Search the Dark ir-3

by Charles Todd

  She saw his unwitting reaction and said quickly, “No, don’t answer that, I’d no right to ask it of you!”

  “Then tell me instead about Margaret Tarlton.”

  She sighed. “Margaret grew up in India. It made her-I don’t know quite how-seem much older than I was. As if all the things she’d seen and done and learned gave her a different sort of maturity from mine. And heaven knows, I’d grown up quickly myself, in a household where political intrigue was mother’s milk!”

  “Did she come from a family with status? Money?”

  “No, although from what I know of her father, he had aspirations, and he used to tell her as a child that England was her hope. If the family could just return to England, they’d be fine. If they could find the money for passage, they’d be fine. I don’t know what golden rainbows he saw for her, or why, but he made her hungry for a way of life she wasn’t going to have unless she married well. In the end, both her parents died of malaria, and she came without either of them. There was a younger sister too, who died near Suez of a fever several men brought back to the ship after going ashore. Margaret arrived in England alone, with no one to call family but distant cousins she’d never met She finished her education at the same school I was sent to; there was a family in Gloucester who provided a scholarship. They’d been missionaries or some such, and often did such things in the hope that it might make the recipient think of taking up the same burden. Well, they reckoned wrong with Margaret! She thought the heathen were quite happy with their own ways and would profit very little from being persuaded to try ours. Buddhism, she told me, made life a long series of chances to try to do better and see oneself more clearly. She didn’t care for Hinduism as much-she said it was as class-conscious as the Church of England. In my opinion, these beliefs-Hinduism and Buddhism-put far too much emphasis on the fate of the individual rather than on the good of mankind as a whole. It sustained a sort of-I don’t know-selfishness. I saw that from time to time in Margaret too, as if she’d been infected by it.”

  “It seems she’d have made a perfect assistant for Simon. With her deep knowledge of the East.”

  But Elizabeth Napier evaded that question very neatly. “I’m no judge. It wasn’t a subject she usually cared to speak of. Most people had no idea she’d lived anywhere but England.”

  “She spoke of India to Captain Shaw.”

  Elizabeth’s face went very still. “Captain Shaw heard it first from me,” she said. “He couldn’t understand why Margaret wasn’t in love with him. She wouldn’t tell him, and I felt he was owed an answer. I asked him not to bring it up with her, but I think he did anyway. I don’t know that Margaret had a capacity for love. If she did, it was buried under such layers of wanting that she’d nearly smothered it. Whatever drove my secretary, it was so fierce she was blind to anything else. I hope her death came quickly; she would have hated dying before she’d gotten what she was after. It was the ultimate failure, you see.”

  The next morning, before he’d had time to order his breakfast or think about the day, Rutledge came face to face with Hildebrand.

  “You ought to come see Mowbray,” he said. “He’s got something on his conscience, and damned if I can find out what it is. I’ve sent for Johnston, in the event it’s a confession. He might speak to you or his lawyer.”

  Rutledge left with Hildebrand, crossing the street in time to see Johnston just passing though the station’s door.

  Inside it was damp and musty from the rain, and this morning, although the clouds were moving northeast, the sun hadn’t shown its face.

  They moved down the passage to the cell where Mowbray was kept, and Rutledge could feel Hamish growing tense, uneasy.

  The heavy key turned in the lock, the door swung back, and the misery inside was almost palpable. The smell of unwashed flesh and hopelessness was enough to make Johnston stop in his tracks. “My God, haven’t you allowed him even the decency of soap and water!”

  “We’ve brought him soap and water,” Hildebrand said curtly. “We can’t dip him into it. My constables are already complaining it’s not fit in here for beast or man. That’s why you’re here. To get to the bottom of this!”

  Mowbray sat where Rutledge had last seen him, head in hands, shoulders slumped. The picture of dejection and despair. His hair seemed to have grown longer, wilder than the gray-streaked ten-day-old beard, and his clothes looked worn, shabby, and grimy.

