Wings of Fire ir-2

by Charles Todd

  “Tell me about Richard’s death.”

  She looked at him over her cup before taking a long swallow. “You know about that. It’s the burying you want to hear.”

  Surprised, he said, “You knew what she’d done?”

  “Not then. Not when it happened, no. But once I found her crying over that little garden she’d wanted to make on the hillside, and when I smoothed her hair and told her her little brother was with God and happy, she turned to me and said in a voice that curdled my blood, ‘God doesn’t know where he is! I should have let them bury him in the vault with the others, but I thought-I thought it might make Mother happier if he wasn’t found. If there was hope alive. I thought-I thought the one who’d killed him would be terrified he’d come back and point a finger, and it would make him confess, and I was wrong!’ I can hear her, clear as I hear you, and it wrung my heart, I tell you! It was later I got the whole story from her, but by then Mr. James had shot himself, and it was better to leave Miss Rosamund with some hope, however small it was. So we did.”

  Rutledge looked up from his notes. He doubted that anyone else in the village would have taken that step with Olivia. It was a measure of Sadie’s understanding of a fragile child. “Did Nicholas know?” he asked.

  “Nicholas knew everything,” she replied, “and held his tongue because Miss Olivia couldn’t prove a word of it then. He was afraid the blame’d turn on her, you see. That they’d say she must’ve killed the boy herself, because she’d hid him, and was now trying to blame someone else. It was a terrible fix to be in. I thought it would be the death of them both. But Miss Olivia was strong! And he gave her all the courage he had, more than many a man possesses. I never saw such courage in a lad. These were children, mind you, carrying a secret too heavy for them. It made them older than their years. But they thought it had stopped, you see! When Miss Rosamund married Mr. FitzHugh. Mr. Cormac and Mr. Nicholas, they went away to school as it was set out they should, a governess was found for Miss Olivia, the twins were born, and the house was happy again. For ten year or more.”

  “Because he had to be patient. To wait until he himself was ready.”

  “Aye,” she told him sadly. “The worst, in a way, was to come. Mr. Brian was thrown by his horse, they said. Nicholas was there on the strand, speaking to him not half an hour before. Miss Rosamund wasn’t in the Hall, she was out in the gardens somewhere. Mr. Nicholas went to find her and that was when Mr. Brian died. But not before Mr. Brian had told Mr. Nicholas that Mr. Cormac, he wanted to change his name to Trevelyan, and would he, Mr. Nicholas, speak to Rosamund about it. Mr. Nicholas asked why Mr. Brian shouldn’t ask her himself, and Mr. Brian said, ‘It’s not my place. I’m not a Trevelyan, and Mr. Cormac isn’t a FitzHugh.’ Mr. Nicholas, he didn’t understand what Mr. Brian meant, but Mr. Brian just shook his head and said, ‘No, I love your mother very deep, and I’ll not ask favors of her! Let her do it out of her heart, not for my sake or Cormac’s.’ “

  “Did Nicholas ever mention that conversation to his mother?”

  “Lord, no! Before he’d found her, they set up a shout about Mr. Brian being bad hurt, and Mr. Nicholas, he looked like a ghost walking and never spoke of it to a soul except Olivia, and that was only after the funeral. I was the one laid out Mr. Brian, when they brought him up the stairs and put him in the bedroom beyond the landing. Looking for a clean shirt, so’s to make him presentable for Miss Rosamund, I found a letter ready to mail in his drawer, stuck deep under them. It was to Mr. Chambers, and it set out, starkly, the circumstances of Mr. Cormac’s birth. But when I spoke of it to Miss Olivia and we went to look for it, it was gone. Mr. Chambers, he never got it.”

  “You read it? When you found it?”

  She got up and went to the door to let the cat out into the night. He caught the breath of the sea and knew that the wind had changed direction. “Have you never lived in a house with servants? They aren’t deaf as posts and blind as bats. It was buried amongst his shirts, sir, not in his desk. I’d never have touched the papers in his desk, but it fell out on the floor and the sheet of paper went this way, the envelope that. I picked ‘em up and read the one before putting it in the other and setting it where it belonged, in the desk. And it was gone from there the next day.”

  “You’re certain Mrs. FitzHugh herself hadn’t take it?”

