Wings of Fire Page 10

  Rutledge considered it dubiously. “Are you sure it won’t sink beneath us?”

  “Oh, no,” she assured him. “It’s quite sound. He just hasn’t had it out much this summer. His son Fred didn’t come back from the Navy. Torpedoed in the North Atlantic. Fishing hasn’t been all that good, anyway. Cornwall’s going to have a bleak future, economically. Trade gone and the pilchards as well. Everyone is complaining.”

  So were the hopeful gulls, wheeling overhead. Between them, Rachel and Rutledge dragged the Belle down to the water and clambered in. Rachel watched him critically.

  He grinned at her. “You don’t trust me. I see that.”

  “It isn’t a matter of trust but of self-preservation. I’ve still time to leap overboard if you’re a rank amateur, likely to do us a mischief.”

  But he knew what he was about, and soon had the little boat out of the shelter of the river’s mouth and into open water. The sea was smooth this morning, wind ruffling it much farther out, where whitecaps danced lightly, but in the lee of the land, it was easy to row as far as the small strand below the Hall, beyond to round the headland, and then back to the strand again, where they pulled the boat up and splashed ashore.

  Rachel turned to him, her face aglow with something he couldn’t read, until she said, “I haven’t done that in ages! It’s wonderful to be on the water again. Peter was a landsman, he didn’t know stem from stern, but Nicholas loved to sail, to be out in all weathers, to feel the tug of the sea under the hull and the fierce pull of the wind. When he went off to war, he had his heart set on the Navy, but they wouldn’t have him—no experience, they said! And so he wound up in Flanders, in the mud and the horror and the killing—and the gas.” The glow faded, and she turned to reach for the basket as Rutledge made the boat fast to some rocks.

  “Tell me about your cousin Susannah, Mrs. Hargrove.”

  She straightened up and stared at him, the basket in her arms.

  “Is that why you brought me here?” she asked quietly. “To pick over my memories and then make your decision about returning tomorrow to London?”

  “No,” he said curtly. “You mentioned the family, not I. She came to see me yesterday. That’s why I asked.”

  She looked away from him, then set down the basket and began to climb the slight rise that led from the strand to the lawns. He followed her. At the top she stood looking across at the garden front of the house. “She’s very much like Stephen, but a paler version—not quite as handsome, not quite as charming, not quite as lively, not quite as . . . loved. I think Rosamund somehow loved him best, because she saw in him her own immortality. Herself, young again and ready to go on with life. Or perhaps he reminded her of Richard. I thought about that sometimes myself. She loved Olivia because she saw George in her, and Nicholas because he was so—so very like his father. In his appearance, I mean. Inside, Nicholas had Rosamund’s strength. Rosamund never showed favorites, at least not openly, but in her heart of hearts, who knows?”

  “Tell me about her husbands.”

  “George was a wonderful man, exciting and very masculine. James was a fine man, with depths and intelligence and a sense of humor. And Brian FitzHugh loved her so much she couldn’t help but love him back, but he was a weaker man.” She turned to look at him, strain in her face. “Does that answer you?”

  “Susannah said something about a Mr. Chambers who was in love with Rosamund and would have married her.”

  “Oh, yes, Tom Chambers was a very near thing. And I think he could have brought her out of her loneliness and depression. She was beginning to feel that too many of the people she loved had died. That it was somehow because of her. Her fault. I don’t mean she told us that in so many words—we sort of pieced it together, among us. Which is why Mr. Chambers mattered. A new love, a new lease on life—soon she’d be happy again! And then one night she took a little too much laudanum to help her sleep, and died before morning.”

  “Susannah is afraid that her mother deliberately killed herself. But she won’t accept that, she turns away from it in fear.”

  Rachel stared at him in surprise. “Does she? Susannah’s never spoken of that to me! Or to anyone else, as far as I know. Are you sure? I mean, could it simply be the strange fancies of a woman expecting a child?”

