Search the Dark

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, there’s a distance between them, you can feel it. I think—I’m afraid she feels that this museum may come between them. But it won’t,” Elizabeth said positively, taking his arm as they crossed the dark street. “No, he’s doing this because he felt he owed something to the maternal side of his family. It’s an obligation he strongly believes in. I think the war made him realize that. Once it’s done, once he’s finished organizing it, someone else will be given the day-by-day responsibility of running this museum, and I see Simon returning to the world he was bred to.”

“London. And politics,” Rutledge offered. Wondering if Margaret Tarlton had been sent here to take over the museum once its purpose had been served, allowing Simon Wyatt his freedom. And keeping Margaret out of London and Thomas Napier’s eye.

“Of course. I don’t believe Aurore appreciates how strongly the tradition is in this family. To serve, to lead. To set an example for others. I know Simon far better than she does. I should do, I’ve known him most of his life!”

“Have you told Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—what you believe his future may hold?”

“Good heavens, no! That’s for Simon to do when the time comes.”

“What do you think happened tonight?” They had nearly reached the Wyatt Arms.

“Nothing. A lover’s quarrel, most likely, and Simon went out to walk it off. And it upset Aurore when he didn’t come back. She must be a very possessive woman. Well, politics will soon teach her that that isn’t wise!”

“It wasn’t a misunderstanding with you—over his future—that Wyatt wanted to think about? Away from the house.”

Elizabeth Napier pulled her hand from his arm and turned to stare up at him. “Whatever gave you that idea! Don’t tell me Aurore felt—or was it something Simon said, as you brought him home?”

“This has nothing to do with Aurore Wyatt,” he said, opening the inn door and holding it for her. From the bar he could hear voices, Denton’s rising to answer someone, and then laughter, the chink of glasses and the smell of beer and smoke and sausages. “Nor with anything Wyatt said to me. I’m asking you for your observations of his mood. Since you know him so well.”

She cocked her head to one side, her eyes on the sign swinging blackly against the stars above them. “Do you really want to hear what I believe? Or does Aurore have you so completely under her spell that you can’t view any of this objectively?”

“She doesn’t—” he began, irritated, but Elizabeth cut him short.

“Don’t be silly,” she said for a second time. “Aurore Wyatt is a very attractive—and very lonely—woman. Men find that an irresistible combination. It isn’t surprising. All right, I think she wants to keep him here, bucolic and safe. She may even have been the one who first put the museum idea into his head. I don’t know and I don’t actually care. The fact remains, you don’t understand what pressures she brings to bear in that household. You take her at face value, this lovely, foreign, exotic woman. You don’t sit across from her at the breakfast table, nor do you have to live with her every day. Simon does. Ask yourself what she’s truly like, and you may have some glimmer of what Simon’s life is like. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not speaking as the jilted woman here, I’m telling you what my observations are—today—now. If I wanted to compete with Aurore Wyatt for her husband, I’d hardly be likely to drive him to wander about the countryside in the dark, to escape me. Would I? There are a thousand more subtle ways of destroying his marriage and bringing him back to me. The question is, then, do I really need to scheme for him if his own wife has already estranged herself from him? Good night, Inspector!”

And with that she turned, walked into the inn, and, without looking back, went up the stairs with that regal manner that had so impressed everyone at the Swan in Singleton Magna.

As his eyes followed her, Rutledge became aware of movement at the corner table under the stairs. A very sober Shaw was looking at him with a grin on his face.

“Yes, I heard all that. Women are bitches,” he said softly, “however well bred they may be and however blue their bloodlines are. Come in, and have a drink with me, before my uncle calls time. You look as if you could use one!”

Rutledge took up his invitation and sat down. The rings on the table had either been wiped away—or they hadn’t accumulated this night. Shaw was nursing one pint that appeared to have gone flat long since. He called to his uncle, who brought another pint for Rutledge.

“The lovely Aurore isn’t Simon Wyatt’s problem,” Shaw was saying. “It probably isn’t the lovely Miss Napier either. What’s bothering him is a guilty conscience.”

Interested, Rutledge said, “Guilt over what? Putting this museum before his father’s expectations of him?”

“The war. What he learned about himself out there in France. Because you do. You soon know if you’re a coward or not. Most of us are, only we find ways to hide it, at least from other people.”

It was something all of them had faced. The question of bravery. Of courage—and these two were not the same. Of mortality. Of what life was. And what death meant. He himself had brought Hamish home….

Losing for an instant the thread of the conversation, Rutledge said, “You’re saying that he failed himself?”

“No, I’m saying he didn’t like the man he turned out to be. I don’t suppose his father expected the war to last, and I don’t suppose Simon did either. Well, none of us did! Quick in and quick out was the idea. Only it wasn’t that way, and in the end, those of us who survived knew what kind of men we were. Some of us even learned to live with it, however little we liked what we saw. But Simon, told all his life that he was Jesus Christ, son of God, fell far below his own estimation and never recovered.”

“That’s a very … sober … assessment,” Rutledge answered. He had nearly used the word cruel, and changed it at the very last.

“I am sober. The pain isn’t so bad tonight. I saw Wyatt leave his house.”

Without particular emphasis, Rutledge said, “Did you indeed? When?”

“Tonight, damn you! I said good evening as we passed in the street. He never answered. He walked past me as if he hadn’t seen me. And I could have touched him, I was that close. Gave me the willies, I can tell you. His face was empty. As if his body was moving of its own volition.”

“Sleepwalking?”

“God, no. His eyes were open, he didn’t stumble or weave, he moved like a man with a destination. Only he was deaf and dumb.”

“Your imagination,” Rutledge said. “He may just have been preoccupied.”

“It wasn’t shell shock either,” Shaw said, ignoring him. “I recognize that when I see it, we had four or five men in our unit who were shambling wrecks before we got them out of the front lines. Pathetic, shaking, barely human.”

Rutledge felt the sudden, unstoppable jolt run through him, jerking the glass in his hand until it spilled. He swore and looked down at his cuff, to conceal his face and Hamish’s swift response: Barely human…

“So it has to be something else,” Shaw went on, oblivious, buried in his own feelings. “Something inside the man that he himself doesn’t see. Until it manifests itself in sudden blackouts. Which tells me it’s some sort of deeply buried guilt, and he can’t face it. What other reason is there?”

“It might be more recent than the war. It might be Miss Tarlton’s death.”

Shaw laughed without any hint of humor. “Are you trying to say that he lapses into these states and commits murder? Or the other way around, commits murder and then lapses out of guilt? You must really be at a loss to find answers for all these bodies you’ve turned up!”

Rutledge studied him. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you? Ever since you met Wyatt in the street? Or even before that.”

“Oh, yes,” Shaw said bitterly. “That’s all I have left to me. An interest in my fellow human beings. We all walk with shadows. You’ve got your own, haven’t you, it’s there in your face and your eyes. I wonder what they are. And if they came out of the war, or from your work.” His eyes scanned Rutledge.

Forcing himself to ignore the challenge, Rutledge waited.

After draining his glass in one long swallow, Shaw said, “I wish I could have gotten drunk tonight—” After a time he picked up Ate thread of the conversation again. “I watch them all. Daulton, because he spoke to her just before she left Charlbury. Wyatt, her host and therefore responsible for her. Aurore, who should have gotten her to that train safely, and didn’t. And let’s not forget Elizabeth Napier, so busily using Margaret’s death to throw herself at Simon again. Or her famous father, who is conspicuous by his absence. If Margaret hadn’t meant anything to him, he’d have come storming into Hildebrand’s office long before this, making political mileage out of his righteous anger. No, they’re all on my list, and I’m just waiting for a single mistake that might tell me which one is guilty.”

“You’ve left Mowbray out of your accounting.”

“No, I haven’t. He’s my last resort, if I’m wrong about the others.”

“Have you reached any conclusions yet?”

“No,” Shaw said, wincing as he moved too suddenly in his chair. “Except that Margaret’s death doesn’t seem to have left even the briefest mark on anybody’s life except mine. And possibly Thomas Napier’s, who knows?” He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “I don’t know whether I loved her or hated her, in the end. I might have killed her myself, if she’d hurt me again. Someone else did, and now I want to find him—or her.”

“For vengeance? It doesn’t work out the way you think it might.”

“Doesn’t it?” Shaw said wryly. “If I discovered her killer tonight, I don’t know what I’d do about it. Turn him over to you. Or batter the life out of him myself. It doesn’t matter, I’m dead anyway. Still—it frightens me, not knowing how I’ll feel. When I loved her so much. That’s why I’m sober, Rutledge. I’m suddenly afraid to drink….”

20

It was the next morning when Rutledge finally ran Simon Wyatt to earth in the museum, shut the doors to the room he was working in, and said curtly, “Sit down.”

“I’ve got too much to do—”

Rutledge cut him short “The museum can wait. The opening can wait. I want to talk to you.”

Something in Rutledge’s voice broke through his wall of isolation. Simon reached for a chair that was filled with boxes, shoved them off the seat, pulled it to him, and sat down. “All right. Five minutes.”

“There’s a very good chance that the murder of Margaret Tarlton can be laid at your wife’s door.”

“Aurore? Don’t be stupid, man, she’s no more guilty of murder than I am! If this is what you want to say to me, I’ve got more important things to attend to!”

Rutledge reached out and pressed Simon back into his chair. “You’ll listen to me until I’ve finished, damn it. And I’ll decide when that is!”

He had spent a long sleepless night going over many things in his mind, but there was no one except Hamish he could have said them to.

“The plan was, as I understand it, for Mrs. Wyatt to drive Margaret Tarlton to the train station at Singleton Magna. She tells me that she didn’t, that she was at the farm working with a sick heifer. All right, that means that Margaret Tarlton is still in this house, looking for a way to the station. Mrs. Daulton sees her at your front gate, waiting—wearing the clothes she had changed into. The dress, in fact, she was wearing when the body was found. Elizabeth Napier has told me that she’s quite sure the dress belonged to Margaret. I’m sure Edith could identify it as well. Or Mrs. Daulton.”

“I haven’t heard about this—” Simon began, incensed. “Why hasn’t anyone told me?”

“Because you’ve got your head buried in this museum and don’t hear what’s being said to you,” Rutledge told him in exasperation. “To go on. Your maid Edith, concerned that Miss Tarlton might miss her train, hurries down to the inn to ask Denton if his nephew Shaw can drive Miss Tarlton. But while she’s gone Miss Tarlton, for reasons of her own, walks down to the rectory and asks Henry Daulton if he or his mother can take her to Singleton Magna. He leaves Miss Tarlton on the steps while he goes to the garden to speak to his mother, but as he turns away she says, ‘There’s Mrs. Wyatt,’ and leaves, angry that she’s already running late. A woman who lives on the other side of the inn tells me that she saw the car leaving town soon afterward, that your wife was driving, and that she believes Margaret Tarlton was a passenger.”

Simon started to speak but Rutledge cut him short. “Whether her evidence is reliable or not doesn’t matter; this places your wife in the car with Margaret Tarlton, heading toward Singleton Magna in time to make the train. Miss Tarlton’s on her way to Sherborne, where she’s to spend several days with Miss Napier.”

There was a look of surprise on Simon’s face, but he said nothing.

“According to the stationmaster, she isn’t one of the passengers on the train going north and certainly not on the train going south. She doesn’t arrive in Sherborne on fifteen August, nor on the following day, because Miss Napier and her chauffeur Benson have gone to meet her, Miss Napier herself on the fifteenth and Benson on the sixteenth. Meanwhile in London, her maid Dorcas Williams hasn’t seen or heard from her, nor have her cousins in Gloucestershire. Miss Tarlton, it appears, has vanished from the face of the earth. But we do have a body in Singleton Magna who is wearing what appear to be her garments. It would seem, then, that Miss Tarlton died on the road outside Singleton Magna sometime in the afternoon. And if your wife took her out of Charlbury in your motorcar, then your wife was most likely the last person to see Miss Tarlton alive. Do you follow me?”

Simon Wyatt, frowning, said, “Yes, of course I do! I just don’t accept your reasoning. My wife is not a murderess, she’d never met Margaret Tarlton before the thirteenth, when she went to collect her at the station, and I can’t imagine any possible reason why Aurore would want to kill a comparative stranger!”

“Miss Tarlton was very likely going to accept your offer of a position here.”

“And what’s that got to do with murder! No, your theory is full of holes, man! Aurore may have taken Margaret as far as Singleton Magna, but it doesn’t tell me what Margaret Tarlton did once she got there! If Aurore set her down in the town, someone else could have as easily met her there. Have you thought of that? Have you made any effort to find out?”

He hadn’t, as Hamish was busily pointing out.

Shaw. Elizabeth Napier. Thomas Napier. Who else?

“Does Miss Tarlton know anyone in Singleton Magna—or for that matter in Charlbury?”

“God, no! She’s been here once or twice with the Napiers, but she’s not the kind of woman who likes the country very much. London is her métier, she’s at home in parlors and salons and theaters.”

“All the same, she was willing to work here. To leave London.”

Simon made a deprecating gesture. “She came to help me make a success of the opening, and then I hoped to attract a student of the East to come in and see to preservation of specimens, the proper cases, some sort of cataloging, all the trimmings of a proper museum. I don’t have the money for that, not at the moment, but the quality of exhibits is quite high. I’ve already shown some of the better examples to Dr. Anderson in Oxford.” Simon grinned. “I expect he hoped I might contribute them to his own private collection. My grandfather was a skilled draftsman and has drawn birds in New Guinea and Sulawesi that created quite a fuss when Anderson showed them to specialists. Many of them hadn’t been described before.” As he spoke, his eyes flashed with more life and enthusiasm than Rutledge had ever seen him show.

“And you told her this was short-term employment?”

“Margaret herself said she wouldn’t stay—six months, a year at best. She spoke of other plans after that. I thought it might be marriage. The way she tilted her head when she said it, with a sort of pride.”

“Any idea who the man might have been?”

“No. But then I’ve been away for four years. Someone she met in the war, at a guess. I don’t see Margaret Tarlton winding up a spinster.”

“Someone she met in the war? Not Thomas Napier?”

Simon stared at Rutledge. “Elizabeth’s father? Good God, what put that idea into your head! I thought I was the only one who knew about that!”

“Someone had helped Miss Tarlton purchase a small house in Chelsea. I thought it might have been her employer.”

A cold look turned Simon’s face hard. “No. It wasn’t Thomas Napier. It was my father. She bought it through a trust fund he set up for her.”

Surprised in his turn, Rutledge said, “Why? That’s an expensive gift.”

“He didn’t see fit to tell me. And they weren’t lovers, if that’s the conclusion you’re jumping to! He said it was a business arrangement, that he’d done it because he’d known her father. Poppycock! Tarlton never came here, and my father was never in India. I’d wager Thomas Napier’s behind it!”

“Are you saying Napier was in love with Miss Tarlton? If he’d wanted her to have a house of her own, why didn’t he buy it for her?” It was the first independent corroboration of that he’d had.

“Politics, mainly. And because he wouldn’t want Elizabeth to know. She’d be angry and hurt, if he’d conducted an affair under his own roof. I expect that’s why he hasn’t come down to Singleton Magna and given Hildebrand hell for dragging his feet in this business. He’s being discreet. For his sake, and for Elizabeth’s. And for Margaret’s, if it turns out all of you are wrong.”

“If there had been another man in her life, what would Napier have done?”

“For a man of his clever, controlled nature, he was besotted with Margaret Tarlton. If you’re asking me if he would have killed her, no, but I’d hate like hell to be in the shoes of the other man!”

“And your father wasn’t in love with her—or receiving favors from her?”

“If it was blackmail, it wasn’t sexual. He may have owed Napier a political favor, or some debt. My father left a letter explaining about the house. I worked out the rest of it myself. Mainly because my godfather had been so cooperative when I asked him to speak to Elizabeth for me. I’d expected him to turn on me.”

“What happens to the house now, if Margaret Tarlton is dead?”

Simon’s fair brows twitched together. “I’m not sure. It was some sort of trust, arranged through lawyers. I was told there’s a clause protecting my father’s claim to the house, based on the fact he’d had some connection with Margaret’s family. If she married or died without children, the trust reverted to him.”

“Your father is dead. Does this mean the house comes to you now?”

Simon answered slowly, “I expect it does. But it’s early days yet to cross that bridge. No one knows for certain, if you’re telling me the truth, whether Margaret is dead—or has simply disappeared for reasons of her own. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about women, Inspector, it’s that they have a logic all their own! She might well turn up alive and surprise all of us.”

Before turning to go, Rutledge asked, “Will you go back to politics, if the museum is a success and you’ve satisfied your duty to your grandfather?”

“Why does that matter so much to everyone?” Sudden anger sent a flush into Simon’s face and he looked directly at Rutledge. “What was your excuse for leaving Scotland Yard to fight in France? Or are you the only one who’s allowed to dig into another man’s soul?”

Rutledge owed Wyatt honesty for honesty. He said slowly, “I believed it was a sense of duty. Of responsibility to King and Country. Not patriotism, you understand, it wasn’t the parades and speeches and flag waving. I remember thinking I have an obligation here. If these men can walk away from their families and their careers, and serve, so must I.”

And Jean had said only, “You know, you look very handsome in uniform!” As if he were dressed for a masquerade… dear God.

“Why did you go back to the Yard? Afterward?”

“Because it was what I did best.”

“Duty, again. I’m no longer sure I know what that means. Even the women in my family were politically astute and politically ambitious. It never occurred to any of them that I might not be cut out of the same bolt of cloth. It never occurred to me. I went away to war to be a hero. I came home a failure in the eyes of most people. No medals, no appetite for politics, no fashionable marriage.”

“Is that why you have taken the trouble to build this museum?” Rutledge gestured to the shelves around them, the mysteries of another world, another culture. So foreign in this English house in an English county. And with a French wife … but that was something he couldn’t say aloud.

It was as if Simon hadn’t heard him. “I wasn’t a bad soldier, I fought hard, I served as well as any man. I don’t know why I survived. I don’t see how any of us did. It was a bloody lottery. I win, you lose.”

Rutledge felt the coldness of memory. The times he’d been terrified that he might die—and the long months when he was terrified that he wouldn’t.

“It wasn’t a pretty war,” Simon finished. “And I discovered that I was no Churchill. In the shambles of the trenches I couldn’t make a pretense of being dashing and flamboyant. It would have been obscene.”

Rutledge, feeling a flatness that pervaded his spirit and gave him a sense of loss, walked slowly back to the inn, where he’d left his car. Had he finally reached the bedrock of Simon Wyatt? In those last words, he thought perhaps he had. “I discovered that I was no Churchill.” Was that the torment that sent him out into the night alone, reliving something that was past?

“Nae mair than you do!” Hamish said with savage honesty.

All right then. Why did he himself persist in this business of policing? Why had he ever taken it up after the war?

“Because it was all you are fit for,” Hamish reminded him.

It was, after all, what he had told Wyatt.

“Then why do I sometimes get it so bloody wrong!”

He started the car and climbed in, shutting the door and letting in the clutch with half his attention on his thoughts. All at once he realized that Shaw was coming out of the inn and hailing him, bent almost double with the effort it took to hurry and shout at the same time.

Rutledge stopped the car so suddenly he killed the engine. A sense of cold foreboding swept through him.

Shaw reached the passenger side and said breathlessly, “Bloody hell, Rutledge, didn’t you hear me?”

“I’m sorry—” Rutledge began, but Shaw shook his head.

