Wings of Fire (26 page)

“You read it? When you found it?”

She got up and went to the door to let the cat out into the night. He caught the breath of the sea and knew that the wind had changed direction. “Have you never lived in a house with servants? They aren’t deaf as posts and blind as bats. It was buried amongst his shirts, sir, not in his desk. I’d never have
touched
the papers in his desk, but it fell out on the floor and the sheet of paper went this way, the envelope that. I picked ’em up and read the one before putting it in the other and setting it where it belonged, in the desk. And it was gone from there the next day.”

“You’re certain Mrs. FitzHugh herself hadn’t take it?”

“Well, as to that, sir, we couldn’t very well ask, could we, now! But later, when she was restless and uneasy in her mind, wandering the house all hours of the night, trying for sleep and not finding it, I wondered. Mr. Adrian, her father, hadn’t wanted her to marry Mr. Brian, and she knew it, but Mr. Brian was a kind man, he made her laugh and he had no eye for her money. The house’d gone to Miss Olivia, but the money was still Miss Rosamund’s. Mr. Brian gave no thought to it. He was happy if she was, and he gave her the twins, and Miss Rosamund adored them. It wasn’t a bad marriage to my way of thinking. Then Mr. Chambers, he started coming around when the period of mourning was finished, and Miss Rosamund, she looked for a time to be herself again, roses in her cheeks and that special way she had of tilting her head as if listening to something sweet in the air, whenever she was happy.”

Sadie, standing at the open door, shut it as the cat came back inside, and went to the hearth to stand. She was tired, her face deeply lined. But Rutledge thought he couldn’t have stopped her now if he’d tried.

“That was in June. By September she was dead, and they said it was by her own hand. But Lord, sir, I knew how much of the laudanum she’d took! I was the one that had to beg her each night to swallow
half
a draught to ease the despair she’d felt all through that last month. But she’d shake her head and say, ‘No, Sadie, I need my wits about me!’ ‘You’ll have no wits left, if ye don’t rest!’ I told her plain out, but she said ‘There’s something I must do, and I’m not sure exactly how to set about it. I’m not going to marry Mr. Chambers. Or anyone else. I’ve got my children to live for, and that’s the most important part of my life now.’ There was no changing her mind, she was that strong.”

“She’d decided against marrying Thomas Chambers? Had she actually told him that?”

“Oh, lord, yes, but he was there every weekend, come to call and dine with her. I heard her say to him once, ‘I’ve killed them all. George and James and Brian. I can’t bear to
see you die, and I won’t, I tell you!’ And he said, ‘That’s nonsense, my love, you’re letting grief turn your thoughts.’ She just looked at him, her face sad. ‘I’m bad luck, Tom, I’d rather stay single than wear widow’s weeds ever again.”

“What made her think she had killed them?” He was fascinated, pretending to drink his tea and over the rim of his cup watching the old face in the lamp’s light, trying to read the eyes.

“Ah, but did she? I wondered about that for the longest time. Miss Olivia,
she
said it was deeper than that, she thought Mr. Cormac, he was in love with Miss Rosamund. But there was no speaking of it, not to Miss Rosamund. She’d smile and say her spirits were fine, she’d just decided that marriage was not worth the grieving afterward.”

“Then how did she come to die?”

“That were odd, sir. One day she said to Miss Olivia, ‘I think I’ll ask Tom to come for the weekend. I need to speak to him. Legal matters, and perhaps after that’s done, we may find it possible to talk about other things.’ I was on the stairs, helping Mr. Cormac and Mr. Nicholas move a chest down from the attics that Mr. Cormac wanted to take back to his London rooms. You could hear their voices as you came down, talking in the drawing room. Then Miss Rosamund, she came out, she looked up at me, and her face turned that bleak I wanted to weep. I didn’t know what’d unsettled her, but it was there in her eyes. Cold as death. It was Miss Olivia who found the note she left, and burned it in the grate.”

“A
note
? I was never told that there was a note found when Rosamund died!” Rutledge said, appalled.

