Damn Hildebrand!
Let it go, he told himself. He’ll know soon enough if you’re right. And London will hear soon enough if you turn out to be wrong. Sufficient unto the day …
Turning, he walked a short distance up the street, realized it was the way to the churchyard, and stopped. He had enough ghosts of his own, without invoking the murder victim’s! Coming back to the inn, he looked up in time to see the curtains being drawn in the window of the top-floor room that Elizabeth Napier had taken.
She had brought her case with her because she expected to spend the night in Singleton Magna. What Rutledge hadn’t known—but she must have considered from the start—was that she might wish to stay longer than just overnight. He’d overheard her quietly speaking to the inn’s manager as she wrote her name in the register, asking if the room might be available for several days rather than just one night.
Whether she had really been sure that the dress and shoes belonged to the dead woman, only Elizabeth Napier could say with any truth.
But she was already looking ahead to anything useful that might grow out of her identification. Inside that fragile shell was a will as strong as steel. What Elizabeth Napier wanted, she was well accustomed to having, of that he had no doubt
And he thought he knew her target. Aurore Wyatt’s husband.
He’d have been willing to wager his life on that certainty.
10
In the early morning, before the town had begun to stir, Rutledge set out again for Charlbury, his mind occupied with how and what he wanted to say. And to whom. Clouds filled the sky, promising rain, and the heat had broken.
He arrived at the Wyatt home while the family was still at breakfast. The maid left him standing in the parlor, and he looked around him at the room. The furnishings were beautifully made and well polished, handed proudly from generation to generation. They were for the most part Georgian, though two of the tables had skirts to the floor and phalanxes of photographs in frames, in the Victorian style of never is too much too much. There was a large portrait over the fireplace, a man dressed in early Victorian black, looking much like a slim and intelligent Prince Albert. At a guess, this was the first Wyatt elected to Parliament. Hinted at in the dark background behind him were the soaring pinnacles of Westminster, as if he’d been painted standing on the bridge at midnight. The inference was both subtle and powerful.
Aurore herself came out to greet Rutledge, a questioning look on her face. Before he could speak to her, she asked if he’d care to join them for a cup of coffee. “Simon is just finishing his breakfast. He’ll be happy to see you again.”
Rutledge had his doubts about that. “Thank you, no. I wanted to ask you—what was Margaret Tarlton wearing the day she left for London?”
Aurore’s face was a polite mask, as if another woman’s apparel was something she seldom gave thought to. Rutledge would have wagered she could have described everything Margaret Tarlton had brought with her. He could count on one hand the number of women he’d met who were oblivious to other women’s appearance and clothing.
She said, considering his question, “I spent most of the morning at the farm, as I told you when you were here before. I didn’t return home in time to drive Miss Tarlton to Singleton Magna. She was wearing blue at breakfast, I remember that. It was very nice with her eyes, and there was a pleat of white in the skirt, to one side, like so.” She demonstrated, pleating the soft cream skirt she herself was wearing. He could see what she meant. “But she went up to pack as I was leaving, and to change. She said it had been terribly warm on the train coming down, she thought she might prefer something lighter for the journey. I didn’t see her after that. You might ask Edith. Our maid.”
To pack. Where was this woman’s suitcase? With her in Gloucestershire or buried somewhere in Dorset? Lost suitcases—lost children …
“How did she travel to Singleton Magna, if you had taken the only car?”
“I don’t know. I assumed that Simon would make another arrangement for her. He had several workmen here, and there’s the motorcar at the inn, belonging to Mr. Denton. Simon has borrowed it before. It wasn’t impossible to find someone to take her so short a way.”
“How many motorcars are there in Charlbury?”
“Simon’s of course, which I seem to drive more often than he does these days. And we have a little carriage we use sometimes. That of the innkeeper. And the rector had one; his widow uses it now.”
“No one else?”
“No,” she said, then added dryly, “but the horse is not dead in the countryside, you know. There are far more carriages and carts and wagons than there are motorcars in a ten-mile radius. Even Dr. Fairfield who comes to the village drives a buggy. That very fierce little man from Singleton Magna, with the face that looks as if he’s bitten into a very sour lemon. If transportation was a problem, anyone in Charlbury would have been glad to take her. If only to please Simon. Why do you ask these things? They have nothing to do with the day that Margaret arrived.”
She has a very clear memory for detail, Rutledge thought. What Margaret Tarlton might have seen, arriving on the same train as Bert Mowbray, had been his excuse when he had asked for her London direction.
“We don’t know where Miss Tarlton went from Singleton Magna. She hasn’t returned to her flat in London, and she failed to arrive at the Napier country home in Sherborne. They were expecting her there.”
Her gray eyes changed as he watched. Anger—or was it resignation?—stirred in their depths. “Ah. Why does that not surprise me?”
“Did you believe Miss Tarlton was sent here as a spy in your midst?” he asked bluntly. She had nearly admitted as much before. It hadn’t mattered then.…
“But of course! Why did Elizabeth Napier all at once have no further need of her services? Why, after nearly eight years with the Napiers, was Margaret prepared to come here?”
“It’s the nature of women, sometimes, to look for a change. I don’t know that Elizabeth Napier has been an easy mistress. Or Margaret Tarlton may prefer work that reminds her of growing up in India.”
“But that’s exactly the point, Inspector. The nature of women,” she said. “Margaret is nearly twenty-nine years old. The age when a woman is reminded that if she’s to marry, it must be soon. How many eligible young men would you say there are here in Charlbury?”
He caught himself wondering how old Elizabeth Napier was, and as if she’d read his mind, Aurore said, “Elizabeth was to marry Simon in 1914. But he asked her to wait, until the war was over. And when he came home from France, there was an unexpected impediment—his French wife. She has wasted five years. She will be thirty next month.” The devastating honesty of the French.
Smothering a rueful grin, he said, “The point is, we appear to have lost Miss Tarlton. Possibly between Charlbury and Singleton Magna. It’s my task to find her, I’m afraid.”
“Then I cannot help you. She went upstairs to pack, and I went to the farm to see to the livestock. As I have already told you.”
There was nothing else he could say, except, “I’ve kept you from your breakfast long enough. I’d like to speak to your husband before I go.”
But Simon had already finished his meal and gone across to the museum, and it was there that Rutledge finally caught up with him. Looking up from the small sandalwood figure in his hands, Simon said, “I thought your business was with my wife? Look at this. Shiva dancing. Exquisite, isn’t it? Even if I don’t have the faintest idea who Shiva might be! I’ll leave such erudition to my assistant.”