It was possible. All too possible. Rutledge could understand Mrs.
Jones’s fears. But that would have meant he knew . . . it kept coming back to that.
Unless Jones had found the letter where she’d hidden it from him. One of Gwyneth’s sisters might have told him that the post had brought with it a letter that made Mama cry.
Hamish said, “It’s no’ likely. Still—”
Rutledge comforted Mrs. Jones as best he could, then went to make tea for her. The child was still sleeping, face flushed a little with the morning heat of the kitchen, and silky dark eyelashes sweeping her cheeks, her dark hair curling about her neck. She would be a beauty, he thought, when she was grown. Like her sister?
But now there was no Harold Quarles to tempt her. She was safe.
He found cups in the Welsh dresser, and before he could carry the tea back to the parlor, Mrs. Jones had come to stand in the door, shame written on her face.
“I am that sorry to put you to such trouble,” she began, but Rutledge cut her short.
“Drink this, if you will,” he said, setting the cup on the table and pulling out a chair for her to sit down.
“But the cat’s out of the bag,” she said wretchedly. “Now Hugh will know, and everyone else. And what am I to do about Gwynie? I can’t go to Cardiff, and I can’t send Hugh, and she’s been gone for days—”
Her face changed, her eyes suddenly haunted. “Do you think she wrote to him, Mr. Quarles, when she ran off? I’d not have thought it of her, but I haven’t seen that much of her since we sent her away. I might not know what’s in her heart now.”
A mother’s nightmare staring her in the face.
For an instant he thought the flood of tears would begin again, but she had cried herself out, and slumped in the chair at the table, so for-lorn he felt pity for her.
What could she do?
“I’ll speak to London,” he promised her, “and have the police in Wales alerted. We may be able to find her.”
It was all he could promise, and she was pathetically grateful. Reluctantly he left her there, staring into her teacup, as if the leaves in the bottom held the answer to her worries.
And for all he knew, they did.
When Rutledge left the Jones house, he turned toward the church, intent on finding out where the organist, Brunswick, lived.
Just before he reached his destination, he came to a pretty cottage where masses of apricot roses climbed cheek by jowl with honey-suckle, framing the windows of the south corner and drooping in clusters above the door. The stonework was very much like that of the church and the rectory in style and age, and he thought it might once have served as a churchwarden’s house.
He was admiring it, unaware at first of the woman kneeling in the front garden, setting out small plants from a nursery tray. She glanced up as Rutledge stopped but didn’t speak. He glimpsed dark, flame red hair, a freckled nose, and intense blue eyes before she bent her head again to her gardening.
Was this the Miss O’Hara who had come to Cambury and set the cat amongst the pigeons, as Inspector Padgett had claimed?
Still digging in the pliable earth, she said with a soft Irish accent,
“You needn’t stare. You must be the man from London.”
“As a matter of fact,” he replied, “I was admiring the house and the roses.”
She looked up again, and this time her smile was derisive. “Of course you were.”
He could feel himself flush, and she laughed, a low, sultry chuckle.
“While I’ve interrupted you, Miss O’Hara,” he said, ignoring the embarrassment he’d felt at her accusation, “I might as well ask where you were on Saturday night between ten o’clock and two in the morning?”
“Because I’ve had words with Harold Quarles? He thought he was a great flirt, but I didn’t care for his attentions, and told him as much.
End of story. And if you must know about Saturday evening, my cat and I were in bed asleep. You can ask him if you need corroboration.”
She gestured toward the cottage door. “He’s there, in the sitting room, curled on a cushion. You can’t miss him.”
“A man has been murdered, Miss O’Hara. It’s not a matter of jest.”
She sobered in a flash. “I know something about murder, Mr. Rutledge, and I never consider it a matter of jest. But Mr. Quarles’s death doesn’t touch me. I didn’t know him except to see him on the street.
If you expect me to weep over his passing, I’m afraid I can’t accom-modate you.”
Turning back to her plants she said nothing more, expecting him to walk on.
But Rutledge was not so easily dismissed. He said, “Why did Quarles single you out for his attentions? Did he have encouragement?”
“Encouragement?” He had angered her. “Indeed he didn’t. And it’s rude of you to suggest it.”
“Still, the question remains.”
She stood up, and he realized she was tall, nearly as tall as he was.
“If you want the answer to that, I suggest you speak to Mrs. Quarles.”
“Why should she have the answer?”
“Because he flirts with women to embarrass her. She must live here, while he appears to spend most of his time in London now. And he bears no shame for what he does, it’s like a game to him. I don’t know how she deals with it. I don’t care. It’s her business, isn’t it? The people who suffer are the families of the women he’s singled out.”
“That’s very callous of him,” he said, surprised at her perception.
He’d heard much the same suggestion from the elder Hurley.
“He’s a man who doesn’t care what others think of him. If it had been Mrs. Quarles who was killed, I would believe him capable of it.”
He quickly reassessed his initial opinion of this woman.
Hamish said, “Aye, she’ll turn your head if you’re no’ careful.”
“Do you think he hated her that much?”
“I don’t think it was hate, precisely. But she walked away from him, and for that perhaps he wanted to punish her.” She smiled. “I’ve had experience of flirtatious men. I can tell the difference between one who is trying to attract my notice and one who is making a show of his interest.”
“Do you know Mrs. Quarles?”
“I’ve seen her occasionally in the shops. She strikes me as a strong woman who knows her own mind. What I don’t understand is why she married the man in the first place.”
A very good question.
“I’m told he could be very pleasant if he wished.”
“That may be so, Inspector, but I’m sure most of Cambury would wonder if he knew the meaning of the word. If that’s all you have to ask me? The roots of these nasturtiums are drying.”
“That’s all for now, Miss O’Hara.” He touched his hat and walked on. But he could feel her gaze following him. The temptation to turn was strong, but he refused to give her that satisfaction.
He stopped briefly at the church, but it was empty.
Rutledge went on, past the churchyard to the outskirts of Cambury, where beyond the last of the houses, he could see farms scattered across the fields. They could have been ten years old or two hundred, crouching so low that they seemed to have grown from seed where they were. Splashes of color dotted the view—washing hung out to dry, flowers blooming in gay profusion here and there, the different green of kitchen gardens, the bare earth of barnyards, and the fruit trees in small squares of orchards, like soldiers on parade, all a patchwork laid over the slightly rolling landscape. Somerset at its prettiest.
Turning around he chose another route to the High Street, not wanting to give Miss O’Hara another reason to taunt him. Hamish chuckled in his mind.