Wings of Fire

by Charles Todd

  He could hear her voice change as she drifted back into the past again, caught up in spite of her reluctance.

  “What was Richard wearing?”

  “I don’t remember—white shirt, long stockings, short trousers, I should think. He did have a jacket too, because he took it off for a time. It was warm in the sun. Rosamund made him put it back on again, when the wind came up. He didn’t want to put it on, and fussed about it. Later, we wondered if that’s why he’d run off, because he was still in a temper. He was so headstrong, sometimes.” She stopped. “Are you sure you want to hear so many little things?”

  “Yes. It helps me frame a picture.”

  She was one of those rare people who could tell a story coherently. Describing clearly the images she saw in her mind, without backtracking and confusing the threads he needed to follow.

  “We’d had our picnic, and Rosamund sat down to rest, James had his head in her lap, I remember thinking how comfortable they looked. Cormac had gone to talk to the guide. He was an old man whose sons left for America twenty years before, to work in the mines there. Cormac wanted to know about them, if they’d prospered, if they’d written home about their new life. I was drowsy, and Olivia sat down beside me, to rest her leg a little. But Richard wanted to go back and see the ponies. He begged her to walk with him, because his mother wouldn’t let him go alone. I don’t know where Nicholas was, he’d wandered off. He did that sometimes, exploring. He always had an unerring sense of direction, no one ever worried about him. Finally Olivia got up and followed Richard, making him promise not to run too fast for her. I was waiting for Nicholas to come back and didn’t want to be bothered with Richard, and I’ve felt very guilty about that ever since ...”

  He let the silence drift, and finally her voice picked up the tale again. “I was nearly asleep when Rosamund said we ought to be starting back. She sent Cormac to look for Nicholas and James to find Olivia and Richard. We walked over to the carriages together and put the baskets away. Rosamund was saying something about a house party she was planning, friends from London. I remember that, because they came for the funeral instead. James’ funeral. Then she said, ‘I wonder what’s keeping them!’ “

  There was another pause. “Cormac came back alone and said that Nicholas had just seen some of those butterflies you only find out on the moors and didn’t want to leave. He took me off with him to persuade him. But Nicholas wasn’t by the rocks anymore, and we looked for five or ten minutes, Cormac and I. Then we went back to where Rosamund was waiting, and Nicholas was already there. James came back with Olivia, saying they couldn’t find Richard. So Rosamund left Olivia and me in the carnages, while she and James and Cor-mac and Nicholas went out to search for Richard. But he didn’t come back. And they couldn’t find him. And Olivia wasn’t sure what had happened, except that he’d gone to play with the ponies in plain sight, and she’d thought he was still with them. They sent the coachman to the Hall on one of the carriage horses to collect the grooms and servants while they went back again to look. By nightfall, it was clear we weren’t going to find him at all. But James wouldn’t hear of calling off the search. He said Richard was just being naughty, hiding from us. Nicholas came back covered in blood and scratches, from a fall, and said he’d located the ponies, and Richard wasn’t with them, but there’d been some gypsy boys about. He and Cormac went back to look again. They searched with torches. I remember the long shadows they cast, and how black the men looked in the distance, and then Rosamund sent us home in one of the carriages, Olivia and Nicholas and me. Olivia was crying, there was no comforting her. And when we got to the stables, she had herself strapped to a horse, and went back with the men from the village, to look again. There wasn’t a horse for Nicholas, and so he went off on his own. I was told to stay at the house and send out word if any of the searchers found Richard. But of course they never did. Sometime later I remember Cormac, with tears cutting through the dirt on his face, yelling at Nicholas about Richard, wanting to know something, and I always thought that was very strange, since Richard had been with Olivia. But no one was himself, we were all distraught. Nicholas sat with Olivia, when they brought her back ill, talking, always talking to her, but from the door I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Uncle James was so exhausted that Dr. Penrith put something in his coffee and it took three men to carry him up to his bed, he was so deeply asleep ...”

