“Well, do me the courtesy of telling me what to expect,” Cormac said, “when you’ve made up your mind. I don’t want scandalous headlines in the morning paper staring back at me over my breakfast!”
“If I can,” Rutledge said, but it wasn’t the same promise he’d given Rachel.
After a moment Cormac said, “I’ve got to be on my way. Tell Rachel I’m sorry I missed her.” His eyes crinkled at the corners in a smile. “But warn her I’m not ready to leave Cornwall yet.” He walked off, moving swiftly and gracefully towards the house. Rutledge wondered whether he would buy it, as he’d thought about doing—or if the bitter memories here outweighed the sweet, even for him.
Cormac, whether he liked it or not, was still under Olivia Marlowe’s spell. Just as Rachel was under Nicholas Cheney’s—
She reached him, looking after Cormac and saying, “He doesn’t look very happy. What surprises did you spring on him?”
“I didn’t know that there were any surprises,” he countered.
Rachel turned her attention back to Rutledge. “Does it ever bother you—as a man, I mean—when the policeman in you has to break into a person’s peace and destroy it? Do you ever have qualms of conscience—nightmares—”
Hamish, answering for him, said, “Aye, there’s nightmares! But no’ the kind the lassie could bear!”
Seeing Rutledge’s face respond to what she thought was her own challenge, she didn’t wait for him to answer, and said instead, “Well, I suppose a conscience can grow accustomed to many things, when it has to!”
When he’d seen Rachel back to Borcombe, settled the boat where he’d found it, and returned the picnic basket to the inn, Rutledge went in search of Mrs. Trepol, housekeeper and cook. She was working in her garden, her hair tied up in a kerchief and an apron over her dress. As he paused at the gate that separated her walk from the road, she looked up, her eyebrows twitched, and she said, “I knew you’d come here before very long. When I saw you with Miss Rachel awhile ago.”
“Inspector Rutledge. I’d like to talk to you about the deaths at the Hall.” He opened the small iron gate set into the stone wall.
“It’s my Christian duty to answer you, but thinking about it bothers my sleep. I try not to.” She set the small trowel in the trug beside her and pulled off the old pair of men’s gloves she wore to protect her hands. “Would you care for a cup of tea, then?”
Following her into the dimness of the house, he saw that there was a cat in the chair he’d chosen to sit in, and moved instead to the long window overlooking the front garden. She unceremoniously dumped the torn out of the chair and dusted it with her apron. “He knows better,” she said, “but it’s his favorite place. I’ll be just a minute. Sit down, please, sir.”
He did, and the torn stared balefully at him from sleep-narrowed eyes. The room was small, with more furniture than it could comfortably hold, but clean of dust. Silverplate picture frames of people he didn’t recognize covered one table, beside small seaside souvenirs from Truro and Penzance. A plate holding pride of place commemorated the coronation of Edward VII, and a smaller one marked that of George V and Queen Mary. A cutting from a magazine, a photograph of the Prince of Wales in his Gaiter robes, had been framed and hung over the couch. This could be the parlor of any cottage in the west of England, Rutledge thought, feeling the quiet peace of it.
“Or in Scotland,” Hamish said with a sense of loss in his voice. “There was my sister’s wedding flowers under a glass bell, and the souvenirs were from Bannockburn and Edinburgh, not the seaside. A photograph of me in my uniform, with Fiona at my side ...”
Mrs. Trepol came in with a tray bearing cups and a teapot, a small dish of cakes to one side. She set it on the tea table in front of the cold hearth, and poured a cup for him. That done, she sighed, as if she’d put off interrogation as long as good manners allowed. Straightening her back, she turned, handed him the cup, and said, “I told the police when it happened—”
“Yes, I know, and your statement was very clear,” he assured her. “But I’m here merely to satisfy the Yard that the deaths were investigated—er—properly.”
Nodding, she said, “Aye, well, the family was well thought of. I’m sure everything that could be done was. It was a shock to me, I can tell you! Walking into that house on my day off, and not finding Mr. Nicholas about—but sometimes Miss Olivia had a bad night, and he’d sit with her until the worst passed. After Miss Rosamund died, Mrs. FitzHugh she was then, and the staff was reduced, he was the one Dr. Penrith showed how to rub Miss Olivia’s limbs and her back, to help the pain. Well, there was no entertaining, only the family coming there from time to time, and a full staff was wasteful! But to end their lives like that ... I can’t say how long it took me to get over my grief. I felt—I felt I should have been there, somehow.” She brought him milk and the small bowl of sugar, then the cakes.
“That you could have prevented it? That you’d have guessed what was in their minds?”
“There was no warning, sir, none, just life going on in its ordinary way!” she told him earnestly. “But I thought if I hadn’t been in such a hurry on the Saturday to leave, to run some errands I’d put off, I might have noticed some little difference, and Mr. Smedley could have come out to the Hall and spoken with them. Restored the balance of their minds!” There was pain in her voice, a heavy sense of guilt as she quoted unconsciously from the inquest verdict.
Suicide was still viewed as a crime against God. Mrs. Tre-pol sincerely felt a responsibility to save her employers’ souls if she could—as well as their earthly lives. Not out of zeal-ousness but from affection. She cared deeply.
“But if you didn’t notice anything—if their behavior was normal—then whatever caused them to take their lives must have occurred after you left.”
“What could have happened? There were no visitors expected that I knew of, and the post had come already, I’d have heard if it brought bad news. And look back on the day as I will, there was nothing that changed in that house! Nothing to cause such anguish that they’d want to die!”
“People don’t kill themselves without a reason,” he said, preparing to ask the question he knew very well would hurt her more. “Unless you think that Miss Marlowe was in such terrible pain that Mr. Cheney gave her too much laudanum, saw what he’d done, and then killed himself in grief.”
She put her own cup down and stared at him. “Mr. Nicholas would never have done such a terrible thing as give her too much! Oh, no, sir, he was not the kind of man to make a mistake like that!”
Without answering her directly, he shifted tactics. “There has been a good deal of sadness in the Hall. Two children dying young. Miss Rosamund losing her husbands before their time. Then Mr. Cheney and Miss Marlowe. And finally, Stephen FitzHugh.”
“As to that, sir, we all have our crosses to bear,” she said stiffly.
“But sometimes there’s a history of violence in a family. And sometimes one person is at the root of it.”
“And who do you think stands at the root of this family’s tragedies, sir?” she asked, bristling. “Mr. Cormac, who lives in London? Or Miss Susannah, who’s the last of the Treve-lyans? They’re all that’s left to do anybody a harm!”
“Miss Marlowe was an unusual woman. She wrote poetry of a kind that few men can produce. Where did she learn so much of life?”
“I never asked her, sir! Come to that, I never knew until she’d died that she was a writer of poems or anything else. Mr. Nicholas must have known, he sat working on his ships in her study, or went to find books she wanted in the library, or talked to her long hours of the day and night. I’d hear their voices, quiet and steady, as I moved about doing my cleaning. I think she’d have told him, she told him most everything important to her.”