Search the Dark - Charles Todd [50]
“I doubt it. Not that many people do, from here. I’d recall that. I’d recall her as well.”
Rutledge thanked him, then walked back to the inn for his car. He might well need that exhumation order if Worthington came up empty-handed.…
Marcus Johnston, Mowbray’s lawyer, was coming down the street toward him as Rutledge drove out of the Swan’s yard. Just as he was about to make the turn for Charlbury, Johnston hailed him. “Any news? I’ve been trying to find Hildebrand to ask. But he’s out in the field again, which tells me not to be sanguine.” He came up to the car and put a hand on the lowered window.
“No. How is your client?”
Johnston took a deep breath, as if bracing himself to think about Mowbray. “Poorly. He forgets to eat, can’t close his eyes more than five minutes, which says he’s not sleeping. Distracted by whatever wretched scenes he’s seeing over and over in his head. When I try to discuss his defense with him, he looks at me as if I’m not there. Damned odd feeling, I can tell you! According to one of the constables, you persuaded him to speak. I’m surprised.”
“I was asking him about his children. He wanted to stop me, and the only way he could do that was to cry out.”
“I should have been there!”
“With four or five people crowded into that wretched cell, he’d have been suffocated! I wasn’t after a confession, I only wanted to know how much the children had grown. Since that 1916 photograph was taken. The flyer hasn’t helped; I thought perhaps we could do something more.”
Johnston shook his head. “I’m beginning to believe he’s hidden them too well. It’s unlikely, to my way of thinking, for a stranger in this town to find any place the local people don’t know about. And yet—” He let it go. “I went to the services for Mrs. Mowbray. I felt someone ought to be there besides the police and the undertaker. I don’t like funerals. This one was worst than most. The rector didn’t know what to say about the poor woman—whether she’d lived a blameless life or was no better than a whore. Which left him platitudes, most of them more apt for a sermon than a burial. No one wanted to mention the circumstances that had brought her there. Murder, I mean. I hadn’t thought to bring flowers, and the ground looked appallingly bare and lonely when they’d filled in the earth. I suppose I ought to see to a simple marker—Mowbray certainly doesn’t have the resources for it. I don’t think he truly undertands that she’s dead.”
“And you were satisfied in your own mind that you knew the victim’s identity? That it was Mary Sandra Mowbray?”
“Yes, of course!” Johnston said, surprised. “In a town this size, if anyone goes missing, there’s gossip—and everyone hears about it. I daresay Hildebrand could have told you the instant he set eyes on her that the victim didn’t belong here! A man like that knows the possibilties and can discount most of them on the spot, I should think.”
“Even though her face was so badly beaten?”
“He’s a good policeman. Thorough, dogged. And Mowbray made no secret of his intentions. The first order of business naturally would have been to bring him in and lock him up. Even I find it hard to deny the man’s guilt; I can only hope to show mitigating circumstances. And even that’s a damned narrow tightrope.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Anyway, if the woman had been someone else, it would surely have come to light by this time.”
“What if a reliable witness informed you that the dress the victim was wearing belonged to another woman, not to Mrs. Mowbray?”
Johnston smiled, the tiredness in his face reflected in his eyes. “As Mowbray’s barrister, I’d be delighted to hear it. As a realist, I’d ask myself why anyone would choose to lie about it.” He took out his watch and opened it “Good God, look at the time! I’ve another client waiting, I must go.”
He walked away, and Rutledge looked after him, his face thoughtful.
The day was gray, humid. Farmers were out in their fields, a sense of urgency about them as they worked, as if they could smell the rain coming.
Charlbury, looking drab in the dull light,