“What will happen to the house?”
“I don’t know. I can’t sell it—not after what I did. I can’t live there. I can’t let it go to wrack and ruin. I can’t have brambles and weeds on my mother’s grave. He ruined all our lives, and I don’t really care what’s become of him.”
She turned her back to him, and he heard the catch in her voice when she added, “There’s nothing I want in that wretched cottage where he went to live. As far as I’m concerned, you can burn it to the ground.”
And then she was inside, on the point of shutting her door.
He said, “The motorcar as well?”
Her voice was weary when she finally answered. “Let them sell it. I have no need for it.”
“Miss Parkinson. I shall have to speak to your sister. There’s no way around it.”
“Did she tell you where she lived? At Road’s End, a house not very different from mine. It’s not far from Porton Down. Ironic, isn’t it? A friend offered it to her for a small rent, and she was upset with me, about the ashes. I can’t blame her for not wanting to live with me.” Rebecca Parkinson laughed harshly. “That house at Partridge Fields is worth a great deal of money. But the two of us have almost nothing to our names. A small inheritance from Mother, that’s it. And I wouldn’t touch my father’s money if he offered it. If I thought it would solve anything I’d shoot myself. But it won’t. Don’t come back here again.”
And she was gone.
He stood there for a moment longer, staring at the closed door. If one of the sisters killed Gerald Parkinson, which was it?
He thought that Rebecca had the stronger sense of abandonment and might in a fit of anger try to assuage it by killing her father. But surely in the heat of the moment, not two years later. Unless there was something he didn’t know, some factor in their relationship that went so deep it had taken time to face. When she had, the only solution might have been murder.
And yet, Sarah, the weaker of the two, might have found she couldn’t live with her own pain and grief any longer and made the choice between killing herself, as her mother had done, or killing her father.
Rutledge turned and went back to the motorcar, driving on to the house at Partridge Fields.
He walked through the grounds to the small garden with the horse fountain. It was dappled in shade, this early, a mysterious and inviting place to sit.
But he’d come not to sit but to look at the grass that surrounded the fountain, squatting to see if there was any sign that someone had stood here two nights ago. The grass was still dew-wet, and it was difficult to judge. No one had trampled the green blades, no one had left a tidy footprint in the moist soil of the shrubbery beds. Still, he’d have given odds that walking here in the dark would lead to a misstep at some point.
It took patience and careful, almost inch-by-inch inspection, but he found something that might have been the half print of a heel just where an edge of the grass walk met the soil.
Hamish said disparagingly, “A bird scratching. A beetle trying to right itself. An owl after a mouse.”
Rutledge got to his feet. “Possibly. But why haven’t they scratched over here—or there?”
“It’s no’ solid proof.”
“No.”
He left the shrubbery and stood where he could see the windows of the master bedroom above the garden.
Here, at this house—in that room, for all he knew—lay the heart of a family’s collapse.
It was as if each of the Parkinsons gave more energy to hurting than to healing.
For one thing, why had Mrs. Parkinson wanted her ashes buried here, if she’d been wretched at Partridge Fields? The answer to that was, she intended them to be a constant reminder to her husband of everything she’d suffered.
He had no idea what she’d had in mind—an urn set on a marble square by the horse fountain, or ashes scattered in the central circle of the French-style beds where the roses grew. It had been Rebecca’s decision in the first anguished days after finding her mother dead to spread them throughout the gardens.
Neither mother nor daughter, set on their acts of revenge, had considered how difficult it might ultimately be for Sarah or Rebecca to live here. Punishing Gerald Parkinson was paramount, shutting out every other consideration, and Rebecca was left to reap the whirlwind she had sown.
Where had all this passionate need to hurt started?
There was Parkinson’s obsession with his work, putting it before his family. And his wife’s morbid fascination with the destructive nature of what he did. These must have led to violent arguments, to turn her thoughts to suicide. Or had she been unstable most of her married life?
In that case, why hadn’t her daughters spared a moment’s sympathy for what their father must have had to endure?
There must have been something else, to send a sensitive mind into a downward spiral of depression and finally despair.
Had Parkinson lashed out physically, when he’d felt his back was to the wall? Striking his wife would have erased any sympathy Rebecca and her sister might have felt.
Then why hadn’t Rebecca mentioned it in defense of her anger? Or Sarah dwell on that as she remembered a kinder father?
Rutledge thought, It’s time to ask Sarah what she remembers about her parents’ relationship, not just her own with her father.
But he spared five minutes to walk to the kitchen garden and knock at the door. No one came to open it, and he finally gave it up and went back to his motorcar.
He had some difficulty finding the small house where Sarah Parkinson lived. It stood at the end of a country lane and was no larger than Pockets and far more isolated.
Over a slight rise, he could just see the roof of a barn and tall chimneys.
Why couldn’t the sisters live together? It would have made sense. Especially if money was a problem. Rebecca was protective of Sarah, but there wasn’t the closeness one might expect under the circumstances of their mother’s death and their father’s desertion. Had the ashes been the only problem?
Sarah Parkinson was surprised to see him. She had come to the door at the sound of the motorcar and now stood on the threshold trying to decide whether to tell him to go away or invite him in.
“Good morning,” Rutledge began. “I’ve come to see if you’re all right.”
“Don’t worry, crying over the past won’t lead me to do anything rash.”
“I expect not. Still. May I come in? I’d like to talk to you.”
He could watch the internal debate as she frowned, then said, “I don’t expect I have much choice about it.”
“We can stand here, if you’d rather.”
“No. Come in. But I won’t take your hat. You won’t be staying long.”
Rutledge smiled. “I want to ask you about your parents. If I come in, are you prepared to answer my questions? Otherwise this will be a waste of time for both of us.”
She was disconcerted by his bluntness. “If I don’t like the questions, I’ll tell you.”
“Fair enough.”
The house was old and had seen hard use. But Sarah Parkinson had tried to make it comfortable and pretty, adding paint to the walls and curtains to the bare windows. A fine French carpet lay on the floor, and some furnishings were a little out of date, as if she’d scavenged them from her parents’ attics. They were far better quality than the walls that enclosed them.