He knew, but didn’t tell her, that often the men who taunted death had a terrible fear of it. And reached out to it in bravery because that was easier than waiting for it to come and fetch them, cowering in some corner. He knew—he’d taken his own wild risks, hoping to put an end to suffering he didn’t know how to face.
When he didn’t answer, she added, “But it was Thomas Chambers I came to torment you about, wasn’t it?”
‘‘Short of fiercely twisting my arm, alarming Mr. Trask, not to mention giving the gossips an earful before morning, how do you propose to do that?” He fell back on teasing her while he considered what he wanted to say to her.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” She was disappointed.
“There is little to tell, if you want the truth,” he said mildly. “He wanted to know what in blazes I was doing here on his turf—sounded much like Cormac FitzHugh and Dr. Hawkins in that regard—and agreed that if Stephen inherited Olivia’s papers, he—Chambers—has no idea what’s become of them. And Susannah would be the most likely person to have charge of them now, once they are found.”
Rachel considered that. “I wonder what she’ll do with them?”
“They have great intrinsic value. I don’t know their monetary worth, on the auction block. Oxford would be delighted to have them. Or Cambridge. She was a major poet.”
“But a woman. I wonder if she’ll be valued so highly, now that everyone knows who O. A. Manning really is. The war poems, for one thing—they seemed so, I don’t know, so genuine, a part of personal experience. But she never went to France, she was a woman who wore a brace on her leg and hardly ever left Cornwall, much less came face to face with war.”
“Does she have to shoulder a rifle and kill to understand war?”
“I don’t know,” Rachel answered honestly. “I wasn’t in France either. I can appreciate the words on the page, but I wasn’t there.”
“You sent a husband off to war. Nicholas went to France. Stephen. You loved all three of them. What did you feel?”
He knew how Jean had felt—she had wanted him back without four years of suffering and guilt and pain coming between them. Unchanged, nothing to remind her that he’d ever gone away from her. The man he was now terrified her. The man he had been was lost somewhere still in France.
She hesitated. “Fear, mainly. I was so afraid. The war dragged on, it seemed as if it would never end. And you tell yourself, ‘He can make it a few more days, another month, he can last out this year, there’s so little of it left!’ But you know, deep down inside, that he can’t live forever, that simple arithmetic, the number of shots fired, the number of shells that fall, the number of assaults and snipers—they have to find their targets, sometimes. And it’s really a matter of chance—the hazards of war—” She broke off and spread her napkin across her lap, taking pains with it so that he couldn’t see her face. He wondered whether she was speaking mostly about Peter or Nicholas. And told himself that he was being unfair to judge her for Peter’s sake.
Then she said in a different voice, “That’s all that you had to say to Mr. Chambers? Or he to you?”
“What were you expecting him to tell me? That he’d been waiting for me or someone like me, to come down here and open Pandora’s Box?”
“No,” she said, wistfulness in her face. “I don’t know what I expected. Not really.”
“Did Olivia like flowers? Pansies, for an example? Did she plant pansies in the gardens at the Hall? Or out on the moors?”
“There’ve always been drifts of pansies in the borders at the Hall. I don’t have any idea who planted them first. But Nicholas was very fond of them, I do know that. As for pansies on the moors,” she shook her head, “I don’t recall ever finding pansies there. But then I never looked for them.”
“I’m having the moors searched again. For Richard’s body.”
Rachel sighed. “Do you think you’ll find it? After all these years?”
“Who knows? I have to look.”
“Constable Dawlish must have been very happy about that!”
Rutledge shrugged. “I didn’t make an inquiry into his feelings on the subject. I just asked him to set up a search.”
She regarded him for a moment, then said, “You’re used to having your way, aren’t you?”
Surprised, he said, “No. I seldom have my way. But when something has to be done, and the local man can do it better than I can, I expect him to get on with it. He knows who can be spared for the job—”
“While you,” she said irritably, “sit in a warm and dry inn!”
“Hardly that. I saw you walking towards the Hall earlier. Why?”
Trask brought a tray with their orders, cutlets for him, a breast of chicken for her, and began to arrange the plates on the table, saving her from having to answer.
By the time the innkeeper had finished and gone away again, she had a pat reply ready for Rutledge. And he had a question of his own ready for her.
There was a pounding on his door in the dark of night, and Rutledge came awake with a start. “Who is it?” he called sharply, after sitting up and clearing his throat. One hand fumbled for his watch.
“Constable Dawlish, sir.” There was a certain pitch to his voice, as if he relished dragging the Inspector out of a warm bed at three o’clock. “I think we’ve found something. Out on the moors.”
Rutledge threw back the blankets and reached for his trousers.
14
In a city there’s never true darkness in the night. But in a place like Borcombe, where people still used oil lamps and clouds obscured what little starlight there was, the blackness was nearly absolute. Rutledge bumped into the bicycle that one of Dawlish’s men had leaned against the wall by the inn door, and swore feelingly.
“You’ll make better time with that,” Dawlish was saying, “than going in your motorcar. We can take some of the paths. Shortcuts.”
Still rubbing his shin, Rutledge nodded, then swung the other leg over the saddle. Side by side the two men pedaled down the wet road, coming to a halt at Dawlish’s signal by Doctor Hawkins’ surgery. The doctor, rumbling with bad temper, came out leading his own bicycle, then without a word, joined them.
It was a long, wet ride, and Rutledge, who didn’t know where he was going, had to follow the shadowy figure of the Constable while Hawkins, still grumbling, brought up the rear. Hamish, of them all, seemed to be most comfortable with the night. The Highlander, keeper of sheep and cattle before turning soldier, had been bred to it.
The moors were several miles away, even by the shortcuts that Dawlish took over fields, across hummocky meadows— once startling a herd of sleeping cows—and through one stand of trees.
The moors were not what Rutledge had expected. Bare, yes. Barren, yes. Rolling, yes. But there were rocks and marshes, rills that tumbled into pools, and scrub growth here and there that rose up like humbled spirits out of the ground. The silence he noticed most. There was a whispering wind that seemed to be saying something just under the range of human hearing, but it didn’t displace the quiet. A ghostly white flock of sheep went scurrying off over a hill like disturbed spirits, jostling each other in their haste, and leaving behind a strong aroma of wet wool that mixed with the wind from the sea and the smell of rotting earth like a miasma.