Search the Dark - Charles Todd [17]
Was that how it had happened? It might explain why the suitcases hadn’t been found. He mentioned them to Hildebrand, who shook his head.
“I’ve thought about that too. Mowbray’s not the only poor sod out of work. If someone had come across the cases and had need of whatever was inside, what’s to prevent him from keeping the lot and his mouth shut at the same time?”
Rutledge felt depression settling in, and Hildebrand didn’t seem to find the endless circle of supposition any more joyful. He rubbed his eyes again and turned the subject to title men who had arrived that morning, and where he had sent them to search.
“Meanwhile, I’ve got my own men asking questions in town. They know what they’re after, we should have some answers by late afternoon.”
When they’d finished their coffee, Rutledge stood up. “I’ve one or two matters needing my attention. I should be back by three o’clock.”
Hildebrand felt relief wash over him. Out of sight was out from under foot. London’s task was diplomacy, where the investigation crossed parish boundaries and sensitive toes might feel trod upon. If that kept Rutledge occupied most of the day, he himself might accomplish a hell of a lot more.
With a brief nod, Hildebrand strode out the door like a man with a heavy schedule ahead of him.
Rutledge stared at the flyer again, deep in thought.
The woman who’d waited on them looked down and saw it. “A sorry business!” she said pityingly. “I blame the war. Disrupting a family, putting ideas into her head. It’s the little ones I feel most for, truth to tell. Losing their father, and a mother no better than she ought to be!”
“From all accounts she was a good mother.”
“That’s as may be! But it’s a sorry business, and mark my words, it’s her that’s to blame!”
“Small as they are, how much would these children remember about Mowbray?” he asked, curious. “He was in France most of their lives. Surely they’d come to accept any replacement as their real father?”
The woman looked up at him, her face scornful. “What makes you think this was the first and only man she’d taken up with?”
It was a very good question!
As she piled dishes on her tray, she added, “My eldest daughter lost her children to the influenza. Too little to live, the doctor told her. I don’t think she’s slept a night since they died. And here’s someone puts her own fancies before her children. Doesn’t sound to me like a good mother!” She lifted the heavy tray and marched off toward the swinging door that led to the kitchens, her pain evident in her straight, unyielding back.
Too little to live…
His war had been broken bodies and the sucking black mud. Unbearable noise—and unbearable silence. Artillery barrages, machine guns, strafing aeroplanes. Horses and men dying, their screams splitting the mind, the sound going on and on long after it had stopped. A war of attrition—meant to kill to the last man. Where one’s own survival seemed beyond any prayer.
In England it had been different. For the exhausted people at home, carrying the burden of deprivation, stunned by the long lists of dead and wounded, worn down by helpless waiting and uncertainty, influenza had come as the silent, stealthy scythe of God, striking without warning, killing with the same certainty as wounds in the flesh gone septic but not confining itself to the trenches. It killed young and old, without rhyme or reason, striking down the healthy, sparing the ailing, leaving children without mothers and mothers without—
He stopped halfway to the hall and spun on his heel to look back at the still swinging door to the kitchen.
Too little to live…
He stared down at the flyer in his hand. The pale faces of the children stared