Wings of Fire ir-2

by Charles Todd

  Passing through the woods, Rutledge considered the problem of Sadie. Did she know what a sworn statement was?

  He would have to go to her, then, and hope her mind was clear.

  As he passed the Otley cottage he could see someone standing in the shadow by the door. Rachel, watching him. He could feel her eyes, the intensity of emotions, the uncertainty. But she stayed where she was, and he wondered what was going through her mind. What she would do now. Or if she would wait. Women often thought along different lines. Where a man saw duty, women were more concerned with emotions, feelings. He’d learned early on that a policeman ignored such differences at his peril.

  Rutledge was just beside the Trepol gate when the housekeeper stepped out her door and called to him.

  “Inspector Rutledge?”

  He opened the gate and went up the walk where he would be out of earshot of Rachel. If Mrs. Trepol had questions about the statement she’d given, it was better not to broadcast them.

  When he reached her, she acknowledged him with a nod and then said, “You’ll be wanting me to clean up after all those feet tracking dirt into the hall and the drawing room?”

  “It would be kind of you,” he said. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Miss Rosamund would never have allowed it,” she said, resigned to what she must have considered little short of desecration. One did not invite half the village in to sit in a fine chair under the best portrait in the house, not in the age in which Mrs. Trepol or Rosamund Trevelyan had grown up and learned their respective places in Borcombe.

  “I know,” he told her, “but sometimes the law must do what has to be done, and worry about the fitness of it afterward. I think she would have been glad to be a party to settling her family’s affairs.”

  “Is that what you’re doing, sir?” Mrs. Trepol asked earnestly.

  “It’s what I’m trying to do. To explain the deaths of Olivia Marlowe and Nicholas Cheney. To set it right.”

  She nodded, as if she understood.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said quietly. “I’d not like to think of them in pain and grief over what they did. A sad end to two lives, that was. I could never feel quite right about it, and I couldn’t see the purpose. We have to live the lives we’ve been given, there’s naught else for it. God doesn’t give us a choice. That’s what the church says. Suffering teaches in its own way.”

  “Yes, sometimes,” he said, knowing how close he himself had come more than once to ending his own suffering.

  She nodded again, and looked around her for her cat. Rut-ledge turned and started up the walk again.

  Mrs. Trepol said, tentatively, “Sir?”

  “Yes?” He only half turned back towards her, wanting to go on to the inn and read the statements.

  “If you’re finished with us, well, sir, I was wondering if maybe you’d know what was best to do with them boxes Mr. Stephen gave me to hold for him. I kept expecting Mr. Chambers to come and fetch them, after Mr. Stephen died, but he hasn’t. Maybe he doesn’t want them any more, now that Mr. Stephen is dead? Just some old things, he told me, some treasures he wanted to keep for himself, memories of the family, he said. Nothing but a boy’s foolishness, he said, but he didn’t want them left behind in the empty house and he wasn’t ready to take them up to London with him, no room in the car with all those things Miss Susannah and the others wanted to carry away.”

  Rutledge turned and looked at her in the late evening light, at the plain, earnest face that waited for him to do what was best.

  “I thought of mentioning it to Miss Rachel, but they’re Mr. Stephen’s things, and I haven’t seen Miss Susannah by herself, only with Mr. Daniel there, and I didn’t know-I thought perhaps that wasn’t what Mr. Stephen would want. He’d said I was to keep the boxes for him, you see. Just for him, as a favor. And he was always a hard one to say no to, so I thought I’d just ask and you might tell me what was best. They’re not my things-I wouldn’t want to do anything wrong.”

  He couldn’t turn to see if Rachel was still in her doorway. He couldn’t be sure she wouldn’t see him carrying boxes away.

  Instead, he scooped up the cat that was coming through the open gate, and said, quietly, “Show me.”

  Mrs. Trepol went indoors, and Rutledge, still carrying the cat, followed her. In a closet set in the hall between her bedroom and the kitchen there was a stack of boxes, three of them. To the other side two coats, a rack of gardening boots, and a line of old umbrellas crowded the narrow space.