  But Rutledge had lost the thread of what she was saying, his thoughts busy elsewhere. When the quiet voice stopped, he said, “Did Olivia and Anne dress as twins, in the same gowns?”

  “Sometimes,” she answered, surprised at the shift in subject. “Olivia didn’t like it. She said she wasn’t part of a pair, like shoes or gloves. She wasn’t in Anne’s shadow, she was just herself. That seemed to bother her ... afterward. We all felt guilty, the way children do, blaming themselves ...”

  “Were they wearing the same dresses the day that Anne fell?”

  “I—I don’t know. Let me think.” She shook her head, “No. Wait! Anne was wearing the gown with bunches of cherries embroidered around the hem and on the sash. Olivia was wearing something blue—forget-me-nots, I think. I remember that my blood and Anne’s matched those cherries.” The empty cup rattled in its saucer, as her fingers trembled. He got up and poured more tea for her, using the ordinary business of spooning in sugar and taking a slice of lemon to distract her.

  “And Nicholas would have known, very well, whose sashes he was holding? Young as he was?”

  “Yes, I told you they were Olivia’s—”

  She stopped. The room was dark now, with only starlight to brighten it, except for the single lamp on the table near the wall. “No,” she said slowly, to the darkness and not to him. “The sash ends weren’t blue, were they? I thought they were. I’d always been so sure. Olivia told me they were blue!”

  “And it was Nicholas who couldn’t be found, when Cormac went out to search for him? On the moors?” He tried to keep his voice level, unemotional. “And he went out alone again, when he’d brought you and Olivia to the Hall?”

  “Yes—”

  “Was he envious of his brother, the attention he got for being wild? Or were they close? Did they spend much of their time together?”

  “I—I think they were too different to be close. Olivia and Nicholas were more alike, really. Quiet by nature, found it easy to amuse themselves. While Richard always needed ... distractions. He was so exuberant. He took up a lot of Rosamund’s time, never wanting a nap, always demanding a game or to be read to, or to be taken to see the horses.” She smiled to herself. “Richard and Anne should have been twins. They were so much alike, quite bossy and active. Headstrong. Exhausting, Nanny called them.”

  “And when James shot himself, where was Nicholas?”

  “I don’t—-he was already in the passage when Cormac wanted to know what the noise was he’d heard, and Nicholas said it was a shot, and he’d already knocked, and then Cormac and one of the servants broke down the door. But I don’t think it was locked after all. I saw Nicholas pushing the bolt back and forth, standing there like a stone. Olivia came then and made him stop, but wouldn’t let him into the room, wouldn’t let him go to his father. Then Rosamund heard the commotion and ran to see what was wrong, and Cormac went racing to the village for Dr. Penrith, and she stood in the door, white as I’d ever seen anyone’s face, but not crying, just shaking as if she’d never stop, and I remember Brian FitzHugh putting his arm around her shoulders, and she shoved him from her, and went on standing there, and Nicholas kept saying, over and over again, ‘It was an accident, I know it was an accident!’ as if it was dreadfully important to hear the words.”

  He waited again, letting her take her time, but she said nothing more.

  Over the years Rutledge had questioned many witnesses to a crime. Even during the war he’d had to debrief returned prisoners, night scouts, men in the forefront of an assault or an attack. What weapons did you see, what collar tabs? What’s the st
rength in reserve? Where are the big guns? It was an art, getting at the truth rather than miring down in the tricks of a man’s memory.

  The first person on the scene of a gruesome killing in London had told him that she didn’t recall much blood, and yet the room to him, hardened as he was, had seemed to be bathed in it. But she had blocked it out, controlling her memory to exclude what had shocked her the most.

  Rachel wasn’t afraid of blood, she was frightened of betrayal, of the possibility that someone she knew and loved was a stranger.

  And yet she’d sent for Scotland Yard, irrevocably calling public attention to her doubts and suspicions.

  It was an odd decision for someone like Rachel to make. A washing of hands. A refusal to be a party to accusation, and at the same time, feeling a desperate need for closure.

