by Charles Todd
But what if Betty had gone to London after all, avoided the Napiers for whatever reasons, spent three months there in the city, found it not to her liking, and come back to Dorset?
That was possible—but was it likely that in coming back, she’d meet her death here before anyone had seen her?
Unless her return threatened someone? But that wouldn’t take into account the fate of Margaret Tarlton.… The two women had nothing in common.
There was a connection somewhere. There had to be. Or else they were all wrong, Mowbray had killed Margaret and Betty Cooper was a separate crime altogether. There was only the doctor’s suggestion that the murders were similar.
He was aware of Elizabeth expostulating, telling him she wanted him to help Simon, to do something before Hildebrand made a grave mistake.
He put his hands on her shoulders to silence her and said, “Look, I’ve got to go. But I’ll be back before Hildebrand comes tomorrow. Is that fair enough?”
“Fair—” she began, but he was already out the door, speaking to Shaw, giving him the same promise.
Shaw, getting stiffly to his feet, stared balefully at Elizabeth and turned to move awkwardly down the walk to the gate. Over his shoulder he said to Rutledge, “I can’t fight you now, but if you don’t come to the inn by midnight, I’m taking matters into my own hands. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Rutledge said, and then: “Can you make it on your own?”
“Damn you, I don’t want your pity! I want answers!”
Rutledge watched him go and waited until Elizabeth, unsatisfied, finally closed the front door. Upstairs at one of the windows overlooking the walk, he could sense Aurore’s eyes on him.
He walked to the museum wing and knocked on the door. When no one answered, in the end Rutledge opened it and walked inside.
He looked carefully through all the rooms. But it was to no purpose.
Simon Wyatt was in none of them, though the door from that wing into the main house was locked.
25
Rutledge stood in the middle of the front room of the museum, mocked by the shadowed masks on the wall and the dancing shades of small gods with their strange faces and contorted bodies.
Hamish too was mocking him, reminding him that Hildebrand was ahead of him, that he’d been dragging his feet, that the arrest made tomorrow was one he could—should—have made before this. Only he hadn’t been able to bring himself to it. “You’re faltering, you’re no’ the man you think you are!”
He couldn’t think, he couldn’t bring all the pieces together. Like the gods on the shelves, he was twisting and turning—going nowhere.
But what was the connection—damn it, where was it? What had he missed?
He walked out of the museum and closed the door behind him.
And where was Simon Wyatt?
He went out of the gate and stood looking around him, making sure that Shaw wasn’t loitering in the shadows, waiting for another chance to confront the Wyatts. Which was why he saw the movement among the trees by the church.
He walked that way, taking his time, certain that it was Simon, blacked out again by whatever stress it was that drove him to wander in the night.
His wife’s guilt? Was that what had taken Simon back to the war, where death was imminent and wiped out pain, memory, thought—
He reached the trees, where the shadows were deeper, where only the pale reflection of clothing showed that someone waited. Rutledge hesitated, unwilling to startle Simon, unwilling to give away his own presence if it was someone else.
He walked on, softly, battle trained, but the voice that came to him out of the darkness was not Simon’s, nor was it Shaw’s.
Aurore said, “I hoped you would come. I couldn’t say this in the house, not with Elizabeth there. I couldn’t do that to Simon. I won’t shame him again!”
He could see her now, the light-colored sweater she’d thrown over her dark dress was a luminous mantle about her shoulders. Her face was even paler, a white oval with dark hollows for eyes. As he came nearer, he could sketch in the details of eyebrows, lips, the curve of her hair, the line of her cheekbone. He could smell her scent, faint and warm, like her breathing.
“Where is your husband? Do you know?”
“He’s in the museum. He has locked me out. He’s taking it very hard, the things Hildebrand has said to him. He thinks he will see me arrested tomorrow.”
“Yes. I know. But Hildebrand hasn’t told anyone else.”
“The story is everywhere, Constable Truit has seen to that. I sent Edith to stay with Mrs. Darley. I didn’t want her to be dragged into our scandal.”
