Todd, Charles (44 page)

"Thank God!" Rutledge felt a wave of relief wash over him. If she had killed herself, it was because she hadn't succeeded.

But Hamish said, "Ye canna' be sure it's suicide. Yon Evering might ha' killed her, to be rid of her."

"There's the letter in her pocket..."

He watched as the distant isles grew larger almost incrementally until the smudge divided itself into many parts, and then the individual isles were visible, spread out before him on the sea.

"I've never been out here," Dunne said. "There's hardly any crime. A constable looks in from time to time, as a matter of course, but it's not really our patch. Pretty, aren't they, like the ruins of the ancient kingdom of Lyonesse. There are stories along many parts of the English coast about church bells ringing out to sea, where there's nothing to be seen. Even as far as Essex, I think."

But Rutledge was urging the boat forward, forcing himself to sit still and wait.

At last they reached the small harbor and touched the quay as the master brought the boat in close.

"Wait here," Dunne ordered him as he leaped on the quay after Rutledge.

The two men took the track leading up to the road at a forced pace, and finally Dunne said, "Here, slow down. I'm half out of breath."

Rutledge waited for him to catch him up, and then turned toward the house.

"That's the Evering place?"

"Yes. See, the road's just ahead. We cross that, and follow the shell path beyond the arbor." Rutledge could hear his own heart beating. The sound was loud in the stillness.

"Peaceful, isn't it?" Dunne said as he turned back to look at the panorama behind him. "And that view—you'd never tire of it. Beats the farm, I'm afraid. And I thought nothing could."

Rutledge was ahead of him, moving fast through the open arbor gate without seeing it, his mind already walking through Evering's front door. By the time Dunne had caught up with him, Rutledge had lifted the knocker and let it fall.

He realized he was holding his breath as he waited.

No one came to answer his summons.

"He's taken the boat out. He went after her. The housekeeper, Mariah Pendennis, must have family in the village. We'll try there." He led the way again, and as they passed the small burial ground of the Everings, he said to Dunne, "That's the stone for the son killed in the Boer War."

"Burned to death, did you say? Horrid way to die. Ah, I spy a rooftop. That must be the village."

But Rutledge's gaze had gone to the small cove. He could just see the mouth of it from here. Another fifty feet—and there was Evering's boat, swinging idly on its anchor.

"You go on to the village, and ask for the woman who works for Evering. Mariah Pendennis. I'm going back to the house."

"What if she's not there?"

"Bring back a responsible man. We'll need him."

Dunne nodded and set off without another word. Rutledge thought,
He's a good man.

He turned back, past the burial ground and the chapel, down the road to the path to the house. The last hundred yards he was trotting, though he knew it must be too late.

This time as he went through the open gate he stopped to look at it.

The lovely piece that had formed the top of it was missing. The swans with curved necks.

He didn't bother to knock again. He tried the door, and it was off the latch. For an instant, he hesitated on the threshold, dreading what he knew now must be here.

He walked into the parlor, and it was empty. The dining room too echoed to his footsteps, the bare boards creaking with age as he crossed to the window and looked out.

The study was next, a handsome room with photographs of the various islands hung between the windows, the shelves across the way filled with a variety of mechanical toys. Rutledge barely glanced at them. Evering lay in front of the desk, crumpled awkwardly, the handle of a kitchen knife protruding from his chest. And in his hands, as if shoved there as an afterthought, were the swans from the gate, bloody now.

Rutledge knelt to feel the man's pulse, but there was no doubt he was dead. He had been for some time.

Hamish said, "When she came, he didna' think she was sae angry. A plain woman in a plain bonnet, ye ken. He must ha' thought she was no match for him. And the knife in the folds of her skirt."

It could have happened that way. Rutledge thought it very likely had.

He went on to search for the servants' quarters, and there he found Mariah Pendennis, dead as well, this time the knife in her back as she prepared the tea things. Sugar and tea had spilled on the work table and down her apron, and a cup was smashed on the stone floor beside her, another overturned on the table. The kettle on the hob had boiled dry, blackened now above the cold hearth.

Rutledge went through the rest of the rooms, but Mariah Pendennis had been the unlucky one, unwittingly answering the door to a murderess. He couldn't find any other servants in the house.

Ronald Evering must have lost more money to the Cumberline fiasco than he could afford. Still, one man didn't require a houseful of servants. Mariah had been sufficient for his needs, with perhaps someone to help with meals and the heavier cleaning chores, and someone to take his wash and bring it back again. His needs were few, and he had got by.

Rutledge could hear Dunne, calling to him from the foyer. He came down the stairs and said, "There are two dead here. Evering and the woman who took care of him."

The man standing behind Dunne sharply drew in a breath.

Dunne said, "I wouldn't have thought—" He left the sentence unfinished.

"She managed it because they didn't suspect her. Evering had no way of knowing who she was or why she was here. A poor woman, harmless." He led the way to the study.

"What's that in his hands?" Dunne asked, crouching down for a closer look.

"It's from the gate outside," the man with him said. "Whatever is it doing
here
?"

The closest she could come to the angel in the tithe barn.
Aloud, he said, "A gesture of some sort?"

"What are these?" Dunne gestured to the collection of toys behind Rutledge. "Odd things to have in a study. My grandson has one like that." He gestured to a small golden bird on an enameled box. "He's allowed to play with it of a Sunday, with his grandmother watching."

"Mr. Evering was that fond of all manner of mechanical things," the man from the village answered him. "When he got a new one, he was like a child, playing with it by the hour. Where's Mariah, then?" Rutledge directed them to the kitchen. He stood where he was, looking down on Evering.

