by Charles Todd
“But it’s the children that’ll tell you the rest of the truth. Alive or dead.”
“I know,” Rutledge said. “And where shall we find them?”
It was nearly dark when he got back to Singleton Magna and left his car behind the inn. In his absence Hildebrand had come to find him and written a message on hotel stationery, its thick, crested paper incongruously scrawled over in heavy black ink.
“London just replied to your request for more information on Mrs. Mowbray. She was from Hereford. No known connection with Dorset. That may mean that the man with her lived or worked or had relatives in this county. I’m looking into that now.”
It was one of the telephone calls Rutledge had made that afternoon, asking a canny sergeant he knew in London to look into Mrs. Mowbray for him. Gibson always had his ear to the ground. If anyone could uncover information on the dead woman, it was he. A pity there was no way Gibson could do the same for the man.
And Rutledge didn’t hold out much hope that Hildebrand would fare any better, with so little to go on. It might take weeks to trace him-if he belonged in Dorset. Or years, if he came from another part of England.
“If he got clear, they’d hide him, him and the children. Family. Friends. If he asked,” Hamish said as Rutledge took the stairs two at a time.
“Very likely,” Rutledge answered aloud, before he could stop himself. “Unless they know that Mowbray is safely in jail.”
“But the children are no’ his,” Hamish pointed out. “And the mother’s dead. If yon man wanted to keep them-”
“-he’d stay out of sight. He’d have to turn them over to the police if he came forward. Yes, that’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?”
The children, again…
They were beginning to haunt him.
4
Rutledge spent a restless night, his room too warm for comfortable sleeping, and his mind too busy.
The images flitted and dissolved in a kaleidoscope of anguish. Of Mowbray, broken and in despair in his cell-of the bloody body of his wife lying at the edge of a field in plain sight when the farmer went to see to his crop-of children crying for their mother and a man who wasn’t their father offering what comfort he could-of a gallows waiting for a prisoner who might not understand why he was being hanged.
And as always, Hamish, attuned to the tumult in his mind, reminded him of his own fallibility, a policeman driven by his own pain attempting to get to the bottom of another man’s. A murderer’s. Both of them- murderers.
“It’s love that’s at the bottom of this,” Rutledge said aloud in the darkness, trying to silence the voice in his head. And then swore because the word conjured up memories of Jean. Jean, in a fashionable blue gown with ecru lace and the flowers he’d given her pinned at her shoulder. Jean laughing as she swung and missed, and the tennis ball went smashing into the backstop. The sun on her face as they walked through Oxford early on a Sunday morning, drinking in the quiet and peace.
But what kind of love? It had so many faces, so many names. Jealousy wove a thread around it, and envy, and fear. People died for love-and killed for it. And yet in itself it was indefinable, it wore whatever passions people brought to it, like a mountebank, with no reality of its own.
Somewhere in the town outside his window he could hear laughter and music. Happy laughter, without restraint or burdens.
Once Jean was married and off to Ottawa, he told himself, he could finally put her out of his mind. As he had nearly put her out of his heart. Olivia Marlowe had taught him more about the quality of love than Jean ever had.
“What will teach me to forget my Fiona?” Hamish said softly. “Do ye never remember her? Do ye never hear her weeping by yon empty grave, while I lie in France with no way to call out to her or offer comfort? What peace can Ian Rutledge find, loving any woman, when there’s Hamish MacLeod on his conscience!”
In the darkness Rutledge turned his head away from the insistent voice. It was true. What woman would be willing to share his life with such demons in his mind?
In the morning Rutledge met Hildebrand for breakfast in the Swan’s dining room, the bright chintz curtains bellying like sails in the early breeze. The tablecloths were blindingly white. Hildebrand appeared to be suffering from a headache. Several times he massaged his eyes as if they burned, and he growled at the middle-aged woman who waited on their table. She gave him a withering look as she walked away and said, “I knew you as a lad, with your braces broken and your face dirty! Don’t come the grump with me!”
Rutledge suppressed a smile.
Hildebrand, ignoring her, said, “I had a hellish conference last night with my chief. He wants those children found. Yesterday wouldn’t be soon enough! Makes the entire county look bad, he informs me, bloody maniacs running about slaughtering their families. He says we’re to make haste and finish this business, or he’ll know the reason why! It might have taken some of the wind out of his sails if you’d been here to placate him.”
“I went out to the scene of the murder. I don’t know where they could have hidden themselves-or been hidden, near that field. I keep coming back to Singleton Magna. And whether someone in the town is keeping silent-assuming the children and the man are still alive.”
Hildebrand stared at him, then pulled one of the flyers out of his pocket and tossed it across to Rutledge’s plate, where it landed on the toast he had just spread with marmalade.
Rutledge picked it up, wiped the back with his serviette, and then said, “What’s this in aid of?”
“The fact that that flyer was given to every household in the town and all the outlying farms. Somebody- somebody! -would have come forward with information. Stands to reason! If not the family, a nosy neighbor, the old biddy across the road, some child wanting to be noticed. Do I have to spell it out for you?”
