Search the Dark

by Charles Todd

  “No one else?”

  “No,” she said, then added dryly, “but the horse is not dead in the countryside, you know. There are far more carriages and carts and wagons than there are motorcars in a ten-mile radius. Even Dr. Fairfield who comes to the village drives a buggy. That very fierce little man from Singleton Magna, with the face that looks as if he’s bitten into a very sour lemon. If transportation was a problem, anyone in Charlbury would have been glad to take her. If only to please Simon. Why do you ask these things? They have nothing to do with the day that Margaret arrived.”

  She has a very clear memory for detail, Rutledge thought. What Margaret Tarlton might have seen, arriving on the same train as Bert Mowbray, had been his excuse when he had asked for her London direction.

  “We don’t know where Miss Tarlton went from Singleton Magna. She hasn’t returned to her flat in London, and she failed to arrive at the Napier country home in Sherborne. They were expecting her there.”

  Her gray eyes changed as he watched. Anger—or was it resignation?—stirred in their depths. “Ah. Why does that not surprise me?”

  “Did you believe Miss Tarlton was sent here as a spy in your midst?” he asked bluntly. She had nearly admitted as much before. It hadn’t mattered then.…

  “But of course! Why did Elizabeth Napier all at once have no further need of her services? Why, after nearly eight years with the Napiers, was Margaret prepared to come here?”

  “It’s the nature of women, sometimes, to look for a change. I don’t know that Elizabeth Napier has been an easy mistress. Or Margaret Tarlton may prefer work that reminds her of growing up in India.”

  “But that’s exactly the point, Inspector. The nature of women,” she said. “Margaret is nearly twenty-nine years old. The age when a woman is reminded that if she’s to marry, it must be soon. How many eligible young men would you say there are here in Charlbury?”

  He caught himself wondering how old Elizabeth Napier was, and as if she’d read his mind, Aurore said, “Elizabeth was to marry Simon in 1914. But he asked her to wait, until the war was over. And when he came home from France, there was an unexpected impediment—his French wife. She has wasted five years. She will be thirty next month.” The devastating honesty of the French.

  Smothering a rueful grin, he said, “The point is, we appear to have lost Miss Tarlton. Possibly between Charlbury and Singleton Magna. It’s my task to find her, I’m afraid.”

  “Then I cannot help you. She went upstairs to pack, and I went to the farm to see to the livestock. As I have already told you.”

  There was nothing else he could say, except, “I’ve kept you from your breakfast long enough. I’d like to speak to your husband before I go.”

  But Simon had already finished his meal and gone across to the museum, and it was there that Rutledge finally caught up with him. Looking up from the small sandalwood figure in his hands, Simon said, “I thought your business was with my wife? Look at this. Shiva dancing. Exquisite, isn’t it? Even if I don’t have the faintest idea who Shiva might be! I’ll leave such erudition to my assistant.”

  “That’s what brought me here, actually. Your assistant. I need to ask you who drove Miss Tarlton back to Singleton Magna, to meet her train.”

  “I thought Aurore had. Why? Does it matter?” He replaced the carving on its shelf and stood back to see if it was dwarfed by the figures on either side. He picked up one of its neighbors, the fanciful figure of a large bird in flight.

  “Yes,” Rutledge said, beginning to lose his temper. “Put that thing down and pay attention to me, man! There’s a woman lying dead in a pauper’s grave at Singleton Magna. I want to know if it could be Margaret Tarlton. And if it is, I want to find out who put her there.”

  “In a grave? That’s nonsense!” He frowned. “Why should you think it’s Miss Tarlton?”

  “Mr. Wyatt, we can’t seem to find Margaret Tarlton. She isn’t in London, and she isn’t in Sherborne, at the Napiers’. She was last reported to be here, in your house, on the point of leaving for her train. Nor have we located the Mowbray children, and that’s the crux of our problem. It raises questions about the identity of the murdered woman. There’s just a chance—an outside chance—that the body Hildebrand found in that field near Singleton Magna wasn’t the Mowbray woman after all. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to start all over again. And I intend to start here!”

