Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  Rutledge thanked Dorcas and promised to send her word as soon as he could tell her what had become of her mistress.

  As the door shut behind him, he found himself wondering if ambition-or accident-had brought Margaret Tarlton to her death.

  Rutledge stopped briefly at his sister’s house before leaving London.

  “You look tired,” Frances said, scanning his face on the threshold. “Working too hard, that’s what it is! Give up that wretched flat of yours and come back here, where you can be looked after properly.”

  Here was the London house Frances had lived in since their mother’s death. It had been left to brother and sister jointly. Tall, gracious, handsomely furnished, situated in a quiet square of similar houses, it made a proper setting for Frances, whose dark unusual beauty was complemented by a clever brain and a formidable knowledge of people that she kept carefully hidden.

  He smiled. “And have you fussing over me morning and night? No, I thank you!” He followed her into the comfortable blue-and-cream drawing room.

  “Fiddle! I never fuss and you know it. Well, what brings you here in the rain, my company or Father’s whisky?” She crossed to an olivewood cabinet.

  “His whisky. I came, as well, for information.” He took his accustomed chair, feeling the tiredness she’d already taken note of.

  She made a face at him as she poured his neat but listened to what he was saying without interruption. She had always been a good listener, it was a trait their father had cultivated in her. “A woman who pays close attention flatters a man, my dear, and that’s the first step in ruling him!”

  Even as he spoke, Rutledge found himself thinking that Frances had taken stillness and turned it into an asset, whereas in Aurore it was more than likely a shield against pain. Or a waiting… but for what?

  “Matilda Clairmont is the widow of James Heddiston Clairmont,” she told him when he’d finished, steepling her slender fingers as she dredged her memory. “He was something to do with the Exchequer well before the war. Thoroughly nice man. She’s the most terrible woman you can imagine, sugary sweet to everyone, just the most helpful and ingratiating way with her I’ve ever come across. If she’s likely to be hanged for murder, I can name you fifty women in town who would rejoice! And send the most expensive wreaths they can lay hands on to the funeral afterward!”

  He grinned. “What’s wrong with being sweet and helpful?”

  Frances shook her head. “Darling, you aren’t another woman, or you’d know. Females like Matilda are deadly. The kind who can drip venom with such graciousness you’d never scotch the rumors she’s set about.” Mimicking, her normally very attractive contralto became light and very innocent. “’My dear, I’ve been told the most dreadful thing about someone, and I can’t bear to believe it could be true! If you swear not to repeat a word, I’ll confide in you-I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since I learned that-’” She returned to her natural voice. “And by the time she’s finished, reputations are in ruins.”

  “Is there any likelihood that Thomas Napier might consider marrying Mrs. Clairmont? I’m told there was some hint of it in the newspapers in the spring.”

  Her eyebrows rose in interested speculation. “Now that’s a rumor that Matilda herself probably started. I haven’t heard it from a reliable source. And if you want my honest opinion, I’d say he’s very likely got a mistress tucked away. He doesn’t strike me as a man on the loose. One can always tell, you know.”

  “Could his mistress be his daughter’s secretary?”

  She considered that. “She might be. But she isn’t. I only know Margaret Tarlton to speak to, but she’s not one to waste herself in a boudoir. She’s ambitious, Ian. There’s not a breath of scandal about her, which is the surest proof.”

  “Who bought the house in Chelsea she lives in?”

  “That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? The money, I’m told, came from a trust fund her father had set up. But somehow I doubt it. He was a very junior civil servant in Delhi, and her mother was a Saddler, from Norfolk. No money there either! Whoever her sponsor is, he’s been very careful.”

  “Could it be Napier?” he asked a second time.

  She tilted her head to one side, considering. The lamplight caught her dark blue eyes, and they sparkled like sapphires. “Ian, are you sure about this?”

  “No. It’s supposition, based on bits of conjecture, not solid fact.”

  “Thomas Napier is a very fine man. Highly regarded in London, and of course with a political following that makes a false step dangerous. For you-and for him. Why this sudden interest in the Napiers and Margaret?”

