Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  It was the first real glimpse Rutledge had had of the missing woman.

  “I asked her- begged her-to tell me if there was another man, and she shook her head and kissed me and said I was being silly. But there was. I could see his eyes following her. I could see the look on his face when he came into a room and she was there. God, he was a mirror of what I was feeling! And I was stupid enough to confront her with it. The day before I was to sail. She wouldn’t see me afterward, wouldn’t answer my calls or my letters. It was-that was the last time. When I was sent home again, half my guts cut away, I knew it was finished. How could I go back to her-how could I even tell her I was alive?”

  Hamish had stirred, already sure of the answer.

  More sure than Rutledge was. “Who was the other man?”

  Shaw grimaced, as if the tension of the last ten minutes had brought back the pain in his body. His arms were lightly clasped around his middle, to hold it in. He seemed completely sober now, eyes dark circled and heavy with memory, a man with only a past and no future.

  “Thomas Napier. If he hadn’t had a daughter a year older than she was, I think he’d have married her himself. He wanted her badly enough! It was there, raw and hot, sometimes, when I’d bring her home and we were laughing, clinging to each other as we made our way up the steps, more tipsy with excitement than wine, but how could he know? When I saw her getting out of the Wyatts’ motorcar last week, I thought for one horrible instant she’d come looking for me! Out of misplaced pity or duty. But Mrs. Prescott soon put an end to that rash hope. She mentioned to Denton that it was the museum that had brought Margaret. Something about coming here as Simon’s assistant. Besides, there was no way she could have known I was here. Very few people do!”

  “Did you speak to her, before she left Charlbury?”

  “God, no! When I can barely stand straight, even now, without all the fires of hell lit in my belly? I’ve got some pride left, damn it! She wouldn’t have me before. What could I say that might have changed her mind now?”

  “She wasn’t married to Napier, for one thing.”

  “No.” Shaw looked at the dark ceiling, where the beams wore a collection of polished horse buttons. Studying them as if they were more important than anything he was thinking or feeling. A bitter concentration.

  “There’s the other side of it as well-she was considering moving here, leaving the Napier household for another position.”

  Shaw laughed, a rough, hollow sound. “She’d have to, wouldn’t she, if she was planning to marry him? Margaret has been Elizabeth’s secretary for years. Not Napier’s social equal, that. But if she were here, under Simon’s wing, she’d be safe enough from gossip. People wouldn’t be so fast to jump to ugly conclusions. That’s the sort of thing Margaret would think of. She must have known very well how to handle him. It was Elizabeth who stood in the way.”

  His mind occupied on his way out of Charlbury, Rutledge almost missed the woman standing by the road clearly hoping to catch his eye.

  She was wearing a faded housedress, the blues nearly gray now, and her hair was pinned back stringendy, as if it were being punished for trying to curl in the dampness. Was she one of the women he’d passed on the street? He couldn’t be sure. She’d have dressed differendy, going to market.

  Rutledge pulled over and said, “Were you looking for me?”

  “Aye! You’re the policeman from London, they say!”

  “Inspector Rutledge. Yes.” Behind her, in the doorway, he could see three small children peering out with large, sober eyes. Whatever it was their mother wanted, they’d been told to stay out of the way and make no noise. Or the policeman would get them? It was a threat used often enough in some quarters of London, to keep children quiet. “Be’ave now, or I’ll fetch the copper on yer!”

  The woman nodded, then hesitated, as if reluctant to give her name. But they were just outside her house, with paint peeling around the windows and a look of shabbiness about the roof where it needed rethatching. He could find her again, easily. She said, “Hazel Dixon. I heard tell you was looking for information about that woman guest at the Wyatts’. How she left Charlbury on the fifteenth.”

  Hamish stirred, and Rutledge tried to keep his own expression bland. “That’s right.” Let her tell it in her own way, or she might change her mind…

  Suddenly there was a hot intensity in the pale blue eyes watching him. “It was her. Mrs. Wyatt. I saw the car. Going on toward noon, it was, two days after that Miss Tarlton came here. I heard the motor and looked out my window, and I saw it passing, in the direction of the crossroads and Singleton Magna.”

