Charles Todd - Search the Dark

“About tonight-” Rutledge reminded him.

“He was in the church earlier. Standing there in front of the altar, lighting candles. Praying, I thought at first. Then he took one of them and started in the direction of the crypt. I don’t think he was walking then.”

“What would interest him in the crypt?” He remembered something Henry had confided to him when he first came to Charlbury. “There are hiding places in the church, aren’t there? Does Simon know about them?”

“I don’t know. He probably does. I didn’t stay very long. But later he came out with a suitcase. I’d seen it before, someone had left it under that stone altar down in the crypt. The old altar, from the Saxon church. Nobody ever uses it, but there’s an altar cloth on it. My mother ironed it every week when my father was alive and kept fresh flowers on it. My father always said it was useless work, but she took pride in it. It’s keeping to tradition, she’d say. I’d hide under its skirts whenever I didn’t want to be found. I think I told Simon about that, but I can’t be sure. I don’t always remember things now.”

“Henry. He knew the suitcase was there-or looked and found it there?”

“Well, he came out carrying it. And don’t ask me where he went with it, I can’t tell you because I don’t know. But I don’t think he wanted to be seen. And almost in the next instant Elizabeth Napier was coming up the church walk again. And you were there under the trees talking quietly to Mrs. Wyatt. I thought it best to go home then.”

If Simon had collected the suitcase, where would he have taken it?

Rutledge thought he knew. The farm-And the police were going to search there in the morning. Damning evidence against Aurore, if it was found there!

He said to Henry, “I’ve got work to do still. Will you be at the rectory or here?” He hadn’t finished with Henry, but there wasn’t time to ask him any more now. It could wait. Simon couldn’t.

“Here, probably. When I can’t sleep, I come here to think. My father had always hoped I’d be rector, just as Simon’s father had expected him to stand for Parliament. But the war put paid to such hopes, didn’t it? I suppose that’s why I can’t sleep. Guilt that I’m not the man I might have been.”

It was a poignant remark, but Henry seemed to accept his circumstances stoically, whether his mother did or not. As if he knew, and shielded her as best he could from the truth. Her insistence that he was making steady, observable improvement must have hurt him many times. The scar was very deep. It had healed. But not the brain behind it.

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.