Wings of Fire (20 page)

“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.

Rutledge drove thoughtfully back to Borcombe, and didn’t realize, until he stepped around the men seated on their sunwarmed 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 Wilkins 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.

“Rutledge?” the stranger demanded. “Inspector Rutledge?”

“I’m Rutledge, yes.”

“Inspector Harvey,” the man retorted with equal curtness. “I’ve come to speak to you.”

Swearing silently at the timing of Harvey’s unexpected appearance—splitting headaches were not the frame of mind in which to conduct painstaking interviews with choleric Cor
nishmen—Rutledge led the way to the small parlor, where today sunlight tried fretfully to light the gloom. “We can have privacy here,” he said, holding open the door. And advantage to me, on my own ground, he thought to himself. It appeared that he well might have need of it.

Harvey followed, still huffing from the stairs.

He was a bluff man, neither tall nor short, but heavy in build, with a red complexion and thinning dark hair. There was an air of having his own way about him, as if on his own ground he was used to being heeded, and his advice or instructions followed. There couldn’t be, Rutledge thought to himself, many police matters in this part of Cornwall which might draw the attention of London. What there was in the way of crime and mischief would be comfortably divided between the police and the local magistrates.

In short, tread carefully.

“I’m glad to meet you finally,” Rutledge said, holding out his hand. Harvey looked pointedly at it and walked on into the room, refusing to take it.

“Finally is the key word here, isn’t it?” he asked, keeping his voice flat.

“You were in Plymouth when I came. And you’ve only just returned, I think. Dawlish told me you were somewhere on the moors, talking to a farmer about wild dogs attacking his domestic animals.”

“So I was. It doesn’t mean I’m blind to what’s happening. I don’t like strangers meddling on my patch. Not without my keeping an eye on them or having regular reports from them to keep me in the picture. Looks bad when I know less than my constable, and less than London. I don’t see what’s wrong with our initial investigation into the three deaths in question, and I don’t see why you haven’t long since come and gone with a clean bill of health on my desk to clear the air in Borcombe.”

“As a matter of fact, nothing appears to be wrong with your initial inquiries. I believe that Stephen FitzHugh died as you said he did. In a fall. It’s the other deaths that interest me. And I accept them as suicides.”

“Just because Miss Marlowe turned out to be famous? Is that’s what this is in aid of? Sending a detective inspector all this way? Playing merry hell with my reputation and her family’s reputation, all to suit the wigs in London who realized too late they’d missed the opportunity of seeing their names in the
Times
in connection with her death? Or are you in fact looking for a wee success to set off the Yard’s regrettable failure to stop this knife-wielding idiot on the loose in London? Oh, yes, I’ve seen the papers—nobody has a clue! Now the local people tell me you’re trying to find a link down here with Master Richard Cheney, the boy lost on the moors. Ridiculous doesn’t cover it!”

“That’s because what you hear from your own people is not in any way the point of my investigation. But if that’s what they’d prefer to think, then I’d prefer to let them.”

Harvey all but snorted. “What I’m asking you, man, is to tell
me
what you’re after, not what you want the villagers to believe!” Harvey was feeding on his own sense of betrayal, letting it fuel his anger. It was a technique used sometimes by men wanting their own way—make life unpleasant enough for the other party, and he’d be too busy defending himself to attack.

Rutledge considered his own tactics, then said, “Nicholas Cheney had a brother who’s been missing since he was five. We presently have no way of knowing if the boy is dead or alive. If alive, he may be an heir. If dead, there’s a possibility it wasn’t accidental. That he was deliberately murdered.”

“By whom, pray? And if the family was concerned about him still being alive after the search was called off and the posters brought in no responses, or later was wanting to know something more about his death, why didn’t they come to my predecessor? Or to me?”

“Would you have listened? Or would you have assured them they could safely believe what they’d rather believe, that the boy died of simple exposure? Any new search was bound to lead to the same conclusion.”

Harvey bristled. “I don’t tell comfortable lies, whatever
you’re used to in London. And I know how to conduct a search.”

“I’m sure you don’t tell comfortable lies,” Rutledge agreed. “And given the facts at your disposal, where would you start searching? From what I can see, there was very little evidence of foul play, unless some passing gypsies carried the boy off, or someone wandering on the moors stumbled on him and killed him for reasons of his own. And the officer in charge examined those possibilities very thoroughly at the time Richard went missing. Even when you took over here, you had no reason to suspect more than some sort of tragic accident. What has changed now is the way we’re looking at the disappearance, and that in itself may prove to be the key.”

“And what is that, pray? He wandered off during a family picnic. And was lost. And is long dead, most likely, because the moors are unforgiving. Why should I have raised false hopes? And as to the present cases, would it have prevented Miss Olivia Marlowe from taking her own life? Or Mr. Nicholas from doing the same? Would it have straightened Mr. Stephen’s cracked neck? I think not!” His own neck was red to his collar with the power of his anger.

“No. But it might have righted a very old wrong. It might have revealed secrets that the family itself didn’t know the answers to. It might make it clearer to us whose will took precedence, and at what time. Who has the right to sell Trevelyan Hall, and who has none.”