  “I think she’s dead. Murdered, very likely, but whether by the man we have in custody in Dorset or by someone else, I’m not sure.”

  “But that’s horrible! In Dorset, you say? I don’t understand!”

  “It’s still only a theory, mind you. But it has to be carefully investigated. She came down to Charlbury to apply for the position of assistant to Simon Wyatt and apparently no one has seen her since then. That’s all we have to go on now. Wyatt’s opening a museum of artifacts his grandfather brought home from the East.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard about that. He’s husband to the fascinating Aurore-everyone is dying to meet her! The woman he chucked a promising political career for. Have you seen her? Is she as intriguing as everyone expects?”

  “She’s-very attractive. An intelligent woman-” He broke off uneasily. The last thing he wanted was Frances on the wrong scent. “Hardly the sensational sort. If that’s the only reason for attending the museum’s opening, I expect most people will be sadly disappointed. Will they come just for that, do you think?”

  But Frances was busy pursuing another thought “That Chelsea house

  … Richard Wyatt, Simon’s father, was absolutely mortified when he discovered Simon was married-it was social suicide, a complete disregard for the proprieties. I remember the uproar at the time- and how quickly it ended. But the timing isn’t right, is it?” She tapped her fingers lightly on the arm of her chair, musing. “Still, do you suppose Napier went to Wyatt saying Margaret has found a house she wants-it will only be for a year or two, Elizabeth will marry Simon and I’ll be free to speak. Then the house will be sold. Lend her the money, to keep Elizabeth from suspecting anything, and I’ll see it’s repaid in good time. Then-when the news came about Aurore-Wyatt called in his favor, and Napier spread the story that Elizabeth had broken the engagement first. Of course that salvaged her pride but it also seemed to salvage Simon’s reputation. Elizabeth is well thought of in London, people felt he’d treated her very shabbily!” She saw her brother’s expression and stopped. “What is it? You feel all of that is completely far-fetched?”

  “No, but none of it makes any sense. If it came out that either man’s name was associated with the Chelsea property, it would ruin Margaret Tarlton too. I don’t see Napier taking such a risk.” He was playing devil’s advocate.

  “Well, there are several ways around that. Buying a house for someone leaves traces, I grant you. On the other hand, if that someone buys it for herself, who’s to say where the actual pounds came from? Enemies could subject Napier’s finances to the closest scutiny and find nothing-they’d never think of looking into Wyatt’s bank balance, would they? And here’s another small bit of the puzzle. Rumor said that Simon Wyatt’s inheritance wasn’t as grand as he’d expected. Bad investments during the war, or so the story goes. I’ve heard that Simon had to sell the Wyatts’ London house to pay for that museum of his! Well, that wouldn’t be surprising, if Napier wasn’t able to keep to his own plans and marry Margaret-after all, Elizabeth is still unwed, so the house couldn’t be sold. It might also explain why Margaret got fed up and decided to change jobs.”

  “It’s an interesting possibility. Still, even if you’re right that Napier borrowed the money from Wyatt, I can’t see any direct connection from that to Margaret Tarlton’s murder. How would it benefit anyone?” He stood up,
the whisky failing to penetrate the gloom he felt settling around him. “For that matter, so far I haven’t found a sound reason for anyone to want to kill her. Except mistaken identity.”

  “No, but you will.” She smiled as she held out her hand for his empty glass. “If there is one.”

  As she walked with him to the door, Rutledge said, “If you had to dispose of a suitcase that might connect you with a murder, where would you hide it?”

  “A suitcase? I’d put it in the one place everyone expects to find luggage-a hotel or a railway station.”

  “Would you? A hall porter or a stationmaster would come across it in the long run and try to locate the owner.”

  “Well, then-the one place no one ever goes.”

  It was a thought that followed him all the way back to Dorset

  14

  It was late when Rutledge pulled into the yard of the Swan in Singleton Magna, and he was tired. The rain had kept up most of the afternoon and into the evening, a steady, gray curtain that soaked everything.