It had come full circle, what this man had set in motion with a few lies. Now he was dead, and Betty Richards with him. She would be buried beside the brother who never acknowledged her. And if Mrs. Quarles read the brief account in a newspaper of a drowning in Cornwall, she might guess why...

There were no more Everings. The cycle would end here, in this house overlooking the sea.

But there was Padgett still to be dealt with.

"Ye can no mair take him in than ye could this one," Hamish told Rutledge. "Their hands are bloody, but ye canna' prove it."

"He sent that poor woman here to confront Evering, as surely as if he brought her to the door."

Hamish said, "If she wasna' her brother's blood, she wouldna' ha' come here. She would ha' stayed with yon Irish lass until she was settled in her own mind what to do with hersel'."

The seeds of these murders had been sown in the way Betty Richards had gone to the bakery and done as much damage as possible with her bare hands. And the seeds of her death were sown when in despair she threw herself into the pond at the Home Farm.

"I don't think she was avenging her brother," Rutledge said slowly. "I think it was avenging the life she was most comfortable with, that died with him."

Hamish said grimly, "It's too bad she didna' include yon inspector in her vengeance."

The Scots, who for centuries had raised blood feuds to a fine art, were not as shocked by them as the more civilized English.

"He'll bring himself down. He won't need a Betty Richards for that."

Back in London, Rutledge went to see Davis Penrith in prison, where he was awaiting trial. Fighting against the sense of the walls closing in on him, Rutledge told the man what had become of Evering.

"I can't say I'm heartbroken," Penrith told him. "The law couldn't touch him. And I'm to hang because of him."

"Hardly that. You needn't have acted on his information."

"Yes," he said bitterly. "It always comes down to that, doesn't it? A choice. The fact is, no one ever chooses well in the throes of jealousy and anger."

"Why did Quarles burn Lieutenant Evering alive? It's the one piece of the puzzle I've not uncovered."

"I won't burden my wife and children with that. I didn't kill the man. I just didn't report what I suspected. I gave Quarles the benefit of the doubt. I wasn't even there when it was done. I didn't see his hands until months later, when they were healing. Whatever it was that drove him, he paid for it in pain and suffering. Let there be an end to it." In spite of his denials, he looked away, as if ashamed.

"Something happened on that train."

"And whatever it was died with the men on it. Now Quarles is gone. I will be soon."

It was all that Penrith could be brought to say.

Leaving the prison, walking out through the gates and into the bright air, Rutledge found himself in a mood that he couldn't shake. Hamish was railing at him, dragging up the war, unrelenting in his fury. It was a symptom of Rutledge's own emotional desolation. His head seemed to be close to bursting with the sound of that soft Scots voice, and memories that rose to the surface unbidden, as clear as if he were in France again, and seeing what he had hoped never to see then or now.

He drove aimlessly for a time, only half aware of what he was doing, until he found himself in Chelsea. In the next street was the house where Meredith Channing lived.

Rutledge went there, got out of the motorcar, and walked to the door.

Standing in front of it, his hand raised to the brass knocker, he thought,
I should go and find Frances.

But she would ask too many questions. And the blackness coming down wouldn't wait.

The door opened, and he heard Meredith Channing say, "Why, Ian, what—" She stopped. "Come in. What's wrong? How can I help?"

"Will you drive with me? Anywhere. Kew. Windsor Great Park. Richmond. I don't care. Just—sit there and say nothing. I don't want to be alone just now."

"Let me fetch my coat."

She was gone less than a minute, but he had already decided he'd made a mistake in coming here. He was turning away when she took his arm and said, "I'm here. Shall I drive?"

He couldn't have said afterward where they had gone or for how long. When the black clouds of despair began, very slowly, to recede, Rutledge found he was embarrassed and turned his head to look at the passing scene, wondering what he could say that could possibly explain what he had done in coming to this woman, of all people.

She seemed to sense a difference in the silence that filled the motorcar, and she took the first step for him. "I should very much like a cup of tea."

The panacea for everything the English had to face. Grateful to her, he said, "Yes. Not a bad idea."

It was one of the worst spells he'd had in a very long time. He wasn't sure whether it was the claustrophobia that had surrounded him in Penrith's narrow cell, or the blow on the head when his motorcar had missed the bend in the road. But when did Hamish need an excuse? It was always Rutledge himself who looked for one. Who tried to pretend there had to be a reason for madness.

There was a tearoom in the next village, and they stopped.

Rutledge found he was hungry and ordered a plate of sandwiches as well as their tea.

Taking off her coat and settling it on the third chair at their table, Meredith Channing said, "Elise told me you'd stopped in for one night, on your way to somewhere else in Somerset."

"Yes, they put me up."

"Her father was looking for you. Elise didn't know at the time. He missed you at your hotel."

Rutledge frowned. "When was this?"

"I don't know. Apparently no one answered the telephone, and so there was no opportunity to leave a message."

"I'll make a point of getting in touch."

She changed the subject, talking about the weather, pouring the tea when it came, offering nothing more demanding than quiet conversation, never expecting him to say more than he felt like saying. It was a kindness.

When they left the tearoom, he found the courage to say, "I must apologize for what happened today. Sometimes—" He broke off and shook his head, unable to explain. To her, to anyone.

She smiled. "I'm glad I was there. Would you like to drive now?"

He took the wheel, and in another half hour they were back in Chelsea. He had no memory of how he'd got there earlier. Or how, for that matter, he had negotiated the streets of London without hitting something or someone. It was a frightening thought.