“I’m truly sorry you’ve been brought into this sordid affair, Miss Napier. And for no reason. Inspector Rutledge hadn’t seen fit to confide his intentions to me—or I might have informed him of a decision taken this same afternoon. Mrs. Mowbray was laid to rest shortly before six o’clock. There’s no body to show you. The matter is closed.”
His eyes slid to Rutledge’s face, triumph in them. “In our minds, there was no question of identity—I discussed that issue thoroughly with my superiors and the rector at St. Paul’s Church. And Mrs. Mowbray had no family other than her children. There was no reason to postpone the—er—decent interment.”
There was a wild fury rising in Rutledge’s throat, choking him. He wanted to take Hildebrand by the neck and throttle him.
It had been a deliberate and cold-blooded decision on Hildebrand’s part, to make sure that his investigation wouldn’t be undermined by what he’d clearly seen as Rutledge’s interference.
Satisfied to see the sudden stiffness in Rutledge’s face and the anger that surged, barely contained, just behind it, Hildebrand smiled tightly. “I took the liberty as well of consulting your superior in London. He was in full agreement.”
Bowles. Of course the bloody man would agree!
And the one person who might have verified the identity of the dead woman was standing here, puzzled by an interaction she couldn’t quite follow.
Elizabeth looked from one to the other. “She’s been buried? But why? I must see her, I’ve come all this way!” She turned to Rutledge. “You’ve got to do something, Inspector!”
Hildebrand said, “Miss Napier—”
“No!” she told him firmly. “No, I won’t be put off! Will you please tell me where to find a telephone? I must speak to my father, he’ll know what I ought to do about this problem—” Her eyes filled with tears, and Hildebrand, who suffered agonies of uncertainty whenever a woman cried, never knowing what to do or say to stem the flood, and inevitably making things worse whatever he did, looked frantically at Rutledge.
This is your doing! his eyes accused.
Rutledge, still fighting against the anger burning inside him, said in a voice he himself hardly recognized, “How did you bury her? In the dress she was wearing when she was killed?”
Hildebrand stared at him as if he had lost his wits. “Dress? Good God, no! The rector’s wife, Mrs. Drewes, offered to send the undertaker something, and—and the necessary undergarments. What’s that to say to anything—”
“Then I’ll see her dress,” Elizabeth said, looking suddenly very tired and very distressed. “If you please?” The tears sparkled on her lashes, unshed but still threatening to fall, given any excuse. “I must have an end to this!”
Rutledge, angry as he was, heard Hamish admiring such a masterly performance. “Yon lassie’s as useful as a regiment,” he said, “though you’d no’ think it to see the size of her!”
Hildebrand was replying doubtfully, “Miss Napier—are you quite sure that’s what you want to do? At this late hour? It’s not—there’s blood over the front of it.”
She nodded her head wordlessly. He took her arm as if afraid she might faint on the spot, already promising to ask the doctor to support her through the ordeal. Over her shoulder Hildebrand’s eyes warned Rutledge to stay out of it. “You’ll be at hotel, then?” he said.
For an instant Rutledge thought that Miss Napier was on the point of objecting, but she caught some nuance of tension in the air between the two men and said only, “Thank you, Inspector Hildebrand.”
Rutledge grimly left him to it, still far too angry to trust himself. Instead he crossed to the Swan to wait in the lobby, Hamish already earnestly pointing out the unwisdom of tackling anyone about what had been done behind Rutledge’s back.
“The man’s no’ one to see beyond what’s clear in his mind. You must na’ threaten his tidy view of yon murder. And he won’t thank you or anyone for making him look a fool. If yon lassie from Sherborne tells him she has seen the dead woman’s dress before, he will na’ pay any heed.”
“What is it you want?” Rutledge demanded silently. “Dead children—hidden in a place we may never find? Or their broken bodies brought in, to tighten the noose around Mowbray’s neck? I came to find those children, and by God, after my own fashion, I think I have! And it’s a conclusion to this investigation that I for one will find one hell of a lot easier to live with!”
“Aye, but Hildebrand’s an ambitious man, and if you take away from him the one case that might ha’ brought him a promotion, he’ll no’ forgive you for it. However many children you’ve spared! He’ll no’ care, except to see what’s been done to him, and your hand heavy in it!”
Which was true. Even in his anger Rutledge recognized it. He made himself stop pacing the floor and silently responded, “It will be worse for him when the Napiers and the Wyatts begin to ask where Margaret Tarlton may have gone. And the search leads in the end to that new grave.”
“Aye, but that’s to come—and who’s to say that it will? Who’s to say that Margaret Tarlton is na’ in London or any other place that takes her fancy? Who’s to say she did na’ want this position and went off to think about it? Hildebrand’s not likely to blame himsel’ if trouble does come home to roost. He’ll find a scapegoat. Mark my words!”
“If I back down, and Hildebrand has his way,” Rutledge said, “there are still the children’s bodies to find. And the black mark will be against me, for that failure. Even though I don’t think they’re out there.”
“It’s your reputation in the balance, aye. Your choice of roads. But once you walk down it, there’s nae turning back.”
Rutledge said nothing, his anger drained away, emptiness left behind. The self-doubt, still so close to the surface—of his skills, his emotions, his wits—seemed to gnaw raggedly at his patience. “It’s your reputation.…”
Very soon afterward a distinctly wobbly Elizabeth Napier reappeared, with a solicitous Hildebrand on one side and a man who turned out to be the local doctor on the other. He was small and thin, with little to say, dragooned into service at Hildebrand’s insistence. As soon as he had turned his patient over to Rutledge with a curt nod, he was gone without excuse or farewell.
Hildebrand led them into a small private parlor and then went out to find some brandy. One lamp was lit, and it offered only a funereal lifting of the gloom. Which seemed to match the mood of the room’s inhabitants. Rutledge made no effort to turn on another and waited quietly for Elizabeth to speak. She seemed to be having trouble organizing her breathing.
“I lost my dinner,” she said after a moment, touching her mouth again with a damp handkerchief. “Made a thorough fool of myself. I thought—I was sure all my long years of service in the slums had inured me to any horror. But all that blood!” An involuntary shiver ran through her. “What made it worse was realizing it might have belonged to someone I knew, I found myself imagining what her face must have looked like—that was the worst part!” She stopped, taking another deep breath, as if she were still fighting nausea. “I don’t see how you can harden yourself to this sort of work!” she added after a moment, lifting wry eyes to meet his. “It must be wearing on the spirit.”
He said, “Nothing makes it any easier. It helps, sometimes, to remind myself that finding the murderer is my pledge to the victim.”
She said, “I don’t expect I’ll ever read or hear about a murder having been committed without picturing that dress in my mind!”