“You’re needed in Singleton Magna straightaway. As soon as you can get there. Hildebrand had someone telephone to the Wyatt house, but you’d already left. Aurore passed the message on to my uncle.”

Rutledge thought, They’ve found the children…. But all he said was, “Very well, I’m on my way.”

His mind was in turmoil. He swore silently as he cranked the car again and, with a wave to the still-flushed man in front of the inn, drove down the road at speed, startling a horse being taken to the smithy for shoeing. It reared and shook its head, wild-eyed, while the farmer holding the reins shouted at Rutledge to mind what he was about.

Driving hard and fast, he kept his mind on the road, not allowing his thoughts to break through his concentration. He reached Singleton Magna, left the car in the yard behind the Swan, and with his heart thundering against his ribs walked back toward the police station. If they’d found the children, it meant he’d been wrong from the start.

There was a small knot of people standing outside the inn—he hadn’t seen them as he came up the street, but he noticed them now. It confirmed his fears. A ripple of excitement swept them as he passed by, but no one called to him or tried to approach. Crossing the busy road between two young girls on horseback and a dray carrying milk cans, he ran lightly up to the door of the station and opened it.

There was nothing else he could do.

Inside the air was thick with ominous tension. Constable Jeffries saw him over the heads of the men jamming the small room and spoke. “We’ve found the children,” he said grimly. “Inspector Hildebrand is waiting for you. In his office.”

Rutledge felt the coldness settle into his very bones. He’d seen dead children before. Somehow he wasn’t prepared to see these. He nodded to the constable and went down the dark passage to Hildebrand’s door, knocking before turning the knob to enter.

“You sent for—” Rutledge began on the threshold, and stopped as if he’d been shot.

In the small room, Hildebrand, stiff with strain, stood behind his desk. He glared at Rutledge.

“You took your time getting here,” he said. “Never mind. It seems that I’ve done your job for you.”

21

The other chair in the room, across the desk from Hildebrand, was occupied by a man holding a small boy on his knees, one arm protectively around the little girl some two years older, who was leaning anxiously against the side of the chair. Both children stared at Rutledge, eyes round and frightened. The boy began to suck his thumb. The man, looking up, was dark haired, of medium height and weight, his pleasant face wearing a distinctly uncertain expression.

Rutledge, with Hamish hammering at the back of his mind, took a deep breath, like a drowning man coming up out of the sea into life-giving air.

“The Mowbray children?” he asked into the lengthening silence.

Hildebrand, rocking on his toes, anger apparent in every line of his body, held Rutledge’s glance as it swung back to his grim face. “No. But close enough. At least it seems that way. You’re the expert from Scotland Yard. That’s why you were sent here. You make the decision.”

Anger of his own surged through Rutledge, but he turned to the man in the chair, holding out his hand. “My name’s Rutledge,” he said, “Inspector Rutledge.”

“Robert Andrews,” the man said, taking it awkwardly over the boy’s head.

“And these are Albert Mowbray’s children?” He paused. “Tricia and Bertie?” He smiled at them, first the girl and then the boy.

The children stared back at him, unmoved by familiar names.

Andrews looked quickly at Hildebrand. “Well, no, they’re mine, actually. This is Rosie and young Robert.” The little girl shyly smiled as her father spoke her name, her head pressed against his shoulder. They were pretty children, both of them—and of the ages Bert Mowbray’s son and daughter had been on the day they died in London.

“Then how are you connected with this—er—investigation?”

“Hasn’t he told you?” Andrews asked, looking again at Hildebrand. “I thought—Well, never mind what I thought!” He cleared his throat. “I was on the train that passed through Singleton Magna on thirteen August. My wife was expecting our third child in two weeks, and I’d promised to take Rosie and her brother to Susan’s mother—she has a house down along the coast—close to the time. And I did. Rosie was tired and wishing the long trip over, weren’t you, love?” He touched her hair briefly with his free hand. “And she tried to leave the train, only she fell on the platform and scraped her knee. That was when the woman came over and bound a handkerchief around the cut, telling her what a brave little girl she was.…”

He looked at Rutledge, not sure how to go on.

“Why didn’t you come forward sooner?” Rutledge asked. “We’ve had sheets printed, police asking questions, going from house to house.” He tried to keep the anger and the shock out of his voice, for the children’s sake and his own, “It was in the papers repeatedly, both a photograph and a request for help.”

“Well, I went straight back to London, didn’t I? And a damned—and a good thing I did, because Susan suddenly went into labor that same night, and everything else went out the window, didn’t it? It wasn’t until I went back to fetch the children that my mother-in-law told me about the—er—what happened to the woman and said I was lucky it wasn’t my wife and my two that was missing. She said she’d had nightmares for days about the poor little dears. Mind you, I’d have never gone to the police if she hadn’t talked on and on about the horror of it all. Which set me to thinking.” He shook his head. “She has a morbid taste for tragedies, that woman does!”

“What happened?”

“The police saw fit to arrest me on the spot, that’s what happened, and if the rector in the church who’d married us and christened these two hadn’t come forward, I’d probably still be there!” He frowned indignantly, still unsettled by the injustice of it all. “That was last night.”

“I’m sorry,” Rutledge said soothingly. “They were trying to do their job.”

“I fail to see how arresting an innocent man is part of any policeman’s job,” Andrews replied, with the first show of spirit.

“Do you remember what the woman was wearing? The one who helped the children?”

“God, no, I don’t know anything about women’s clothes—” he began.

“Was it pink? Or perhaps yellow?” Rutledge waited. All this time, Hildebrand had been standing at his back, across the desk, silent and watchful and hoping—believing!—that Rutledge might still fail.

Andrews shrugged. “I tell you, I don’t know.”

Rutledge turned to the little girl, squatting on his heels before her. “Can you remember the woman who helped you at the train, when you fell?” he asked gently, smiling at her. “Was she pretty? As pretty as your mother?”

Rosie looked down, playing with the sash of her own dress. “Yes,” she said so softly it was just a whisper.

“Tell me.”

“She was pretty,” Rosie repeated.

Over her head Rutledge asked, “Do you still have the handkerchief?” Andrews silently mouthed no.

“I liked her hat,” Rosie said into the exchange. “I want one.”

“Do you? What color was it?”

He waited, patient, silent. After a moment she pointed to a carafe of water on the desk, a crystal jug with an upturned glass for its lid. A band of silver at the neck caught the reflected light of the courtyard, shining and clear. “Like that,” she said, and smiled shyly.

“Like light on water, silvery,” the Wyatt maid Edith had said.

Rutledge slowly straightened and turned to Hildebrand.

The inspector said abruptly, “If you’d excuse us for a moment, Mr. Andrews?” Without waiting for an answer, he went around the desk and looked at Rutledge.

The two men went out into the dark, cramped passage, carefully closing the door behind them and moving away, out of earshot. At the far end of the passage, the other door that locked Mowbray away was deep in shadow. Rutledge found himself thinking about the man inside.

“He didn’t kill them,” he said, more to himself than to Hildebrand.

“We don’t know that,” Hildebrand said.

“That child just identified the color of the hat Miss Tarlton was wearing. If it was Miss Tarlton at the station, if it was Miss Tarlton that Mowbray saw and came looking for, it means his wife must surely have died in 1916, with the two children. And it was only his imagination—” He stopped. Knowing—who better?—how imagination tricked the mind. How what you believed was shadowed and shaped by what you had done. Mowbray hadn’t been in London to save his wife or his children, he’d been away in France. He’d come home to bury them. He’d missed them every day since. To the point that in a desperate time of his life, he had seen what he wanted most in the world to see … a return to what had been.

“We don’t know that!” Hildebrand repeated stubbornly. “A child that age in a courtroom? It would be a farce, the questioning could tangle her into knots. Are you willing to put that family through such a nightmare?”

“What are you going to do instead? Will you continue this search, widen it, go on looking until there’s nowhere else to try?”

“I fail to see that it’s any of your business! If we have found those children, you may return to London and leave the rest to the local police.”

“Then allow me one final test. Let Mowbray see them—”

“Have you run stark mad—”

“No, listen to me!” As their voices clashed, the constable on duty at the desk opened the door at the head of the passage and stared down it. He quickly shut it again at a gesture from Hildebrand. “What I want to do is this.”

An hour later it was arranged. Not without complaints from Robert Andrews and from Hildebrand and from Marcus Johnston, Mowbray’s attorney.

A call put in to Bowles in London by an irate Hildebrand caught the man in a fierce mood, not a receptive one. Even when the receiver was turned over to Rutledge, Bowles’s voice rang down the line in deafening vowels.

“I’ve had Thomas Napier calling in from his office to see what progress we’ve made toward finding Miss Tarlton,” he said shortly. “I don’t like to have politicians breathing down my neck. It’s your fault, Rutledge, for dragging the Napiers into the issue in the first place!”

“If the dead woman is Miss Tarlton, Mr. Napier will do more than breathe down our necks,” Rutledge said. “He’ll be camping in your office! From all reports he was as fond of her as he was of his own daughter.” Fonder, very likely.…

“Then find out, once and for all, if these children are Mowbray’s or not. Do you hear me? Put Hildebrand on again, I’ll set him straight.”

And so it was arranged.

When they went to fetch Mowbray, sunk in the darkness of his terrors, he came shuffling and blinking into the light in Hildebrand’s room, his face gaunt, unshaven, his hair lank and dull. He said nothing as Johnston, his own face stiff, greeted his client. A silence fell.

Mowbray seemed not to know or care who they were, what they wanted. He had been brought here. He suffered that with the same awful patience he gave to everything he did now, from eating his food to lying on his cot through the night. Nothing touched him. In the courtyard outside Hildebrand’s windows, a ball came bouncing across the debris of leaves and dust.

Johnston was talking when the first child appeared. It was the same age as Robert Andrews, and nearly the same coloring, a little boy chasing exuberantly after the red ball.

Mowbray started up, crying, “No—don’t torment me—”

Rutledge said quietly, “Is that your Bertie, Mr. Mowbray?”

“No, God, no. I killed my Bertie, you told me so yourself!”

Another small boy came running into the yard, fiercely demanding his turn with the ball, and the first turned away with it, leading to a screaming match between the two. A third boy appeared, a little older now, closer to the age the Mowbray boy would have reached if he’d lived.

Watching Mowbray carefully, Rutledge said, “You must look at them, Mr. Mowbray. You must help us know if one of these boys is your son.”

Mowbray, his eyes wet with frantic tears, turned toward Johnston for help. Johnston, shaking, said, “Inspector!” in warning.

The fourth child came reluctantly into the courtyard. Mowbray suddenly started, half rising from his chair. Johnston reached out to stop him, and Rutledge reminded him softly, “Remember! There is no way he can reach them!”

Before Johnston or Hildebrand could move, Mowbray had come across the room to the window, sinking to his knees before it, his face contorted with tears. “Bertie?” he cried, his hands raking the glass. “Bertie? Is it you, lad?”

Robert Andrews the younger turned toward the man at the window, looking at him in alarm. Then he turned back to the ball players and scooped up the ball they had dropped in their struggle. Racing away up the walk toward the street shouting, “Mine! Mine!” he vanished.

Mowbray cried, “No—no—come back! Bertie!”

And at the same time he caught sight of Rosie, being led by the hand into the courtyard by a slightly older child. On such short notice, they’d had difficulty finding girls of the right age…. He stared at her, drinking in the sight of her, a strange look of wonder on his face. Rosie, her hand confidingly in that of the other girl, looked straight at the window and then away again. That same shy smile lit her face.

“Tricia, love?” Mowbray asked, his body trembling as if he had a fever. “They said I’d killed you and left you in the dark for the foxes—”

He broke down then, his eyes turning to Rutledge for one brief moment, in their depths something shining. It was the brief, terrible spark of hope.

Johnston was openly moved, his face wet with tears. Hildebrand swore under his breath, the same words over and over and over again.

Rutledge, ignoring the savagery of Hamish’s anger, looked at Mowbray and told himself that it had had to be done—for Margaret’s sake—for Mowbray’s sake, above all else. He went to the prisoner and touched his shoulder. “They are the children you saw,” he said gently. “The children at the train station. Is that what you’re telling me? The little boy who picked up the ball, and that smaller girl. Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, yes, they’re my children, they’re alive—” His shoulders moved with the sobs racking his lungs, his words tumbling out incoherently. He pressed his face against the glass as the two girls turned and went back the way they’d come, eyes straining for a last glimpse of them. He repeated the words, more clearly this time, as if finding them easier to believe with each breath.

“No,” Rutledge said. “No, I’m afraid they aren’t Bertie and Patricia. Their name is Andrews. Think, Mowbray! Your Bertie would be four now, nearly five. Like the older boy you saw. And the little girl, Patricia, would be seven by now. These two children—the ones who remind you so much of your own two—are younger, the ages Bertie and Patricia were when they died in London.”

“Their mother?” Mowbray asked huskily, suddenly remembering. “Is she out there too?” Raw need gleamed like fire in his eyes.

“No.” His voice was very low, with infinite compassion in its timbre. “The mother of these two children who remind you so much of your own is in London, recovering from the birth of her third child. She’s auburn haired, and—er—plump.” He pulled from his pocket the photograph that Robert Andrews had let him borrow. “Do you see that?”

After a moment the words seemed to register. Mowbray looked at it, frowning with the effort. The woman captured by the camera had dark hair, far darker than that in the photograph Mowbray himself had carried, and she weighed at least two stone more. “That’s not Mary!” he said in surprise. “She doesn’t look anything like Mary!” His eyes swiveled to Johnston and Hildebrand. “Where’s Mary?” he demanded accusingly, as if she might still be conjured up with the children.

Hildebrand opened his mouth but Rutledge got there before him. “Look at this photograph,” he said, passing the one he’d borrowed from Elizabeth Napier. “Do you see your wife among these women, Mr. Mowbray? Look carefully at all of them, and tell me.”

He studied it, distraught and weeping. “She’s not there,” he said, hope dying again. “She’s not there.” He looked up at Rutledge and said with such pathos that it brought silence to the three watchers, “Did I kill my Mary, then?” Rutledge stood there, looking down at the frightened, ravaged face. Against the judgment of the policeman he’d trained to become, he said quietly, “No. You didn’t kill her. The German bombs did, a long time ago. She can’t suffer anymore. And she can’t come back to you. Neither can the children.”

But he made no mention of Margaret Tarlton.

After the angry doctor had taken Mowbray back to his cell and given him a sedative to swallow, Johnston walked out of the police station saying only, “I don’t know what you’ve accomplished. I just don’t know what to believe!”

The constable was busily sorting out the children by the front door, thanking the parents from whom he’d borrowed them, and watching Andrews crossing to the hotel with a very sleepy little boy on his shoulder and a little girl dragging her feet in the dust, head down and yawning.

“What happened?” the constable asked Hildebrand, and then quickly went back into the station, minding his own business with industry.

Hildebrand said, “Johnston is right. What’ve you accomplished? If those are the children we’ve been searching for—and for the sake of argument, I’ll accept it for now—there’s still the dead woman. If she happens to be this Miss Tarlton, Mowbray killed her mistaking her for his wife! That’s the long and short of it. Stands to reason. We’ve still got one victim, and we’ve got her killer.”

“Have we? He didn’t recognize Margaret Tarlton, did he? How did he meet her? And where is her suitcase? Where is her hat? We’re back to the same quandary we’ve faced all along. If Mowbray killed that woman and then went to sleep under a tree, ripe picking for the police when the body was found, why did he bother to clean the blood off himself, get rid of the weapon, and hide her suitcase? To what end? Why not leave them there, beside her?”

“Who knows what goes on in the mind of a madman!”

“Even the mad have their own logic!”

“No, don’t come the Londoner with me, Rutledge! Madness means there’s no logic left in the mind.”

“I submit, then, that whoever killed Margaret Tarlton took away the suitcase, the hat she was wearing, and the weapon.”

“Oh, yes? Walking down the road with them in his hand, was he?”

“No. He—the killer—was taking Margaret Tarlton by car to the station in Singleton Magna. And it was into the car that he shoved the hat and the weapon and the missing suitcase, until he could dispose of them later!”

“Oh, yes?” Hildebrand repeated. “But came through his front door spattered with blood and said, ‘Don’t mind this lot, I’ll just have a quick bath before tea!’ ”

“Yes, it’s the blood that’s the problem,” Rutledge admitted. “We don’t know where either Mowbray or anyone else might have washed off the blood.”

But there was only one place, and he’d already felt the words burning in the back of his mind like red-hot brands.

At the farmhouse, Aurore Wyatt could easily have walked inside after tending a sick heifer and bathed her face and hands and thrown away a stained shirtwaist, or burned it in the kitchen fire. Except for the deaf old man who worked there, who would have seen or paid any heed to what she did? By the time she got back to her own house,

she’d have been clean.…

Rutledge, standing there in the late-afternoon sunlight while a saw droned on and on somewhere in the distance, suddenly knew how Judas had felt. A traitor—a betrayer of someone who trusted him …

Or who trusted in her spell over him?

22

When it was finished, when Hildebrand had walked back into his office and the waiting knot of people—starved of news—had wandered away, Rutledge drew a long shuddering breath and went back to the Swan. He felt dazed with weariness, the emotional trial in Hildebrand’s office still searing his conscience.

What choice had he been given?

At what price had Mowbray won some respite from his own horrors? Or had they only been scored more deeply into the man’s tormented mind? And was he a killer at all, but only the victim as much as the dead woman in the pauper’s grave by the church?

Hamish, who disapproved of much that Rutledge did, holding him to the high standards of a man who was Calvinist in heart and soul, said, “When ye’re done feeling sorry for yoursel’, there’s the ither woman with nae name and nae face. What aboot her, then?”

“What about her?” Rutledge said. “Mowbray couldn’t have killed her, he couldn’t have made a practice of riding trains and murdering any woman with a passing resemblance to his dead wife! And she was dark-haired, not fair!” He suddenly lost patience with Hamish. “What has she to do with Margaret Tarlton, for God’s sake?”

“Aye, that’s the question. But look, if she has a part in this matter, she deserves justice even if there’s nae MP calling for answers!”

Tired to the bone, Rutledge said, “If we’ve cleared Mowbray of killing his children, and if we’ve shown that the dead woman is very likely Margaret Tarlton—if Miss Napier has told the truth about recognizing that dress—then we’re back to the people who knew her best. The Napiers. Shaw. The Wyatts.”

“Aye. Find that hat, forebye, and you’ll ha’ the answer.”

“You said that about the children,” Rutledge said wearily. “And it wasn’t enough.”

He had reached his room, but without any memory of walking into the inn or up the stairs or down the passage. Closing the door behind him, he took off his coat and threw himself face down across the bed.

Two minutes later, Hamish’s complaints notwithstanding, Rutledge was deeply asleep, where not even dreams could reach him. The dark head on the pillow stirred once as the church bell struck the hour, one arm moving to crook protectively around it and the other hand uncurling from the tight fist of tension.

You don’t, Rutledge told himself over a late dinner, lose your objectivity if you want to be a good policeman. You learn to shut out the pain of others, you learn to ask the questions that can break up a marriage, set brother against brother, or turn father against son. Willy-nilly, to get at the truth.

But what was truth? It had as many sides as there were people involved and was as changeable as human nature.

