Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  “Tell her it was police business,” Rutledge responded, and walked on.

  But it was over his meal that answers began to come to him. And he went over them again and again, to be sure he was right.

  Whatever else had happened here in Singleton Magna, there was a dead woman.

  And with that one incontrovertible fact, he must start.

  7

  Rutledge spent what was left of the day and into the dusk looking for the dead woman.

  In Singleton Magna, everyone saw her as Mowbray’s wife. The one the man, burning with anger and injustice, had scoured the town to find.

  Everyone told Rutledge that. Describing encounters they’d had-or someone they knew had had-with Mowbray. Believing in his anger and his intent to kill. The woman, on the other hand, was dead. They could tell him nothing about her. It was as if she had no other identity or reality than that of victim.

  Even Harriet Mason, the woman who had arrived on the same train for a visit with her aunt, remembered nothing. “I was that sick from the journey, I didn’t know or care about anything but getting here to Auntie’s,” she said pointedly, looking at Rutledge through thin, pale lashes.

  Mrs. Hindes, stiff with rheumatism and a strong dislike of being a burden on anyone, said, “The only person besides Harriet I noticed coming out of the station that day was the woman who was met by Mrs. Wyatt. The one in the fetching hat. But of course Harriet was feeling faint and I really didn’t have time to pay particular attention to anyone else, though there must have been half a dozen or so passengers arriving.” She smiled wryly, her strong face suddenly mischievous. “You must excuse us, Inspector, we are the lame and the halt, I fear.”

  And she watched with quiet satisfaction as Harriet bristled.

  Early the next morning Rutledge left the town to stop at every house near the main road, with no success. From there he drove on to Stoke Newton, the home of three passengers who had arrived on the noon train the day Mrs. Mowbray had been seen on the platform. The farmer, his wife, and their young daughter had been met by a tenant, “fetched home in the wagon,” Mrs. Tanner told him jovially in a parlor dominated by a giant aspidistra. To Rutledge it seemed to smother his chair with its broad leaves. “Like so many sides of beef!”

  “You didn’t see Mrs. Mowbray on the train? Or the children with her?”

  “Lord, Inspector, the train was that crowded leaving London! Holidaymakers, mostly, families with children any age between six months and ten years. Full of sauce, they were, but I don’t mind, a lively child’s a healthy child, I say. I’m sure we was lucky to find a seat!” Mrs. Tanner answered. “No, we’ve talked it over, amongst ourselves. If Mrs. Mowbray and her young ones was on that train, we took no notice of them-no reason to, one family among so many!”

  In the afternoon he found himself in Charlbury again, asking Denton at the pub for the Wyatt house. It was, as he’d thought, near the church.

  “Can’t miss it. Big, with that wing they added just before the war. That was to be Mr. Wyatt’s office, and Mr. Simon’s as well, when the time came. Now it’s being refurbished to house that museum Mr. Simon’s so set on.”

  Rutledge opened the gate and stepped into a front garden of pink geraniums and warmly scented lavender, with white stock and taller white delphiniums behind them. He climbed the two steps to the small porch, but a maid answered the door before he could ring the bell.

  She said in some distress, “If you’ve come about them shelves that’s fallen down, Mr. Wyatt is over in the new wing.”

  Rutledge followed her pointing finger and took the brick path to the second door of the house, which led into the newest part. Someone shouted, “Come in!” to his knock, and he entered a scene of chaos.

  There were boxes strewn about the floor like snowdrifts, and glass-fronted cases filled with the most exotic collection of statuary and weaponry and musical instruments that he’d seen in some time. Eastern, most of them, as far as he could tell. Exotic dancers stood on shelves beside squat gods and animal masks, while daggers and swords were displayed in fans, their points gleaming in the sunlight Tiered parasols in red, yellow, black, and white were fringed in what appeared to be gold bullion, and there were what looked like parts of doorways or windows, heavy with carved scenes. Garish puppets elbowed each other, some of them three dimensional while others were flat, painted on hide. Below, on another shelf, were fantastic butterflies pinned in tidy rows, like enameled brooches in every color of the rainbow. Nothing in England was that spectacular. Hamish was absorbing the scene with Presbyterian horror, pointing out that these items were pagan and therefore suspect.