  Rutledge had already put down the squirming cat, and he stood there staring for a moment at the boxes. Then he lifted down the first of the three and opened it carefully. Mrs. Trepol turned away, as if afraid she might be trespassing if she looked at the contents.

  He felt no such compunction.

  The first box held Olivia’s notebooks of verse, annotated and revised, her record of creative thought, the process of making words do her bidding. He regarded the neat rows thoughtfully, not reading any of them but paying silent homage to them as his fingers gently touched their spines. The second box held contracts, letters, and bank records. He was amazed at how well good verse paid. The third was a collection of many things, photographs, a genealogy of the Trevel-yan family, personal letters, childhood scribbling that gradually foretold the growth of a formidable talent, and a number of books with her name in lovely script on the flyleaves.

  Rutledge, trying to hide his disappointment and quell Hamish’s fierce litany of “I told you so!” prodded the contents again, as if expecting them to produce, by magic, the answers he wanted. Mrs. Trepol had gone into the kitchen to feed her cat, and he squatted on the wide floorboards, refusing to give up.

  It wasn’t until then that he noticed that some of the contents, stacked as if in a file drawer, were higher than the others. Lifting them out gently, he found a slim journal under this batch, and took it out in its turn.

  The hand was strong and clear, the writing of a woman who had used a pen most of her life and was at home with words.

  Not a journal, a letter to her half brother. He skimmed it swiftly.

  Dear Stephen,

  There are some things you must know, and I shall not be here to tell them to you. I’m sorry about that, to leave you with these revelations when you are grieving for us. But I must arm you for what’s to come. I have done my best to protect you and Susannah. For one thing, 1 have left the house in such a way that it must be sold, and you’ve been aware for years that that was my wish as well as Nicholas’. For another, I have kept you in ignorance as long as I dared, and drawn the lightning myself all these years. By dying, I have set him free at last. And you will be safe now. You have nothing he wants. I have promised him that. But who can know what the future holds? Circumstances change, and I cannot foresee every possibility. The time may come when what I am writing down here is all you have. Whether you believe me or not, I pray you’ll trust me and for your own sake, keep the confidence I am sharing with you. Vengeance will only bring you and Susannah down into the pit. And my death will have been for nothing!

  Let me tell you, then, about the murderer who has lived with us for all of your life and most of mine.

  25

  Rutledge stopped there and closed the journal, returning it to its resting place. Hamish for once was silenced, his voice if not his presence shut down in the face of truth. Rutledge felt his heart racing, his mind torn between triumph and depression. Triumphant that there was something more than lines of verse on which to base his case, and depressed that Olivia Marlowe had had to sacrifice herself to keep her younger half brother and sister alive. Had that been what drove her to suicide? A threat against Stephen: his life or yours?

  Was that the bargain struck with Lucifer? Or only a part of it?

  Mrs. Trepol stuck her head around the kitchen door and said, “Will you be taking them with you, sir? Mr. Stephen’s things?”

  Rutledge got to his feet and began to stack the boxes into the closet again.

 
“Go on keeping them safe for now,” he told Mrs. Trepol. “Let them stay where they are. I’ll come for them myself before I leave. Sooner, if I can. And I wouldn’t bother either Miss Rachel or Miss Susannah about them now. They’ve got enough on their minds, I don’t want to worry them about Mr. Stephen at the moment.”

  She thanked him gravely and followed him to her door, closing it after him.

  Hamish, never silenced for very long, had found his voice again. “I’ll hear no crowing, now or later! Ye didn’t find them, did you? They had to come to you, out of nowhere, and you can’t take any of the credit for that!”

