Wings of Fire

by Charles Todd

  “Which firm is handling the wills?”

  “Chambers and Westcott for Olivia and for Nicholas. I don’t know about Stephen. He had a friend in the City who was a solicitor.”

  It would be easy enough to find that out in London.

  He thanked her and walked on to the rectory, expecting Smedley to be tending his garden, but the grim-faced housekeeper announced that he was having a nap and she wasn’t about to disturb him.

  Rutledge was just turning away when Smedley came down the stairs into the hall, his hair standing up in the back and his shirttail on one side hanging out of his trousers.

  “Good afternoon, Inspector,” he said, voice still thick with sleep. “Give me two minutes, and I’ll walk in the garden with you.”

  Rutledge went around the back, walked along the tidy rows of vegetables and flowers, and was nearly to the small, scummy pond that had once held fish before Smedley stepped out the back door and came to join him. His hair was combed and his shirt neatly tucked into his trousers, his braces in place.

  He cast a look at the sky, and said, “It has been a beautiful day. I hear you and Rachel took a boat out.”

  Rutledge smiled. “We did. And lived to tell the tale, though she had some doubts in the beginning. Who was the gossip?”

  “It came by way of Mrs. Hinson, who had seen Mr. Trask outside the inn on her way to morning service. She then stopped to offer my housekeeper a small pot of the jam she made yesterday. And I was given the news with my tea, along with the jam.”

  “What do the gossips of Borcombe have to say about three deaths at the Hall, all in a matter of months?”

  “Much as you’d expect. The women felt that Olivia’s writing must have turned her mind. We aren’t used to famous poets in Borcombe. I think they believed somehow it was a proper judgment on her, for writing about things best left unsaid and probably best left unfelt in a woman.”

  “And the men?”

  Smedley frowned as he stooped to pull a yellowed leaf off the nearest carrot. “The men are of two minds about Olivia Marlowe. She was of course a Trevelyan, and they’re above the common lot, in most eyes. You forgive a Trevelyan much that you might hold against the greengrocer or your neighbor across the road. At the same time, dying by her own hand was an admission that she’d overstepped the bounds, in a manner of speaking, and finally became aware of it. The universe, you might say, is now back in its stable orbit.”

  “What about Stephen FitzHugh? And Nicholas?”

  “Stephen was a sore loss. Half the village adored him— every female under sixty, and more than a few over that! The other half, the men, admired him. A good man to have on your side, sense of humor, knew how to lose as well as to win. Quite a reputation for courage in the war, was wounded, decorated. Sportsman. Successful in his business, which was banking. Popular with the ladies. Yes, he was admired—and sometimes envied. That’s natural. Nicholas was respected— Rosamund’s son, the natural leader in village affairs, the man you turned to when there was trouble. Pillar of strength. Not the sort you’d expect to choose suicide. The general belief was that he found Olivia dead or dying, and in the first shock of grief, took his own life. That’s romantic nonsense, but they’re more comfortable with it than with the truth—that he might have wanted to die. But this isn’t why you came to see me, I think?”

  “I wanted to know what became of Olivia’s papers. The ones she left to Stephen as her literary executor.”

  “They’re probably still at the house. Stephen didn’t want to sell, he wanted to keep the Hall as a memorial to his sister. The others took a few personal things, but he was dead set against removing much else. And was prepared to fight a bitter battle to have his way. Have you looked in Olivia’s room? Or her desk?” He read the expression on Rutledge’s face. “No, of course not. Well, I’d start there. It’s not likely, is it, that Olivia sent them off to her solicitor? He’d have guessed something was wrong, and she didn’t want that. Besides, we aren’t sure just how soon after she decided to put an end to her life she acted on that decision. A day? A month? Five years? A few hours?”

  “She had straightened up her desk. Nicholas hadn’t cleared away his ships.”

  Smedley looked at him. “That’s proof of nothing.”

  “Of, perhaps, a state of mind?”

  “You’re saying that she knew where she was going, what she was planning to do, and Nicholas didn’t?”

