Rutledge for once took his advice. After thanking Mrs. Prescott, he drove back to the inn, to leave the motorcar there.
The chauffeur of the other car looked up quickly as Rutledge came to a halt, as if expecting to see someone else. Thomas Napier, perhaps? He nodded politely once he realized that Rutledge was no one he knew and went back to his task of brushing out the interior. It looked spotless.
“Is that Miss Napier’s motorcar?” Rutledge asked, getting out. It was a simple way to open a conversation. And the car was, he’d noticed, very like the Wyatts’.
“Her father’s, yes, sir,” the man replied warily. He was sturdy, in his midtwenties, and there were burns across his face and the backs of his hands. Rutledge had seen such wounds before, on airmen sent down in flames.
“Where will I find her?”
“My instructions were to wait for Miss Napier here. That’s all I know.”
Rutledge turned to look up the road toward the Wyatt house.
“I don’t know what there is about this town,” the driver said unexpectedly, coming to stand behind him. “It’s—unfriendly. I wouldn’t want to live here!”
“What’s your name?” Rutledge asked over his shoulder.
“Benson, sir.”
“I understand Miss Napier came here often in the past. Did you drive her?”
“No, that must have been Taylor. He’s retired now. I was hired some six months back to replace him.”
“Knew Margaret Tarlton, did you?” He caught himself using the past tense but let it go. He turned. If Benson noticed the slip, he gave no sign.
Instead he studied the man before him. “Who’s asking?”
Rutledge told him. Benson nodded. “You must have been the policeman who came for Miss Napier last night! Yes, I know Miss Tarlton—I’ve driven her around most of London, on occasional business for Mr. Napier or his daughter. Always tries to be punctual and says she’s sorry if she keeps me waiting.”
“She was expected in Sherborne?”
“On the evening train. Miss Napier wanted the car most of that day and said she’d go along to the station herself to fetch Miss Tarlton. But she wasn’t on the train.”
“What did Miss Napier have to say to that?”
“She said something must have detained Miss Tarlton, and she’d want me to go back on the next day. But Miss Tarlton wasn’t on that train either.”
“Which day was it that Miss Napier met the train? And where did she go beforehand? Do you know?’
“Over a week ago, sir. Thirteen August it was, sir. I don’t know where she went beforehand. It’s often to Sherborne, when I’m not asked to drive her. But that’s not to say it was Sherborne. Miss Napier just told me I’d have the day and the evening free.”
Hamish stirred with sharpened interest
It was on 13 August, in the late afternoon, that the murdered woman’s body had been found outside Singleton Magna.
Rutledge said, “Does Thomas Napier ask you to—er—keep an eye on his daughter? He’s a prominent man, and she seems to do some sort of charity work in the London slums. He must feel some concern about that.”
“No, sir. He’s never seemed to have a particular concern in that direction. It’s Miss Tarlton he’s always wanting to know about.”
12
Rutledge walked up the road to the Wyatt house. Hamish, still mulling over Benson’s last remark, demanded, “Why did you no’ ask him what he meant?”
“Because Elizabeth Napier might question him, if she saw us there talking together. I’d rather bring up her father to her, not the chauffeur. Bowles might have been on to more than he realized, when he asked about a London connection—”
He saw Mrs. Daulton and her son, Henry, coming toward him. Mrs. Daulton paused to speak to him as he touched his hat, and said in her usual no-nonsense way, “You find the cat firmly ensconced among the pigeons, Inspector.”
Was she using the term metaphorically? Or was she being careful not to say in plain terms what Henry might hear and repeat?
He nodded to Henry, who responded in kind.
“You’re a policeman,” he said, as if glad to have this straight. “I thought you liked old churches.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Rutledge answered truthfully. He’d always had an interest in architecture, thanks to his godfather. David Trevor probably knew more about any given British building than the men who had originally put it up. Stone and brick and wood were profession, passion, and pastime to him.
Mrs. Daulton was saying, “Miss Napier seems to believe something’s happened to Miss Tarlton. She’s quite worried, in fact. She came to see me before she went to speak to Simon. To collect herself before they met, I expect. I thought there might have been more to your questions than you told us earlier!”
“I don’t know myself what my interest is in Miss Tarlton,” he replied. “At first it was as a witness. That was true enough. Now she could be involved, in one way or another.”
“You’re right, young women of her class don’t vanish into thin air. But I refuse to believe that there’s a murderer loose who might slaughter all of us in our beds—three parishioners have already come to see me this morning with such a story. Apparently they had it from Mrs. Prescott.”
“I don’t think Charlbury is in grave danger,” he agreed.
“Then you feel that that poor man in Singleton Magna’s jail may have killed Margaret Tarlton—that he may have mistaken her for his wife.”
“It’s possible,” he replied. She was an intelligent woman, one who was plain and uncompromising in her view of life.
“Then it’s time I set matters straight. As my late husband would say, the sooner you scotch a snake, the better.” She suddenly smiled, transforming her face, giving it an attractiveness and youthfulness that surprised him. “I do not, of course, refer to Miss Napier as the snake.” The smile faded as she looked down the empty street behind him. “Still, you can see for yourself what suspicion and fear can do in a small place like this. Everyone is staying indoors.”
Henry said, “The last time it was the influenza. Like a plague. Frightened everybody. I’d read about the plague at school.” He frowned, then said, “I think I remember Miss Napier. From before the war.”
“Of course you do,” Mrs. Daulton said calmly. “You and Simon, Miss Napier and Marian were friends.” To Rutledge she added, “Marian was my daughter. She died in childhood.”
“She died of lockjaw,” Henry put in. “It wasn’t very pleasant.”
In the brief silence that followed, Rutledge seized his opportunity. He said to Henry, keeping his voice on a conversational level, “Do you remember Miss Tarlton coming to the rectory last week? I expect she was looking for someone to take her to Singleton Magna.”
Henry nodded. “She wanted to know if I could drive her. Or failing that, my mother. She said she didn’t want to go in Denton’s car.”
With Shaw? Interesting! “How was she dressed? Do you recall?”
He smiled. “I don’t know much about women’s clothes, Inspector. It was summery, like flowers. I do remember her straw hat, though. I didn’t much like it. Her hair was pretty enough without it.” His eyes were clear, untroubled.
“And after that?”
“She went away. I think she was quite angry.”
“Do you know why?”
“She said something about a train. She was afraid she might miss it.”
Mrs. Daulton was gazing at her son with rapt attention, hanging on his words as if he were delivering the profoundest of answers, making her enormously proud of him. Rutledge found himself thinking, This man’s tragedy isn’t his, he doesn’t know what he’s lost. It’s his mother’s. His wounds are the death knell to any ambitions for him, and she can’t accept it. She’ll push her son as long as she can. She’s another civilian casualty, like Marcus Johnston.…