  Simon shook his head. “Margaret Tarlton took the afternoon train back to London. She’s most certainly not a murder victim!”

  “Then, damn it, where is she now? And how did she get from Charlbury to Singleton Magna?”

  “I’ve told you—I was busy in here, and it was already arranged for Aurore to drive her.”

  Rutledge swore under his breath. He knew that Simon Wyatt wasn’t a stupid man. And yet he didn’t seem to hear what was said to him, or register the gist of it. “Are you telling me that your wife is a liar?”

  He suddenly had Simon Wyatt’s full attention, clearly focused. “Aurore never tells lies,” he said curtly. “If she says she didn’t drive Margaret to the station, she didn’t.”

  “Then who did? That’s what I’ve come to discover.”

  The museum’s outer door opened and a woman walked in, calling Simon’s name. Rutledge, who could see the outer door from where he stood, recognized her at once. She’d been in the garden behind the inn, at the Women’s Institute meeting. That white streak in her hair was distinctive.

  “Hallo, Simon—” She stopped. “Oh, do forgive me, I didn’t know you had a visitor! I was sure this young man was calling on Aurore. I’ll come back later, shall I? Nothing important—”

  “Inspector Rutledge, Mrs. Joanna Daulton. She’s the cement that holds Charlbury together. Her late husband, Andrew, was our rector. He hasn’t been replaced yet, and Mrs. Daulton has taken on his work as well as her own for nearly two years now. I don’t know what we’d do without her.” He smiled at her with more affection and awareness than he’d ever demonstrated when speaking of his wife.

  Mrs. Daulton didn’t pretend to modesty. She said only, “Well, someone has to do it, while the bishops make up their tedious little minds! How do you do, Inspector? Mrs. Prescott, who lives next door to Constable Trait, has already met you, I think. I’ve been looking forward to that pleasure as well.” She held out her hand and he took it in his. A woman accustomed to social responsibilities and the burden of church duties that fell to her lot as the rector’s wife, she was clearly comfortable in any situation.

  “Thank you. It must have been your son that I saw the other day. By the church. He told me his father had been rector here.”

  Something moved in her face, a sadness that was beyond even her ability to deny. “Indeed? Henry was severely wounded in the last year of the war. But he’s making wonderful progress; we’re all quite pleased.”

  Was it a polite social response, the “I’m quite well, thank you” that can mean anything from blatant good health to one foot in the grave? Because if Rutledge was any judge, Henry Daulton’s brain was permanently damaged. But then he was no judge of how far Daulton had come.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he responded with equal politeness, then added, “Did you see Miss Tarlton during her stay in Charlbury? In particular on the last day of her visit?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t—to speak to, I mean. As I was coming away from the Hamptons’, she was at the gate in front of this house, standing there as if waiting for someone. Later Henry told me she’d rung the bell at the rectory, searching for me to ask if I might drive her in to catch her train. But before he could fetch me from the garden, she called out that Mrs. Wyatt had come after all, and she would go with her.”

  “What was she wearing? When you saw her at the gate here?”

  “Oh—I remember thinking how wonderfully cool she looked, on such a warm day. A floral pattern, quite pretty. Mauve or pink or lavender, I’m not exactly sure. It was the overall effect I noticed, and t
he hat.”

  “Hat?” He remembered that Mrs. Hindes had mentioned a fetching hat.…

  “Yes, a straw, with an upswept brim on the left side. Many women can’t wear hats like that—I’m one of them! Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—could, of course, and certainly Miss Tarlton does them justice. It’s the height, I’m sure.”

  She herself was wearing a very conservative hat, in a medium shade of blue. It had an air of efficiency about it rather than style. She was a very efficient woman, Rutledge thought. In a courtroom she would make an unflappable witness, her words well ordered and to the point.

  But if that indeed was Margaret Tarlton murdered in a field, where was her hat? Suitcases, hats, children …

  “I’d like to ask your son if she was wearing her hat when she came to your door.”

  “May I ask why all this interest in Miss Tarlton’s apparel?” She looked from Simon to Rutledge. “Is anything wrong?”

  Besides being efficient, she was clearly no fool.

