Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Rachel stopped, “I go this way-I’m staying with a friend on the outskirts.” She shaded her eyes again with her hand, and said, “You didn’t mean that-about going back to London? You’ll stay and see what you can find? I’ll never persuade Henry to appeal for help again.”

He laughed. “Probably not.” Remembering the heat in London, the cramped little office, Bowles’ pretensions, and the squalid knifings that had somehow captured the imagination of the city, he found himself saying, “No, I’m not going back yet. I’ll be here for several more days.”

She left, reassured, and he turned towards The Three Bells. But noticing the shingle on the front of the doctor’s surgery, he opened the garden gate and went through to knock at the door.

A young woman with pretty strawberry blond hair opened the door and said, “Ah, you’re just in time, if you want to see the doctor. Five more minutes, and he’d have gone through to his luncheon.”

“Mrs. Hawkins?” he asked, guessing.

“Yes, and if you’ll just wait here a moment,” she answered, leading him into a small sitting room fitted out with bits and pieces of worn furnishings that had been relegated here from the rest of the house, “I’ll tell him you’re here. The name, please?”

Rutledge gave it to her, and she disappeared through the door beside him. A moment later she whisked back into the waiting room. “Dr. Hawkins will see you now.” She held the door wide, ready to shut it behind him.

Rutledge went through into the tidy, surprisingly bright surgery. “Dr. Hawkins?” he said to the short, thickset man behind the desk. He was not as young as his wife, but not much beyond thirty-five, he thought.

“Indeed, and what can I do for you this morning?” His eyes raked Rutledge, from crown to toe. Seeing more than Rutledge cared to have him see. “Having trouble sleeping, are you?”

“No, I’m having no trouble at all, as it happens,” Rutledge said stiffly. “I’m Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard-”

“Oh, Lord, and what’s happened now!”

“It isn’t what is happening now that concerns me. I’ve been asked to look into the deaths of three of your patients, Stephen FitzHugh, Olivia Marlowe, and Nicholas Cheney.”

Hawkins stared at him, then threw his pen on the desk with such force that it bounced and nearly rolled off the edge. “Those deaths are history. Closed. The Inquest agreed with my first impressions and my considered opinion. An accident and a double suicide. Surely you’ve read the medical report?”

“I have, and it’s very thorough. All the same, there are questions I must ask. And that you are required to answer.”

“I know damned well what I’m required to do,” Hawkins said irritably. “And I’ve done it.” His eyes narrowed and he looked at Rutledge with sudden suspicion. “You aren’t planning to dig up the bodies, are you? That’s all I need right now!”

“In what way?”

“Look, I’ve been a good doctor here. I took over from my wife’s father, who’s nearly gaga now, war finished him, too much to do, too little energy to do it. I’ve built a decent practice, and I’m being considered for a partnership in Plymouth. I learned my craft in the war, doing things I’d never thought in school I’d be expected to do. Sew up the dying, send the living back to the Front, find a way to keep the shell-shock cases from being shot for cowardice-” he saw Rut-ledge flinch, and added with relish “-and even deliver forty-seven babies to refugees who had no place to sleep themselves, much less with infants to nurse! I’ve paid my dues, I’ve earned the right to move on to better things, and if my future partners get wind of the fact that three- three – of my cases are being exhumed, under Scotland Yard’s eager eye, I’ll be dead, stuck here forever. No chance at Plymouth, no hope of London in the end.”

“The fact that Scotland Yard has an interest in these deaths in no way is a reflection on you-”

“The hell it isn’t! For God’s sake, man, I filled out the death certificates! It has everything to do with me!”

“Then you’re convinced that there’s nothing in either of the suicides or in the accident that could warrant further police interest?”

“That’s exactly what I am! Convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt!”

“It hasn’t occurred to you that something in the pasts of these three people might change the circumstances enough that what appeared to be suicide was actually murder and suicide? To use an instance I came across recently.”

Hawkins threw up his hands. “Murder and suicide? You’ve been drinking, I can smell it on your breath. Enough to be having delusions?”

“No, I’m as sober as you are,” Rutledge said, reining his temper in hard.

“Not bloody likely, when you suggest such things as you did just now! I walked into that study and found two people on the couch. A man and a woman. Their hands were touching, his left and her right. In the other hand, each held a glass. There had been laudanum in the glasses, and it was on their lips and in their mouths and in their guts. Enough to kill both quickly, and several times over. Miss Marlowe had had poliomyelitis, and contrary to what people tell you, paralysis is not painless. She had been given laudanum by my father-in-law and by me, as needed. Until this spring she’d used it responsibly, no indications of addictions or abuse. But it’s as painless a death as you could wish for, if you have to go out. I can’t blame her for choosing it, and I saw no evidence that either one had forced drinking it on the other. No bruises about the mouth or tongue, none on the lips. Nothing else in their stomachs to arouse suspicion. Double suicide. That’s precisely what it was. No more, no less.”

“Nothing in their stomachs to suggest that one might have secretly given an overdose to the other, before swallowing his or her own draught?”

“It’s hard to introduce laudanum secretly into clear soup, spring lamb, roasted, vegetables and potatoes.”

“People of their sort usually drank wine with meals, and coffee afterward.”

“The state of digestion tells me that they lived for enough hours after their meal that it couldn’t have been in their wine or their coffee. I’d say they swallowed the laudanum some time after midnight. As if they’d sat up talking about it, and then decided to do it. Or possibly around dawn. They’d been dead for some time when Mrs. Trepol discovered them on Monday morning. Over twenty-four hours. Now my own meal is waiting, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and eat it. My advice to you is to return to London and do something useful there. There’s very little crime in a place like Borcombe. We haven’t needed the services of Scotland Yard in living memory, and I doubt if we will in the next twenty years!”

Rutledge left the doctor’s office, thinking over what he’d been told that morning.

Damn all, if you came right down to it!

No crimes, no murderers, no reason for a seasoned Scotland Yard inspector to waste his time here.

“But just what ye’re good for-nithing,” Hamish declared. “What if Warwickshire was only a bit of luck, and none of your doing? What if you failed there, and haven’t had the sense yet to see it? What if ye’re failing now, because you haven’t got the skills to tell whether there’s murder here or no? That house is haunted, man, and if you don’t find out why, ye’ll be defeated by your own fears!”

After lunch at The Three Bells, Rutledge felt restless and uncertain. He told himself it had nothing to do with Hamish’s remarks, or the frustration he felt over where to turn next. Cormac FitzHugh had seemed to be so certain of his facts. Rachel Ashford was unsettled by the notion of murder being done, even though she’d called in the Yard herself. Hawkins was not cooperative, and the police in Borcombe had no reason to stir up the pot for murder, when their investigation had ended so creditably.