He was on the point of telling her that Simon was missing again, but before he could speak, she had moved closer to him, her hands outstretched, and for an instant he thought she was going to touch him, take his hands in hers or rest her fingers on his forearms. Instead something hard, uneven, brushed against the cloth of his coat. Instinctively he reached out to take it, and his fingers closed over smooth, woven straw. Confused, he ran his left hand over it and realized with cold shock what it was.
A hat. A woman’s straw hat. He could see it more clearly now, the shape and texture, the upswept brim. Ribbons from the crown tangled around his fingers as he turned the hat first this way and then that.
“This is proof that I killed Margaret. It is the hat she was wearing when she left Charlbury. I have kept it, in case of need. The rest of her belongings I burned at the farm, with feathers from a plucked hen we’d eaten fow our dinner. Edith will tell you that it is the same hat that Margaret was wearing when she left, and no doubt Margaret’s maid will confirm that it is hers.” She was silent for a time, and he found himself unable to trust his voice to question her.
“You may arrest me, as you promised, and take me at once to London. I don’t want to see my husband shamed by Hildebrand walking in with all the people in Charlbury goggling, then taking me away with fanfare.”
“I don’t know that this is Margaret’s hat—” he began, and reached into his pocket for the small lighter that he’d carried in the war. With one smooth action he slipped the cap and the flint. The small flame seemed to flare like a blaze of orange light between them. He could see her eyes, large with surprise, the pupils dilated and then sharpening.
He tore his glance from her face and examined the hat. It was just as Edith had described it. If it wasn’t Margaret Tarlton’s hat, it was too damned near it for comfort. He could feel the ache in his throat as he examined it.
“I have a small case there, under the trees. I am ready to leave,” she said, her voice steady. But her eyes were wells of uncertainty.
He capped the lighter again and slipped it into his pocket, Hamish clamoring in his ears. Over the deafening sound he said, “Aurore—”
“No! Don’t say anything more. We must go before Elizabeth or Simon comes out to find me. Please! It was our bargain, you can’t tell me you don’t remember! You, of all people!”
“Aurore. Why did you kill Margaret Tarlton?”
“I shall tell you on our way to London. Pleaser!”
“I can’t do this. I don’t believe you. Whatever you are confessing to, it isn’t murder.” He turned the hat again in his hands, striving to ignore Hamish, striving to sound patient, untroubled, the policeman doing his duty.
But not to protect the innocent, only to find the guilty—
“You promised!” she said again, her voice husky with hurt.
He said, “Listen to me! I want to know where you found this hat and why you think it was Simon who killed Margaret.”
She gasped, and this time her fingers did grip his arm in the darkness. “It was I who killed Margaret. I hit her and hit her and hit her, until my shoulder was tired and I couldn’t lift the rock any more. I drove back to the farm and bathed the blood away, and I left my things in the room there, along with her things—I knew Jimson would never open my door! It was safe, no one comes there!”
Her wor
ds and her grip were tight, convincing, and he could feel her desperation, the need to make him believe.
Rutledge said, closing his mind to Hamish and to her pain, “All right. I believe you. But tell me, why did you have to kill Betty Cooper? What had that poor girl done to make you batter her into unconsciousness and then death?”
She moved convulsively, her hand on his arm showing him as clearly as if she stood in full daylight, what emotions were passing through her body.
“Ah, yes. I thought we might come to that as well. Betty was very pretty,” she said. “But that wasn’t the reason. Simon was sending her to London, to Elizabeth. I thought—I thought she would be used by Elizabeth to drive a wedge. As Margaret would have been, later. An excuse to call Simon and say ‘About Betty … I should like to know what you think about her wages—her behavior—her future.’ It was such a small excuse. But it was an excuse!”
When he said nothing, she went on in a low, trembling voice. “I am not the woman you think I am, Ian Rutledge. I cannot be endowed with virtues I never possessed. I’m French, I think differently, I feel differently. I am a murderess, and I have lied to you from the start.”