Take Margaret Tarlton, for one. If you believed the stories told, she was Elizabeth Napier’s friend and confidante, Thomas Napier’s lover, Daniel Shaw’s heartbreak, and a reminder of Simon Wyatt’s glorious past, when he was still destined for greatness. A reminder to Aurore Wyatt that her husband was vulnerable to the blandishments of the Napiers. Most murderers know their victims. It could be one of those closest to her—or it could be someone who had followed her from London.

It could be that by purest chance Mowbray had come upon her and killed her, just as they’d believed all along.

Or take the working-class woman who had died and been buried in a fallow field. On the surface of it, she’d nothing to do with Mowbray, and very likely little to do with Margaret Tarlton. Was she, then, a red herring? Or was she the first victim of the same killer? And how did you find the name and direction of a working-class woman who hadn’t been reported missing and who apparently had no connection with anyone in Charlbury? She could have come from London—Portsmouth—Liverpool. She could have come from the moon.

But he thought there might be one person who could tell him.

The next morning, while Hildebrand was busy interviewing Elizabeth Napier—tiptoeing on eggshells, as one of the constables put it—Rutledge drove back to Charlbury.

In every village, the one person who could be counted on to know every facet of the lives and failures of each parishioner was most often the rector’s wife. Whereas in a town of any size, it was usually the constable who could provide the smallest details about anyone on his patch.

Rutledge called on Mrs. Daulton. Henry answered the door and said, “She’s in the back. And rather too mucky, I think, to come inside. I’m not much of a gardener myself,” he added, and as if in explanation, “I always pull up the wrong things.”

“I’ll find her. Thank you, Mr. Daulton.”

She was in her garden, a shabby smock over her shirtwaist and skirt, a kerchief around her head, and what appeared to be her husband’s old boots on her feet. From the look of the boots she’d been wading in mud at some point. She was currently pruning the canes of a climbing rose that had grown too exuberantly that year. Her hair was pulled from its tidy bun by the thorns, and there were scratches on her face. She seemed to be thoroughly happy.

“Inspector,” she said, when she looked up to find him striding down the path from the side of the house. “How thoughtful of you to come to me. As you see, we are our own gardeners here at the rectory.” Straightening her back as if it hurt, she added, “Mind you, I recollect the day when there were two gardeners and a lad to keep these grounds! Not that I stayed out of them even then.” She took off her gloves and extended her hand. “What can I do to help you?”

Rutledge smiled as he took her hand and said, “I need your knowledge. Of people, and of one person in particular.”

She looked at him straightly. “I will not help you put Simon Wyatt in prison for a crime he’s innocent of.”

“I shan’t ask it of you,” Rutledge promised. “No, my interest is in a maid who vanished some time ago.”

“The body in the field.” She nodded. “I doubt it’s Betty Cooper, but then you never know, do you?” She set the gloves beside the trowel and the pruning shears in the barrow at her side. “Come along, then, we can sit over there.”

Over there was a small rustic bench in the shade of a great, ancient apple tree, its branches bowed down with green fruit. Before them the beds and borders of the rectory garden spread out like a fan toward the house. It was a pretty scene, peaceful and quiet. Rutledge followed her and sat down beside her. She sighed, as if tearing her thoughts from the rosebush and bringing them to bear on what he wanted to hear.

“I can’t tell you much about the girl. But enough, perhaps, for your purposes. Betty came to Dorset during the war. From a poor family near Plymouth. Many girls went into war work of some sort, omnibus conductors and the like. Mrs. Darley ran a large dairy farm and needed help. Betty was sent to her because the girl had some experience with animals and the work was to her liking, or so I was told. At any rate, she pulled her weight until the end of the war and afterward asked Mrs. Darley to give her some training as a parlor maid. As I heard it, Betty didn’t want to be a clerk in an office or a shopgirl, she wanted to be the person who opened doors to guests and served tea. That’s a rather silly view, maids do more than that, but Betty had aspirations, you see, and they included learning how to dress and how to speak properly. And she was quite pretty; it was only a matter of time before the lure of better prospects took her away. Mrs. Darley,” she ended dryly, “entertains less than stellar company. She’s a farmer’s wife, not a society hostess.”

Rutledge was suddenly reminded of the farmer’s wife and daughter he’d interviewed only days before, who had been on the same train as Mowbray. No, housemaid to a farm wife wouldn’t appeal to an ambitious young woman out to make her fortune.

“I suggested to Simon that he take her on, when he came back from France and brought Aurore to Charlbury. He interviewed Betty, but there wasn’t any money for a second girl. And Edith had been with Simon’s father. She’s the cook’s niece, you see, and wanted to stay on.”

“That refusal was the turning point for Betty?”

“Yes, it was. Not a month later she was gone in the night, slipping away with her belongings and not leaving so much as a note. Mrs. Darley would gladly have given her a reference.”

“Was there a man in the picture?” he asked.

“No,” Mrs. Daulton said, considering the possibility. “I think not. Betty had … ambitions. She might flirt with every man she met, including our own Constable Truit, but it was harmless, she was hoping to do better than a farmer’s son. At any rate, as far as anyone knows, that’s the last news of Betty Cooper.” She smiled wryly. “I consider Betty one of my failures. You and I know very well what happens to most of the hopeful young women who go to London without references or prospects. It’s a dreary end to ambitions, isn’t it?”

“There’s no possibility of finding her, there are too many like her in London. If that’s where she went.”

“There’s no family in Plymouth that I’m aware of. No reason to go back there.” She smoothed the dirt from one palm. “The war gave girls so many new opportunities. Still, I don’t know that it’s a good thing to offer a glimpse of a new way of thinking and then snatch it back the minute the men come marching home from war. What will they do? These girls with a taste for independence?”

“Betty had no other training?”

“To hear Mrs. Darley tell it, she was a cross between Mata Hari and the Whore of Babylon! But no, she had no skills. She was pretty enough for Dorset, but I doubt she’d attract all that much notice in London. Still, who can say? She might have settled somewhere and found happiness by now!”

“Describe her, if you would, please.”

Mrs. Daulton considered for a moment. “Very dark hair, very white skin—which made a striking combination, as you can imagine. I don’t recall what color her eyes were. Blue, at a guess. Slim, but only of medium height. I had a feeling she might run to plumpness in middle age.”

The description came very close to the body they’d found. But Betty had left Dorset months before the physical evidence pointed to a time of death.

“She never came back? You’re quite sure of that?”

She smiled. “If Betty had come home like a beaten dog, Mrs. Darley would have shouted it to the world. As vindication for dire predictions.”

He said slowly, “I shall have to ask Mrs. Darley to look at the body.”

The smile vanished. “No. I know how she feels about Betty, she’d like to think the girl got her just deserts. It wouldn’t be an objective identification. She’s not vindictive, but she was badly hurt by what she perceives as the girl’s callousness. Well, it was a personal rejection of a sort, wasn’t it? Mrs. Darley offered Betty the best she had, and it wasn’t good enough for the girl. At least that was the way Mrs. Darley felt her friends must see it.”

“Someone has to tell us if the dead woman is Betty Cooper. Or not.”

She took a deep breath and stood up. “I’ll do it. Just give me a moment to change into something cleaner.”

“You must think about it carefully,” he warned her. “It won’t be a very—pleasant—experience for you either. She was bea—”

“No!” she said sharply, cutting across his words. “Don’t tell me. I can stand it better if I don’t know how she suffered.” She turned to look at him. “Are you reaching for straws, Inspector? I have heard—various accounts, I assure you, and none of them kind—about what was done yesterday. I’m very glad those children were found alive. But I think the methods used to be certain were rather cruel.”

“It would have been far more cruel to have hanged an innocent man.”

She said, “It is no excuse, all the same.”

They arrived at the doctor’s surgery half an hour later. Rutledge had telephoned the police in Singleton Magna, asking Hildebrand to make the necessary arrangements. There was a message waiting for him at the surgery. “I’m pursuing my own line of inquiry. Handle this yourself.”

Dr. Fairfield was distinctly cool, but did as he was asked.

Henry Daulton had insisted that he come as well. “My mother will need me afterward,” he said simply. “I saw dead people in the war. She won’t like it.”

All the same, they made him wait outside.

In the spare, scrubbed room, Mrs. Daulton was shown the articles of clothing first. She looked at them, then shook her head. She was very white, her lips drawn tightly together. After a moment she said with some constraint in her voice, “No. I don’t recollect Betty wearing anything like this while she worked for the Darleys. But then I wouldn’t know her personal wardrobe. Or what she may have bought later. I’m sorry. That’s not much help, is it?”

The musty smell of earth and death filled the air as the clothes were refolded and put away.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” the doctor asked solicitously. “Before we go on? My wife will be glad to have you step across to the house, Mrs. Daulton.”

Her eyes strayed to the white screen in one comer of the room. “I’d rather—” She cleared her throat with an effort. “I’d rather finish as quickly as possible,” she said. “If you don’t mind?”

As he led her forward and withdrew the screen, she looked at Rutledge with anxious eyes. “I tell myself this is no worse than comforting the dying. Or helping to lay out the dead.”

The body had been made as presentable as possible, which wasn’t saying much. Even the sheet covering it seemed stark and horribly suggestive.

When it was drawn back, Joanna Daulton gasped and seemed for an instant to cringe into herself. Then she recovered, from what inner wells of strength, Rutledge couldn’t tell, but he felt only admiration. She looked down at the battered face, tatters of rotting flesh and yellowed bone, the broken nose. Her eyes were wide, observing. Careful.

Then she shut her eyes, reached out a hand, and turned away. Rutledge took the trembling fingers and held them in his. They were icy cold.

“I—that might be Betty,” she said shakily. “There’s—a resemblance—of a kind. Still—Could I have some air, please?”

Rutledge transferred his grip to her arm and led her out into the main surgery, while the doctor quietly drew the sheet back over the dead woman’s face. Mrs. Daulton took the chair Rutledge drew away from the desk for her and sat down with a suddenness that told him she was close to fainting.

He thrust a waiting glass of cold water into her hand and said bracingly, as he would have done to a raw recruit shaking with reaction after his first battle. “That was well done. You were very brave, and it’s over now.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Mrs. Daulton said quietly after she had drank the water and rested for a moment. “I shall see that face in my nightmares for a very long time to come. The sad thing is, I appear to have been no help at all to you. I’m sorry.”

And to his astonishment, she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.

Rutledge delivered a subdued Mrs. Daulton and her son to the rectory in Charlbury and then, after two other stops, went back to Singleton Magna for his lunch. He was sick of death and bodies and questions.

But there was no respite. Halfway through his meal, there was a telephone call from London.

He expected it to be Bowles, complaining and demanding. Instead it was Sergeant Gibson.

“Inspector Rutledge, sir? I’ve been doing some digging in Gloucestershire, looking for that Tarlton woman. No luck, I’m afraid, but I’ve come across a small bit of information that you might want to hear. The cousins who live there are middle-aged, I’d say closer to forty than thirty. They’ve got a little boy of three or thereabouts. Proud as punch of him, they are. But one old gossip down the street tells me Mrs. Tarlton—that’s the cousin—couldn’t have children, it was the sorrow of her life, and this is a miracle baby.”

Rutledge felt a ripple of excitement. “Have you spoken to Mrs. Tarlton’s physician?”

“Aye, I did that, and he said—mind you, he didn’t like it one bit!—that Mrs. Tarlton had seen fit to go to Yorkshire to have the lad. He hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Returned with her baby, looking like the cat that ate the cream, very pleased with herself indeed. He didn’t have the direction of the doctor who’d delivered the boy, didn’t know, if you ask me! So I took it upon myself to look up the boy’s birth certificate. Very interesting reading, that. Sarah Ralston Tarlton, mother, father listed as Frederick C. Tarlton. Which is as it should be, if the boy’s truly theirs. I went next to the attending physician in York, and he says Mrs. Tarlton stayed in a rented house with her sister-in-law, an older woman. Her husband came several times to visit.”

He waited.

Rutledge said, “Any description of him?”

“Vague. Fits Freddy, right enough. The doctor said they were there only a few months, until Mrs. Tarlton and of course the baby were fit to travel. They were emigrating to Canada, he thought. But I’ll be willing to wager that it was all a farce, and our Miss Tarlton had a baby which she handed over to the cousins. She wouldn’t be the first young woman in London to slip up with some soldier.”

But was it “some soldier”? Or was the child Thomas Napier’s? If the arrangements had been so carefully made from the start, that link would be buried deepest. Napier had enemies; they would like nothing better than to catch even the faintest whiff of scandal.

“Well done, Sergeant! You’re vastly underrated. Has anyone told you that? I owe you a drink when I get back to London.”

“As to that, sir, rumor here says you’ve taken root in Dorset.” There was a deep chuckle at the end of the line as Gibson hung up.

“Interesting information or no’,” Hamish was saying, “what’s it got tae do wi’ this business?”

“Everything—or nothing,” Rutledge said, replacing the receiver. “It could give Elizabeth Napier a damned fine motive for murder.”

“Or yon Daniel Shaw. If he was to learn what happened.”

Or even Thomas Napier, if he was tired of moral blackmail.…

None of which accounted for the second body.

Rutledge found himself restless, unable to settle to any one thought or direction. Every time he’d made any progress in this investigation, he seemed to slip back into a morass of questions without answers. He walked as far as the church yard, then turned down a shaded lane that led past the back gardens of half a dozen houses before winding its way to the main road again.

The source of his restlessness was easy to identify. The problem of Betty Cooper. He’d stopped at the Darley farm on the way back to Singleton Magna, to question Mrs. Darley. She had been bitter, as Joanna Daulton had foretold.

“I did my best by that girl! I gave her a home, I taught her to be a good maid, and I would have helped her find a place when she was ready. Instead, she walked away in the night, without a thank-you or a good-bye. Whatever trouble she got into afterward is none of my concern.” She was a woman with thinning white hair and a harassed expression, worn by years of hard work. “I’m sorry if she’s got herself killed, I wouldn’t have wished that on her. But a green girl goes to a place like London and she’s likely to find trouble, isn’t she?”

“Would she have been likely to come back to you for help? If she’d needed it?” he’d asked. “If she’d found herself in trouble?”

The room was full of sunlight, but there was a darkness in Mrs. Darley’s face. “She’d have been sent away with a flea in her ear, if she had! I have no patience with these modern girls who don’t know their place or their duty.”

“Was there anyone she was close to in the neighborhood? A man or a woman? A maid at someone else’s home?”

“Women didn’t much care for her, she put on airs. Above herself, she was. As for men, they’d come around, as men will, but she wouldn’t give them the time of day either. Saving herself for better things, she was. Well, that’s all right in its way, but she had notions she shouldn’t of. When Henry Daulton came back from the war, she said if he hadn’t been wounded so bad, she’d have had a fancy for him. Then she met Simon Wyatt, and she was all for finding herself a gentleman. Mr. Wyatt had interviewed her only as a favor to Mrs. Daulton, but she couldn’t see that, could she? Took it personal, just because he’d seen her himself, rather than leaving her to his French wife.”

“She told you this?” Rutledge asked, surprised.

“Lord save us, no! I overheard her talking to one of the cowmen. He was teasing her, like, and she said a gentleman didn’t have dirt under his nails nor smell of sweat, nor drink himself into a stupor of a Saturday night, and knew how to treat a lady. Much taken with Mr. Wyatt she was. She said he’d gone and got himself a French wife, but it wouldn’t last. He was home now, and not in France. That’s when I came around the corner from looking at the cream pans and told her I’d not have talk like that under my roof. My late husband didn’t stand for that kind of sauciness, and neither do I! It wasn’t more than ten days later, if that long, before she was gone. And I haven’t seen her, nor wanted to, since. I don’t wish her harm, no, but some learn the hard way, don’t they?”

Rutledge also tracked down Constable Truit, who had—according to Joanna Daulton—tried to court the dead woman.

He shook his head when Rutledge began his questions. “Inspector Hildebrand asked me to have a look at the body when it was first brought in. I couldn’t see any likeness to Betty. Miss Cooper. Sleek as a cat, she was, sunning itself in the window. Not like this one, thin, cheap clothes and shoes. Not Betty’s style.” His confidence was solid, convincing.

Rutledge wondered if Truit saw what he wanted to see or if this was a considered opinion. All the same, the answer contradicted Mrs. Daulton’s tentative identification.

A dead end. And yet … if the dead woman was Betty Cooper, she’d come back to Dorset. Someone had killed her, when she did, to silence her.

Just as someone had killed Margaret Tarlton, when she came back to Charlbury for the first time since 1914.

“That’s wild supposition,” Hamish said.

But was it?

What did these two women have in common? Or—to put it another way, what threat had these two women posed, that cost them their lives?

The common thread, if there was one, seemed to be Simon Wyatt. And a savage beating that was the cause of death in both cases. But it was as tenuous as gossamer, that thread. One tug, to see where it might lead, would snap it.…

If Elizabeth Napier had killed her secretary because Margaret had borne an illegitimate child to Thomas Napier, it made no sense for her to have killed a serving girl months before.

If Daniel Shaw had killed Margaret out of jealousy, he had no motive to kill anyone else.

If the connection was Simon Wyatt, then he, Rutledge, was back to Aurore.

“Or Simon himsel’,” Hamish pointed out. “For yon bonny house and the money it will bring in.”

Thanking Truit, he found himself thinking with cold clarity that there was one way that Simon Wyatt might win on two fronts: retrieve the money he needed so badly from Margaret’s Chelsea house and rid himself of his French wife. Leave her to hang for murder.…

Coming out of Truit’s house, he was waylaid by Mrs. Prescott.

“I don’t see why you haven’t moved into the Arms,” she told him. “You’re in Charlbury more often than the doctor or the priest.”

“By accident,” he said, smiling.

She looked up at him. “Pshaw! It’s a pretty face bringing you back.”

He could feel a flush rising. “Margaret Tarlton’s face wasn’t pretty when her killer had finished. That’s what brings me back here. Did you have something to tell me?”

Mrs. Prescott nodded. “My brother, now, he’s a good listener. Says his voice dried up the day after his wedding and hasn’t been heard since. But he’s a great one for the gossip over a pint at the Arms. You’d think he knew more about wood than any man alive.”

“Wood?” His mind was only partly on what she was saying.

“He’s a carpenter. Like the Lord, only not liable to wind up on some of his own handiwork! Makes chests and bed frames over to Stoke Newton. And he’s the one told me about the body they’d found by Leigh Minster.”

“And you’re here to tell me the identity of it?”

“No, it’s not anyone I know. Not that Miss Tarlton, if this one’s already rotting. Nor yet anyone around Charlbury, that I can think of. But it makes you wonder, don’t it, if a woman’s safe these days, out on the roads. When I was a girl, you could walk to Lyme Regis, if you’d cared to, and not a thing to fear any part of the way. I ask you again, do you believe that man Mowbray’s to blame?”

“What do you think?”

She tilted her head to look up at him against the sun. “I don’t see this part of Dorset is a likely place for murderers to congregate by the half dozen, waiting their chances! They’d be more like to die of boredom!”

He said, keeping his face grave, “Are you saying the killer is a local man—or woman?”

“I have a thought or two I’m working on,” she told him, an undercurrent of seriousness changing her voice. “Mind, I’m not saying it’s the most likely way things happened! Only that I suppose it could have.”

Surprised, he thought she was telling the truth, rather than trying to tweak his interest.

“I’d be careful who I told,” he warned her. “If it’s not Mowbray, safely locked away, your thought or two might well make a killer very uncomfortable.”