  Rutledge watched the light and shadows play on the upper windows of the rectory, a bird’s flight reflected in them, and the movement of the apple tree’s higher branches. “I’m saying that she was prepared. He wasn’t.”

  “Or it might be that her poetry was terribly important. And his ships weren’t. He could leave those, in safety.”

  Which brought Rutledge back again to those literary papers.

  He walked to the Hall after dinner and stood looking up at the house in the golden shadows of the westering sun. He could hear sea birds calling, and somewhere a jackdaw singing lyrically. In his mind’s eye, ghosts of the people who’d made the Hall a home stirred and moved about the lawns, laughing and talking and bringing life to the scene. To the emptiness.

  Someone said, behind him, “They’ve not left—”

  He turned to find the old woman, and remembered her name this time. Rachel had called her Sadie.

  “No,” he said. Then, playing her game, he asked, “Which ones do you see? Is Anne there?”

  “Anne was willful, she must have her way or she’d set the nursery on its ear. They said it was a child’s tantrums, but the tree grows as the twig is bent, and if her father had lived, that would have been different. Instead, the women spoiled her and let her do as she pleased, and she wanted to hold tight to everyone’s affection, even the old master’s— Mr. Trevelyan. Miss Rosamund’s father, that was. Sometimes she’d put off her stormy ways, and sit quiet with a book in her lap, and he’d come into the room and mistake her for her sister. There was no telling them apart, unless Miss Anne was being her naughty self. Or she’d tell tales on the others, and once got Master Cormac a hiding for beating a horse, and him never one to abuse the animals. Master Nicholas, now, he stood up to her once, and refused to let her have the little soldiers he’d been given for his birthday. But she found them later and buried them out in the garden, and he never did discover where they were. She died soon after.”

  Her words made Rutledge’s blood run cold. Here was a reason for Olivia to have killed her sister. A child’s excuse for murder. He found he didn’t want to know about Anne.

  “Why did Richard die out on the moors?”

  “There’s none sure he did. ‘Twas no body ever found. Miss Olivia said they fell asleep in the sunshine, and he was gone when she opened her eyes. She thought mayhap he’d wandered off to find the moor ponies. He were a restless child, with the energy of two and a devil in his eyes. Miss Rosamund called him her little soldier, and said he was born to wear a uniform. Like her first husband.”

  “And Nicholas?”

  “Ah, he was one who always knew more than he said. Kept himself to himself, and you never guessed at what rivers ran inside him, or how deep. Bookish, some thought, but if you want to know my mind on that, he was waiting with a dreadful patience to grow up. As if there was something waiting for him. If there was, we never knew of it. He was content to stay by Miss Olivia and keep her spirits high when the pain was hard. But if you looked into his eyes when he stared out at the sea, you knew there was a roamer inside him. Not like Master Richard, but a man who saw distant places in his soul.”

  “How did you come to know the Trevelyan family so intimately?”

  There was roguish laughter in her eyes as she stared back at him, giving a bawdy twist to his words. “Even the mighty use bedpans, like ordinary mortals,” she told him. “I nursed the living when needful, and laid out the dead. Dr. Penrith sent for me when Miss Olivia had the crippling disease and was like to die. He didn’t trust the London nurses they wanted.�
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  She seemed today to be clear-minded and aware of what she was saying. Testing it, he repeated, “You laid out the dead?”

  A wariness moved behind her eyes, though her expression didn’t change. He took a chance and asked her, “Was there a killer in that house?”

  But her eyes clouded as he watched her lined face, and she said, “I told you there were a Gabriel Hound in that house, and you’d hear him running some nights, before something bad happened. Running through the rooms, in the dark, looking for his soul. On those nights, the wind howled in the trees and rattled the windows, and I kept the coverlet over my head. Miss Olivia warned me once, when I spoke to her of it, and I knew to heed her. I’d die too if I told what I heard or saw. Which is why I’ve outlived them all but two, and Miss Susannah’s safe enough in London.”

  “What about Cormac FitzHugh?”

  “He’s not a Trevelyan, is he?” she asked. “There’s no Gabriel hound wants anything he has.”