“It was my understanding—still is—that Miss Olivia and Mr. Nicholas had nearly identical wills. In that event, I don’t quite see legal quibbling over which is which. And I can tell you that Mr. Nicholas was a very straightforward man, very able, concerned about his responsibilities to the church and the village. Fought in the war, did his duty like the gentleman he was—”

Hamish, interrupting, wanted to know what being a gentleman had to do with fighting in France. Rutledge ignored him.

“—and in my opinion had long ago put to rest the question of his brother’s death. Never spoke of it to me in the
past fifteen years. And never spoke to my predecessor about it either, or it’d have been in the record. Which leaves us with Miss Olivia, and I don’t know that I’d put much past
her
!”

It was so different from any other comments he’d heard about Olivia that Rutledge was surprised.

Harvey smiled with sour satisfaction. “We’re not all clods here in the wilds of Cornwall, whatever London may have led you to believe.”

“No one has suggested that you might be,” Rutledge said, moving with great care now. “Tell me what reasons you have to back up your opinion.”

“Read her books, man! My wife is a decent woman, she’d never so much as feel or think what Miss Marlowe thought fit to put down baldly in print! It’s unwomanly and disturbing. A mind capable of such immodesty is in my estimation capable of the worst in human degradation.”

He’d spoken with such venom that Rutledge found himself wondering what Olivia had done to raise Harvey’s hackles. He thought he knew. She’d been Miss Marlowe of the Hall, quiet and unassuming, someone he could patronize, the cripple who was content to be seldom seen and not often heard. A tidy round peg in her tidy round hole, like Mrs. Harvey. And then the truth about O. A. Manning had come out, and Harvey had been made to look or feel a fool for misjudging her. That would be unforgivable, and he’d judge her with a vengeance now. Rutledge quelled the urge to rise to Olivia’s defense, his own temper held on a tight rein.

Harvey had already moved on to his next grievance. “Now tell me what this new evidence you spoke of might be. Those rags they found out on the moors? You’ll never prove they belonged to the boy. Could have been put there any time in the years before or since. Don’t they teach you your business in London?”

“Quite well,” Rutledge said through his teeth. “And I intend to continue going about it until I’m satisfied.”

Harvey was furious, but something about the other man’s voice, the steel in it, the natural air of command that came with years in France, made him stop short and reexamine his
opponent. His first impression had been of an ill, weary man with no stamina for the course. Someone who could be bullied and sent back to London with his tail between his legs. Stake your ground, wield your temper like a club, and he’d soon apologize and be off.

Instead he’d come up against hard core, and more experience than he’d expected. Harvey tried to think if he’d heard the name Rutledge before in connection with any of the major cases the Yard had handled. It rattled him more that he couldn’t. Knowing what Rutledge might be capable of gave him more range to push. Not knowing left him in pitch dark on a steep cliff.

Rutledge, meanwhile, was making his own assessment. Of a man who did his job thoroughly and properly, but lacked imagination to do it cleverly. That was going to matter a great deal.

After a swift, appraising silence, both men moved to chairs and sat down, as if the confrontation was finished and the conference begun.

As a form of peace offering, Rutledge said, “Apart from your natural disinclination to see a case opened again for no sound reason—and I understand that, I’d dislike it myself—were you quite serious when you said that Miss Marlowe was capable of anything? Any degradation. Would you for instance include murder in that list?”

And then Harvey surprised him a second time by vacillating. “Yes and no.”

“If you discount her poetry, and her reputation there, what gave you the feeling that she was different?” Or was it all hindsight, the willingness to believe that Olivia hadn’t hoodwinked him completely…

Mulling it over, Harvey said, “It was not something I could put my finger on, mind you. It was more her interest in the subject of crime that made me uneasy. People, most especially women, don’t think to ask the questions she asked, unless there’s worry in the mind, or fear. Or even depravity. Now in a pub talking to a man about my work, I’ll be asked a hundred questions, from how I know I’ve got the right mis
creant to whether I’ve watched a hanging. That’s different, it’s curiosity, the same as he’d ask an undertaker or even a glassblower about his trade. Idle conversation. You can tell the man knows naught about it, and you could give him lies and he’d be just as satisfied.”

Rutledge nodded. The farmers and tradesmen and lorry drivers he’d fought with had often found it odd to be in the same trench as a policeman. As if he viewed all mankind with innate suspicion. Expecting the worst.

“So it was different when Miss Olivia asked me what made a man take another man’s life. What goaded him, whether he was evil by birth and nature or only caught up in a web of happenstance he couldn’t fight his way clear of. Whether murdering ran in families or wasn’t inheritable.” He paused. Rutledge realized that Harvey had kept this conversation buried deep inside himself for a very long time. And was only reluctantly revealing it now. Because he was a fair man, whatever he lacked in cleverness. “Whether a murderer could truly repent and change. And her as fair and innocent looking as the day she were born! I didn’t know about the poetry, not then, but I can tell you it gave me the willies, because she was that intense I knew it wasn’t idle talk, meeting the new man in charge and making polite noises about his job. She wanted—she wanted something
more
. And I couldn’t have told you on peril of my life what it was.”