Mrs. Prescott gave him a straight look. “I’m no fool,” she told him bluntly. “You’re Scotland Yard, and safe enough. Constable Truit,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at his house, “w a fool. I hear the talk around this part of Dorset. Only it doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Like that quilt I was telling you about—bits and pieces, bits and pieces—they add up.”

“Have you got enough to baste together a whole story? If you do, I’d like to hear it.”

She shook her head. “Not yet. No, early days yet! I just wanted you to know that I was working at it.” She smiled crookedly. “I’ve a fond spot for Simon Wyatt. And I detest that Hazel Dixon. I’d just as soon see her nose put out of joint! She’s one to cause trouble out of spite. Pure spite!”

He said again, “I’d refrain from meddling, if I were you.”

“I won’t meddle,” she told him. “I’ll just listen, that’s all.”

23

Rutledge realized that his unguided steps had led him to the small surgery of Dr. Fairfield. The doctor was in and prepared to give him five minutes. The coolness was still there, but Fairfield knew his duty and did it precisely.

“There’s only one question, it won’t take more than five minutes. It’s about the body found here in Singleton Magna—Mrs. Mowbray or Miss Tarlton. I’d like to know if that woman had borne children?”

“That was one of the first questions Hildebrand asked me. And yes, she had. At the time, my answer provided additional evidence that she must be the Mowbray woman. Whether it applies as well to Margaret Tarlton, I can’t say.”

“It may be that Miss Tarlton also had a child. Out of wedlock.”

Fairfield said, “I’m afraid medical science can’t tell us whether the mother was wearing a wedding band or none at the time of birth.”

“And the body at Leigh Minster?”

“I’d say she hadn’t. It is harder to be sure, given her time in the ground. That’s two questions.” He pulled out his watch and glanced at it.

Rutledge took the hint as it was intended, and left.

* * *

He found himself wishing he could interview Thomas Napier, to test the theory of his involvement with Margaret. But Rutledge knew what Bowles would have to say to that request. And Napier himself might well refuse—he had made a point of staying in the background, except for what might be judged as reasonable concern for a young woman in his employ and still under his protection. Even his visits to Bowles’s office could be construed as a man acting in the place of a father. Bowles would most certainly interpret it that way. It made his own life simpler and easier.

The next best choice was Thomas Napier’s daughter.

It was time to ask Elizabeth Napier a few blunt questions.

She was in the museum, a pinafore over a pretty summer dress in blues and greens, busily dusting the new shelves that had replaced the fallen ones.

Rutledge greeted her and asked her to come for a walk with him, out of the house and away from other ears. Somewhere he could hear the maid Edith beating a carpet and Aurore’s voice speaking to Simon.

Surprised, Elizabeth removed her pinafore and said, “I don’t see the need for such secrecy, I’ve nothing to hide. But if you insist—very well.”

They walked down toward the common and the pond. A dog slept peacefully by the water’s edge and ducks swam smoothly in small flotillas, conducting loud conversations as they went. Rooks called in the trees, and he could hear the blacksmith’s hammer. There was a bustle in Charlbury’s streets, the shops doing a brisk business, but here it was quiet enough except for Hamish, muttering in the back of his mind.

“You promised Bowles you’d no’ tread on toes!” he was reminding Rutledge with vigor. “Do you want to end your career on a political blunder?”

Someone had set a bench under a tree some ten feet from the pond, and Rutledge led Elizabeth to it. She inspected it, then sat down, leaving space for him to join her. A light wind lifted the curls at the sides of her face, giving her a vulnerable, almost childlike quality as she turned expectantly toward him.

“I want to ask you about Margaret Tarlton. I find it helps if I understand the background of the victim. Not just where she came from, but how she must have felt about those around her, how she lived her life, how she arrived at a time and place where someone believed she had to die. It often brings me closer to finding the murderer.”

“I thought the police in Singleton Magna were satisfied that Mowbray had killed her. Inspector Hildebrand is not a man who changes his mind lightly.”

“Mowbray is a strong possibility. We can’t overlook him. The problem is, so many pieces of this puzzle don’t fit together properly. And that tells me that I’ve yet to fill the empty spaces between them. It seemed to me that you’d rather not have the Wyatt household hear what I’m about to ask you.” He was choosing his words carefully, aware that she might leave when he finally got to the point.

“I’ve nothing to hide from Simon!”

“No, but your father might. I’ve heard—from a number of sources—that your father was more than fond of Margaret. He was very likely in love with her.”

She turned to face him, her eyes bright, her face shocked. “Who on earth has told you such lies?”

“Are they lies?” he asked gently, apparently watching the ducks.

“My father is very fond of Margaret. You’ve known that from the start! As for love, I don’t believe he’s paid more than polite attention to any woman since my mother’s death.”

“Sometimes a daughter is the last to know a father’s feelings.”

“No, you don’t quite see what I’m telling you. My mother was very important to him, and I’ve done what I could to fill her place. But superficially. I sit at the head of his table, I entertain his guests, I attend public functions with him, and I spend hours with very dull women who must be handled with the greatest care because either their husbands’ opinions or their money carries weight. My father is a man who keeps his emotions tightly locked inside. He hasn’t spoken my mother’s name since the day he buried her. I’m well aware that men have physical needs, but for all I know my father buried those with my mother too.”

“For all you know,” he repeated, no inflecton in his voice.

“Since her death I’ve never seen him show affection, even to me, in public. He doesn’t touch people if he can avoid it, he doesn’t care to be touched. Whatever natural human contacts there are, he accepts but doesn’t encourage. To Margaret he was kind, considerate, and protective, as he was of me. He told me once that she had no family to speak of, and he felt responsible for her as long as she resided under our roof. He saw to it when she was required to spend time on his affairs that she was properly escorted home afterward. I daresay any man of breeding would have done the same!”

She stopped. In the silence that followed he thought about what she had said. If she was lying, she was practiced at it. He considered mentioning the child and decided against it. It was a tenuous charge and, right or wrong, could hurt a goodly number of innocent people. But if Sergeant Gibson’s information was correct, Thomas Napier now had a son to put in his daughter’s place.

“Very well. You believe that your father has no more than a natural fondness for Margaret. Let’s turn the coin over. Was she fond of him?”

“Of course she was. He’s a man who engenders loyalty. And that’s not a daughter’s blind assessment, you can ask anyone who knows him well.”

“Miss Napier, Margaret lived with you for five or six years—”

“No! If Margaret was in love with my father, she successfully kept it from me. And very likely from him as well. She was ambitious, I grant you, but she also understood that scandal of any kind was political fodder. Margaret was very like my father, you know, not a woman who wore her heart on her sleeve. The pair of them would make very dull lovers!”

And yet Shaw had said he saw passion, hot and raw, in Napier’s eyes.

“Why had Miss Tarlton chosen to leave your employ? I’ve been given several reasons for her decision, but I’d very much like to hear the truth.”

Elizabeth shrugged. “She wanted a change. The museum reminded her of India, possibly. Or she was tired of London.”

“She carefully concealed her Indian background, Miss Napier. I don’t believe she would elect to come here to Charlbury and open that door again. Nor was Dorset likely to foster an ambitious young woman’s prospects. I think you persuaded her to come, to give yourself an excuse to call on Simon Wyatt from time to time. I’m sure that’s why you felt some sense of guilt when you were told Margaret was dead—”

“I wouldn’t—”

“But you would. You’ve come now yourself and you’re staying. A foot in the door. Still, your motives aren’t important. What matters is why Margaret agreed to your scheme. Was she happy for an excuse to break her ties with you, to leave London and to put some distance between herself and your father? Or, if she wanted to marry him, she must have realized that he wouldn’t ask her as long as she was a nobody, your secretary, vulnerable to cruelties from women who took pleasure in reminding her of her place. Even moving to another house hadn’t changed that. She was, as she put it herself, still a servant.” He smiled, to take some of the sting from his words. “She wouldn’t be the first woman to feel that leaving him might make up a man’s mind for him. He was already jealous, he knew that Captain Shaw was living here. He must have told her he was afraid she’d rekindle that old romance, that Shaw might persuade her that a ring on her finger was better than the shadowy life of a mistress—”

“Nonsense!” Elizabeth’s face was flushed with anger. “You’ve twisted the truth to fit your own muddled evidence! She was never my father’s mistress!”

Rutledge turned to her. “I don’t intend to embarrass you or your father, Miss Napier. I simply want the truth so that I can sort out the rest of this tangle and find Miss Tarlton’s killer. And I think I have found the truth, finally.”

Elizabeth got up, her skirts brushing against him as she turned to go. “I’d like very much to know who gave you this information. You said ‘a number’ of sources. Was that true? Or simply a euphemism?”

“Yes. It was true. I’ve heard it from enough sources that I have no choice but to believe it.”

She frowned, mentally running down a list of possible names. He could see her mind at work. Then she smiled. “Well. It doesn’t matter. My father is safe, isn’t he? Either way. If Margaret is dead. And it wasn’t I, was it, who drove Margaret to the station that last morning. Good day, Inspector!”

He watched her walk on toward the inn, her stride graceful, her bearing giving her that aura of royal dignity that made up for inches. But he thought, his eyes on her straight back, that she was upset, as if he’d touched a rawness in her that bled inside.

Rutledge considered the possibility that whatever the stationmaster might have said, Margaret Tarlton reached Singleton Magna, and Elizabeth Napier met her there, offering to drive her on to Sherborne. And killed her along the road, to put an end to any connection between Margaret and Thomas Napier.

But that brought him around again to the question of who drove Margaret to Singleton Magna.

He was beginning to believe he knew … if it hadn’t been Aurore in the Wyatt motorcar, it might have been Simon. In spite of Mrs. Dixon’s certainty that Aurore was driving, it was the vehicle and not the occupants she’d seen. He was persuaded of that by his own instincts and the woman’s vehemence.

But why would Simon kill Margaret Tarlton or anyone else? Why would Aurore be terrified that he might have?

It was on the way back to his car that he halted by the smithy and stood thinking intently for several minutes as he watched the activity around him. People going about their own business moved past him with curiosity in their eyes, nodding but not pausing to speak to him. He was the bringer of misfortune, in a sense. They wouldn’t ignore him completely, but there was no warmth in their faces as they went on. The sooner he left, the sooner life in Charlbury could return to normal.

As, in a way, it already had. In spite of police activity in the neighborhood, in spite of the discovery of another body some distance away, no one had been murdered in Charlbury itself, and no one had been arrested in the village. The initial shock had begun to wear off and, with it, some of the tension. That explained the activity on the street. He found that very interesting.

If Aurore was guilty, then the village had not lost one of its own. . . . The stranger could be taken away, grief would disrupt Simon Wyatt’s life for a time, but the familiar face of Elizabeth Napier was assurance perhaps that he wouldn’t grieve for long. All would be as it had been.

Hamish, wary, noticed her first.

Rutledge became aware that someone was speaking his name and turned to see a woman standing beside him, casting a look over her shoulder as if afraid that she might be seen with him. She was a plump woman, attractive in a way, but with the small mouth and narrow eyes of a spiteful nature. Her dark hair was pinned up with an effort at style, and she was wearing a very becoming summer dress. He thought, if she smiled, she might even be pretty.

“Yes, what can I do for you?” he asked, giving her his full attention.

“My name is Marian Forsby. I only wanted to tell you that I haven’t seen anything that might help you with your inquiries, but I thought perhaps—” She paused, casting another look around her.

He said, “This is a very public place, Mrs. Forsby. May I offer you a cup of tea at the Wyatt Arms?” He smiled, some of the forbidding harshness of his thoughts vanishing with it.

Gratefully she accepted, and in a very few minutes they were ensconced under the trees where he had talked with Aurore, a pot of tea in front of them. Mrs. Forsby poured it delicately and served him with a practiced air of gentility. But her work-roughened hands told him otherwise. Would the women of Charlbury have been any kinder to Margaret Tarlton than they had been to Aurore? Or perhaps Margaret had expected to be here for a very short time.

There was no one else in the back garden, yet Mrs. Forsby still had an air of looking over her shoulder, even without turning her head, as if every nerve ending were attuned to movement around them.

“I am married to Harold Forsby, who owns the ironmonger’s shop. We have a house just up the way from there,” she said, busying herself with her cup so that she didn’t have to meet his eyes. “I’ve been concerned for some time—you see, I’m often occupied with the children—they’re four and eight, very active, they are. Which has made for some difficulties between myself and my husband.” Her cheeks flushed, but she went on resolutely into his interested silence. He wasn’t sure where this was leading, but a policeman quickly learned that patience was a valuable tool.

“I don’t quite know how to say this, Inspector. But Hazel Dixon mentioned that you were interested in Mrs. Wyatt’s activities. I thought it best to speak to you myself, since I was in a position to tell you some things others might not have thought it necessary to pass on. Mrs. Wyatt is—well, to put it bluntly, she is a woman who attracts the eye of a man, and she knows it. Very French, she is, and that does seem to add to her appeal. That slight accent, and the way she dresses. Well, I can only imagine what her relationship is with her husband, but a woman who is promiscuous often has a very—er—jealous nature. She doesn’t like competition! I’m sure that’s why she persuaded him to give up standing for Parliament and take on this silly museum of his! Such a waste, wouldn’t you say? We’ve had Wyatts representing us for ever so many years, he’s so suitable for the task!”

“Promiscuous?” he asked, moving directly to the key word.

“Oh, yes, I can’t imagine that any decently behaved woman would attract so much attention to herself if she was not—well, of that nature. She can’t be ignorant of the looks cast her way! A married woman neither invites nor encourages such bold notice. It’s neither proper nor genteel. And with Mr. Wyatt so busy with this museum of his, he hasn’t taken steps to put a stop to it!”

Her mouth tightened until the lips were a thin, short line.

The third stone was being cast at Aurore.…

“What has this to do with my investigation, Mrs. Forsby?” He tried to keep the anger out of his voice, picking up his cup and burning himself with the scalding tea. He realized that there was no sugar, no cream in his. Setting it down, he remedied that, courteously waiting for Mrs. Forsby to answer.

“If I were a woman like that,” she said after a moment, “and another very pretty woman came into my household, I shouldn’t like it! I suppose it’s a natural jealousy in someone who prefers to be the center of attention at home as well as in the neighborhood. The talk was, they’d find a male assistant for Mr. Wyatt, someone from one of the colleges. Mrs. Wyatt would have preferred that, I’m quite sure, another besotted male in the house. It might have kept her from straying farther afield, at least for a time. But it didn’t turn out that way, did it?”

“Are you telling me that Aurore Wyatt has taken lovers in Charlbury?”

She put down her own cup and said, “I don’t know about lovers, Inspector, I can’t speak for Mrs. Wyatt. I think—at the moment—that it’s probably her deep need for male attention. But you know where that leads in the long run! I’ve seen the way Harold looks when she comes into the shop, and I’ve seen Denton at the Arms and Bill Dixon, and even Constable Truit hanging on every word she utters, their faces wreathed in silly smiles, their eyes avid, and God alone knows what’s going through their minds! It may not be true adultery yet, but it’s only a matter of time. She’ll tire of their admiration and want more. No, I don’t think Mrs. Wyatt would have liked to see competition under her roof, and I’m sure if you don’t act soon, something will very likely happen to Miss Napier as well. I’m not suggesting that it will, but one must do one’s duty before something terrible happens, and not in hindsight. Well, there you have it!”

It was a tangle of jealousy and envy, with no reason behind it but a woman’s need to retaliate, to strike out at the interloper.

“Are you saying that I should arrest Mrs. Wyatt for murder? On what evidence? And the murder of whom?”

She lifted an impatient hand. “Miss Tarlton, of course. Mrs. Dixon swears she saw Mrs. Wyatt in the car driving Miss Tarlton to Singleton Magna. I’m sure she’s not the only one to notice the car, if the truth be told. And I’ve just explained to you why I believe Mrs. Wyatt could have done such a terrible thing. I don’t speak up lightly, Inspector! I came to you after considerable thought and prayer. But if a person breaks one of the commandments, it isn’t such a great step from breaking others, is it?”

“But you’ve no proof that Mrs. Wyatt has betrayed her husband?”

She smiled tightly, then drank her tea. “What proof do you need? If that woman they found just the other day is Betty Cooper, then you ought to consider that Mr. Wyatt was thinking of taking her on as a second maid. Edith is rather plain, but Betty had a way with her. Mrs. Wyatt wouldn’t have liked her about the house, flaunting herself! It was not long afterward that Betty disappeared. No one remarked it at the time, but it’s very likely she met the same fate.”

“The woman found at Stoke Minster has been dead for only three months or so. Betty Cooper left Dorset long before that.”

“Did she? She left Mrs. Darley, right enough! She may even have gone to London for a time. But in the end she came back, didn’t she? And wanted that job Mr. Wyatt had promised her. If she came to the Wyatt door on Edith’s day off, and Mrs. Wyatt answered, what do you think could have happened?”

It was an interesting theory.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “If Mrs. Wyatt has, as you say, an eye for the men in Charlbury, why should she object if her husband took a fancy to Margaret Tarlton or Betty Cooper? I should think that would provide Mrs. Wyatt with more opportunity to indulge in her own affairs.”

“But I just told you!” Mrs. Forsby said. “She wants to hoard them all, Mr. Wyatt, my Harold, any man with eyes in his head to see her—even you. I’ve watched her with her hand on your arm, smiling up at you like Miss Innocence herself! Even a London inspector from Scotland Yard is fair game for that one!” She finished her tea, her face pink with a sense of righteous triumph. “Mrs. Wyatt got her hands on Mr. Wyatt in the war, even when he was engaged to Miss Napier. It’s not right, it’s not proper. And if she had no respect for a man already promised to someone else, then she won’t let marriage vows stop her.”

It was Hamish who put the thought into his head. That Aurore Wyatt had escaped a war-ravaged country by marrying Simon.

“Did you or anyone else see Betty Cooper after she disappeared six months ago? Did anyone see her come back to Charlbury? Hearsay won’t do, we need hard evidence. The body wasn’t found in this village, after all. It could be unrelated to Margaret Tarlton’s death. It may not have anything to do with Aurore Wyatt.”

She touched her lips with the serviette in her lap and folded it neatly before laying it beside her empty cup. “Nobody said she was a fool. And she’d have to be, to leave bodies lying about on her own doorstep! What I ask myself is, who else had any call to harm Betty Cooper? Or this Miss Tarlton. Can you tell me that? No, I didn’t think so! And where’s it ail to stop? I ask you.”

Rutledge walked with her to the door of the Wyatt Arms. Denton nodded to him as he passed, but Daniel Shaw was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Forsby was still talking about how difficult it had been to come forward, as if she wanted his reassurance that she’d done the right thing. But the air of triumph was still there.

He thanked her and watched her walk back the way she’d come, with a neck stiff with righteousness beneath her summery hat.

But Hamish was pointing out, with some force, that Aurore had tried her charms on him, and it had worked.

“You canna’ fault a woman like yon, for wanting her own back on the foreigner who takes her husband’s eye, when she has a husband of her own.”

He was angry all the same. Defensive, for Aurore’s sake. Surely Wyatt had some inkling of the feelings that were rampant in Charlbury! Or was the man so blinded by his own pain that he couldn’t see what was happening?

“You’re no’ her champion,” Hamish reminded him. “You’re a lonely man who’s lost the one woman he thought cared for him. You see the loneliness in her, and it turns your head. But it’s no’ the same—your Jean walked away and is marrying anither man in your place. Yon woman already has a husband!”