  “Well, as to that, sir, we couldn’t very well ask, could we, now! But later, when she was restless and uneasy in her mind, wandering the house all hours of the night, trying for sleep and not finding it, I wondered. Mr. Adrian, her father, hadn’t wanted her to marry Mr. Brian, and she knew it, but Mr. Brian was a kind man, he made her laugh and he had no eye for her money. The house’d gone to Miss Olivia, but the money was still Miss Rosamund’s. Mr. Brian gave no thought to it. He was happy if she was, and he gave her the twins, and Miss Rosamund adored them. It wasn’t a bad marriage to my way of thinking. Then Mr. Chambers, he started coming around when the period of mourning was finished, and Miss Rosamund, she looked for a time to be herself again, roses in her cheeks and that special way she had of tilting her head as if listening to something sweet in the air, whenever she was happy.”

  Sadie, standing at the open door, shut it as the cat came back inside, and went to the hearth to stand. She was tired, her face deeply lined. But Rutledge thought he couldn’t have stopped her now if he’d tried.

  “That was in June. By September she was dead, and they said it was by her own hand. But Lord, sir, I knew how much of the laudanum she’d took! I was the one that had to beg her each night to swallow half a draught to ease the despair she’d felt all through that last month. But she’d shake her head and say, ‘No, Sadie, I need my wits about me!’ ‘You’ll have no wits left, if ye don’t rest!’ I told her plain out, but she said ‘There’s something I must do, and I’m not sure exactly how to set about it. I’m not going to marry Mr. Chambers. Or anyone else. I’ve got my children to live for, and that’s the most important part of my life now.’ There was no changing her mind, she was that strong.”

  “She’d decided against marrying Thomas Chambers? Had she actually told him that?”

  “Oh, lord, yes, but he was there every weekend, come to call and dine with her. I heard her say to him once, ‘I’ve killed them all. George and James and Brian. I can’t bear to see you die, and I won’t, I tell you!’ And he said, That’s nonsense, my love, you’re letting grief turn your thoughts.’ She just looked at him, her face sad. ‘I’m bad luck, Tom, I’d rather stay single than wear widow’s weeds ever again.”

  “What made her think she had killed them?” He was fascinated, pretending to drink his tea and over the rim of his cup watching the old face in the lamp’s light, trying to read the eyes.

  ‘‘Ah, but did she? I wondered about that for the longest time. Miss Olivia, she said it was deeper than that, she thought Mr. Cormac, he was in love with Miss Rosamund. But there was no speaking of it, not to Miss Rosamund. She’d smile and say her spirits were fine, she’d just decided that marriage was not worth the grieving afterward.”

  “Then how did she come to die?”

  “That were odd, sir. One day she said to Miss Olivia, ‘I think I’ll ask Tom to come for the weekend. I need to speak to him. Legal matters, and perhaps after that’s done, we may find it possible to talk about other things.’ I was on the stairs, helping Mr. Cormac and Mr. Nicholas move a chest down from the attics that Mr. Cormac wanted to take back to his London rooms. You could hear their voices as you came down, talking in the drawing room. Then Miss Rosamund, she came out, she looked up at me, and her face turned that bleak I wanted to weep. I didn’t know what’d unsettled her, but it was there in her eyes. Cold as death. It was Miss Olivia who found the note she left, and burned it in the grate.”

  “A note? I was never told that there was a note found when Rosamund died!” Rutledge said, appalled.

  Sadie sat down, heavily and with great effort, then asked him to fetch her homemade wine, from the small cupboa
rd by the dry sink. When she’d finished half the glass and got her breath with more comfort, she said, “No. Miss Olivia, she burned it, like I said. It was written in a scrawl you’d hardly recognize, and hidden under the pillow. Just a name. And a warning. ’Twas all Miss Olivia needed. She went whiter than she was and bent over her mother’s body in such grief I couldn’t bear it. So I walked out of the room and went to fetch Mr. Nicholas, The note was never spoken of again. I didn’t need to be told. I’d heard the hounds myself since poor little Richard was taken. I knew who’d put the overdose in Miss Rosamund’s water. Not her, not that woman so full of life and love-she’d not have gone to her God with self-murder on her hands!” It was spoken with a vehemence that brought an angry flush to Sadie’s cheeks. In a stronger voice she added, “The twins, they were still too young to know anything about such things, only that their mother’d taken ill in the night and overdosed herself. Mr. Chambers, he was heartbroken. You’d have thought he was the grieving widower, not the family’s lawyer. It was the Gabriel hounds that whispered in her ear, bending over her as she dropped into that last sleep, and she’d known, she’d known where the danger was!”

