Wings of Fire (19 page)

“I may be pregnant. I’m not deaf! Well, is it true?”

“Yes, it’s true,” Rutledge told her.

“Why on earth are you interested in a child who died over twenty years ago? Do bodies even
last
that long? I don’t see any point in it!”

“I’m interested in what became of him.” He paused, then said, “If he’s still alive, he’s one of the heirs, isn’t he? Nicholas’ younger brother.”

He heard Rachel gasp, across the small inlaid table from him, but he didn’t look up at her. It was Susannah’s response he was interested in.

“If he’s alive, why hasn’t he turned up? Even a child of five knows who he is, where he came from. You’d think he’d have found a way home by now. Somehow.” Susannah was fidgeting with the fringe on her shawl, more from exasperation, he thought, than nervousness.

“Yes, there’s always that possibility. But he hasn’t. I’m just being thorough, that’s all. Did you ever hear stories of
what happened on the moor? As you were growing up?”

“No, it wasn’t the sort of thing discussed around children, and by the time I was old enough to be curious about Richard, or Anne, or even my father, Rosamund always managed to change the subject. I remember my father, but of course not the early years, before he married Rosamund.”

“He was brought up a Catholic, I’m told. What about you? And Stephen. Or Cormac?”

“We’re all Anglican. Well, I suppose Cormac was born a Catholic, but he never practiced, as far as I know. What difference does it make?”

“Does he have close ties in Ireland? Has he ever talked about the rebellions and the uprisings? Michael Collins? The black and tans?”

“He’s not interested in politics. Never was, as far as I know. Cormac is typical of the City—he’s very good at what he does, he enjoys making money, and he behaves himself. Reputation
is
money, he says.”

“He’s an attractive man. Wealthy. Socially acceptable. Why hasn’t he married? In his position a hostess is almost indispensable.”

“Yes, I know, I’ve acted for him often enough. So has Rachel.” She shot a sidelong glance at Rachel. “I always wondered—growing up, watching them together—if there might be something between Cormac and Olivia. The tension between the two of them and the way they very carefully avoided each other. She never married. I thought perhaps he was the reason. I wondered if she was ashamed of her bad leg, and
wouldn’t
marry him. But wanted to, very badly.”

“You know that’s all in your imagination,” Rachel said, suddenly restless. She shifted so that her face was out of the light coming through the stained glass in vivid shades of port wine and honey, dappling the walls and the floor and her shoulder. “They never seemed to have much in common, and I was around them for years before you were born.”

“Which tells
me
,” Susannah said, “that they had a lot in common! Didn’t
you
find Cormac attractive? All my school
friends were desperately in love with him! Everyone wanted to come down to the Hall for weekends.”

Jenny Beaton laughed. “I was fondest of Stephen. I had such a crush on him when I was twelve. Do you remember that?”

“Cormac’s very attractive,” Rachel answered defensively. “But I never really thought of him in that way—”

“Nicholas didn’t like him, and so you didn’t!” Susannah retorted.

“Why didn’t Nicholas like him?” Rutledge asked before Rachel could answer. Jenny was watching them, her face inquisitive, but he kept his eyes on Susannah and Rachel.

“Nicholas was the oldest son. Until Cormac’s father married Rosamund,” Susannah said. “It put his nose out of joint, I think. This newcomer lording it over him. Except that Cormac didn’t lord it over anyone.”

“That’s not true! Nicholas was never jealous. It was something else, something I never did really understand until I asked Rosamund about it once, and she said that Cormac’s father replaced Nicholas’ father, and sons often found that hard to swallow.” She turned quickly, her eyes flying to Rutledge’s face. “I’d forgotten that conversation,” she said, surprised. “I don’t know why it suddenly came to mind. What happened last night must have jarred my memory—”

“What do you mean,
what
happened?” Susannah broke in, sitting up straight, her face sharp with curiosity. “What are you talking about!”

But Rutledge knew what Rachel was thinking, that he had stirred up the past, like a stick spun in muddy water, churning up what lay at the bottom, wanted or not.

“Family relationships,” Rutledge answered for her. “We were discussing them. After dinner.”

Disappointed Susannah lay back against her cushions again. “Well, Nicholas never took any resentment out on Stephen or me,” she said. “And we were the
children
of that marriage! Why blame Cormac? It certainly wasn’t
his
doing that Mother chose to marry his father. It probably changed
his life far more than Nicholas’, when you stop and think about it.”

