The picnic basket was bountiful, pasties wrapped in napkins, beer for him, a thermos of tea for Rachel, an assortment of biscuits in a small tin, and a packet of cheese with a fresh loaf of bread. There were plums in the bottom in another napkin.
They did it justice, although Rutledge was preoccupied and Rachel found herself making self-conscious small talk, sticking with topics that couldn’t lead her—and the Inspector— back to the Hall or its inhabitants.
Discussing her interest in Roman ruins in England was easier, then she found herself wondering aloud why he’d chosen police work when he might have gone into the law, like his father.
“I remember my father talking about briefs. A barrister defended the accused, he said, and a KC defended the law, and if the victim was alive, he might present his evidence about the robbery, the assault, the trespass. But if he was dead, he was the primary cause of the case, and had no role in it, except as proof that a crime had been committed.” He grinned at her. “That seemed very unjust to a small boy burning with a sense of right and wrong that was entirely his own. I felt the victim should be heard, that his voice as well as his life’d been taken from him. I believed that the truth mattered. That protecting the innocent mattered. It seemed to me the police must be concerned about that if the courts were not. But that wasn’t true, either.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said, looking away, “as I learned soon enough, the primary task of the police isn’t to prove innocence, it’s to prove guilt.”
Something in his voice at the end warned her not to pursue the subject. She glanced up, and saw Cormac FitzHugh coming towards them across the lawns.
She said quickly, beginning to gather up the lunch things and put them back into the basket, “Are you leaving for London in the morning?”
“No,” he answered, “not yet. I’ve a few more loose ends to clear up before I’m satisfied. But I promise I’ll tell you when I’m finished here.”
“That’s fair enough,” she answered, and stood up, brushing the sand from her trousers. By the time Cormac had reached them, she was already walking away along the strand, towards the headland.
Cormac called a greeting, and looking at the boat on the shingle said as he reached Rutledge, “I see you talked the landlord out of his boat for the day. I wish I’d thought about that myself.” Then, his eyes following Rachel, where she was already out of earshot, he added, “I’ve been worried about her. She took Nicholas’ death hard. Following on the heels of Peter’s. Rachel is too level-headed to deny they’re gone, but there’s an emptiness she doesn’t quite know how to fill. Lately she’s even avoided me, and Susannah. As if the living remind her too much of the dead.” He shook his head. “I know how that is. I bury myself in my work and let the days run into each other.”
“You aren’t staying at the Hall?”
“I’d asked Mrs. Trepol to make up a bed,” he said wryly, “then couldn’t face the silence. Friends at Pervelly are putting me up.”
“Is that where Mrs. Hargrove and her husband are visiting?”
Cormac turned back to Rutledge, surprise in his face. “Is Susannah down here? Daniel swore he wasn’t letting her leave London again until she delivered. But she’s always been more strong-minded than she looks. If she wants something, he can’t stand in her way for very long. She’s probably staying with the Beatons. She was in school with Jenny Beaton. Jenny Throckmorton, she was then.”
* ‘Your sister didn’t want to hear of the investigations being reopened, either. She said there was enough disgrace in a double suicide, she didn’t want her child born into a family where murder was suspected.”
Cormac grinned. “Pregnant women are often edgy, I’m told.”
“You’ve never married?”
He walked away, his back to Rutledge, and picked up a stone to skip over the incoming waves. “No,” he said finally, “I haven’t married. Like Rachel, I have scars that haven’t healed.”
Hamish rumbled uneasily, and Rutledge tried to ignore him. He said, “I haven’t found any evidence of a crime being committed here. But I’d like to know why Nicholas Cheney died. To understand why,” he amended. “I can’t quite accept your suggestion, that Olivia didn’t want to die alone.”
Cormac came back to where Rutledge was standing. The whisper of the water running in was louder as the tide turned. “God knows,” he said tiredly. “It might have had something to do with her poetry. Or what Nicholas knew about her, about her life. Or what she thought he might do afterward— after she’d gone. Or it might have been sheer bloody-mindedness.”
“If she wanted her secrets kept, why leave her literary papers to Stephen? And surely you knew nearly as much about her history as Nicholas did. Possibly more. Killing him didn’t seal her secrets in the grave.”
“Ah, but she knew I was making a name for myself in London. That I’d go to any lengths to avoid scandal that might hurt my reputation in the City. It wasn’t very likely, was it, that I’d be eager to rattle any family skeletons? There’s a passage in one of her poems about ‘secret histories, kept to the grave, last defense of master and slave ‘gainst the final onslaught of heaven and hell, a Resurrection where the soul will tell what the tongue and the mind, in dreadful fear, had hoped against hope that none might hear.’ “ He shrugged. “The transfer of thousands of pounds is made on my handshake, the agreement to contracts and the trust of banks and investors. I’m as good as my word, and people depend on that. I had more to lose in telling than she did. She could have ruined me more easily than I could ever have ruined her.”
“But you might have ruined O. A. Manning.”
“Did she really care about O. A. Manning? She cut that part of her life short as well.”
“Unless she’d said what it was she wanted to say, and knew it was safe forever, printed into lines on paper. That no one could take it from her.”
Cormac studied Rutledge’s face. “Do you mean a confession of sorts? I don’t know the poems that well. I couldn’t begin to guess what she intended, in writing them. I really don’t believe that she herself knew what they were—only a force that had to find expression, regardless of the hand and mind that created it. Olivia was the most complex person I’ve ever known.”
Rachel had reached the headland, where rocky outcrops blocked her way and the sea sent spray flying in the sunlight. She stopped, hesitating, looking back at them, a small, frail figure against the massive land mass and the vastness of the sea. After a moment, she turned and started towards them again. She moved with grace, her hair flying in the wind, her strides long and sure.
“From here, she might be Jean ...” Hamish said softly.
Watching her, Rutledge said, “I still think Nicholas’ death is the key. I could believe the rest of what you’ve told me, if I was satisfied there.”
Cormac said, “Then you’ll have to go to the grave for your answers. I don’t have any to give you.”
“Could it be connected with the house? In some way? If she’d died and Nicholas Cheney had lived, he would have inherited the Hall. And I don’t believe, from what little I know of him, that he’d have sold it.”
Surprised, Cormac’s fair brows snapped together. He said slowly, “Then why not simply change her will—cut him out of it? The Hall was hers, to do with as she pleased. Why not leave it to Stephen? He claimed to be her favorite, and I think there might be some truth to that.”
“Stephen would have kept the Hall, too.”
“As a memorial, not as his home. There’s a difference, I suppose.”
Rutledge shook his head. “Whatever it is, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”