“I’m not in love with her!”

“No,” Hamish said thoughtfully, “I’d no’ say you were. But she can pull the strings, and you dance like a puppet at the end of them! Because she’s hurting as much as you are. And like calls to like. It’s no’ love, but it Can light fires all the same in a man!”

Rutledge swore, and told Hamish he was a fool.

But he knew that Aurore cast spells. Except over her husband. Whatever he’d felt for his wife in France when he’d married her, it was quite different now. And for all he, Rutledge, knew of it, Aurore herself had changed as much as Simon had. That was the centerpiece of their marriage—change—and it might not have been all on one side.

If Aurore’s marriage was empty, she might well be frightened of other women catching Simon’s eye. If Simon neglected her, she might well be driven to having an affair, to point out to him that others wanted very badly what he chose to cast off.

Which might explain why the husbands of Charlbury were besotted and the wives were prepared to see Aurore Wyatt hang, if it took her away from there.

24

Rutledge was halfway to his car when he saw Hildebrand coming out of the Wyatt house. The Singleton Magna inspector saw him as well and signaled Rutledge to wait. When he reached the car, there was a nasty gleam in Hildebrand’s eyes. For a moment he studied Rutledge, and then said, “Well, you can pack your bags tonight and leave for London in the morning. I’ve got the Tarlton murder solved. Without the help of the Yard, I might add. You’ve been precious little help from the start, come to that.”

“Solved? That means an arrest, then.”

“Of course it does. Keep my ear to the ground, that’s what I do. Truit tells me what he doesn’t tell you—well, no reason why he should, is there? You were here to find the children. And they’ve been found, haven’t they?”

He was gloating, his face gleaming with it, his manner offensive but just short of insulting. He paused to let Rutledge respond.

“That’s good news,” he answered.

Hildebrand still waited and, when Rutledge had nothing more to add, went on with malicious pleasure. “I’m having a search warrant brought. We’ll find the murder weapon and that suitcase you were so fond of throwing in my face. And when we do, I’ll have my murderer. Ever seen a woman hang? Delicate necks, over swiftly.”

Rutledge felt cold, not sure whether Hildebrand was telling him the truth or trying to rouse him to anger. “Stop beating about the bush, Hildebrand!”

He held up a square hand, the back of it toward Rutledge, and began to tick off the points, bending down each finger as he went. “Witnesses saw Mrs. Wyatt driving the victim to Singleton Magna, even though she denies it. Mrs. Wyatt wasn’t happy about the Tarlton woman coming here. Jealousy, I’m told. Mrs. Wyatt could wash up after the murder at that farm of the Wyatts’, and nobody was the wiser. Handyman didn’t see her leave and didn’t hear her return. That’s where she tucked the murder weapon and probably the suitcase as well, out of sight into the hay or under one of the sheds. Who’d notice a worn spanner or an old hammer in that yard full of rusting junk?”

“Why did you change your mind?” Rutledge forced himself to ask. “I thought you were convinced that Mowbray had killed Margaret Tarlton, mistaking her for his wife.”

“I was fairly sure of that, given the evidence. But we found something else interesting today. I sent one of my men to Gloucestershire, where the Tarlton woman’s relatives live. They were that upset, to hear she was dead, not just missing. They asked my sergeant if she’d left a will, and he was smart enough to go to London to find out. Lawyer wouldn’t let him see it, but Miss Tarlton had left everything to her young godson, the cousin’s child, we got that much out of the old fool. And her house to Simon Wyatt. There’s the motive right there! Miss Napier may’ve thought she was engaged to Wyatt, but she wasn’t the only string to his bow. Must have put both their noses out of joint, when he came home with that French wife! And must have put his wife’s nose out of joint when she discovered his mistress was coming to live with them!”

“I don’t think—” Rutledge began through the clamor Hamish was raising in his head.

“You aren’t paid to think,” Hildebrand said, unconsciously quoting Old Bowels. “You’re paid to find murderers. Stay out of my way until this is finished, I’m warning you!” He strode off, marching purposefully toward the car waiting for him at Truit’s house. Watching him go, Rutledge swore.

Hildebrand had hardly passed from view, on his way back to Singleton Magna, when the Napier car came down the same road, making for the inn. Rutledge assumed it was Benson, going to fetch Elizabeth Napier, then realized that there was a man seated beside him.

The car pulled up in front of the inn and Rutledge saw Benson pointing in his direction. Benson’s passenger nodded and got down, walking toward Rutledge. The distinguished face, the trim beard, the broad shoulders told him at once that this was Thomas Napier.

Napier said, as soon as he was within hearing, “Inspector Rutledge?’

“That’s right.” Rutledge had been in his car on the point of leaving, but killed the engine and got down to take the hand Napier held out to him.

“Thomas Napier, from London. Is there any place where we can speak privately?” he asked, looking around. “That bench over there by the pond, I think?” he went on, unconsciously choosing the place where Rutledge had questioned his daughter. The ducks had gone, leaving the surface of the pond like a mirror, reflecting the sky.

They walked in silence in that direction, and Rutledge let the older man choose his own time, his own words. But curiosity was rampant, and the tension in the other man had stirred Hamish into questing life.

“I don’t trust that fool Hildebrand,” Napier began. “Miss Tarlton’s solicitor called me today. He said that one of Hildebrand’s people had come to ask about Margaret’s will. There’s a clause in it that could cause a good deal of trouble for a good many innocent people. Margaret’s memory as well. I’ve spoken to Superintendant Bowles, and I’m not overly impressed by him either.”

They had reached the bench, and Napier sat down, scanning Rutledge from head to foot. “You look like the sensible sort. In the war, were you?”

“Yes,” Rutledge answered, obeying Napier’s gesture and taking the other end of the bench. “I was.” The words were more curt than he’d meant.

“Hmm. Then I daresay you’ll understand when I tell you that Simon Wyatt is a man living on the edge, as it were. He’s my godson, I care deeply about him. The war came damned close to breaking his spirit, and he hasn’t been able to recover the balance of his mind. I’ve not encouraged him to stand for office, I’ve felt that he was probably better off working on this museum of his, finding his feet again in his own good time. Dorset is quiet, a healing place, as I know myself.” The tone of voice was fatherly, concerned. It was as if the rupture caused by Simon’s marriage to Aurora had never occurred.

“I understand, but I don’t see that this is important enough to bring you from London to tell me.”

“Simon may not know some of the terms of Margaret’s will. They may need explanation. But they have nothing to do with this murder, and they have nothing to do with Margaret’s affairs. Simon’s father was kind enough to arrange a loan for her when she needed it, and that was that. He wasn’t involved with her in any way, he simply felt that she deserved a measure of independence, and helped provide it. You never knew Margaret, but she was a very able young woman, very charming, very attract—”

His voice broke, and for several seconds he fought for control. “She was all that a man might want in his daughter,” he ended lamely. “I would have done the same for her, if she’d asked me, but she no doubt felt it was improper, since she lived in my house. It was the sort of arrangement that could have political repercussions, and she was astute, politically—”

“Unsafe for you—but safe enough for Simon’s father?”

Napier turned to look at him. “Don’t be purposely obtuse!”

“No,” Rutledge answered. “All right, then, you don’t want Wyatt to know why the house is left to him. But that’s out of my hands. Hildebrand is going for a search warrant for Wyatt’s farm. He apparently believes Aurore Wyatt killed Miss Tarlton because she was under the impression that Miss Tarlton and Wyatt had had an affair. That Simon Wyatt bought the Chelsea house. And that Simon Wyatt might well be the father of the child Miss Tarlton bore. She could hardly want his mistress moving in with them.” It was a mixture of fact and fiction, but Rutledge was interested to see how well this balloon flew. And what reaction it provoked. He might have only this one opportunity to confront Napier.…

The expression on Napier’s face was a mixture of shock and horror. “How do you know all this? About the child? And why should Aurore Wyatt know of it? It wasn’t Simon’s, he was away at war—”

“Was it his father’s?”

“God, no! Whatever you think about Margaret Tarlton, I assure you she—”

“Then who was its father? Daniel Shaw? You? I’m not interested in Miss Tarlton’s child. I’m only interested in what bearing it might have on her murder.”

“The child is dead—it was born dead! It has no bearing on anything!” There was an undercurrent of wild grief behind the defensive words. A wrenching pain.

“Mr. Napier, if Hildebrand learns of it, it could send a woman to the gallows. It gives her a clear motive, don’t you see that, to kill a suspected rival.”

“No. I’ve met Aurore Wyatt several times. She isn’t my concern; she can take care of herself, she’s clever and resourceful and strong. Simon is very vulnerable. Whatever this fool Hildebrand is trying to do, he’s wrong. I think Margaret was the unwitting victim of that poor sod they’ve got in the jail at Singleton Magna. There’s no more nor less to it than that. What I want from you is the assurance that my daughter—and Simon Wyatt—won’t be dragged through the newspapers on the whim of an incompetent policeman!”

“Mr. Napier, I don’t believe Bert Mowbray killed Miss Tarlton. I think that her murder was no accident, it was a deliberate attack on her personally. And I suspect that there has been another murder of a young woman, some months ago. How they’re related I can’t say at the moment—”

“Do you believe Simon is guilty of either of them?”

“No, why should I—”

“But one of them might be set at the door of his wife? Possibly both?”

“As to that, I can’t tell you—”

“Then find the answers, damn you! I came to warn you that I don’t want my daughter’s name dragged into this. I’m taking her back to Sherborne at once. And I don’t want to read about Simon in the papers either, nor about that house in Chelsea, nor about any child that might or might not have been born.”

Rutledge said, “Margaret Tarlton’s murderer has covered his tracks quite cleverly. Still, there’s an answer somewhere. Ferreting it out may open the Wyatts to speculation and some scandal. I’ll avoid that if I can, I’ve always tried to shield the innocent. But in the end there may be nothing either of us can do to protect them. The other woman who may have died by the same hand—”

“I’m not concerned with another woman! I want you to stop this fool Hildebrand from walking in heavy boots through the life of a man who is very easily destroyed. Personally, professionally. Do you hear me? If any of this touches Simon Wyatt, I’ll hold you personally responsible. I’ll see to it that you suffer the consequences. I want this business cleared up without damaging Simon or Margaret, I want Margaret’s killer hanged, and I don’t want any foulness from this affair touching my daughter in any way. You would do well to believe me, Inspector! I am a man who never makes idle threats.”

Napier got to his feet and stood looking down at Rutledge. Whatever he read in the other man’s face, he changed his tactics abruptly.

“There’s that fellow, Shaw,” he said roughly. “He was in love with her in the war, and he’s still in love with her for all I know. If Mowbray didn’t kill her, then Shaw probably did. Find out, and make an end to it.”

Rutledge felt himself welling with anger as Napier walked away. Napier had protected his own, he hadn’t cared about anyone else. He had willingly sacrificed Mowbray, he had callously abandoned Aurore to the mercy of the police. Even Daniel Shaw was expendable. Politicians made difficult decisions; Napier was used to sacrificing one good for another. But this was ruthlessness.

Walking away from the pond, Rutledge toyed for a moment with the possibility that Napier had killed Margaret himself, out of jealousy or anger at her refusal to carry on with an affair that she may have considered, in the end, was taking her nowhere. But Napier was too well known in Dorset—even whispers of his involvement would ruin him. This was, possibly, what drove him harder than his concern for Simon Wyatt. If he’d wanted Margaret dead, surely he’d have killed her anywhere but here.

By the same token, to be fair, Napier had been unable to show his grief, his love, his loss, in public. He had had to stand aside and let strangers bury Margaret, turning whatever it was he felt inward, to fester and rankle. He may have made his threats out of love for her rather than any fear for Simon.

They were still threats, and Rutledge took them very seriously.

“It’s no’ in your hands,” Hamish reminded him. “Whatever Napier has said. But either way, ye’re sacrificed as well.”

“Not if I can help it,” Rutledge said as he turned the crank and brought the car to sputtering life. He got in and drove to the Wyatt farm, his mind full of Hamish:

“If you no’ can finish this business, you’ll be back in yon hospital, crouched in a dark corner of your soul. It’s got to be finished, look you, and not for the woman’s sake, for your own!”

Jimson was working in the yard, mending the wheel on a barrow, his gnarled hands deftly shifting the shaft to bring the worn place within reach. He didn’t look up until Rutledge’s shadow fell across his shoulder and onto the dirtstained wood of the long handles.

“Lord, you know how to startle a man!” Jimson said, straightening up and dropping the shaft. “Now look what you’ve done,” he went on in an aggrieved voice, his face twisting to see Rutledge against the brightness of the sun.

“I need your help,” Rutledge said. “I can’t go to your master or your mistress, the police from Singleton Magna are coming soon with a search warrant. But I want to go through the house and the barn. Now. Before they get here. Will you walk with me?”

“What’re you looking for, then? What’s the police after?”

“A suitcase belonging to a dead woman. A pretty hat. A murder weapon.”

“Pshaw! There’s no pretty hat here. Nor suitcases I don’t know about. If it’s a murder weapon you want, take your pick.” He gestured to the array of tools lying in the dust at his feet. “Any one of those will kill a man.”

Hammer, a spanner, a pair of clamps, all of them—he was right—potential weapons.

But Rutledge shook his head. “No. Not these.”

“Then what?” Jimson demanded. “That stone? A length of wood?”

“I don’t know. All right, we’ll forget the weapon for the time being. The suitcase. We’ll search first for that.”

“What does it look like, then? Mrs. Wyatt, she has suitcases in the attic.”

“I don’t know, I tell you! If I did, I wouldn’t be here. Look, this is useless, Jimson! I need to walk through that house, I need to see for myself what’s in the barn. Hildebrand and Truit will be here in the morning—”

“Truit, is it?” Jimson demanded, incensed. “We’ll see about that. All right, then, the front door’s open, and I can see it from here. Touch anything that don’t need touching, and I’ll know it.”

Rutledge thanked him and walked around to the door. It was unlocked, as it had been before. Thinking about that, Rutledge opened it wider and stepped into the hall, where the stairs rose to the first floor. To his left and right were a pair of rooms, opening into the broad hallway. He gave them a cursory glance, certain that they would hold no secrets. The floors creaked as he moved about, but Jimson wouldn’t hear that. The old man’s bedroom was in the back to one side of the kitchen and appeared to have been a maid’s room at one time, for there were roses on the wallpaper and the iron bed had a floral design at its head. The lamp was serviceable, as were the chair, the stool, and a table. The washstand was oak and had seen better times, the mirror cloudy with age. A jug of water stood on a second table by the bed, and there was a pipe rack next to it, with a tin of tobacco beside it. From the look of the pipes, none of them had been smoked for years, but the aroma of Turkish tobacco lingered and stirred when Rutledge moved one or two.

Upstairs were several bedrooms and a pair of bathrooms. One of the rooms had a rocking chair beside a marble-topped washstand with fresh towels on the racks on either side, a pitcher of water in the bowl. Clothes hung in the closet, mostly coveralls and worn men’s shirts that must have been Simon’s at one time but carried Aurore’s scent now. A pair of straw hats stood on the closet shelf, one of them with a hole in the brim, the other with a sweat-stained band.

The room had an intimate feel to it, as if she’d just left. The candlestick on the bedside table was burned down to half. He wondered if sometimes she’d spent the night here. The bedsheets were soft with age but freshly washed.

The other rooms bore the signs of neglect, a fine sheen of dust on the furniture, a cobweb hanging down above a bedpost, but clean enough for all that. No one had been in these rooms, he thought, for months.

The attic was filled with bits and pieces of old furniture, leather luggage green with age, chairs without seats, broken lamps, a child’s crib and a nursing rocker. He looked into corners, behind the headboards of beds, beyond the empty trunks, into the empty cases, and there was nothing to be seen.

In the end he gave up and went to the barn, quartering it while a cat followed him about, rubbing against his trouser legs when he stopped to look at a box of gear or a stack of tiles or old boots crammed into a bin.

But the barn yielded nothing, and he stood there in the loft, looking at the thick piles of hay, wondering if it was worth his while to dig through the lot. Hamish, tired and irritable, said, “You’ll no’ solve the riddle here.…”

And it was true, but he made the effort to look into the outbuildings and into overturned carts, startling a hen with a clutch of eggs under one. She squawked sharply at him, dashing off with wings flapping.

When he came back to where Jimson was finishing his work on the barrow, the old man said, “Well, you wanted to do it, didn’t you? And for what? You haven’t found what you was looking for.”

“No.” He turned to look at the sky. The sun was sinking toward the west, casting long shadows and golden stripes across the lawn and the fields behind the barn. It would be dark quite soon. Seven or eight heavily uddered cows were staring at him from the gate near the milking shed, and he could hear the lowing of others making their slow way home. Jimson wheeled the barrow toward the barn. Rutledge called his thanks but remembered that the man couldn’t hear his voice. Couldn’t hear a car or footsteps in the house at night.

He found himself wondering if Aurore might have entertained lovers there.

Feeling depressed, he got back into the car and drove to Charlbury.

“At least,” Hamish offered, “you did na’ find anything.”

“I was one man. Hildebrand will bring half a dozen. More.”

Henry Daulton was standing by the churchyard, his eyes on the rooks wheeling above the truncated tower, settling uneasily for the night. He waved as Rutledge passed. Then Mrs. Prescott was hailing him, and he stopped the car.

“I hear that there’s to be an arrest tomorrow. That Inspector Hildebrand is coming to do it himself. I thought you were in charge! The man from London.”

“No. It’s his investigation. I came to coordinate the search for the children. That’s finished.” He felt tired, his eyes gritty from the dusty barn and the staleness of the farm’s attics.

“But what about Mr. Simon? What’s to happen to him?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. He isn’t the person Hildebrand is after.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Betty Cooper,” she demanded, “much less a friend of the Wyatts! It makes no sense. That’s what you ought to be saying to the police in Singleton Magna, why would the Wyatts want to harm her? If you want to save Mrs. Wyatt from the gallows and her husband from a death of grief, that’s the question you ought to be asking!”

Rutledge shook his head. “I’ve asked that question and found no answer. If you have any, I’m willing to hear them. Besides, no one can be sure that the other body is Betty Cooper’s. The timing isn’t there, Mrs. Prescott, whatever you want to believe. Betty left six months ago, not three.”

She was vehement, her face ablaze with purpose. “I told you once, if you want to hide the recent dead, do it in a fresh grave. Betty Cooper wanted to work in a gentleman’s house. Mr. Simon couldn’t hire her, he already had Edith. I can’t see that he’d have sent her away empty-handed! Not Mr. Simon. He’d have done what he could for the girl, for Mrs. Daulton’s sake. Have you even asked him? What they talked about, those two?”

Rutledge stared at her, and she grinned self-consciously. “No,” he said slowly. “I don’t think anyone has.”

“Well, I’d not let it linger on the tongue too long, or that Inspector Hildebrand will be back tomorrow with his warrants!”

He saluted her and backed up the car until he was in front of the Wyatt gate. He met Elizabeth at the front door, her face anguished. She caught his arm and dragged him into the parlor, shutting the door. “For God’s sake, what’s happening? No one will tell me. Aurore is in her room, I think she’s crying. Simon has shut himself up in the museum and won’t let me in. And my father was here in Charlbury, I saw him speaking to you, but he wouldn’t come to the house, he just sent Benson with a note telling me to leave straightaway. That madman Hildebrand’s to blame, isn’t he, it all went wrong when he came! For God’s sake, what’s it all about?”

