Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

Whoever had worked here knew he-or she-was out of sight of watchful eyes.

If you lived at the Hall and wanted to burn something, he thought to himself, why not in the grate? Or the stove in the kitchen? Or in the basket in the kitchen garden where trash was usually sent to be incinerated?

To come out here on the headland and build a fire with the wind clawing up over the cliff must have been a damned nuisance, trying to keep the flames from leaping out of control, to keep bits of paper or cloth from blowing every which way in a flurry of sparks, trying to prevent your eyebrows and fingers from being scorched as you worked over the blaze, feeding it. Then pouring water over the lot, to make sure it was dead before leaving it.

Unless… unless you had something to burn that you didn’t want anyone else to see. Or find the remnants of, in the ashes of the hearth. Or smell in the passages of the house, smoke hanging heavily, like a confession.

To come out here, in the daylight or the darkness, where the smoke and the smell and any remnants that the fire might accidentally leave wouldn’t be noticed or rouse suspicion, indicated a need for privacy-or secretiveness.

He stood up, wondering who had used this patch of ground.

Rachel was coming towards him, just closing the last garden gate, and he hurried to meet her, not wanting her to see the burned spot. “Hungry?” he called, when she stopped to wait for him.

“Starved!” she answered, fetching up a smile. It was almost natural. “What were you looking at so intently? I called, and you didn’t hear me.”

“Did you? It was lost in the wind. I was wondering if that meadow over there might have been an old orchard.”

“Yes, actually it was.” She didn’t pursue that train of thought, but said instead, “It’s sad to think of the Hall being sold. Of strangers living here.”

“I thought you were in agreement about selling the house? That only Stephen held out against it.”

“Oh, I think it should be sold. There’s nothing left here now of what we loved as children, and trying to keep it alive artificially, as a museum, would be much worse than strangers moving in. I mourn the past, that’s all.” She looked over her shoulder as they walked down the headland towards the beach again, as if hoping the house itself would tell her she was wrong. After a moment she added more to herself than to him, “I expect the best course after all is for Cormac to buy it. Which keeps the Hall in the family in a roundabout way, and we’ll none of us feel guilty about choosing strangers over Olivia. Although it seems selfish to make poor Cormac the family’s sacrificial lamb!” She smiled ruefully. “Have you ever noticed how many times feeling guilty shapes human decisions? Rather than love or pity or avarice or whatever else one might have felt instead? A wretched way of getting through life, isn’t it?”

He grinned down at her. “In my work, feelings of guilt can be useful-sometimes even solve the crime for me.” But there had been other times, he could have told her, when remorse and guilt never entered into the picture. A killer caught by some tiny mistake he made, not because of any human emotion driving him. Careful, elusive, cold. Rutledge found himself thinking that this new Ripper wouldn’t be such a man. He was lashed by such savage desires he could tear flesh like paper. And he’d grow more and more careless as the fires consumed him as well as his victims.

The picnic basket was bountiful, pasties wrapped in napkins, beer for him, a thermos of tea for Rachel, an assortment of biscuits in a small tin, and a packet of cheese with a fresh loaf of bread. There were plums in the bottom in another napkin.

They did it justice, although Rutledge was preoccupied and Rachel found herself making self-conscious small talk, sticking with topics that couldn’t lead her-and the Inspector- back to the Hall or its inhabitants.

Discussing her interest in Roman ruins in England was easier, then she found herself wondering aloud why he’d chosen police work when he might have gone into the law, like his father.

“I remember my father talking about briefs. A barrister defended the accused, he said, and a KC defended the law, and if the victim was alive, he might present his evidence about the robbery, the assault, the trespass. But if he was dead, he was the primary cause of the case, and had no role in it, except as proof that a crime had been committed.” He grinned at her. “That seemed very unjust to a small boy burning with a sense of right and wrong that was entirely his own. I felt the victim should be heard, that his voice as well as his life’d been taken from him. I believed that the truth mattered. That protecting the innocent mattered. It seemed to me the police must be concerned about that if the courts were not. But that wasn’t true, either.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, looking away, “as I learned soon enough, the primary task of the police isn’t to prove innocence, it’s to prove guilt.”

Something in his voice at the end warned her not to pursue the subject. She glanced up, and saw Cormac FitzHugh coming towards them across the lawns.

She said quickly, beginning to gather up the lunch things and put them back into the basket, “Are you leaving for London in the morning?”

“No,” he answered, “not yet. I’ve a few more loose ends to clear up before I’m satisfied. But I promise I’ll tell you when I’m finished here.”

“That’s fair enough,” she answered, and stood up, brushing the sand from her trousers. By the time Cormac had reached them, she was already walking away along the strand, towards the headland.

Cormac called a greeting, and looking at the boat on the shingle said as he reached Rutledge, “I see you talked the landlord out of his boat for the day. I wish I’d thought about that myself.” Then, his eyes following Rachel, where she was already out of earshot, he added, “I’ve been worried about her. She took Nicholas’ death hard. Following on the heels of Peter’s. Rachel is too level-headed to deny they’re gone, but there’s an emptiness she doesn’t quite know how to fill. Lately she’s even avoided me, and Susannah. As if the living remind her too much of the dead.” He shook his head. “I know how that is. I bury myself in my work and let the days run into each other.”

“You aren’t staying at the Hall?”

“I’d asked Mrs. Trepol to make up a bed,” he said wryly, “then couldn’t face the silence. Friends at Pervelly are putting me up.”

“Is that where Mrs. Hargrove and her husband are visiting?”

Cormac turned back to Rutledge, surprise in his face. “Is Susannah down here? Daniel swore he wasn’t letting her leave London again until she delivered. But she’s always been more strong-minded than she looks. If she wants something, he can’t stand in her way for very long. She’s probably staying with the Beatons. She was in school with Jenny Beaton. Jenny Throckmorton, she was then.” * ‘Your sister didn’t want to hear of the investigations being reopened, either. She said there was enough disgrace in a double suicide, she didn’t want her child born into a family where murder was suspected.”

Cormac grinned. “Pregnant women are often edgy, I’m told.”

“You’ve never married?”

He walked away, his back to Rutledge, and picked up a stone to skip over the incoming waves. “No,” he said finally, “I haven’t married. Like Rachel, I have scars that haven’t healed.”

Hamish rumbled uneasily, and Rutledge tried to ignore him. He said, “I haven’t found any evidence of a crime being committed here. But I’d like to know why Nicholas Cheney died. To understand why,” he amended. “I can’t quite accept your suggestion, that Olivia didn’t want to die alone.”