From the mutinous expression on her face, Rutledge could tell that Rachel strongly disagreed. But remembering Susannah’s health, she held back the defense that seemed to be burning on the tip of her tongue.

“But I was fond of Nicholas myself,” Susannah went on complacently. “He had more patience with us than most boys his age. When Father died, I remember sitting on his knee, terribly frightened about putting Father into that huge, cold vault in the church. I kept telling everyone that he’d want to be out in the light, where he could hear the horses running and the sea coming in and children playing. And Nicholas said, ‘That’s why he died out on the strand, so he could be free. What we’re putting in the vault tomorrow is only a token, a place where Rosamund can put flowers.’ Then he took us on a pirate’s hunt, looking for Father’s gold crucifix to put in the coffin. But we never found it. I don’t know whether he did later, or not.”

Hamish was already pointing out that it meant nothing, but Rutledge felt the coldness in his bones.

Suddenly tired and out of spirits, Susannah added, “I don’t want to think about death and unhappiness. What you’re doing in Borcombe is a waste of time. It distresses Daniel, and that always disturbs me. Richard is dead, and so is everyone else, and I don’t see why Scotland Yard should care a ha’penny about any of us. Stephen’s gone, and you can’t bring him back, however hard you try. Nobody murdered him, he just
fell
! And as far as I know, that’s still not a crime, is it? So just go away and let us get on with life!”

Jenny Beaton was about to interject a change of subject, but Rutledge was faster.

“Did your brother take Olivia’s papers from the house? Those she left him regarding her writing?”

“Stephen took hardly anything. I feel so guilty now about how we all behaved over that. Like—like dustmen quarreling over the bins! You were as bad as the rest of us, Rachel!” she ended accusingly, her face flushing with emotion.

Rachel was on the point of denying it, then closed her mouth firmly.

Mrs. Beaton hastily overrode her anyway, extending an invitation to stay for luncheon, but Rutledge thanked her and claimed pressing business back in Borcombe. He and Rachel left soon afterward.

“A fine diplomat you are!” she accused him, back on the main road. “She’s supposed to have rest,
tranquillity
!”

“She seemed perfectly capable of looking after herself. Susannah is a lot stronger than you give her credit for.”

“You aren’t a doctor—”

“No, and neither are you! Now tell me about Cormac and Nicholas.”

“Tell you what? I thought I’d made that plain at the Beatons. They never found common ground. They were envious of each other, Nicholas because Cormac was older, Cormac because Nicholas was Rosamund’s son and he wasn’t. What’s wrong between you and Cormac? Why do you bristle at each other? Explain that, and you’ll see why Cormac and Nicholas didn’t get along.”

Rutledge knew why he and Cormac bristled. They were at opposite ends of the pole. Cormac wanted the family skeletons packed away where they couldn’t rattle, and he, Rutledge, was in the process of digging them out and displaying them on the village green. Antagonists. Two men used to having their own way—and each finding the other blocking it.

He found himself wondering suddenly if it was Cormac’s City reputation that he was protecting so ardently—or a woman he’d wanted to love but couldn’t.

Hamish said, out of the blue, “The heart doesna’ care what she is, if he wants her badly enough. But the head doesna’ rest easy on the pillow when she’s a killer.”

Which was true.

He, Rutledge, still wanted Jean, though he knew—he had seen for himself—that she couldn’t bear to have him come near her…

They were nearly back to the village when Rutledge pulled into a farmer’s muddy lane and switched off the engine.

Turning to Rachel, he said, “You told me about a letter last night. Whether you want to remember telling me or not, it’s up to you. But it will save all of us a great deal of time and fuss if you simply finish what you started.”

“What will you do, if I don’t? Make me walk back to Borcombe from here?” she retorted.

“You know I wouldn’t do that. Rachel, for God’s sake, you may well be concealing evidence.”

“No, I’m not!” she said fiercely, turning in her seat to face him. “The letter was to
me
! Not to the police or an inquest full of prying eyes. I don’t know how you managed to make me speak of it. If I’d been myself, if you hadn’t
tricked
me, I never would have!”

“You told me, the day you sent for Scotland Yard,” he said tiredly, ignoring Hamish’s accusations and objections. “You made your decision then. And there’s nothing you can do now to take it back again.”

“I won’t let you have my letter!”

“Then tell me what it says.”

There was an angry silence between them. And then, in a voice that was so different he didn’t realize at first what she was doing, she began to repeat the words from memory.

There was a stillness in the car after she’d finished. He made himself look down at his hands, resting on the wheel, and not at her.