  Before Rutledge could answer him, a man’s voice called, “Well? What are you doing, loitering out there? Come look at this disaster!”

  Rutledge went through a doorway to find a man on his knees collecting shells that had tumbled from a tall bookcase, its shelves haphazard and half out of their moorings.

  “You’re damned lucky they didn’t shatter! You swore they’d support-” He was halfway through the sentence when he saw his visitor and realized it wasn’t the carpenter he’d sent for. “Who the hell are you?”

  It was the fair-skinned man he’d seen yesterday, carrying the front end of a ladder. “Mr. Wyatt? I’m Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard. I’ve come to speak to you-”

  “Not now, man! Can’t you see what’s happened here? I’m expecting Baldridge or one of his minions, and he’s got some explaining to do! I told him a dozen times if I told him once that these shelves had to be well anchored against the weight, or they’d be over before we knew where we were! And I was right.”

  He got to his feet. Tall, slender, with a face that was both strong and intelligent. There were lines at the corners of his blue eyes that spoke of laughter-belied now by the deep grooves bracketing his mouth. The marks of strain. He surveyed the disaster. “Some of these shells are priceless. They’ve come from half the islands in the Pacific, and each one was carefully numbered and kept in a box so as not to separate sets. And now look! I suppose I’ll have to bring someone down from London to be sure we’ve got them in the right order again.”

  “Mr. Wyatt. I only need a minute of your time,” Rutledge broke in. “I understand that on thirteen August you or your wife collected a guest from the railway station in Singleton Magna. Is that true?”

  “Yes, yes, that was Miss Tarlton, from London. She’s my new assistant. Or she will be if I can persuade my wife to let me take her on. Mrs. Wyatt is nothing if not stubborn, and just because-” He stopped, aware that he was talking about his personal affairs with a stranger, and a policeman at that. “Miss Tarlton was recommended by someone whose opinion I trust. Mrs. Wyatt and I hold different opinions on that subject. I hired the young lady, and she’s to return at the end of the month to take up her position here.” His mouth set sternly, as if he could foresee the battle ahead.

  “She returned to London after the interview?”

  “Yes, yes. Ah-Baldridge,” he said, looking beyond Rutledge. “Come see this mess your workmen have made! I ought to make you return every penny I paid you.”

  Rutledge turned to see a youngish man in a dark suit standing foursquare in the doorway. “I told you, Mr. Wyatt, to let the bolts dry before you set anything on the shelves!” he was saying.

  “Wet plaster, is it! And my fault!” Wyatt snorted scornfully. “I told you to anchor the shelves firmly, and just look at your interpretation of ‘firmly’!”

  Rutledge said, “Mr. Wyatt-”

  Wyatt said, “Go next door and talk to my wife, Aurore. She’ll tell you whatever it is you need to know!” And he was already shaking his finger at Baldridge, not waiting to see if Rutledge was pleased with the suggestion or not.

  Rutledge left the two men to it and walked back through the first room, wondering if Denton wasn’t correct in his assessment of the museum planned for Charlbury. In this out of the way village, who would come to see such exotica?

  When he arrived a
gain at the front door, the maid answered the bell and said, “I’m sorry, sir! Mr. Wyatt didn’t tell me who to expect. It was the builder in Sherborne he’d been on the telephone shouting at most of the morning, and someone was promised to come.”

  Rutledge said, “No matter. I’d like to speak to Mrs. Wyatt if I may.”

  “She’s in the back garden, sir. If you’ll wait in the parlor, I’ll fetch her. What name shall I say, sir?”

  “Rutledge. I’ll walk out with you, it will save time.” He was tired of the Wyatt reluctance to put aside their own business for his.

