Wings of Fire (15 page)

Rutledge smiled, a cold smile that never reached his eyes. “If that were true, I could cause a great deal of trouble. But in the end, I’d only harm myself. No. Come with me, Mr. Chambers.”

He stood up, and without waiting to see if Chambers would follow, he went out into the inn’s hallway, fetched his coat from the rack, and was already picking up the borrowed umbrella when Chambers slowly came after him through the parlor door.

“Where are we going?”

“To the Hall,” Rutledge told him. “Do you have any objections?”

“I don’t—I’d rather not go there!”

“Why?”

“None of your damned business!” Chambers flared into anger as a defense. “I have no responsibility to you or to Scotland Yard. Only to my clients. I have neither obligation nor duty to cooperate with the police in a wild goose chase!”

“If you have a clear conscience, I see no reason why you should refuse to go with me to the Hall. Today or any day.”

“No.” It was very final.

Rutledge shoved the umbrella back into the tall brass stand and went back into the parlor, tossing his coat across the nearest chair. After a moment, Chambers followed him and shut the door with a pointed slam.

“What do you want of me?” he asked, standing there blocking it. “And what do you want of this investigation? Besides this ridiculous charge of murderers in the Trevelyan household.”

“You know something was wrong in that house, don’t you?
Rachel
felt it, because—she was particularly susceptible to the moods of the people who lived there.” He couldn’t bring himself, objectivity or not, to betray Rachel’s regard for Nicholas. “And you’re vulnerable too. Because you cared deeply for Rosamund and you
know
she wasn’t a woman likely to kill herself. Or let’s take Nicholas as an example, if you find thinking about Rosamund too painful. Would you have pegged him as a potential suicide? The sort of man who’d quietly choose to die with his half sister rather than face life on his own? A sentimental pact, in the moonlight, on a peaceful Saturday night? Or did Nicholas strike you as a man with a burden he carried with great patience and strength?”

Chambers’ expression was closed, the solicitor yielding nothing, loyalty to his clients coming ahead of any personal feelings.

“Damn it, you’re too intelligent to put your own responses down to sentimentality, but you feel uncomfortable in the Hall. Let me describe it for you. You walk through the door, and the house isn’t benign, it’s alive with jarring forces. To some extent, it’s a subjective response, I grant you, because
of the uneasiness in your own mind. Your intuition tries to point out that there’s something very wrong here, but you refuse to listen, you don’t want to believe that what you sense could be true. And you won’t help
me
to find the answers for the same reasons!”

Rutledge was met with a wall of resistance. But he was beginning to take the measure of it now.

“Even I have felt the emotions in that house! I was moved by O. A. Manning’s poetry, I was shocked by the manner of the poet’s death, I was personally involved in a way that an ordinary policeman wouldn’t have been. And I’m not by nature one to look for moods or—what is it that the crackpots call it?—vibrations? I don’t believe in ghosts, either. But Trevelyan Hall is haunted, in a sense that you and I both accept.”

Chambers still didn’t answer, but his face was paler, strained.

“I survived in those hellholes they called trenches for four years. It seemed like forty—a lifetime. I learned to trust my intuition. Men who didn’t often died. I was lucky to possess it in the first place, and war honed it. I learned that it wasn’t a figment of my imagination. Nor was it a replacement for the God I’d lost. Whatever it was, you came to recognize it. An inkling, a warning, a sudden flash of caution, a split-second insight that saved your life. Indisputably real, however unorthodox the means of reaching you. It gave you an edge on death, and you were grateful. Then I lost it for a time, it doesn’t matter why. But it hasn’t failed me completely, and I can tell you why you’re afraid to go back to that house. You know that Rosamund’s death haunts you there. You can feed yourself lies down in Plymouth. But not here. Not in the house itself!”

Rutledge could see the clenched jaw. The desperate rejection. In his own head Hamish was clamoring for him to leave the man in peace—

“It was an accidental overdose!”

The words, when they finally came, seemed to be torn from the depths of Chambers’ soul.

“No.” Rutledge waited, relentless. “Rosamund didn’t
make such mistakes. She was a strong woman. She was sunshine and light, not despair and darkness. It wasn’t suicide, and it wasn’t an accidental overdose.”

“I refuse to accept murder!”

“Because you believe that murder, if it was done, was your fault. For loving Rosamund. For wanting to marry her. For winning her love. Just as suicide could mean a rejection of your love, murder means someone wanted to prevent another stepfather in the house, another family. Another long wait for whatever it was he—or she—wanted badly enough to kill for.”

Hamish was saying in agitation, “Where did this notion come from? You never spoke of it before!”

