H
ildebrand was out to lunch when Rutledge walked down to the police station, and rather than wait in the dark smothering confines of the place, he asked if he could speak to Mowbray instead.
The constable on duty, mindful of the tightrope he walked between this man from London and Inspector Hildebrand, dithered for two whole seconds, thinking it through. But Rutledge knew his man, and with the commanding presence of a former army officer standing in front of him and brooking no nonsense, the constable came down on the side of prudence and offered to take Rutledge back personally.
They found another constable in the cell with Mowbray, a cadaverously thin policeman who looked to be in the last stages of tuberculosis, but his voice was strong and deep as he stood up, speaking politely to Rutledge.
“He doesn’t have much to say, sir,” the watcher told him. “Just sits and stares. Or cries. That’s the worst, just tears rolling down his face and no sound … .”
“Go have yourself a smoke,” the first constable told him, and he left with a swift stride that spoke volumes. “We can only keep a man here two hours,” he went on to Rutledge in an undertone. “I’d have a riot on my hands, else. Not the best of assignments.”
“No.” Rutledge turned to Mowbray, and said in a firm, quiet voice, “Mr. Mowbray? It’s Inspector Rutledge, from London.”
The bowed head came up with a jerk, the face tight with fear. “You’ve found them, then?” he asked, voice a thread of sound. “Are—are they—dead?”
“No. But I’d like to ask you—it’s hard searching for someone you’ve never seen. I’d like you to describe the children for me. As you saw them on the railway platform.”
Mowbray shook his head. “No, please—I can’t—
I can’t!
“It would help,” Rutledge told him gently, “if we knew. If they seemed healthy—lively—or were quiet, shy—”
Mowbray clapped his hands over his ears, swaying with pain and grief. “No—
don’t!
Oh, God, don’t!”
He was relentless, it had to be done. “They grow fast, children do. Would you say Mary was a good mother? That she’d cared for them properly? Were they well filled out? Or had she neglected them, let them grow thin and pale—”
The bowed head came up again, eyes suddenly fierce behind the tears. “She’s a good mother, always was, I’ll not hear anything against my Mary!”
“You must have found it easy to recognize
her
—but much harder to be sure of them. The little girl must have gone up like a weed—they do, sometimes—”
But perseverance got Rutledge nowhere. With a gasp Mowbray threw up his hands, as if warding off blows. “I tell you I couldn’t harm them—they were alive!—I loved them—I wanted to hold them—
for God’s sake, I loved them!”
Rutledge reached out and touched the stooped shoulder, avoiding the eyes that looked into hell.
Like Hamish’s eyes, if he ever turned and found them watching him
—
Rutledge spun on his heel and went out of the room, his breathing disordered, his mind in turmoil. The constable came after him, then stopped. “You got him to speak—it’s more than I’ve been able to do!”
“Not that it did any good! Are you coming?”
“I’ll have to wait for Hindley to return,” he said. “If you don’t mind—”
“No, I’ll find my own way!” Rutledge walked down the passage, his breath coming roughly in his throat. Outside on the steps of the building, he ran into Hildebrand.
“You look like you’ve seen your own ghost,” he said, staring at Rutledge. “What’s happened?”
I’ll
not go back into that building! Not yet! Rutledge told himself and said aloud, “Nothing has happened. But I want to speak to you where we can’t be overheard. Shall we walk down to the railway station?”
Grumbling about the heat, Hildebrand followed him as he strode off. “I’ve been out in the sun most of the morning,” he was saying. “I’ll be dead of sunstroke before we find those bodies. And half my men with me!”
“That’s what I want to speak to you about. I don’t think Mowbray saw either his wife or his children at the railway station—”
“Don’t be daft, man!” Hildebrand said harshly, stopping to stare at Rutledge. “Of course he did! That’s what started the poor sod’s rampage!”
“Listen to me, damn it! I think he believed he saw his wife—or someone who strongly resembled her. And children of the ages he remembered. They reminded him so forcibly of his family that he was thrown into emotional confusion. Just then the train pulled out, which meant he couldn’t confront the woman and sort it all out. By the time he’d made his way back to Singleton Magna again, he was convinced he had to be right, that she and the children had somehow survived. But when he couldn’t find any trace of them here, the longer he searched the more certain he was that there must be a conspiracy afoot to conceal them. And the angrier and the more determined he became—”
Hildebrand watched him with disbelief. He was in no
mood
for folly—
“The sun’s turned
your
wits, man! He knew his wife, he
came after her, he killed her, and that’s why we’re searching high and low for those children—”
“Mowbray may well have killed the woman,” Rutledge agreed, holding on to his own temper. “But every time we ask anyone about the missing woman or the missing children, we begin by telling them that we’re searching for the Mowbrays. And no one has seen them! If we had another name to put to the woman—the children—even the man—we might hear a different answer.”
“The man’s name? You’re saying that if he believed he married her, and we knew what name she’d taken, we could set things straight by saying ‘Here, we’re looking for the Duchess of Marlborough, this is her photograph, and these are her children,’ and some bored footman might say, ‘She’s gone to visit her cousin over in Lyme Regis, we don’t expect her back for days!’ And we find ourselves telling him that she’s not in Lyme Regis, she’s dead.”
Rutledge took a deep breath. “If we knew who was missing, we might have a place to start. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. After a fashion.”
“But we’ve known that all along!” Hildebrand retorted, exasperated. “And you’re not having me believe that it wasn’t Mrs. Mowbray that’s dead. I don’t believe in coincidence!” His instincts had been right—this one was a meddler!
