“They might not’ve had much baggage with them,” the man said, “if ’twere only a day trip. It might help if we knew what we were looking for.”
Rutledge shook his head. “I don’t know. If anything more comes over the wire, I’m at the Swan. Send word to me there.” It was a far-fetched hope.
And so he’d gone for his belated meal, letting the stationmaster do the same. “My wife’s waiting my dinner,” the man had said, following Rutledge out of the small, cluttered office. “She’s ill-humored when I’m late!”
“Tell her it was police business,” Rutledge responded, and walked on.
But it was over his meal that answers began to come to him. And he went over them again and again, to be sure he was right.
Whatever else had happened here in Singleton Magna, there was a dead woman.
And with that one incontrovertible fact, he must start.
7
Rutledge spent what was left of the day and into the dusk looking for the dead woman.
In Singleton Magna, everyone saw her as Mowbray’s wife. The one the man, burning with anger and injustice, had scoured the town to find.
Everyone told Rutledge that. Describing encounters they’d had—or someone they knew had had—with Mowbray. Believing in his anger and his intent to kill. The woman, on the other hand, was dead. They could tell him nothing about her. It was as if she had no other identity or reality than that of victim.
Even Harriet Mason, the woman who had arrived on the same train for a visit with her aunt, remembered nothing. “I was that sick from the journey, I didn’t know or care about anything but getting here to Auntie’s,” she said pointedly, looking at Rutledge through thin, pale lashes.
Mrs. Hindes, stiff with rheumatism and a strong dislike of being a burden on anyone, said, “The only person besides Harriet I noticed coming out of the station that day was the woman who was met by Mrs. Wyatt. The one in the fetching hat. But of course Harriet was feeling faint and I really didn’t have time to pay particular attention to anyone else, though there must have been half a dozen or so passengers arriving.” She smiled wryly, her strong face suddenly mischievous. “You must excuse us, Inspector, we are the lame and the halt, I fear.”
And she watched with quiet satisfaction as Harriet bristled.
Early the next morning Rutledge left the town to stop at every house near the main road, with no success. From there he drove on to Stoke Newton, the home of three passengers who had arrived on the noon train the day Mrs. Mowbray had been seen on the platform. The farmer, his wife, and their young daughter had been met by a tenant, “fetched home in the wagon,” Mrs. Tanner told him jovially in a parlor dominated by a giant aspidistra. To Rutledge it seemed to smother his chair with its broad leaves. “Like so many sides of beef!”
“You didn’t see Mrs. Mowbray on the train? Or the children with her?”
“Lord, Inspector, the train was that crowded leaving London! Holidaymakers, mostly, families with children any age between six months and ten years. Full of sauce, they were, but I don’t mind, a lively child’s a healthy child, I say. I’m sure we was lucky to find a seat!” Mrs. Tanner answered. “No, we’ve talked it over, amongst ourselves. If Mrs. Mowbray and her young ones was on that train, we took no notice of them—no reason to, one family among so many!”
In the afternoon he found himself in Charlbury again, asking Denton at the pub for the Wyatt house. It was, as he’d thought, near the church.
“Can’t miss it. Big, with that wing they added just before the war. That was to be Mr. Wyatt’s office, and Mr. Simon’s as well, when the time came. Now it’s being refurbished to house that museum Mr. Simon’s so set on.”
Rutledge opened the gate and stepped into a front garden of pink geraniums and warmly scented lavender, with white stock and taller white delphiniums behind them. He climbed the two steps to the small porch, but a maid answered the door before he could ring the bell.
She said in some distress, “If you’ve come about them shelves that’s fallen down, Mr. Wyatt is over in the new wing.”
Rutledge followed her pointing finger and took the brick path to the second door of the house, which led into the newest part. Someone shouted, “Come in!” to his knock, and he entered a scene of chaos.
There were boxes strewn about the floor like snowdrifts, and glass-fronted cases filled with the most exotic collection of statuary and weaponry and musical instruments that he’d seen in some time. Eastern, most of them, as far as he could tell. Exotic dancers stood on shelves beside squat gods and animal masks, while daggers and swords were displayed in fans, their points gleaming in the sunlight Tiered parasols in red, yellow, black, and white were fringed in what appeared to be gold bullion, and there were what looked like parts of doorways or windows, heavy with carved scenes. Garish puppets elbowed each other, some of them three dimensional while others were flat, painted on hide. Below, on another shelf, were fantastic butterflies pinned in tidy rows, like enameled brooches in every color of the rainbow. Nothing in England was that spectacular. Hamish was absorbing the scene with Presbyterian horror, pointing out that these items were pagan and therefore suspect.
Before Rutledge could answer him, a man’s voice called, “Well? What are you doing, loitering out there? Come look at this disaster!”
Rutledge went through a doorway to find a man on his knees collecting shells that had tumbled from a tall bookcase, its shelves haphazard and half out of their moorings.
“You’re damned lucky they didn’t shatter! You swore they’d support—” He was halfway through the sentence when he saw his visitor and realized it wasn’t the carpenter he’d sent for. “Who the hell are you?”
It was the fair-skinned man he’d seen yesterday, carrying the front end of a ladder. “Mr. Wyatt? I’m Inspector Rutledge, from Scotland Yard. I’ve come to speak to you—”
“Not now, man! Can’t you see what’s happened here? I’m expecting Baldridge or one of his minions, and he’s got some explaining to do! I told him a dozen times if I told him once that these shelves had to be well anchored against the weight, or they’d be over before we knew where we were! And I was right.”
He got to his feet. Tall, slender, with a face that was both strong and intelligent. There were lines at the corners of his blue eyes that spoke of laughter—belied now by the deep grooves bracketing his mouth. The marks of strain. He surveyed the disaster. “Some of these shells are priceless. They’ve come from half the islands in the Pacific, and each one was carefully numbered and kept in a box so as not to separate sets. And now look! I suppose I’ll have to bring someone down from London to be sure we’ve got them in the right order again.”
“Mr. Wyatt. I only need a minute of your time,” Rutledge broke in. “I understand that on thirteen August you or your wife collected a guest from the railway station in Singleton Magna. Is that true?”
“Yes, yes, that was Miss Tarlton, from London. She’s my new assistant. Or she will be if I can persuade my wife to let me take her on. Mrs. Wyatt is nothing if not stubborn, and just because—” He stopped, aware that he was talking about his personal affairs with a stranger, and a policeman at that. “Miss Tarlton was recommended by someone whose opinion I trust. Mrs. Wyatt and I hold different opinions on that subject. I hired the young lady, and she’s to return at the end of the month to take up her position here.” His mouth set sternly, as if he could foresee the battle ahead.
“She returned to London after the interview?”