  She walked off before he could ask her what had brought her to the Hall on this particular evening. Or what she knew of a fire built out on the headland. But her mind was already slipping away again, and he wasn’t sure he’d have gotten a straight answer anyway.

  Still, he listened again to what she’d said. “Miss Olivia warned me once, when I spoke to her of it, and I knew to heed her. I’d die too if I told what I heard or saw.”

  Miss Olivia.

  He went on his way, taking his time and approaching the house as if he’d come as a guest and not an intruder.

  Where would Olivia have left her papers? Not in the hallway where anyone might stumble over them, that was true enough. But would she have hidden them, or simply put them where Stephen would think to look?

  He unlocked the door and went inside. Someone had left the drapes open. Cormac? The sun’s warmth had flooded the hall along with its light, and there was a brightness here that somehow made him think of Rosamund.

  “There doesna’ need to be anything howling from the attics to haunt a house,” Hamish reminded him suddenly.

  “No,” Rutledge answered aloud, agreeing with him. “But this brightness will fade with the dusk. What else is here?”

  He went up the stairs to the study and stood in its doorway again, eyes roving the walls and furnishings. There was no place of easy concealment here. Not without moving rows of books—or Nicholas’ ships—and then shifting heavy shelves. And Nicholas shared this room, after all.

  He shut the door and made his way down the gallery to Olivia’s bedroom, glancing briefly at the plan Constable Daw-lish had drawn up for him, although he knew very well which door to open.

  He stood on the threshold for a moment, then crossed to open the drapes, allowing the setting sun to wash into the dimness. As he did, he caught again that elusive perfume that he’d smelled when the shawl slipped off the typewriter. And it was stronger when he opened Olivia’s closet door and looked at the clothing hanging on both sides of the deep recess. Skirts, dresses, dinner gowns, robes, coats, shawls, in neat and orderly rows, coats first, night robes last. Hatboxes stood in the back on shelves, next to half a dozen handbags. Several umbrellas hung on hooks to one side, and a cane with a heavily wrought silver head. Beneath the clothing were two rows of shoes, the right of each pair with a small metal tab like a stirrup under the instep, and straps at each end. For the brace she wore.

  Without touching them he surveyed the clothes. She liked colors, rose and a particular shade of dark blue and a deep forest green, as well as crimson and winter black, summer white and pastels. Tailored clothes, evening dresses very stylish but never fussy. His sister, Frances, would have approved of them, would have pronounced Olivia Marlowe a woman of quiet good taste. Just as the rector had said. But was there another side of her? And where did it reside?

  The closet had been built into what had in the past been a small dressing room. He walked into it, towards the shelves at the back, brushing against the clothing, and that perfume whirled out around him, almost in angry protest at his invasion of her privacy. Where had she found such an expressive scent? It touched the senses, lingered in the memory, confused the image he tried over and over again to draw. Elusive as she was—and more alive.

  He began methodically to open each hatbox, starting at the top, and from some of them, the heavy odor of cedar shavings wafted up to him, displacing Olivia’s perfume. Sweaters in a range of colors. Woolen stockings and scarves and gloves. Leather belts and leather gloves, Italian made and very supple. A fur hat, with upswept brim and a dashing style. Frances would have adored it—and looked stunning in it.

  Nothing else.

  He had carefully stacked the boxes on the floor. Now he pulled out the thick wooden shelves, beginning with the top shelf, looking to see if any of the panels in the wall behind it were loose or even hinged. If Olivia had kept her writing a secret for so many years, it meant she knew how to guard her privacy. From servants as well as family. If there was no space for storing personal papers in the study where she worked, she would most certainly have considered her bedroom next as a repository, and this wide closet, which no one but a maid had any excuse to enter, was Rutledge’s first choice.

  The closet was too dark for him to be sure that the end panels couldn’t be opened somehow, and he had to remove the middle and then the bottom shelf to run his hands over the wall.

  Nothing.