“It isn’t coincidence. It’s the mind of a man who sees someone out a train window, thinks he’s recognized her, and by the time he’s walked all the way back to Singleton Magna, he believes it. And he finds a woman outside of town, on foot and vulnerable, and he kills her, because the only woman he’s able to think about by this time is his wife!”
“And what, pray, was the poor woman doing on foot outside of town? And where did
she
come from? And what name shall we give
her
? And why hasn’t anyone come looking for her? Answer me that!”
It was hopeless. Rutledge, on the point of bringing up changes in the children’s ages, decided it would fall on deaf
ears now. Instead he said, “I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have most of them. Not yet! But those search parties aren’t finding what they’re after, and I for one am willing to look in any direction that might clear up this murder.”
“We’ve cleared up the murder, hasn’t anyone told you? What’s Mowbray doing in my jail, watched day and night by my men, if we haven’t? If you can’t help me do what has to be done here, for God’s sake don’t muddy the waters with notions that make about as much sense as—as flying from that rooftop!”
“In my experience—” he began.
“Rubbish!” Hildebrand swung away from Rutledge, then angrily turned back to face him, jaw clenched. He said, “This is my investigation. You’ve been sent from London to find the children. Or their bodies. To get me whatever I need from another jurisdiction easier and faster. And here I’m the one setting up the search parties, running about in the bloody sunshine while you chase phantoms. Get about your own work, man, and leave the rest of this business to me!”
“Look,” Rutledge said, trying a last time, “if you bring Mowbray to court in his present condition, the jury will want to see
proof
that he did what you’re claiming he did. They’ll want means and motive and a weapon, they’ll want to know those children
are
dead, and at his hand, so they can convict a witless man without having it rest heavy on their conscience. His defense will run you in circles, making your life a misery before it’s over. They’ll put him on the stand and have him swearing he’s Jack the Ripper or the Czar of Russia before they’ve finished with him. And if we’re wrong—about any particular—”
“Have you met Mowbray’s barrister? Johnston? The man’s already in the grave with his son. He’ll not fight any evidence we present, he’ll be happy enough to see his client sent to an asylum instead of the gallows. And that’s supposing he cares one way or another! Once we find the other bodies, no jury in England will let Mowbray off!” Hildebrand
strode ten feet and swung around a second time, too angry to let it go. “Do what you were sent to do, man! This isn’t Cornwall, you’ll not be finding any deep, dark secrets in
my
patch, and you’ll not spoil my case.”
And he was gone, arms swinging in a barely suppressed need to hit something, anything, if it released the tension in his body. Rutledge watched him, oblivious of the stares of passersby, as Hildebrand crossed the street and disappeared into the Swan.
“I could ha’ told you—” Hamish began.
I don’t want to hear it!
Rutledge turned and walked on, up the hill toward the common, where the coolness of the trees closed over him.
Mowbray.
Was
he guilty of murdering his wife? And had he killed his children? Or was the body waiting to be claimed in the makeshift morgue a stranger’s, with nothing more than coincidence dragging her into another man’s madness? And the children—or the man with them? Did they exist, or were they something from the dark reaches of grief, conjured up with the pain of jogged memory?
What was wrong with this murder, what was it that lay beneath the surface, like a corpse beneath the ice, waiting to rise and point an accusing finger when the time came?
Hamish said, “Yon policeman wants his answers tidy, like a birthday box done up in ribbons and silver paper. Never mind what’s truly happened. You’d do well to heed him and not meddle. He can make a bad enemy!”
“There’s a dead woman to be thought of,” Rutledge reminded him. “And that man in the cell.” But what could be done for Mowbray now, even if they found a dozen murderers to take his place? The poor devil was broken by his own torment. He looked up at rooks calling from the branches arching high over his head. “I don’t think we’ll find the children,” he added pensively.
“Then where’ve they got to?” Hamish demanded.
“To safety,” he answered, and for the life of him, he couldn’t have explained where that notion had come from.
He took his lunch at the Swan, eating in solitary splendor in the dining room. It was nearly two o’clock, and the young woman waiting on him was yawning in a corner, her eyes drowsy as she filled the sugar bowls and then collected the salts and peppers in their turn. She looked enough like Peg, the chambermaid, to be her sister. Rutledge listened to the clink of the silver tops as she worked with them, his own thoughts busy with details.
He had called in at the railway station and persuaded the master to ask down the line whether suitcases had been unclaimed when the train made its last stop.
The telegraph key had clicked swiftly and surely, and then silence. “There’s a chance they were found by the conductor, long before the end of the line,” the man reminded Rutledge.
“I’d thought of that.” But the conductor who had put Mowbray off the train was an experienced man and according to the file had been questioned by Hildebrand himself. He’d have been the first to see the significance of any uncollected luggage that had come to light then or later.
The key began to click in response. The stationmaster listened and then shook his head. “No unclaimed luggage,” he said. “Not that day. Nor that week either.”
“Then contact any stops in between—”
“All of them?” the man demanded, staring at Rutledge.
“All of them,” he agreed. But the second message sent out by the stationmaster brought in the same response. No unclaimed luggage …
“They might not’ve had much baggage with them,” the man said, “if’twere only a day trip. It might help if we knew what we were looking for.”
Rutledge shook his head. “I don’t know. If anything more comes over the wire, I’m at the Swan. Send word to me there.” It was a far-fetched hope.
And so he’d gone for his belated meal, letting the stationmaster do the same. “My wife’s waiting my dinner,” the man had said, following Rutledge out of the small, cluttered office. “She’s ill-humored when I’m late!”
“Tell her it was police business,” Rutledge responded, and walked on.
But it was over his meal that answers began to come to him. And he went over them again and again, to be sure he was right.