“You must come at once,” she said. “I’ve got Gwyneth Jones at my house. She just came home, and her father’s at the bakery, firing up the ovens, her sisters asleep in their beds.”
He turned to find his shoes and his coat. “Is she all right?”
“Frightened to death, tired, hungry, and looking as if she’s slept in her clothes. Mrs. Jones told me you knew her story. The question now is, what to do? Gwyneth’s father is going to be furious, and her mother is on the point of having a fit.”
“Have you told the girl that Quarles is dead?” Rutledge asked as they went toward the stairs.
She shook her head. “No, nor has her mother. Gwyneth explained to her mother that she was homesick, but she told me that she missed Cambury and wanted to work in the shop again, rather than dance to her grandmother’s tune.”
They opened and shut The Unicorn’s door as quietly as possible, so as not to disturb the night clerk sleeping in his little cubicle.
“How did you know which room I was in?” he asked as they stepped out into the cool night air and walked briskly toward Church Street.
“How do you think? I looked in the book at Reception.”
Rutledge found himself reflecting that if the story got around Cambury that he was seen escorting a disheveled Irishwoman out of the hotel and back to her house at this hour of the morning, gossip would be rampant. And Padgett would have much to say about it. The one bright point was that Gwyneth had been sent to Miss O’Hara’s house while it was still dark. They could at least keep her arrival quiet for a while.
As if she’d read his mind, Miss O’Hara suppressed a laugh. “We’ll have to avoid the man who brings round the milk. Bertie. He’s the worst rumor monger in Cambury. If you wish to have your business discussed over the world’s breakfast table, confide in him.”
The first hint of dawn was touching the eastern sky, and the cool-ness of evening still lurked in the shadows. It would be light enough soon for anyone looking out a window to see them.
“Why did Mrs. Jones bring her to you?”
“If the other children had seen their sister, there’d be no keeping the news from their father. I was the only woman living alone she could think of.”
“What do you know about the situation?”
“Enough to realize that if she’d fled Wales, and her father got wind of it, he’d kill Harold Quarles.”
“How did the girl get home?”
“Begging lifts from anyone she thought she could trust. She had a little money with her, but not enough to pay for a train or omnibus.”
They had reached the O’Hara cottage and quickly slipped inside.
Gwyneth Jones was sitting dejectedly in the kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug of hot tea, her face as long as her tangled dark hair.
All the same, he could see that she was a lovely girl, with curling black hair and dark lashes, dark eyes, skin like silk. But whatever spirit she might have possessed was now sunk in gloom and fear.
She started to her feet like a cornered wild thing when she saw that Miss O’Hara had brought someone with her.
Rutledge said quickly, “You needn’t be afraid. Your mother has told me about you. I’m a policeman—from London. Inspector Rutledge, and you can trust me. Miss O’Hara did the right thing, asking me to help you sort out your troubles.”
“A policeman?” She frowned. “My mother says I can’t come home—she wants to send me directly back to Wales, and she refuses to let me see my da. It’s as if I’ve done some terrible thing, and no one wants me anymore.”
She sounded like a terrified and bewildered child.
Miss O’Hara went to her and put a hand on her arm, urging her to sit down again. Instead, Gwyneth threw her arms around the older woman and began to cry wretchedly.
“Miss Jones. Gwyneth,” Rutledge began. “Listen to me. There’s been some trouble here in Cambury, that’s why I’m here. Rather—
um—serious trouble.”
His hesitation as he searched for a less threatening word than murder was enough. The girl broke free of Miss O’Hara’s embrace and turned to stare at him, her tear-streaked face appalled. “My father’s dead. That’s why they won’t let me go to him. ”
“No, its not your father—”
“Then it’s Mr. Quarles who’s dead, and you’ve got my father in custody for it.”
“He’s only one of several suspects, Gywneth. No one has been taken into custody—”
“I tried to tell him, Mr. Quarles isn’t a monster, whatever the gossips say. But he believed them, just like she did.” She pointed to Miss O’Hara, then added, “Mr. Quarles was nice to me, he told me that I could choose my own life. I don’t have to follow my father in the bakery if I don’t want to. I don’t have to be the son my father never had—”
His eyes met Miss O’Hara’s over the girl’s head. “Gwyneth. Did Quarles offer to take you to London, and help you find this new life?”
“Of course he didn’t. He told me I must learn to do something well, to make my living. To cook or to bake or to make hats, it didn’t matter.
He told me not to go into service. His sister did, and she was wretched to the end.”
“Where does his sister live?” Rutledge asked, thinking that she could provide him with more information about Quarles than anyone else.
“She’s dead. All his family is dead. They have been for years. He doesn’t have anyone but his son.”
“You’re certain Mr. Quarles didn’t try to convince you to run away from home? Or encourage you to leave your grandmother’s and come back to Cambury?” Miss O’Hara asked.
“Of course not. My father thought he was flirting with me, but he wasn’t. He said he hated to see such a pretty girl waste her life in Cambury, when she could live in Glastonbury or Bath and marry better than the young men I know here. And he’s right, I don’t like any of them well enough to marry them.”
It was a different story from the one Jones himself had told Rutledge. But taking that with a grain of salt, Rutledge could see that Jones was jealous, wanted his favorite child to stay with him and inherit the bakery, not find work and happiness away from Cambury. He’d seen Quarles as the snake in his Eden, tempting his young daughter with tales that turned her head. And he’d read what he wanted to believe in the older man’s attentions.
Who knew what was in Harold Quarles’s mind—whether he wanted to help her or hoped to lead Gwyneth astray, perhaps take advantage of her when she was older and lonely and far from home.
She was extraordinarily pretty. But would she be any happier in a larger town? Would she find this young man of her dreams—or would she be trapped by someone who had other reasons for befriending her, and in the end, ruin her? Quarles hadn’t troubled himself over Gwyneth’s inexperience.
Rutledge could see and understand a father’s anger. He could also see—if it were true—that Quarles might have discovered in Gwyneth more than Cambury had to offer and tried to show her that she could reach higher than her parents had, her mother with six children, her father content with his fourteen hours a day in his bakery.
It didn’t matter. Quarles was dead, and Hugh Jones had a very good reason for killing this man who was interfering with his family.
Rutledge said, “Did your father know you were running away?”
She looked down, as if ashamed. “I’ve written to him since March, begging to come home. I told him I was wretched and couldn’t bear to be there, away from everyone. He knew I was unhappy. Still, he said I must stay for now. And so I didn’t tell him I had decided to run away—
he’d have come to Wales and stopped me, if he’d had to lock me in my bedroom. And so I slipped away without a word.”