  Johnston stepped forward and said, “Mr. Mowbray. It’s Marcus Johnston. I represent you. Do you remember me?”

  But there was no response, although Johnston gently tried pleading, cajoling, and coaxing for a good ten minutes to break through the man’s apathy.

  Finally he gave up and moved back out into the passage, breathing as if he’d felt short of air.

  Hildebrand turned to Rutledge. “See what you can do, man! I’ll take any help I can get!”

  Rutledge could feel his own heart pounding, and Hamish was a live presence in his mind. But he forced himself with every shred of will he possessed to step into the cell. The constable on duty was a large, heavy man who seemed to fill the corner he stood in like some ancient pillar rooted there in the dimness. His face was tense, his eyes on Mowbray like a lifeline.

  Hildebrand crowded in after Rutledge, and Johnston, seeming to feel his responsibility like a dead weight that couldn’t be shoved aside, pushed in after. It was Rutledge’s worse nightmare, and he was on the brink of panic when he finally made his voice work.

  “Mowbray? Good God, man, what would Mary think of you, filthy and unshaven?” he asked, more harshly than he’d intended. “It’s a matter of pride!”

  “Mary’s dead,” Mowbray mumbled at last, as if finally jarred into the present. “She can’t see me now, she can’t hear you.”

  “What makes you so certain the dead are deaf and blind?”

  “They say I killed her! Is it true?” He looked up, his own personal hell raging in the red-rimmed eyes. Rutledge wondered how much the man could understand, or if this apparent conversation with Mowbray was merely something the sane men in the room believed in.

  Catching Johnston’s eye, Rutledge answered, “I don’t know. A woman’s body has been found. You’d been searching for your wife, you’d made public threats against her, whether you remember them or not. The woman seemed to match the photograph of your wife we found in your wallet. What else should we believe?”

  “I remember seeing her by the train. I remember it! But if she died in London, how could that be? How could she end up in this place? I don’t even know where I am.” It was as if he’d forgotten that a man was supposed to have been with the woman. He looked vaguely around him, as though his eyes weren’t focusing on the cell walls, that they saw things visible only to him.

  Like Hamish…

  “What was she wearing when you saw her?”

  “I saw her. The wind blew her hair like I remembered, and she had that smile when she looked at the children, that smile…”

  “How was she dressed?” Rutledge persisted. “Was she dressed in blue? Green?”

  “She wore pink for me. She always did, when she wanted to make me happy. I took a photograph of her once in pink. I have it here-” He fumbled for his wallet and not finding it, gave up.

  “And the children? How were they dressed?”

  But Mowbray couldn’t face thinking about his children, and Rutledge nearly lost him again to the depths of apathy.

  “There was a woman along the road. Walking by herself,” he went on quickly. Johnston made an abrupt movement, trying to stop Rutledge. Hildebrand opened his mouth to speak and was ignored. “She had on a pink dress, this woman. Pink with lavender and rose. But it wasn’t your wife. It was someone else. Did you see her? Did you speak to her?”

  But Mowbray’s head was back in the cradle of his hands. He was weeping silently.

  “God damn it!” Hildebrand exploded. “You’ll muddle the waters worse than they are-”

  “I didn’t
agree to this line of questioning!” Johnston began at the same instant.

  “Hildebrand. Send the man in the corner there to bring that dress to us. I want to show it to Mowbray.”

  “No, that’s out of order, I won’t-”

  “I’ve got to consider the ramifications if he should identify it-we don’t know-” Johnston was blustering. “I can’t follow your reasoning!”

  “I want the dress,” Rutledge said. “Send the man for it!”

  “It’s on your head!” Hildebrand retorted. ”Do you hear me?”

  But in the end he relented. And the heavyset constable, relief visible on his face, diffidently strode past them and was gone.

  They stood in angry, volatile silence while he was away. Mowbray’s weeping had stopped, and he seemed to be asleep where he sat, his breathing very irregular and harsh, as if dreams haunted him. Then suddenly he started into full wakefulness, crying out in anguish, throwing out his hands as if to ward off what had come out of the depths of his mind.

