She walked off before he could ask her what had brought her to the Hall on this particular evening. Or what she knew of a fire built out on the headland. But her mind was already slipping away again, and he wasn’t sure he’d have gotten a straight answer anyway.
Still, he listened again to what she’d said. “Miss Olivia warned me once, when I spoke to her of it, and I knew to heed her. I’d die too if I told what I heard or saw.”
Miss Olivia.
He went on his way, taking his time and approaching the house as if he’d come as a guest and not an intruder.
Where would Olivia have left her papers? Not in the hallway where anyone might stumble over them, that was true enough. But would she have hidden them, or simply put them where Stephen would think to look?
He unlocked the door and went inside. Someone had left the drapes open. Cormac? The sun’s warmth had flooded the hall along with its light, and there was a brightness here that somehow made him think of Rosamund.
“There doesna’ need to be anything howling from the attics to haunt a house,” Hamish reminded him suddenly.
“No,” Rutledge answered aloud, agreeing with him. “But this brightness will fade with the dusk. What else is here?”
He went up the stairs to the study and stood in its doorway again, eyes roving the walls and furnishings. There was no place of easy concealment here. Not without moving rows of books—or Nicholas’ ships—and then shifting heavy shelves. And Nicholas shared this room, after all.
He shut the door and made his way down the gallery to Olivia’s bedroom, glancing briefly at the plan Constable Daw-lish had drawn up for him, although he knew very well which door to open.
He stood on the threshold for a moment, then crossed to open the drapes, allowing the setting sun to wash into the dimness. As he did, he caught again that elusive perfume that he’d smelled when the shawl slipped off the typewriter. And it was stronger when he opened Olivia’s closet door and looked at the clothing hanging on both sides of the deep recess. Skirts, dresses, dinner gowns, robes, coats, shawls, in neat and orderly rows, coats first, night robes last. Hatboxes stood in the back on shelves, next to half a dozen handbags. Several umbrellas hung on hooks to one side, and a cane with a heavily wrought silver head. Beneath the clothing were two rows of shoes, the right of each pair with a small metal tab like a stirrup under the instep, and straps at each end. For the brace she wore.
Without touching them he surveyed the clothes. She liked colors, rose and a particular shade of dark blue and a deep forest green, as well as crimson and winter black, summer white and pastels. Tailored clothes, evening dresses very stylish but never fussy. His sister, Frances, would have approved of them, would have pronounced Olivia Marlowe a woman of quiet good taste. Just as the rector had said. But was there another side of her? And where did it reside?
The closet had been built into what had in the past been a small dressing room. He walked into it, towards the shelves at the back, brushing against the clothing, and that perfume whirled out around him, almost in angry protest at his invasion of her privacy. Where had she found such an expressive scent? It touched the senses, lingered in the memory, confused the image he tried over and over again to draw. Elusive as she was—and more alive.
He began methodically to open each hatbox, starting at the top, and from some of them, the heavy odor of cedar shavings wafted up to him, displacing Olivia’s perfume. Sweaters in a range of colors. Woolen stockings and scarves and gloves. Leather belts and leather gloves, Italian made and very supple. A fur hat, with upswept brim and a dashing style. Frances would have adored it—and looked stunning in it.
Nothing else.
He had carefully stacked the boxes on the floor. Now he pulled out the thick wooden shelves, beginning with the top shelf, looking to see if any of the panels in the wall behind it were loose or even hinged. If Olivia had kept her writing a secret for so many years, it meant she knew how to guard her privacy. From servants as well as family. If there was no space for storing personal papers in the study where she worked, she would most certainly have considered her bedroom next as a repository, and this wide closet, which no one but a maid had any excuse to enter, was Rutledge’s first choice.
The closet was too dark for him to be sure that the end panels couldn’t be opened somehow, and he had to remove the middle and then the bottom shelf to run his hands over the wall.
Nothing.
He retrieved the bottom shelf to settle it back on the brackets that held it, and instead clipped the edge on the left-hand bracket. Part of the shelf broke off, and then something else tumbled down, ringing merrily as it bounced twice on the hard wood of the floor. A key? He got down on one knee to search for it, running his hand back and forth across the wood, and there was nothing. Frustrated, he moved back to the front of the closet and started again. It took him nearly five minutes to find it, where it had landed in a shoe.
A small locket, gold, the sort of thing little girls often wore. He took it over to the window, where the light was better. There were entwined initials on the outer face of the locket, and he made them out—MAM. Margaret Anne Marlowe? His fingers found the delicate catch and he opened the frame to two tiny portraits inside. They were in oil, lovely little miniatures of a man and a woman. After a moment he recognized them. Rosamund and her first husband, Captain George Marlowe. Anne’s parents. An exquisite gift to a child on her birthday or at Christmas, to be worn when she was dressed up, with special care.
How had it come to be hidden among Olivia’s things? Or had Olivia simply inherited it when her sister died, and lost track of it over the years?
Rutledge went back to the closet and brought the shelves out again, then the boxes and the shoes. On hands and knees, then standing, he searched every inch of the walls and the floor.
Nothing. Except for the half inch sliver of wood that had been knocked off the bottom shelf by his clumsiness.
He picked up the shelf, looking to see where the chip had come from, and if he could put it back where it belonged.
It was the end of a longer strip of wood that had been set very carefully into the back edge of the heavy shelf. With his penknife he gently pried that out of its slot, and when he did, another object tumbled out of the space hollowed out behind,
He picked up that and the shelf, and carried them both to the windows.
The second object was a man’s gold pipe cleaner, smooth from long use, but the initials engraved in it were still legible. JSC. James Cheney, Nicholas’s father? He set that on the sill beside the locket.
Holding the shelf up to the light, he looked into the carved-out hollow. Someone had stuffed cotton deep inside it, and embedded within the soft fibers he could see bits and pieces of other articles. The sun caught them in its brightness, as if pointing to them. He winkled them out, slowly and gently.
First came a small boy’s cuff buttons, heavy gold and again with initials engraved on them. RHC. Richard Cheney? Behind them was a lovely little signet ring, that looked as if it had been crafted for a child. And carved deeply into the face of the ring was a coat of arms. Inside, engraved in the band itself, were the initials REMT. Rosamund Trevelyan. A gold crucifix came out easily, finely wrought, with the figure a little worn. From the letters on the reverse, it had belonged to Brian FitzHugh. Finally, at the very back, a watch fob in the shape of a small boat, with the initials NMC. Nicholas.
The sunlight flashed across the raised sail as Rutledge laid it with the others he had spread out on the wooden win-dowsill, and in spite of the warmth that poured through the glass panes, he felt cold.
He knew exactly what these were.