Wings of Fire ir-2 Read online

  Laughing to himself at his own susceptibility, he who had lived among the dead in France, he pulled the shawl gently back into place and went out of the room, closing its door behind him.

  The gallery was quiet and empty, the hall as well. There were no ghosts here. And yet-there was something that stirred Hamish into Scottish complaint again.

  Ignoring him, Rutledge went down the stairs, blew out his candle, and opened the door into the soft darkness beyond.

  Where something stood in the drive like a being out of hell and regarded him with a stillness that made Hamish yell out a warning.

  Rutledge, accustomed to night forays into no man’s land where the danger was much more real and often silently swift, held his ground and said, “What is it you want?” But he could feel his heart thudding from the surprise.

  The rector said, “It’s you, then, Inspector?”

  “What the hell?”

  Mr. Smedley lowered the blanket he’d thrown over his nightclothes and head and said, “I saw lights moving about in the Hall. I didn’t stop to dress, I came at once. I wanted to know who or what was walking about here! Was it you? Or are you here on the same errand? I’d been told that Mr. FitzHugh had decided not to stay at the Hall after all. I thought it was still quite empty!”

  “I came for some books,” Rutledge said, hearing the defensive note in his own voice. “I thought they might help me in my understanding of the poet.”

  “Ah, yes. The poems.” He sighed. “Come back to the rectory with me, man, and we’ll sit down like decent Christian folk, in good light.”

  Rutledge chuckled, locked the door, and followed him down the drive. “You’re a brave man to come looking for intruders in an empty house,” he said, catching up.

  “Pshaw!” Smedley answered. “I’m not afraid of anything the human mind can conceive! One recognizes the face of evil in my profession, just as you do in yours. But you’ll notice that I did not walk into the house, and I came armed.” From the folds of his blanket he produced a very businesslike heavy iron poker that gleamed darkly in the pale light of the moon.

  “What happened to turning the other cheek?” Rutledge asked, amused.

  Smedley laughed. The shadows of the copse fell over them. “It’s all very well in its place, you understand, but I don’t believe our Lord intended for us to turn the other cheek to criminals. After all, he threw the moneylenders out of the temple.”

  “And you believed that there was a criminal in the Hall tonight?”

  “I most certainly didn’t expect to find Scotland Yard creeping about the premises. But the house has much that’s valuable in it, and we have our share of tramps and good-for- naughts coming around. The saddest are the men who can’t find work and have too much pride to beg. We’ve done what we could as a parish, but I don’t think I could fault a man who was desperate enough to steal for his family’s table. Not to condone it, you perceive, but to understand what needs drive him.”

  “You have an unusual Christian charity.”

  “Well, I didn’t enter the Church for sake of my pocket, but because I have a hunger in my own soul.”

  “And has it been satisfied?”

  “Ah, yes. It has. Though I must admit that the perplexities have multiplied more than I’d expected. Find one answer, and open the door to a hundred more questions. Now, if you please, we’ll walk silently here. Old Mrs. Treleth has a small dog that takes great pleasure in keeping her neighbors awake, if he can pounce on the smallest noise as an excuse.”

  They walked quietly out of the wood, down the lane to the main road, and then turned towards the church. Mrs. Treleth’s dog continued to slumber.

  By the rectory gate, Rutledge said, “I’ve disturbed your sleep enough for one night, I’ll go along to the inn.”

  “Indeed, I’m wide awake, and you’ll pay for it with your company!” Smedley said lightly. “Come along quietly, you’d not be any happier than I if we wake my housekeeper. She’s worse than the little dog, God forgive me!”

  They made their way to his study with a minimum of noise, and the rector said, pulling his blanket more closely around him, “As I’m not dressed for the church, I feel no qualms about a wee dram of something-shall we say- strengthening? As a Devon man, may I offer you a cup of our finest cider?” There was a gleam in his eye.

  Rutledge said, straight-faced, “I’d be delighted.”

  Devon cider could kick like a team of army mules, deceptively smooth on its way down, and building a fire in the belly that was unexpectedly hard on the head. He’d had Calvados in Normandy that did the same, and wondered if the two had common roots.

  Smedley returned with two tall cups and a cold jug. He set them on the table between his chair and Rutledge’s, and said, “You can put those books down, I’m not here to wrestle your soul for them. As a matter of fact, I have copies of my own. Your midnight foray was unnecessary.”

  “Ah, but I would have had to ask for them,” Rutledge said with an answering grin. “And I preferred not to do that. To draw more attention to this investigation than it’s already created.”

  “So it’s an investigation now?”

  “No,” Rutledge said shortly. “I’m still… considering the options.”

  Smedley quietly chuckled, acknowledging that he’d touched Rutledge on the raw, and handed him his cup. Then his face changed, and as he pulled the blanket around him more comfortably, he said, “Well, I don’t know any answers. It’s between you and your conscience, when you find yours.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Smedley shrugged. “We must all decide how to use the knowledge we collect in life. In my work and in yours as well, I’m sure, there are painful decisions to be made. And painful choices. They’re never really the same, are they? Decisions and choices. Why did you suddenly want the books?”

  “Because when I came down to Cornwall, I didn’t know that one of the victims was O. A. Manning. Only that a woman named Olivia Marlowe was dead. Now I think the poems must have some bearing on her life, if not her death. I’d like to-understand-both women, if I can.”

  “Have you read them before? The poems?”

  “Oh, yes. I read Scent of Violets at the Front. My sister sent me a copy. It frightened me, in a way. That someone else saw and felt the things that haunted me and I never had the courage to write about even in letters home.” He couldn’t have said to Jean or to his sister for that matter, worldly as Frances was, what it was like to live in the nightmare of war. His letters had been light, giving a superficial account of suffering, and not the bedrock. He thought Frances had guessed.

