“That’s what brought me here, actually. Your assistant. I need to ask you who drove Miss Tarlton back to Singleton Magna, to meet her train.”
“I thought Aurore had. Why? Does it matter?” He replaced the carving on its shelf and stood back to see if it was dwarfed by the figures on either side. He picked up one of its neighbors, the fanciful figure of a large bird in flight.
“Yes,” Rutledge said, beginning to lose his temper. “Put that thing down and pay attention to me, man! There’s a woman lying dead in a pauper’s grave at Singleton Magna. I want to know if it could be Margaret Tarlton. And if it is, I want to find out who put her there.”
“In a grave? That’s nonsense!” He frowned. “Why should you think it’s Miss Tarlton?”
“Mr. Wyatt, we can’t seem to find Margaret Tarlton. She isn’t in London, and she isn’t in Sherborne, at the Napiers’. She was last reported to be here, in your house, on the point of leaving for her train. Nor have we located the Mowbray children, and that’s the crux of our problem. It raises questions about the identity of the murdered woman. There’s just a chance—an outside chance—that the body Hildebrand found in that field near Singleton Magna wasn’t the Mowbray woman after all. If that’s the case, we’re going to have to start all over again. And I intend to start here!”
Simon shook his head. “Margaret Tarlton took the afternoon train back to London. She’s most certainly not a murder victim!”
“Then, damn it, where is she now? And how did she get from Charlbury to Singleton Magna?”
“I’ve told you—I was busy in here, and it was already arranged for Aurore to drive her.”
Rutledge swore under his breath. He knew that Simon Wyatt wasn’t a stupid man. And yet he didn’t seem to hear what was said to him, or register the gist of it. “Are you telling me that your wife is a liar?”
He suddenly had Simon Wyatt’s full attention, clearly focused. “Aurore never tells lies,” he said curtly. “If she says she didn’t drive Margaret to the station, she didn’t.”
“Then who did? That’s what I’ve come to discover.”
The museum’s outer door opened and a woman walked in, calling Simon’s name. Rutledge, who could see the outer door from where he stood, recognized her at once. She’d been in the garden behind the inn, at the Women’s Institute meeting. That white streak in her hair was distinctive.
“Hallo, Simon—” She stopped. “Oh, do forgive me, I didn’t know you had a visitor! I was sure this young man was calling on Aurore. I’ll come back later, shall I? Nothing important—”
“Inspector Rutledge, Mrs. Joanna Daulton. She’s the cement that holds Charlbury together. Her late husband, Andrew, was our rector. He hasn’t been replaced yet, and Mrs. Daulton has taken on his work as well as her own for nearly two years now. I don’t know what we’d do without her.” He smiled at her with more affection and awareness than he’d ever demonstrated when speaking of his wife.
Mrs. Daulton didn’t pretend to modesty. She said only, “Well, someone has to do it, while the bishops make up their tedious little minds! How do you do, Inspector? Mrs. Prescott, who lives next door to Constable Trait, has already met you, I think. I’ve been looking forward to that pleasure as well.” She held out her hand and he took it in his. A woman accustomed to social responsibilities and the burden of church duties that fell to her lot as the rector’s wife, she was clearly comfortable in any situation.
“Thank you. It must have been your son that I saw the other day. By the church. He told me his father had been rector here.”
Something moved in her face, a sadness that was beyond even her ability to deny. “Indeed? Henry was severely wounded in the last year of the war. But he’s making wonderful progress; we’re all quite pleased.”
Was it a polite social response, the “I’m quite well, thank you” that can mean anything from blatant good health to one foot in the grave? Because if Rutledge was any judge, Henry Daulton’s brain was permanently damaged. But then he was no judge of how far Daulton had come.
“I’m glad to hear it,” he responded with equal politeness, then added, “Did you see Miss Tarlton during her stay in Charlbury? In particular on the last day of her visit?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t—to speak to, I mean. As I was coming away from the Hamptons’, she was at the gate in front of this house, standing there as if waiting for someone. Later Henry told me she’d rung the bell at the rectory, searching for me to ask if I might drive her in to catch her train. But before he could fetch me from the garden, she called out that Mrs. Wyatt had come after all, and she would go with her.”
“What was she wearing? When you saw her at the gate here?”
“Oh—I remember thinking how wonderfully cool she looked, on such a warm day. A floral pattern, quite pretty. Mauve or pink or lavender, I’m not exactly sure. It was the overall effect I noticed, and the hat.”
“Hat?” He remembered that Mrs. Hindes had mentioned a fetching hat.…
“Yes, a straw, with an upswept brim on the left side. Many women can’t wear hats like that—I’m one of them! Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—could, of course, and certainly Miss Tarlton does them justice. It’s the height, I’m sure.”
She herself was wearing a very conservative hat, in a medium shade of blue. It had an air of efficiency about it rather than style. She was a very efficient woman, Rutledge thought. In a courtroom she would make an unflappable witness, her words well ordered and to the point.
But if that indeed was Margaret Tarlton murdered in a field, where was her hat? Suitcases, hats, children …
“I’d like to ask your son if she was wearing her hat when she came to your door.”
“May I ask why all this interest in Miss Tarlton’s apparel?” She looked from Simon to Rutledge. “Is anything wrong?”
Besides being efficient, she was clearly no fool.
“Just a matter of routine. We’re interested in everyone who arrived in Singleton Magna on the train last week.”
“Ah, yes, that poor man who killed his family. I sometimes think the war has driven all of us into madness!”
Rutledge turned to Simon Wyatt. “You still haven’t answered my last question.”
Simon took a moment to remember. “No. Because I don’t know how to answer it. I told you, I thought Aurore was going to take care of it. You’d better speak with Edith, I suppose. The maid. I’ll see if I can find her for you. Mrs. Daulton? I’m sorry—”
“No, no. Come to see me when you have time, Simon, there’s no hurry!”
Rutledge held the door for Mrs. Daulton and walked with her as far as the gate.
“What’s this all about?” she asked him. “You were questioning Simon as if he’d done something wrong. I’ve known him since he was a child; I won’t see him treated like a miscreant without knowing why!”
“It’s just a matter of checking information, Mrs. Daulton—”
Joanna Daulton stopped and looked up at him, seeing more than he expected she might. “Young man, I’m not simpleminded, and I won’t be spoken to as if I were. If there’s anything that connects Margaret Tarlton to this wretched Mowbray affair, I suggest you ask her about it. Simon still has a great deal of work to do before this museum is set to open, it’s all he thinks about. And if you want my advice, it’s best to let him get on with it! The war nearly destroyed him, and I’ve never been so grateful as I am to that ridiculous grandfather of his for putting the notion of a museum in his head. It’s brought Simon back from the edge of despair. Never mind whether it’s a roaring success or not, it has stood between Simon and self-destruction. I won’t let you upset that balance, do you hear me?”
“We can’t find Margaret Tarlton. We’ve looked in London where she lives and in Sherborne, where she was expected next but never arrived.”