  “Could you see the driver?” he asked. She would have been on the far side of the car, as he was now.

  “Well, it was her, wasn’t it? She’s the one drives the car! Mr. Wyatt, he don’t care to drive himself, he’s used to having people at his beck and call. I’ve seen her, with a scarf blowing out like some banner announcing her! And the men too, turning to look, wanting in their eyes. It’s indecent, lustful! Most of ’em, including my Bill, know what she’s like. They was in France and those women had no men of their own, I know what went on! My Bill didn’t learn to-”

  She stopped, this time with a rising flush. She hadn’t meant to say such things, she’d allowed herself to be led on by his way of listening.

  There were shadows, moving a little, behind the children, and Rutledge realized that other women-at least two? he thought, possibly three-were in the dimly lit front room, moral support for her confession but not intended to hear whatever it was that Bill had-or had not-been taught by any Frenchwomen he’d encountered abroad.

  It was a common enough anxiety of wives in wartime. That men far from home, fighting a war against loneliness and fear as well as the enemy, might have found comfort of a sort in the local women. And picked up disease or new tastes. The music halls were filled with jokes and songs about the French.

  “It was her!” she repeated fiercely. “I’d swear to it!”

  “Was there anyone in the motorcar with her?”

  Mrs. Dixon bit her lip. “I saw something rosy-with lavender in it! Must have been that Miss Tarlton. Well, it stands to reason! Who else would have been in that car with Mrs. Wyatt!”

  But he thought she might be lying now. Had she seen Margaret Tarlton at the Wyatt gate and known what she was wearing? Or was she so determined to indict Aurore Wyatt that she was piecing together bits of information garnered from the other women listening and invisible inside her house? “What kind of hat was Miss Tarlton wearing?”

  Mrs. Dixon stared at him. Then she said, too quickly, “The way that Mrs. Wyatt drives her husband’s motorcar, you’d be a fool to wear a hat! It’d be blown off your head before you was out of Charlbury!”

  And it was true, as Hamish was busy pointing out, that Aurore herself hadn’t been wearing a hat the first time Rutledge had seen her. But he couldn’t recall if there had been one in the seat beside her…

  “They say that that Miss Tarlton’s missing. What do they think’s become of her?” Mrs. Dixon asked, unable to stop herself. Curiosity was driving her now. “That man in Singleton Magna, he’s already killed his wife-”

  “We want to locate Miss Tarlton because she arrived on the same train with Mowbray. She might have seen him, or his family.”

  “They say he killed his children!” She shuddered, caught up in her own fears, glancing over her shoulder uneasily. “I’ve kept mine close, I can tell you, since I heard of that.”

  “I don’t believe you have anything to fear from him now. He’s in custody.”

  She turned to go. “I saw that Miss Tarlton the day she came. I was along to my sister’s house. If I’d stolen another woman’s husband, like some I know, I’d not want such a pretty face at my breakfast table! Tempting fate all over again, that’s what it is. And Mr. Simon already regretting his choice!”

  “Regretting? What do you mean?” It was sharper than he’d intended.

  But Hazel
Dixon wouldn’t be drawn into that topic. “I’ve said enough. I saw the car, and Mrs. Wyatt in it! And that other woman. If that’s any good to you, I’m glad!”

  Rutledge thought as he let off the brake that Elizabeth Napier’s presence in Charlbury was bearing its bitter fruit. In a village already rife with speculation about Simon’s wife, rumor had spread from house to house, and Hazel Dixon, encouraged and supported by her friends, was now casting the second stone at Aurore Wyatt. She wouldn’t have spoken out if the village had maintained its wall of silence, an undivided front. Elizabeth Napier, breaking the seal by openly showing her anxiety over Margaret Tarlton’s disappearance and allowing the bloody events of the Mowbray murder to find their way-even if topsy-turvy-into the story, had already shadowed Simon’s mind with doubt. And as if by osmosis, the Hazel Dixons of Charlbury had picked up the strong scent of distrust and were emboldened to strike out.

  He was never sure how such things actually worked in a village. But work they did.

  Aurore had been absolutely right. Seeing her in his company, even for so brief a time, had fed the hungry maws of gossip.

