Rutledge took up his invitation and sat down. The rings on the table had either been wiped away—or they hadn’t accumulated this night. Shaw was nursing one pint that appeared to have gone flat long since. He called to his uncle, who brought another pint for Rutledge.
“The lovely Aurore isn’t Simon Wyatt’s problem,” Shaw was saying. “It probably isn’t the lovely Miss Napier either. What’s bothering him is a guilty conscience.”
Interested, Rutledge said, “Guilt over what? Putting this museum before his father’s expectations of him?”
“The war. What he learned about himself out there in France. Because you do. You soon know if you’re a coward or not. Most of us are, only we find ways to hide it, at least from other people.”
It was something all of them had faced. The question of bravery. Of courage—and these two were not the same. Of mortality. Of what life was. And what death meant. He himself had brought Hamish home….
Losing for an instant the thread of the conversation, Rutledge said, “You’re saying that he failed himself?”
“No, I’m saying he didn’t like the man he turned out to be. I don’t suppose his father expected the war to last, and I don’t suppose Simon did either. Well, none of us did! Quick in and quick out was the idea. Only it wasn’t that way, and in the end, those of us who survived knew what kind of men we were. Some of us even learned to live with it, however little we liked what we saw. But Simon, told all his life that he was Jesus Christ, son of God, fell far below his own estimation and never recovered.”
“That’s a very … sober … assessment,” Rutledge answered. He had nearly used the word cruel, and changed it at the very last.
“I am sober. The pain isn’t so bad tonight. I saw Wyatt leave his house.”
Without particular emphasis, Rutledge said, “Did you indeed? When?”
“Tonight, damn you! I said good evening as we passed in the street. He never answered. He walked past me as if he hadn’t seen me. And I could have touched him, I was that close. Gave me the willies, I can tell you. His face was empty. As if his body was moving of its own volition.”
“Sleepwalking?”
“God, no. His eyes were open, he didn’t stumble or weave, he moved like a man with a destination. Only he was deaf and dumb.”
“Your imagination,” Rutledge said. “He may just have been preoccupied.”
“It wasn’t shell shock either,” Shaw said, ignoring him. “I recognize that when I see it, we had four or five men in our unit who were shambling wrecks before we got them out of the front lines. Pathetic, shaking, barely human.”
Rutledge felt the sudden, unstoppable jolt run through him, jerking the glass in his hand until it spilled. He swore and looked down at his cuff, to conceal his face and Hamish’s swift response: Barely human…
“So it has to be something else,” Shaw went on, oblivious, buried in his own feelings. “Something inside the man that he himself doesn’t see. Until it manifests itself in sudden blackouts. Which tells me it’s some sort of deeply buried guilt, and he can’t face it. What other reason is there?”
“It might be more recent than the war. It might be Miss Tarlton’s death.”
Shaw laughed without any hint of humor. “Are you trying to say that he lapses into these states and commits murder? Or the other way around, commits murder and then lapses out of guilt? You must really be at a loss to find answers for all these bodies you’ve turned up!”
Rutledge studied him. “You’ve been thinking about this, haven’t you? Ever since you met Wyatt in the street? Or even before that.”
“Oh, yes,” Shaw said bitterly. “That’s all I have left to me. An interest in my fellow human beings. We all walk with shadows. You’ve got your own, haven’t you, it’s there in your face and your eyes. I wonder what they are. And if they came out of the war, or from your work.” His eyes scanned Rutledge.
Forcing himself to ignore the challenge, Rutledge waited.
After draining his glass in one long swallow, Shaw said, “I wish I could have gotten drunk tonight—” After a time he picked up Ate thread of the conversation again. “I watch them all. Daulton, because he spoke to her just before she left Charlbury. Wyatt, her host and therefore responsible for her. Aurore, who should have gotten her to that train safely, and didn’t. And let’s not forget Elizabeth Napier, so busily using Margaret’s death to throw herself at Simon again. Or her famous father, who is conspicuous by his absence. If Margaret hadn’t meant anything to him, he’d have come storming into Hildebrand’s office long before this, making political mileage out of his righteous anger. No, they’re all on my list, and I’m just waiting for a single mistake that might tell me which one is guilty.”
“You’ve left Mowbray out of your accounting.”
“No, I haven’t. He’s my last resort, if I’m wrong about the others.”
“Have you reached any conclusions yet?”
“No,” Shaw said, wincing as he moved too suddenly in his chair. “Except that Margaret’s death doesn’t seem to have left even the briefest mark on anybody’s life except mine. And possibly Thomas Napier’s, who knows?” He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “I don’t know whether I loved her or hated her, in the end. I might have killed her myself, if she’d hurt me again. Someone else did, and now I want to find him—or her.”
“For vengeance? It doesn’t work out the way you think it might.”
“Doesn’t it?” Shaw said wryly. “If I discovered her killer tonight, I don’t know what I’d do about it. Turn him over to you. Or batter the life out of him myself. It doesn’t matter, I’m dead anyway. Still—it frightens me, not knowing how I’ll feel. When I loved her so much. That’s why I’m sober, Rutledge. I’m suddenly afraid to drink….”
20
It was the next morning when Rutledge finally ran Simon Wyatt to earth in the museum, shut the doors to the room he was working in, and said curtly, “Sit down.”
“I’ve got too much to do—”
Rutledge cut him short “The museum can wait. The opening can wait. I want to talk to you.”
Something in Rutledge’s voice broke through his wall of isolation. Simon reached for a chair that was filled with boxes, shoved them off the seat, pulled it to him, and sat down. “All right. Five minutes.”
“There’s a very good chance that the murder of Margaret Tarlton can be laid at your wife’s door.”
“Aurore? Don’t be stupid, man, she’s no more guilty of murder than I am! If this is what you want to say to me, I’ve got more important things to attend to!”
Rutledge reached out and pressed Simon back into his chair. “You’ll listen to me until I’ve finished, damn it. And I’ll decide when that is!”
He had spent a long sleepless night going over many things in his mind, but there was no one except Hamish he could have said them to.
“The plan was, as I understand it, for Mrs. Wyatt to drive Margaret Tarlton to the train station at Singleton Magna. She tells me that she didn’t, that she was at the farm working with a sick heifer. All right, that means that Margaret Tarlton is still in this house, looking for a way to the station. Mrs. Daulton sees her at your front gate, waiting—wearing the clothes she had changed into. The dress, in fact, she was wearing when the body was found. Elizabeth Napier has told me that she’s quite sure the dress belonged to Margaret. I’m sure Edith could identify it as well. Or Mrs. Daulton.”
“I haven’t heard about this—” Simon began, incensed. “Why hasn’t anyone told me?”
“Because you’ve got your head buried in this museum and don’t hear what’s being said to you,” Rutledge told him in exasperation. “To go on. Your maid Edith, concerned that Miss Tarlton might miss her train, hurries down to the inn to ask Denton if his nephew Shaw can drive Miss Tarlton. But while she’s gone Miss Tarlton, for reasons of her own, walks down to the rectory and asks Henry Daulton if he or his mother can take her to Singleton Magna. He leaves Miss Tarlton on the steps while he goes to the garden to speak to his mother, but as he turns away she says, ‘There’s Mrs. Wyatt,’ and leaves, angry that she’s already running late. A woman who lives on the other side of the inn tells me that she saw the car leaving town soon afterward, that your wife was driving, and that she believes Margaret Tarlton was a passenger.”