  “As ye’ll be doing one day!” Hamish reminded Rutledge, chilling his blood.

  Mowbray turned and begged, “Where are my children? Have you seen my children? Oh, God, I don’t know where to look for them anymore.”

  The constable returned at that instant, breaking the spell that had held the witnesses in stunned thrall. He carried a carefully wrapped bundle in his hands and looked first to Hildebrand before passing it on to Rutledge.

  Rutledge opened it, concentrating on the string and the knot, on the folds that led inward, until he held a garment within the white sheets of tissue paper, dark against their paleness. After a moment, without arranging the dress or the paper, he went to kneel on the cold, hard floor in front of Mowbray.

  “Will you look at this?” he asked gently, making no attempt to touch the man, who was staring blindly into nothingness again.

  It was some while before he coaxed Mowbray into glancing down at the dress he held out like an offering to some vacant god.

  Mowbray frowned as if he couldn’t make out what it was, much less recognize it. But Rutledge was very patient. He could feel his feet and knees beginning to ache from the awkward position, but he kept himself steady and quiet, offering no distraction.

  After a time Mowbray reached out a work-hardened finger and touched the fabric of the dress as if testing to see if it was real. Lightly, not with interest so much as his inability to decide what it was. Then he saw that it had a shoulder, a sleeve-a collar-and knew.

  “I thought the bombs killed her. I wasn’t there when it happened. I was in France, Captain Banner was telling me I had to go to London. That something had happened. I think they took me by car to the port. It was raining and dark and I couldn’t feel anything-not even in the service in the chapel-”

  The dark bloodstains were visible now, black and stiff, a long soaked patch and the splatters, like black dots on the cloth with no attempt to place them becomingly, no sense of artistry, only marks of the intensity of the attack.

  “They wouldn’t open the casket and let me see her. They said I shouldn’t. Was this what she was wearing, then? Is- oh, God, it must be her blood!” He recoiled, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as if to keep them away from the horror. “I wanted to hold her again and they wouldn’t let me- they didn’t tell me there was so much blood!”

  “Stop this,” Johnston cried, in nearly as much horror as Mowbray. “It’s inhumanly cruel, it’s-you’ve got to stop!”

  He came forward, pulling at Rutledge’s shoulders, forcing him backward. Hildebrand, swearing, was trying to tell the constable to get back into that room, damn it! Their voices echoed in the cramped space, loud and frightened.

  Rutledge threw off Johnston’s grip, kept his balance by a miracle of muscle and tendon, and protected the dress from the floor. Mowbray, looking in amazement from one to the other, as if startled into brief sanity, said quite clearly, “That’s not the pink she liked! Who gave that to her? Was it him? Was it the man with her?” He fingered it again, puzzled. “It’s the wrong color, I tell you- I knew when I saw her it was the wrong color!”

  For an instant Rutledge thought Mowbray was going to lunge at his throat and choke him, but it was the dress the hands were reaching for, groping, clutching, then holding it up, peering at it in the dimness, trying to see, and turning toward the door, toward Hildebrand, who’d arrested him.

  “It’s not hers, it’s a trick! She’s smaller than this, I know my own wife’s clothes! Why did the Hun want to kill her, she was never any harm to anybody, never an unkind word! I’ll make him pay, see if I don’t! I’ll kill every one of the bastards I can put hand to, I’ll grind him into the mud-pound until there’s no face left, and keep on pounding until you can’t tell brains from earth. I swear it to God, I do!”

  Hildebrand managed to get the dress out of his grip without ripping it, and Johnston tried to push him back to the cot, while Rutledge stood there and watched the spate of words he’d released.

  They hadn’t cleared Mowbray of murder. He may not have killed his wife, the dead woman might well be Margaret Tarlton, but he’d just described in passionate, intense detail the way the dead woman had died.