“I didn’t know, when I got it, that he was going to die. I thought—I thought he was worried for me, Peter’s death, my—my own feelings towards him, my hopelessness about that. I did know—for some time—that Olivia was having trouble again, with the paralysis. I suppose I’d told myself that in a few years—five, perhaps—she might—something might happen. The doctors had never held out much hope of—of a long life for her! And if he was free—if I were free—if he wanted to come to me, he could. That for Olivia’s sake, all these years he’d lied to himself—lied to me—lied to her. About how he really cared for me. I told myself he’d let me marry Peter because he thought it was for the best. I told myself that he couldn’t leave Olivia alone in that house, with no one but the servants to look after her. That he’d stay with her—and I
respected
him for that!—until the end. That—Oh,
damn, damn, damn! I told myself what I wanted to hear
. But he didn’t want to go on living, did he? Or he would have!”

There were no tears on her cheeks when he finally looked at her, only a great sadness in her face that touched him deeply.

“And for weeks afterward I asked myself, What hold did she have over him? What was it that was stronger than anything he could have felt for me? Why couldn’t she let him live?
What was it that Olivia knew and I didn’t?
”

This time there was a fierce anger in her voice, a need that was so ferocious, so passionately real, that she had been driven to act. To send for the Yard.

Rutledge didn’t know what to say, how to answer her.

Instead he got out and started the car again, and drove silently back to the village. In front of the cottage, as he pulled up the brake, he said, “You weren’t prepared for murder, were you?”

“No—I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” Her voice was still husky. “But I had to know why—And there wasn’t anyone else I could speak to. Most certainly not Peter’s brother in Whitehall! I told myself that Scotland Yard would be objective and quick, and I’d at least know why Nicholas died. That’s all I wanted to hear. And now, now you’ve dragged in Richard—and Anne—and Rosamund—and I’m so frightened I can’t sleep. I don’t want to know any more. I’d rather believe that Nicholas didn’t love me than discover something awful about him that I couldn’t bear to live with!”

“Will you come back to the Hall with me? I want to show you something.”

“No, I won’t be tricked again.”

“This isn’t a trick. Let me show you some things I found. Some things I’m not sure I understand. But very…worrying. And the reasons why I’m still here. You may be able to explain them away. It would be better for all of us, if you could.”

She shook her head, then raised it and looked hard at him.
“If I do, will you go away? Back to London and let it be?”

“That depends,” he said, “on the truth.”

They drove to the Hall, taking the long way around and leaving the car in front of the steps while he led her out to the headland to see the burned stretch of land. The rain had made the grass grow again, and the patch was nearly covered now. But she could still make it out. Barely.

Frowning, she said, “Are you telling me that Stephen burned Olivia’s papers here? But why?”

He took an envelope from his pocket and shook the small objects it contained into the palm of his hand. A bit of ribbon, the silver edge of something, the length of leather.

She touched them gently. “My first thought would be love letters, seeing that ribbon. Was it blue, do you think? A woman would choose blue. Olivia liked green, but not that pale shade. It isn’t the sort of ribbon you see on a woman’s clothing, is it? Or the hair. But a nightgown? Or a very young child’s gown? Love letters would be more likely. Olivia’s, I’d say.” She smiled wryly at him to hide the hurt. “I can’t imagine Nicholas being sentimental enough to keep all
my
letters bound in ribbon!”

The corner of silver puzzled her for a time, then suddenly she laughed. “Of
course!
One Christmas, Rosamund gave us all matching frames for photographs. Leather and silver, for traveling. She said we might choose our own photographs, and I had one of Rosamund and Nicholas I put in mine.”

“What did Nicholas and Olivia keep in theirs?”

“Nicholas wanted one of his parents. It was in his bedroom, for a time. I don’t know what Olivia chose, but she said she wouldn’t be traveling much, and might like one of George in India, because he’d done her traveling for her. I remember Rosamund hugging her, pain in her face.”

“And the leather?”

“Well, Olivia kept a leather notebook by her bed. There was a strap that closed it, and a small lock. I thought it was a journal. But she said no, it was for thoughts in the night. I didn’t understand what she meant, until I discovered she was
a poet.” She picked it up, turning it in her fingers. “How sad that she burned it. If that’s what it was.”

“She? Do you think Olivia did this?”

“Who else? Cormac was the first one down here, he might have taken things he didn’t want us to find. Personal things. Something to do with his relationship to Olivia. But somehow I don’t picture him out on a hillside in the dark, with a fire blazing. The smart thing would have been to carry them back to London and burn them there, where no one would notice.”