  But Jean had preferred the lies…

  Hamish stirred but said nothing about Fiona.

  “And Wings of Fire? Have you read that?”

  “They’re extraordinarily moving, those poems. Where did Olivia Marlowe, spinster of this parish, learn so much about love?”

  “A question I’ve asked myself over and over again. Cor-mac was the only man she saw much of who wasn’t a part of the family. I know, Stephen claimed that she’d taken her fondness for him and extended it to the experience between a man and a woman. It may be true-she was capable of that leap of understanding, if anyone was. And Stephen was the kind of child-the kind of man -who endeared himself to everyone. I’ve forgiven him sins that I’d have turned another lad over my knee for committing. Told myself he was fatherless, and young, and meant no harm. But I loved the boy as I’d have loved my own son, for the goodness in him, and the light. He was very like Rosamund, and I know my own weakness in that direction too.” He frowned. “Perhaps that’s what Olivia saw in him. Rosamund.”

  He sat in silence, drinking from his cup, and letting the sounds of the house creak and breathe and whisper around them. Comforting sounds. Then he said, “And the last collection, the Lucifer poems? Have you read those?”

  “Not yet.” He’d been in hospital when they came out last year.

  “It’s a very interesting study of the fac
e of evil. Olivia understood that, just as well as she understood love and war and the warmth of life. As a priest I found it… disturbing. That she should know the dark side of man so much better than I. That she should believe that God tolerated evil because it has its place in His scheme. That there are some who are not capable of goodness in any sense. The lost, the damned, the sons of Satan, whatever you choose to call them, exist among us, and cannot be saved because they don’t have the capacity for recognizing the purpose of good. As if it had been left out of the clay from which they were formed.”

  Rutledge thought about a number of the cases he’d worked on before the war. And some of the acts of sheer wanton viciousness that he’d witnessed in France. He believed in evil, and in the capacity of man to be evil. In a sense, evil paid his wages. He wasn’t as sure as Smedley was that everyone had a capacity for good.

  Smedley drained his cup. “I’d not like to think that Olivia Marlowe knew such a being as she describes. Actually knew him. I’d not like to think that I’d met him, on the streets of Borcombe or along the farm lanes or in one of the towns on market day. I would have trouble with that.”

  Rutledge finished his cup as well, and felt his head beginning to spin. He had a hard head for liquor, but cider could leap out of the jug at you, when you were tired and unsettled and had an empty stomach. “You don’t think Olivia herself was capable of such evil?”

  Smedley stared at him. “You must lead a drearier, more despairing life in London than most of us can comprehend,” he said, “to ask me that! But I won’t answer you directly, I’ll tell you to read the poems yourself. And then decide.”

  He stood up, gathering the blanket about his burly shoulders. “I think I can sleep, now,” he added, “and I’ll be surprised if you don’t as well. Leave the books until morning. You’ll be glad of that advice, believe me.”

  Rutledge took the advice along with the books, went home to bed and fell asleep almost at once. He wondered, on the brink of sliding into the depths, if he’d have one hell of a headache tomorrow…

  He did. But whether it was cider or lack of sleep that pounded through his skull, he wasn’t sure. Breakfast and several cups of the inn’s violent black coffee seemed to help. He realized that it was Sunday morning, and that the village of Borcombe was on its way to church services or a day of leisure.

  Suddenly Rutledge didn’t care about murder or the poems or about the job he’d been sent to do.

  He sent a note by the boot boy to Rachel Ashford. Although he himself had no idea where she was staying, he trusted to the village intelligence system that worked more swiftly and more thoroughly than anything the Allies had devised during the war. The boy said instantly he knew where she could be found, and pocketing the coin Rutledge had given him, he set off at a trot.

  Ten minutes later he was back with a reply, and had pocketed his third coin of the morning. Two from the London gentleman and one from the lady.

  Rutledge opened the envelope and read the brief lines at the bottom of his own scrawled request.

  “I’d love to sail. I’ll join you in twenty minutes. Ask the innkeeper if we might use his boat. I know where it’s kept.”

  So he went in search of the innkeeper, and received permission to take out the Saucy Belle with Mrs. Ashford. Although he hadn’t sailed since before the war, Rutledge had some experience and thought-correctly-that Rachel might have more.

  She came to the inn wearing sensible shoes and a pair of what looked like men’s tousers, cinched tightly at the waist with an oversized belt. Her eyes smiled as he looked at her, but she made no explanation, whether these were Peter’s clothes or borrowed from someone else. They walked together down the road towards the sea and the small assortment of boats there. Rutledge had a basket over his arm, courtesy of The Three Bells and a generous bribe to the cook. Rachel said after a moment, “You’ve more foresight than I have. I was so glad of the invitation to sail, I didn’t think of food. Or is that a man’s thing? Peter was remarkably good at foraging; he said he’d learned it young.”

  Rutledge laughed. “He was always hungry at school. I never knew anyone so good at scrounging. His mother sent him generous boxes-tins of canned goods and packages of cakes and biscuits. The Scottish shortbreads usually lasted the longest. I remember they sometimes took the taste of the woolens in his trunk, but we never minded that. When they were finished, we were desolate, until he’d convinced some other boy to share hidden rations.”

  They had reached the overturned boats on a small shingle strand that was just above the reach of the tides. “That’s the Belle,” she said, pointing to a red dinghy that looked as if it could use a fresh coat of paint and perhaps more than a little caulking.

  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.