“And you’ll tell Susannah that if she’ll grant this one wish, I’ll be leaving for London as soon as I’ve tied up all the loose ends?”
“Yes, but I still don’t see why you need something like this. It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of!”
“You’ll understand. Afterward. It will save days of work. Trust me.”
“I’ve seen spiders I trust more,” she said tartly, and stepped into the driver’s seat. “If you cause Susannah any pain, any grief—if she has a miscarriage because of you—”
“She won’t. What I’m about to do will give her peace of mind.”
“Learning that her half sister was a murderess? Oh, yes, I call that quite soothing for a woman in her condition.” She turned and looked at Rutledge, a long, earnest look that seemed to probe beneath his skin and into his very brain.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Are you quite sure?” she asked quietly, her face sober and very worried.
He reached out and touched her hand as it rested on the wheel. “I can only tell you that what I’m doing will be for the best. If there was murder done, it ought to be known, and the past put to rest. There ought to be justice, for the dead, if no one else.”
“The dead are dead. It’s the living I’m worried about now. And—and Nicholas.”
“No one can touch Nicholas,” he said gently. “Not now. Not ever again. You know that better than I do.”
“I won’t let you destroy his memory, Inspector Rutledge. I won’t let you. If you do try, I’ll find a way to put it right. Whatever I have to do, I will do. Believe that.”
He felt cold in the early morning breeze, in spite of his coat.
“I can’t hurt Nicholas,” he said again. “He’s dead, Rachel. You have to accept it, and what it means. He left you, he chose to die with Olivia, not to live with you.” He could see the flare of pain in her eyes, and ignored it. “That’s what he told you in his last letter. He didn’t want you.”
Her mouth tightened. “I wanted him,” she said quite simply. “Now start this damned thing or I’ll not go at all, not even for Susannah’s sake!”
He shut the door, walked around, and bent down to turn the crank. He could sense her watching, he knew what was in her mind. As the engine roared into life again and he stepped back, the crank in his hand, she looked straight at him over the bonnet of the car. “Leave Cormac out of this,” he said, coming around the wing towards her. “Don’t send for him. It’s between Olivia and Nicholas, you and me. He’s not a Trevelyan. Don’t send for him, he’ll just make matters worse.”
“No one could make them worse. Except you.”
She took off the brake, let in the gear and the car moved briskly off down the road. She didn’t look back. He watched her handle the car around the curve, his mind on her driving, judging whether he’d made the right decision to send her. But there was no one else who could have persuaded Susannah.
Hamish, lurking in the shadows, said only, “Play with witchcraft, and you’ll burn yourself.”
“It isn’t witchcraft,” Rutiedge answered harshly. “It’s the only way I can think of to get at the truth!”
There was an echo of the engine from the narrow hedgerows, although the car had long since vanished to sight. Rut-ledge started to turn back towards the inn, then looked up to find Mary Otley watching him from the doorway of the cottage.
“You haven’t put her in harm’s way, have you, sir?” she asked.
“No. With any luck, I’ve put her out of it,” he answered, and walked back to the inn for his breakfast.
“The constable’s still at his breakfast, sir,” Mrs. Dawlish said, opening her front door to the Inspector from London.
“I’ll just come through and have a word with him in the kitchen,” he said, gently pushing the door wider. “If you don’t mind.”
She did, but was too polite to say so, though he could read her face clearly enough.
The constable stood up hastily, napkin still stuck under his chin, as Rutledge came down the passage and turned into the kitchen. It was a large room, with windows on two sides and a door into the back passage at the rear, next to the great polished black stove. A table with the remains of breakfast and an unexpectedly bright bowl of zinnias stood in the very middle of the room. A vast Cornish dresser took up most of one wall, the pantry through a door beyond, and against the other wall the smaller, scraped wood top of the cooking table shone in the light from the east. The curtains at the windows, the pattern on the tablecloth, and the walls themselves were all a summer blue, as if somehow to bring the color of the sea into the house.
“Sir!” he said in alarm.
“It’s all right, Dawlish. I’ve just come to tell you that you can call off the search on the moors. This morning.”
The man’s face brightened. “Then you’ve given it up, sir? All this nonsense about the Trevelyan family? You’re going back to London?”
“There are some loose ends to tie up. Some statements I’ll need, to cover the questions I seem to have raised. You won’t mind helping with those?”
“No, sir, not in the least,” Dawlish said expansively, willing to do cartwheels if it got rid of the inconvenient man from London and put Inspector Harvey into a pleasanter mood. “Whatever you wish, I’ll be happy to help.”
Rutledge smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, and for an instant Dawlish was filled with a new uncertainty. But he brushed it aside as Rutledge said, “I’ll be back in two hours with a list of names. I don’t want you to tell anyone else who is on that list. Do you understand me? You’ll send for these people one at a time, exactly as you’re told to do, and you’ll have them write their statements for me exactly in the order I’ll give you, and in the circumstances I describe. It may seem strange to you, but I think in the end you’ll see what I’m driving at. There will be a specific list of questions for each interview. And I want you to ask them exactly as written. Change them in any way, and I’ll have it all to do over again. It will only take longer. Do you understand me?”
Dawlish didn’t, and Rutledge knew he didn’t. But Dawlish nodded, and Rutledge turned to go.
“Two hours. Be here when I come. And don’t forget the men on the moors.”
“Not bloody likely!” Dawlish answered to himself as Rutledge turned and walked out of the sunny, blue kitchen.
Working fast and steadily, Rutledge made his lists, his mind tied up with the complexity of details, setting them out with precision. He had always been good at organizing his thoughts, at creating a picture of events from start to finish. And this time the facts were there. No gaps, no guesses. No room for doubt. No room for Hamish to creep in and haunt him. But Hamish was there, still debating the wisdom of what lay ahead, a stir in the silence.
Trask came up with a telegram for Rutledge, and he opened it reluctantly, knowing it came from London, knowing it was from Bowles.
It read, “If you aren’t doing your job, you’re needed here. If there’s something happening, I want to know about it.”
“No answer,” Rutledge told Trask, and went back to what he was writing.
Explaining to Bowles would be the same as emptying the Sahara with a teacup. There was not enough time for it. Not today. Tomorrow might be different.
Finally he sat back and looked at the sheets of paper on his desk.
How weak was the evidence?
Damned weak at the moment.
Without statements, without the voices of people and their written words, evidence was always thin.
And yet, it was there. It was there. Waiting to be culled.
He felt satisfied.
Rachel had driven straight to the Hall and left the car there before walking back into the village. She came into the inn as Rutledge ran lightly down the stairs, and he knew the instant he saw her face that he’d got what he wanted.