Rutledge found himself wishing he could ask a painter like Catherine Tarrant if she saw light in the same way, or if it was only his undependable imagination.
He came into the town of Singleton Magna almost before he knew it was there, the abrupt shift from fields to houses almost as sharp as a line drawn in the earth. The railroad’s tracks parted company with him and ran on to the station.
Slowing as he motored down the main street, with its shops still doing a brisk business and farm carts pulled up at the curbs, he searched for the local police station.
It was no more than a cubbyhole next to the town’s one bank, a small offshoot of the main building that must at one time have been a shop. The front window had been painted white with the letters POLICE in black, and the heavy green door was nicked by time and hard use, its iron handle worn with age. The bank it adjoined was more majestic, with a handsome porch above its door, as if it too had begun life as something else, a merchant’s house or a church office.
After finding a place to leave his car and stepping out into the warmth of the afternoon, he saw a tall, stooped man of middle age just coming out of the green door. The man looked at him, frowned, and came over to speak. “Are you Inspector Rutledge, by any chance?”
“Yes, I’m Rutledge.”
The man held out a long-fingered hand. “Marcus Johnston. I’m representing that poor devil Mowbray. Nasty business. Nasty. And he’s not saying a word, not even to me. God knows what kind of case I can build for him. My advice at the moment is to throw himself on the mercy of the courts.”
Rutledge, whose father had followed the law, said only, “I don’t know a great deal about the man or his crime, except for the scant information the local people sent up to the Yard. He was searching the town for his wife, I understand? And her body has been found, but not the others he was after.”
“That’s right. The police have done their best, they’ve covered the ground hereabouts for miles in every direction. No bodies. No graves. More important, no one inquiring about her. No distraught husband and sobbing children, I mean.” He sighed. “Which leads to the conclusion that they’re dead. And all Mowbray will say to me is that they were his children, why should he want to kill them?” A woman passed and Johnston tipped his hat to her. She nodded and then eyed Rutledge with curiosity as she walked on.
“I did some checking before I left London. I’m told Mowbray was in France in 1916 when the bombing occurred. He was sent home on compassionate leave to bury his wife and children. They were identified by the constable when they were pulled from the rubble of the building. Mother and two children, dead. Mowbray himself never saw the bodies; he was told it was better to remember them as they were.”
“Inspector Hildebrand believes there must have been a mistake of some sort—the constable felt fairly certain the bodies were Mowbray’s wife and children, but they could have been another family altogether. The bombing demolished one building, as I understand it, and that brought down those on either side. Fifty or more dead. Easy mistake for the constable to have made—especially at night, fires, injured people everywhere. Absolute horror and chaos.” Johnston grimaced. “Bombs and tons of masonry don’t leave much to look at, I don’t suppose.”
“If it had been another family who died in the raid, why hasn’t someone come looking for them? Parents? Sisters? Husband home on leave? Seems odd no one did, and discovered the mix-up.”
“God knows,” Johnston answered tiredly. “My guess is, there was nobody to care about the dead woman—and Mowbray’s wife probably took advantage of that to start a new life. Makes sense, especially if she’d grown tired of waiting. Take happiness while you can. No fuss. Easier than a divorce.”
In France half a dozen men under Rutledge’s command had applied for compassionate leave at one time or another, most of them men whose wives wanted to leave them and had told them so in a letter. One had been furiously angry....
“Private Wilson,” Hamish reminded him. “He said he’d have her back or know the reason why. He was brought up on assault charges in Slough and given six months.”
Johnston seemed to know what Rutledge was thinking, adding “Hard on the poor sod who’s told his family’s dead, but I daresay she never thought about that. Only that he wouldn’t come tearing home in a rage.” He squared his shoulders with an effort, as if the weight of the world lay on them.
Rutledge studied the long, thin face, lined with something more than age or exhaustion. That was a look he, Rutledge, had seen often enough since he came home from France. And recognized. This man had lost a son in the war and was still grieving hard. The murder of a young woman, someone he didn’t know and didn’t love, had less reality to him than the death in a foreign country of the only flesh and blood that had mattered to him. Johnston was going through the motions for his client. That was all he could do.
“Thank you for being so frank,” Rutledge said, preparing to walk on into the police station.
Johnston seemed to realize how hopeless he himself thought the evidence was. He summoned a smile and added, ‘‘Early days yet, of course! Early days!” But there was a hollowness in the words and the smile.
Rutledge watched him move on down the street, then opened the door of the station, finding himself in a scene of turmoil. There were some half a dozen people crammed into a room meant to hold two at best, and the sudden sense of claustrophobia that swept over him was so fierce he drew in his breath with the shock of it.
Someone looked up, a constable, and said sharply, “What is it you want?”
“Rutledge, from London,” he managed to say, but it came out harshly. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him, making the sense of suffocation worse. He could feel the knob on the door behind him jammed into his back.
“Ah!” the constable replied noncommittally. “Come this way, sir, if you please.” He led Rutledge through the anarchy and into a dark, stuffy hall that smelled of cabbage and dust. “That’s the leaders of the next search parties,” he said over his shoulder. “We’ve not found the others— the man or the children.”
Rutledge didn’t answer. They reached a door painted brown, and the constable knocked, then turned the knob.
The room beyond was bright with late sun, and a long pair of windows stood wide, looking out into a small courtyard overgrown with weeds. Although the windows provided little air movement, they gave the sense of openness he badly needed—an escape into light and freedom. Ham-ish, in the back of his mind, sighed with a relief as great as his own.
“Inspector Rutledge, Inspector Hildebrand. If you’ll excuse me, sir? ...” The constable left the end of his request dangling in the silence as he retreated, closing the door softly behind him.
Hildebrand looked Rutledge up and down. “They said they were sending an experienced man.”
“I was with the Yard before the war,” Rutledge replied.
“But away through the better part of it,” Hildebrand finished for him. He himself was white-haired, with a youngish face. Rutledge put his age at not more than forty-five. “Ah, well. Sit down, man! Here’s what we have. Murder victim presumed to be Mrs. Mary Sandra Mowbray, of London. Matches the general description of the late Mrs. Mowbray, or I should say, presumed late. Even Londoners can’t die twice, can they? In his wallet Mr. Mowbray had a photograph of her with the children, taken in 1915, just before he was shipped over to France. We’ve had copies made to circulate. So far nothing’s come of it.” He tossed a file across the cluttered desk, and Rutledge found himself looking down at a faded photograph of a woman facing the camera and the sun at the same time, squinting a little. She was wearing a floral print dress and a single strand of pearls. Her hair seemed dark blond or a light brown, the way the sun caught it. Her face was oval and pretty, with fine bones and a distinct look of breeding handed down from some remote ancestor. The children by her side were a little clearer. The boy was no more than two, wearing a sailor suit and hat that had fallen to a rakish angle over one eye. He grinned, squinting, while his hands clutched a ball nearly as large as he was. The little girl, not as childishly plump, had the same fairness as the mother. She could have been a large four or a small five, judging from the shy smile that showed all of her front baby teeth quite clearly. Her hand clutched her mother’s skirts, and her head was tilted in a way that promised a sweet nature rather than a rowdy one, peering up through her lashes with no hint of roguish-ness.