  “The danger to herself?”

  “Oh, aye, that, and the danger to Miss Olivia. Because the truth of the matter was, you see, Mr. Cormac’d set his cap next for Miss Olivia. If he couldn’t become a Trevelyan in one way, he’d do it another. And Miss Rosamund, she wouldn’t marry him. Nor after begging her, how could he ask for Miss Olivia, without it all coming out? She’d have told Mr. Chambers too when he came, sure as God gave her the breath. It was what she’d decided, after all the worry and the sleepnessness. He was in a bind, and the easy answer was to remove the light of that house. Miss Rosamund, she’d used every excuse to put Mr. Chambers off, and he hadn’t run, he still wanted her with all his heart. He’d have done whatever she asked. He’d have questioned Olivia, too, and she might have told him at long last what was on her soul. But when Miss Rosamund died, Mr. Chambers was so sunk in his own pain that there was no way of reaching out to him. Miss Olivia buried her mother and told the world that grief had overwhelmed her in the night. Mr. Smedley, he loved that family, and he wouldn’t hear of suicide. Nor Dr. Penrith. He said her hands had been shaking, she’d been in a muddle from no sleep, and it was easy for her to make such a tragic mistake-dosing herself rather than waking one of the servants from their rest. She was that thoughtful, people believed it was true. And her killer counted on that to go scot-free! Who was there to cry murder? Miss Olivia? Who burned that paper?”

  “If it was murder-”

  She looked at him pityingly. “I’ve laid out more than half this village in my time, dead of accidents, dead of sickness, dead of broken hearts-it’s common enough, dying. Aye, sometimes murder’s been done too, but Dr. Penrith was a good man, he could find that needle in the haystack. And we all knew each other well enough to guess whose hand had done it: the husband, the lover, the jealous neighbor. But it was different at the Hall. There was none there who didn’t love Miss Rosamund dearly, and Miss Olivia knew they’d fight against her, unwilling to believe any such tale as she could spin. He was careful, and very clever. There was no proof! But that was when Miss Olivia and Mr. Nicholas took Mr. Brian’s children out of their will. No house, and the money tied tight in trust. However long and loud the hound might bay, it wouldn’t be for their blood. But he came for her, anyway, in the end. Because of the poems. Because he has the money now to do as he pleases. Because she knew what she knew, and it was time for him to marry. There’s a new provision in the deed of that house that if Cormac FitzHugh ever chooses to live in the Hall, he must never marry. Mr. Chambers, he thought it was because Miss Olivia loved Mr. Cormac and didn’t want him to bring another bride there. But she said it was her house, she’d do as she liked with it, and nobody could stop her. Which was true enough. And Mr. Cormac, he’s never married. But he’ll live in the Hall, and I hope, with all my heart, that the hounds come for him there, in the dark, when there’s no help to be had!”

  She began to weep, tears running down her white, withered face in ugly runnels, as if there had never been places for them to fall before, and now they couldn’t find a way.

  Rutledge found himself breathing hard, his body tight with black and wordless rage. He gave her his handkerchief and she took it, fumbling in the blindness of the tears. She touched her face with a dignity that was heart wrenching, because these were not tears for herself. She still hadn’t cried for herself.

  26

  After a long silence, Rutledge asked, “Why did Olivia choose to die? And why did Nicholas die with her?”

  Sadie shook her head. “If she wanted you to know that, she’d of told you. In her poetry. Somehow.”

  And, God help him, she had.

  Huskily Rutledge said, “More to the point, did she tell you?”

  “She didn’t have to. I may be old and tired and useless, but there was more to me, once, and a heart to match it. I knew without the telling!”

  “Was Cormac ever in love with Olivia?”

  “He was deathly afraid of her, if I’m a judge. It was the only thing he ever showed fear of, and that fear was nigh on to superstitious! Miss Olivia said he didn’t believe in God, but that he believed with whatever heart he had, her death would surely be his death.”