Sadie sat down, heavily and with great effort, then asked him to fetch her homemade wine, from the small cupboard by the dry sink. When she’d finished half the glass and got her breath with more comfort, she said, “No. Miss Olivia, she burned it, like I said. It was written in a scrawl you’d hardly recognize, and hidden under the pillow. Just a name. And a warning. ’Twas all Miss Olivia needed. She went whiter than she was and bent over her mother’s body in such grief I couldn’t bear it. So I walked out of the room and went
to fetch Mr. Nicholas. The note was never spoken of again. I didn’t need to be told. I’d heard the hounds myself since poor little Richard was taken. I knew who’d put the overdose in Miss Rosamund’s water. Not her, not that woman so full of life and love—she’d not have gone to her God with self-murder on her hands!” It was spoken with a vehemence that brought an angry flush to Sadie’s cheeks. In a stronger voice she added, “The twins, they were still too young to know anything about such things, only that their mother’d taken ill in the night and overdosed herself. Mr. Chambers, he was heartbroken. You’d have thought he was the grieving widower, not the family’s lawyer. It was the Gabriel hounds that whispered in her ear, bending over her as she dropped into that last sleep, and she’d known, she’d
known
where the danger was!”

“The danger to herself?”

“Oh, aye, that, and the danger to Miss Olivia. Because the truth of the matter was, you see, Mr. Cormac’d set his cap next for Miss Olivia. If he couldn’t become a Trevelyan in one way, he’d do it another. And Miss Rosamund, she wouldn’t marry him. Nor after begging
her
, how could he ask for Miss Olivia, without it all coming out? She’d have told Mr. Chambers too when he came, sure as God gave her the breath. It was what she’d decided, after all the worry and the sleepnessness. He was in a bind, and the easy answer was to remove the light of that house. Miss Rosamund, she’d used every excuse to put Mr. Chambers off, and he hadn’t run, he still wanted her with all his heart. He’d have done whatever she asked. He’d have questioned Olivia, too, and she might have told him at long last what was on her soul. But when Miss Rosamund died, Mr. Chambers was so sunk in his own pain that there was no way of reaching out to him. Miss Olivia buried her mother and told the world that grief had overwhelmed her in the night. Mr. Smedley, he loved that family, and he wouldn’t hear of suicide. Nor Dr. Penrith. He said her hands had been shaking, she’d been in a muddle from no sleep, and it was easy for her to make such a tragic mistake—dosing herself rather than waking one of the servants
from their rest. She was that thoughtful, people believed it was true. And her killer counted on that to go scot-free! Who was there to cry murder? Miss Olivia? Who burned that paper?”

“If it was murder—”

She looked at him pityingly. “I’ve laid out more than half this village in my time, dead of accidents, dead of sickness, dead of broken hearts—it’s common enough, dying. Aye, sometimes murder’s been done too, but Dr. Penrith was a good man, he could find that needle in the haystack. And we all knew each other well enough to guess whose hand had done it: the husband, the lover, the jealous neighbor. But it was different at the Hall. There was none there who didn’t love Miss Rosamund dearly, and Miss Olivia knew they’d fight against her, unwilling to believe any such tale as she could spin. He was careful, and very clever.
There was no proof!
But that was when Miss Olivia and Mr. Nicholas took Mr. Brian’s children out of their will. No house, and the money tied tight in trust. However long and loud the hound might bay, it wouldn’t be for their blood. But he came for her, anyway, in the end. Because of the poems. Because he has the money now to do as he pleases. Because she knew what she knew, and it was time for him to marry. There’s a new provision in the deed of that house that if Cormac FitzHugh ever chooses to live in the Hall, he must never marry. Mr. Chambers, he thought it was because Miss Olivia loved Mr. Cormac and didn’t want him to bring another bride there. But she said it was her house, she’d do as she liked with it, and nobody could stop her. Which was true enough. And Mr. Cormac, he’s never married. But he’ll live in the Hall, and I hope, with all my heart, that the hounds come for him there, in the dark, when there’s no help to be had!”

She began to weep, tears running down her white, withered face in ugly runnels, as if there had never been places for them to fall before, and now they couldn’t find a way.

Rutledge found himself breathing hard, his body tight with black and wordless rage. He gave her his handkerchief and
she took it, fumbling in the blindness of the tears. She touched her face with a dignity that was heart wrenching, because these were not tears for herself. She still hadn’t cried for herself.

