Wings of Fire ir-2

by Charles Todd

  The corner of silver puzzled her for a time, then suddenly she laughed. “Of course! One Christmas, Rosamund gave us all matching frames for photographs. Leather and silver, for traveling. She said we might choose our own photographs, and I had one of Rosamund and Nicholas I put in mine.”

  “What did Nicholas and Olivia keep in theirs?”

  “Nicholas wanted one of his parents. It was in his bedroom, for a time. I don’t know what Olivia chose, but she said she wouldn’t be traveling much, and might like one of George in India, because he’d done her traveling for her. I remember Rosamund hugging her, pain in her face.”

  “And the leather?”

  “Well, Olivia kept a leather notebook by her bed. There was a strap that closed it, and a small lock. I thought it was a journal. But she said no, it was for thoughts in the night. I didn’t understand what she meant, until I discovered she was a poet.” She picked it up, turning it in her fingers. “How sad that she burned it. If that’s what it was.”

  “She? Do you think Olivia did this?”

  “Who else? Cormac was the first one down here, he might have taken things he didn’t want us to find. Personal things. Something to do with his relationship to Olivia. But somehow I don’t picture him out on a hillside in the dark, with a fire blazing. The smart thing would have been to carry them back to London and burn them there, where no one would notice.”

  “Why in the dark? Why do you think this was done at night?”

  Rachel shrugged. “It has that kind of feeling. Clandestine?”

  Next, he took her into the house and up to Olivia’s room. She entered it reluctantly, looking around her as if somehow she’d see the other woman standing silently in the shadows. He opened the closet and began to work. She watched, trusting him in spite of herself to explain when he was ready, but she started when one of the canes fell to the floor with a loud clatter, indicating that she was very tense. He continued to remove boxes from the back of the closet without a word, then pulled out the shelf, and carried it to the window.

  Rachel followed him, and bent over him, curiosity aroused, their heads nearly touching as he worked, using his penknife carefully to draw out the strip of wood, then the cotton. Finally, on the windowsill as before lay the row of small gold objects, sparkling in the sun, telling a tale without words.

  Rachel gasped, moving them about in turn with her fingertip.

  “That’s Rosamund’s ring. Her father gave it to her when she was very young. And a silver box of wax, so that she could seal all her letters. She wore it on her little finger, sometimes, even when she’d outgrown it. And I remember Anne wearing that locket! She’d let me look at the pictures, if I was quiet in church. Were these Richard’s? The cuff buttons? Olivia used to put them in for him, to help Nanny-he couldn’t be still for an instant. And that fob’s Nicholas’, he was so proud of it. James gave him his first watch, and Rosamund gave him the fob. It was a beautiful watch. Stephen let me have it-when-when he was going through Nicholas’ room. The fob had been in the family for ages. I thought perhaps he’d taken that. And that pipe cleaner is James’, he carried it everywhere he went. I always thought it was much too handsome to use in a pipe, and he laughed when I told him so. I don’t know about the crucifix. Was that the one Susannah mentioned? Brian’s? I never saw Cormac wearing one.”

  ‘‘Yes, it has Brian’s initials on the back. See?”

  He turned it over, and she peered at it for a moment. “They all have initials on them,” he told her. “The mark of the owner.”

  “How very odd. Where did you find these? Surely not inside that board! And where did they come from? Olivia must have had the ring and the locket, but surely not Richard’s and James’ things. Or Brian’s. Cormac might have wanted that crucifix.”

  “They were hidden in the board, just as I showed you. One fell out-the locket-when I was going through the closet looking for Olivia’s papers. After a time I discovered the others.”

  “But why were they hidden? I don’t understand!”

  “They’re trophies of the dead. I thought that Olivia had collected them from each of her victims. Something they’d treasured and she’d coveted. Now, I don’t know.” He picked up the board again, and the wood that slotted so perfectly into it. “It was Nicholas who worked in wood. It was his skill that must have made this hiding place. I realize that now. Not Olivia’s. And it was Nicholas who led the hunt for the crucifix. Susannah mentioned that. What better place to keep them safe than Olivia’s closet? She wouldn’t be likely, would she, to go moving shelves around on her own.”