In the tumult of his own emotions, Rutledge tersely answered the voice aloud. “I didn’t know before. But it makes sense now. I see the pattern!”

He did. Olivia had systematically eliminated her family—the twin sister who could pass for her and steal her grandfather’s love. The stepfathers she hadn’t wanted. The half brother who had stirred up the household and kept it on its ear. The mother who was planning to marry again. But not Nicholas, never Nicholas, who had looked after her. Not until the very end, when he no longer served any purpose—

Hamish was still raising fierce objections. Rutledge ignored them. He was angry and unsettled and—yes—bewildered by the leap his intuition had taken without warning.

Without a motive, he could keep to himself his suspicions about Olivia. He could deny, on the surface, that he believed in them because there was no real evidence except the carefully hidden trophies of the dead. It was possible—it was likely—it was practicable—But still theory. Still his own torment.

Now, it was real. Suddenly, it was
real—

He had nearly forgotten about Chambers in the dark, low-ceilinged room, standing by the door like a man who’d lost his way and waited for a sign.

The hoarse voice startled him.

“Damn you! You should have died in France!” Chambers
said with such bitterness that Rutledge knew he’d won.

It was a hollow victory. It had cost both men very dearly.

Suddenly, exhausted and drained, he felt he was on the edge of a precipice inside himself, the blackness he’d fought so long in the hospital, and once, too short a time ago, in Warwickshire. It seemed to draw him, to beckon like the Sirens, a place of peace and darkness and silence where nothing could ever touch him again.

The doctors had warned him he was still at risk, that it might be too soon to go back to the pressures of the Yard, while his own stability was an uncertain factor—and he’d fought them, inch by inch, to try returning.

And then a line of poetry came running through his head like a bright and deadly thread.

It was as if Olivia herself urged him to fail, to choose the darkness and leave the past intact. Chambers would never speak of it again. Rutledge was certain of that—

But the very last lines of the same poem came back to him too.

The dilemma of Olivia Marlowe, who could give and who could destroy with equal adroitness.

His voice still shaken, Chambers said, “I need a drink. From the look of you, I’ve no doubt you could use one too.” He turned and opened the parlor door, crossing the hall to the inn’s dining room. There he took a table by the window, pulled out the other chair for Rutledge, and sat down heavily. In the watery light, he looked old and tired, but Rutledge knew it was an illusion.

Trask came hurrying across the room to ask them what they’d have, and Chambers ordered whiskey, glancing at Rutledge to see if that met with his approval. “Make it a strong one, and then we’ll have our lunch. I can’t travel back to Plymouth half sober.”

When Trask had gone again, Chambers sighed. “You’re a damned hard man, do you know that?”

“I’m stubborn, that’s all.”

Chambers smiled grimly. “Well, so am I. I loved Rosamund, damn it. I don’t want to think I missed the causes of her distress at the end, and I don’t want to think that one of her family could be—evil. That’s what it would have to be. Not wickedness, you understand. That’s entirely different. Do you believe in evil, Inspector, or did you lose that, along with God?”

“I’ve seen enough evil in my work. I respect its existence.”

“Yes, that’s probably very true. I don’t, as a country so
licitor, deal with crime as often as I deal with property and wills and contracts, the ongoing bits and bobs of everyday life. Still, God knows money often brings out the worst in people! But it strikes me—having seen some of the dregs of life myself—that evil is something we don’t understand because it’s outside the pale of ordinary experience.”

“You should tell that to the rector, Smedley. He has strong views in that direction himself.”

“Yes, I know him, a good man. But the point I’m making here is that I knew everyone in Mrs. FitzHugh’s household, and I sensed no evil there. I couldn’t point my finger at any one of them, and say, ‘There I have some doubts’ or ‘I can’t feel easy about that one.’ Mind you, I’m still not
agreeing
with you on any of this,” he added wryly, “but for the sake of argument—”

Yet Rutledge could see that Chambers was already following the path of his own reasoning. “We can eliminate both Stephen and Susannah. They were born after it all began,” he said.

“Began? Where?”

“With Anne, Olivia’s twin sister. To be more precise, with her death.”

“Damn it, she fell out of a
tree
!”

“Or was pushed. And our choices are broader now. Nicholas, Rachel, Olivia. Rosamund. James Cheney and Brian FitzHugh. Cormac. They were all alive at that time. The servants. We can’t leave them out of the equation.”

“You can omit the adults,” Chambers said testily. “They weren’t there when it happened. Not even one of the nursery maids.”

Ignoring him, Rutledge said, “And next was young Richard.”

