Search the Dark - Charles Todd [47]
She opened the gate. “Do heed me, Inspector. Walk carefully where Simon’s concerned. Don’t upset him if there’s no need for it!”
Rutledge watched her walk firmly up the street. Had she purposely—or inadvertently—sacrificed Aurore Wyatt to distract him from Simon? On the whole, he’d guess that it was on purpose. Mrs. Daulton’s first duty was to the boy she’d watched grow up, not to his foreign-born wife. On the other hand, he told himself, she might feel that Aurore was far better able to protect herself than Simon was.
Edith was nervously waiting for him in the parlor, standing stiffly by the hearth as if the portrait at her back gave her moral support.
“I’m not here to badger you,” he told her gently. “It’s just a matter of what Miss Tarlton was wearing when she left here last week, on her way to London. Do you remember?”
Surprised at the simplicity of the question, Edith smiled. “Oh, yes, sir! It was a pretty dress, quite summery to my way of thinking! Rose and lavender, with a slim skirt and a belt of the same cloth. And a straw hat that had ribbons of the same colors around the crown. But that wasn’t half as fine as what she was wearing when she arrived!” She stopped, her blue eyes alarmed. She had overstepped her bounds—
Rutledge said, “Yes, I’d like to know about that as well.”
“It was this silvery gray silk, and it shimmered like cool water when she moved, and she had the most wonderful hat to match, the silk ruched down the brim, and a low crown. The only touch of color was this thin crimson ribbon tied in a bow and set to one side. I’d never seen anything quite so—so stylish!”
Had Margaret Tarlton come prepared to outshine the French bride?
“What luggage did she have with her?”
“The one piece, sir.”
“Who drove her to the station in Singleton Magna?”
“Mrs. Wyatt was set to do it, but she was late, and Miss Tarlton was afraid she’d miss her train. So she asked if there was anyone else who might take her, if Mrs. Wyatt didn’t come in time. But she must have, because I said I’d run down to the Wyatt Arms to ask Mr. Denton for the loan of his car and his nephew, Mr. Shaw, for Miss Tarlton, but he said his nephew was over to Stoke Newton with it, and when I came back, Miss Tarlton had gone.”
“You think Mrs. Wyatt carried her into Singleton Magna, then?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Edith told him honestly. “But Mrs. Wyatt isn’t one to forget what she’s promised to do.”
As Rutledge was leaving, Aurore came around the corner of the house, a basket of deadheaded flowers over her arm. She saw him and said, “Inspector?”
He turned to wait for her. Shielding her eyes against the cloudy brightness of the morning, she looked up at him. “I wish you to tell me what’s happening. All these questions about Margaret. It makes me uneasy!”
There was a trowel in her gloved hands and a smudge of damp earth on one cheek. He found himself staring at it “I don’t know myself why I’m asking them,” he said, surprising himself. “Every time I think I’m a step closer to the truth, the concepts of what’s truth and what’s wishful thinking seem to merge, and there’s only a muddle where there had appeared to be answers.”
Because if Margaret Tarlton was wearing gray silk on the morning she arrived, how could Bert Mowbray have searched everywhere for a woman wearing pink?
Aurore reached out and touched his arm. “You will know what to do,” she said. “However difficult it is. You have courage, you see. It’s there, in the lines of your face. Suffering has taught you that.”
He found himself wanting desperately to tell her about Hamish—and Jean. The words seemed to hover on the edge of his tongue, ready to spill over, wanting understanding—absolution—and afterward, peace.
Stunned by his unexpected and overwhelming reaction to her sympathy, he stood there, at a loss.
Hamish was warning him over and over to leave—now! While you still have some measure of self-control.
He thought for one dazed instant that the