  “Just a matter of routine. We’re interested in everyone who arrived in Singleton Magna on the train last week.”

  “Ah, yes, that poor man who killed his family. I sometimes think the war has driven all of us into madness!”

  Rutledge turned to Simon Wyatt. “You still haven’t answered my last question.”

  Simon took a moment to remember. “No. Because I don’t know how to answer it. I told you, I thought Aurore was going to take care of it. You’d better speak with Edith, I suppose. The maid. I’ll see if I can find her for you. Mrs. Daulton? I’m sorry—”

  “No, no. Come to see me when you have time, Simon, there’s no hurry!”

  Rutledge held the door for Mrs. Daulton and walked with her as far as the gate.

  “What’s this all about?” she asked him. “You were questioning Simon as if he’d done something wrong. I’ve known him since he was a child; I won’t see him treated like a miscreant without knowing why!”

  “It’s just a matter of checking information, Mrs. Daulton—”

  Joanna Daulton stopped and looked up at him, seeing more than he expected she might. “Young man, I’m not simpleminded, and I won’t be spoken to as if I were. If there’s anything that connects Margaret Tarlton to this wretched Mowbray affair, I suggest you ask her about it. Simon still has a great deal of work to do before this museum is set to open, it’s all he thinks about. And if you want my advice, it’s best to let him get on with it! The war nearly destroyed him, and I’ve never been so grateful as I am to that ridiculous grandfather of his for putting the notion of a museum in his head. It’s brought Simon back from the edge of despair. Never mind whether it’s a roaring success or not, it has stood between Simon and self-destruction. I won’t let you upset that balance, do you hear me?”

  “We can’t find Margaret Tarlton. We’ve looked in London where she lives and in Sherborne, where she was expected next but never arrived.”

  Joanna Daulton stared at him, and for the first time since she had walked into the museum he watched her grapple with something that was outside her usual experience as community leader. She seemed uncertain how to take him. “You can’t find her? In the sense that you don’t know just where she may have gone—or in the sense that she’s missing?”

  “That’s our dilemma, actually. We aren’t sure.”

  “Well, Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—drove her to the station. I should think that’s clear enough. Which means to me that Miss Tarlton left Dorset on the train. I should think London is a better place to start searching than Singleton Magna. I was always under the impression that the police knew their business!”

  Rutledge said nothing. Hamish, hearing the exchange, said, “She reminds me of Fiona’s aunt, Elspeth MacDonald. No man in his right mind crossed her!”

  She opened the gate. “Do heed me, Inspector. Walk carefully where Simon’s concerned. Don’t upset him if there’s no need for it!”

  Rutledge watched her walk firmly up the street. Had she purposely—or inadvertently—sacrificed Aurore Wyatt to distract him from Simon? On the whole, he’d guess that it was on purpose. Mrs. Daulton’s first duty was to the boy she’d watched grow up, not to his foreign-born wife. On the other hand, he told himself, she might feel that Aurore was far better able to protect herself than Simon was.

  Edith was nervously waiting for him in the parlor, standing stiffly by the hearth as if the portrait at her back gave her moral support.

  “I’m not here to badger you,” he told her gently. “It’s just a matter of what Miss Tarlton was wearing when she left here last week, on her way to London. Do you remember?”

  Surprised at the simplicity of the question, Edith smiled. “Oh, yes, sir! It was a pretty dress, quite summery to my way of thinking! Rose and lavender, with a slim skirt and a belt of the same cloth. And a straw hat that had ribbons of the same colors around the crown. But that wasn’t half as fine as what she was wearing when she arrived!” She stopped, her blue eyes alarmed. She had overstepped her bounds—

  Rutledge said, “Yes, I’d like to know about that as well.”

  “It was this silvery gray silk, and it shimmered like cool water when she moved, and she had the most wonderful hat to match, the silk ruched down the brim, and a low crown. The only touch of color was this thin crimson ribbon tied in a bow and set to one side. I’d never seen anything quite so—so stylish!”

  Had Margaret Tarlton come prepared to outshine the French bride?

  “What luggage did she have with her?”