  “I don’t want credit,” Rutledge said, walking down the path and closing the gate behind him, still torn between taking the boxes with him and leaving them where they were. He turned towards the inn once more, only part of his mind taking in the emptiness of the street, the quietness-no noisy children, no neighbors gossiping over garden walls, no young couples strolling hand in hand through the evening light. He’d seen it before, the way villages drew inward in a time of crisis. “I’m starting with the statements. After that, I’ll have Harvey collect that letter. Once I’ve organized all my own information clearly in black and white, he’ll be able to see how the letter corroborates it. And if he can see it, London will have to do the same.”

  “And what about Stephen FitzHugh? Did he find yon letter? Was that why he left the boxes here?”

  “He must have read it,” Rutledge said tiredly. “He was her executor because she trusted him. That may have been her only mistake. I believe Stephen had changed after the war. Rachel said much the same thing, that he wasn’t the same man when he came home. My God, how few of us are!” There was bitterness in his voice, hearing again Rachel’s diatribe, and feeling no triumph for what he’d accomplished this day, only doubt over his methods. Beside him the tip of the church tower was touched by the slanting brightness, like a beacon. It gave him no comfort.

  Hamish clicked his tongue in disagreement.

  “Damn it, look at the facts, then! He decided on a memorial-that was the word Rachel used-instead of selling the house. That went against Olivia’s express wishes, and yet he hid the boxes where no one could find them and stumble on the truth. I think Stephen looked at his choices and felt he could turn the Hall into a museum by blackmailing the killer into allowing it. That was arrogance, not courage.”

  A fisherman, coming up from the strand, caught sight of Rutledge walking towards him and made a point of crossing the street to the far side, to avoid passing him. Yes, the village had drawn its conclusions

  …

  “You can’t know what was in his mind!”

  “No. But I know he left the boxes with Mrs. Trepol. He didn’t put them in the car to take to London. He didn’t leave them in the house where someone else might have come across them. He didn’t give them to the solicitor, Chambers. He put them in the care of a woman who would follow his instructions exactly, and he knew that.”

  “Aye, but Stephen FitzHugh fell down the stairs. It was an accident, and you said as much yourself.”

  “I still believe that.”

  Rutledge had reached the inn, pushing open the door. It was dark and silent, except for lights at the end of the kitchen passage. He carried the statements to his room and locked them in his suitcase along with the small bits of gold before finding Trask and asking that some dinner be sent upstairs. For once the landlord had nothing to say when he brought up the tray. It was as if the village was shunning him.

  Later Rutledge walked through the gloaming towards Sadie’s cottage. The setting sun still struck the headland with a rich golden light, but in the narrow valleys it was already that soft blue dusk that stole color from the land and left it almost in limbo between day and night.

  Sadie was in her garden, weeding a row of carrots. She straightened her back as he came down the path towards her and stared at him in silence.

  He felt a sense of guilt, as if it was written in his face that he’d been there the night before, digging among the pansies. But he knew it was impossible for her to be sure-to have seen anything, heard anything.

  “She doesna’ need to hear or see,” Hamish reminded him. “She has the gift.”

  “Good evening,” Rutledge began, keeping his voice neutral. “I’ve come to ask you why you didn’t walk across to the Hall to talk to Constable Dawlish. He waited, hoping to speak to you.”

  “Let him wait,” she said, “I’ve naught to say to him.”

  “To me then. Will you speak to me?”

  “I’ve told you before-”

  “That you want no part of the Gabriel Hound! I know. I won’t ask you about him, not directly. But I hope you can tell me more about Olivia. How she managed to keep such secrets, young as she was. How she grew into the woman she was, without breaking under the strain. And then this spring, why she chose to take her own life. If she expected to bring him down with her, or if she’d given up. I need Olivia’s help, and she’s dead. But she trusted you. Will you let her speak through you? I’m ready to bring this killer into a courtroom, and I need all the secrets now. Except his name. I know that. Finally.”

  She cocked her head to one side and examined him. “I’d not be in your shoes, then. There’s no mercy in him.”

  “That’s why I must finish this tonight.” His voice was gentle now.