  There was pain in her eyes. “You can’t think-but there’s the fob. Why should Nicholas add a trophy of his own, and not one for Olivia, if he was the killer. If he killed her before he took his own life?” Her face begged him to tell her it couldn’t be true.

  “I don’t know what was burned in the fire. But could Olivia have carried things out there, burned them, and come back into the house without Nicholas knowing what she was doing? Especially if it was done at night? Someone made very certain that a number of things were destroyed. Secretly. It would have been easy for him to go out there. At night, while Olivia slept.”

  “No, not Nicholas!”

  “Rachel, Olivia couldn’t have gone out there without his knowing.”

  “She could have! He went into the village, to the church, to visit the rector, to have a meal at the inn, talk to people. She could have done it then.”

  “All right. But the fire-and the letter-tell me that one of them knew that it was all over. Nicholas couldn’t possibly have written to you if Olivia planned all this on her own. If he hadn’t known what was about to happen.”

  She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He may- something might have been worrying him-he might have known, without really knowing. You do sometimes! He might have-suspected what she was planning. They understood each other so well.”

  “And on the moors yesterday,” he went on, ignoring her interjection, “they found what looked like a small boy’s clothing. Wrapped in oiled cloth, to keep it from rotting too soon. That means someone stripped the boy’s body. Took away the clothing that might have made it easier to identify him. That’s planning, Rachel. Someone planned his disappearance!”

  “If you found his clothing, you must have found his bones,” she pointed out, desperate now.

  “No. I told you, the body had been stripped. If you’re going to that trouble, you don’t leave the body and the clothing in the same hole. It would make no sense, would it? Next point. I have a witness who says that Brian FitzHugh was talking to someone on the beach just before he died. Can you see Olivia trying to make her way down through those rocks? Wouldn’t Brian have gone up to meet her, to save her the effort? Finally, if Nicholas was jealous of Rosamund’s remarriage to Brian, he wouldn’t be eager to see Thomas Chambers move in to fill FitzHugh’s shoes either. And it looked very much as if that could happen. But Chambers lived in Plymouth, not Borcombe. Nicholas couldn’t reach him. He could stop his mother from taking a new husband. In the grave, she wouldn’t betray him again. She was his.”

  She backed over to the bed, her eyes still on his face, her own very bleak, her mind listening, whatever her heart was denying. She sank down on the edge of the coverlet, and as she did, he caught that same illusive hint of perfume again, and so did she. Straightening hastily, she moved across the room to the desk instead. As far from the fragrance as she could get. “You can’t prove it!” Rachel told him defiantly. “You can’t prove any of this. And I won’t let you ruin Nicholas’ memory with speculation and doubt. Olivia was famous. They won’t let you tear her down either, wait and see. You’ll end up ruining yourself. But I’m going to find out what drives you so hard, and I’m going to stop you, before I’ve lost my own way, and start believing this filth. This was a close, happy family! Why do you want to destroy it?”

  “I want the truth,” he said tiredly.

  “No, you don’t,” she told him cold
ly. “You’ve come out of the war a broken man, I can read that much in your face. You need to prove yourself again. And you think that the dead are easier targets than the living. All right, I don’t know what made Olivia want to kill herself. I expect it was suffering that drove her to it. And I don’t know why Nicholas wanted to die. But I’d rather go through the rest of my life wondering than lose him entirely. You don’t have anything to lose, do you? You’ve never loved anyone enough to give yourself for them. I must have been mad, asking for Scotland Yard to be sent down here. I believed in justice, and you only believe in revenge!”

  She was moving before she’d finished, catching him off balance, and was out the door, slamming it behind her. He could hear her running down the gallery, almost stumbling in blind haste.

  He didn’t need Hamish’s warning. Remembering the stairs, remembering how Stephen had fallen on the worn treads, Rut-ledge swore and was across the room in four swift strides, going after her.

  He overtook her at the top of the steps, catching her arm in a fierce grip, swinging her around to face him.