  It took time to settle him down again, but when the adrenaline finally subsided and he had some small grip again on his surroundings, he sank back into the same posture they’d found him in, rocking himself with the pain and the uncertainty, as if he had no recollection of the dress, the men around him, or tensions so taut that Hamish was warning Rutledge to go- go!

  But he stayed, walked back down the passage with Hildebrand and Johnston berating him in vicious terms, spilling out their own shock and horror in a tirade that left them both breathless and stumbling over each other’s words without noticing it.

  Rutledge stopped at the door to the front room, and turned.

  “It may have been unorthodox,” he said coldly. “It was most certainly necessary. There’s a possibility he saw Margaret Tarlton alive-and killed her thinking she was his wife.” You sacrifice the man for the woman -”Or even more likely, came across her dead body. Which may explain why he was so quick to believe the charges against him. Because Margaret Tarlton’s not in London, not in Gloucestershire, and not in Sherborne. You tell me where she is-and why we can’t find her. There’s a death certificate for Mrs. Mowbray, but it’s Miss Tarlton who’s missing! Can’t you understand what I’m telling you?”

  “You’re not going to turn my case into a circus, I’ll have you recalled first-”

  “How can I build any reasonable defense after what we just heard-”

  “That’s beside the point,” Rutledge said. “I’m not interested in solving your problems, I’m interested in what’s at the bottom of this murder. I’m interested in saving that poor devil if he’s innocent and convicting him if he’s guilty. I want to find answers to the riddle of who’s lying in that grave in your churchyard-and why she’s there. I believe I’m on the right track. If you won’t help me prove I’m right, then for God’s sake, show me where I’m wrong.”

  Johnston said, “You forced my client to all but convict himself out of his own mouth, before witnesses! I don’t see how that’s supposed to save him!”

  “Did you listen at all to what he was saying? That the dress in Hildebrand’s hands isn’t Mrs. Mowbray’s color or size! But Elizabeth Napier swears it’s Margaret Tarlton’s color and size. If we were wrong about his victim, can’t you see that we may also be wrong about his part in her death?’

  “Are you claiming that it’s my investigation that’s at fault? By God!”

  Rutledge could feel frustration battling his need for air and space. He said, “No. We’re all in this muddle together, Hildebrand. Only, if we’re wrong at the end of it, it will be Mowbray who pays for any blunders we’ve made, not you or I.”

  “And what do we do about those wretched children, then? Answer me that-pretend they never existed, and hope to hell we’re right?”

  The door behind
Rutledge opened suddenly, bringing in a sweep of air because the outer door was also standing wide.

  A breathless sergeant, red-faced and muddy, said over Rutledge’s shoulder, “Inspector Hildebrand, sir? We’ve found a body, sir. I think-you’d best come and see it!”

  15

  Rutledge drove. Hildebrand sat in the seat beside him while Sergeant Wilkins occupied the space that Hamish considered his own.

  That made Rutledge edgy. If he turned around, would Hamish be there in the shadows beside the sergeant? Or had the sergeant unwittingly exorcized his fellow passenger?

  Hildebrand sensed his uneasiness and attacked. “Rather throws your theory into a cocked hat, doesn’t it?”

  “I won’t know until we get there.”

  Hildebrand laughed. “Yes, that’s it, slip off the hook. You’ve done bloody little else since you got here!” Then, remembering the presence of his sergeant, he added to the man, “Tell me again. Slowly this time!”

  The sergeant repeated the story he had spilled out in Hildebrand’s office, the words tumbling over each other in frantic haste. His voice was calmer now, as he ordered his thoughts and remembered details. “We’d broadened the search, like you’d said, and it was that young chap, Fenton, who saw the earth seemed different in the one place, sunken like, as if something had been buried and the soil had settled in around it. Well, he began to dig a bit, thinking it might be somebody’s old dog or the like, and instead he comes up with a muddy edge of cloth. Appeared to be part of a blanket at first, then we could see the corner, with a bit of lining. A coat, we thought. You could see the color, a dark blue. Then the white of bone. We stopped there and I came for you straightaway. Not wanting to disturb anything before you’d seen it like it was.”