After a long silence, Rutledge asked, “Why did Olivia choose to die? And why did Nicholas die with her?”

Sadie shook her head. “If she wanted you to know that, she’d of told you. In her poetry. Somehow.”

And, God help him, she had.

Huskily Rutledge said, “More to the point, did she tell you?”

“She didn’t have to. I may be old and tired and useless, but there was more to me, once, and a heart to match it. I knew without the telling!”

“Was Cormac ever in love with Olivia?”

“He was deathly afraid of her, if I’m a judge. It was the only thing he ever showed fear of, and that fear was nigh on to superstitious! Miss Olivia said he didn’t believe in God, but that he believed with whatever heart he had, her death would surely be his death.”

For the first time in a very long hour, Hamish stirred and spoke as clearly as if he’d sat there at the table with them from the start. Or because of the tension that held him like a vise, had Rutledge himself formed the words aloud? Somehow he was never, afterward, sure.

“She’s wrong there, it was no’ her death that brought him down, but Nicholas Cheney’s. And yon lassie not understanding it, and sending for the Yard.”

Sadie looked up at him, her eyes no longer clear and sharp.
“Aye, it’s true enough,” she answered. “It was Mr. Nicholas dying. But how could
he
have left Mr. Nicholas alive? He’d have come for Mr. Cormac with his bare hands the instant anything happened to Miss Olivia. However carefully it were done. That’s all that saved Mr. Cormac for twenty years, Miss Olivia not wanting to see Mr. Nicholas hanged! No, they had to die together. That was the only chance Mr. Cormac had in this world.”

Rutledge had written down her words, and afterward, when he’d made more tea and coaxed her out of weariness and the peace of forgetfulness, with his help she read them over and with a shaking hand, signed at the bottom of the last page.

Now,
now
he could walk into a courtroom with all the evidence any barrister might need. Except for what Stephen hadn’t trusted to Olivia’s boxes. The FitzHugh family history.

It was late when Rutledge walked through the woods, trying to cope with the emotions that still consumed him, listening to his own footsteps on the path, the soles of his shoes grinding on the gritty flint and earth like the mills of the gods. Slowly but surely—But he didn’t want slowly, he wanted a reckoning now, bloody and final and with vengeance driving it.

And Hamish, ferociously wrestling for control, was losing.

As he rounded the last bend in the trees, there were lights ahead of him. And behind the bright windows, the heavy thunderheads of a storm building. Flashes of reddish gold lightning laced the clouds, dancing among them as the roll of distant sound like guns firing out to sea reached him. Rutledge felt a cleaving tightness in his stomach.

“Before the battle, aye,” Hamish remembered with him, “always the guns. But in God’s name, you’re not in France now, not
tonight
! That’s a storm coming in fast, and yon house has nae claim on you now. Nor the man in it! Your work’s done. This is no’ your fight, man!”

Pausing in the shelter of the darkness, he turned his eyes back to the house. There were lamps in several rooms. The
drawing room. The study where Olivia and Nicholas had died. An upstairs bedroom that had been Rosamund’s…

An invitation, then. Of a kind. “I’m here. I know what you’ve done this day. Come and face me yourself, if you dare!”

Hamish said, “Not when ye’re sae angry! Not with the darkness on ye! It’s not worth dying for, just to see how he’ll take his defeat!”

“I’m not dying in there. And neither is he, if I can help it. He’s laid down the challenge. I won’t walk away from it. Olivia didn’t.” But he knew very well it was the heat in his own blood speaking.

Hamish retorted, “This isna’ the law, it’s vengeance! And it’s for her—all for that bluidy
woman
!”

He didn’t answer, his mind already busy, calculating, weighing—

There was a scent of pipe tobacco on the breeze that ruffled the leaves over his head. Faint but real. Then the sound of feet walking closer.

Rutledge turned his head. Behind him on the path the rector’s voice came out of the darkness, low and passionate.

“The people of Borcombe are simple, but they aren’t stupid. They’ve talked to each other, and put most of the story together by now. So have I. And I’ve spent my day trying to undo the harm you’ve done here. You’ve shaken their faith, and in the end they’ll blame themselves for all those deaths. They’ll shoulder the burden for twenty-five years of wickedness, for not recognizing or stopping it.”