Chambers’ black brows snapped together. Trask came just then with their glasses, and as he walked away again, Chambers said, “All right. He was out on the moors, during a family picnic. Olivia was with—”

He stopped.

Rutledge waited, watching the trained mind work behind
the disbelieving eyes. Watching the solicitor vie with the prejudices of the lover.

“No!” he said in a fierce whisper. “No, I will not accept that! Not Olivia! She was the apple of her grandfather’s eye. She was Rosamund’s shadow. She was, for God’s sake, a remarkably courageous and astute woman, never mind the poetry! She wouldn’t have touched that child!”

“But don’t you see? That’s the key to a successful murderer. When no one is willing to believe he or she could possibly be behind such cruelty.”

Chambers shook his head adamantly. “No. If we must put the blame on someone, let it be Cormac. He was no child of Rosamund’s, and I know very little about his childhood, which makes it easier to point my finger in that direction. Yes, hypothetically Cormac I will accept! But not Olivia!”

“All right, Cormac, if you will. What did he have to gain, killing Anne? Or young Richard? I can see that killing James Cheney might have made way for Cormac’s father to marry the grieving widow, but Cormac was never in line to inherit the house or vast sums of money, and still isn’t. I don’t know how Susannah Hargrove’s will stands, but I should think she leaves her share of the estate to her husband, if it hasn’t been sold by the time she dies.”

“I can’t break my trust and tell you how her affairs stand, but yes, I can be frank about one matter. Susannah doesn’t leave her share of the house to Cormac. After all, she’s got a family of her own to think of. Or soon will.”

“Then why should Cormac kill people and risk being caught? If he’s nothing to gain? And without fail the outsider is the first to draw suspicion. There’s always the ugly possibility of childhood jealousy, I grant you, but somehow that doesn’t fit him, does it? Cormac strikes me as a clearheaded businessman who will take calculated risks in the market, but not in his personal life.”

“Well, yes, I must agree there,” Chambers replied reluctantly. “There was no call to be jealous. I know for a fact that Rosamund saw to his education, then gave him introductions to prominent men in the City when he came down from
Cambridge. Just what she’d have done for her own sons! The rest he’s earned on his own considerable merit. Which brings us back to where we started. There’s no possible motive I can see for your choice to light on Olivia, either. Even if Richard did go wandering while in her care.” He finished his whiskey and turned to signal Trask, saying to Rutledge over his shoulder, “But let me put this question to you. Suppose you’re right about her. Where will prosecuting a dead woman, however evil she might have been, take you? Certainly not into a court of law.”

“O. A. Manning is still very much alive,” Rutledge responded.

Chambers turned back, staring at him speculatively. “I begin to see,” he said quietly.

Chambers left after the meal, with a final comment. “I’ll give you a hearing when you’ve got incontrovertible evidence to show me. Until then, I shall do my best not to give credence to a word you’ve told me. And my best is very good indeed, let me assure you!”

Luncheon appeared to have restored his balance.

Rutledge went up to his room, overwhelming fatigue dogging his steps as he climbed the narrow stairs.

The reactions he’d gotten from Chambers proved how far the case he could presently lay out would go in a courtroom. He’d sown seeds of doubt in the solicitor’s mind, but he hadn’t done more than make him think. And a jury is no better than the evidence presented to it. That was a maxim at the Yard.

All right then, where to go next?

The men searching the moors in this wretched weather would have to find more than suspicions…

Richard’s body and the manner in which it was found could go a long way towards proving murder. But by whom? What if there were no pansies at his feet to link the small body with the poem Olivia had written?

In the afternoon Rutledge set out in a lowering mist to look for the small isolated cottage where the old midwife lived. Trask had reluctantly told him how to find it.

“She’s harmless, they say, but she gives me the willies!” he’d confided to Rutledge. “Never know where you stand with her. And those eyes—they lay a man bare, like a fleshing knife, but beyond the bone.”

“I’m told she’s a good nurse.”

“Oh, aye, I grant her that. But what does she steal when you’re defenseless?” From the expression on his face Rutledge knew he wasn’t thinking of money. Or the brass candlesticks.

Of such fears witch-hunts were born, Rutledge thought as he set out.

Sadie lived in a narrow cranny that branched off the main valley of the Bor, hardly more than a cul-de-sac where her sod-roofed house squatted in the rain like a wet gray toad. A garden had been hacked out of the hillsides and into the narrow strip of flatland on which the house had been built. He could recognize herbs of different kinds—although he only knew the names of half of them—and rows of cabbage and onions and carrots next to straggling lines of flowers beaten down by the heavy rains. A dozen bedraggled chickens scratched in a muddy pen out back.