  He stepped out of the car into a puddle, invisible in the shadowed yard, and swore. His hat, tilted against the rain, dripped unpleasantly down his coat as he turned toward the front of the inn and into the rising wind. He could feel his shirt beginning to stick to his skin across his shoulders.

  At the inn door he paused to shake his hat, then squelched across the damp rug put down to stop the influx of water into the lobby proper.

  There was a message waiting for him. He opened it and read, “We’ve looked where we said we would, and had no luck.” It was signed “Bowles” in a dainty penmanship that belonged to the smiling woman behind the desk. She nodded as he glanced up. “He said you’d know what was meant.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  Margaret Tarlton wasn’t visiting her cousins in Gloucestershire. Elizabeth Napier had been right.

  As he reached the stairs, wondering if it was too late to order a pot of tea and something to eat, the front doors opened again and Elizabeth Napier herself swept in with a black umbrella cascading rain like a young waterfall. The hem of her skirt was darkly wet as well and her black shoes left tracks on the floor crossing his. Benson took the umbrella from her as soon as she reached the relative dryness indoors and then disappeared. The sound of the car moving off into the night came to Rutledge.

  She saw him on the stairs and said, “My God, it’s worse than London-the roads turn to muddy ruts and everywhere you put your foot there’s a puddle! I looked for you earlier, hoping you might dine with me.” She regarded him for a moment and added, “Inspector Hildebrand told me he thought you’d gone to the Wyatt Arms instead.”

  “No. I had business elsewhere.”

  Coming up to him, she said, “You look tired! Have you eaten at all?” Taking his silence for no, she turned to the woman at the desk. “Is your cook still here? I’d like a private parlor, if you please, and something hot to eat Soup will do. With tea.” Without waiting for an answer, she said to Rutledge, “I’ll take my death of cold, even in August, if I don’t change these wet clothes. I’ll only need five minutes!” She swept past him in an aura of damp wool that matched his own.

  But it was almost fifteen before she came down the stairs again and considered him approvingly. He had changed his shirt and his shoes, and wore a sweater in place of his coat With his hair still damp and unruly, she thought he looked much younger than he seemed before.

  There was soup and fresh bread set out in one of the smaller rooms, with tea on a table by a fire someone had hastily laid. It took a little of the chill and an air of mustiness from the room, giving it a cozy, almost intimate feeling.

  Rutledge, curious, wondered what her reasons were for creating this comfortable setting. Whatever they might be, he preferred her company to his own thoughts in the silent room upstairs.

  Elizabeth served him and then herself, although from the way she ate he thought it was out of politeness instead of hunger. He felt suddenly ravenous.

  The soup was mutton, with barley, carrots, potatoes, and what tasted like turnips. The aroma alone was sustaining. He wondered if Elizabeth had commandeered the staff’s first course.

  She waited until he’d finished half his soup before launching into her real purpose for waylaying him.

  “My father says, if you need more men, he’ll ask the Yard to send them.”

  Wouldn’t Bowles be delighted with that request! he thought, but said only “Thank you. But no, they’d only be underfoot. If the searches that Hildebrand’s conducting haven’t brought us any answers by this time, additional men-and strangers at that-aren’t going to.” He helped himself to a second bowl of soup and cut more bread. There was butter in a covered dish as well, as he discovered.

  She said, “They aren’t going to find the children. I know that. You know that. But Hildebrand insists he has to find them. I spoke with the rector here in Singleton Magna this afternoon. Mr. Drewes. I felt I ought to do something about a headstone. My father wanted to remove the body to London. He’s taking Margaret’s death very hard, I can tell you. Ten years-you grow fond of someone in ten years. It isn’t surprising, I was very close to her myself.”

  He said nothing, letting her carry on in her own fashion.

  “Mr. Drewes was rather confused, I must say. He’d been informed of course that the dead woman was Mrs. Mowbray, and I don’t think he was too happy at the thought of changing the church records. I told him to blame Inspector Hildebrand for being overhasty.” She tilted her head and smiled wryly. “He thinks I’m utterly charming, so I must have put it less bluntly than that Of course he never said as much to my face, I overheard him talking to that woman at the desk, after he’d very gallantly walked me back to the Swan, holding his umbrella over me and getting himself thoroughly wet. His wife will have had something to say about that!”

