She could feel herself hating Rutledge, blaming him. It was wrong, of course, and she could tell herself that as many times as she liked, but deep inside, she found herself wanting to lash out, to hurt him, as he’d hurt her. For planting seeds that might grow.
Hamish was scolding him for upsetting Rachel, but Rutledge himself was glad enough for a brief space to think. He turned and walked up the lawns towards the headland, mind busy with the complexities of this case that wasn’t a case. And with Rachel, who had loved Nicholas Cheney, whether she believed that or not.
The wind came bounding over the cliff face, ruffling his hair and tugging at his trouser legs as he moved higher along the grassy edge that rose at a fairly steep angle the closer he came to the top. Below him, the sea rhythmically threw itself at the rocky face, whispered softly, and then came back for another try. Farther out, there was a fishing boat moving slowly across the water, trailed by a half a dozen gulls. He could hear their cries echoing against the headland.
Turning, he looked back at the house. It rose above the colorful gardens with comfortable grace, first to a lawn that was reached by a broad flight of Italianate stone steps, and then by way of another flight, to the terrace enfolded by the two short wings that looked down on it. Rachel was moving about there now, where great stone urns spilled over with flowers, trailing blossoms and vines like bridal bouquets. It was a peaceful setting, not grand, but beautiful.
He turned again, this time to look towards the village, half hidden behind the copse that separated it from the grounds of the Hall. Past the church tower, he could just see the upper floor of the rectory, its windows dark blue squares in the sun.
Why had the rector been stirring at such a late hour of the night, much less looking out his windows? And could he see the Hall from there, could he have caught the movement of a candle in the study on the upper floor?
An interesting pair of questions . . .
Something had brought the man out of his bed and into the dark woods in such haste that he’d not stopped to pull on his trousers or a coat, he’d simply thrown a blanket around his nightclothes and taken a poker from the hearth. A poker for a living threat, not a dead one.
Rutledge crested the headland and moved a few yards down the far side, looking towards a meadow that he thought might well have been a walled orchard once, the land still rough and hummocky where the trees had been cut down but the roots and stumps left for the grass to swallow with time. Yes, now he could see the faint line of foundation that marked where a wall had run. It was here, then, that Olivia’s twin sister had died. Out of sight of the house, the stables, and the gardens, behind a wall of brick and leaves.
Hamish was insistently calling his attention to something, and he glanced down at his feet. There was what looked like a large, scorched patch of earth, as if someone had burned something here. Not recently, not within the past few weeks— the grass was already growing greenly through the blackened stubs, and the fine ash was like a film on the ground, evenly spread about, no chunks, no remnants of anything identifiable. Scuffing the surface with his shoe, Rutledge thought it might have been paper rather than wood or rags that had fueled the fire, it had burned so thoroughly. Or else whatever was not consumed had been taken away.
He knelt, looking more closely, his fingers probing, and found something caught in one of the clumps of grass just outside the circle. It looked like a bit of faded ribbon, blue perhaps, or pale green, it was hard to say after days of wind and sun and rain draining it of most of its color. And closer in there was a thick edge of harder stuff, that might once have been heavy leather, like the end of a belt. Casting around for anything else, he discovered a small decorative silver corner, thin and blackened but still possessing a fine tracery of Celtic design. From a picture frame? A book? A locket?
Odd things to have cast into a fire!
Still squatting in the grass, he realized that he was just able to see the roof of the Hall, but there was not even a glimpse of the village, except for the battlemented top of the church tower. In the other direction, fields and woods. At his back, the sea.
Whoever had worked here knew he—or she—was out of sight of watchful eyes.
If you lived at the Hall and wanted to burn something, he thought to himself, why not in the grate? Or the stove in the kitchen? Or in the basket in the kitchen garden where trash was usually sent to be incinerated?
To come out here on the headland and build a fire with the wind clawing up over the cliff must have been a damned nuisance, trying to keep the flames from leaping out of control, to keep bits of paper or cloth from blowing every which way in a flurry of sparks, trying to prevent your eyebrows and fingers from being scorched as you worked over the blaze, feeding it. Then pouring water over the lot, to make sure it was dead before leaving it.
Unless ... unless you had something to burn that you didn’t want anyone else to see. Or find the remnants of, in the ashes of the hearth. Or smell in the passages of the house, smoke hanging heavily, like a confession.
To come out here, in the daylight or the darkness, where the smoke and the smell and any remnants that the fire might accidentally leave wouldn’t be noticed or rouse suspicion, indicated a need for privacy—or secretiveness.
He stood up, wondering who had used this patch of ground.
Rachel was coming towards him, just closing the last garden gate, and he hurried to meet her, not wanting her to see the burned spot. “Hungry?” he called, when she stopped to wait for him.
“Starved!” she answered, fetching up a smile. It was almost natural. “What were you looking at so intently? I called, and you didn’t hear me.”
“Did you? It was lost in the wind. I was wondering if that meadow over there might have been an old orchard.”
“Yes, actually it was.” She didn’t pursue that train of thought, but said instead, “It’s sad to think of the Hall being sold. Of strangers living here.”
“I thought you were in agreement about selling the house? That only Stephen held out against it.”
“Oh, I think it should be sold. There’s nothing left here now of what we loved as children, and trying to keep it alive artificially, as a museum, would be much worse than strangers moving in. I mourn the past, that’s all.” She looked over her shoulder as they walked down the headland towards the beach again, as if hoping the house itself would tell her she was wrong. After a moment she added more to herself than to him, “I expect the best course after all is for Cormac to buy it. Which keeps the Hall in the family in a roundabout way, and we’ll none of us feel guilty about choosing strangers over Olivia. Although it seems selfish to make poor Cormac the family’s sacrificial lamb!” She smiled ruefully. “Have you ever noticed how many times feeling guilty shapes human decisions? Rather than love or pity or avarice or whatever else one might have felt instead? A wretched way of getting through life, isn’t it?”
He grinned down at her. “In my work, feelings of guilt can be useful—sometimes even solve the crime for me.” But there had been other times, he could have told her, when remorse and guilt never entered into the picture. A killer caught by some tiny mistake he made, not because of any human emotion driving him. Careful, elusive, cold. Rutledge found himself thinking that this new Ripper wouldn’t be such a man. He was lashed by such savage desires he could tear flesh like paper. And he’d grow more and more careless as the fires consumed him as well as his victims.