  “I’m not trying to ruin Nicholas! Or Olivia! There’s murder here, damn it. You’re an intelligent woman, you could see it for yourself if you weren’t so bloody wrapped up in your emotions!” he told her, furious with her, furious with himself.

  Rachel didn’t cry. Where protecting Nicholas was concerned, she was braver than most of the men who wore medals from the war. He hoped that Nicholas was worth it-and feared that he wasn’t.

  “Don’t talk to me about emotions!” she said, her voice like ice. “It’s Olivia, isn’t it? You don’t want her to be a killer, you don’t want all that poetry to come out of darkness and hate. Those damned poems blind you, and everybody else. Olivia was a witch, she had a withered leg, and yet she was able to take Nicholas down with her into depression and death! She could kill her own sister and her own half brother, and give an overdose of laudanum to her mother, and still you want to see her as saint! Her sufferings are just another part of the myth, her writing something you wrestle with because she’s a woman and respect because you once thought it was a man’s, and women shouldn’t write about lying in bed with a lover or standing knee-deep in your own ordure in a trench, or how near we all are to hell! But you wonder, don’t you, what kind of lover she’d have been, and where she might have learned the tricks that mattered. Well, ask Cormac. Maybe he’ll tell you what she was like!”

  Stung, he let her go, dropping his hand from her arm, and she turned, walking down the stairs with her head high and her shoulders straight with anger. Fighting for breath and control even while she still seethed with the fury consuming her.

  At the foot of the steps she turned to look back up at him and said, “Now you know how I felt in Olivia’s bedroom! I’ve given you a taste of your own poison, and you found it hard to swallow, didn’t you? I don’t know if a word of what I’ve just said is true, and I don’t really care. But now you can see for yourself what lies a twisted imagination might come up with. How easily you can twist the truth to debase other people’s emotions. I loved Nicholas, and I mourn the man he was. And I won’t believe your lies about him. You can think what you like about Olivia. I’m going back to London, if I can find Cormac and ask him to take me. But I promise you this: I’ll ruin you if you ruin Nicholas.”

  “Rachel, listen to me-”

  “No. I’ve already listened to you, and I think it’s all hog-wash. What you think is your own business. What you do about what you think is very much my business. Consider yourself warned.” She walked to the door.

  “Wait!” he commanded, already on his way down the stairs.

  “Why? To be insulted again? Or worse still, hurt? I can’t think how you could have been Peter Ashford’s friend. He was such a gentle, good man.”

  “I’ll make a bargain with you.”

  She laughed. “I don’t bargain with the devil.”

  Ignoring that, he said, “Help me find out the truth. And I swear to you, if Nicholas is guilty-no, wait, let me finish-if Nicholas is the one I’m after, I’ll walk away from it, go back to London, and tell the Yard they were wrong, there was nothing further to investigate in any of the three deaths in Borcombe this spring. The past-the others-can stay buried with him.”

  Rachel stood with her back to him, the door’s handle in her hand, the door already swinging gently towards her.

  “I don’t believe you!”

  “I swear!” And he would do it. He knew that, deep down inside.

  “And if it isn’t Nicholas?”

  “Then we’ll decide what ought to be done. In fairness to the dead. All of the dead.” To O. A. Manning. To the poems that might be worse than lies.

  “I’ll think about that. And give you my answer tonight. I’ll send a message to The Three Bells.”

  The door was open now, and she went through it without looking back, the wind from the sea picking up strands of her hair and blowing them around her face. She seemed awfully slim and lonely, very small and very bereft as she moved down the steps and onto the drive, skirting his car.

  Hamish was calling him a fool for swearing to such a bargain.

  “The Yard brings in their man, you can’t turn your back on your oath, no’ for a slip of a girl that can’t see where the wind’s blowing!”

  “So you believe me now, do you?” Rutledge silently challenged Hamish. “You see I’m right.”

  “I think ye’re a damned fool, and a long way from home! What is there about witchery in a woman that touches you? Your Jean wasn’t that sort, she’s no’ the kind to spin a man’s head or set his soul on the brink. Olivia Marlowe casts a spell out of her grave, and ye’re lost!”