“Why in the dark? Why do you think this was done at night?”

Rachel shrugged. “It has that kind of feeling. Clandestine?”

Next, he took her into the house and up to Olivia’s room. She entered it reluctantly, looking around her as if somehow she’d see the other woman standing silently in the shadows. He opened the closet and began to work. She watched, trusting him in spite of herself to explain when he was ready, but she started when one of the canes fell to the floor with a loud clatter, indicating that she was very tense. He continued to remove boxes from the back of the closet without a word, then pulled out the shelf, and carried it to the window.

Rachel followed him, and bent over him, curiosity aroused, their heads nearly touching as he worked, using his penknife carefully to draw out the strip of wood, then the cotton. Finally, on the windowsill as before lay the row of small gold objects, sparkling in the sun, telling a tale without words.

Rachel gasped, moving them about in turn with her fingertip.

“That’s Rosamund’s ring. Her father gave it to her when she was very young. And a silver box of wax, so that she could seal all her letters. She wore it on her little finger, sometimes, even when she’d outgrown it. And I remember Anne wearing that locket! She’d let me look at the pictures, if I was quiet in church. Were these Richard’s? The cuff buttons? Olivia used to put them in for him, to help Nanny—he couldn’t be still for an instant. And that fob’s Nicholas’, he was so proud of it. James gave him his first watch, and Ros
amund gave him the fob. It was a beautiful watch. Stephen let me have it—when—when he was going through Nicholas’ room. The fob had been in the family for ages. I thought perhaps he’d taken that. And that pipe cleaner is James’, he carried it everywhere he went. I always thought it was much too handsome to use in a pipe, and he laughed when I told him so. I don’t know about the crucifix. Was that the one Susannah mentioned? Brian’s? I never saw Cormac wearing one.”

“Yes, it has Brian’s initials on the back. See?”

He turned it over, and she peered at it for a moment. “They all have initials on them,” he told her. “The mark of the owner.”

“How very odd. Where did you find these? Surely not inside that board! And where did they come from? Olivia must have had the ring and the locket, but surely not Richard’s and James’ things. Or Brian’s. Cormac might have wanted that crucifix.”

“They were hidden in the board, just as I showed you. One fell out—the locket—when I was going through the closet looking for Olivia’s papers. After a time I discovered the others.”

“But why were they hidden? I don’t understand!”

“They’re trophies of the dead. I thought that Olivia had collected them from each of her victims. Something they’d treasured and she’d coveted. Now, I don’t know.” He picked up the board again, and the wood that slotted so perfectly into it. “It was Nicholas who worked in wood. It was his skill that must have made this hiding place. I realize that now. Not Olivia’s. And it was Nicholas who led the hunt for the crucifix. Susannah mentioned that. What better place to keep them safe than Olivia’s closet? She wouldn’t be likely, would she, to go moving shelves around on her own.”

There was pain in her eyes. “You can’t think—but there’s the fob. Why should Nicholas add a trophy of his own, and not one for Olivia, if he was the killer. If he killed her before he took his own life?” Her face begged him to tell her it couldn’t be true.

“I don’t know what was burned in the fire. But could Olivia have carried things out there, burned them, and come back into the house without Nicholas knowing what she was doing? Especially if it was done at night? Someone made very certain that a number of things were destroyed. Secretly. It would have been easy for him to go out there. At night, while Olivia slept.”

“No, not Nicholas!”

“Rachel, Olivia couldn’t have gone out there without his knowing.”

“She could have! He went into the village, to the church, to visit the rector, to have a meal at the inn, talk to people. She could have done it then.”

“All right. But the fire—and the letter—tell me that one of them knew that it was all over. Nicholas couldn’t possibly have written to you if Olivia planned all this on her own. If he hadn’t known what was about to happen.”

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He may—something might have been worrying him—he might have known, without really knowing. You do sometimes! He might have—suspected what she was planning. They understood each other so well.”

“And on the moors yesterday,” he went on, ignoring her interjection, “they found what looked like a small boy’s clothing. Wrapped in oiled cloth, to keep it from rotting too soon. That means someone stripped the boy’s body. Took away the clothing that might have made it easier to identify him. That’s
planning
, Rachel. Someone planned his disappearance!”

“If you found his clothing, you must have found his bones,” she pointed out, desperate now.

