Search the Dark - Charles Todd [55]
Rutledge felt a wave of disgust. He knew how Simon, with his oddly abrupt, unfeeling manner toward his wife, must have confronted her, making her feel she had been directly accused.… “Why have you been lying about this? I’d think it would be better to come straight out with the truth—everyone knows it was you who drove Margaret.…”
“Perhaps she didn’t take Miss Tarlton to the station after all,” Rutledge replied in her defense, before he could stop himself. His task was to determine guilt, not innocence. But he refused to watch possible innocence trampled.
There was a brief silence.
“I suppose someone else might have driven her,” Simon agreed reluctantly. “There are other motorcars in Charlbury. But Aurore promised me she’d see to it. And it isn’t like Aurore to lie. I don’t understand this, any of it!”
Yet he had told Rutledge earlier that Aurore never lied.…
“I think it’s too early to go on witch hunts,” Elizabeth put in, her voice appealing for reassurance. “Margaret’s missing. It—it doesn’t actually mean she’s—dead. I don’t know where she might have gone. Do you?”
“Perhaps your father might know her whereabouts,” Rutledge countered, not allowing himself to fall into the neat trap she’d set—expecting him to bring up the dress she’d identified the night before.
There was darker color in Elizabeth Napier’s face this time, then it drained away as quickly as it had come. “I asked him myself this morning. He thought she was with me. He was understandably upset that she’d been missing a week and no one had realized it. He likes Margaret, I think everyone does. She’s one of the most dependable people I know. That’s why her position was so important.”
“Then why did she choose to apply for the position here?” Rutledge asked. “Just because some of the things in this room remind her of India? I’d say at a guess that many of them come from other places in the East. Java. Burma. Perhaps Ceylon or even Siam.”
“It’s much the same culture,” Simon impatiently pointed out. “Buddhism. Hinduism. The same roots. Margaret told me that herself. What are you doing to find her? Do you have men out looking? Has anyone spoken to the stationmaster in Singleton Magna?”
“I went to see him this morning,” Rutledge answered. “And men are searching the same ground two and three times, looking for the Mowbray children. If she’s out there, one of the teams will find her. Somehow I don’t think they will.” His glance moved on to Elizabeth. Let her tell the rest of that story, if she felt so inclined—that the body had already been properly buried. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to find Mrs. Wyatt. Is she at home this morning?”
“Yes, yes, just go around to the house,” Simon told him. “And I want a report, Rutledge. What’s being done, how you’re handling this situation. I still have connections in London. I’ll use them if I have to.”
“There won’t be any need for that,” Rutledge said. “The police are quite good at what they do. It’s a question of time. That’s all. Miss Napier.”
He turned and left, irritated by the implied threat
Aurore must have seen him coming back toward the house from the museum because she was there at the main door as he came up to knock.
“It isn’t a very fine morning, Inspector. And so I will not wish you one. Is there any news?”
“I’m afraid not. I’d like very much to talk to you,” he said. “But not in the house or the garden. Will you walk with me? As far as the church, perhaps?”
She smiled wryly. “While all those faces are pressed against their windows, wondering if you will arrest me on the way back? Yes, I know what is being said! I can feel it Charlbury is both titillated and scandalized by this affair. What is that novel one of your famous authors has written about the French Revolution? Where the old women sit by the guillotine and knit as the heads of aristocrats fall into baskets? Except here it is not knitting, I think. It is the face that is just behind