Search the Dark - Charles Todd [56]
“I saw you standing behind a curtain. As I came up the walk,” he said.
She smiled. “So I was! Allow me to find my sweater, Inspector!”
She was back in only a moment, as if she’d had it close to hand. They walked out of the house and turned through the gate toward the churchyard.
“I apologize for such stupid bitterness!” she told him, as if there had been no interruption to their conversation. “It is not like me. But Elizabeth Napier is a woman one cannot defend herself against. She uses innuendo like a sword. But then I must remember that I have robbed her of the man she wanted to marry. It is the most unforgivable thing one woman can do to another.”
“I think she’s worried about Margaret Tarlton.”
“Is she?” Aurore turned her head and looked at his profile. “I am glad to hear it. I thought she was worried for Simon.”
He smiled down at her. “Touché. A little of both. With Elizabeth Napier, as I am fast learning, there are no absolutes.”
She laughed, a deep, brief chuckle.
“You are an extraordinary man,” she said. “Are you married?”
“No.” It was uncompromising. She read more into it than he intended.
“No,” she repeated softly. “It explains much. Now—you wished to speak to me?” She pulled her sweater a little more closely about her, as if as a shield.
“Everyone seems to believe—although so far I’ve not found one of them who actually saw you!—that it was you who drove Margaret to the station. And therefore, in their view, you’re the person who should know whether she got there safely or not. I spoke to the stationmaster. He claims she didn’t take either train from Singleton Magna on the day she left Charlbury.”
“But I have told you. I was with a heifer that was sick. Whatever Simon may say, we can’t afford to lose livestock—Simon is pouring every penny he possesses into this museum. There was not a great deal of money to start with. His inheritance from his father was quite small. And it is this farm that will pay for our food, bur car, our clothes. Not his grandfather’s treasures.”
She matched him stride for stride, comfortably walking beside him. And he was a tall man. They had nearly reached the churchyard.
She said, stopping him with her hand outstretched as if wanting to touch him, then deciding against it, “Do you think I am lying to you, Inspector?”
He had never felt his soul stripped so bare by the eyes of another person. It was as if she searched into depths he himself had never plumbed.
“I don’t know. But I shall make it my business to find out.” He studied her face in his turn, then asked, “Did you drive Margaret to Singleton Magna, quarrel with her, and put her out along the way? Where Mowbray then came across her, walking? No one would blame you for that, you couldn’t have known. This might explain to us how Mowbray got to her. And bring an end to all these questions.”
She bit her lip. “I would be morally responsible. But you are playing fair with both of us, are you not? To ask? Very well, I will make a pact with you.” Her eyes smiled suddenly, with the humor of it. “A pact with the devil, if you like.”
“I can’t make promises—”
“This one is not a promise. It is a pact. There is a difference. Even I know that difference, in English.” She searched his face again and then said quietly, “If you come to the conclusion after your investigations that I have lied about where I was. when Margaret Tarlton left Charlbury, if you believe that there is any possibility of my guilt in any harm that may have come to her, then you will face me and say such things. Directly. You will not speak first to Simon—nor to Elizabeth Napier, nor to that policeman in Singleton Magna. Do you agree?”
“Are you telling me—”
“No, I am not telling you I have killed Margaret Tarlton. Of course not! But suspicion is a very ugly thing, Inspector, and it destroys both the innocent and the guilty. Sometimes there is no way, afterward, to make right the damage that has been done. If I am to be accused of any crime, I prefer to have it said to my face, not whispered