“My brother Cormac telephoned to my husband’s office in London and left a message that you’re here to reopen the matter of my family’s recent losses. His secretary passed it along. Is that true? Or did she get it wrong?”
“I’m afraid it is true,” he said gravely. “Which is not to say that Scotland Yard won’t come to the same conclusions in all three deaths.”
“Yes, I’m sure it will—too late. Too late for us! The family, I mean. We’ll be dragged through the newspapers, our dirty linen hung out for all to goggle at, and then, when you are quite satisfied, you’ll beg our pardon and take the train back to London as if nothing had happened! It’s bad enough, Inspector, to have to smile at people who know very well two members of your family killed themselves. If the police start whispers of murder, we’ll all be disgraced. I’m expecting a child in the late autumn. I won’t have it brought into the world in the midst of a nasty police matter!”
He fought back a smile at her vehemence, and said only, “I’ve said nothing about murder. To you or to your half brother.”
“Why else would Scotland Yard give a—a damn about some obscure village matters, if there weren’t suspicions on somebody’s part? Is it because Olivia was famous? Is that why you’re here to bedevil us?” Tears overlaid the anger in her eyes, but she held them back, fighting hard.
When he didn’t immediately answer, she turned her back on him and stared out the window. “I knew that was what it must be. I told Daniel it could be nothing else! Why did Olivia have to do something so—so selfish! If she wanted to end it all, why did she have to leave shadows on the house— on us! I grew up there too, I don’t deserve to have my memories, my very childhood, turned into something hostile and empty and grotesque! And if you have your way, we won’t even be able to sell the house and be rid of it!” She whirled around and stared at him. “I hate that house now! I want it sold and all of the past ripped out of it by new owners who don’t know—don’t care—who we were!” She swallowed hard, then the tears came. “Who will buy it,” she demanded huskily, “if there was murder as well as suicide there. We’ll have it hung around our necks, like our sins, for the rest of our lives.”
He pulled out his handkerchief and held it out to her, but she ignored it, fumbling in her handbag for one of her own. “I’ve just lost my brother,” she said brokenly. “And now this! And the doctor said I wasn’t to be upset.”
“If you don’t believe murder has been done, why should you hate the house so much?” he asked, in an attempt to distract her. “What has it done—what has been done there— to distress you?”
She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “It isn’t what was done, it’s what’s been lost. Rosamund—my mother—held such light in her hands, and the house—all of us—were touched by it. And then she died, and it was all changed, all different, all—I don’t know! Dark and dreary and full of Olivia’s obsessions!”
“Obsessions about what?”
“How should I know? Olivia was a woman who lived in her thoughts, in her feelings. I’m not like that, I feel, I cry, I laugh. She was silent. I didn’t—I couldn’t understand her. It’s—unnatural—in a woman to write as she did. I still don’t think of her as that poet. I think somehow they must have got it all wrong!”
“Do you believe Nicholas Cheney could have written those poems?”
She stared at him, tears drying on her lashes. “Nicholas? I—it hadn’t occurred to me—to any of us! Do you think it was Nicholas? Truly?”
He said carefully, “I don’t know enough about your family to offer that as a possibility. I’m just answering your question about Olivia Marlowe.”
Her face fell. “Oh.”
“Do you know why Nicholas and Olivia killed themselves?”
Susannah shook her head. “I’ve lain awake at night, wondering why anyone could do such a thing. I was her sister— half sister—but she never said a word to me about her feelings—about despair, desperation. You’d have thought ... but she didn’t! And Nicholas—it’s like a betrayal—to go off like that and leave me alone just before Stephen died! Mother betrayed me too—I’ve always suspected, feared, down deep inside that she killed herself too!”
Pain welled in her eyes, deep and terrifying. “What’s wrong with my family? I’m the only one left now—not counting Cormac. One day will something awful happen to me, will I leave this child without a mother, and without anyone of its own to love? Cormac was that way—alone. He never had any one else. However beautiful he is, Cormac is terribly alone, and I don’t want my child to grow up in that kind of world!”
7
Rutledge calmed her down as best he could, asking her if she’d like him to summon Dr. Hawkins.
But Susannah shook her head. “No. I don’t need a doctor, I need a little peace, and if you’d only go back to London and leave us as we were, I’d be able to forget.”
“You said that Rosamund might have killed herself. Did you mean that metaphorically, in the sense that she killed herself with worry or ignored her own health, didn’t take proper care, that sort of thing? Or that she took her own life, deliberately and knowingly?”
“She died of an overdose of laudanum. Dr. Penrith said it was a mistake, that in the night she’d accidently miscounted the drops she was supposed to take. But I was afraid her strength had run out. Her laughter. I was afraid that she was tired of facing the next morning, and the next night. She was afraid to marry again, even though there were any number of men who would have been glad to have her. She said she’d buried the last man she loved, she would never do it again, that there wasn’t enough left of her heart to put into another grave. Her solicitor, Mr. Chambers, was rather like James Cheney, strong, steady, a good man. I thought she was fond of him, and most certainly he cared for her. But it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t ...”
Susannah took a deep breath. “I can’t talk about it any more! Daniel is downstairs, he’ll have fits if he sees me so upset. Daniel would do anything to make me happy. It isn’t fair to worry him like this.” She asked to use the water and his basin to wash her face, and he went to find the linen cupboard in the passage outside his room, to bring towels for her. She thanked him, looked searchingly in the mirror when she’d finished, and said, “Will you give me your arm down the stairs? I don’t mind going up them, but since Stephen’s— since then, I’ve had a thing about coming down them. About falling. I dream about it, sometimes. My foot slipping, the weight of the baby ...” She shivered.
“You were all outside when he fell?”
“Yes, impatient, in a hurry, not thinking about his foot. I remember saying to Rachel that Stephen could be so tiresome at times. All this bother just for some old books he wanted to find. As if he couldn’t come back anytime for them! And then Cormac went inside, shouted to us to come at once, and it was already too late. I felt so ill I thought I might miscarry!”
He took her down the stairs, and she leaned heavily on his arm, as if clinging to life itself. But once in the passage outside the bar, she smoothed her skirts, gave him a relieved smile, and walked with absolute assurance through the door to where her husband was waiting.
Daniel had some remarks of his own to make about Rut-ledge’s presence in Borcombe, hinting darkly at the Government having ignored Olivia until it was too late, and now wanting to seem efficient and solicitous.
“It’s a nasty business, Inspector, to destroy a family for political gain!”
Rutledge let him have his say, and finally they left in a new motorcar, murmuring something about friends in the next town who would be waiting upon them for dinner. Over her shoulder, Susannah gave him a last pleading glance before turning to answer some question her husband had put to her.