In his eyes I saw my soul, then found my life in his
embrace ...
Unexpected—and enlightening. If it was true, it explained so much.
But it was only half of the final answer. He was sure of it now.
It was well after three o’clock—he’d heard the church clock strike the hours since midnight, and felt time passing like a heavy burden. His mind was worn and his spirits had sunk like a stone, the earlier enthusiasm already attacked by doubt. Writers often used their own experience for inspiration. Was that all she’d done? Had he counted too much on her, wishing his own need into her words?
No, that was all wrong, all wrong. He just hadn’t learned to see it in the right way yet. With exhaustion nagging at him, caught in the tumult of his own depression and Hamish’s prodding, he’d failed her. Not the other way around.
He rubbed his eyes, then got up and washed his face in the cold water from the pitcher. The coffee was even colder, but he forced himself to drink it, and then stretching his shoulders as he’d done a thousand times on night watches in the war, he finally sat back down again. Giving up was defeat. And by God, he wasn’t going to face the shaving mirror in the morning with excuses and evasions. He’d start all over again, if he had to. At the beginning if that’s what it took to cudgel his wits into action.
“There’re still the papers,” Hamish reminded him. “If ye’re half the detective ye think ye are, you’d have found them by now.”
The finest moment in the final volume was “Lucifer,” the centerpiece of the book, a description of the great and glorious prince whose ambition reached too far. To Milton he’d been the archangel who had dared to envy God, finally to be disgraced and hurled, headlong and flaming, into the pit of Hell to reign over the damned.
To Olivia Marlowe, he’d been the dark angel of death.
Rutledge read the lines again, and this time the image created by the words took shape in his mind.
The dark angel. Beyond her power to control, beyond her power to condemn. Beyond her power, nearly, to understand.
But not an angel, not an allegory of Death. A man.
Clever, unemotional, his own law. Resolute, fearless. Without compassion. And immutable. However long it took, however dangerous it was, however destructive, he got what he desired.
A man who was neither good nor evil, merely unbound by the constraints of humanity or God. A glittering archangel, perhaps, but without a soul. And yet, like Lucifer, filled with envy and the need to possess what to him was omnipotence. Only, his heaven had been earthbound.
A Gabriel Hound, the old woman called him, heathen.
It was a chilling portrait, and it was the most truly devastating study of cold, hard ego, of a core of being without light or grace, that he’d ever seen.
By the time Rutledge had finished the poem the last time, he felt an exaltation in his blood that had nothing to do with poetry or Olivia Marlowe, and everything to do with the great courage of O. A. Manning.
He knew now the name and face of the Gabriel Hound. Proving it was going to be very dangerous. And Rachel would be brought to tears if he succeeded.
22
Rutledge found it hard to sleep, and Hamish, ever vigilant for an opening, was there in his mind, critical, disagreeing, ridiculing, citing all the objections to his arguments. Pointing out over and over again— “You havena’ found a why. You havena’ got the reason!” “I don’t need reasons. Leave that to the lawyers—” “Lawyers are no’ policemen, they’ll twist the truth until it’s lost!”
“All I need is proof, and Olivia gave me that—” “Proof, is it? A muckle of lines, that’s what ye’ve got! Would ye stand and recite in yon courtroom, while your fine jury nods in their seats and yon judge begs you to get on with it before he declares a mistrial? Och, man, it’s no’ a case, it’s professional suicide!”
“What about her papers? You’ve reminded me of them yourself. You must have thought they were important when you did.”
“They’re gone, man, face it. Ye havena’ found them, and never will.”
“Nicholas wouldn’t have destroyed those out on the headland, she wouldn’t have let him! Cormac might have, if he found them first, before the lawyers and Stephen got there. But somehow I don’t think he did find them. I think he’s been looking as hard as I have. I can’t believe he wants anyone to know the truth about what happened between him and Olivia. Before I’m finished, I’ll find those bloody papers!” “Oh, aye, we’re back again to a dead woman’s poems! A
dead woman’s papers! What you need is a live killer. And a
confession. A witness to confront him! And there’s no’ any
hope of finding those.”
“No,” Rutledge retorted bitterly. “But I’m not beaten yet.”
He rose at five o’clock, his head feeling stuffed with cotton wool from an hour’s heavy sleep at the very end. Shaving with cold water, he dressed and hurried down the back stairs, startling the elderly scullery maid setting out the crocks of butter and putting the new-baked bread into cloths in a basket in the kitchen.
“Lord, sir! You gave me such a fright!” she cried, looking up at him and then burning her fingers on a hot loaf of bread, nearly dropping it. “Was it coffee you were wanting, sir? It’s not been put on yet.”
“Is there someone here who can carry a note over to Mrs. Otley’s house for me?”
Her eyebrows flew up. “A note! At this hour, sir? Surely not!”
“As soon as may be,” he said testily.
“There’s the boy taking out the ashes—”
“He’ll do.” He was already writing several lines on a sheet from his notebook, frowning as he worded it to his satisfaction, then ripping it out to fold and address on the outside. “Bring him here.”
She went to fetch the boy, looking at Rutledge over her shoulder as if he’d lost his wits. The sleepy child, no more than nine or ten, took the note, opened his eyes wider at the sight of the sixpence in Rutledge’s hand, and paid close heed to his instructions.
Then he was off.
Rutledge followed him out of the kitchen and down the hall, watched him drag open the inn door and set off through the early mists up the hill towards the Otley cottage.
It was ten minutes before he was back, breathless and red-faced, but smiling.
“She wasn’t that happy with me, sir, for waking her. She said I was to tell you that, and say that I’d earned a shilling for the trouble it took to bring Mrs. Otley to the door.”
It was highway robbery, but Rutledge handed over a shilling, and the boy went dashing back down the passage towards the kitchens.
Rachel’s reply was hardly more than a scrawl. “If you haven’t run mad, you soon will. But if this is what it takes to send you back to London, I’ll do it.”
Grinning, he stuffed the paper into his pocket and went around to the back of the inn where his motorcar was parked in one of the disused sheds.
Within five minutes he was driving up to Mrs. Otley’s cottage, the sound of the car loud in the street, and down near the wood someone’s dog was barking in savage displeasure at the racket. The dog the rector had warned him of? You could hear the damned thing all over Borcombe!
Rachel came down the cottage steps ten minutes later, dressed in a dark coat and a hat she’d tied down with a scarf.
Rutledge got out and held the door for her. “Are you sure you can drive this automobile?”
She looked at him in disgust. “Of course I can. Probably better than you do, on these roads. I know them, you don’t.”