Charles Todd - Search the Dark

He went there and knelt on one knee to look more closely at it. It yawned, empty.

The dark space was large enough for a suitcase like Margaret Tarlton’s, or for a small boy gleefully escaping from adult supervision. But who had put the suitcase in there?

He thought he had part of the answer now. He felt heavy with sadness.

Aurore was just behind him, staying close in the pale light of her own candle, her breath uneven, as if the place disturbed her. He thought she might be sorry she had come now. But she stooped to look at the small space too and then gasped as another voice spoke. It seemed to rise from the ground under their feet, although that was a trick of the echo.

It was Henry, on the stairs, saying, “My mother told me about Simon. I’m sorry. She’s very upset, she feels responsible.” He didn’t have a candle.

Yes, she would, Rutledge thought. The final tragedy in her life.

Rutledge straightened up and came across the uneven floor toward Henry. “Was this your hiding place? Was this the place from which Simon Wyatt took the suitcase tonight?”

Henry said, “I’d rather not tell you. Let the dead lie in peace.”

“It will help Simon. He isn’t guilty; neither is Aurore.”

Henry frowned, a move that emphasized the deep scar. “But it will harm someone else, won’t it? It will hurt me.”

“That very much depends on why it was put here, as well as by whom.”

Henry came down the last of the steps and moved across the crypt, the candle flames dancing with his passage. “It would have been safer over here,” he said, coming to a stop in front of one of the tombs there. “The suitcase.”

The low rectangular stone vault was small, plain. The top was engraved with a name, date, and a few lines of scripture. But no figures at the sides supported it, and no designs ran like filigree either across the top or down the corners. It seemed to squat on the floor, out of place among its more ornate brethren, as if unfinished.

“The end stone here isn’t sealed. The tomb’s actually empty, did you know? It belonged to the wife of another Simon Wyatt, some three hundred years ago. The next wife didn’t want her to lie here in Charlbury and had the body sent to Essex. It’s one of the family skeletons, in a manner of speaking.”

He stooped by the tomb and pushed one side of the stone that marked the foot. It scraped across the floor but moved with fair ease. “You wouldn’t have needed much of a space, to slip a suitcase in there. But most people can’t tell it’s free. I knew. Even my father didn’t.”

Rutledge said quietly, “You couldn’t have moved that as boys. It was too heavy. Would it be too heavy for a woman?” He was thinking of Aurore.

“Probably not. If she knew about it. The old sexton showed it to me when I was six or seven. He had a ghoulish nature; he said I’d wind up here if I misbehaved in church. Rather a cruel thing to tell a child, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. It was.” To one side of Rutledge, Aurore stood with that stillness of hers that he so admired.

Henry frowned, thinking. “I must have told Simon about these hiding places. That’s how he could find the suitcase, when he came looking tonight. I asked him what he was searching for, and he said it was a suitcase no one else wanted. He said Aurore had put it here, but she hadn’t”

Aurore, turning to Rutledge, opened her mouth to speak and stopped.

“No, I don’t believe she had put it here either.” Rutledge said, his voice attuned to Henry’s mood. “Who did? Do you know?”

Henry shook his head. “It was in the attic for a time.”

“Whose attic? Simon’s?”

“No, of course not. It came from my mother’s.”

“How did she come to have it? It didn’t belong to her. Did you give it to her?”

“She brought it home one day. I asked her where it came from, and she said it was better if I didn’t worry about it. There was another one too, but she put that one on a train from Kingston Lacey to Norfolk. I expect she wanted to put this one on a train too but hadn’t had time.”

Where do you hide a suitcase? Where there are other suitcases…

Aurore was staring at Henry. She said, “How did Simon know that the suitcase was here?”

“I don’t believe he did. He’d searched the farmhouse. And the barn. After the inspector here had gone this afternoon. Then he came here, to search the church. I don’t think he was very pleased to find it.”

“No,” Rutledge said. “I shouldn’t have thought he was at all pleased. It proved something he didn’t want to believe. I think-Henry, it’s time we found your mother.”

“Why?”

“Mrs. Wyatt needs her.”

Henry said, “I like Mrs. Wyatt. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve watched her often. I like pretty hair. Hers is very pretty.”

Rutledge, standing very still, said softly, “Aurore, will you trust me? Let your hair down. Slowly. Give me the candle.”

After an instant’s hesitation, she handed it to him and slowly began to unpin her hair, collecting the pins in her teeth. The knot at the back of her neck loosened and unwound. As she took the pins in her left hand her hair spilled in long gleaming waves, falling over her shoulders nearly to her waist. She looked at Rutledge, frowning but unafraid. Her hair was not pretty-it was beautiful.

Henry, mesmerized, sucked in his breath and walked toward her, his eyes shining in the light. His hand moved, reaching, then drew back. “You won’t scream if I touch it?” he said to Aurore. And to Rutledge he said, “I like to touch it. But it always makes them scream, and I hate that part.”

“No,” Rutledge said firmly, “you can’t touch it tonight.” Henry stopped where he was, uncertain. Rutledge passed one of his candles to Aurore, her face white and stark now, and stepped into Henry’s path. “Mrs. Wyatt, would you mind fetching Mrs. Daulton for me? You should find her at your house, with Elizabeth. Ask her to come here, but don’t come back with her, do you understand?”

“Ian-” she began, moving toward the stairs.

“There’s no need, I’m here,” Joanna Daulton said, coming down the crypt steps. Dressed now, composed, she stood there, blocking the only exit from the low-ceilinged, cold stone undercroft of the old church, another candle in her hand, and Rutledge felt himself succumbing to the numbing fear of being shut in, cut off from the outside air. Hamish was urgently telling him to pay heed In Mrs. Daulton’s left hand, half hidden by her skirts and the shadows, was the straw hat that had belonged to Margaret Tarlton.

Aurore was moving closer to Rutledge, one hand fumbling at her hair, gathering it together. But Joanna Daulton said, “You needn’t be afraid, my dear. Henry never hurts anyone. He just has a fascination about seeing a woman’s hair flowing down her back. I don’t think he even understands why this compulsion is there. The physical implications. Nor does he understand that respectable women don’t care for such attentions. He only wants to touch, and to him that’s hot-wrong. Like a child wanting to touch something very pretty, he sometimes can’t stop himself.” The last words seemed to be wrenched from her.

“He tries to choke them when they scream,” Rutledge said.

“Yes, it frightens him, he tries to shut them up. If they stood still, he’d stop at once. But that’s as far as it ever goes. He never does any harm.”

“He tried, tonight, to choke Elizabeth Napier.”

“Yes.” She turned tiredly toward Aurore. “I wouldn’t have had Simon die for anything in the world,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow. “I mean that, Aurore. I never intended for any such thing to happen.”

“I shall have to take Henry in for questioning,” Rutledge said. “Will he understand what I’m doing and why?”