Charles Todd - Search the Dark

“Mowbray may well have killed the woman,” Rutledge agreed, holding on to his own temper. “But every time we ask anyone about the missing woman or the missing children, we begin by telling them that we’re searching for the Mowbrays. And no one has seen them! If we had another name to put to the woman-the children-even the man-we might hear a different answer.”

“The man’s name? You’re saying that if he believed he married her, and we knew what name she’d taken, we could set things straight by saying ‘Here, we’re looking for the Duchess of Marlborough, this is her photograph, and these are her children,’ and some bored footman might say, ‘She’s gone to visit her cousin over in Lyme Regis, we don’t expect her back for days!’ And we find ourselves telling him that she’s not in Lyme Regis, she’s dead.”

Rutledge took a deep breath. “If we knew who was missing, we might have a place to start. Yes. That’s what I’m saying. After a fashion.”

“But we’ve known that all along!” Hildebrand retorted, exasperated. “And you’re not having me believe that it wasn’t Mrs. Mowbray that’s dead. I don’t believe in coincidence!” His instincts had been right-this one was a meddler!

“It isn’t coincidence. It’s the mind of a man who sees someone out a train window, thinks he’s recognized her, and by the time he’s walked all the way back to Singleton Magna, he believes it. And he finds a woman outside of town, on foot and vulnerable, and he kills her, because the only woman he’s able to think about by this time is his wife!”

“And what, pray, was the poor woman doing on foot outside of town? And where did she come from? And what name shall we give her? And why hasn’t anyone come looking for her? Answer me that!”

It was hopeless. Rutledge, on the point of bringing up changes in the children’s ages, decided it would fall on deaf ears now. Instead he said, “I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have most of them. Not yet! But those search parties aren’t finding what they’re after, and I for one am willing to look in any direction that might clear up this murder.”

“We’ve cleared up the murder, hasn’t anyone told you? What’s Mowbray doing in my jail, watched day and night by my men, if we haven’t? If you can’t help me do what has to be done here, for God’s sake don’t muddy the waters with notions that make about as much sense as-as flying from that rooftop!”

“In my experience-” he began.

“Rubbish!” Hildebrand swung away from Rutledge, then angrily turned back to face him, jaw clenched. He said, “This is my investigation. You’ve been sent from London to find the children. Or their bodies. To get me whatever I need from another jurisdiction easier and faster. And here I’m the one setting up the search parties, running about in the bloody sunshine while you chase phantoms. Get about your own work, man, and leave the rest of this business to me!”

“Look,” Rutledge said, trying a last time, “if you bring Mowbray to court in his present condition, the jury will want to see proof that he did what you’re claiming he did. They’ll want means and motive and a weapon, they’ll want to know those children are dead, and at his hand, so they can convict a witless man without having it rest heavy on their conscience. His defense will run you in circles, making your life a misery before it’s over. They’ll put him on the stand and have him swearing he’s Jack the Ripper or the Czar of Russia before they’ve finished with him. And if we’re wrong-about any particular-”

“Have you met Mowbray’s barrister? Johnston? The man’s already in the grave with his son. He’ll not fight any evidence we present, he’ll be happy enough to see his client sent to an asylum instead of the gallows. And that’s supposing he cares one way or another! Once we find the other bodies, no jury in England will let Mowbray off!” Hildebrand strode ten feet and swung around a second time, too angry to let it go. “Do what you were sent to do, man! This isn’t Cornwall, you’ll not be finding any deep, dark secrets in my patch, and you’ll not spoil my case.”

And he was gone, arms swinging in a barely suppressed need to hit something, anything, if it released the tension in his body. Rutledge watched him, oblivious of the stares of passersby, as Hildebrand crossed the street and disappeared into the Swan.

“I could ha’ told you-” Hamish began.

I don’t want to hear it!

Rutledge turned and walked on, up the hill toward the common, where the coolness of the trees closed over him.

Mowbray. Was he guilty of murdering his wife? And had he killed his children? Or was the body waiting to be claimed in the makeshift morgue a stranger’s, with nothing more than coincidence dragging her into another man’s madness? And the children-or the man with them? Did they exist, or were they something from the dark reaches of grief, conjured up with the pain of jogged memory?

What was wrong with this murder, what was it that lay beneath the surface, like a corpse beneath the ice, waiting to rise and point an accusing finger when the time came?

Hamish said, “Yon policeman wants his answers tidy, like a birthday box done up in ribbons and silver paper. Never mind what’s truly happened. You’d do well to heed him and not meddle. He can make a bad enemy!”

“There’s a dead woman to be thought of,” Rutledge reminded him. “And that man in the cell.” But what could be done for Mowbray now, even if they found a dozen murderers to take his place? The poor devil was broken by his own torment. He looked up at rooks calling from the branches arching high over his head. “I don’t think we’ll find the children,” he added pensively.

“Then where’ve they got to?” Hamish demanded.

“To safety,” he answered, and for the life of him, he couldn’t have explained where that notion had come from.

He took his lunch at the Swan, eating in solitary splendor in the dining room. It was nearly two o’clock, and the young woman waiting on him was yawning in a corner, her eyes drowsy as she filled the sugar bowls and then collected the salts and peppers in their turn. She looked enough like Peg, the chambermaid, to be her sister. Rutledge listened to the clink of the silver tops as she worked with them, his own thoughts busy with details.

He had called in at the railway station and persuaded the master to ask down the line whether suitcases had been unclaimed when the train made its last stop.

The telegraph key had clicked swiftly and surely, and then silence. “There’s a chance they were found by the conductor, long before the end of the line,” the man reminded Rutledge.

“I’d thought of that.” But the conductor who had put Mowbray off the train was an experienced man and according to the file had been questioned by Hildebrand himself. He’d have been the first to see the significance of any uncollected luggage that had come to light then or later.

The key began to click in response. The stationmaster listened and then shook his head. “No unclaimed luggage,” he said. “Not that day. Nor that week either.”

“Then contact any stops in between-”

“All of them?” the man demanded, staring at Rutledge.

“All of them,” he agreed. But the second message sent out by the stationmaster brought in the same response. No unclaimed luggage…

“They might not’ve had much baggage with them,” the man said, “if ’twere only a day trip. It might help if we knew what we were looking for.”

Rutledge shook his head. “I don’t know. If anything more comes over the wire, I’m at the Swan. Send word to me there.” It was a far-fetched hope.

And so he’d gone for his belated meal, letting the stationmaster do the same. “My wife’s waiting my dinner,” the man had said, following Rutledge out of the small, cluttered office. “She’s ill-humored when I’m late!”