Rutledge said, straight-faced, “I’d be delighted.”
Devon cider could kick like a team of army mules, deceptively smooth on its way down, and building a fire in the belly that was unexpectedly hard on the head. He’d had Calvados in Normandy that did the same, and wondered if the two had common roots.
Smedley returned with two tall cups and a cold jug. He set them on the table between his chair and Rutledge’s, and said, “You can put those books down, I’m not here to wrestle your soul for them. As a matter of fact, I have copies of my own. Your midnight foray was unnecessary.”
“Ah, but I would have had to ask for them,” Rutledge said with an answering grin. “And I preferred not to do that. To draw more attention to this investigation than it’s already created.”
“So it’s an investigation now?”
“No,” Rutledge said shortly. “I’m still ... considering the options.”
Smedley quietly chuckled, acknowledging that he’d touched Rutledge on the raw, and handed him his cup. Then his face changed, and as he pulled the blanket around him more comfortably, he said, “Well, I don’t know any answers. It’s between you and your conscience, when you find yours.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Smedley shrugged. “We must all decide how to use the knowledge we collect in life. In my work and in yours as well, I’m sure, there are painful decisions to be made. And painful choices. They’re never really the same, are they? Decisions and choices. Why did you suddenly want the books?”
“Because when I came down to Cornwall, I didn’t know that one of the victims was O. A. Manning. Only that a woman named Olivia Marlowe was dead. Now I think the poems must have some bearing on her life, if not her death. I’d like to—understand—both women, if I can.”
“Have you read them before? The poems?”
“Oh, yes. I read Scent of Violets at the Front. My sister sent me a copy. It frightened me, in a way. That someone else saw and felt the things that haunted me and I never had the courage to write about even in letters home.” He couldn’t have said to Jean or to his sister for that matter, worldly as Frances was, what it was like to live in the nightmare of war. His letters had been light, giving a superficial account of suffering, and not the bedrock. He thought Frances had guessed.
But Jean had preferred the lies .. .
Hamish stirred but said nothing about Fiona.
“And Wings of Fire? Have you read that?”
“They’re extraordinarily moving, those poems. Where did Olivia Marlowe, spinster of this parish, learn so much about love?”
“A question I’ve asked myself over and over again. Cor-mac was the only man she saw much of who wasn’t a part of the family. I know, Stephen claimed that she’d taken her fondness for him and extended it to the experience between a man and a woman. It may be true—she was capable of that leap of understanding, if anyone was. And Stephen was the kind of child—the kind of man—who endeared himself to everyone. I’ve forgiven him sins that I’d have turned another lad over my knee for committing. Told myself he was fatherless, and young, and meant no harm. But I loved the boy as I’d have loved my own son, for the goodness in him, and the light. He was very like Rosamund, and I know my own weakness in that direction too.” He frowned. “Perhaps that’s what Olivia saw in him. Rosamund.”
He sat in silence, drinking from his cup, and letting the sounds of the house creak and breathe and whisper around them. Comforting sounds. Then he said, “And the last collection, the Lucifer poems? Have you read those?”
“Not yet.” He’d been in hospital when they came out last year.
“It’s a very interesting study of the face of evil. Olivia understood that, just as well as she understood love and war and the warmth of life. As a priest I found it ... disturbing. That she should know the dark side of man so much better than I. That she should believe that God tolerated evil because it has its place in His scheme. That there are some who are not capable of goodness in any sense. The lost, the damned, the sons of Satan, whatever you choose to call them, exist among us, and cannot be saved because they don’t have the capacity for recognizing the purpose of good. As if it had been left out of the clay from which they were formed.”
Rutledge thought about a number of the cases he’d worked on before the war. And some of the acts of sheer wanton viciousness that he’d witnessed in France. He believed in evil, and in the capacity of man to be evil. In a sense, evil paid his wages. He wasn’t as sure as Smedley was that everyone had a capacity for good.
Smedley drained his cup. “I’d not like to think that Olivia Marlowe knew such a being as she describes. Actually knew him. I’d not like to think that I’d met him, on the streets of Borcombe or along the farm lanes or in one of the towns on market day. I would have trouble with that.”
Rutledge finished his cup as well, and felt his head beginning to spin. He had a hard head for liquor, but cider could leap out of the jug at you, when you were tired and unsettled and had an empty stomach. “You don’t think Olivia herself was capable of such evil?”
Smedley stared at him. “You must lead a drearier, more despairing life in London than most of us can comprehend,” he said, “to ask me that! But I won’t answer you directly, I’ll tell you to read the poems yourself. And then decide.”
He stood up, gathering the blanket about his burly shoulders. “I think I can sleep, now,” he added, “and I’ll be surprised if you don’t as well. Leave the books until morning. You’ll be glad of that advice, believe me.”
Rutledge took the advice along with the books, went home to bed and fell asleep almost at once. He wondered, on the brink of sliding into the depths, if he’d have one hell of a headache tomorrow ...
He did. But whether it was cider or lack of sleep that pounded through his skull, he wasn’t sure. Breakfast and several cups of the inn’s violent black coffee seemed to help. He realized that it was Sunday morning, and that the village of Borcombe was on its way to church services or a day of leisure.
Suddenly Rutledge didn’t care about murder or the poems or about the job he’d been sent to do.
He sent a note by the boot boy to Rachel Ashford. Although he himself had no idea where she was staying, he trusted to the village intelligence system that worked more swiftly and more thoroughly than anything the Allies had devised during the war. The boy said instantly he knew where she could be found, and pocketing the coin Rutledge had given him, he set off at a trot.
Ten minutes later he was back with a reply, and had pocketed his third coin of the morning. Two from the London gentleman and one from the lady.
Rutledge opened the envelope and read the brief lines at the bottom of his own scrawled request.
“I’d love to sail. I’ll join you in twenty minutes. Ask the innkeeper if we might use his boat. I know where it’s kept.”
So he went in search of the innkeeper, and received permission to take out the Saucy Belle with Mrs. Ashford. Although he hadn’t sailed since before the war, Rutledge had some experience and thought—correctly—that Rachel might have more.
She came to the inn wearing sensible shoes and a pair of what looked like men’s tousers, cinched tightly at the waist with an oversized belt. Her eyes smiled as he looked at her, but she made no explanation, whether these were Peter’s clothes or borrowed from someone else. They walked together down the road towards the sea and the small assortment of boats there. Rutledge had a basket over his arm, courtesy of The Three Bells and a generous bribe to the cook. Rachel said after a moment, “You’ve more foresight than I have. I was so glad of the invitation to sail, I didn’t think of food. Or is that a man’s thing? Peter was remarkably good at foraging; he said he’d learned it young.”