Rutledge said quietly, “You couldn’t have moved that as boys. It was too heavy. Would it be too heavy for a woman?” He was thinking of Aurore.
“Probably not. If she knew about it. The old sexton showed it to me when I was six or seven. He had a ghoulish nature; he said I’d wind up here if I misbehaved in church. Rather a cruel thing to tell a child, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was.” To one side of Rutledge, Aurore stood with that stillness of hers that he so admired.
Henry frowned, thinking. “I must have told Simon about these hiding places. That’s how he could find the suitcase, when he came looking tonight. I asked him what he was searching for, and he said it was a suitcase no one else wanted. He said Aurore had put it here, but she hadn’t”
Aurore, turning to Rutledge, opened her mouth to speak and stopped.
“No, I don’t believe she had put it here either.” Rutledge said, his voice attuned to Henry’s mood. “Who did? Do you know?”
Henry shook his head. “It was in the attic for a time.”
“Whose attic? Simon’s?”
“No, of course not. It came from my mother’s.”
“How did she come to have it? It didn’t belong to her. Did you give it to her?”
“She brought it home one day. I asked her where it came from, and she said it was better if I didn’t worry about it. There was another one too, but she put that one on a train from Kingston Lacey to Norfolk. I expect she wanted to put this one on a train too but hadn’t had time.”
Where do you hide a suitcase? Where there are other suitcases.…
Aurore was staring at Henry. She said, “How did Simon know that the suitcase was here?”
“I don’t believe he did. He’d searched the farmhouse. And the barn. After the inspector here had gone this afternoon. Then he came here, to search the church. I don’t think he was very pleased to find it.”
“No,” Rutledge said. “I shouldn’t have thought he was at all pleased. It proved something he didn’t want to believe. I think—Henry, it’s time we found your mother.”
“Why?”
“Mrs. Wyatt needs her.”
Henry said, “I like Mrs. Wyatt. She doesn’t know it, but I’ve watched her often. I like pretty hair. Hers is very pretty.”
Rutledge, standing very still, said softly, “Aurore, will you trust me? Let your hair down. Slowly. Give me the candle.”
After an instant’s hesitation, she handed it to him and slowly began to unpin her hair, collecting the pins in her teeth. The knot at the back of her neck loosened and unwound. As she took the pins in her left hand her hair spilled in long gleaming waves, falling over her shoulders nearly to her waist. She looked at Rutledge, frowning but unafraid. Her hair was not pretty—it was beautiful.
Henry, mesmerized, sucked in his breath and walked toward her, his eyes shining in the light. His hand moved, reaching, then drew back. “You won’t scream if I touch it?” he said to Aurore. And to Rutledge he said, “I like to touch it. But it always makes them scream, and I hate that part.”
“No,” Rutledge said firmly, “you can’t touch it tonight.” Henry stopped where he was, uncertain. Rutledge passed one of his candles to Aurore, her face white and stark now, and stepped into Henry’s path. “Mrs. Wyatt, would you mind fetching Mrs. Daulton for me? You should find her at your house, with Elizabeth. Ask her to come here, but don’t come back with her, do you understand?”
“Ian—” she began, moving toward the stairs.
“There’s no need, I’m here,” Joanna Daulton said, coming down the crypt steps. Dressed now, composed, she stood there, blocking the only exit from the low-ceilinged, cold stone undercroft of the old church, another candle in her hand, and Rutledge felt himself succumbing to the numbing fear of being shut in, cut off from the outside air. Hamish was urgently telling him to pay heed—
In Mrs. Daulton’s left hand, half hidden by her skirts and the shadows, was the straw hat that had belonged to Margaret Tarlton.
Aurore was moving closer to Rutledge, one hand fumbling at her hair, gathering it together. But Joanna Daulton said, “You needn’t be afraid, my dear. Henry never hurts anyone. He just has a fascination about seeing a woman’s hair flowing down her back. I don’t think he even understands why this compulsion is there. The physical implications. Nor does he understand that respectable women don’t care for such attentions. He only wants to touch, and to him that’s hot—wrong. Like a child wanting to touch something very pretty, he sometimes can’t stop himself.” The last words seemed to be wrenched from her.
“He tries to choke them when they scream,” Rutledge said.
“Yes, it frightens him, he tries to shut them up. If they stood still, he’d stop at once. But that’s as far as it ever goes. He never does any harm.”
“He tried, tonight, to choke Elizabeth Napier.”
“Yes.” She turned tiredly toward Aurore. “I wouldn’t have had Simon die for anything in the world,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow. “I mean that, Aurore. I never intended for any such thing to happen.”
“I shall have to take Henry in for questioning,” Rutledge said. “Will he understand what I’m doing and why?”
“Of course he will,” Joanna said sharply. “He’s not a fool. But it won’t be necessary. He didn’t kill those women. I did.”
He looked at her, infinite pity in his eyes. To protect her son …
“How many have there been?”
“It started in London. I’d taken rooms near the hospital while Henry was there recovering, and they’d let him out of hospital, in my care, with a nurse to come three days a week. He tried once to unpin her hair, and she screamed, and he choked her. She was very angry, she threatened to tell the doctors, to have Henry put away. I gave her a great deal of money and bought her passage on a ship leaving for New Zealand. And that was that. Afterward, I watched him very carefully. But when Betty came to the house, to tell me that Simon was giving her an introduction to the Napiers, Henry was alone with her in the parlor. I was finishing the washing up. I didn’t know, I thought he was out. I didn’t know until I heard her scream. I offered her what money I had and told her she’d be better off going to London with a small fortune in her pocket than settling for being a maid to the Napiers. And she went. But the money didn’t last. She came back, demanding more.”
Joanna Daulton shuddered. “I couldn’t give her any more. I didn’t have any more to give. But she was a greedy little bitch, she threatened to have Henry put away, and in the end I had no choice but to kill her. It was horrible. I hated myself, I hated her, I hated having to connive and lie and live with such a thing on my conscience. I told myself, in future I shall never let him out of my sight again, I’ll watch even more closely. It won’t happen again, I could see he was showing great improvement—”
“But he wasn’t, was he?” Rutledge asked gently. “He has never fully recovered. He never will.”
“No.” The word seemed stark and anguished, matching her eyes. “And I shan’t be there to care for him. He will have to go back to hospital now whether I want him to or not.”
“The next woman he was alone with was Margaret Tarlton, looking for someone to drive her to the train.”
She sighed. “I hate to say this about the dead, but Margaret Tarlton was worse than Betty. I knew, from something Richard Wyatt told me once, when he and Margaret had a stormy affair in 1913, that she had a way of getting whatever she wanted. I think she’d have married Richard, if he’d had enough money to satisfy her. And now she had the power of the Napiers behind her. She was hard, and very angry, very unforgiving. I didn’t have any money to offer her. She said she didn’t care what happened to Henry. She said it was what he deserved.” Joanna Daulton turned to Aurore. “I told her, You aren’t a mother, or you’d understand. But she said it doesn’t matter, he belongs behind bars, he isn’t stable. We argued again outside Singleton Magna. I was driving your car, Aurore, there wasn’t enough petrol in mine. I’d walked over to the farm and borrowed it, and all the way to the train Margaret Tarlton was insisting on going to the authorities in Singleton Magna. I couldn’t persuade, I couldn’t bribe—she made me stop the car and put her out. That’s when, God help me, I took that stone you keep in the back of your car and I killed her! And that poor man Mowbray took the blame, because to save him, I’d have had to destroy my own son!” Her voice twisted in anguish.