Rutledge said, “I’ve seen it happen before in murder cases. ‘
I could have prevented it
.’ But not this time. Not with this killer. Tell them that.”

“If I understood
why…
”

Rutledge turned his attention back to the headland. Gauging the storm and what was waiting in the house. The lamps were still burning.

“The bedrock of my faith is redemption. That everyone can be saved, because deep down there’s some goodness to
search out and nurture,” Smedley said tiredly. “I want to help.”

“No. There’s no goodness to find here. Go back to the village and leave this to me. Here, take this with you.” He handed Smedley the statement he’d taken from the old woman. “Keep it safe for me.”

“What is it?”

“Just give it to Harvey. It’s finished. Or it will be, in a little while.”

“
That’s
what frightens me. Finished how? Olivia wouldn’t have wanted it to end in violence. As a man of God, I can try to reach out, to offer the church’s solace and forgiveness.”

Rutledge, on edge and wishing the rector back in his church, said savagely, “I’ll make it plain. This man has killed for the sake of killing. Whatever he may tell you, whatever reasons he may offer, whatever logic he can bring to bear for his defense, he killed because it suited his purpose! And because the opportunity was there. And the power of shaping his own fate with his own hands he found exhilarating. Whatever went wrong in him, it isn’t going to be exorcised by the church. Or by you.”

“No! There is good in every human being. I believe it devoutly!”

“Then go down on your knees before the altar and pray for guidance. I need it! Or, if you want to be useful, find Inspector Harvey and tell him I require a warrant. But send Constable Dawlish around to the beach by boat. Just in case he tries to leave in that direction.”

“By boat? There’s a storm coming.”

“I know. Hurry, man! There isn’t much time.”

Rutledge was already walking away as he spoke. Smedley stayed in the enclosed darkness of the trees as the Londoner came to the end of the path and started up the drive, not concealing his presence, not slowing his pace.

Hamish said roughly, “All right then, ye’ll be fighting his darkness and your own, but ye’re a clever man, and ye canna’ show weakness, it’s what he’ll watch for. Let the words roll off his tongue and your back.”

But Rutledge didn’t hear.

Slowly, one by one, the lamps were extinguished, plunging the house into darkness. All but one he could see in the drawing room, with its faint glimmer in the hall’s tall windows.

The thunder made him flinch again, his nerves raw, his senses already at fever pitch.

Lightning flickered, and through the windows of the room where Olivia had died, it seemed to dance fleetingly, as if there was a living presence there.

At the steps, Rutledge hesitated, but the door didn’t open, and he took out the key he still kept in his pocket.

The shaft of light falling from the drawing room door like a spear was very bright after the darkness outside, making him blink, and he hesitated, aware of what might come out of the hall’s shadows at him. Then he turned towards the drawing room, his footsteps brashly loud in the stillness.

There was an airlessness too in the house that seemed to suffocate him, in spite of the high ceilings and the open door behind him.

He could smell the trenches again, feel the earth shaking under his feet as the barrage began. The sappers were still deep underground. He wasn’t sure they’d make it out in time—they’d be buried alive in moving earth, as he’d been, breath shut off by tons of soil rising high into the night sky and then collapsing in on them—on him—shutting out everything, sight, hearing, air—

Hamish stirred, uneasily calling out to him.

Rutledge forced himself back into the present, making himself concentrate on the light, not the dark.

On the threshold of the drawing room, he stopped again. There was a decanter and two glasses on the small table by the hearth, beneath Rosamund’s portrait. One of the glasses was half full. The other empty.

As if waiting for him…they’d both been right, he and Hamish…

Leashing his anger with an iron will, he crossed the silent room and stood looking at the portrait for a time, his eyes
seeing it, his ears listening to the sounds of the house. It seemed to be electric with tension.

And then Cormac FitzHugh was standing in the doorway.

“She belongs here, doesn’t she? I was sorry that Susannah insisted on taking her away.”

As if Rutledge was a guest, and Cormac, the host, was making idle conversation before dinner. Rutledge turned to see the man’s face, and felt a coldness in his blood.

