Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Rutledge used his handkerchief to clear off a space, then took out the photographs and made a fan of them on the table. “What can you tell me about these people?” What light there was from the narrow windows fell across them, gently touching their faces.

“Ah-more secrets than I want to remember. That’s the gift of old age, Inspector. You begin to forget. And in for-getfulness is peace.”

“But I’d like to know their secrets. To satisfy myself that all’s well. That there was nothing done-now or before-that should have roused suspicion.”

The old man chuckled. “Suspicions? A doctor always has suspicions, he’s worse than the police. But sometimes there’s more compassion in silence than in words. When you can’t undo the harm that’s been done, sometimes you bury it with the dead. James Cheney killed himself, and I said it was an accident cleaning his guns. Why burden Rosamund with more grief than she already had? The boy was lost, there was no bringing either of them back. Father or son. And Olivia was in such a state that I thought she’d lose her reason, swearing she’d never let Richard out of her sight, except to look at a plover’s nest she’d found. And Nicholas saying that it was his fault, he hadn’t watched out for either of them when he’d known he ought to. And the servants crying, and no man about the place but Brian FitzHugh, to see to the burying.” “FitzHugh was there when Cheney died?” “Oh, aye, he was, he’d come and go-about the horses they raced, Miss Rosamund and her father. Winners, the lot of them. Good bloodlines. Like the Trevelyans. And now only Miss Susannah is left. And she’s more Irish than Cornish, if you don’t mind my saying it!”

“What do you know about Cormac FitzHugh?” “Nothing,” the old man said, finishing his beer. “He never needed me for any doctoring, not a splinter in the foot nor fall from a horse. When they sent him away to earn his own living, I was glad. Miss Olivia said one day she’d write some poems about him. I paid no heed to it then, I thought it was girlish foolishness, romantic nonsense.”

Rutledge stared at the watery eyes in the bearded face. Was the doctor trying to say that the love poems were written by Olivia to Cormac FitzHugh? That they had nothing to do with her half brother Stephen, whatever he’d tried to believe?

Tired from a restless night, Rutledge sat in a chair by his window and let himself drowse, He was just into that soft, floating ease between sleeping and waking when he heard sharp taps, a woman’s high heels, coming briskly up the stairs. And then sharper taps as she rapped on his door.

Jerked into wakefulness, he straightened his tie, ran a hand over his hair, and went to open the door. Rachel, he thought hazily, come to fetch her photographs.

But it was a tall, slim blond woman with angry eyes who stared up at him when the door swung wide.

“Inspector Rutledge?” she said crisply, looking him up and down.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m Rutledge.”

“I’d like to speak to you. In your room, if I may. The parlor is not private, this time of day.”

When he hesitated, she said, “I’m Susannah Hargrove. Stephen FitzHugh’s sister.”

He stood aside and let her come in, gesturing to the chair he’d drawn up to the window. He stayed where he was by the door, on his feet.

She ignored the chair. Instead she rounded on him like a battleship bringing her heavy guns to bear.

“My brother Cormac telephoned to my husband’s office in London and left a message that you’re here to reopen the matter of my family’s recent losses. His secretary passed it along. Is that true? Or did she get it wrong?”

“I’m afraid it is true,” he said gravely. “Which is not to say that Scotland Yard won’t come to the same conclusions in all three deaths.”

“Yes, I’m sure it will-too late. Too late for us! The family, I mean. We’ll be dragged through the newspapers, our dirty linen hung out for all to goggle at, and then, when you are quite satisfied, you’ll beg our pardon and take the train back to London as if nothing had happened! It’s bad enough, Inspector, to have to smile at people who know very well two members of your family killed themselves. If the police start whispers of murder, we’ll all be disgraced. I’m expecting a child in the late autumn. I won’t have it brought into the world in the midst of a nasty police matter!”

He fought back a smile at her vehemence, and said only, “I’ve said nothing about murder. To you or to your half brother.”

“Why else would Scotland Yard give a-a damn about some obscure village matters, if there weren’t suspicions on somebody’s part? Is it because Olivia was famous? Is that why you’re here to bedevil us?” Tears overlaid the anger in her eyes, but she held them back, fighting hard.

When he didn’t immediately answer, she turned her back on him and stared out the window. “I knew that was what it must be. I told Daniel it could be nothing else! Why did Olivia have to do something so-so selfish! If she wanted to end it all, why did she have to leave shadows on the house- on us! I grew up there too, I don’t deserve to have my memories, my very childhood, turned into something hostile and empty and grotesque! And if you have your way, we won’t even be able to sell the house and be rid of it!” She whirled around and stared at him. “I hate that house now! I want it sold and all of the past ripped out of it by new owners who don’t know-don’t care-who we were!” She swallowed hard, then the tears came. “Who will buy it,” she demanded huskily, “if there was murder as well as suicide there. We’ll have it hung around our necks, like our sins, for the rest of our lives.”

He pulled out his handkerchief and held it out to her, but she ignored it, fumbling in her handbag for one of her own. “I’ve just lost my brother,” she said brokenly. “And now this! And the doctor said I wasn’t to be upset.”

“If you don’t believe murder has been done, why should you hate the house so much?” he asked, in an attempt to distract her. “What has it done-what has been done there- to distress you?”

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It isn’t what was done, it’s what’s been lost. Rosamund-my mother-held such light in her hands, and the house-all of us-were touched by it. And then she died, and it was all changed, all different, all-I don’t know! Dark and dreary and full of Olivia’s obsessions!”

“Obsessions about what?”

“How should I know? Olivia was a woman who lived in her thoughts, in her feelings. I’m not like that, I feel, I cry, I laugh. She was silent. I didn’t-I couldn’t understand her. It’s-unnatural-in a woman to write as she did. I still don’t think of her as that poet. I think somehow they must have got it all wrong!”

“Do you believe Nicholas Cheney could have written those poems?”

She stared at him, tears drying on her lashes. “ Nicholas? I-it hadn’t occurred to me-to any of us! Do you think it was Nicholas? Truly?”

He said carefully, “I don’t know enough about your family to offer that as a possibility. I’m just answering your question about Olivia Marlowe.”

Her face fell. “Oh.”

“Do you know why Nicholas and Olivia killed themselves?”

Susannah shook her head. “I’ve lain awake at night, wondering why anyone could do such a thing. I was her sister- half sister-but she never said a word to me about her feelings-about despair, desperation. You’d have thought… but she didn’t! And Nicholas-it’s like a betrayal-to go off like that and leave me alone just before Stephen died! Mother betrayed me too-I’ve always suspected, feared, down deep inside that she killed herself too!”