She must have seen him coming, because the old wooden door inched open before he got there. “Leave the umbrella by the sill, and wipe your feet on yon rag!” she told him sharply. “I want no mud on my floors!”

He did as he was told and was surprised when he finally crossed the threshold and stepped into the low beamed room that served her as both parlor and kitchen. She had whitewashed the walls, and they glowed like butter in the fire that didn’t begin to fill a hearth broad enough to hold a pig. But the room was warm, and the bright rag rugs that covered the stone floor kept out the damp. The furniture was old, worn, castoffs that had seen finer days. Bunches of drying herbs and flowers hung in the rafters, giving the room an oddly exotic tang of mixed scents. Baskets, woven of rushes, held a stock
of dry wood, and a large black cat—her familiar? he wondered in wry amusement—slept on a cushion by the only window.

Sadie looked him up and down with those bright eyes. “What brings a London policeman out in a West Country rain to talk to an old woman?” Her mind seemed clear enough today, he thought, listening for the querulousness that seemed to come with confusion, when she began drifting out of reach.

“I’m trying to piece together information about the family at the Hall. You know that,” Rutledge answered mildly. “I thought you might remember some other things that would be useful.”

“Like?”

“Like, where are the servants who used to work there?”

“Scattered. Gone to other houses, or retired. Or dead.”

“Do you remember their names?”

She grinned at him. “At my age?” But he thought she could, if she tried. “Ask Mrs. Trepol. Or the rector.”

“Then tell me about Nicholas Cheney.”

Suddenly wary, she stared at him.

“Why should I? He’s not one I care to speak about.”

“I’m trying to understand why he killed himself. Why he chose to die beside Olivia. It seems…out of character.”

She chuckled. “Ever seen a man gassed in the war?”

“Many times.” Their crusted faces and red, blistered mouths, the hoarse gasping as they struggled for air. He shuddered, remembering it.

“Then you don’t need me to tell you how the lungs burn, how you can’t draw a deep breath because the tubes are raw, and you choke on your own phlegm. He said he dreamt of the scent of violets. And lemons.”

“Nicholas wasn’t that ill. You know it. And I know it now.”

She went over to the window and touched the cat, her face turned away from him. “Don’t ask me about Nicholas Cheney. Or the boy Richard. That’s why you’ve come, I can read
it in your eyes. And I’ve listened to the men grumbling on their way to search the moors.”

“Do you plant pansies in your garden?” Rutledge asked, reaching to the rafters to touch the upside down heads of strawflowers, brittle between his fingers.

“They don’t dry well,” she said, straightening up to look at him.

“Do they grow well on the moors?”

“Sometimes they do. Volunteers that the wind blows. Or a bird leaves behind.” She was wary still, but not afraid of these questions. He wondered why. “Pansies like the cool of springtime, and a little shade in the afternoon. If that’s what you’re looking for, find the place where they’d want to grow. Not where someone thought of putting ’em.”

Rutledge considered her. The old, stooped body, the worn, bright eyes, the knowledge and the experiences of a lifetime fading with age, slipping into forgetfulness.

He remembered a chaplain in the war, at a hasty service for a half-dozen soldiers killed in the shelling. Saying, “They’ll never grow old—never feel fear and cold, hunger or pain, or the sorrows of lost love or the pity of the young. While they have missed much, these men who won’t see their sons in their mothers’ arms, or the moon over a summer sea, or the beauty of a rose, they have what we all look for in the end—eternal springtime. It is not their grief but ours that haunts us.” Oddly enough, it had helped weary men. But not, he thought, the chaplain.

“Has your life been a happy one?” Rutledge asked her.

Shock spread across her face, then lingered in her eyes. “No one ever asked me that before,” she said quietly. “But no. I was never given the choice of happiness. Only of service. I don’t know that I wasn’t better off, come to that. If you feel happiness, you must also feel grief.”

“Did Olivia Marlowe know grief?”

“Miss Livia? She went to funerals like the rest of them, and cried.”

“No. Grief for what her life brought her. Not the paralysis.
Not the poetry. Not the dead in her family. But grief for what
she
was.”

“Aye,” the old woman answered finally. “She carried a great burden on her soul. And had no way to put it right. She said to me once, a long time ago, that God had put an affliction upon her, and I asked what that was. She told me, to live with evil and not know how to stop it.”

“And did she, by dying, put an end to it?”

Sadie frowned. “I don’t know, sir. For her sake, I pray she did. I’d hate to think of her lying in her grave with no hope of peace!”

He turned to go. Then thought of one final question. “Was she the frail angel that watched at Richard’s grave?”