“No. I told you, the body had been stripped. If you’re going to that trouble, you don’t leave the body and the clothing in the same hole. It would make no sense, would it? Next point. I have a witness who says that Brian FitzHugh was talking to someone on the beach just before he died. Can you see Olivia trying to make her way down through those rocks? Wouldn’t Brian have gone up to meet her, to save her the
effort? Finally, if Nicholas was jealous of Rosamund’s remarriage to Brian, he wouldn’t be eager to see Thomas Chambers move in to fill FitzHugh’s shoes either. And it looked very much as if that could happen. But Chambers lived in Plymouth, not Borcombe. Nicholas couldn’t reach him. He
could
stop his mother from taking a new husband. In the grave, she wouldn’t betray him again. She was his.”

She backed over to the bed, her eyes still on his face, her own very bleak, her mind listening, whatever her heart was denying. She sank down on the edge of the coverlet, and as she did, he caught that same illusive hint of perfume again, and so did she. Straightening hastily, she moved across the room to the desk instead. As far from the fragrance as she could get. “You can’t prove it!” Rachel told him defiantly. “You can’t prove any of this. And I won’t let you ruin Nicholas’ memory with speculation and doubt. Olivia was famous. They won’t let you tear her down either, wait and see. You’ll end up ruining yourself. But I’m going to find out what drives you so hard, and I’m going to stop you, before I’ve lost my own way, and start believing this filth.
This was a close, happy family! Why do you want to destroy it
?”

“I want the truth,” he said tiredly.

“No, you don’t,” she told him coldly. “You’ve come out of the war a broken man, I can read that much in your face. You need to prove yourself again. And you think that the dead are easier targets than the living. All right, I don’t know what made Olivia want to kill herself. I expect it was suffering that drove her to it. And I don’t know why Nicholas wanted to die. But I’d rather go through the rest of my life wondering than lose him entirely. You don’t have anything to lose, do you? You’ve never loved anyone enough to give yourself for them. I must have been mad, asking for Scotland Yard to be sent down here. I believed in justice, and you only believe in revenge!”

She was moving before she’d finished, catching him off balance, and was out the door, slamming it behind her. He could hear her running down the gallery, almost stumbling in blind haste.

He didn’t need Hamish’s warning. Remembering the stairs, remembering how Stephen had fallen on the worn treads, Rutledge swore and was across the room in four swift strides, going after her.

He overtook her at the top of the steps, catching her arm in a fierce grip, swinging her around to face him.

“I’m not trying to ruin Nicholas! Or Olivia! There’s murder here, damn it. You’re an intelligent woman, you could see it for yourself if you weren’t so bloody wrapped up in your emotions!” he told her, furious with her, furious with himself.

Rachel didn’t cry. Where protecting Nicholas was concerned, she was braver than most of the men who wore medals from the war. He hoped that Nicholas was worth it—and feared that he wasn’t.

“Don’t talk to me about emotions!” she said, her voice like ice. “It’s Olivia, isn’t it? You don’t want
her
to be a killer, you don’t want all that poetry to come out of darkness and hate. Those damned poems blind you, and everybody else. Olivia was a witch, she had a withered leg, and yet she was able to take Nicholas down with her into depression and death! She could kill her own sister and her own half brother, and give an overdose of laudanum to her mother, and
still
you want to see her as saint! Her sufferings are just another part of the myth, her writing something you wrestle with because she’s a woman and respect because you once thought it was a man’s, and women shouldn’t write about lying in bed with a lover or standing knee-deep in your own ordure in a trench, or how near we all are to hell! But you wonder, don’t you, what kind of lover she’d have been, and where she might have learned the tricks that mattered. Well, ask Cormac. Maybe he’ll tell you what she was like!”

Stung, he let her go, dropping his hand from her arm, and she turned, walking down the stairs with her head high and her shoulders straight with anger. Fighting for breath and control even while she still seethed with the fury consuming her.

At the foot of the steps she turned to look back up at him and said, “Now you know how I felt in Olivia’s bedroom!
I’ve given you a taste of your own poison, and you found it hard to swallow, didn’t you? I don’t know if a word of what I’ve just said is true, and I don’t really care. But now you can see for yourself what lies a twisted imagination might come up with. How easily you can twist the truth to debase other people’s emotions. I loved Nicholas, and I mourn the man he was. And I won’t believe your lies about him. You can think what you like about Olivia. I’m going back to London, if I can find Cormac and ask him to take me. But I promise you this: I’ll ruin you if you ruin Nicholas.”

“Rachel, listen to me—”

“No. I’ve already listened to you, and I think it’s all hogwash. What you think is your own business. What you do about what you think is very much my business. Consider yourself warned.” She walked to the door.