It was late in the evening when he reached Borcombe, tucked into a deep valley that ran down to the sea below a long headland. The rain had stopped, but heavy clouds still obscured the sky, and lights from houses and a busy pub already glistened across the wet pavements though the time was only a little after nine. It was a smallish village, and he quickly found the house he was looking for on the corner of Butcher’s Lane, home of Constable Dawlish. Pulling up before the white picket gate, he opened the door and got out stiffly, taking a moment to stretch his tired legs and massage aching shoulders. Then the door was opening at the top of the stone steps and a man in shirtsleeves was staring out.
“Inspector Rutledge?”
“Yes.” He opened the gate and went up the short, flagstone walk. “Constable Dawlish?”
They shook hands on the threshold and Dawlish ushered him into a small, warm room off the entry hall. “Let me take your coat, sir. A bit cool for July, isn’t it? It’s the rain, I expect. Have you had any dinner?”
“Yes, thank you. But I could do with some tea.”
“Kettle’s on the boil now, sir.” Dawlish gestured to the dark red horsehair sofa. “You’ll be comfortable over there. And I’ve got all the papers about the case in the folder on the table beside you. Inspector Harvey is sorry he can’t be here, but he had to go along to Plymouth. There’s a man there, fits the description of one we’ve been looking for. Talked three widows out of their savings.”
“We’ll manage well enough without Harvey at this stage,” Rutledge replied, taking Dawlish’s measure. He was tall and thin, a young man with old eyes. “On the Somme, were you?” he asked, hazarding a guess.
“Part of the time. I was over there three years. Felt like thirty.”
“Yes. It did.”
Mrs. Dawlish, small and plump, came in with a tray of tea, thick sandwiches, and dainty cakes. She smiled shyly at Rutledge as she set the tray on a second table by the hearth but well within reach of the sofa, and said, “Help yourself, Inspector. There’s plenty more in the kitchen.” And then she whisked herself out of the room, the perfect policeman’s wife.
“I’ll read these reports tonight,” Rutledge said as he took the cup Dawlish poured. “First, I’d rather hear your own point of view.”
Dawlish sat down and frowned earnestly at the cup in his hands. “Well, to tell the truth, I don’t see murder anywhere in this affair. Two suicides and an accident. That’s how it seemed to me. And to Inspector Harvey as well. There was no note with the suicides, but I was there, I saw the bodies, and you’d have a hard time, Inspector, setting up a murder to appear a suicide so fine as that. The bodies, the room, their faces. We don’t know why they decided to kill themselves, that’s right enough. But Miss Olivia Marlowe, she’d been a cripple and must have suffered something fierce from it. The housekeeper said she had many a bad night. And Mr. Nicholas Cheney, he’d done naught else but care for her all his life. Except for the war, of course—he was gassed at Ypres, and sent home. I suppose he felt there was nothing left to him if she went first. Too late, to his way of thinking, to start again. With his damaged lungs. Or maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to. Some people are like that, they’re content with what they know, however bad it is, and fear what they don’t know, however good it might turn out. He was young, younger than she was by four years, he could have married, had a family of his own. But I’m wandering from the facts—”
Rutledge shook his head. “No, no, I want to hear. You knew these people, after all. And you saw the bodies.”
Relieved that the gaunt man from London wasn’t pushing to have his own way, willy-nilly, Dawlish nodded. “Well, then, I accepted what I saw for what it seemed. There was no reason to do otherwise, and you can’t make up a case for murder when there’s no cause, no evidence to base it on. So the family was notified, they came and buried their brother and sister. It was as simple as that. But then they were clearing out the house to ready it for the market—and it’s a handsome house, they’ll sell it easy, even out here in the middle of nowhere. There was money made on the war, and a lot of it wants to be respectable money now.” There was no bitterness in the quiet voice, and only a hint of irony that those who had done the fighting weren’t the ones who had made their fortunes from it.
“The house might bring in enough to kill for?” “Possibly, though it’ll require a good deal of work to bring it up to being a showplace again. They’ll have to consider that in setting the price. And whatever they do get, it has to be split among the surviving family. It took more than a fortnight to clear out the house—just of personal belongings and the like. They’d all stayed to do that, except Mr. Cormac, who’d had to return to the City part of the time but was back that last weekend. At any rate, that last day when they were leaving, Mr. Stephen, the youngest, went head over heels down the stairs and broke his neck. But there was no one who could have been responsible for that, as far as we can tell. They were all outside at the time; he called out the window and said he was on his way down. And the next thing you knew, he’d fallen. Mr. Cormac went in to see what was keeping him, and set up a shout at once. No time to push him, no time to do more than find him, from what the others said. It’s a long sweep of stairs, the treads worn, and he went down with enough force to bruise the body. So he wasn’t dead to begin with and then just tossed over a banister. Besides, he’d called down, every one of them heard him.” He finished his first sandwich and reached for another. “Dr. Hawkins said he may have been hurrying, and with his bad foot—from the war—just missed his step. The others were that upset they’d been so impatient with him.” “And they are? These others?”
“It’s a complicated family, sir. There’s Cormac FitzHugh, now, he’s very well thought of in the City. He was there. He’s Mr. Brian FitzHugh’s son, born in Ireland before Mr. Brian married Miss Rosamund. Miss Susannah was there, she’s twin sister to the man who fell. Miss Susannah and Mr. Stephen were Mr. Brian’s children by Miss Rosamund, you see. And Miss Susannah’s husband, Daniel Hargrove, was there. And of course Miss Rachel, she’s a cousin on the Marlowe side of the family. Miss Olivia’s cousin, to be exact. Miss Olivia’s father was a Marlowe. Miss Rosamund, Miss Olivia’s mother, was married three times, and had two children by each of her husbands. But they’re all gone now except for Miss Susannah. She’s the last of the lot. Marlowe, Cheney, or FitzHugh.”
“This Rosamund, the mother—and stepmother—of all these children—”
“Rosamund Trevelyan, sir, whose family has owned the Hall since time out of mind. Her father’s only child. A lovely lady, sir, quite a beauty in her day. There’s a fine portrait of her up at the house, if they haven’t taken it away yet. If ever a woman deserved to be happy, it was that one. But sorrow seemed to be her lot. Still, to her dying day, nobody ever heard a harsh word from her. At her services, the rector spoke of the ‘light within,’ and she had that.” He smiled wistfully. “So few people do.”
“She’s—in one way or another—the key to this family, then. And to the house.”
“Aye, that’s true enough. Miss Rachel, now, she was Miss Rosamund’s first husband’s mece. Captain Marlowe, that was, Olivia’s father. Miss Rachel has been in and out of the house all her life. Mr. Hargrove, Miss Susannah’s husband, first came here when he was going on twelve, I’d say. Miss Rosamund had a string of race horses, most of them Irish bred, and more than a few bought from the Hargrove stables. Fine animals, they were, won dozens of prizes. As a lad I won more than a bob or two betting on them myself.”
“Who inherited the house when Rosamund died?”