Wings of Fire ir-2 Read online

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

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

  “Why did Richard die out on the moors?”

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

  “And Nicholas?”

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

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

  There was roguish laughter in her eyes as she stared back at him, giving a bawdy twist to his words. “Even the mighty use bedpans, like ordinary mortals,” she told him. “I nursed the living when needful, and laid out the dead. Dr. Penrith sent for me when Miss Olivia had the crippling disease and was like to die. He didn’t trust the London nurses they wanted.”

  She seemed today to be clear-minded and aware of what she was saying. Testing it, he repeated, “You laid out the dead?”

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

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

  “What about Cormac FitzHugh?”

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

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

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

  Miss Olivia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Nothing else.

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

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

  Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  He knew exactly what these were.

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

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

  “Trophies of the dead,” he said softly.

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

  Charles Todd

  Wings of Fire

  10

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

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

  The bottom drawer on the left side was empty.

  The dressing table, the tall chest, the bureau, and the bedside table yielded more personal things, perfume and cosmetics, combs and brushes, odds and ends of jewelry, filmy lingerie, silk scarves and stockings, lacy handkerchiefs, and a prayer book, candles, and matches. Nothing out of the ordinary in any way, though sometimes intimate and daunting.

  He knew, from what Rachel had told him, that the family had already taken away the things that made a room personal and individual-pictures and photographs and possessions with a particular value that wouldn’t be put up for sale with the house. But perhaps out of respect for Stephen’s insistence, much of Olivia’s life still survived in this room.

  Yet Olivia had been careful to leave nothing behind for either the police or her biographers that could be construed- or misconstrued-into the woman who’d lived in this room.

  The items buried deep in the closet must have been there a very long time, and if no one had found them before now, the chances were that no one might have discovered them for years to come. When they would have no meaning to strangers living here…

  He went back to the window and picked up each article, one at a time.

  Six victims, if these were indeed trophies. Olivia’s sister, Anne. Her stepfather James Cheney. Her half brother Richard Cheney. Her stepfather Brian FitzHugh.

  Her own mother, Rosamund Trevelyan.

  And the man who’d spent his life in her service. Nicholas Cheney.

  She’d been so sure of him, then, so sure that he would die with her. Or that she could send him into the darkness before her.

  “Gentle God,” Rutledge whispered softly.

  And after a moment, he found himself silently cursing Chief Superintendent Bowles for sending him here.

  Drawing the drapes again and closing the door firmly behind him, Rutledge went down the passage, his mind still working with a policeman’s precision, his thoughts far from where his feet carried him. The tiny, betraying trophies had been safely returned to their hiding place, out of sight. But not out of his thoughts, burned with molten brightness into his very brain. In Stephen’s room was the comfortable chaos of living. There was a cricket bat in the corner, a pair of riding boots by the closet door, suits and shirts and jackets hung haphazardly on the rod inside, books on the table under the window-they were mostly about golf and tennis, Ireland and horses-and ivory inlaid cuff links in the dish on the dressing table, with a fish hook and a length of gut from a tennis racket beside them. But no boxes. No folders of personal papers, no literary failures or private letters or contracts. What Stephen kept here was the detritus of boyhood and the things one left in a country house visited fairly often.

  In the interim between her death and his, Stephen might well have taken Olivia’s papers to his bank for safekeeping. But Rutledge went through the drawers again, found a routine letter from Stephen’s bank manager, and copied the address in his notebook.

  As he was about to close the curtains, Hamish said, “When I was a laddie, Ma was a fierce one with broom and rag, nothing safe from her eyes when the fit to clean was on her. I’d hide what 1 cherished in the shed behind the straw, or above the rafters in the loft, after Pa died. She wasna’ as tall as my pa.”

  Rutledge stopped, listening to what Hamish said. Stephen was a c
hild from a large family. Nosy sisters and prying brothers. He might well have had a secret place of his own. But not in this room. He, Rutledge, had been damned thorough…

  Or had he?

  He glanced around the room again. He’d even had up the carpet, looked inside the grate, under the bed He knelt again by the bed. Nothing, only a thin coating of dust, sifting down gently since Mrs. Trepol’s last visit.

  The frame. The slats that held the springs. Above that the mattress, sagging a little in the center. The bedclothes The slats? What could you hide on a slat? A key, perhaps…

  He went under the bed, on his back, mindful of his coat and careful not to scrape his head on the springs as he used his arms on the side boards to propel himself. Claustrophobia caught at him, and he had to shut his eyes against the wave of terror that ran through him. He coughed hard, the dry dust sucked into his drier throat. The springs were all but pressing into his face, not as high as he’d first thought!

  With eyes still shut tight, he forced his breathing back to a normal rhythm. What you don’t see can’t fall in on you! he told himself sternly.

  After a moment, searching with his memory rather than his eyes, he ran shaking fingers over the nearest slat, between the springs and the wood, barking his knuckles and collecting fine splinters. Nothing but more dust. There were five slats in all. He felt for the others, and began again, moving his shoulders and hips across the floor until he could reach each slat. Nothing. It was useless, he might as well give up. The last slat now Only the slight rustle of sound warned him in time, but the object still clipped his ear, falling, and he banged his head as he recoiled.

  Slithering swiftly out from under the frame again, he turned and looked back. The springs were a good fifteen inches above the floor, not face high.

  And a small book was lying, spine upward, in an inverted V on the floor. He reached for it, and managed to fish it out without going back under the bed again.