  “Did you come in the night? Last night?”

  “Yes. I came. I found Richard. There are pansies at his feet.”

  Something in her face crumpled. But she said nothing.

  “She couldn’t stop the hounds,” he said. “She couldn’t bring him to justice. But she did tried to leave the evidence, one way or another. In hope. Don’t let it be wasted! Let me see that justice is done for her.”

  Sadie pulled her black shawl closer about her thin shoulders. Weighing him. Judging him. “He’s run free all these years. He’ll slip any leash put on him. And come back here.”

  “No one comes back from the gallows.” He searched for something else to convince her. “And the dead can sleep in peace, then.”

  “I’d like that,” she answered after a time. “Before I die, I’d like to be certain sure of that.”

  He thought she was still going to refuse. He thought, watching the play of emotions on her lined, tired face, the telltale eyes, that he was going to lose her.

  But she straightened her back again and started to walk towards the cottage door. “Come inside, and I’ll make tea. And answer your questions.”

  Sadie was the only person connected with the family that Olivia hadn’t written about in her poems. He’d noticed that omission last night, and now he understood it. He’d been right to look behind the facade.

  He followed the old woman through the low doorway and took out his notebook. She gestured for him to sit, and the cat on the window ledge stared at him through slitted eyes as he took the chair Sadie indicated. In silence she put the kettle on, got out cups and the tin of tea.

  He waited, giving her space and time.

  When the small teapot was set on the table and she began to pour, he asked his first question. She handed him his cup before she answered.

  And in the next hour, he was very glad after all that she hadn’t come to the Hall to be interviewed by Constable Daw-lish.

  Her voice was shaking when she started. A thin, frail thread of sound that worried him, made him careful neither to overwhelm nor overtire her. He could see, too, when it became a catharsis, like confession before a priest. A deep and emotional release that welled up slowly, and yet brought with it waves of intense feelings. She wasn’t retelling an old story, she was quite literally reliving old and very bitter griefs. Buried so long they were part of bone and sinew, and a sense of failure. She was-he’d been told it early on-by nature and profession a healer.

  “No, we none of us suspected Anne had been killed,” she replied slowly to his first question. “But Miss Olivia, she fretted herself near to death over it, and Mr. Adrian-her g
randfather, that was-said it was because they were one flesh, Anne and Olivia. But it was deeper than that. The child had nightmares and sometimes I’d be called in to sit beside the bed, a lamp in the corner with a shawl thrown over it, to hold her hand. Mr. Nicholas was only a wee thing, but he’d stand at the door and watch his sister with those deep dark eyes of his, and it was as if he knew what she was suffering. But Miss Olivia, she never spoke of what was in her heart. Not even to her mother. After a time she was better, and yet not the same ever again. She’d sit with a book in her lap, and not know a word on the page. She’d be standing by the window, looking out, and never see what was beyond the glass. I’d tended wounded soldiers in my time. This was a wounded child.”

  “When did she first mention the Gabriel Hound to you? Or was it you who told her?”

  “One day she found a book in her grandfather’s library, and read about them. ‘Twas an old story, and she wanted to know if I’d heard of it, and of course I had. She wanted to know then if I’d believed in it, and I said, ‘Child, I’ve seen the Turks, I don’t need to fear any hounds!’ And she answered me with that straight look of hers. ‘I’ve heard them. The night Anne died.’ It was all she said, and after that, I found myself lying awake of nights, listening too. Because you took Miss Olivia’s flights of fancy serious. She was a knowing one.”

  “Then why didn’t she speak to her mother? Or Adrian Trevelyan? Surely they’d have believed her.”

  “I asked her once. She said, ‘I was warned.’ And she wouldn’t budge from that.”

  He felt the cold on the back of his neck, as if something had touched him where the hackles rise. Small wonder Olivia had lived in her own world for so very long. She had been frightened into it, and it had become her sanctuary.

  Sadie’s eyes brimmed with pain. He hastily changed directions.