She was back in only a moment, as if she’d had it close to hand. They walked out of the house and turned through the gate toward the churchyard.
“I apologize for such stupid bitterness!” she told him, as if there had been no interruption to their conversation. “It is not like me. But Elizabeth Napier is a woman one cannot defend herself against. She uses innuendo like a sword. But then I must remember that I have robbed her of the man she wanted to marry. It is the most unforgivable thing one woman can do to another.”
“I think she’s worried about Margaret Tarlton.”
“Is she?” Aurore turned her head and looked at his profile. “I am glad to hear it. I thought she was worried for Simon.”
He smiled down at her. “Touché. A little of both. With Elizabeth Napier, as I am fast learning, there are no absolutes.”
She laughed, a deep, brief chuckle.
“You are an extraordinary man,” she said. “Are you married?”
“No.” It was uncompromising. She read more into it than he intended.
“No,” she repeated softly. “It explains much. Now—you wished to speak to me?” She pulled her sweater a little more closely about her, as if as a shield.
“Everyone seems to believe—although so far I’ve not found one of them who actually saw you!—that it was you who drove Margaret to the station. And therefore, in their view, you’re the person who should know whether she got there safely or not. I spoke to the stationmaster. He claims she didn’t take either train from Singleton Magna on the day she left Charlbury.”
“But I have told you. I was with a heifer that was sick. Whatever Simon may say, we can’t afford to lose livestock—Simon is pouring every penny he possesses into this museum. There was not a great deal of money to start with. His inheritance from his father was quite small. And it is this farm that will pay for our food, bur car, our clothes. Not his grandfather’s treasures.”
She matched him stride for stride, comfortably walking beside him. And he was a tall man. They had nearly reached the churchyard.
She said, stopping him with her hand outstretched as if wanting to touch him, then deciding against it, “Do you think I am lying to you, Inspector?”
He had never felt his soul stripped so bare by the eyes of another person. It was as if she searched into depths he himself had never plumbed.
“I don’t know. But I shall make it my business to find out.” He studied her face in his turn, then asked, “Did you drive Margaret to Singleton Magna, quarrel with her, and put her out along the way? Where Mowbray then came across her, walking? No one would blame you for that, you couldn’t have known. This might explain to us how Mowbray got to her. And bring an end to all these questions.”
She bit her lip. “I would be morally responsible. But you are playing fair with both of us, are you not? To ask? Very well, I will make a pact with you.” Her eyes smiled suddenly, with the humor of it. “A pact with the devil, if you like.”
“I can’t make promises—”
“This one is not a promise. It is a pact. There is a difference. Even I know that difference, in English.” She searched his face again and then said quietly, “If you come to the conclusion after your investigations that I have lied about where I was. when Margaret Tarlton left Charlbury, if you believe that there is any possibility of my guilt in any harm that may have come to her, then you will face me and say such things. Directly. You will not speak first to Simon—nor to Elizabeth Napier, nor to that policeman in Singleton Magna. Do you agree?”
“Are you telling me—”
“No, I am not telling you I have killed Margaret Tarlton. Of course not! But suspicion is a very ugly thing, Inspector, and it destroys both the innocent and the guilty. Sometimes there is no way, afterward, to make right the damage that has been done. If I am to be accused of any crime, I prefer to have it said to my face, not whispered behind my back. Can you understand this? It is not so cruel.”
“You’re trying to protect someone, is that it? Simon?”
Her mouth turned down wryly. “I am protecting myself, I think. I don’t know. But yes, Simon too—this museum must open in one month. It is not the best publicity, do you think, to have it said that the owner’s wife is a murderess? People will come out of morbid curiosity, and I could not bear that. I do not think our marriage could survive that. And so I look for a solution of sorts.”
“I don’t know,” he said, trying to make sense of her words, “what you are asking of me—”
She shrugged, that very Gallic gesture that could mean so many things. “Call it intuition, if you like. Or a sense I cannot explain. But I shall tell you this. Where Elizabeth Napier is concerned, there is no question of right or wrong in this matter. She is looking for simple justice. That is for herself, not for Margaret. And justice is sometimes blind. So—I make my pact with you. And try to spare my husband pain, if I can.”
Holding out her hand as a man might do, she waited for Rutledge to take it. But deep in his mind Hamish was already coming to another conclusion.
“She’s afraid,” he said softly, “because there is something she knows and canna’ tell. Hildebrand would no’ stand for this nonsense—”
Was it that, Rutledge wondered, or the fact that she was sure she could reach him—and so was using him to protect herself by putting on him the onus of betraying her? Using him as Elizabeth Napier was using Simon Wyatt?
“Aye. A woman does na’ think the way a man does,” Hamish told him.
But Rutledge had made up his mind.
He took the hand she held out and shook it briefly. “Agreed,” he said.
And watched the play of expressions across her face. Surprise. A certain wariness. Relief. At the last, a flare of fear.
As if she realized, suddenly and far too late, that perhaps she had misjudged him.…
Rutledge walked back to the gate with Aurore Wyatt without speaking. She had slipped into a silence all her own, as if she had forgotten the man beside her. Her face was withdrawn, her eyes shuttered behind the long lashes.
They could hear Elizabeth Napier’s voice, and Simon’s. Not the words so much as the comfortable rise and fall of a conversation between two people who had much in common. Long years of understanding, respect—love …
Aurore said, tilting her head to listen, “I knew when Margaret Tarlton came here to apply for the position of assistant that, one way or another, she would bring that woman back into our lives. I was right. Only I didn’t see the way of it. Just that it would happen.”
“He married you. That’s what matters.” As Jean would never marry him. It was finished. But then, as Hamish was busy reminding him, Rutledge himself had been the last to let go in that relationship. Why should Elizabeth Napier be any different? If the war years had changed him so much, taking Jean from him, they had also cost Elizabeth Napier Simon Wyatt. Simon too had changed.…
“Yes, he married me. But I ask myself sometimes, was it the war? Was he sorry for me and what had happened to me? Was it loneliness, or a man’s need for a woman? Or was it truly love? I thought I knew. Then. Now I am not as certain as I once was.” She put her hand on the gate, ready to open it and go inside. “Please. Find that woman. Find her soon. For Simon’s sake!”
And she left him standing there, watching her graceful stride as she went up the walk, ignoring the voices that seemed to ignore her so completely.
13
There was one other stop Rutledge wished to make in Charlbury. The inn. It was the pulse of village life, oftentimes the place where gossip and conjecture made their first rounds. The question was, would Denton tell him what was being said, or as the outsider would he be shut out of knowledge any villager might be given for the asking?