“I don’t know. Hildebrand has finally convinced himself that Mowbray didn’t kill Margaret Tarlton—we were all fairly certain of that, it isn’t news. But if Mowbray didn’t kill her, then it has to be someone from Charlbury, you see. And it was Aurore Wyatt who was set to take Margaret Tarlton to meet the train.”

“Aurore.” She said the name unconsciously, as if tasting it on her tongue. “You’re saying that it was Aurore? But why?”

“I don’t know. There are several theories making the rounds. It seems she’s become the popular candidate, now that Mowbray’s out of the running.”

“But Simon will feel responsible! It was Simon who wanted Margaret to come here as his assistant!”

“No,” Rutledge answered bluntly. “It was your scheming that brought her here to interview for the position of assistant.”

“But what about that man Shaw?” she demanded frantically. “He was wild with Margaret for not seeing him. He taunts me every time I go into the Wyatt Arms. I can’t imagine Aurore battering anyone to death, but Shaw could do it! He’s been a soldier, he knows how to kill!”

“Knowing how to kill doesn’t make you a murderer,” he told her. But he had killed his share of men, in the war. Was that so very different? He could feel Hamish asking that same question in the depths of his mind. “Simon was also a serving officer. If Daniel Shaw is suspect because of his war record, we mustn’t forget Simon Wyatt.”

“Stop it, do you hear me? Simon hasn’t killed anyone! I’d believe Aurore did it before I’d believe Simon could have! I’ve never understood her, I can’t think why he ever married her! Can’t you do anything? Can’t you find out what it is Hildebrand wants?”

There was a pounding at the door that cut short his response. Elizabeth said something under her breath and went to answer it.

From where he was standing, he could see the heavy door swing open at the same instant a slurred, angry voice cried, “I want to know, damn you! I want to know who killed her!”

It was Shaw standing there, his face white, his body tense with pain.

“You’re drunk, disgusting! Go away!” Elizabeth said curtly, preparing to close the door in his face. Behind him the night was black, clouds having moved in with the sunset and now obscuring the stars. Somewhere in the garden a toad sang its mating call, and a moth swept through the bright square of light cast across the lawns. Shaw struck the door with his arm, forcing it open again, and stepped inside. Rutledge, moving swiftly from the parlor, was there to meet him, at Elizabeth’s back.

He said, “Go home, Shaw. I told you I’d give you a name, once it was certain. But it isn’t certain. Hildebrand has jumped the gun.”

“Truit’s in the Arms, bragging. They’re prepared to make an arrest, damn you!” He stared over Elizabeth’s head at Rutledge’s face, pain in his eyes that wasn’t all from the pain in his body. “I’m not drunk. I want the truth!”

“Wait by my car, and I’ll tell you what I know,” Rutledge said. “If you don’t go, I’ll have you arrested for disorderly conduct.”

Shaw bit his lip against the pain and said, “I’ll wait here on the step. I don’t think I could walk that far!” He stepped backward, nearly lost his balance, and sat heavily on the step, crouched protectively over his wound.

Elizabeth said, “You are drunk!”

Rutledge caught her arm and pulled her from the door as he shut it.

She turned on him, saying, “the wolves are gathering!”

“Listen to me! This can matter more than your wolves. Does the name Betty Cooper mean anything to you?”

Something stirred in her eyes. Curiosity? Calculation? He couldn’t be sure in the dim light that reached the hall from the parlor.

“She was a serving girl, if that’s the one you mean. Simon suggested we might consider finding her a place in London. We’d lost two of the younger maids to other positions, he must have known.”

“And so he sent her to you from here?”

“Well, we expected her to come to us on a trial basis, but she never arrived. I don’t see what this has to do with anything! There isn’t time!”

“When was that?”

“Nearly six months ago. Just after Simon came back from France and opened the house here in Charlbury. That’s not important, I tell you—”

“Yes, it is,” he answered her. “If Betty Cooper didn’t arrive at your door, where did she go?” And why hadn’t she taken up Simon’s proposal that she work for the Napiers? It was a position beyond the dreams of a country girl who wanted to make her way in London. Nor did it explain why the body was only three months dead. Mrs. Prescott was wrong; his questions led him nowhere.

“How should I know? Girls go to London every day, I can’t be responsible for the fate of any of them!”

But what if Betty had gone to London after all, avoided the Napiers for whatever reasons, spent three months there in the city, found it not to her liking, and come back to Dorset?

That was possible—but was it likely that in coming back, she’d meet her death here before anyone had seen her?

Unless her return threatened someone? But that wouldn’t take into account the fate of Margaret Tarlton.… The two women had nothing in common.

There was a connection somewhere. There had to be. Or else they were all wrong, Mowbray had killed Margaret and Betty Cooper was a separate crime altogether. There was only the doctor’s suggestion that the murders were similar.

He was aware of Elizabeth expostulating, telling him she wanted him to help Simon, to do something before Hildebrand made a grave mistake.

He put his hands on her shoulders to silence her and said, “Look, I’ve got to go. But I’ll be back before Hildebrand comes tomorrow. Is that fair enough?”

“Fair—” she began, but he was already out the door, speaking to Shaw, giving him the same promise.

Shaw, getting stiffly to his feet, stared balefully at Elizabeth and turned to move awkwardly down the walk to the gate. Over his shoulder he said to Rutledge, “I can’t fight you now, but if you don’t come to the inn by midnight, I’m taking matters into my own hands. Do you hear me?”

“I hear you,” Rutledge said, and then: “Can you make it on your own?”

“Damn you, I don’t want your pity! I want answers!”

Rutledge watched him go and waited until Elizabeth, unsatisfied, finally closed the front door. Upstairs at one of the windows overlooking the walk, he could sense Aurore’s eyes on him.

He walked to the museum wing and knocked on the door. When no one answered, in the end Rutledge opened it and walked inside.

He looked carefully through all the rooms. But it was to no purpose.

Simon Wyatt was in none of them, though the door from that wing into the main house was locked.

25

Rutledge stood in the middle of the front room of the museum, mocked by the shadowed masks on the wall and the dancing shades of small gods with their strange faces and contorted bodies.

Hamish too was mocking him, reminding him that Hildebrand was ahead of him, that he’d been dragging his feet, that the arrest made tomorrow was one he could—should—have made before this. Only he hadn’t been able to bring himself to it. “You’re faltering, you’re no’ the man you think you are!”

He couldn’t think, he couldn’t bring all the pieces together. Like the gods on the shelves, he was twisting and turning—going nowhere.

But what was the connection—damn it, where was it? What had he missed?

He walked out of the museum and closed the door behind him.

And where was Simon Wyatt?

He went out of the gate and stood looking around him, making sure that Shaw wasn’t loitering in the shadows, waiting for another chance to confront the Wyatts. Which was why he saw the movement among the trees by the church.

He walked that way, taking his time, certain that it was Simon, blacked out again by whatever stress it was that drove him to wander in the night.

His wife’s guilt? Was that what had taken Simon back to the war, where death was imminent and wiped out pain, memory, thought—

He reached the trees, where the shadows were deeper, where only the pale reflection of clothing showed that someone waited. Rutledge hesitated, unwilling to startle Simon, unwilling to give away his own presence if it was someone else.

He walked on, softly, battle trained, but the voice that came to him out of the darkness was not Simon’s, nor was it Shaw’s.

Aurore said, “I hoped you would come. I couldn’t say this in the house, not with Elizabeth there. I couldn’t do that to Simon. I won’t shame him again!”

He could see her now, the light-colored sweater she’d thrown over her dark dress was a luminous mantle about her shoulders. Her face was even paler, a white oval with dark hollows for eyes. As he came nearer, he could sketch in the details of eyebrows, lips, the curve of her hair, the line of her cheekbone. He could smell her scent, faint and warm, like her breathing.

“Where is your husband? Do you know?”

“He’s in the museum. He has locked me out. He’s taking it very hard, the things Hildebrand has said to him. He thinks he will see me arrested tomorrow.”

“Yes. I know. But Hildebrand hasn’t told anyone else.”

“The story is everywhere, Constable Truit has seen to that. I sent Edith to stay with Mrs. Darley. I didn’t want her to be dragged into our scandal.”

He was on the point of telling her that Simon was missing again, but before he could speak, she had moved closer to him, her hands outstretched, and for an instant he thought she was going to touch him, take his hands in hers or rest her fingers on his forearms. Instead something hard, uneven, brushed against the cloth of his coat. Instinctively he reached out to take it, and his fingers closed over smooth, woven straw. Confused, he ran his left hand over it and realized with cold shock what it was.

A hat. A woman’s straw hat. He could see it more clearly now, the shape and texture, the upswept brim. Ribbons from the crown tangled around his fingers as he turned the hat first this way and then that.

“This is proof that I killed Margaret. It is the hat she was wearing when she left Charlbury. I have kept it, in case of need. The rest of her belongings I burned at the farm, with feathers from a plucked hen we’d eaten fow our dinner. Edith will tell you that it is the same hat that Margaret was wearing when she left, and no doubt Margaret’s maid will confirm that it is hers.” She was silent for a time, and he found himself unable to trust his voice to question her.

“You may arrest me, as you promised, and take me at once to London. I don’t want to see my husband shamed by Hildebrand walking in with all the people in Charlbury goggling, then taking me away with fanfare.”

“I don’t know that this is Margaret’s hat—” he began, and reached into his pocket for the small lighter that he’d carried in the war. With one smooth action he slipped the cap and the flint. The small flame seemed to flare like a blaze of orange light between them. He could see her eyes, large with surprise, the pupils dilated and then sharpening.

He tore his glance from her face and examined the hat. It was just as Edith had described it. If it wasn’t Margaret Tarlton’s hat, it was too damned near it for comfort. He could feel the ache in his throat as he examined it.

“I have a small case there, under the trees. I am ready to leave,” she said, her voice steady. But her eyes were wells of uncertainty.

He capped the lighter again and slipped it into his pocket, Hamish clamoring in his ears. Over the deafening sound he said, “Aurore—”

“No! Don’t say anything more. We must go before Elizabeth or Simon comes out to find me. Please! It was our bargain, you can’t tell me you don’t remember! You, of all people!”

“Aurore. Why did you kill Margaret Tarlton?”

“I shall tell you on our way to London. Pleaser!”

“I can’t do this. I don’t believe you. Whatever you are confessing to, it isn’t murder.” He turned the hat again in his hands, striving to ignore Hamish, striving to sound patient, untroubled, the policeman doing his duty.

But not to protect the innocent, only to find the guilty—

“You promised!” she said again, her voice husky with hurt.

He said, “Listen to me! I want to know where you found this hat and why you think it was Simon who killed Margaret.”

She gasped, and this time her fingers did grip his arm in the darkness. “It was I who killed Margaret. I hit her and hit her and hit her, until my shoulder was tired and I couldn’t lift the rock any more. I drove back to the farm and bathed the blood away, and I left my things in the room there, along with her things—I knew Jimson would never open my door! It was safe, no one comes there!”

Her words and her grip were tight, convincing, and he could feel her desperation, the need to make him believe.

Rutledge said, closing his mind to Hamish and to her pain, “All right. I believe you. But tell me, why did you have to kill Betty Cooper? What had that poor girl done to make you batter her into unconsciousness and then death?”

She moved convulsively, her hand on his arm showing him as clearly as if she stood in full daylight, what emotions were passing through her body.

“Ah, yes. I thought we might come to that as well. Betty was very pretty,” she said. “But that wasn’t the reason. Simon was sending her to London, to Elizabeth. I thought—I thought she would be used by Elizabeth to drive a wedge. As Margaret would have been, later. An excuse to call Simon and say ‘About Betty … I should like to know what you think about her wages—her behavior—her future.’ It was such a small excuse. But it was an excuse!”

When he said nothing, she went on in a low, trembling voice. “I am not the woman you think I am, Ian Rutledge. I cannot be endowed with virtues I never possessed. I’m French, I think differently, I feel differently. I am a murderess, and I have lied to you from the start.”

He couldn’t see her face, he couldn’t watch her eyes, and the telltale hand had been withdrawn. But he knew beyond doubt that he had to accept her confession now.

He had no choice but to arrest her for two murders and let the courts decide for him whether she was guilty or not. The hat in his hand was proof enough, and if the suitcase had been burned, it didn’t matter. Confession, evidence …

“What did you do with the murder weapon?”

“It was a smooth stone from the car. I kept it there to put under a tire on a hill. I saw a lorry in France roll down a hill into a crowded wagon, full of refugees. It killed so many of them. I carry the stone to prevent such a thing from happening again. It is still in the car. If you look, you will find it below the rear seat. I daresay it still has Margaret Tarlton’s blood on it.”

He stood there, listening, hearing the ring of truth, hearing too the deep grief behind it. Hearing the ragged breathing.

Aurore knew too many of the details. She had brought him the hat, she had given him the murder weapon, she had given him what—to many women—would seem a reasonable motive for two deaths.

And yet—and yet his instinct told him she was a consummate liar, not a murdereress. He knew now who she was shielding—though not yet why. What was it she knew that drove her to this confession? What had given Simon away, in her eyes? The hat, perhaps lying forgotten in the back of the car? Coming out of the barn that afternoon to find the car was not there, where she’d left it? Simon’s insistence that she had taken Margaret to the train, when he knew she had not? How long had it taken her to put the facts together? A bit at a time? Or one terrible blow she hadn’t expected?

Yet Rutledge found himself thinking that Simon had been too obsessed with his museum to plot so clever a murder, so clever a way of convicting his wife. Or had that been another lie? Diabolical and cruel …

There was another possibility—that someone else had seen to it that the finger of guilt pointed at Aurore, and Simon was unwittingly suffering the same agonies of doubt and fear as she was. Had the first attempt to be rid of Aurore—killing Betty Cooper—misfired when the girl’s body was not discovered? And Margaret Tarlton, the next sacrifice, had nearly backfired too, when Mowbray took the blame for her death. Until Elizabeth Napier came to Charlbury and set Hildebrand straight … but could any of that be proved?

Rutledge said, “Very well. I’m arresting you, Aurore Wyatt, for the death by murder of Margaret Tarlton and Betty Cooper.” It was, after all, what she wanted. And it would forestall Hildebrand.

He could feel the tension drain out of her, a smothered sob of relief.

“I’m so very glad it’s over,” she said quietly. “You don’t know how hard it has been to live a lie.”

But he did—he lived one every day, he told himself as he took her arm and started for the car. His lie was that he was a competent policeman, an experienced and capable officer of Scotland Yard.

Hamish was reminding him of it with vitriolic pleasure.

26

They had gotten no farther than the edge of the trees when a cry, cut short, rang through the night. Aurore stopped still, listening, her head turned toward the church. “I think it came from there!” she said anxiously.

“Wait here!” Rutledge ordered, already moving.

“No! I’m coming with you!” She was at his heels as he ran toward the front of the church. There were lights coming on in the nearer houses and a light moving down the path from the rectory.

But when they reached the church porch, all they found was Elizabeth Napier in a crumpled heap by the steps, her head buried in her arms. In the blackness of the night she seemed terribly small and vulnerable.

Aurore went quickly to her, touched her shoulder, said, “Help is here, what has happened?”

Elizabeth looked up, the whites of her eyes like half-moons in her pale face. She said roughly, her voice breaking on the words, “I was attacked—”

The lantern bobbing up the walk from the rectory reached them, and Joanna Daulton said with brisk calm, “What’s wrong? Can I help?”

Her lamplight fell on Elizabeth, on the dark hair spilling down in waves over her shoulders and the torn collar of her dress. There were red marks like bruises on her throat. Elizabeth put up her hand against the invasion of the light and said, “Oh, God, I was so frightened!”

Rutledge said, “Who was it? Did you see?”

Elizabeth shook her head a little. “No—one minute he was there, startling me, his hands on me, and when I screamed, he reached for my throat, and I could feel his breath on my face—” She shuddered, her body beginning to shake with reaction. Aurore, after the slightest hesitation, knelt to put her arms around Elizabeth, cradling her head against her breast.

“It’s all right, you’re safe now, don’t think about it,” she was saying over and over in a low, soothing voice that seemed to touch all of them.

Rutledge said, “I’ll have a look around—”

“No!” Elizabeth cried. “No, don’t leave me!”

“Mrs. Daulton and Mrs. Wyatt will stay with you. I must go after him now. There may still be time to—”

“No, please, take me back. I—I don’t want to be alone,” she pleaded.

He thought it was more than that and remembered suddenly that Simon hadn’t been in the museum. That very likely Simon hadn’t been in the house.

He left the thought there and helped Elizabeth to her feet. As he did, he realized that neither he nor Aurore had Margaret’s hat. He swore under his breath. An attack—or a diversion? If it was a diversion, it had been successful.

Rutledge gave Elizabeth his arm and they moved silently down the church walk and across the road. As they reached the Wyatt gates, Mrs. Daulton said something about reassuring the neighbors, and he saw her go on to intercept the men hurrying in their direction. Aurore opened the house door for them.

Rutledge deposited Elizabeth on a sofa in the parlor, getting his first real look at her. Her pale face was drawn with fear and shock, but her mind was working clearly. She said huskily as she made an awkward attempt to bind up her hair again, “I don’t want to wake Simon, please don’t bother him with this! It will only add to his distress.”

Aurore’s eyes met Rutledge’s over Elizabeth’s head. She said only, “No, we won’t disturb Simon. It’s best”

Rutledge, using the excuse of fetching water, went down the hall and began a swift, methodical search of the house.

The connecting door to the museum was still latched, and he walked next into the garden. But it was dark, given over to the sounds of the night.

Instinct told him—instinct honed by night marches and night attacks—that the gardens were empty. Even Hamish felt nothing there.

Wherever Simon was, it wasn’t in the house or on the grounds.

Had he been walking again, had he been at the church? Had he seen the hat in Aurore’s hands, there among the trees?

Or was Elizabeth trying to play her own games?

There was always the chance that Daniel Shaw had attacked her, wanting answers he hadn’t gotten at the Wyatt door earlier. At least, Rutledge told himself, this couldn’t be laid at Aurore’s door; she’d been with him.

But something about the first glimpse he’d had of Elizabeth in the light of Mrs. Daulton’s lamp had set off alarm bells. In one odd, inexplicable, fleeting instant she had reminded him of Betty Cooper lying in her tidy grave. And yet it was something people had said, he thought, not what he’d seen. He could hear the echo of it, but not the words. Not yet …

He turned and went back into the house, filling a glass with water and carrying it to the parlor. Simon Wyatt’s grandfather was staring down at them from his frame above the hearth, as if the difficult silence between the two women met with his disapproval.

Elizabeth had succeeded in putting up her hair and was lying with her head against the back of the sofa, her eyes closed. Aurore, sitting stiffly in a chair, her face still, looked up as he came in. He shook his head but made no other explanation for the time it had taken to fill one glass with water. He thought she must have guessed that Simon was nowhere to be found.

He gave the glass to Elizabeth, who drank it slowly with her eyes closed. The red, bruised marks on her throat were very clear now. They looked very real as well. Studying them, he couldn’t see how she could have made them herself.

She said, returning the glass to him, “Thank you.” She coughed and swallowed again, as if her throat were painful. “I have never been so terrified! I thought—for an instant I thought I was going to die!”

“It was a man?” Rutledge asked.