  What had she wanted from him, the objective Inspector from London? What sort of proof was she after? What did she know, and how was he going to find it under the layers of protective emotional armor?

  And what did it have to do with Nicholas? Nicholas, the quiet one. Always there, always in the background. Had he played an objective role? Or a subjective one? Had he protected Olivia? Or had she protected him?

  Was it knowledge that Nicholas had carried to the grave? Or guilt?

  Hamish was angry with him, telling him he was wrong. But he couldn’t stop himself from grasping at this particular straw. It might solve so many problems ...

  “It’s your own armor you’re after, any excuse you can find to shift the blame! Any name to put in place of the woman who bewitched you with her verse! Ye’ll sacrifice him for her sake! Hae ye no conscience, man?” Hamish raged.

  Yet he had to know. If there was a chance, he had to know it.

  Finally he asked, “Rachel? What are you afraid of? What are you afraid to remember? Who made Anne fall out of that tree? It wasn’t an accident, was it? And who lured Richard away, on the moors? He was only five. How could he have wandered so far on his own? And who put the gun into James Cheney’s dead hand? When Brian FitzHugh was down on that beach the day he died, who was he talking to? Someone he trusted enough to tum his back on him—or her.”

  She sat in stony silence. He went on quietly, “They were murdered. You tell me you don’t want to believe it’s true, but you feel it, deep inside yourself. The truth. Just as I do. And Rosamund very likely died by the same hand. Just because the murderer is also dead doesn’t matter. But the truth does. Was it Olivia? Or Nicholas? Who hated—or loved—or envied—enough to commit murder?”

  “No one,” she cried, turning to face him, her eyes black with despair. “It’s nonsense, what you keep trying to say. There’s no murderer in this house! I lived here, I ought to know!”‘

  “It had to be Olivia or Nicholas. You must choose.”

  “No! Nicholas never hurt anyone! Nicholas was not the kind of man who’d kill children—or his own father—or his mother!”

  “Then we’re left with Olivia.”

  “No—I—there is no murderer, I tell you!”

  “But there is. And you believed in it strongly enough that you sent for Scotland Yard!”

  “No. I had to know why Nicholas wanted to die! I couldn’t believe he would want to take his own life, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t Nicholas!”

  “But he did. Or else Olivia killed him.”

  “No!”

  She was out of her chair, lunging towards him, her face stark with pain, her hands balled into fists, as if she wanted to pound them against him. Rutledge got to his feet, braced.

  She stood in front of him, shaking and livid with emotion, but didn’t touch him. “Go away! Go back to London, damn you! Leave me in peace!”

  “But you sent for Scotland Yard. What did you know, Rachel, that made you think it was murder?”

  “No—no! I tell you, no!”

  “You thought Nicholas would marry you, didn’t you? If Olivia was dead. Instead, he chose to die with her. Or was killed. Or killed her, then himself. They’re the only possibilities we have.”

  Her face crumpled, and furious with himself for what he’d done, he reached for her, pulling her into his arms. She buried her face in the front of his coat and cried, her body shaking with the force of her grief. “Tell me what you know,” he urged, against her hair, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “He wrote to me before he died—Nicholas—” she began brokenly.

  Then the door slammed open, and Cormac FitzHugh came into the room, his shadow springing before him across the ceiling, like a great black monster, breaking the spell.

  “What the bloody hell!” he exclaimed, staring at them in sheer astonishment. “What are you doing—what’s going on here!”

  16

  Startled and red-faced, her tears catching in her throat, Rachel broke free from Rutledge’s hold and whirled to the night-darkened windows, as far from Cormac as she could move in the little room, drawing silence around her as if it made her invisible.

  Rutledge, furiously angry, turned on him instead. The two men glared at each other, shoulders tight, on the balls of their feet, ready to act or to block. They were breathing hard, for an instant the only sound in the room.

  “I might ask you the same question!”

  “What is this, harassment? Or a rendezvous?”

  Their voices clashed, loud and thick with the force of dislike.

