Search the Dark - Charles Todd [112]
It was Hamish who put the thought into his head. That Aurore Wyatt had escaped a war-ravaged country by marrying Simon.
“Did you or anyone else see Betty Cooper after she disappeared six months ago? Did anyone see her come back to Charlbury? Hearsay won’t do, we need hard evidence. The body wasn’t found in this village, after all. It could be unrelated to Margaret Tarlton’s death. It may not have anything to do with Aurore Wyatt.”
She touched her lips with the serviette in her lap and folded it neatly before laying it beside her empty cup. “Nobody said she was a fool. And she’d have to be, to leave bodies lying about on her own doorstep! What I ask myself is, who else had any call to harm Betty Cooper? Or this Miss Tarlton. Can you tell me that? No, I didn’t think so! And where’s it ail to stop? I ask you.”
Rutledge walked with her to the door of the Wyatt Arms. Denton nodded to him as he passed, but Daniel Shaw was nowhere to be seen. Mrs. Forsby was still talking about how difficult it had been to come forward, as if she wanted his reassurance that she’d done the right thing. But the air of triumph was still there.
He thanked her and watched her walk back the way she’d come, with a neck stiff with righteousness beneath her summery hat.
But Hamish was pointing out, with some force, that Aurore had tried her charms on him, and it had worked.
“You canna’ fault a woman like yon, for wanting her own back on the foreigner who takes her husband’s eye, when she has a husband of her own.”
He was angry all the same. Defensive, for Aurore’s sake. Surely Wyatt had some inkling of the feelings that were rampant in Charlbury! Or was the man so blinded by his own pain that he couldn’t see what was happening?
“You’re no’ her champion,” Hamish reminded him. “You’re a lonely man who’s lost the one woman he thought cared for him. You see the loneliness in her, and it turns your head. But it’s no’ the same—your Jean walked away and is marrying anither man in your place. Yon woman already has a husband!”
“I’m not in love with her!”
“No,” Hamish said thoughtfully, “I’d no’ say you were. But she can pull the strings, and you dance like a puppet at the end of them! Because she’s hurting as much as you are. And like calls to like. It’s no’ love, but it Can light fires all the same in a man!”
Rutledge swore, and told Hamish he was a fool.
But he knew that Aurore cast spells. Except over her husband. Whatever he’d felt for his wife in France when he’d married her, it was quite different now. And for all he, Rutledge, knew of it, Aurore herself had changed as much as Simon had. That was the centerpiece of their marriage—change—and it might not have been all on one side.
If Aurore’s marriage was empty, she might well be frightened of other women catching Simon’s eye. If Simon neglected her, she might well be driven to having an affair, to point out to him that others wanted very badly what he chose to cast off.
Which might explain why the husbands of Charlbury were besotted and the wives were prepared to see Aurore Wyatt hang, if it took her away from there.
24
Rutledge was halfway to his car when he saw Hildebrand coming out of the Wyatt house. The Singleton Magna inspector saw him as well and signaled Rutledge to wait. When he reached the car, there was a nasty gleam in Hildebrand’s eyes. For a moment he studied Rutledge, and then said, “Well, you can pack your bags tonight and leave for London in the morning. I’ve got the Tarlton murder solved. Without the help of the Yard, I might add. You’ve been precious little help from the start, come to that.”
“Solved? That means an arrest, then.”
“Of course it does. Keep my ear to the ground, that’s what I do. Truit tells me what he doesn’t tell you—well, no reason why he should, is there?