  He found himself wondering if Mrs. Drewes would even hear the story. Elizabeth Napier had a seductive way of sitting, her back straight, her shoulders slightly at an angle. Her hair, brushed back from her face, was gleaming in the firelight, and he could smell the faint scent of heliotrope.

  “My father says if you find yourself in any difficulty with the local people, you have only to tell him. He made it clear to your superintendant this afternoon that he expects you to handle this business about Margaret.”

  He felt a surge of irritation at her meddling-or was it Napier’s?

  “I don’t believe that will be necessary,” he said. “But thank you,” he added, knowing it was what she wanted him to say. To satisfy her own sense of self-importance or her father’s silent need to be involved in the matter?

  “What do you think of Aurore Wyatt?” she went on. She was making conversation as an experienced hostess might at a dinner party, interspersing the salient points as if they were commonplace remarks. Now she was down to what interested her most She rose to refill his tea cup, indicating she was giving him an opportunity to respond. Out of politeness if nothing else.

  “I don’t think about her,” he said. “My task is to locate the rest of the Mowbray family-if they exist-or find out what part in this business Margaret Tarlton played. Which reminds me. I’d like to know something about her-not as your secretary, but as a woman might see her.”

  “Which is as adroit a way of changing the subject as any I’ve seen since my mother’s uncle used to make excuses for his forgetfulness!” she said lightly, turning aside his refusal. “I think Aurore has turned your head as easily as she has Simon’s. And my father’s! He likes her, you know. He says if the French army had been made up of soldiers half as brave as Aurore, we’d have won the war three years ago.”

  Rutledge said, “They lost their best men early on. And the rest lost heart.”

  “And we paid in British blood for their inadequate weapons and their inadequate generals. Not that we didn’t have a few incompetent generals of our own! Frankly I wasn’t prepared to like Aurore. But I do. She’s got a quality of stillness that I admire-I’ve neve
r been able to stop my mind or my tongue from working as they pleased. I can quite understand why Simon fell in love with her. And out of love with me!”

  “War does strange things to people,” he said, falling back on the old cliche and wondering if he could shift the conversation one last time to Margaret.

  “It certainly changed Simon,” she said, a wistfulness in her voice. “I was frightened by what I saw in him today. A fragility. It wasn’t there before! He was a man who had never known personal defeat, never had any doubts, always had his eye well set on the mark. It was what I truly loved in him, you know. His certainty. Not quite arrogance, just an assurance that he knew his way and was confidently following it. It was a guarantee of safety, that assurance. I felt safe in his care.” Toying with her teaspoon, she stopped, then added, “I asked Aurore if she’d noticed it-after all, she hadn’t known Simon before the war, she might not have been aware of any change in him. But she said, ‘He’s terribly afraid.’” Elizabeth paused thoughtfully. “I can’t accept that. I’ve never known Simon to be afraid of anything. Or any one!”

  But Rutledge knew what Aurore meant. It wasn’t a question of lacking courage. Surviving had frightened Simon. He hadn’t expected to live. He couldn’t comprehend how he’d deserved to live. And there was a feeling, deep down inside, that God would remember him one day and rectify the error.

  “Simon isn’t afraid of anyone or anything. That’s not what his wife was trying to tell you. He’s alive and so many other good men are dead. There’s a sense of guilt in that. It breeds fear of a different kind.”

  She stared at him. “Were you in the war? Do you feel that way?”

  Oh, God, he thought, as Hamish echoed the question in the depths of his soul. Guilt was-it was the agony of spirit that made every day bleak. The fear that you might not live up to the cost of your survival-that you might not, somehow, justify the whim of fate that let Death miss you and take so many around you. The drive-and the brake-on all that you did and thought and felt, when the Armistice came and you were alive to see it. The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. There was a biblical ring to that, straight out of the Old Testament, the sort of resounding phrase that thundered from the pulpit and terrified small boys even when they didn’t know what in God’s name was being said.