A Pale Horse - Charles Todd [31]
There was a central hall with stairs leading up to the first floor. The building was quiet, the students gone home at the end of the day. The sign over the nearest door read SCHOOL OFFICE.
Miss Norton passed it by and was already halfway up the stairs.
An echo of voices, a child’s and a woman’s, reached them, disappearing down the passage ahead of them.
“Alice?” Miss Norton called.
“Yes? Mary? Is that you?” Mrs. Crowell turned to stare. “What on earth brings you here at this time of day? Who’s minding the hotel?”
“I asked Velma to step in for me.” As they came closer, Mary Norton indicated the man behind her. “Alice—this is Inspector Rutledge from London. Scotland Yard.” Her words seemed to fill the passage, floating ahead of her, echoing behind her.
To his surprise as he caught up with the two women, Mrs. Crowell turned warmly to him, extending her hand.
He took it as she said, “How nice of you to come!” as if she’d been expecting him.
A classroom door opened farther down the passage, and a head popped out, vanishing again just as quickly. Rutledge glimpsed a pale, startled boy’s face. Then it was gone.
He followed the two women into a tidy office, and Mrs. Crowell shut her door.
“I’m so glad you came to see me first,” she went on, speaking directly to Rutledge, “because it’s important to know the facts behind my concerns. There is a history of sorts between my husband and Inspector Madsen.” She was intense, earnest, as if she had rehearsed the manner of her presentation many times over. “This may well explain why he’s so anxious to prove that my husband is guilty of murder. But he isn’t—truly he isn’t. I can think of no reason in this world why he should kill a stranger. I can’t explain how my husband’s book got to the ruins either, but if you think about it, is it likely that he’d take such a silly thing with him if he were intent on murder?”
Rutledge could see the scar clearly now, running across her face from the corner of her left eye to the line of her jaw on the right, near her ear. It had healed smoothly without pulling at the flesh around it, but it was still ugly, marring the rather classical features of straight nose, square jaw, and well-set gray eyes. She had not been strictly beautiful, but was certainly a very attractive woman, before the wound. He couldn’t tell if she was still self-conscious about it or had grown used to it.
Hamish said, “She doesna’ look in the mirror verra’ often.”
Before Rutledge could answer Mrs. Crowell, Mary Norton said quickly, “He’s brought a sketch to show you, my dear. Will you look at it and tell me if you recognize this man?”
“The dead man?” Alice Crowell paused as she was about to take her chair behind the desk. “But—” she faltered. “Why—I mean why should I wish to see it?”
“Because—well, to assure the police that Albert is telling the truth when he says he never saw this person before.” Mary’s words were hurried, as if to break the worst news quickly and avoid any mention of the man who had scarred Mrs. Crowell’s face.
“Oh. Very well.” Alice reluctantly held out her hand for the folder that Rutledge was carrying. “He isn’t—I shan’t have nightmares, shall I?” she asked as he passed the folder to her.
“It’s merely a man’s face. Nothing more frightening than that.”
As the two bent over the sketch he’d brought, Mary’s dark head close to Alice’s fair one, Rutledge wondered how he would have felt about someone who did such injury to Jean. Or to Frances, for that matter. If he could have forgiven the drunken man with such apparent grace. Or perhaps Crowell had seen the change in his wife’s appearance as a way of keeping her here in this small, dingy school when it was clear that she wasn’t from this part of the country. Her accent, like Rutledge’s own, spoke of good schooling and a wider circle. Righteous men, he thought, often feel the need to serve in the most forbidding places.
He watched Mrs. Crowell’s expression as she examined the sketch, but all he could read there was puzzlement.
“I don’t think he’s anyone I know,” she said doubtfully, still bending over