There was nothing there of anger or tension or a desire to kill. If anything, Cormac’s expression was pleasant, welcoming. But the brilliant blue eyes were fire.

Answering him, Rutledge said, “Yes. She’s the spirit of the house.”

Cormac smiled at him. “That’s a very Irish way of putting it.”

“Is it?”

Cormac came to the table and picked up his drink, then gestured with the glass. “Won’t you join me?”

Rutledge said nothing, and Cormac went on easily, “There’s no laudanum in it. Will you join the search for this new Ripper?”

“He isn’t my business. Never was. But Olivia Marlowe is.”

“Ah.” He lifted the glass again, gesturing this time to the portrait. “You didn’t know her as I did. Olivia was only a pale shadow of Rosamund.”

“She had a remarkable talent. Olivia.”

“Her poetry? But talent is transient. Fame is transient. We are all going to die some day, more’s the pity. It seems man has learned to do everything except live forever. When we achieve earthly immortality, I suppose we’ll finally have the power of God.”

“I’m not sure I’d want that. Immortality. To live forever would be—tiresome. Eternal youth, that might be more useful.”

Cormac laughed, the handsome face lighting from within. “Would you choose now, or before 1914?”

“Before. I have no fond memories of the war.”

“No, I don’t think you have. I’ve read your medical reports—I still have connections in London with the people I worked with during the war. And most things are available for money. A very intriguing file. I’m amazed you survived. But you’ve nothing to fear from me. I don’t plan to expose you.”

No, Rutledge thought. You’d much rather kill me.

He said aloud, “It doesn’t matter. I never expected to keep my secrets forever. If they come out, I’ll find something else to do with my life.” But he knew how great a lie that was…

“Or end it?” Cormac asked softly, responding to the silent thought.

“You can pray for that. Will you be here when I leave?”

“It depends on what you’ve come to find.” For the first time something echoed in the quiet voice.

After a moment Rutledge said, “Why should I make it easy for you?” and walked past Cormac, back into the hall. To his surprise, Cormac actually let him go. But he could feel the man’s eyes still watching him, and he knew it wasn’t over.

He crossed the hall, taking the stairs two at a time while Hamish reminded him that Stephen had fallen here, the words tumbling like the man had done, over and down and crashing into the floor below. Yet only Rutledge could hear them. At the top of the steps in the gallery, he made his decision, then took up the small lamp from the table where it had been set, waiting, nearly lost in the surrounding blackness.

Down the passage to the left, not the right, past the closed doors of bedrooms, the darkness here astir with feelings Rutledge couldn’t name as the lamplight made a circle of orange light around him. The oil was hot beneath the glass, warming his hand. He thought of Olivia, and of Nicholas. Did one ever come back from the dead? It was an interesting question. He hoped it would be some time before he discovered the answer to it.

The silence in Stephen’s room was palpable. In the lamplight the furnishings seemed stark and somehow dauntingly empty, heavily shadowed.

He paused in the doorway for a moment, listening to the
sound of his own breathing and Hamish’s trepidation.

“Leave now!” the soft Scottish voice repeated over and over. “
Now!
”

But Rutledge crossed to the bed and knelt, his hands moving along the struts that held the springs in place. Fingers careful, sensing their way over the strips of dusty wood.

His nails struck the book’s binding, his fingers stretched and closed around it, drawing it out with infinite circumspection.

Then it was in his grasp.

He stood, and in the silence there was now a humming of tension, like the distant baying of hounds. The hairs on the back of his neck lifted in a primeval reaction. Hamish, hissing malevolently, heard it too.

There was very little time.

He opened the slim book. Thumbed through the pages once, then again. Found the family genealogy that had been written carefully here, ever since a century-dead FitzHugh had held this prayer book in his hand at confirmation. Long ago in Ireland. In another time and another world…

The sound was louder, the tension something that made his body tighten with anticipation. It was like waiting for the Huns to come over the top, and yet—different. The first rumble of nearby thunder shook the house, and his pulses leaped, as if the first shells had landed.

“
Hurry!
” Hamish urged him.

With one swift movement he drew his pocketknife, opened it, and gently slit the handwritten pages at the binding so that they fell out in his hands.