He couldn’t see her face, he couldn’t watch her eyes, and the telltale hand had been withdrawn. But he knew beyond doubt that he had to accept her confession now.
He had no choice but to arrest her for two murders and let the courts decide for him whether she was guilty or not. The hat in his hand was proof enough, and if the suitcase had been burned, it didn’t matter. Confession, evidence …
“What did you do with the murder weapon?”
“It was a smooth stone from the car. I kept it there to put under a tire on a hill. I saw a lorry in France roll down a hill into a crowded wagon, full of refugees. It killed so many of them. I carry the stone to prevent such a thing from happening again. It is still in the car. If you look, you will find it below the rear seat. I daresay it still has Margaret Tarlton’s blood on it.”
He stood there, listening, hearing the ring of truth, hearing too the deep grief behind it. Hearing the ragged breathing.
Aurore knew too many of the details. She had brought him the hat, she had given him the murder weapon, she had given him what—to many women—would seem a reasonable motive for two deaths.
And yet—and yet his instinct told him she was a consummate liar, not a murdereress. He knew now who she was shielding—though not yet why. What was it she knew that drove her to this confession? What had given Simon away, in her eyes? The hat, perhaps lying forgotten in the back of the car? Coming out of the barn that afternoon to find the car was not there, where she’d left it? Simon’s insistence that she had taken Margaret to the train, when he knew she had not? How long had it taken her to put the facts together? A bit at a time? Or one terrible blow she hadn’t expected?
Yet Rutledge found himself thinking that Simon had been too obsessed with his museum to plot so clever a murder, so clever a way of convicting his wife. Or had that been another lie? Diabolical and cruel …
There was another possibility—that someone else had seen to it that the finger of guilt pointed at Aurore, and Simon was unwittingly suffering the same agonies of doubt and fear as she was. Had the first attempt to be rid of Aurore—killing Betty Cooper—misfired when the girl’s body was not discovered? And Margaret Tarlton, the next sacrifice, had nearly backfired too, when Mowbray took the blame for her death. Until Elizabeth Napier came to Charlbury and set Hildebrand straight … but could any of that be proved?
Rutledge said, “Very well. I’m arresting you, Aurore Wyatt, for the death by murder of Margaret Tarlton and Betty Cooper.” It was, after all, what she wanted. And it would forestall Hildebrand.
He could feel the tension drain out of her, a smothered sob of relief.
“I’m so very glad it’s over,” she said quietly. “You don’t know how hard it has been to live a lie.”
But he did—he lived one every day, he told himself as he took her arm and started for the car. His lie was that he was a competent policeman, an experienced and capable officer of Scotland Yard.
Hamish was reminding him of it with vitriolic pleasure.
26
They had gotten no farther than the edge of the trees when a cry, cut short, rang through the night. Aurore stopped still, listening, her head turned toward the church. “I think it came from there!” she said anxiously.
“Wait here!” Rutledge ordered, already moving.
“No! I’m coming with you!” She was at his heels as he ran toward the front of the church. There were lights coming on in the nearer houses and a light moving down the path from the rectory.
But when they reached the church porch, all they found was Elizabeth Napier in a crumpled heap by the steps, her head buried in her arms. In the blackness of the night she seemed terribly small and vulnerable.
Aurore went quickly to her, touched her shoulder, said, “Help is here, what has happened?”
Elizabeth looked up, the whites of her eyes like half-moons in her pale face. She said roughly, her voice breaking on the words, “I was attacked—”
The lantern bobbing up the walk from the rectory reached them, and Joanna Daulton said with brisk calm, “What’s wrong? Can I help?”
Her lamplight fell on Elizabeth, on the dark hair spilling down in waves over her shoulders and the torn collar of her dress. There were red marks like bruises on her throat. Elizabeth put up her hand against the invasion of the light and said, “Oh, God, I was so frightened!”
Rutledge said, “Who was it? Did you see?”