  “She was quite upset. If it’s a fancy, she’ll make herself ill before she delivers. I think, judging by what little I saw, that she’s terrified it might be true. Why?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Rosamund took too much joy in life to kill herself. I find it hard to believe such a thing myself.”

  “You said just now that she was depressed—”

  “Yes, but we’re all depressed at some time or another! We all go through dark periods when living seems to be harder than giving up. Have you never felt that death seemed a friend you could turn to gladly?”

  Hamish answered her first, bitterly. “Not for me did it come in friendship! I’d have lived if I could!”

  Rutledge turned away, afraid she might read Hamish’s response in his own eyes. “We’re talking about Rosamund—” he answered lamely.

  “No,” Rachel said firmly. “Rosamund couldn’t have killed herself! Nicholas would have known! Nicholas would have told me!”

  8

  Without waiting for Rutledge to respond, Rachel added with false briskness, “Do you mind? While I’m here, I ought to see if Wilkins kept his promise to water the urns on the terrace. He sometimes forgets ...” She set off towards” the house, a deprecating glance apologizing to him for not suggesting that he come with her. But she needed time on her own, to try to recover some of the promise of the morning.

  She’d already dealt with—or tried to deal with—enough grief as it was. She couldn’t bear to think of Rosamund as a suicide. Not the woman who’d been the very symbol of serenity, of brightness and vitality. Not the woman who’d been such a strong influence in her own childhood. It was impossible—a contradiction! But she hadn’t been able to comprehend Nicholas choosing his own way out of whatever it was haunting him, either. She’d finally asked for Scotland Yard’s help because she couldn’t tolerate the uncertainty, the doubt. And now this man from London was making things worse, not better. Talking about murder. Questioning the very bedrock of the Hall, the woman who’d been its soul, its center ...

  She’d approached Henry Ashford out of personal desperation. And they’d sent her a man who didn’t care about Nicholas—who felt nothing for Rosamund, or even Olivia. He was dredging up more pain, more hurt, more doubt—dredging up all the things she’d much rather forget forever. He wasn’t here to answer her need, he was too busy with his own, London’s, and she’d never expected that to happen. While she still walked in the terrible darkness of Nicholas’s death . . .

  She could feel herself hating Rutledge, blaming him. It was wrong, of course, and she could tell herself that as many times as she liked, but deep inside, she found herself wanting to lash out, to hurt him, as he’d hurt her. For planting seeds that might grow.

  Hamish was scolding him for upsetting Rachel, but Rutledge himself was glad enough for a brief space to think. He turned and walked up the lawns towards the headland, mind busy with the complexities of this case that wasn’t a case. And with Rachel, who had loved Nicholas Cheney, whether she believed that or not.

  The wind came bounding over the cliff face, ruffling his hair and tugging at his trouser legs as he moved higher along the grassy edge that rose at a fairly steep angle the closer he came to the top. Below him, the sea rhythmically threw itself at the rocky face, whispered softly, and then came back for another try. Farther out, there was a fishing boat moving slowly across the water, trailed by a half a dozen gulls. He could hear their cries echoing against the headland.

  Turning, he looked back at the house. It rose above the colorful gardens with comfortable grace, first to a lawn that was reached by a broad flight of Italianate stone steps, and then by way of another flight, to the terrace enfolded by the two short
wings that looked down on it. Rachel was moving about there now, where great stone urns spilled over with flowers, trailing blossoms and vines like bridal bouquets. It was a peaceful setting, not grand, but beautiful.

  He turned again, this time to look towards the village, half hidden behind the copse that separated it from the grounds of the Hall. Past the church tower, he could just see the upper floor of the rectory, its windows dark blue squares in the sun.

  Why had the rector been stirring at such a late hour of the night, much less looking out his windows? And could he see the Hall from there, could he have caught the movement of a candle in the study on the upper floor?

  An interesting pair of questions . . .

  Something had brought the man out of his bed and into the dark woods in such haste that he’d not stopped to pull on his trousers or a coat, he’d simply thrown a blanket around his nightclothes and taken a poker from the hearth. A poker for a living threat, not a dead one.