  She looked up at him doubtfully and then led the way through the house and out a tall pair of french doors that overlooked the gardens. He could see someone working in a potting shed at the end of the path and said, “I can find my way from here. Thanks.”

  The maid stopped, and said, “I think I ought to-”

  He looked down at her. “It will be all right. Mr. Wyatt suggested that I talk with his wife, and this is as good a place as any.”

  That seemed to reassure her, and she left him to continue down the path to the shed. The woman inside, dressed in a gray smock, turned as she heard his footsteps crunching on the graveled path and came out into the dappled sunlight

  They stared at each other in mutual surprise. Rutledge said, “Mrs. Wyatt?”

  She inclined her head. “Inspector-Rutledge, is it not?” For an instant she seemed at a loss. “My husband is in the other wing, I think.”

  “It’s you I’ve come to see.”

  Her eyes darkened. “You haven’t-they haven’t found the children.”

  “No. I’m here in a different capacity today. Asking questions about anyone who got off the train at Singleton Magna at the same time Mrs. Mowbray and her family did. I understand from Mr. Wyatt that you had a guest who also arrived on thirteen August. Can you tell me about her?” Without thinking, he’d begun speaking to her in French. It had seemed natural. Midway through the last sentence, he realized it and switched to English.

  She replied in the same language. “Yes, a Miss Tarlton, from London. She came to be interviewed by my husband concerning the position of his assistant.” She answered freely enough, but warily. He could hear the nuances in her voice.

  “She arrived at the station and was met?”

  “I went to meet her myself. Simon was busy-the museum keeps him quite busy these days.” There was, he thought, a faint overtone of irony in the words.

  “How long did she stay with you?”

  “Only two days.”

  “You drove her back to the station?”

  “I was supposed to drive her, yes. But I was delayed at the farm-I’ve taken over running it, while Simon is so occupied with the museum. She was already gone when I came back to collect her. I expect he saw to it, in my place. Trains don’t wait for cows with colic,” she added wryly.

  “No, I don’t suppose they do,” he answered, reminding himself that she was no different from any other witness he might question. And yet he’d met her first with no knowledge of her role-if there was any-in his investigation. It seemed to give her, somehow, an edge. As if she judged him, even as he judged her, because they had begun as equals.

  She waited for him to go on. There was a stillness about her that struck him as she stood there, composed and quiet Even her eyes were still, absorbing him somehow. As if time were not an issue of concern to her. Or possibly to him either. It was a very strong impression and he found it distracting.

  Most of the Frenchwomen he’d met spoke with self-possession and a natural sense of self-worth. Vivacity was to them a tool of conversation, half flirtatious, half a mannerism that reflected their view of life. This woman was different It was something deep inside, a well of stillness that seemed without end. But not, he thought, a well of serenity…

  Hamish said, apparently out of context, “She’s no’ a killer.”

  She drew off her gardening gloves and pulled the smock over her head. “I’ve missed my tea, waiting for Simon. Will you have a coffee-or some wine-with me? There’s a table under the trees there. I’ll just find Edith.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ve not quite learned to like tea. But I’m trying.”

  He walked back to the french doors with her. The fragrance of lily of the valley came to him suddenly, and he realized that it was her perfume. It surprised him; the sweetness wasn’t what he’d have thought she might have chosen for herself. Something headier-or at least more provocative. And yet today in her plain gray dress with its buttoned belt and square white collar, she was anything but provocative. Quakerish, perhaps.

  She called to Edith as she walked through the french doors, leaving him in the garden.

  Hamish, unsettled in the back of his mind, reminded him he was a policeman on duty. And to keep his wits about him.

  It was a timely reminder. Rutledge walked over to the small table and shook a butterfly off the nearest chair. He wondered what it would think of its gaudy brethren on display in a glass case inside this house. Served them right, for drawing attention to themselves?

  Aurore Wyatt came back and took the chair opposite the one he’d moved. “Edith tells me you’ve already been to the museum. What do you think of it?”

  “Unusual,” he replied dryly, after some thought.