Elizabeth shook her head a little. “No—one minute he was there, startling me, his hands on me, and when I screamed, he reached for my throat, and I could feel his breath on my face—” She shuddered, her body beginning to shake with reaction. Aurore, after the slightest hesitation, knelt to put her arms around Elizabeth, cradling her head against her breast.
“It’s all right, you’re safe now, don’t think about it,” she was saying over and over in a low, soothing voice that seemed to touch all of them.
Rutledge said, “I’ll have a look around—”
“No!” Elizabeth cried. “No, don’t leave me!”
“Mrs. Daulton and Mrs. Wyatt will stay with you. I must go after him now. There may still be time to—”
“No, please, take me back. I—I don’t want to be alone,” she pleaded.
He thought it was more than that and remembered suddenly that Simon hadn’t been in the museum. That very likely Simon hadn’t been in the house.
He left the thought there and helped Elizabeth to her feet. As he did, he realized that neither he nor Aurore had Margaret’s hat. He swore under his breath. An attack—or a diversion? If it was a diversion, it had been successful.
Rutledge gave Elizabeth his arm and they moved silently down the church walk and across the road. As they reached the Wyatt gates, Mrs. Daulton said something about reassuring the neighbors, and he saw her go on to intercept the men hurrying in their direction. Aurore opened the house door for them.
Rutledge deposited Elizabeth on a sofa in the parlor, getting his first real look at her. Her pale face was drawn with fear and shock, but her mind was working clearly. She said huskily as she made an awkward attempt to bind up her hair again, “I don’t want to wake Simon, please don’t bother him with this! It will only add to his distress.”
Aurore’s eyes met Rutledge’s over Elizabeth’s head. She said only, “No, we won’t disturb Simon. It’s best”
Rutledge, using the excuse of fetching water, went down the hall and began a swift, methodical search of the house.
The connecting door to the museum was still latched, and he walked next into the garden. But it was dark, given over to the sounds of the night.
Instinct told him—instinct honed by night marches and night attacks—that the gardens were empty. Even Hamish felt nothing there.
Wherever Simon was, it wasn’t in the house or on the grounds.
&
nbsp; Had he been walking again, had he been at the church? Had he seen the hat in Aurore’s hands, there among the trees?
Or was Elizabeth trying to play her own games?
There was always the chance that Daniel Shaw had attacked her, wanting answers he hadn’t gotten at the Wyatt door earlier. At least, Rutledge told himself, this couldn’t be laid at Aurore’s door; she’d been with him.
But something about the first glimpse he’d had of Elizabeth in the light of Mrs. Daulton’s lamp had set off alarm bells. In one odd, inexplicable, fleeting instant she had reminded him of Betty Cooper lying in her tidy grave. And yet it was something people had said, he thought, not what he’d seen. He could hear the echo of it, but not the words. Not yet …
He turned and went back into the house, filling a glass with water and carrying it to the parlor. Simon Wyatt’s grandfather was staring down at them from his frame above the hearth, as if the difficult silence between the two women met with his disapproval.
Elizabeth had succeeded in putting up her hair and was lying with her head against the back of the sofa, her eyes closed. Aurore, sitting stiffly in a chair, her face still, looked up as he came in. He shook his head but made no other explanation for the time it had taken to fill one glass with water. He thought she must have guessed that Simon was nowhere to be found.
He gave the glass to Elizabeth, who drank it slowly with her eyes closed. The red, bruised marks on her throat were very clear now. They looked very real as well. Studying them, he couldn’t see how she could have made them herself.
She said, returning the glass to him, “Thank you.” She coughed and swallowed again, as if her throat were painful. “I have never been so terrified! I thought—for an instant I thought I was going to die!”
“It was a man?” Rutledge asked.
“Oh, yes. He was tall, strong. It was horrible!” The distaste in her face was real as well. “I thought I was going to die!” she said again, unable to stop herself from thinking it “It was Shaw, it must have been! The man is mad, he ought to be put in jail. I won’t go back to the Wyatt Arms tonight, I won’t!”