  Rutledge crested the headland and moved a few yards down the far side, looking towards a meadow that he thought might well have been a walled orchard once, the land still rough and hummocky where the trees had been cut down but the roots and stumps left for the grass to swallow with time. Yes, now he could see the faint line of foundation that marked where a wall had run. It was here, then, that Olivia’s twin sister had died. Out of sight of the house, the stables, and the gardens, behind a wall of brick and leaves.

  Hamish was insistently calling his attention to something, and he glanced down at his feet. There was what looked like a large, scorched patch of earth, as if someone had burned something here. Not recently, not within the past few weeks— the grass was already growing greenly through the blackened stubs, and the fine ash was like a film on the ground, evenly spread about, no chunks, no remnants of anything identifiable. Scuffing the surface with his shoe, Rutledge thought it might have been paper rather than wood or rags that had fueled the fire, it had burned so thoroughly. Or else whatever was not consumed had been taken away.

  He knelt, looking more closely, his fingers probing, and found something caught in one of the clumps of grass just outside the circle. It looked like a bit of faded ribbon, blue perhaps, or pale green, it was hard to say after days of wind and sun and rain draining it of most of its color. And closer in there was a thick edge of harder stuff, that might once have been heavy leather, like the end of a belt. Casting around for anything else, he discovered a small decorative silver corner, thin and blackened but still possessing a fine tracery of Celtic design. From a picture frame? A book? A locket?

  Odd things to have cast into a fire!

  Still squatting in the grass, he realized that he was just able to see the roof of the Hall, but there was not even a glimpse of the village, except for the battlemented top of the church tower. In the other direction, fields and woods. At his back, the sea.

  Whoever had worked here knew he—or she—was out of sight of watchful eyes.

  If you lived at the Hall and wanted to burn something, he thought to himself, why not in the grate? Or the stove in the kitchen? Or in the basket in the kitchen garden where trash was usually sent to be incinerated?

  To come out here on the headland and build a fire with the wind clawing up over the cliff must have been a damned nuisance, trying to keep the flames from leaping out of control, to keep bits of paper or cloth from blowing every which way in a flurry of sparks, trying to prevent your eyebrows and fingers from being scorched as you worked over the blaze, feeding it. Then pouring water over the lot, to make sure it was dead before leaving it.

  Unless ... unless you had something to burn that you didn’t want anyone else to see. Or find the remnants of, in the ashes of the hearth. Or smell in the passages of the house, smoke hanging heavily, like a confession.

  To come out here, in the daylight or the darkness, where the smoke and the smell and any remnants that the fire might accidentally leave wouldn’t be noticed or rouse suspicion, indicated a need for privacy—or secretiveness.

  He stood up, wondering who had used this patch of ground.

  Rachel was coming towards him, just closing the last garden gate, and he hurried to meet her, not wanting her to see the burned spot. “Hungry?” he called, when she stopped to wait for him.

  “Starved!” she answered, fetching up a smile. It was almost natural. “What were you looking at so intently? I called, and you didn’t hear me.”

  “Did you? It was lost in the wind. I was wondering if that meadow over there might have been an old orchard.”

  “Yes, actually it was.” She didn’t pursue that train of thought, but said instead, “It’s sad to think of the Hall being sold. Of strangers living here.”

  “I thought you were in agreement about selling the house? That only Stephen held out against it.”

  “Oh, I think it should be sold. There’s nothing left here now of what we loved as children, and trying to keep it alive artificially, as a museum, would be much worse than strangers moving in. I mourn the past, that’s all.” She looked over her shoulder as they walked down the headland towards the beach again, as if hoping the house itself would tell her she was wrong. After a moment she added more to herself than to him, “I expect the best course after all is for Cormac to buy it. Which keeps the Hall in the family in a roundabout way, and we’ll none of us feel guilty about choosing strangers over Olivia. Although it seems selfish to make poor Cormac the family’s sacrificial lamb!” She smiled ruefully. “Have you ever noticed how many times feeling guilty shapes human decisions? Rather than love or pity or avarice or whatever else one might have felt instead? A wretched way of getting through life, isn’t it?”

