“The fact that Scotland Yard has an interest in these deaths in no way is a reflection on you—”
“The hell it isn’t! For God’s sake, man, I filled out the death certificates! It has everything to do with me!”
“Then you’re convinced that there’s nothing in either of the suicides or in the accident that could warrant further police interest?”
“That’s exactly what I am! Convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt!”
“It hasn’t occurred to you that something in the pasts of these three people might change the circumstances enough that what appeared to be suicide was actually murder and suicide? To use an instance I came across recently.”
Hawkins threw up his hands. “Murder and suicide? You’ve been drinking, I can smell it on your breath. Enough to be having delusions?”
“No, I’m as sober as you are,” Rutledge said, reining his temper in hard.
“Not bloody likely, when you suggest such things as you did just now! I walked into that study and found two people on the couch. A man and a woman. Their hands were touching, his left and her right. In the other hand, each held a glass. There had been laudanum in the glasses, and it was on their lips and in their mouths and in their guts. Enough to kill both quickly, and several times over. Miss Marlowe had had poliomyelitis, and contrary to what people tell you, paralysis is not painless. She had been given laudanum by my father-in-law and by me, as needed. Until this spring she’d used it responsibly, no indications of addictions or abuse. But it’s as painless a death as you could wish for, if you have to go out. I can’t blame her for choosing it, and I saw no evidence that either one had forced drinking it on the other. No bruises about the mouth or tongue, none on the lips. Nothing else in their stomachs to arouse suspicion. Double suicide. That’s precisely what it was. No more, no less.”
“Nothing in their stomachs to suggest that one might have secretly given an overdose to the other, before swallowing his or her own draught?”
“It’s hard to introduce laudanum secretly into clear soup, spring lamb, roasted, vegetables and potatoes.”
“People of their sort usually drank wine with meals, and coffee afterward.”
“The state of digestion tells me that they lived for enough hours after their meal that it couldn’t have been in their wine or their coffee. I’d say they swallowed the laudanum some time after midnight. As if they’d sat up talking about it, and then decided to do it. Or possibly around dawn. They’d been dead for some time when Mrs. Trepol discovered them on Monday morning. Over twenty-four hours. Now my own meal is waiting, and if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and eat it. My advice to you is to return to London and do something useful there. There’s very little crime in a place like Borcombe. We haven’t needed the services of Scotland Yard in living memory, and I doubt if we will in the next twenty years!”
Rutledge left the doctor’s office, thinking over what he’d been told that morning.
Damn all, if you came right down to it!
No crimes, no murderers, no reason for a seasoned Scotland Yard inspector to waste his time here.
“But just what ye’re good for—nithing,” Hamish declared. “What if Warwickshire was only a bit of luck, and none of your doing? What if you failed there, and haven’t had the sense yet to see it? What if ye’re failing now, because you haven’t got the skills to tell whether there’s murder here or no? That house is haunted, man, and if you don’t find out why, ye’ll be defeated by your own fears!”
After lunch at The Three Bells, Rutledge felt restless and uncertain. He told himself it had nothing to do with Hamish’s remarks, or the frustration he felt over where to turn next. Cormac FitzHugh had seemed to be so certain of his facts. Rachel Ashford was unsettled by the notion of murder being done, even though she’d called in the Yard herself. Hawkins was not cooperative, and the police in Borcombe had no reason to stir up the pot for murder, when their investigation had ended so creditably.
He thought about it for several minutes, staring out his window towards the sea, then picked up his coat and went in search of the rectory. It stood four-square beside the church, gray stone with white trim at the windows and doors, but built more for long service than for beauty.
The rector wasn’t in his office, but the housekeeper sent Rutledge around the back to where he was pottering about in his garden. It was a big garden, green and prosperous, with roses by the house and the scent of wall flowers coming from somewhere, sweet and elusive.
The rector was middle-aged, a man more accustomed— from the look of him—to working in the ground than preaching from a pulpit. He straightened up when he saw Rutledge coming across the strip of lawn between the vegetables and the flowers. “Good afternoon,” he said, neither effusively nor coolly, but with the manner of a man who’d rather be about his own business just now than God’s.
“Inspector Rutledge, from London,” he replied. “Mr. Smedley?”
“Aye, that’s right,” the rector said with a sigh and put down his hoe.
“No, keep working, if you like. I’d prefer to stay out here and talk than go inside.” The housekeeper, if he was any judge, had long ears. “It isn’t a matter for a priest so much as a question of information that I need.”
“Well, then, if you don’t mind?” He picked up his hoe and began to chip at the weeds between rows of what appeared to be marigolds and asters next to a line of sweet peas.
“I’m here because London has a few remaining questions about several deaths in May. At Trevelyan Hall.”
The rector glanced at him with a smile. “So gossip was right this morning. And you’d hardly set foot in the place.”
“Yes, but the questions I’m about to ask you aren’t for the ears of gossips. Good intentioned or ill. I want to know about the people who died. The woman and the two men. What they were like, how they lived, why they should die, so close together.”
The rector’s back was to Rutledge now, as he turned to come down the other row. “Ah. Well, that’s a long story. Do you know much about the family?”
“About the grandfather who owned the Hall. About the daughter who had three husbands and six children, only one of whom is still living. About the cousin. And about the stepson who lives in London and made his fortune. I could have learned all this from the shopkeepers and the housewives on their way to market. I need more. To satisfy London that all’s well.”
“And why should London doubt that?”
“The Home Office has been going through reports. They like to be thorough. Three deaths in one family in such a short time raises ... doubts?”
“None of those here, I can tell you that much! I don’t know of any questions raised when Olivia and Nicholas were discovered, nor any gossip that’s flown about since. And in a village like this, it’s your surest sign that all’s well. As for the death of Stephen FitzHugh, the man fell in an empty house, all the members of his party outside and accounted for. Unless you believe in ghosts, I don’t suppose there’s much to be suspicious of in that.”
“Strange that you should mention ghosts,” Rutledge said idly. “I’m told the Hall is haunted. And not by anything that can be exorcised by the church.”
The rector straightened again and looked at him. “Who has told you these tales?”
“A Scotsman, for one,” Rutledge answered.
The rector smiled. “They’re great ones for the Sight, the Scots. Has he also told you whether murder has been done?”