  Hamish, from his accustomed place deep in Rutledge’s mind, asked, “Are you sae certain, then, it’s gossip and no’ the truth?”

  Constable Truit still hadn’t returned from the search party he’d been summoned to join. Tired of waiting for him, Rutledge left Charlbury and halfway back to Singleton Magna made up his mind.

  It began to rain long before he reached London, and the streets were shining with wet, the trees drooping heavily, when he found the house in Chelsea that he was looking for.

  It was small, with a narrow porch, silk drapes crossing the windows, and on the steps pots of geraniums in a shade that complemented the brick. Even in the dull light it possessed a decided charm. At the same time it wasn’t a house that a young woman on her own could afford. Unless there was money in the family to draw on.

  The maid who answered the door was small and dark, with Welsh ancestry in her round face. But her voice was pure London. Rutledge told her who he was. She led him into a small parlor attractively decorated with rosewood furnishings, a French carpet, and pre-Raphaelite prints on the walls. He recognized several of them. Either Margaret Tarlton liked the romantic aura they represented, or she knew its value as a setting. And yet, oddly, he hadn’t imagined her as a romantic. Was Thomas Napier? Sometimes men of power and prestige had buried in them a streak of the quixotic when it came to their preferences in women.

  The maid offered him a chair and stood before him in her stiff black dress, hands cupped in front of her, feet together, like a child anticipating a reprimand. Worry drew her dark brows together and her face was strained, tired. He asked her name. It was Dorcas Williams. She had been employed as a second parlor maid by the Napiers before coming here to work for Miss Tarlton.

  “I don’t know what I can say, sir! Scotland Yard has come twice, and still there’s no word from my mistress-I’ve told them all I can think of. There’s no news?” she asked diffidently. “Mr. Napier has been here this morning, asking!”

  “Not yet. The fact is, I’m more interested in Miss Tarlton herself. Sometimes in searching for someone who’s gone missing, it helps to know more about the person. We have a better feeling for where to look.”

  “Yes, sir.” She regarded him expectantly, as if prepared to cooperate in any way. But behind her eagerness, the shadow of fear still lurked.

  “Let’s begin,” Rutledge said as if it had just occurred to him, “with her work for Miss Napier. Did she like what she did-did she get along well with her employers?”

  “She liked her work well enough,” the girl answered willingly. “She was good at it, at organizing. Seeing to flowers and caterers and invitations being printed-finding the right musicians. Writing thank-you notes. Sometimes she’d say, ‘You’ll never guess, Dorcas, who’s coming to the luncheon on Thursday!’” She smiled. “Oftentimes I’d get it right too!”

  “There was nothing she disliked about her work?”

  The smiled faded. “I’ve heard her say she didn’t want to spend a lifetime planning parties in the houses of other people.”

  “Did she get on well with Elizabeth Napier?”

  “Yes, sir. Mostly. I think-I think there was some disagreement over her changing jobs. But I didn’t understand the rights of that. Miss Tarlton, she didn’t want it to be Dorset, and Miss Napier, she said it was just the thing.”

  “Why was she against going to Dorset? Do you know?”

  “No, sir.” Her face creased with the effort to remember. “I don’t think she ever spoke of that to me.”

  “This house. Does it belong to Miss Tarlton? Or to her cousins?”

  “Oh, it’s Miss Tarlton’s, right enough, sir. It was two years ago she moved here, and I was engaged along with the cook and an outside man.”

  Two years ago, Rutledge repeated to himself. About the time Shaw was leaving England…

  “Who pays your wages?”

  “Miss Tarlton, sir, of course, sir.”

  “Does she have a private income? Apart from her salary from the Napiers.”

  “As to that I don’t know, sir. She said once her people never did well out of India, unlike some. Her cousins in Gloucestershire are comfortable enough, I suppose, but they don’t run to servants, just a daily woman who cleans and prepares the dinner.”

  He was no closer to seeing Margaret Tarlton as a woman in her own right. Yet he couldn’t put his finger on what was missing.

  It was Hamish who did.

  “I’d no’ like to think,” he said, “that she lived in this house and dressed so fine but had no friends to impress wi’ it all!”