  He grinned down at her. “In my work, feelings of guilt can be useful—sometimes even solve the crime for me.” But there had been other times, he could have told her, when remorse and guilt never entered into the picture. A killer caught by some tiny mistake he made, not because of any human emotion driving him. Careful, elusive, cold. Rutledge found himself thinking that this new Ripper wouldn’t be such a man. He was lashed by such savage desires he could tear flesh like paper. And he’d grow more and more careless as the fires consumed him as well as his victims.

  The picnic basket was bountiful, pasties wrapped in napkins, beer for him, a thermos of tea for Rachel, an assortment of biscuits in a small tin, and a packet of cheese with a fresh loaf of bread. There were plums in the bottom in another napkin.

  They did it justice, although Rutledge was preoccupied and Rachel found herself making self-conscious small talk, sticking with topics that couldn’t lead her—and the Inspector— back to the Hall or its inhabitants.

  Discussing her interest in Roman ruins in England was easier, then she found herself wondering aloud why he’d chosen police work when he might have gone into the law, like his father.

  “I remember my father talking about briefs. A barrister defended the accused, he said, and a KC defended the law, and if the victim was alive, he might present his evidence about the robbery, the assault, the trespass. But if he was dead, he was the primary cause of the case, and had no role in it, except as proof that a crime had been committed.” He grinned at her. “That seemed very unjust to a small boy burning with a sense of right and wrong that was entirely his own. I felt the victim should be heard, that his voice as well as his life’d been taken from him. I believed that the truth mattered. That protecting the innocent mattered. It seemed to me the police must be concerned about that if the courts were not. But that wasn’t true, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” he said, looking away, “as I learned soon enough, the primary task of the police isn’t to prove innocence, it’s to prove guilt.”

  Something in his voice at the end warned her not to pursue the subject. She glanced up, and saw Cormac FitzHugh coming towards them across the lawns.

  She said quickly, beginning to gather up the lunch things and put them back into the basket, “Are you leaving for London in the mo
rning?”

  “No,” he answered, “not yet. I’ve a few more loose ends to clear up before I’m satisfied. But I promise I’ll tell you when I’m finished here.”

  “That’s fair enough,” she answered, and stood up, brushing the sand from her trousers. By the time Cormac had reached them, she was already walking away along the strand, towards the headland.

  Cormac called a greeting, and looking at the boat on the shingle said as he reached Rutledge, “I see you talked the landlord out of his boat for the day. I wish I’d thought about that myself.” Then, his eyes following Rachel, where she was already out of earshot, he added, “I’ve been worried about her. She took Nicholas’ death hard. Following on the heels of Peter’s. Rachel is too level-headed to deny they’re gone, but there’s an emptiness she doesn’t quite know how to fill. Lately she’s even avoided me, and Susannah. As if the living remind her too much of the dead.” He shook his head. “I know how that is. I bury myself in my work and let the days run into each other.”

  “You aren’t staying at the Hall?”

  “I’d asked Mrs. Trepol to make up a bed,” he said wryly, “then couldn’t face the silence. Friends at Pervelly are putting me up.”

  “Is that where Mrs. Hargrove and her husband are visiting?”

  Cormac turned back to Rutledge, surprise in his face. “Is Susannah down here? Daniel swore he wasn’t letting her leave London again until she delivered. But she’s always been more strong-minded than she looks. If she wants something, he can’t stand in her way for very long. She’s probably staying with the Beatons. She was in school with Jenny Beaton. Jenny Throckmorton, she was then.”

  * ‘Your sister didn’t want to hear of the investigations being reopened, either. She said there was enough disgrace in a double suicide, she didn’t want her child born into a family where murder was suspected.”