  “It has nothing to do with Jean. Or Olivia Marlowe,” Rutledge countered, watching Rachel’s long, clean strides as she walked towards the wood. “And it has naught to do with yon lassie, either!” Hamish retorted.

  Rutledge closed the door after Rachel before she reached the shadows of the trees and then took the stairs two at a time, to put away the articles he’d left on Olivia’s windowsill. Back into their cotton nests again, for the moment. Until he was ready to bring them out for good. His sixth sense told him he’d won in his bargain with Rachel. He hoped he was right.

  As he passed the closed door to Nicholas’ room, he said aloud, his voice rough, “You should have lived, you fool, and married her. She’d have made a better wife than any you’ll find in the grave.”

  Hamish chuckled.

  Rutledge, irritated, ignored him.

  But Hamish was in Rutledge’s own mind. And Hamish recognized what Rutledge had just admitted to Nicholas.

  That he couldn’t be guilty, or he wouldn’t have won Rachel’s heart.

  It was one of the first lessons Rutledge had learned at the Yard. That love seldom had anything to do with murder. Pity, yes. And compassion, sometimes. Even mercy, on occasion. But not love.

  And the question in this case was not whether Rachel loved Nicholas, but how Nicholas loved Rachel.

  Enough to protect her, as Cormac had suggested, or enough to use her to protect himself. Which had it been? Which way had Nicholas turned?

  As Rutledge carefully worked with the little gold trophies, he realized all at once that Nicholas might well have included himself among the dead, before swallowing his laudanum. But not Olivia. That’s why there was no trophy for Olivia. She had escaped through her poetry. He had waited too long to kill her-if that’s what he’d done, if that was what had actually happened. She’d already found her wings of fire.

  18

  Rutledge drove thoughtfully back to Borcombe, and didn’t realize, until he stepped around the men seated on their sun-warmed bench before the inn door, drinking their beer, that he’d missed his lunch.

  Hamish pointed out that the dining room had already closed.

  Which did nothing to improve Rutledge’s mood.

  He felt he was ready to start taking statements from his witnesses: Mrs. Trepol and Wi
lkins the gardener, Rachel and Cormac, Smedley, Dr. Penrith and Dr. Hawkins. Getting it on paper where he could sort it, challenge it, or use it to move forward.

  But Borcombe was a tiny place, and everyone knew everyone’s business. To speak to people, to ask them for a general picture of the family at the Hall and the events that might-or might not-impinge on matters that concerned him, stirred up talk and rumors. To ask for official statements was tantamount to providing a blueprint for exactly what he was after: old murders, not new ones. Room for Constable Dawlish and his choleric superior to raise hell with London. Bringing Bowles down on him like a cyclone, demanding to know what he meant by stirring up the county, causing problems for the Yard when it already had its hands full. Room too for Cormac to have him recalled summarily, citing harassment of a prominent family, never mind the local police.

  And he’d be forced to reveal more than he could, at the moment, defend. Publicly. But he knew he was right. All his experience at the Yard, his own intuition, the facts that he could be sure of, pointed to a long, cold-blooded series of killings that had spanned years. Cunningly planned, meticulously carried out, skillfully concealed.

  A few more days He’d have to wait, damn it! On the statements. It would be foolhardy to push on and wreck everything.

  Which merely added to his frustration, and Hamish was there, already taking advantage of it. Rutledge tried to shut him out. The clamor in his head was ferocious, and he forced himself to ignore it.

  Very well, then, he promised himself. Wait he would- until he had finally talked to the local man, Inspector Harvey, and seen the way the wind blew there. It could make a difference in his planning, he had to accept that.

  Sidestepping someone coming down the stairs as if he owned them, Rutledge settled for mentally laying out his schedule, which of the villagers should give statements first, what approach he was going to take in the questions asked, how he might draw out of each witness exactly what he wanted without arousing rampant speculation, and how fast he could accomplish the lot. There was also the dilemma of what had become of Olivia’s papers. He was going to have to find them He realized the man on the stairs was staring hard at him, eyes narrowed and angry. Rutledge looked up at him for the first time, and swiftly shelved his own thoughts.