“Oh, yes. He was tall, strong. It was horrible!” The distaste in her face was real as well. “I thought I was going to die!” she said again, unable to stop herself from thinking it “It was Shaw, it must have been! The man is mad, he ought to be put in jail. I won’t go back to the Wyatt Arms tonight, I won’t!”

“I’ll look for him,” Rutledge said. And added to Aurore, “Please lock the door when I leave. You’ll be safe enough.”

“You’ll come back?” she asked.

“Yes.” He knew why she was asking. Come back to arrest her.

“That’s all I need to know.” She went with him to the door, and as he stepped out onto the walk, she said, “Please—Simon—”

“Aurore. I must find the hat. That’s why I’m going.”

She seemed startled, remembered it, and said, “Yes, of course!” as she shut the door firmly.

The townspeople had gone back to their beds, reassured by Mrs. Daulton. He could see her lantern bobbing up to the rectory again. It occurred to him that she was a very courageous woman. But then she was no longer young or pretty. As Margaret Tarlton and Betty Cooper were said to have been. As Elizabeth Napier was. Perhaps that was why she had felt safe. Or perhaps it was in her nature to take risks for the sake of others. Some women did. He had seen them nursing the worst influenza cases, working with septic wounds, braving weather that would have given a strong man pause.

As he walked toward the church, his mind was busy. What was it Mrs. Prescott had said about Margaret Tarlton, and Truit had told him about Betty Cooper? “She had such lovely hair.” Mrs. Prescott’s voice came back to him, admiring, envious. And Truit had said “—sleek as a cat sunning itself in a window,” or words to that effect.

They weren’t merely pretty women. They were both quite sure of their attractions … not flaunting them, just sure of them.… Tantalizing. Tempting.

But that still left Shaw out of the equation. He’d been in love with Margaret. At least he’d claimed he was.

If it had started with Betty Cooper—and Rutledge was now almost certain it had—then love had a great deal to do with the murders. But there wasn’t time to go into that now.

With Hamish alive in his mind, Rutledge was already scanning the shadows, looking for Wyatt, looking for Shaw. The hat was nowhere to be found, although he searched carefully. The small case that Aurore had left leaning against the trunk of a tree was still there. He walked up to the church, on guard, wary.

But there was nothing there. The stand of trees, the graveyard beyond, the shadows by the heavy walls, were empty of life. He went around the church itself twice, moving cautiously, slowly, taking care to be sure. Then he tried the door on the porch.

It opened under his hand, swinging with a deep groan across the stone paving. In an island of darkness, there were candles ahead, burning on the stone altar, casting strange, flickering shadows across the aisles, the Norman pillars, the high arched roof. There was a golden warmth to the light, and the man sitting in one of the chairs in the nave turned to look at him, his own face golden in its reflection.

It was Henry Daulton. “I’ve looked everywhere. There’s no sign of anyone. I stepped in here instead of going back to the house. It’s quiet here. I thought Simon might come back. I don’t like to hear a woman scream, it tears at my nerves.”

“Yes. It’s very quiet,” Rutledge answered, his voice echoing and his footsteps rebounding from the stone paving as he walked down the aisle toward Henry. “Did you see what happened?”

“I was out looking for Simon Wyatt. He was walking again, Shaw told me. He’d seen him and then lost him. A few minutes later Elizabeth asked me to help her find him. She was worried about him. I told her it was all right, that he’d come home on his own, but she insisted.”

“You knew he walked?”

“I don’t sleep well sometimes. Once or twice I’ve seen him go out on the lawn and stand like a statue for a quarter of an hour or more. Another time I met him coming down the shortcut from the farm—it ends over by the churchyard. My mother’s concerned about him, she says he’s on the edge of collapse. But he isn’t. He’s worried about money and Aurore and the museum. He doesn’t see how it’s going to work out, and that’s what makes him black out. To stop thinking.”

Which was an oddly penetrating observation.

“About tonight—” Rutledge reminded him.

“He was in the church earlier. Standing there in front of the altar, lighting candles. Praying, I thought at first. Then he took one of them and started in the direction of the crypt. I don’t think he was walking then.”

“What would interest him in the crypt?” He remembered something Henry had confided to him when he first came to Charlbury. “There are hiding places in the church, aren’t there? Does Simon know about them?”

“I don’t know. He probably does. I didn’t stay very long. But later he came out with a suitcase. I’d seen it before, someone had left it under that stone altar down in the crypt. The old altar, from the Saxon church. Nobody ever uses it, but there’s an altar cloth on it. My mother ironed it every week when my father was alive and kept fresh flowers on it. My father always said it was useless work, but she took pride in it. It’s keeping to tradition, she’d say. I’d hide under its skirts whenever I didn’t want to be found. I think I told Simon about that, but I can’t be sure. I don’t always remember things now.”

“Henry. He knew the suitcase was there—or looked and found it there?”

“Well, he came out carrying it. And don’t ask me where he went with it, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. But I don’t think he wanted to be seen. And almost in the next instant Elizabeth Napier was coming up the church walk again. And you were there under the trees talking quietly to Mrs. Wyatt. I thought it best to go home then.”

If Simon had collected the suitcase, where would he have taken it?

Rutledge thought he knew. The farm—And the police were going to search there in the morning. Damning evidence against Aurore, if it was found there!

He said to Henry, “I’ve got work to do still. Will you be at the rectory or here?” He hadn’t finished with Henry, but there wasn’t time to ask him any more now. It could wait. Simon couldn’t.

“Here, probably. When I can’t sleep, I come here to think. My father had always hoped I’d be rector, just as Simon’s father had expected him to stand for Parliament. But the war put paid to such hopes, didn’t it? I suppose that’s why I can’t sleep. Guilt that I’m not the man I might have been.”

It was a poignant remark, but Henry seemed to accept his circumstances stoically, whether his mother did or not. As if he knew, and shielded her as best he could from the truth. Her insistence that he was making steady, observable improvement must have hurt him many times. The scar was very deep. It had healed. But not the brain behind it.

Rutledge nodded and left, his footsteps echoing again in the stillness. From the nave, Henry called, “If Simon is wandering, don’t startle him. Let him finish whatever it is he wants to do first. Will you be careful about that?”

“Yes. I’ll remember.” But he didn’t believe Simon was anything but very much himself, well aware of what he was doing.

He went out to his car, started the motor, and drove with haste to the farm. It was dark, dark as the night. He left the car by the gate and walked swiftly up the murky blackness that was the rutted lane, swearing as he missed his footing several times in the deeper patches. A man could break an ankle here with ease, he thought. And who would know? Jimson wouldn’t hear any calls for help!

When he reached the house, he walked carefully around it, staying in the shadows as much as possible. But he couldn’t see any lights, he couldn’t pick out any sign of Simon Wyatt’s presence. Inside the house or out. Hamish was alert in his mind, wary, watchful.

Rutledge moved on, into the barn, and saw at once that the horses had been taken out. Even the barn cat wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He strode swiftly, silently, down the empty, dusty passage to the back doors and discovered that the cows, usually penned for the night behind the barn, had been loosed in the fields. He could just see them, ghostly white patches against the darkness of the pasture. As he came back, he realized that the door of the chicken coop stood open and that the chickens had scattered, roosting on the tops of overturned wagons or the roofs of sheds.

He had nearly reached the front of the barn, his mind occupied with myriad possibilities—Hamish was already warning him about the most likely of them.

And then, among the loose piles of hay in the loft, a yellow ball of fire, bright as the sun, began to blossom into roaring life with frightening intensity.

Simon had set the barn alight!

Rutledge ran, his steps muffled by the packed earth, echoed by the paving stones, his eyes sweeping the stalls, the tack room, the loft. Searching every corner, even as time ran out. He began to cough from the heavy, swirling smoke, and then he felt the heat on his back as the flames took hold behind him. He found himself stumbling for the nearest door, and then turned around as something caught his eye at the foot of one of the great oak beams that supported the loft and the roof. It was in the shadow of the beam, nearly invisible, black against black, but the fire was dancing on the silver catches that locked the suitcase. It had been left where the fire would burn the hottest, around that beam, consuming it fully—melting even the metal in the end.

Whatever Hildebrand might suspect tomorrow, there would be no proof. And suspicion would still fall heavily on Aurore. Had Simon intended to save his wife—or damn her?

Although Hamish was calling to him to leave it, Rutledge dashed back into the smoke, palling and black, and reached down to grip the handle, his other arm raised to shield his eyes. Was the hat here too? He groped for it, along the floor, and in an instant lost his bearing. He was blinded, disoriented, unable to tell in the thickening air which way he had come from. There was a curtain closing in on him, choking and smothering, cutting him off. Suffocating him in a claustrophobic cloak, sucking at his will. Hamish was a roar in his mind, louder than the roar of the fire, hammering at him to go!

“Simon?” Rutledge shouted, realizing all at once that a fire could destroy a man as well as a barn and a suitcase, and felt the rawness in his throat. “Simon!”

But there was no answer and time was down to seconds before he himself was trapped. He could hear Hamish screaming at him now. Sparks were setting every wisp of straw to burning. He ran again, this time blindly, his face seared by flames as he passed within their sphere. And then he was through them, blundering first into a wall, feeling the draft of air that was feeding the blaze, and stumbling finally out the door. Still coughing hard, he ran on, to pound heavily on the back door of the farmhouse. Once the blaze was at its height, there would be no saving the house either.

He came through the door shouting for Jimson, checking the dark, empty ground-floor rooms already reflecting the dawnlike brightness from the barn, and ran up the stairs, searching there as well. The old glass of the windows on the back of the house mirrored the flames against the wall in shimmering images, lighting his way. In the front it was stygian darkness still, and he quartered each room carefully, making absolutely sure. But Jimson was not here. Nor was Simon. Wherever they were, they weren’t in danger of burning to death.

He came out into the night again, his lungs burning from the smoke. It was rolling now, billows of it, as it fed on old wood, dust, and hay. The grass by one of the sheds was already flickering with fiery dewdrops. He searched the sheds and found them empty, bales of hay waiting in them for the match to come.

The air was thick, heavy. He could hear horses in the distance, neighing shrilly in alarm. Hamish was telling him to go, to hurry.

The sound of the flames was greedy now, soaring into the night on a pillar of black smoke and sparks.

Rutledge hesitated, yet he knew he could do nothing for the barn. There was nothing one man—or an army of men—might do as the flames fed hungrily on the hay and then jumped to the dry, old wood of stalls and pillars and walls. He stood staring at it in despair, knowing what its destruction would mean to Aurore.

Finally retrieving the suitcase from the porch where he’d left it, he turned and hurried back down the drive to his car.

Wherever Simon was, he had to find him. He had the strongest feeling that it was already too late. But he had to try. To live with himself, he had to try.

But there was no sign of Wyatt on the road, and Rutledge thought as he coughed raggedly, I couldn’t have missed him coming here—the fire wasn’t that far along when I arrived. He must have taken a shortcut from here to Charlbury—he must have come out somewhere near the church where no one would see him. He’s ahead of me!

Driving very fast now, his headlamps probing the darkness, he made the trip to Charlbury in a matter of minutes.

The Wyatt house was alight, not with fire but with lamps. He braked hard, skidding to a halt, and was out of the car almost as soon as the engine stopped.

Aurore was in the front garden, her face wild with fear.

“Simon isn’t in the house,” she said. “I can’t find him, I’ve looked everywhere. Oh, God—can you see those flames? We must do something—Jimson—”

“Jimson’s safe. Simon was at the farm—he set the barn to burn, Aurore. It will be gone in a short time. But he wasn’t there, nor was Jimson. And the cattle, the horses are safe. There’s nothing that can be done.”

But the fire bell by the common was ringing loudly, and men, stuffing nightshirts into trousers, were gathering by the inn and piling into carts, wagons, whatever they could find, throwing buckets among the packed bodies. Rutledge caught sight of Jimson among them, yelling fiercely.

“He burned—but why!” Aurore ignored the chaos, her mind only on Simon.

Rutledge said, “The suitcase. He wanted to destroy it and anything else that might have been left there, any evidence that could still be found. It was the only thing he could think of doing before Hildebrand came tomorrow. Aurore, you must tell me now, where did you find that straw hat?”

“The suitcase—Margaret’s?” She was very still. “I don’t understand.”

“It was hidden in the church, Aurore. Henry knew about the hiding place there, and Simon. Simon went to fetch it tonight. You hadn’t destroyed it, had you? If you lied about that, you lied about the hat—”

Elizabeth Napier had come to the door. “I heard voices—is that you, Simon?” She peered out into the garden, seeing only the tall man beside Aurore.

“No, it’s Rutledge.”

“I smell smoke!” she exclaimed as she stepped out the door. Her voice was still rough. She turned in the direction that men and wagons were moving up the road and saw the distant flames leaping into the night sky. “My God!”

“It’s the farm, there’6 nothing we can do. I don’t know where Simon is. Elizabeth, did he know of hiding places in the church? Behind the old altar, for one, under the altar cloth? The one that Henry used as a boy? Who else did?”

“We were never allowed to play there—I’ve never heard of a hiding place. Has Simon already gone to try to save the farm buildings? We ought to be there, helping him! Be quick, Aurore, we need the car!” She started down the walk.

“There’s a suitcase in the back of my car. Will you look at it and tell me if you recognize it?” The hurrying men had disappeared, but there were clots of women near the Wyatt Arms, some staring toward the fire, some of them packing another wagon with picks, shovels, buckets, a barrel of ale.

Aurore began to move, but he gripped her arm, holding it firmly.

Elizabeth said, “I’m not interested in suitcases! Why isn’t Benson here when I need him? Will you take me, Aurore, or not—”

“Please do as I ask.” There was an inflection in his voice that stopped the flow of words as if they’d been cut off. She stared at him, surprised by his intensity.

Then she moved through the gate and turned to look at Rutledge again with an expression that was hard to read—anger he thought, because her primary concern was still Simon. But it was his as well. She went on to the car.

After a moment she called in surprise, “I know that case! That’s Margaret’s! Where on earth did you find it? I thought the killer had taken it?”

“You’re absolutely sure of that? It belonged to her?”

“Of course I am! My father gave her this case for her birthday two years ago. It’s part of a set.” She turned and said, with sudden understanding, “It means you know who killed her, doesn’t it?”

“I think, Miss Napier, that you’d better go back into the house and telephone Inspector Hildebrand in Singleton Magna. Tell him, please, that he’s wanted here. That there’s an emergency. Meanwhile, Aurore, you must help me find Simon!”

Elizabeth stepped away from the car and looked at him with fierce passion. “What’s happened? Why won’t you tell me! Aurore, make him tell me!”

Aurore opened her mouth to say something just as the silence was shattered by the sound of a gunshot coming from the direction of the museum.

“Oh, God—” She was already running, fleet as a wraith, her skirts lifted, her body tense with fear and terror.

Elizabeth screamed, one long heart-tearing sound, a name, and was after her in a flash of skirts and flying heels.

But Rutledge, swifter, was there ahead of them, at the door of the museum, opening it, rushing into the empty room, and then the next and the next, until he’d reached the small office that Simon had used.

At the door he came to such an abrupt halt that Aurore cannoned into him, and Elizabeth was a poor third, pressing at their backs, calling Simon’s name.

“Don’t come any closer!” he said, putting out an arm to stop Aurore.

“No, I must go to him, I’ve had training, I can—oh, God, let me go!”

Elizabeth, pushing her way past both of them, reached the threshold, and for an instant Rutledge thought she was about to faint. She swayed on her feet, grasped the door’s edge, and began to whimper with soft, short breaths.

Aurore broke away and went into the room.

Rutledge knew what it held. He had seen. In that one brief, anguished glance, he had seen it all in the lamplight. Simon Wyatt, seated at the desk, a sheet of paper on the top in front of him, a pen beside it, and his blood blown across it by the impact of the bullet to his temple. The pistol on the floor beside his chair was German, a war souvenir.

The Germans, Rutledge thought helplessly, had got him after all.

And Hamish, aware of the grief and the pain and the horror of what had happened, said, “Look well. See yoursel’. If it’s no’ the Germans waiting, it will be me.”

Rutledge stood there for an instant, frozen, seeing in his mind’s eye his own shattered face lying on one arm out-flung across the bare wood.

27

Rutledge made himself walk into the room and look at the sheet of paper under Simon’s arm, although he had guessed what was written on it. It was addressed to Hildebrand. It said only, “You were wrong. I blacked out and killed them both. She didn’t know. It is better this way.” And the signature read, with a flourish, Simon Wyatt.

Rutledge softly swore, the waste of a man’s life shocking him.

Aurore was kneeling beside her husband, her arm across his shoulder, saying “He’s still warm, there must be a pulse, if I can stop the bleeding—”

Elizabeth was clinging to the door frame, sobbing heavily, her eyes unable to look away.

Rutledge bent to Aurore, touched her shining hair briefly, gently, then forced her to let Simon go, lifting her to her feet, turning her to face him. “He’s dead, Aurore. He’s dead, there’s nothing you can do.”

She buried her face against him then, and he thought she was going to cry, like Elizabeth. But she was only searching for strength, her body at the point of breaking, her mind already broken.

She said, “I was so afraid. I was so afraid that one day—And now I’ll never need to be afraid again.”

She let him lead her out of the room but seemed unaware of the chair he seated her on or the handkerchief he thrust into her hands.

Elizabeth refused to go, clinging to the door, her eyes unable to leave the crumpled shoulders, the untidy fair hair, the great black stain of blood.

Rutledge finally got her to move back into the museum, and that was when she straightened, seeming to tower in her anger, and loosed the storm of it at Aurore.

“It’s your fault, you killed him! You took him away from all he knew and all he wanted, and made him into what you believed he ought to be, and in the end, it killed him. He needn’t have died but for you and your damned, selfish blindness! I hope you’re satisfied, I hope his spirit haunts you every day of life and breath left to you and that you never, never, know what happiness is, ever again!”

Rutledge went to her and shook her hard, until she broke into tears again and sank in the chair he quickly shoved toward her. Burying her head in her hands, she began to moan Simon’s name, over and over, like a litany.

Aurore, white and strained, still hadn’t cried. She looked up at Rutledge, her eyes filled with ineffable pain, and said only, “He didn’t do it.”

“You thought he had. He thought you had. He killed himself because he couldn’t face losing you, he couldn’t face the scandal, he couldn’t face another change in his life. He was trying to protect you.”

“Hildebrand came to him today—”

“I don’t know how Simon knew of the suitcase. Whether he put it there—or found it there. If it’s any comfort to you—”

He broke off as the door opened and Joanna Daulton came through the outer rooms toward them. Her hair still pinned up, the white streak like a blazon, but she was wearing a robe over her nightdress. She looked from Aurore to Elizabeth, saying something about the fire, and then seemed to shrink into herself as she took in what their faces told her as they lifted to hers. “Simon?” she asked Rutledge. “Gentle God! Where!”

He nodded toward the back room, then said, “Don’t go.”

She walked past him without a word and into the small office, staying only for a moment. He thought he heard her saying words of prayer from the service for the dead. Then she turned, her face chalk white, and said, “What can I do?”

“Will you call Hildebrand for me? Ask him to come directly. And then if you would, you might find some help for Miss Napier and Mrs. Wyatt. I think both have been through enough for one night. They need tea, warmth—comfort.”

“I’ll see to it,” she said, but some of her usual efficient crispness was gone. “I loved him,” she added simply, “I watched him grow from childhood. I thought, if I had another son, that’s what I’d want him to be. Someone like Simon.” She shook her head, as if to clear it. “I hope he’s at rest—I hope he’s at peace!” Her voice broke, and she went out the door, leaving him with the two women while she made the necessary arrangements.