“No,” Rutledge said, reining in his temper. He was looking at the flyer, at the faces. “This should have brought results. I agree. But it hasn’t. And I keep asking myself why no one has come forward.”
“Which tells me,” the other man responded acerbically, “that they’re dead. The man and the children. Which is where we’ve been for some days now-looking for their bodies.”
“There can’t be all that many hiding places within walking radius of the town. And if Mowbray caught up with his wife by that field along the high road, it narrows our search even more. The western side of Singleton Magna, not the east. Otherwise he’d have had to bring her-or chase her-through the town itself. And that’s not on.”
“We’ve looked. There isn’t a stone as large as that plate in front of you that we haven’t lifted, not a tree we haven’t climbed, not a stream we haven’t walked through up to our knees. Not a wall, a plot of disturbed ground, a shed, an outhouse, bridges, or any other conceivable place we haven’t searched at least three times. And are searching yet again!”
They’ve vanished, then, Rutledge thought. Like foxfire, the nearer you come, the farther away it appears to be.
Hamish was saying something, but Rutledge ignored him.
“I went on to Leigh Minister and Stoke Newton. You’ve searched there as well?”
“Yes, on the premise that the train was going south.”
“What about the other fork?”
“The way to Charlbury? That’s another three miles distant. We spoke to the constable there, in the name of thoroughness, but I wasn’t surprised when we drew a blank. A long way for a man and a woman to walk, encumbered with children. And Stoke Newton’s closer than Charlbury. Stands to reason, if Mrs. Mowbray was looking for sanctuary, she’d have chosen Stoke Newton.”
“What if she considered that herself-and chose Charlbury instead, to throw us off the track?”
Hildebrand shrugged. “It’s possible. But likely? No. You’re hunting for straws, man!”
“Then clear up another puzzle for me. Why was Mowbray so certain he’d find her here in Singleton Magna?”
“I spent most of the night turni
ng that over in my mind. I don’t think he was certain. Look, she wasn’t on the train when he saw her, she was already on the platform, kneeling to speak to the little girl. They’d gotten off the train before he saw her-and very likely before she saw him. Stands to reason, he’d tell himself, if they got off here, this was where they planned to be. So he hunted for her here-and in the end, he got it right.”
Was that how it had happened? It might explain why the suitcases hadn’t been found. He mentioned them to Hildebrand, who shook his head.
“I’ve thought about that too. Mowbray’s not the only poor sod out of work. If someone had come across the cases and had need of whatever was inside, what’s to prevent him from keeping the lot and his mouth shut at the same time?”
Rutledge felt depression settling in, and Hildebrand didn’t seem to find the endless circle of supposition any more joyful. He rubbed his eyes again and turned the subject to title men who had arrived that morning, and where he had sent them to search.
“Meanwhile, I’ve got my own men asking questions in town. They know what they’re after, we should have some answers by late afternoon.”
When they’d finished their coffee, Rutledge stood up. “I’ve one or two matters needing my attention. I should be back by three o’clock.”
Hildebrand felt relief wash over him. Out of sight was out from under foot. London’s task was diplomacy, where the investigation crossed parish boundaries and sensitive toes might feel trod upon. If that kept Rutledge occupied most of the day, he himself might accomplish a hell of a lot more.
With a brief nod, Hildebrand strode out the door like a man with a heavy schedule ahead of him.
Rutledge stared at the flyer again, deep in thought.
The woman who’d waited on them looked down and saw it. “A sorry business!” she said pityingly. “I blame the war. Disrupting a family, putting ideas into her head. It’s the little ones I feel most for, truth to tell. Losing their father, and a mother no better than she ought to be!”
“From all accounts she was a good mother.”
“That’s as may be! But it’s a sorry business, and mark my words, it’s her that’s to blame!”
“Small as they are, how much would these children remember about Mowbray?” he asked, curious. “He was in France most of their lives. Surely they’d come to accept any replacement as their real father?”
The woman looked up at him, her face scornful. “What makes you think this was the first and only man she’d taken up with?”
It was a very good question!
As she piled dishes on her tray, she added, “My eldest daughter lost her children to the influenza. Too little to live, the doctor told her. I don’t think she’s slept a night since they died. And here’s someone puts her own fancies before her children. Doesn’t sound to me like a good mother!” She lifted the heavy tray and marched off toward the swinging door that led to the kitchens, her pain evident in her straight, unyielding back.
Too little to live…
His war had been broken bodies and the sucking black mud. Unbearable noise-and unbearable silence. Artillery barrages, machine guns, strafing aeroplanes. Horses and men dying, their screams splitting the mind, the sound going on and on long after it had stopped. A war of attrition-meant to kill to the last man. Where one’s own survival seemed beyond any prayer.
In England it had been different. For the exhausted people at home, carrying the burden of deprivation, stunned by the long lists of dead and wounded, worn down by helpless waiting and uncertainty, influenza had come as the silent, stealthy scythe of God, striking without warning, killing with the same certainty as wounds in the flesh gone septic but not confining itself to the trenches. It killed young and old, without rhyme or reason, striking down the healthy, sparing the ailing, leaving children without mothers and mothers without He stopped halfway to the hall and spun on his heel to look back at the still swinging door to the kitchen.
