Search the Dark - Charles Todd [37]
Yet he could tell that the conviction was growing stronger with every moment. She was an intelligent woman—
Still, she fought against it. Elizabeth stood by Rutledge’s side, her hand on his arm, her eyes scanning the two faces, one in an ornate frame, the other a grainy reproduction on cheap paper. Whatever her inner struggle, whatever the deeper emotion that lay behind her fear of the truth, she couldn’t ignore the evidence before her.
Then she spoke, with a heaviness that made him ashamed of the necessity of bringing her into this murder. There were tears standing in her eyes, and her fragility touched him deeply. “If it’s true—if that poor woman is Margaret—then it’s all my fault. I sent her there—I thought I was being quite clever. I thought it was incredibly simple and that no one would ever suspect—how very stupid of me!” She fiercely blotted her eyes with her serviette, then looked down at it in surprise, as if she’d forgotten her dinner—as if it belonged to a far distant and far different past.
Bracing her shoulders, she said, “It won’t do to cry. I’m always the first to say that! ‘Don’t cry!’ I’ve told those pathetic women in the slums. ‘It doesn’t solve anything!’ But it relieves the pain somehow, doesn’t it?”
Carefully folding the flyer, she handed it back to Rutledge along with the photograph in its silver frame. “You’ll need that, I think. And you’d better come in,” she said. “Have you dined? No? That’s good, I have need of company just now. We’ll eat what we can of dinner. Then I’ll change and go with you to Singleton Magna. I want to see this woman—or has she been buried?”
“No, she hasn’t been buried. But she isn’t—her face was badly beaten. I don’t know that you could, er, hope to recognize her.”
Her own face went white, and he thought for a moment she might faint. But she said resolutely, “Don’t tell me before I’ve eaten something! Come with me!”
Rutledge followed her back into the hall and down the passage to a room with an arched ceiling and a table down the middle that would comfortably seat twenty or more. At the far end, in isolated splendor, a place had been set for one. She walked to it, picked up the small silver bell by her plate, and rang it sharply. When the maid came to answer her summons, she said, “Another place for the inspector, please. Tell Cook I’ll have a fresh bowl of soup as well.” She waited until the maid had taken the first course back through the heavy door to the kitchens and then indicated the chair on her right. Rutledge accepted it.
Elizabeth Napier took a deep shuddering breath, closed her eyes for an instant, shutting out what she had, soon, to face, then sipped her wine as if it offered the strength she didn’t possess.
“Are you quite sure this—this woman—whoever she may turn out to be—was killed by this man, Mowbray? Is that proved beyond a doubt?”
“No. Not beyond any doubt. But he publicly threatened his wife. And then we found the … her. There’s no one else we have any reason to suspect. At any rate, he’s presently under arrest.”
“Then,” she said, “that relieves my mind—and my conscience.”
“In what way?” he asked, looking directly at her. But she was unfolding her serviette and laying it neatly across her lap. He couldn’t see—or read—her eyes.
She shook her head.
He said, “If there’s information you might have—if the woman in Singleton Magna is Margaret Tarlton, not Mary Mowbray—”
“No,” she replied vehemently. “I won’t make accusations and turn your policemen loose on an innocent person. That would be morally wrong!”
“Then why did the thought even cross your mind?”
The maid returned with a tray and two plates of a palegreen soup on it, the smell of lamb and white beans wafting to Rutledge, awakening his stomach if not his mind to enthusiasm. The sandwiches had been finished some time ago. She served her mistress and then the guest before filling his glass with wine. With a rustle of those starched skirts, she disappeared again into the kitchen.