Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  “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 the 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 insta
nt 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.

  A victim had no one in the law to speak for him or her. The police were bent on finding the guilty party. The courts were set up to determine guilt, and if guilt was proved, to offer sanctioned retribution for the crime committed. Prison or the gallows. Society was then satisfied by the restoration of order. Civilized order, where personal revenge and vendettas were foregone in the name of law.

  Was that any consolation to the victim? Did it make up for the missed years of living?

  When he himself had stood in the trenches, facing imminent death and seeing it reach out for him in a multitude of disguises, the concept of dying gloriously for King and Country had taken on a different image, a certainty of life ending in a shock of pain and sheer terror, with nothing left of the man he was or might be. Only a bloody ruin to be tumbled into a hasty grave if he was found-if not, lying where he’d fallen, obscenely rotting on the battlefield where even the crows dare not come for him. And in those months when he’d wanted to die, to bring the suffering to an end, he had thought longingly of what might have been… if there had been no war. Yes, he knew, better than most, what the dead have lost.

  And where was Margaret Tarlton, if she wasn’t lying in that grave?

  It always came back to the children. Find them-or not-and he would have his answer. But you couldn’t wish children dead, to solve a mystery.

  Rutledge said aloud, “We’ve come full circle.”

  “Aye,” Hamish said in resignation.

  As he strode into the Swan, the young woman behind the desk called, “Inspector? Inspector Rutledge!”

  He turned, and she went on, “A Superintendent Bowles in London has been trying to reach you. The message was, please contact him as soon as possible. He left his number for you-” She held out a sheet of paper.

  He hesitated, not sure he was ready to speak to London. The young woman said helpfully, “You’ll find the telephone in the cloakroom, just there.”

  It took ten minutes to put the call through and fifteen more for someone to locate Bowles. In the end, when Bowles finally called him back, Rutledge had prepared himself for a catechism.

  Instead Bowles said loudly, as if compensating for the distance between Scotland Yard and Dorset, “Is that you, Rutledge? I’d like to know why Thomas Napier descended on me this morning, concerned about his daughter! What in God’s name have you done to the woman!”

  “I brought her from Sherborne to Singleton Magna last night. Hildebrand showed Miss Napier the clothing the victim was wearing when she was found. According to Miss Napier, the apparel belonged to Margaret Tarlton.”

  “Good God, haven’t you found her? I thought she was in Sherborne.”

  “She never arrived there. I’ve located witnesses who place her in Charlbury, on the point of leaving to catch her train. I was just about to ask the stationmaster if he remembered her. Neither Simon Wyatt nor his wife seems to know who drove her to Singleton Magna.”

  There was an audible sigh at the other end of the line. “First the Napiers, and now the Wyatts. I told you not to tread on any toes!”

  “I haven’t.” So far. He could foresee the possibility of it…

  “What’s the Mowbray woman doing in Miss Tarlton’s clothing, anyway?”

  “It’s quite possible the dead woman is Miss Tarlton.”

  “Well, get to the bottom of it, man! I don’t see what the problem is! And Hildebrand’s complaining that you’re never around when he needs you, and I’m told the children still haven’t been found. That was your responsibility! There may be no expectation of finding them alive now-but find them we shall! Do you hear me? What’s taking so damned long?”

  “The victim has been buried. With your permission, I’m told. If we don’t locate Miss Tarlton, we have a dilemma.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line. “Are you saying you want that corpse exhumed?”

  “It may be necessary-”

  “No! I’ll send someone to Gloucestershire, on the off chance the Tarlton woman’s gone there. If she has, we’d look a fool, wouldn’t we? There isn’t a man in the picture, is there? Someone in London she may not want the Napiers to know about? I’ll have Worthington ask her family about that, while he’s in Gloucestershire. If she’s not with them.”

  “I don’t think London is at the bottom of this business.”

  “You aren’t paid to think, you’re there to find answers! And for God’s sake, placate that Napier woman before her father comes down on the lot of us! Don’t annoy the Wyatts either, do you hear me?”

  There was a distinct sound of the receiver at the other end being slammed into its cradle.

  Rutledge felt like doing much the same.

  He found Peg, the chambermaid, and asked her to take a message to Miss Napier’s room.

  “Miss Napier left not ten minutes ago, sir. Someone brought a motorcar over from Sherborne, and she’s being driven to Charlbury.”

  He swore, silently, as Peg curtsied and went on her way.

  “Aye, you should ha’ seen it coming!” Hamish said, commiserating. “But yon Frenchwoman addled your wits. You’ve no’ been thinking straight all the morning, and see where it’s got you! A tongue-lashing by auld Bowels, and that headstrong lassie slipping off to Charlbury the instant your back’s turned, intent on meddling in this business.”

  “Making mischief isn’t at the bottom of it. Elizabeth Napier still wants Simon Wyatt. The question is, to what lengths is she willing to go, if she thinks there’s even an outside chance of getting him?”

  “I’ve a feeling,” Hamish warned, “that you’d best be on your way to Charlbury, to find out.”

  But Rutledge first went to the station to ask the master about Margaret Tarlton, describin
g her and the clothing she’d worn.

  The man shook his head. “I don’t remember a woman fitting that description taking the London train. There were three men from Singleton Magna going up that day, and two women who bought tickets to Kingston Lacey. I know them both by name. That was the passenger tally, according to my records.”

  “She may have taken the train south, rather than to London.”

  “I doubt it. Not that many people do, from here. I’d recall that. I’d recall her as well.”

  Rutledge thanked him, then walked back to the inn for his car. He might well need that exhumation order if Worthington came up empty-handed…

  Marcus Johnston, Mowbray’s lawyer, was coming down the street toward him as Rutledge drove out of the Swan’s yard. Just as he was about to make the turn for Charlbury, Johnston hailed him. “Any news? I’ve been trying to find Hildebrand to ask. But he’s out in the field again, which tells me not to be sanguine.” He came up to the car and put a hand on the lowered window.

  “No. How is your client?”

  Johnston took a deep breath, as if bracing himself to think about Mowbray. “Poorly. He forgets to eat, can’t close his eyes more than five minutes, which says he’s not sleeping. Distracted by whatever wretched scenes he’s seeing over and over in his head. When I try to discuss his defense with him, he looks at me as if I’m not there. Damned odd feeling, I can tell you! According to one of the constables, you persuaded him to speak. I’m surprised.”

  “I was asking him about his children. He wanted to stop me, and the only way he could do that was to cry out.”

  “I should have been there!”

  “With four or five people crowded into that wretched cell, he’d have been suffocated! I wasn’t after a confession, I only wanted to know how much the children had grown. Since that 1916 photograph was taken. The flyer hasn’t helped; I thought perhaps we could do something more.”