Too little to live…
He stared down at the flyer in his hand. The pale faces of the children stared back at him.
Why hadn’t the children changed since 1916? Mowbray had described them as he’d seen them on the train platform as if they’d not altered from this faded photograph. Children who should have aged three years-in size and appearance. Did that mean he hadn’t seen them, except in grieving imagination?
No wonder the flyers hadn’t brought any results!
“But the woman’s dead- she was real enough,” he told himself.
Missing suitcases. A woman who’d vanished for over twenty-four hours, between hastily leaving the train and her murder. The ages of the missing children. Questions that niggled at the edges of his mind, with no answers.
Unless the poor devil living with his own madness in that jail cell had killed a woman and children he’d never seen before!
Gentle God!
Rutledge took the stairs to his room two at a time, as if trying to outrace the horror he’d evoked. There he picked up his hat, stood thoughtfully in the middle of the floor as he debated the best course of action, then ran lightly down the steps again and out to his car.
On the road west, he could see small groups of men in the distance, searching, covering again ground they’d already tramped over three and four times. Heads bent, sticks poking into undergrowth and among the thick boughs of trees, they moved steadily and carefully across the terrain assigned to them. In the field where the body had been found the grain was alive with them, and there was a fuming, red-faced man sitting his horse at the edge of the corn. The farmer, most likely. Rutledge considered stopping to speak to him and then decided it could wait until the man’s temper had subsided. This was his best crop of the season, trampled through no fault of his own. A policeman from London would be no different in his book than one from Singleton Magna.
At the signpost, Rutledge took the northwest road this time, toward Charlbury. He drove slowly, scouting for a likely outbuilding that might offer shelter. But the two dilapidated sheds he did investigate were empty of anything except pigeons, mice, and a swarm of insects rising into the stuffy air from the dust beneath his feet.
Tramping back to his car, he heard the sound of another automobile coming fast along the lane. He stopped to watch it, his coat over one shoulder, his shirtsleeves rolled up on his forearms, wishing he’d thought to bring a Thermos of tea or water with him. His throat felt parched.
The motorcar slowed as it came nearer and then braked as it drew abreast of him. A woman was driving it, and he knew the instant he saw her face that she wasn’t English. There was something about the way her dark hair was swept up into a bun, the blue dress she wore with a scarf around the throat. Style. His sister Frances would have recognized it instantly.
She was French “Are you in trouble?” she asked, her English lightly and fascinatingly accented. He found himself suddenly at a loss for words.
It wasn’t beauty. Not that she wasn’t damned attractive. But it was more subtle. Good bones, his sister Frances could have told him. A sensuality that came from within, a curve of the lips, a lift to the eyebrows. The way her clothes set off her coloring, the shades of blue in the scarf like stained glass, vivid and rich, bringing light to the gray eyes that shifted as he watched from clear, still water to dark, unfathomable pools of speculation.
He spoke quickly, and in French. “No, I’m a policeman. Inspector Rutledge from London. I’m taking part in the search for the missing Mowbray children.”
She smiled a little, hearing his French, unexpected in a deserted lane in the middle of Dorset, then she caught what he was saying. “Ah. The children. It is very sad, is it not? I hope they will be found alive. But one wonders, as the time goes by. I have no children-” She stopped, then went on wryly, “-it is something one feels, I think, about children, whether one is a parent or not.”
The smile, even as brief as it was, had been like sunlight over the sea. What in God’s name had brought such a creature as this to England? Rutledg
e glanced at her hands on the wheel and saw a wedding band. That explained it then. A man…
“Yes.” He moved slightly, away from her car.
She took that as a signal that the conversation was finished, although he’d meant it in another sense. “Then I shall leave you to your search. I wish you success with it-and living children at the end of it.”
The motorcar moved off, and as he watched her drive on, he cursed himself for being a tongue-tied fool. He hadn’t even asked her name, or where she lived. And what had brought her here, to this stretch of road connected with a murder investigation. If she knew of any place the police had not thought to search “She’s a stranger here hersel’,” Hamish reminded him. “She’d no’ be likely to ken what the police have na’ thought of.”
Which was true. He couldn’t hear her engine in the distance now. She was gone.
Rutledge started his car again and got in.
“And a woman like yon is naught but trouble!” Hamish added for good measure. “Leave her out o’ this business.”
Rutledge laughed. But he could still see the softness of her skin, warm with the sunny day, and the dark tendril of hair that swept across her cheek like a caress. Why was it that French women had a knack for disturbing a man, whether they were beautiful or not? Whatever it was, most of them were born with it, and he didn’t need to understand it to recognize it.
In a ramshackle barn, swaybacked with age and a roof half fallen in, he was startled by a small hawk he’d disturbed. She came sailing down toward him, defending her fledglings, and swooped near enough for him to hear the soft whish of her wing feathers on the still air. And then she was back in the beams again, well hidden. He could feel her eyes watching him. Nothing here, only prints of the heavy nailed boots of searchers.