Search the Dark - Charles Todd [127]
“The suitcase—Margaret’s?” She was very still. “I don’t understand.”
“It was hidden in the church, Aurore. Henry knew about the hiding place there, and Simon. Simon went to fetch it tonight. You hadn’t destroyed it, had you? If you lied about that, you lied about the hat—”
Elizabeth Napier had come to the door. “I heard voices—is that you, Simon?” She peered out into the garden, seeing only the tall man beside Aurore.
“No, it’s Rutledge.”
“I smell smoke!” she exclaimed as she stepped out the door. Her voice was still rough. She turned in the direction that men and wagons were moving up the road and saw the distant flames leaping into the night sky. “My God!”
“It’s the farm, there’6 nothing we can do. I don’t know where Simon is. Elizabeth, did he know of hiding places in the church? Behind the old altar, for one, under the altar cloth? The one that Henry used as a boy? Who else did?”
“We were never allowed to play there—I’ve never heard of a hiding place. Has Simon already gone to try to save the farm buildings? We ought to be there, helping him! Be quick, Aurore, we need the car!” She started down the walk.
“There’s a suitcase in the back of my car. Will you look at it and tell me if you recognize it?” The hurrying men had disappeared, but there were clots of women near the Wyatt Arms, some staring toward the fire, some of them packing another wagon with picks, shovels, buckets, a barrel of ale.
Aurore began to move, but he gripped her arm, holding it firmly.
Elizabeth said, “I’m not interested in suitcases! Why isn’t Benson here when I need him? Will you take me, Aurore, or not—”
“Please do as I ask.” There was an inflection in his voice that stopped the flow of words as if they’d been cut off. She stared at him, surprised by his intensity.
Then she moved through the gate and turned to look at Rutledge again with an expression that was hard to read—anger he thought, because her primary concern was still Simon. But it was his as well. She went on to the car.
After a moment she called in surprise, “I know that case! That’s Margaret’s! Where on earth did you find it? I thought the killer had taken it?”
“You’re absolutely sure of that? It belonged to her?”
“Of course I am! My father gave her this case for her birthday two years ago. It’s part of a set.” She turned and said, with sudden understanding, “It means you know who killed her, doesn’t it?”
“I think, Miss Napier, that you’d better go back into the house and telephone Inspector Hildebrand in Singleton Magna. Tell him, please, that he’s wanted here. That there’s an emergency. Meanwhile, Aurore, you must help me find Simon!”
Elizabeth stepped away from the car and looked at him with fierce passion. “What’s happened? Why won’t you tell me! Aurore, make him tell me!”
Aurore opened her mouth to say something just as the silence was shattered by the sound of a gunshot coming from the direction of the museum.
“Oh, God—” She was already running, fleet as a wraith, her skirts lifted, her body tense with fear and terror.
Elizabeth screamed, one long heart-tearing sound, a name, and was after her in a flash of skirts and flying heels.
But Rutledge, swifter, was there ahead of them, at the door of the museum, opening it, rushing into the empty room, and then the next and the next, until he’d reached the small office that Simon had used.
At the door he came to such an abrupt halt that Aurore cannoned into him, and Elizabeth was a poor third, pressing at their backs, calling Simon’s name.
“Don’t come any closer!” he said, putting out an arm to stop Aurore.
“No, I must go to him, I’ve had training, I can—oh, God, let me go!”
Elizabeth, pushing her way past both of them, reached the threshold, and for an instant Rutledge thought she was about to faint. She swayed on her feet, grasped the door’s edge, and began to whimper with soft, short breaths.
Aurore broke away and went into the room.
Rutledge knew what it held. He had seen. In that