  He retrieved the bottom shelf to settle it back on the brackets that held it, and instead clipped the edge on the left-hand bracket. Part of the shelf broke off, and then something else tumbled down, ringing merrily as it bounced twice on the hard wood of the floor. A key? He got down on one knee to search for it, running his hand back and forth across the wood, and there was nothing. Frustrated, he moved back to the front of the closet and started again. It took him nearly five minutes to find it, where it had landed in a shoe.

  A small locket, gold, the sort of thing little girls often wore. He took it over to the window, where the light was better. There were entwined initials on the outer face of the locket, and he made them out—MAM. Margaret Anne Marlowe? His fingers found the delicate catch and he opened the frame to two tiny portraits inside. They were in oil, lovely little miniatures of a man and a woman. After a moment he recognized them. Rosamund and her first husband, Captain George Marlowe. Anne’s parents. An exquisite gift to a child on her birthday or at Christmas, to be worn when she was dressed up, with special care.

  How had it come to be hidden among Olivia’s things? Or had Olivia simply inherited it when her sister died, and lost track of it over the years?

  Rutledge went back to the closet and brought the shelves out again, then the boxes and the shoes. On hands and knees, then standing, he searched every inch of the walls and the floor.

  Nothing. Except for the half inch sliver of wood that had been knocked off the bottom shelf by his clumsiness.

  He picked up the shelf, looking to see where the chip had come from, and if he could put it back where it belonged.

  It was the end of a longer strip of wood that had been set very carefully into the back edge of the heavy shelf. With his penknife he gently pried that out of its slot, and when he did, another object tumbled out of the space hollowed out behind,

  He picked up that and the shelf, and carried them both to the windows.

  The second object was a man’s gold pipe cleaner, smooth from long use, but the initials engraved in it were still legible. JSC. James Cheney, Nicholas’s father? He set that on the sill beside the locket.

  Holding the shelf up to the light, he looked into the carved-out hollow. Someone had stuffed cotton deep inside it, and embedded within the soft fibers he could see bits and pieces of other articles. The sun caught them in its brightness, as if pointing to them. He winkled them out, slowly and gently.

  First came a small boy’s cuff buttons, heavy gold and again with initials engraved on them. RHC. Richard Cheney? Behind them was a lovely little signet ring, that looked as if it
had been crafted for a child. And carved deeply into the face of the ring was a coat of arms. Inside, engraved in the band itself, were the initials REMT. Rosamund Trevelyan. A gold crucifix came out easily, finely wrought, with the figure a little worn. From the letters on the reverse, it had belonged to Brian FitzHugh. Finally, at the very back, a watch fob in the shape of a small boat, with the initials NMC. Nicholas.

  The sunlight flashed across the raised sail as Rutledge laid it with the others he had spread out on the wooden win-dowsill, and in spite of the warmth that poured through the glass panes, he felt cold.

  He knew exactly what these were.

  He had seen dozens of collections like them, in the trenches in France. A button from the greatcoat of a German officer, goggles from a downed airman, stripes from the sleeves of corporals and sergeants, collar tabs from officers, a battered Prussian helmet, a pistol taken from a corpse, an empty ammo belt from a machine gunner’s nest, whatever a man fancied ...

  When his mind stubbornly refused to frame the words, Hamish did it for him.

  “Trophies of the dead,” he said softly.

  Small golden treasures, very personal and surely very precious, that marked each of Olivia Marlowe’s unwitting victims.

  10

  Rutledge forced himself to walk away from the things he’d found, and instead to go through the motions required of him.

  He began with the olive wood desk on its graceful, delicate legs. In the several drawers he found stationery in various sizes, engraved, and matching envelopes, bottles of ink, scissors, a box of visiting cards with Rosamund’s name on them, a book of accounts for shops in London and in Borcombe, a leather notebook with stamps and addresses—none of them of special interest—and the usual clutter of pens and pencils. The only truly personal item was a wooden pen holder, hand carved, in the shape of a monster fish, the kind drawn on ancient maps at the edge of the known world, where they waited to swallow unwary ships. On the bottom, following the curve of a tiny scale, he found the initials NMC/OAM. From Nicholas to Olivia. Or to O. A. Manning?