  Hamish was clamoring. Warning. Rutledge ignored him, his whole attention concentrated on Cormac. For an instant it was touch and go, the policeman struggling to rein in his desire to wipe up the floor with the man in the doorway for interrupting when he did, and the levelheaded entrepreneur fighting the primitive urge to feel fist against flesh. The soldier and the Irishman. But Scotland Yard and the City won.

  With difficulty, Cormac managed to say in a near-normal tone, “I saw the light in the kitchen. I came to find out who was in the house. What’ve you done to Rachel? Why is she crying?”

  “The Hall upsets her,” Rutledge retorted. “But she came to help me look for something. It was kind of her. Leave her alone.”

  “Rachel? Has he hurt you?”

  She answered softly, without turning around. “I’m all right, Cormac. Just—it’s as he said. I—I still haven’t—Olivia and Nicholas. And Stephen. I—if they ‘d only hurry up and sell this house, I’d he all right!” she finished despairingly. “I can’t go, I can’t stay! I beg you just put an end to it!”

  “I’m—the lawyers are dragging their feet. There’re three wills involved,” he said slowly, as if she’d blamed him, not Rutledge, for her tears. “But I’ll do what I can to speed up the sale.” He hadn’t looked away from Rutledge, except for a brief glance at Rachel. Now he looked back at her again. “Let me take you home. If the Inspector has any more business here, he can finish it in the morning, damn it!”

  “No. I’m all right, Cormac. Truly.”

  “You aren’t. I can see you shaking from here.” He crossed the room, ignoring Rutledge, almost daring him to step in the way. Then, gently touching Rachel’s shoulder, he turned her towards him and gave her his handkerchief. Rutledge felt himself bristling as she took it gratefully and nodded her thanks, for a moment burying her face in its white folds. With his arm around her shoulders, Cormac led her past Rutledge to the door, but there Rachel stopped and looked at the Londoner with something in her eyes that he couldn’t read. Was she asking him to go with them? Or begging him to stay where he was?

  When he didn’t respond, she turned and let Cormac take her out into the passage. Rutledge picked up the lamp, left the tea things where they were, and went down to the kitchen. Blowing out the lamps, he set them on the kitchen table and walked out to the hall in the cold darkness of the house. To his surprise, Cormac and Rachel were still there, waiting for him, silhouettes without presence.

  Cormac held the door key in his gloved hand, impatience marking the line of his body as he watched Rutledge take his time crossing the hall.

  Then they w
ere out in the starlit night, the door slamming behind them, the lock turning with a click of finality. Cormac came down the steps to take Rachel’s arm, and lead her along the drive. Rutledge, feeling like a left thumb—and knowing that was how Cormac meant for him to feel—followed.

  “Will you let me take you back to London tomorrow?” Cormac was saying to Rachel. “Your friends keep asking when you’ll come to town again, I promise soon, but it doesn’t satisfy anyone. Let’s surprise them!”

  She had stopped crying, but there were tears still blocking her throat, in spite of all she could do. Ail the same, Rachel wasn’t easily cowed, as Rutledge was learning.

  “I—I’m just not ready, Cormac. But thanks for the offer.” She glanced across at Rutledge, a shadowy figure to Cormac’s left. He could see her pale face turn towards him. There was steel in her voice as she added, “When Scotland Yard goes, I’ll go.”

  “If you’re sure that’s what you want?” She nodded. “All right. I suppose it never hurts to keep an eye on what’s happening. Daniel won’t give me any peace; he’s insisting that I use my influence in London to get rid of the police. I told him that might cause more problems. But Susannah is in bed right now, doctor’s orders, so he may contact the Yard himself.”

  “Not the baby—is anything wrong?” Rachel asked quickly.

  “No, just precautions. But try to tell Daniel that. You’d think he was the one carrying twins, damn it! I’ve seen foaling horses with more composure.”

  She laughed huskily, as he’d meant for her to.

  “That’s better,” he told her, squeezing her arm. They reached the shadows of the wood, and Rutledge let them walk ahead, his mind busy.