  “Did she have friends?” Rutledge asked. “Women? Men?”

  “She didn’t have so many women friends, but there were admirers,” Dorcas answered slowly. “Mostly young men, officers home on sick leave. One or two I thought she fancied more than the others. There was a young lord, too, took her to the theater a time or two. But ‘he’s not looking for a wife,’ she’d say. ‘His mother’s a widow, and she’ll choose for him, one that suits her.’ Still, I thought she was fond of him.”

  Or of his money and position? Hamish asked.

  Rutledge said, “What about the young Canadian officer?”

  Dorcas grinned. “He called at the Napiers often. I liked him fine,” she said, “always a word to make me laugh. Promising to find me an Eskimo when he went home! Fancy that!”

  “I understand Miss Tarlton wouldn’t see him again before he went back to his regiment. He tried to reach her, and she refused to accept his calls.”

  Surprised, Dorcas said, “How did you come to know that? I thought for a time-but she’d have no part of Canada. ‘Not much better than India,’ she’d tell me, ‘and not the kind of life I intend to live.’”

  “She hasn’t heard from Shaw-or seen him-since the war ended?”

  “She said he’d gone home. But he hadn’t I heard Mr. Napier, not a month past, tell her he was living in Dorset. ‘Is that why you’re off to Wyatt’s museum?’ he wanted to know. ‘Because young Shaw’s there?’ They was having their tea, I was passing the cups, and she nearly spilled hers. So I thought it likely she’d not known whether Captain Shaw was alive or dead. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she told Mr. Napier. But the way she said it-I couldn’t tell, somehow, but I thought she might have been wondering if she might just see him. Now-or if she got the position at the museum.”

  “What was Napier’s reaction?”

  “He was fiddling with the serviette on his knee. But he was frowning, I could see that. I couldn’t help but feel he didn’t want her to go to Dorset anyway. And this was just the final straw, to his way of thinking.”

  “Was Mr. Napier… fond… of Miss Tarlton?”

  “He was very kind to her, she said so often enough. ‘But kindness isn’t the answer,’ she’d say. ‘I don’t want kindness, I want a house and a place in society, and children of my own, a
nd to hold my head up, looking people in the eye, instead of being treated like a servant !’ That was last May, when she had a bad throat and was in bed for nearly a week. It was the newspaper started it, and I’ve never seen her in such an ill temper. I said, ‘I can’t think Mr. Napier and his daughter have ever treated you in such a fashion.’ And her answer was ‘No, but all their acquaintance do! I thought it would be the best possible way to move into better circles, working for Elizabeth. And it was the gravest mistake I’ve ever made.’ So when Miss Tarlton had finished with it, I looked through the newspaper, to see what it was that upset her.” She hesitated. “There was a photograph of Mr. Napier and a lady at a garden party, and speculation that Mr. Napier might be thinking of remarrying. I’d heard her say she disliked the lady intensely. ‘Madame Condescension,’ she calls her. I don’t believe she’d care to work for Miss Napier if Mrs. Clairmont became the second Mrs. Napier.”

  Afterward, Rutledge walked through the house, still searching for the nature of the missing woman. In the bedroom were a number of photographs: of the Napiers at parties or on horseback; of (according to Dorcas) the cousins in Gloucestershire, wearing country clothes and shy smiles; of a small child in long skirts, seated on a rocking horse or playing with a ball, the cousins hovering protectively in the background.

  In the closets hung an array of clothes, all of excellent cut and beautiful fabrics, but without designer labels. Rutledge had the feeling, touching a silk sleeve here and a linen shoulder there, that they had all been sewn by the same seamstress. Miss Tarlton had had the taste to recognize the best but not the money to buy it. It was even possible that she had made most of the clothes herself. The tailoring and needlework showed considerable skill.

  There was nothing in the house from India except for a small elephant, trunk uplifted, carved in sandalwood, and a photograph of a man, woman, and two children seated in a tropical garden. She hadn’t taken pride in her roots, she had shoved them out of sight. Margaret Tarlton had created a new self for London society, clever, sophisticated, elegant-and reaching for heights she couldn’t climb alone.