyes sad. “It probably is cruel. I’d thought long and hard about that myself. I didn’t know what else to do. I could have told Harvey and these people what it is I’m after, but I don’t think they’d have believed me any more than you have. And the wall they’ve all drawn around the Trevelyan family would only go higher.”

  “All this for a dead woman! For Olivia!”

  “No, not for Olivia. For two small children who never lived to grow up. For James Cheney who died in despair, and Brian FitzHugh who trusted the wrong person, to his cost, and for Rosamund, who was driven to taking her own life to make it all stop. For Olivia, who gave up a quite incredible gift because something far more precious was threatened. And for Nicholas, who had spent a lifetime in her service, because he believed he failed her. For all I know, Stephen’s death was a part of it all. He was searching for something just before his fall, and I think I now may know what it was. If he hadn’t been late, if he hadn’t been in such a damned hurry, he might not have gone headfirst down those stairs. He was, in a sense, a victim too.”

  “How very morally upright of you, to set the record straight. And will we have a wax effigy of Olivia in the dock, when you present your evidence to the jury?”

  “No,” he said tiredly. “We’ll have a living person.”

  She stared at him, her mouth moving soundlessly, as if the words were there, but her voice had failed her.

  24

  There was a pounding at the front door, the sound traveling up the stairs like thunder, and Rutledge brushed past Rachel without a word, going out of the door and closing it behind him before crossing the hall to find Inspector Harvey waiting impatiently outside. Rather than ushering him into the house, Rutledge went out to stand in the bright sunlight beside him.

  “I’m told my constable is here. That you ordered him to call off the search on the moors this morning. And that you’ve got him taking statements from witnesses in the Trevelyan Hall drawing room, rather than his office.”

  “Yes, I left a message for you, explaining. I’m returning to London-”

  “So you said! And what use, pray, are these statements you’ve gone to such lengths to obtain?”

  “To clear the record. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  Not mollified at all, Harvey retorted, “Indeed. But I shouldn’t have thought that interviewing the good citizens of Borcombe would serve any better purpose now than it did at the time of the suicides.”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Rutledge agreed, watching gulls wheeling over the shoreline. He chose his words with great care. He needed Harvey’s support, but not his suspicions. “They probably can’t shed any further light on the deaths of Miss Marlowe and Nicholas Cheney. What I’m hoping they might do is give me sufficient understanding of Miss Marlowe’s state of mind over the last few years. Family affairs were worrying her-at least I have reason to believe that may be true. It could explain why, in spite of her literary success, she felt she couldn’t face living. Would you mind very much giving Dawlish an account of your discussion with her, about what makes a murderer?”

  “I’d feel a fool! That was a private conversation between you and me, what I told you!”

  ‘‘So it was. But if Miss Marlowe’s mind was already dwelling on such matters when you came here as a police officer, such evidence might provide additional weight. I feel she carried… a sense of guilt, for want of a better word, about the misfortunes in her family. I found some confirmation of that in her poetry as well. Gifted imaginations are often sensitive and very impressionable. They sometimes see what we overlook.”

  Harvey looked searchingly at him.

  “Are you having me on?” he demanded.

  Rutledge’s eyes came back from the sea to Harvey’s face. Something in them made the other man wary. “I’ve never been more serious. Olivia Marlowe believed that there was a murderer loose in her family. She believed she knew the identity of the killer, and that she had proof of a sort. Of a sort, mind you. Not the kind of proof you and I might use to ask for an arrest warrant, perhaps, or that a good barrister couldn’t make laughable in a courtroom. But she believed it. And she tried to document it as carefully as she could.”

  “That’s-that’s preposterous!” Harvey blustered, his neck brick red and the color rising fast. “I’ve never heard a more ridiculous fiction in all my years as a policeman! This is my country, I’d have known if there was murder done here. My predecessor would have known!”

  “Precisely why,” Rutledge responded, “I need these statements. I see no point in taking unsubstantiated rumors back to London. In my opinion we should set Olivia Marlowe’s fears to rest once and for all. She was famous, and there will be biographers. They shouldn’t be left to draw conclusions that might reflect badly on the police.” He shrugged. “What may come of it is the truth. I can’t think of anything fairer than that.”

  “That damned woman was a bother when she was alive, and worse now that she’s dead,” Harvey fumed, thinking over what Rutledge had said. And from the sound of it, Olivia Marlowe wasn’t going to stay quietly dead. He hadn’t reckoned on biographers trampling about his turf and prying into village business. Asking questions, raising doubts, stirring up people. He’d thought that was finished when the reporters had come to find out about O. A. Manning. The specter of an endless parade of troublemakers still to arrive was decidedly unsettling at best.

  Rutledge watched the slow, careful progress of Harvey’s mind as he considered the situation facing him. And then came to his decision.

  Harvey had been told the truth. Not all of it, but the cold, hard kernel of truth that was the center of what Rutledge was doing. The rest would come when the facts were down on paper and irrefutable. When the warrant was required.

  “Yes, well, I can understand what you’re saying, that there’ll be no peace for any of us. If the Home Office wanted this case reopened, we’ve already had the first round. Some newspaperman may get wind of it next, God forgive us, and we’ll be on the front pages! And the academics will be the worst of the lot, reading whatever they damned well please into her verse, and turning Borcombe upside down to show they’re right.” He sighed. “Oh, very well. Do what you have to do. Just make what haste you can.”

  Harvey turned and walked off down the drive. Rutledge felt the tension in his shoulders begin to loosen and absently rubbed the back of his neck.

  There was something more he wanted to do in the house, but Rachel was still there, and it was more important to avoid her now. The other matter could wait.

  The day wore on, a long straggle of people coming to the house,
the rector among them, giving their statements to Daw-lish and then leaving again, strangely subdued. For a time Rutledge watched them from the headland, and he saw too that Harvey made his appearance in due course, then left shaking his head. Rutledge wondered whether Dawlish had told him more than he should have about the questions asked-and answers received. Reporting to his superior, that’s how he’d have viewed it. Rutledge hoped he had not. Harvey’s stubborn, straight mind might just make the right leap. Good policemen, clever or not, had a sense about some things. It didn’t take imagination to learn from experience. The problem was, where would Harvey turn if he learned the truth? How would he use it? Hasty decisions had a way of wrecking a clean, tight investigation. And Harvey wanted to be seen as running his own territory, not following the lead of strangers from London.

  By dinnertime Rutledge had collected the statements from the weary constable eager to get home to his wife. Then he went up the stairs two at a time, and carefully collected the small gold articles from Olivia’s closet. For a moment he held them in the palm of his hand, where they shone with soft beauty, as if innocent of blood and death.

  As they were, in themselves, he thought sadly.

  Downstairs he took one last long look at Rosamund’s portrait, silently apologizing for what he’d caused to be done in her drawing room that day. She stared back at him in silence, a faraway look in her eyes.

  He walked back towards the village alone, his mind busy.

  Sadie hadn’t come, Dawlish reported, though Dr. Penrith, walking slowly on his daughter’s arm, had arrived at the Hall at the time set for him. And Wilkins, and Mary Otley. Later someone would have to interview Susannah and her husband, and Tom Chambers, the solicitor. Rutledge himself had questioned Dawlish at the end of the day, writing down his answers without looking up at the man’s accusing eyes.

  The constable was an intelligent man, he could think through what he had spent the long day doing. But how far had he gotten in putting the pieces of the puzzle together? Far enough to wonder, Rutledge thought, but not quite far enough to know the whole…