Rutledge nodded and left, his footsteps echoing again in the stillness. From the nave, Henry called, “If Simon is wandering, don’t startle him. Let him finish whatever it is he wants to do first. Will you be careful about that?”
“Yes. I’ll remember.” But he didn’t believe Simon was anything but very much himself, well aware of what he was doing.
He went out to his car, started the motor, and drove with haste to the farm. It was dark, dark as the night. He left the car by the gate and walked swiftly up the murky blackness that was the rutted lane, swearing as he missed his footing several times in the deeper patches. A man could break an ankle here with ease, he thought. And who would know? Jimson wouldn’t hear any calls for help!
When he reached the house, he walked carefully around it, staying in the shadows as much as possible. But he couldn’t see any lights, he couldn’t pick out any sign of Simon Wyatt’s presence. Inside the house or out. Hamish was alert in his mind, wary, watchful.
Rutledge moved on, into the barn, and saw at once that the horses had been taken out. Even the barn cat wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He strode swiftly, silently, down the empty, dusty passage to the back doors and discovered that the cows, usually penned for the night behind the barn, had been loosed in the fields. He could just see them, ghostly white patches against the darkness of the pasture. As he came back, he realized that the door of the chicken coop stood open and that the chickens had scattered, roosting on the tops of overturned wagons or the roofs of sheds.
He had nearly reached the front of the barn, his mind occupied with myriad possibilities—Hamish was already warning him about the most likely of them.
And then, among the loose piles of hay in the loft, a yellow ball of fire, bright as the sun, began to blossom into roaring life with frightening intensity.
Simon had set the barn alight!
Rutledge ran, his steps muffled by the packed earth, echoed by the paving stones, his eyes sweeping the stalls, the tack room, the loft. Searching every corner, even as time ran out. He began to cough from the heavy, swirling smoke, and then he felt the heat on his back as the flames took hold behind him. He found himself stumbling for the nearest door, and then turned around as something caught his eye at the foot of one of the great oak beams that supported the loft and the roof. It was in the shadow of the beam, nearly invisible, black against black, but the fire was dancing on the silver catches that locked the suitcase. It had been left where the fire would burn the hottest, around that beam, consuming it fully—melting even the metal in the end.
Whatever Hildebrand might suspect tomorrow, there would be no proof. And suspicion would still fall heavily on Aurore. Had Simon intended to save his wife—or damn her?
Although Hamish was calling to him to leave it, Rutledge dashed back into the smoke, palling and black, and reached down to grip the handle, his other arm raised to shield his eyes. Was the hat here too? He groped for it, along the floor, and in an instant lost his bearing. He was blinded, disoriented, unable to tell in the thickening air which way he had come from. There was a curtain closing in on him, choking and smothering, cutting him off. Suffocating him in a claustrophobic cloak, sucking at his will. Hamish was a roar in his mind, louder than the roar of the fire, hammering at him to go!
“Simon?” Rutledge shouted, realizing all at once that a fire could destroy a man as well as a barn and a suitcase, and felt the rawness in his throat. “Simon!”
But there was no answer and time was down to seconds before he himself was trapped. He could hear Hamish screaming at him now. Sparks were setting every wisp of straw to burning. He ran again, this time blindly, his face seared by flames as he passed within their sphere. And then he was through them, blundering first into a wall, feeling the draft of air that was feeding the blaze, and stumbling finally out the door. Still coughing hard, he ran on, to pound heavily on the back door of the farmhouse. Once the blaze was at its height, there would be no saving the house either.
He came through the door shouting for Jimson, checking the dark, empty ground-floor rooms already reflecting the dawnlike brightness from the barn, and ran up the stairs, searching there as well. The old glass of the windows on the back of the house mirrored the flames against the wall in shimmering images, lighting his way. In the front it was stygian darkness still, and he quartered each room carefully, making absolutely sure. But Jimson was not here. Nor was Simon. Wherever they were, they weren’t in danger of burning to death.
He came out into the night again, his lungs burning from the smoke. It was rolling now, billows of it, as it fed on old wood, dust, and hay. The grass by one of the sheds was already flickering with fiery dewdrops. He searched the sheds and found them empty, bales of hay waiting in them for the match to come.
The air was thick, heavy. He could hear horses in the distance, neighing shrilly in alarm. Hamish was telling him to go, to hurry.
The sound of the flames was greedy now, soaring into the night on a pillar of black smoke and sparks.
Rutledge hesitated, yet he knew he could do nothing for the barn. There was nothing one man—or an army of men—might do as the flames fed hungrily on the hay and then jumped to the dry, old wood of stalls and pillars and walls. He stood staring at it in despair, knowing what its destruction would mean to Aurore.
Finally retrieving the suitcase from the porch where he’d left it, he turned and hurried back down the drive to his car.
Wherever Simon was, he had to find him. He had the strongest feeling that it was already too late. But he had to try. To live with himself, he had to try.
But there was no sign of Wyatt on the road, and Rutledge thought as he coughed raggedly, I couldn’t have missed him coming here—the fire wasn’t that far along when I arrived. He must have taken a shortcut from here to Charlbury—he must have come out somewhere near the church where no one would see him. He’s ahead of me!
Driving very fast now, his headlamps probing the darkness, he made the trip to Charlbury in a matter of minutes.
The Wyatt house was alight, not with fire but with lamps. He braked hard, skidding to a halt, and was out of the car almost as soon as the engine stopped.
Aurore was in the front garden, her face wild with fear.
“Simon isn’t in the house,” she said. “I can’t find him, I’ve looked everywhere. Oh, God—can you see those flames? We must do something—Jimson—”
“Jimson’s safe. Simon was at the farm—he set the barn to burn, Aurore. It will be gone in a short time. But he wasn’t there, nor was Jimson. And the cattle, the horses are safe. There’s nothing that can be done.”
But the fire bell by the common was ringing loudly, and men, stuffing nightshirts into trousers, were gathering by the inn and piling into carts, wagons, whatever they could find, throwing buckets among the packed bodies. Rutledge caught sight of Jimson among them, yelling fiercely.
“He burned—but why!” Aurore ignored the chaos, her mind only on Simon.
Rutledge said, “The suitcase. He wanted to destroy it and anything else that might have been left there, any evidence that could still be found. It was the only thing he could think of doing before Hildebrand came tomorrow. Aurore, you must tell me now, where did you find that straw hat?”
“The suitcase—Margaret’s?” She was very still. “I don’t understand.”
“It was hidden in the church, Aurore. Henry knew about the hiding place there, and Simon. Simon went to fetch it tonight. You hadn’t destroyed it, had you? If you lied about that, you lied about the hat—”