Joanna Daulton stared at him, and for the first time since she had walked into the museum he watched her grapple with something that was outside her usual experience as community leader. She seemed uncertain how to take him. “You can’t find her? In the sense that you don’t know just where she may have gone—or in the sense that she’s missing?”
“That’s our dilemma, actually. We aren’t sure.”
“Well, Aurore—Mrs. Wyatt—drove her to the station. I should think that’s clear enough. Which means to me that Miss Tarlton left Dorset on the train. I should think London is a better place to start searching than Singleton Magna. I was always under the impression that the police knew their business!”
Rutledge said nothing. Hamish, hearing the exchange, said, “She reminds me of Fiona’s aunt, Elspeth MacDonald. No man in his right mind crossed her!”
She opened the gate. “Do heed me, Inspector. Walk carefully where Simon’s concerned. Don’t upset him if there’s no need for it!”
Rutledge watched her walk firmly up the street. Had she purposely—or inadvertently—sacrificed Aurore Wyatt to distract him from Simon? On the whole, he’d guess that it was on purpose. Mrs. Daulton’s first duty was to the boy she’d watched grow up, not to his foreign-born wife. On the other hand, he told himself, she might feel that Aurore was far better able to protect herself than Simon was.
Edith was nervously waiting for him in the parlor, standing stiffly by the hearth as if the portrait at her back gave her moral support.
“I’m not here to badger you,” he told her gently. “It’s just a matter of what Miss Tarlton was wearing when she left here last week, on her way to London. Do you remember?”
Surprised at the simplicity of the question, Edith smiled. “Oh, yes, sir! It was a pretty dress, quite summery to my way of thinking! Rose and lavender, with a slim skirt and a belt of the same cloth. And a straw hat that had ribbons of the same colors around the crown. But that wasn’t half as fine as what she was wearing when she arrived!” She stopped, her blue eyes alarmed. She had overstepped her bounds—
Rutledge said, “Yes, I’d like to know about that as well.”
“It was this silvery gray silk, and it shimmered like cool water when she moved, and she had the most wonderful hat to match, the silk ruched down the brim, and a low crown. The only touch of color was this thin crimson ribbon tied in a bow and set to one side. I’d never seen anything quite so—so stylish!”
Had Margaret Tarlton come prepared to outshine the French bride?
“What luggage did she have with her?”
“The one piece, sir.”
“Who drove her to the station in Singleton Magna?”
“Mrs. Wyatt was set to do it, but she was late, and Miss Tarlton was afraid she’d miss her train. So she asked if there was anyone else who might take her, if Mrs. Wyatt didn’t come in time. But she must have, because I said I’d run down to the Wyatt Arms to ask Mr. Denton for the loan of his car and his nephew, Mr. Shaw, for Miss Tarlton, but he said his nephew was over to Stoke Newton with it, and when I came back, Miss Tarlton had gone.”
“You think Mrs. Wyatt carried her into Singleton Magna, then?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Edith told him honestly. “But Mrs. Wyatt isn’t one to forget what she’s promised to do.”
As Rutledge was leaving, Aurore came around the corner of the house, a basket of deadheaded flowers over her arm. She saw him and said, “Inspector?”
He turned to wait for her. Shielding her eyes against the cloudy brightness of the morning, she looked up at him. “I wish you to tell me what’s happening. All these questions about Margaret. It makes me uneasy!”
There was a trowel in her gloved hands and a smudge of damp earth on one cheek. He found himself staring at it “I don’t know myself why I’m asking them,” he said, surprising himself. “Every time I think I’m a step closer to the truth, the concepts of what’s truth and what’s wishful thinking seem to merge, and there’s only a muddle where there had appeared to be answers.”
Because if Margaret Tarlton was wearing gray silk on the morning she arrived, how could Bert Mowbray have searched everywhere for a woman wearing pink?
Aurore reached out and touched his arm. “You will know what to do,” she said. “However difficult it is. You have courage, you see. It’s there, in the lines of your face. Suffering has taught you that.”
He found himself wanting desperately to tell her about Hamish—and Jean. The words seemed to hover on the edge of his tongue, ready to spill over, wanting understanding—absolution—and afterward, peace.
Stunned by his unexpected and overwhelming reaction to her sympathy, he stood there, at a loss.
Hamish was warning him over and over to leave—now! While you still have some measure of self-control.
He thought for one dazed instant that the warm hand on his arm was lifting to touch his face. And he knew, helplessly, that it would be his undoing.
But she stepped back, that deep sense of stillness wrapping her again in her own untouchability.
Without saying good-bye, he turned and walked through the gate. He didn’t remember turning the crank or starting the motorcar. He didn’t remember driving out of Charlbury. It wasn’t until he reached the crossroads that some measure of self-command overcame the turmoil in his mind.
Aurore Wyatt was a suspect in a murder investigation.
And she had been conscious of the effect she’d had on him.…
11
Rutledge sat in his car at the crossroads trying to shut out Hamish’s voice. “Loneliness leads a man into folly,” he was pointing out. “It’s loneliness at the bottom of it. And she saw that, man, she’s no’ above using it. The notice of Jean’s engagement’s left ye vulnerable to such wiles—”
“It was natural—she’s a damned attractive woman.”
“Aye, and she’s got a husband. Besides which, she’s French.”
Rutledge shook his head. As if being French explained a woman like Aurore. And yet, somehow it did. She knew more about men than was good for them. She saw deeper inside them. But her power was very different from Elizabeth Napier’s.
He’d have to remember that.
He sighed and let in the clutch.
He tried to shift the subject in his mind as well, to distract Hamish from coming too close to the truth. And to distract himself from the feel of Aurore’s hand resting so lightly on his arm.
What was he going to do about this problem before him? Was the dead woman Margaret Tarlton? Or Mary Sandra Mowbray?
“Aye,” Hamish reminded him, “it’s a proper puzzle, and if you canna’ get to the bottom of it, no one else will!”
Still—did it truly matter, if Bert Mowbray had been the one who killed her, what her name actually was? Murder was murder. The identity of the victim was secondary. It didn’t change anything. Death was quite final, and a man would be hanged as surely for murdering a nameless tramp as he would be for killing a peer of the realm. The only difference was in the public attention the trial would receive.
And yet Rutledge knew that to him it mattered.
A victim had no one in the law to speak for him or her. The police were bent on finding the guilty party. The courts were set up to determine guilt, and if guilt was proved, to offer sanctioned retribution for the crime committed. Prison or the gallows. Society was then satisfied by the restoration of order. Civilized order, where personal revenge and vendettas were foregone in the name of law.