Aurore said, “This has changed nothing in our bargain. I will not have this put at Simon’s door. Do you hear me?” It was as if she hadn’t taken in what he’d been saying earlier.

“Aurore—”

“No. He will not be remembered as a murderer. If there is a paper saying so in that room, please, for the love of God, destroy it. Don’t let it destroy him!”

“I can’t destroy evidence!”

“Then I will.”

She got to her feet and was nearly to the door of the smaller room before he caught her, his hands on her arms.

“Aurore. Listen to me. It isn’t over yet. Give me time! If you destroy that letter, you will probably hang. And he died to prevent that. Can you understand me?”

“He died because he couldn’t endure any more pressure from anyone.”

He made a swift and measured decision. “Come with me. Back to the house. I must lock this wing until Hildebrand arrives.” He took Elizabeth’s arm, supporting her, while Aurore—Aurore the widow—walked unaided by his side, one foot placed precisely in front of the other, as if she were half alive. It was always the Elizabeths of this world, he thought in a distant corner of his mind, around whom people gathered in a crisis, offering sympathy and comfort and human warmth. They seemed so vulnerable and helpless. And yet the Elizabeths were often tougher than all the rest, more deeply centered on how the crisis deprived them than moved by unbearable grief. How did you comfort Aurore, when you knew that even touching her was anathema? That beneath the incredible strength lay stark despair.

He locked the museum door with the key he found there and escorted both women across the front gardens. The side of his face was beginning to hurt, where the flames had seared it.

By the time they reached the house, Elizabeth was near to collapse. That spoke volumes to Rutledge—he understood clearly what she had done—and how it would affect the remainder of her life. And so did she. Simon’s death lay at her door as much as at Hildebrand’s. If she hadn’t meddled—if she hadn’t tried to bring him back to her somehow—anyhow—again and again …

When Elizabeth had been settled on the sofa in the quiet parlor, a pillow under her head and the light shielded with a shawl, he turned toward the door.

Aurore said, “Where are you going? I want to know. I want to go with you.”

“I’m not going to London. Only as far as the church. I want to see this hiding place. Aurore, tell me the truth. You found the hat, didn’t you? Where?”

She shook her head, stubbornly adhering to the story she’d given him.

And she stubbornly followed Rutledge to the church, as if afraid he’d leave her, breaking their bargain. Or afraid that left alone, she couldn’t hide from grief any longer?

Inside, the candles still burned and the odor of incense was very strong. It took him some time to find the stairs to the crypt, hidden in a corner of a side aisle. As Simon had done before, he took a candle to light his way down the narrow, crumbling steps and into the cool stone chamber that had once been a small church, its heavy pillars squat, its arches broad and ugly rather than graceful. Sturdy, strong enough to support the building that had been put up over it, windowless and bare, almost spiritually bleak, the crypt now served to house the dead. Wyatts for the most part, but there were others as well, he could see eight or ten tombs spaced unevenly around two walls, leaving the center of the stone-paved floor empty.

Along the other walls were stored a broken pew, bits of stone from rebuilding, boxes of hymnals, shovels and picks for digging graves, containers for flowers, lengths of canvas, buckets—all the oddments of death and burial. You could see, he thought, that nothing could be hidden among or behind them.

Neither he nor Aurore had spoken.

At one end of the crypt was a stone altar with no grace. A monolithic slab with a vine pattern running around it set upon three square, heavy stones. An altar cloth, thin from damp and age, draped the stones, covering them to the floor. In the center of the top was a squat stone cross, powerful in its roughness. A bronze vase, empty, stood to one side, as if waiting for flowers. And under the altar cloth, as it hung like a tent, was a narrow three-sided rectangle, the back open.

He went there and knelt on one knee to look more closely at it. It yawned, empty.

The dark space was large enough for a suitcase like Margaret Tarlton’s, or for a small boy gleefully escaping from adult supervision. But who had put the suitcase in there?

He thought he had part of the answer now. He felt heavy with sadness.

Aurore was just behind him, staying close in the pale light of her own candle, her breath uneven, as if the place disturbed her. He thought she might be sorry she had come now. But she stooped to look at the small space too and then gasped as another voice spoke. It seemed to rise from the ground under their feet, although that was a trick of the echo.

It was Henry, on the stairs, saying, “My mother told me about Simon. I’m sorry. She’s very upset, she feels responsible.” He didn’t have a candle.

Yes, she would, Rutledge thought. The final tragedy in her life.

Rutledge straightened up and came across the uneven floor toward Henry. “Was this your hiding place? Was this the place from which Simon Wyatt took the suitcase tonight?”

Henry said, “I’d rather not tell you. Let the dead lie in peace.”

“It will help Simon. He isn’t guilty; neither is Aurore.”

Henry frowned, a move that emphasized the deep scar. “But it will harm someone else, won’t it? It will hurt me.”

“That very much depends on why it was put here, as well as by whom.”

Henry came down the last of the steps and moved across the crypt, the candle flames dancing with his passage. “It would have been safer over here,” he said, coming to a stop in front of one of the tombs there. “The suitcase.”

The low rectangular stone vault was small, plain. The top was engraved with a name, date, and a few lines of scripture. But no figures at the sides supported it, and no designs ran like filigree either across the top or down the corners. It seemed to squat on the floor, out of place among its more ornate brethren, as if unfinished.

“The end stone here isn’t sealed. The tomb’s actually empty, did you know? It belonged to the wife of another Simon Wyatt, some three hundred years ago. The next wife didn’t want her to lie here in Charlbury and had the body sent to Essex. It’s one of the family skeletons, in a manner of speaking.”

He stooped by the tomb and pushed one side of the stone that marked the foot. It scraped across the floor but moved with fair ease. “You wouldn’t have needed much of a space, to slip a suitcase in there. But most people can’t tell it’s free. I knew. Even my father didn’t.”

Rutledge said quietly, “You couldn’t have moved that as boys. It was too heavy. Would it be too heavy for a woman?” He was thinking of Aurore.

“Probably not. If she knew about it. The old sexton showed it to me when I was six or seven. He had a ghoulish nature; he said I’d wind up here if I misbehaved in church. Rather a cruel thing to tell a child, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was.” To one side of Rutledge, Aurore stood with that stillness of hers that he so admired.

Henry frowned, thinking. “I must have told Simon about these hiding places. That’s how he could find the suitcase, when he came looking tonight. I asked him what he was searching for, and he said it was a suitcase no one else wanted. He said Aurore had put it here, but she hadn’t”

Aurore, turning to Rutledge, opened her mouth to speak and stopped.

“No, I don’t believe she had put it here either.” Rutledge said, his voice attuned to Henry’s mood. “Who did? Do you know?”

Henry shook his head. “It was in the attic for a time.”

“Whose attic? Simon’s?”

“No, of course not. It came from my mother’s.”

“How did she come to have it? It didn’t belong to her. Did you give it to her?”

“She brought it home one day. I asked her where it came from, and she said it was better if I didn’t worry about it. There was another one too, but she put that one on a train from Kingston Lacey to Norfolk. I expect she wanted to put this one on a train too but hadn’t had time.”

Where do you hide a suitcase? Where there are other suitcases.…

Aurore was staring at Henry. She said, “How did Simon know that the suitcase was here?”

“I don’t believe he did. He’d searched the farmhouse. And the barn. After the inspector here had gone this afternoon. Then he came here, to search the church. I don’t think he was very pleased to find it.”

“No,” Rutledge said. “I shouldn’t have thought he was at all pleased. It proved something he didn’t want to believe. I think—Henry, it’s time we found your mother.”

“Why?”

“Mrs. Wyatt needs her.”

Henry said, “I like Mrs. Wyatt. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve watched her often. I like pretty hair. Hers is very pretty.”

Rutledge, standing very still, said softly, “Aurore, will you trust me? Let your hair down. Slowly. Give me the candle.”

After an instant’s hesitation, she handed it to him and slowly began to unpin her hair, collecting the pins in her teeth. The knot at the back of her neck loosened and unwound. As she took the pins in her left hand her hair spilled in long gleaming waves, falling over her shoulders nearly to her waist. She looked at Rutledge, frowning but unafraid. Her hair was not pretty—it was beautiful.

Henry, mesmerized, sucked in his breath and walked toward her, his eyes shining in the light. His hand moved, reaching, then drew back. “You won’t scream if I touch it?” he said to Aurore. And to Rutledge he said, “I like to touch it. But it always makes them scream, and I hate that part.”

“No,” Rutledge said firmly, “you can’t touch it tonight.” Henry stopped where he was, uncertain. Rutledge passed one of his candles to Aurore, her face white and stark now, and stepped into Henry’s path. “Mrs. Wyatt, would you mind fetching Mrs. Daulton for me? You should find her at your house, with Elizabeth. Ask her to come here, but don’t come back with her, do you understand?”

“Ian—” she began, moving toward the stairs.

“There’s no need, I’m here,” Joanna Daulton said, coming down the crypt steps. Dressed now, composed, she stood there, blocking the only exit from the low-ceilinged, cold stone undercroft of the old church, another candle in her hand, and Rutledge felt himself succumbing to the numbing fear of being shut in, cut off from the outside air. Hamish was urgently telling him to pay heed—

In Mrs. Daulton’s left hand, half hidden by her skirts and the shadows, was the straw hat that had belonged to Margaret Tarlton.

Aurore was moving closer to Rutledge, one hand fumbling at her hair, gathering it together. But Joanna Daulton said, “You needn’t be afraid, my dear. Henry never hurts anyone. He just has a fascination about seeing a woman’s hair flowing down her back. I don’t think he even understands why this compulsion is there. The physical implications. Nor does he understand that respectable women don’t care for such attentions. He only wants to touch, and to him that’s hot—wrong. Like a child wanting to touch something very pretty, he sometimes can’t stop himself.” The last words seemed to be wrenched from her.

“He tries to choke them when they scream,” Rutledge said.

“Yes, it frightens him, he tries to shut them up. If they stood still, he’d stop at once. But that’s as far as it ever goes. He never does any harm.”

“He tried, tonight, to choke Elizabeth Napier.”

“Yes.” She turned tiredly toward Aurore. “I wouldn’t have had Simon die for anything in the world,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow. “I mean that, Aurore. I never intended for any such thing to happen.”

“I shall have to take Henry in for questioning,” Rutledge said. “Will he understand what I’m doing and why?”

“Of course he will,” Joanna said sharply. “He’s not a fool. But it won’t be necessary. He didn’t kill those women. I did.”

He looked at her, infinite pity in his eyes. To protect her son …

“How many have there been?”

“It started in London. I’d taken rooms near the hospital while Henry was there recovering, and they’d let him out of hospital, in my care, with a nurse to come three days a week. He tried once to unpin her hair, and she screamed, and he choked her. She was very angry, she threatened to tell the doctors, to have Henry put away. I gave her a great deal of money and bought her passage on a ship leaving for New Zealand. And that was that. Afterward, I watched him very carefully. But when Betty came to the house, to tell me that Simon was giving her an introduction to the Napiers, Henry was alone with her in the parlor. I was finishing the washing up. I didn’t know, I thought he was out. I didn’t know until I heard her scream. I offered her what money I had and told her she’d be better off going to London with a small fortune in her pocket than settling for being a maid to the Napiers. And she went. But the money didn’t last. She came back, demanding more.”

Joanna Daulton shuddered. “I couldn’t give her any more. I didn’t have any more to give. But she was a greedy little bitch, she threatened to have Henry put away, and in the end I had no choice but to kill her. It was horrible. I hated myself, I hated her, I hated having to connive and lie and live with such a thing on my conscience. I told myself, in future I shall never let him out of my sight again, I’ll watch even more closely. It won’t happen again, I could see he was showing great improvement—”

“But he wasn’t, was he?” Rutledge asked gently. “He has never fully recovered. He never will.”

“No.” The word seemed stark and anguished, matching her eyes. “And I shan’t be there to care for him. He will have to go back to hospital now whether I want him to or not.”

“The next woman he was alone with was Margaret Tarlton, looking for someone to drive her to the train.”

She sighed. “I hate to say this about the dead, but Margaret Tarlton was worse than Betty. I knew, from something Richard Wyatt told me once, when he and Margaret had a stormy affair in 1913, that she had a way of getting whatever she wanted. I think she’d have married Richard, if he’d had enough money to satisfy her. And now she had the power of the Napiers behind her. She was hard, and very angry, very unforgiving. I didn’t have any money to offer her. She said she didn’t care what happened to Henry. She said it was what he deserved.” Joanna Daulton turned to Aurore. “I told her, You aren’t a mother, or you’d understand. But she said it doesn’t matter, he belongs behind bars, he isn’t stable. We argued again outside Singleton Magna. I was driving your car, Aurore, there wasn’t enough petrol in mine. I’d walked over to the farm and borrowed it, and all the way to the train Margaret Tarlton was insisting on going to the authorities in Singleton Magna. I couldn’t persuade, I couldn’t bribe—she made me stop the car and put her out. That’s when, God help me, I took that stone you keep in the back of your car and I killed her! And that poor man Mowbray took the blame, because to save him, I’d have had to destroy my own son!” Her voice twisted in anguish.

Aurore said, “Don’t—for God’s sake, don’t!”

Mrs. Daulton said, “I’m glad it’s over. I thought when I heard Elizabeth scream tonight, it will go on and on and on, until one day I can’t bear it anymore. But I love him, you see. I really wanted him to be whole again. I told myself that Simon was recovering—Henry could recover too. I told myself a hundred lies. I told myself that I could make Henry well myself, if I had time enough and peace enough. It was all so terrible. But I couldn’t harm Elizabeth. I’ve known her almost all her life. It was hard enough with people I barely knew. With Elizabeth—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t kill her, Aurore. I couldn’t do it. But I killed Simon, didn’t I? Inadvertently. I’d have liked to kill myself, but I haven’t that kind of courage. I suppose women generally don’t.” She smiled across the room at her son. “Henry, darling, I don’t think you’ve understood a word of what I’ve been saying, and just as well. Come along, let me put you to bed. And then I must go with the inspector for a while. It will be all right, you’ll see. You liked hospital, didn’t you …?”

Her voice trailed off as she held out her hand, dropping Margaret Tarlton’s hat on the steps. Henry came to take her cold fingers in his, and Rutledge watched, letting it happen. Henry looked across at Rutledge, and there was a strained smile on his face. He understood far more than his mother wanted to believe.

Mrs. Daulton turned and led her son up the steps. Aurore said quickly to Rutledge, “I don’t think she should go alone!”

“It’s all right. She won’t harm him. She won’t harm herself. I’ll take you home and then go to the rectory. By the time Henry is settled, Hildebrand will be here.”

“You believed her?” She followed him across the crypt, her candle flame shaking because her hand was shaking badly.

“Yes. I’ve been half certain, since that damned hat went missing tonight.” They had all made a connection between Henry and the dead women, and dismissed it. Shaw had more anger in him than Henry had ever shown. But Shaw had had no reason to kill Betty Cooper … while Simon or Aurore might have. Or Elizabeth Napier—

At the stairs, as he bent to retrieve the hat, Rutledge said, “I saw Henry once with a small bird in his hands. It was oddly childlike. He may have tried to stop these women from screaming and frightened them badly. Himself as well. But he wouldn’t have beaten them, on and on until they were dead. As his mother had had to do, to silence them. He’s not mad. It’s just that much of his mind is gone. Whatever abilities and skills he once had, he’s lost them.”

He took her arm to help her up the steep, crumbling steps. Her scent was strong in the cool air, a sign of her distress. He said, “Will you tell me now where you found this hat?”

“I took the shortcut to the farm the day after Margaret left. It was in the bushes there; Joanna must have dropped it. But I thought Simon had. And someone had started the car while I was in the barn—I heard it leave and come back. I was sure Simon had taken Margaret to Singleton Magna.” Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. “He was desperate for money. I thought—I had so little faith left in him! I had seen his father’s letter. About the house in Chelsea. And he had insisted on hiring Margaret …”

There was no comfort he could offer.

She said as they reached the aisle and he blew out their candles, “If only Simon had waited for the morning!” There was infinite sorrow in her voice.

“I know,” Rutledge said quietly, but the stone took his words and gave them a haunting echo. “He was a good man, Aurore. He just lost his way. A lot of us did, in the war. And we weren’t all wearing visible wounds. That was the worst part of it. No one could look at us and say, ‘See what the war has done.…’ ”

“I loved him so much,” she said, tears coming at last. “I thought he didn’t love me.”

After a moment he said, “What will you do?”

She said, into the echo of his words, “I shall open the museum, if I can. And make it work. And after that, I shall go far away from here. We have all died, in a way—myself, and Simon, Henry and his mother, Mowbray, those poor women. I can’t bear to think about it.”

They had reached the door of the church. He handed her the key to the museum. She turned to him and said, “I shall go from here alone. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Whoever she is, this woman you have loved, she is not worth your grief, do you know that? Find a love of your own, and don’t lose it as I did!”

And she was gone, hurrying down the path toward her house, where he could hear cars arriving and voices raised in alarm. In the bright sky behind him, the barn and the house still burned out of control, flames leaping high, garishly, into the night.

He felt very tired, and very much alone.

Hamish said, “You’re a better policeman than you think you are.”

“Am I? I’d have saved him if I could.…”

“Aye. But he’d no’ have thanked you. He died for her; it gave his death a meaning. It was what he was after, and it was far better than dying a coward.”

Rutledge walked out of the shadows of the trees. He could see Aurore standing in the doorway of the museum, unlocking it. He braced himself and called to Hildebrand, stopping that surge of people toward the house long enough for Aurore to remove the note from Simon’s dead hand. There was no reason to cause pain where it wasn’t needful.

She paused as the museum door swung open and looked blindly back toward the church. But Rutledge was already standing among the policemen from Singleton Magna, handing the hat to Hildebrand, swiftly and clearly telling the staring faces what had happened. As he finished, a number of them went on to the museum; the others, led by Hildebrand, went toward the rectory.

Shaw, by the gate, stood waiting until they’d gone. He looked at Rutledge and said, “Is it true? What you just told that lot? Or a pack of lies? About Mrs. Daulton?”

“It’s true.”

Shaw rubbed his face, drawn and exhausted. “I wanted someone I could kill. I wanted it to be Napier. Or Simon. Or even Henry. I can’t touch that poor woman, even for Margaret’s sake. Hanging will be a blessing for her!”

“It will be an end, but not a blessing.”

Rutledge turned the crank, got into his car, and said, “Can I give you a lift as far as the inn?”

Shaw shook his head. “I need to walk awhile.”

Rutledge drew away and in the night watched his two headlamps plow gaudy furrows down the dark road. He felt empty, drained. But Mowbray was still in his cell. The man deserved compassion, and help. Rutledge would see to it.

Hamish said, “You could na’ let Mowbray hang for murder. He never touched a soul. She’ll fare well enough. You must na’ fret.” It wasn’t clear whether he was speaking of Aurore or Joanna Daulton.

Rutledge said, “No.” But he knew he would remember Aurore’s face and her stillness, and the French way she had of shrugging, whenever he thought of Jean. They were inextricably linked, because he and Simon were linked. He could still see the pistol beside the chair, he could smell the powder and the blood.

There but for the grace of God go I.…

But Hamish said into the roar of the engine and the sound of the wind whispering through the open car, “Not now. Not yet.”