Charles Todd - Wings of Fire

“Oh, long before the war. I’d just arrived in Borcombe. I didn’t know her mother, the one they still call Miss Rosamund, that everyone was so fond of, and I knew only that Miss Olivia was one of the family up at the Hall. Her and her brother, and the two younger ones, the twins.”

“How did you answer her?”

“I had to tell her the truth as I saw it. That the darkness in the human soul was something I’d never come to understand in my years of policing but I believed it to be beyond healing. That struck her as sad, I could see it in her eyes. And then she said, ‘Do families believe you, when you tell them a son-or a daughter-is guilty of murder?’ I said, ‘They’re often the last to believe,’ and she nodded as if she understood, and thanked me for my time, and walked away.” When Rutledge made no answer, Harvey added, “Not a natural conversation to have with a young woman, would you say?”

He wanted reassurance. He wanted to believe that Olivia and not he himself had been out of line. He didn’t want to think that she had had a guilt on her conscience, had turned to the figure of authority in Borcombe, and been rejected because he had somehow failed to understand her. Rutledge wondered if she’d brought this up before, with Harvey’s predecessor, or the rector before Smedley. And found no absolution for the burden she carried.

Which meant in turn that Rutledge was not going to confide in Harvey either. Not until he was sure of his ground. It would be wasted breath, and if he, Rutledge, turned out to be wrong, the damage as Rachel had pointed out, and Cormac as well, could be enormous.

And so, in pacification, Rutledge said, “To the end of the week, then. I’ll continue the search for the boy, I’ll continue my questions, and then if I have no more to go on than I have now, I’ll come to you and confer.”

“Find him or not, mark my words, the lad is dead.”

The innkeeper, Trask, brought a tray and a pot of coffee to Rutledge in his room and made a show of setting the cup within reach, putting out the sugar bowl and small pitcher of milk, refolding the napkin that had covered the thick sandwiches. Affably mentioning Harvey’s visit, he showed all the signs of a man prepared to linger and gossip.

For once Rutledge preferred the innkeeper’s opinions to the silence of his own thoughts. Or Hamish’s.

“A good man, we’ve had no complaint of him, keeps the peace and is fair-minded. The magistrates seem to think well of him too, from what I hear. Thorough, that’s the reputation they give him.” Disappointed when Rutledge didn’t take the hint and offer his own views on the local constabulary, Trask reminisced for a time about the Trevelyan family, leaving the impression that The Three Bells had been the center of social life for generations of them. Rutledge swallowed that with his first cup of coffee, and a grain of salt.

Then something the innkeeper was saying caught his attention. “And of course her mother was the old nanny there. That’s the reason Miss Rachel prefers the cottage to the inn.”

“Are you telling me that the Trevelyan nanny is still alive?” He felt a surge of wrath that no one-least of all Rachel-had seen fit to tell him that.

“Lord, no, she’d be near ninety, wouldn’t she! Polworth, her name was, she’d been nanny to Miss Rosamund, then married and had a daughter of her own, Mary, and when Mary was off to school, she went back to the Hall to care for Mr. Stephen and Miss Susannah. Only ever had the one child herself. Mr. Polworth died of the consumption early on. Mary Otley, the daughter is now. Husband was killed out in Africa, place called Mafeking.”

“Soldier?”

“God save you, sir, no, he were a missionary. His death took the heart out of Mary, and she came home. Wasn’t her cup of tea, so to speak, preaching to the heathen, suffering from dysentery and them big flies, and water not fit to drink-”

“Thank you, Trask,” Rutledge said, cutting him off. Trask wasted another few minutes filling his tray with the empty dishes, brushing away crumbs, leaving the pot of coffee, as if hoping for another opening. But he got none and soon took the hint.

Afterward, Rutledge sat there and listened to the birds singing outside his window in the ruined garden, laying his plans carefully.

It was nearly four in the afternoon when Rachel left the cottage and crossed the road to the rectory, disappearing into the house when the liverish housekeeper opened the door. Rutledge, lying in wait in the small wood from which he could see the cottage quite clearly, gave her a full minute in case the call was a short one, then strode quickly to the gate that shut the cottage walk off from the village street.

The woman who opened the door to his knock was elderly, but not, he thought, as old as she appeared to be. From the yellow of her eyes, he could see that she’d had malaria more than once, and still paid dearly for her years in Africa. It was not a continent that was kind to European women.

Startled to see him, she said, “Miss Rachel’s just gone over to visit Rector” Her voice held a degree of reserve, and no Cornish accent.

“I know. I wanted to speak to you, if I may. Mrs. Otley, is it? I understand that your mother was nanny at the Hall.”

She let him in, and the room itself reflected the odd life she’d lived. There was the coziness of chintz, embroidered cushions, and a worn Axminster carpet. A Zulu shield hung cheek by jowl with a crossed pair of long, deadly spears on the wall, next to a print of the King and Queen in a wooden frame, and a hand-lettered certificate stating that Mary Pol-worth Otley had crossed the Equator on the ship Ramses. The chair she pointed out to him wore a fine fringe of pale cream dog hairs. Resigning himself to collecting them on his clothing, Rutledge wondered where the dog was. It came trundling in, a fat puppy that sniffed his trousers and then tried to tear his shoelaces out by the roots. Mrs. Otley, referring to it as Rhodes, shooed it away and sat down, her face solemn.

“What was it you wanted to see me about, sir? If you’re here to ask questions about Miss Rachel-”

“No. I was more interested in your mother’s work at the Hall. Did she talk about the family very often?”

“To me? No, sir. She adored Miss Rosamund, you could see that, and was very fond of the children at the Hall, but she wasn’t one to make comparisons. And she treated their business as theirs, and mine as mine.”

Which was certainly to her credit. “Did you play with the Trevelyan children?”

“No, sir, I was far older than any of them. I did lend a hand in the nursery from time to time, when there was sickness or company coming. It helped me, when I was out in Africa teaching little ones.”

“Were you there when Anne Marlowe fell out of a tree in the orchard? Or when young Richard was lost on the moors?”

“No, I was away at school. I wanted more than anything to be a governess, and Miss Rosamund was kind enough to take an interest in me. She sent me to Miss Kitchener’s Academy in Kent.” A rueful smile moved quietly across her face. “Then in my first position as governess, I met Edwin, just back from Africa and a widower. He was a fiery man, full of God and grand ideas. I became the third Mrs. Otley, but this time it was Edwin who was buried in Africa, not his wife. I came home a widow and childless. I worked in a slum school in London for a time, telling myself it was best for me to stay busy in the church. But it wasn’t. I hadn’t had a calling, you see. Only Edwin’s dream, second hand.”

He could hear the sense of grief, not for her husband or herself but for the waste of her life on something she hadn’t believed in.

And then as if she’d picked up his earlier conclusion, she said, “Africa’s hard on women. That’s why I persuaded Miss Rachel not to follow Peter Ashford to Kenya. She was all for going. She’d have been left out there a widow, if she hadn’t listened. And-and for many reasons I was right.”