“How did you answer her?” Rutledge asked, intrigued.
“That they don’t put up tombstones until they have the body, and she said, quite seriously, ‘But that’s not true. There are markers in the churchyard for any man lost at sea.’ She had a raging fever by the time they got her home, and I heard no more about angels and tombstones.”
Rutledge found himself thinking of a poem in one of the earlier volumes. It began,
They stood an angel in the churchyard for the man they
lost at sea,
But for him I loved so dearly, there was never place for me
To come and mourn his passing, touch the earth beneath
my hand,
Or bring him blood-red roses ...
He tried to recall the last lines and failed.
But Hamish, the soft Scottish burr clear in his voice, provided them for him.
Alas, a frailer angel watches where you sleep
With pansies—for remembrance—lying at your feet.
Olivia herself had known where Richard lay—find him there, and the case was made!
When tea was brought, Rutledge asked about James Cheney’s death, and Dr. Penrith shook his head sadly. “I couldn’t tell Rosamund how he died. And at least he’d had sense enough to put the barrel to his temple and not in his mouth, for all the world to know what he’d been about! But who can say whether it was accidental or not, whether the thought came to him suddenly and he hadn’t the will to turn it aside. One round was all he had put in the cylinder, and he used it. To end the pain. That was my guess.”
“Who was in the house that day?”
“They all were. Olivia. Nicholas. Rosamund. And Adrian, of course. FitzHugh was there, he’d brought over the new brood mares. It was Cormac came for me, pleading for me to make haste, to do something. But it was useless. I knew that as soon as I saw James’ body.”
“And you never thought of murder?”
“Good God! Self-murder is terrible enough! And who would want to kill James? He was a kind man, a good man. The house had seen enough grief already, who could possibly want to add to Rosamund’s burdens? There’s no one alive that cruel!”
Agitated, he spilled his tea, and Rutledge knelt to mop it up with his napkin, his back to the scorching fire.
“What did Olivia have to say when she was told of James’ death?”
“I don’t remember,” Penrith said testily. “It was a long time ago, and I was not concerned with Olivia, I was worried about Rosamund, and her father. He never recovered his spirits after that, you could see it clear.”
The old eyes, fading into a milky gray, looked back into a past he didn’t want to remember. “I walked behind their coffins,” he said sadly. “Not because they’d been in my care. Not for Adrian’s sake. But because in that house I found something I’ve never felt since under any roof, not even my own. Laughter was there, and happiness. And most of all, a glory. Brian FitzHugh told me once that it was in the very stones of the Hall, that it had been handed down with the Trevelyan blood and the Trevelyan land. That’s romantic nonsense, an Irishman’s blarney. But I knew what it was, I knew from the very first day I set eyes on her. It was Rosamund ...”
Emotion had drained him. He began to nod over his tea cup, head sinking slowly until his chin rested on his cravat, and Rutledge gently removed the saucer from the gnarled fingers. Then, with the wet napkin and the tray, he slipped quietly out of the room and into the—by comparison—frigid passage.
Mrs. Hawkins, taking the tray from him, said apologetically, “He slips off to sleep easier every day. I wonder sometimes ...” But she left the sentence unfinished, and instead showed him to the door. “Thank you for coming to cheer him a little,” she said. “I don’t expect you’ll be in Borcombe much longer, but I know he’d be glad to see you again before you leave.”
“Did you know Olivia Marlowe very well?” he asked, looking out at the rain coming down in sheets.
“She was friendly enough, whenever we ran into each other, but no, I wasn’t likely to know her well. She didn’t go about much. I was that surprised when they told me she wrote poetry, but then she was an invalid, wasn’t she? With time heavy on her hands. Nicholas was here sometimes in the evening, to visit my father. I always thought he might marry Rachel.” A pink flush rose in her cheeks. “I’ve never known a man quite like him—there was an intensity about him, a—a force.” She began to search through the Chinese stand beside the door, and took out an old umbrella. ‘‘You can borrow this, if you like. Otherwise, you’ll sure to be calling on the doctor with a fever.” Then, in a rush, as if she felt she had to finish what she’d begun. she said, “Nicholas tried to protect Olivia from everything. He thought if he was there, with her, he could hold off the pain, he could keep her from the darkness that beset her. He tried so hard, you could see it— I could see it, I mean—and I thought, when I heard how he’d died, that he was still afraid for her in death. As if, somehow, he could save her from what came after ...”
Rutledge splashed through the puddles on his way back to the inn, heedless of where he put his feet or the dampness spreading through his socks. Wet feet had been the ever-present hell of the trenches; it had cost more men than Stephen FitzHugh their toes or part of a foot. You learned somehow to shut it out, until the smell told you that the rot had begun.
Hamish was fuming at the back of his mind, telling him something, and he ignored the voice, his mind on Olivia Marlowe.
If she knew where Richard was buried, then she’d killed him. And if she knew, then it was a place that could be found. The boy hadn’t been taken by gypsies or thrown into quicksand, he’d been killed and hidden.
“With pansies—for remembrance—”
Had Olivia meant that figuratively? Or literally?
“It doesna’ matter. What if she meant pansies to put near him, flowers that wilted and were gone in a day? Who would see them, who would guess what she was about?”
The angel then, a frailer angel. Herself? Somewhere that Olivia, with her brace, could reach?
She could ride a pony. That widened the circle. He’d been right to order the constable to search the moors again.
Rutledge turned, crossed over to the nearest shop. In the small window fronting the road there was a collection of ribbons and laces behind a spill of colorful embroidery thread, packets of needles, and an array of handkerchiefs that reminded him of those he’d seen in Olivia’s room. As he opened the door, a gust of wind and rain nearly jerked the knob out of his hand.
Startled, a middle-aged woman looked up from a cushion of bobbins and threads and a half-finished lace collar on her lap. “Could I help you, sir?” she asked, trying hastily to get to her feet.
“No, sit down, I’m too wet to come in. I need directions, that’s all.”
She sank back into her chair, somehow preventing the bobbins from roiling to every point of the compass. Then he saw that like the Belgian nuns he’d come across during the war, she had them pinned in place. “To where?”
“I’m looking for the man who did the gardening at the Hall. Wilkins is his name.”
“Oh, you’ve come the wrong way, sir! He’s down towards the river, in a little house you can’t miss. There’s a stone wall and a garden in front, and beehives out back.”