by Charles Todd
“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 grandfather, 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.
“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 Nic
holas 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 cupboard 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!”