  For the first time in a very long hour, Hamish stirred and spoke as clearly as if he’d sat there at the table with them from the start. Or because of the tension that held him like a vise, had Rutledge himself formed the words aloud? Somehow he was never, afterward, sure.

  “She’s wrong there, it was no’ her death that brought him down, but Nicholas Cheney’s. And yon lassie not understanding it, and sending for the Yard.”

  Sadie looked up at him, her eyes no longer clear and sharp. “Aye, it’s true enough,” she answered. “It was Mr. Nicholas dying. But how could he have left Mr. Nicholas alive? He’d have come for Mr. Cormac with his bare hands the instant anything happened to Miss Olivia. However carefully it were done. That’s all that saved Mr. Cormac for twenty years, Miss Olivia not wanting to see Mr. Nicholas hanged! No, they had to die together. That was the only chance Mr. Cormac had in this world.”

  Rutledge had written down her words, and afterward, when he’d made more tea and coaxed her out of weariness and the peace of forgetfulness, with his help she read them over and with a shaking hand, signed at the bottom of the last page.

  Now, now he could walk into a courtroom with all the evidence any barrister might need. Except for what Stephen hadn’t trusted to Olivia’s boxes. The FitzHugh family history.

  It was late when Rutledge walked through the woods, trying to cope with the emotions that still consumed him, listening to his own footsteps on the path, the soles of his shoes grinding on the gritty flint and earth like the mills of the gods. Slowly but surely-But he didn’t want slowly, he wanted a reckoning now, bloody and final and with vengeance driving it.

  And Hamish, ferociously wrestling for control, was losing.

  As he rounded the last bend in the trees, there were lights ahead of him. And behind the bright windows, the heavy thunderheads of a storm building. Flashes of reddish gold lightning laced the clouds, dancing among them as the roll of distant sound like guns firing out to sea reached him. Rutledge felt a cleaving tightness in his stomach.

  “Before the battle, aye,” Hamish remembered with him, “always the guns. But in God’s name, you’re not in France now, not tonightl That’s a storm coming in fast, and yon house has nae claim on you now. Nor the man in it! Your work’s done. This is no’ your fight, man!”

  Pausing in the shelter of the darkness, he turned his eyes back to the house. There were lamps in several rooms. The drawing room. The study where Olivia and Nicholas had died. An upstairs bedroom that had been Rosamund’s…

  An invitation, then. Of a kind. “I’m here. I know what you’ve done this day. Come and face me yourself, if you dare!”

  Hamish said, �
�Not when ye’re sae angry! Not with the darkness on ye! It’s not worth dying for, just to see how he’ll take his defeat!”

  “I’m not dying in there. And neither is he, if I can help it. He’s laid down the challenge. I won’t walk away from it. Olivia didn’t.” But he knew very well it was the heat in his own blood speaking.

  Hamish retorted, “This isna’ the law, it’s vengeance! And it’s for her-all for that bluidy woman!”

  He didn’t answer, his mind already busy, calculating, weighing There was a scent of pipe tobacco on the breeze that ruffled the leaves over his head. Faint but real. Then the sound of feet walking closer.

  Rutledge turned his head. Behind him on the path the rector’s voice came out of the darkness, low and passionate.

  “The people of Borcombe are simple, but they aren’t stupid. They’ve talked to each other, and put most of the story together by now. So have I. And I’ve spent my day trying to undo the harm you’ve done here. You’ve shaken their faith, and in the end they’ll blame themselves for all those deaths. They’ll shoulder the burden for twenty-five years of wickedness, for not recognizing or stopping it.”

  Rutledge said, “I’ve seen it happen before in murder cases. 7 could have prevented it. ‘ But not this time. Not with this killer. Tell them that.”

  “If I understood why…”

  Rutledge turned his attention back to the headland. Gauging the storm and what was waiting in the house. The lamps were still burning.

  “The bedrock of my faith is redemption. That everyone can be saved, because deep down there’s some goodness to search out and nurture,” Smedley said tiredly. “I want to help.”

  “No. There’s no goodness to find here. Go back to the village and leave this to me. Here, take this with you.” He handed Smedley the statement he’d taken from the old woman. “Keep it safe for me.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just give it to Harvey. It’s finished. Or it will be, in a little while.”