  Her laughter, husky and rich, was unexpected. “How very English of you,” she said. “The English are masters of understatement, are they not?” Then she added as if it mattered to her, “It’s become Simon’s life. I hope it is what he wants to do and not what he feels he ought to do.”

  “In what sense?”

  “The Wyatts have always gone into politics. For generations. It was expected-before the war, you understand-that he would stand for Parliament as well. From childhood he was prepared for nothing else. And by nature it suited him. Handsome, able, a genuinely charming man who commanded respect. He never speaks of it now. Only of this museum, about which he knows so little.” There was a wryness in her eyes. “But we are none of us the same after four years of war. And he married me, which was not very wise in a politician. An English wife would have been safer. More-comme il faut?”

  He said nothing, but had a sudden mental picture of Aurore Wyatt among the male and female voters of a quiet Dorset constituency. The cat among the pigeons… “I understand his other grandfather was an explorer of sorts.”

  “Yes, in the Pacific and Indian oceans. He left Simon his collections-I think, in the hope that he might display them and make his grandfather as famous as Darwin or Cook. Simon had said nothing of this to me in France. It wasn’t until I arrived in England that he seemed to remember anything at all about his grandfather’s boxes. They were stored in London, had been for ages. And suddenly he would not hear of anything but this museum.” She shrugged in that way that only Frenchwomen have, lifting her shoulders with her head to one side, as if denying any understanding of the matter. “That is why I wonder, sometimes, if he feels an obligation to satisfy one ancestor if not the other. If not Westminster, then this museum. It would be very sad, would it not?”

  “What does Simon Wyatt himself want in life?”

  “Ah!” Aurore answered ruefully. “If I knew that, I would be a very fortunate woman.”

  Edith came out with a tray of glasses and a bottle of wine. “The coffee’s not done,” she said apologetically.

  “Wine will do very well, for me,” Aurore said, and offered a glass to Rutledge before pouring her own. He accepted, and found the wine very good indeed, dry and perfect for a warm afternoon. She watched him savor it, her eyes observing without judging. “You were in the war, I think?”

  “How do you know?”

  She tilted her head and thought for a moment before answering him. “You speak French very well. And you know a good wine when you taste it.” But he knew that it wasn’t what she might have said, if she’d been honest.

  “The war was neither wine nor language,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “It was a very hard four
years. They are finally over.”

  Somewhere Hamish echoed softly, “Over?”

  “But not yet forgotten,” she said astutely, looking at the man’s face and eyes, and reading more there than he was comfortable having her see. “No, I understand. I also have seen too much pain and death. And my husband as well. I thought-there was a time when I thought he might not survive the war. I watched him, and I knew he was expecting to die. Which sometimes means that it will happen. Like so many of the young men marching off to war, he didn’t understand that he was mortal. He came to the fighting as if it were a game, there on the steps at Eton. And when he discovered it was not like this, it was too late. There was nothing to be done but fight and wait for death to come. And even death failed him. Sometimes I think the survivors feel guilty for having lived, when so many died.”

  Thinking of Hamish, Rutledge looked away. It was too near for comfort.

  She said, putting down her glass, “Is there anything that can be done?”

  “No.” He wanted to offer her hope, and couldn’t. He had none to give. After a moment he realized that Hamish was trying to draw his attention to something-that her digression had led Rutledge away from what had brought him here. Out of purpose? Or because he had listened with some sense, some knowledge of the suffering she was talking about?

  “Why do I tell you these things?” she asked, frowning. “I have not spoken of them to anyone, not even the nuns!”

  “She’s no’ a woman to do anything by chance,” Hamish reminded him.

  He brought the topic of conversation abruptly back to Miss Tarlton’s visit. “I’m under the impression that Mr. Wyatt offered Miss Tarlton a position. As assistant. Is that true?”

  Aurore Wyatt looked away. Even in profile, the stillness about her was striking, as if her body were attuned to it in blood and bone. Yet there was a strength too, which seemed to mask a great, unspeakable pain. Part of that she had told him about-but not all. Not nearly all. He was sure of it.