Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

The closet was too dark for him to be sure that the end panels couldn’t be opened somehow, and he had to remove the middle and then the bottom shelf to run his hands over the wall.

Nothing.

He retrieved the bottom shelf to settle it back on the brackets that held it, and instead clipped the edge on the left-hand bracket. Part of the shelf broke off, and then something else tumbled down, ringing merrily as it bounced twice on the hard wood of the floor. A key? He got down on one knee to search for it, running his hand back and forth across the wood, and there was nothing. Frustrated, he moved back to the front of the closet and started again. It took him nearly five minutes to find it, where it had landed in a shoe.

A small locket, gold, the sort of thing little girls often wore. He took it over to the window, where the light was better. There were entwined initials on the outer face of the locket, and he made them out-MAM. Margaret Anne Marlowe? His fingers found the delicate catch and he opened the frame to two tiny portraits inside. They were in oil, lovely little miniatures of a man and a woman. After a moment he recognized them. Rosamund and her first husband, Captain George Marlowe. Anne’s parents. An exquisite gift to a child on her birthday or at Christmas, to be worn when she was dressed up, with special care.

How had it come to be hidden among Olivia’s things? Or had Olivia simply inherited it when her sister died, and lost track of it over the years?

Rutledge went back to the closet and brought the shelves out again, then the boxes and the shoes. On hands and knees, then standing, he searched every inch of the walls and the floor.

Nothing. Except for the half inch sliver of wood that had been knocked off the bottom shelf by his clumsiness.

He picked up the shelf, looking to see where the chip had come from, and if he could put it back where it belonged.

It was the end of a longer strip of wood that had been set very carefully into the back edge of the heavy shelf. With his penknife he gently pried that out of its slot, and when he did, another object tumbled out of the space hollowed out behind,

He picked up that and the shelf, and carried them both to the windows.

The second object was a man’s gold pipe cleaner, smooth from long use, but the initials engraved in it were still legible. JSC. James Cheney, Nicholas’s father? He set that on the sill beside the locket.

Holding the shelf up to the light, he looked into the carved-out hollow. Someone had stuffed cotton deep inside it, and embedded within the soft fibers he could see bits and pieces of other articles. The sun caught them in its brightness, as if pointing to them. He winkled them out, slowly and gently.

First came a small boy’s cuff buttons, heavy gold and again with initials engraved on them. RHC. Richard Cheney? Behind them was a lovely little signet ring, that looked as if it had been crafted for a child. And carved deeply into the face of the ring was a coat of arms. Inside, engraved in the band itself, were the initials REMT. Rosamund Trevelyan. A gold crucifix came out easily, finely wrought, with the figure a little worn. From the letters on the reverse, it had belonged to Brian FitzHugh. Finally, at the very back, a watch fob in the shape of a small boat, with the initials NMC. Nicholas.

The sunlight flashed across the raised sail as Rutledge laid it with the others he had spread out on the wooden win-dowsill, and in spite of the warmth that poured through the glass panes, he felt cold.

He knew exactly what these were.

He had seen dozens of collections like them, in the trenches in France. A button from the greatcoat of a German officer, goggles from a downed airman, stripes from the sleeves of corporals and sergeants, collar tabs from officers, a battered Prussian helmet, a pistol taken from a corpse, an empty ammo belt from a machine gunner’s nest, whatever a man fancied…

When his mind stubbornly refused to frame the words, Hamish did it for him.

“Trophies of the dead,” he said softly.

Small golden treasures, very personal and surely very precious, that marked each of Olivia Marlowe’s unwitting victims.

Charles Todd

Wings of Fire

Rutledge forced himself to walk away from the things he’d found, and instead to go through the motions required of him.

He began with the olive wood desk on its graceful, delicate legs. In the several drawers he found stationery in various sizes, engraved, and matching envelopes, bottles of ink, scissors, a box of visiting cards with Rosamund’s name on them, a book of accounts for shops in London and in Borcombe, a leather notebook with stamps and addresses-none of them of special interest-and the usual clutter of pens and pencils. The only truly personal item was a wooden pen holder, hand carved, in the shape of a monster fish, the kind drawn on ancient maps at the edge of the known world, where they waited to swallow unwary ships. On the bottom, following the curve of a tiny scale, he found the initials NMC/OAM. From Nicholas to Olivia. Or to O. A. Manning?

The bottom drawer on the left side was empty.

The dressing table, the tall chest, the bureau, and the bedside table yielded more personal things, perfume and cosmetics, combs and brushes, odds and ends of jewelry, filmy lingerie, silk scarves and stockings, lacy handkerchiefs, and a prayer book, candles, and matches. Nothing out of the ordinary in any way, though sometimes intimate and daunting.

He knew, from what Rachel had told him, that the family had already taken away the things that made a room personal and individual-pictures and photographs and possessions with a particular value that wouldn’t be put up for sale with the house. But perhaps out of respect for Stephen’s insistence, much of Olivia’s life still survived in this room.

Yet Olivia had been careful to leave nothing behind for either the police or her biographers that could be construed- or misconstrued-into the woman who’d lived in this room.

The items buried deep in the closet must have been there a very long time, and if no one had found them before now, the chances were that no one might have discovered them for years to come. When they would have no meaning to strangers living here…

He went back to the window and picked up each article, one at a time.

Six victims, if these were indeed trophies. Olivia’s sister, Anne. Her stepfather James Cheney. Her half brother Richard Cheney. Her stepfather Brian FitzHugh.

Her own mother, Rosamund Trevelyan.

And the man who’d spent his life in her service. Nicholas Cheney.

She’d been so sure of him, then, so sure that he would die with her. Or that she could send him into the darkness before her.

“Gentle God,” Rutledge whispered softly.

And after a moment, he found himself silently cursing Chief Superintendent Bowles for sending him here.

Drawing the drapes again and closing the door firmly behind him, Rutledge went down the passage, his mind still working with a policeman’s precision, his thoughts far from where his feet carried him. The tiny, betraying trophies had been safely returned to their hiding place, out of sight. But not out of his thoughts, burned with molten brightness into his very brain. In Stephen’s room was the comfortable chaos of living. There was a cricket bat in the corner, a pair of riding boots by the closet door, suits and shirts and jackets hung haphazardly on the rod inside, books on the table under the window-they were mostly about golf and tennis, Ireland and horses-and ivory inlaid cuff links in the dish on the dressing table, with a fish hook and a length of gut from a tennis racket beside them. But no boxes. No folders of personal papers, no literary failures or private letters or contracts. What Stephen kept here was the detritus of boyhood and the things one left in a country house visited fairly often.