Search the Dark - Charles Todd [126]
“Simon?” Rutledge shouted, realizing all at once that a fire could destroy a man as well as a barn and a suitcase, and felt the rawness in his throat. “Simon!”
But there was no answer and time was down to seconds before he himself was trapped. He could hear Hamish screaming at him now. Sparks were setting every wisp of straw to burning. He ran again, this time blindly, his face seared by flames as he passed within their sphere. And then he was through them, blundering first into a wall, feeling the draft of air that was feeding the blaze, and stumbling finally out the door. Still coughing hard, he ran on, to pound heavily on the back door of the farmhouse. Once the blaze was at its height, there would be no saving the house either.
He came through the door shouting for Jimson, checking the dark, empty ground-floor rooms already reflecting the dawnlike brightness from the barn, and ran up the stairs, searching there as well. The old glass of the windows on the back of the house mirrored the flames against the wall in shimmering images, lighting his way. In the front it was stygian darkness still, and he quartered each room carefully, making absolutely sure. But Jimson was not here. Nor was Simon. Wherever they were, they weren’t in danger of burning to death.
He came out into the night again, his lungs burning from the smoke. It was rolling now, billows of it, as it fed on old wood, dust, and hay. The grass by one of the sheds was already flickering with fiery dewdrops. He searched the sheds and found them empty, bales of hay waiting in them for the match to come.
The air was thick, heavy. He could hear horses in the distance, neighing shrilly in alarm. Hamish was telling him to go, to hurry.
The sound of the flames was greedy now, soaring into the night on a pillar of black smoke and sparks.
Rutledge hesitated, yet he knew he could do nothing for the barn. There was nothing one man—or an army of men—might do as the flames fed hungrily on the hay and then jumped to the dry, old wood of stalls and pillars and walls. He stood staring at it in despair, knowing what its destruction would mean to Aurore.
Finally retrieving the suitcase from the porch where he’d left it, he turned and hurried back down the drive to his car.
Wherever Simon was, he had to find him. He had the strongest feeling that it was already too late. But he had to try. To live with himself, he had to try.
But there was no sign of Wyatt on the road, and Rutledge thought as he coughed raggedly, I couldn’t have missed him coming here—the fire wasn’t that far along when I arrived. He must have taken a shortcut from here to Charlbury—he must have come out somewhere near the church where no one would see him. He’s ahead of me!
Driving very fast now, his headlamps probing the darkness, he made the trip to Charlbury in a matter of minutes.
The Wyatt house was alight, not with fire but with lamps. He braked hard, skidding to a halt, and was out of the car almost as soon as the engine stopped.
Aurore was in the front garden, her face wild with fear.
“Simon isn’t in the house,” she said. “I can’t find him, I’ve looked everywhere. Oh, God—can you see those flames? We must do something—Jimson—”
“Jimson’s safe. Simon was at the farm—he set the barn to burn, Aurore. It will be gone in a short time. But he wasn’t there, nor was Jimson. And the cattle, the horses are safe. There’s nothing that can be done.”
But the fire bell by the common was ringing loudly, and men, stuffing nightshirts into trousers, were gathering by the inn and piling into carts, wagons, whatever they could find, throwing buckets among the packed bodies. Rutledge caught sight of Jimson among them, yelling fiercely.
“He burned—but why!” Aurore ignored the chaos, her mind only on Simon.
Rutledge said, “The suitcase. He wanted to destroy it and anything else that might have been left there, any evidence that could still be found. It was the only thing