  “The one piece, sir.”

  “Who drove her to the station in Singleton Magna?”

  “Mrs. Wyatt was set to do it, but she was late, and Miss Tarlton was afraid she’d miss her train. So she asked if there was anyone else who might take her, if Mrs. Wyatt didn’t come in time. But she must have, because I said I’d run down to the Wyatt Arms to ask Mr. Denton for the loan of his car and his nephew, Mr. Shaw, for Miss Tarlton, but he said his nephew was over to Stoke Newton with it, and when I came back, Miss Tarlton had gone.”

  “You think Mrs. Wyatt carried her into Singleton Magna, then?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” Edith told him honestly. “But Mrs. Wyatt isn’t one to forget what she’s promised to do.”

  As Rutledge was leaving, Aurore came around the corner of the house, a basket of deadheaded flowers over her arm. She saw him and said, “Inspector?”

  He turned to wait for her. Shielding her eyes against the cloudy brightness of the morning, she looked up at him. “I wish you to tell me what’s happening. All these questions about Margaret. It makes me uneasy!”

  There was a trowel in her gloved hands and a smudge of damp earth on one cheek. He found himself staring at it “I don’t know myself why I’m asking them,” he said, surprising himself. “Every time I think I’m a step closer to the truth, the concepts of what’s truth and what’s wishful thinking seem to merge, and there’s only a muddle where there had appeared to be answers.”

  Because if Margaret Tarlton was wearing gray silk on the morning she arrived, how could Bert Mowbray have searched everywhere for a woman wearing pink?

  Aurore reached out and touched his arm. “You will know what to do,” she said. “However difficult it is. You have courage, you see. It’s there, in the lines of your face. Suffering has taught you that.”

  He found himself wanting desperately to tell her about Hamish—and Jean. The words seemed to hover on the edge of his tongue, ready to spill over, wanting understanding—absolution—and afterward, peace.

  Stunned by his unexpected and overwhelming reaction to her sympathy, he stood there, at a loss.

  Hamish was warning him over and over to leave—now! While you still have some measure of self-control.

  He thought for one dazed instant that the warm hand on his arm was lifting to touch his face. And he knew, helplessly, that it would be his undoing.

  But she stepped back, that deep sense of stillness wrapping her again in her own untouchability.

 
Without saying good-bye, he turned and walked through the gate. He didn’t remember turning the crank or starting the motorcar. He didn’t remember driving out of Charlbury. It wasn’t until he reached the crossroads that some measure of self-command overcame the turmoil in his mind.

  Aurore Wyatt was a suspect in a murder investigation.

  And she had been conscious of the effect she’d had on him.…

  11

  Rutledge sat in his car at the crossroads trying to shut out Hamish’s voice. “Loneliness leads a man into folly,” he was pointing out. “It’s loneliness at the bottom of it. And she saw that, man, she’s no’ above using it. The notice of Jean’s engagement’s left ye vulnerable to such wiles—”

  “It was natural—she’s a damned attractive woman.”

  “Aye, and she’s got a husband. Besides which, she’s French.”

  Rutledge shook his head. As if being French explained a woman like Aurore. And yet, somehow it did. She knew more about men than was good for them. She saw deeper inside them. But her power was very different from Elizabeth Napier’s.

  He’d have to remember that.

  He sighed and let in the clutch.

  He tried to shift the subject in his mind as well, to distract Hamish from coming too close to the truth. And to distract himself from the feel of Aurore’s hand resting so lightly on his arm.

  What was he going to do about this problem before him? Was the dead woman Margaret Tarlton? Or Mary Sandra Mowbray?

  “Aye,” Hamish reminded him, “it’s a proper puzzle, and if you canna’ get to the bottom of it, no one else will!”

  Still—did it truly matter, if Bert Mowbray had been the one who killed her, what her name actually was? Murder was murder. The identity of the victim was secondary. It didn’t change anything. Death was quite final, and a man would be hanged as surely for murdering a nameless tramp as he would be for killing a peer of the realm. The only difference was in the public attention the trial would receive.

  And yet Rutledge knew that to him it mattered.