Search the Dark - Charles Todd [62]
“She liked her work well enough,” the girl answered willingly. “She was good at it, at organizing. Seeing to flowers and caterers and invitations being printed—finding the right musicians. Writing thank-you notes. Sometimes she’d say, ‘You’ll never guess, Dorcas, who’s coming to the luncheon on Thursday!’” She smiled. “Oftentimes I’d get it right too!”
“There was nothing she disliked about her work?”
The smiled faded. “I’ve heard her say she didn’t want to spend a lifetime planning parties in the houses of other people.”
“Did she get on well with Elizabeth Napier?”
“Yes, sir. Mostly. I think—I think there was some disagreement over her changing jobs. But I didn’t understand the rights of that. Miss Tarlton, she didn’t want it to be Dorset, and Miss Napier, she said it was just the thing.”
“Why was she against going to Dorset? Do you know?”
“No, sir.” Her face creased with the effort to remember. “I don’t think she ever spoke of that to me.”
“This house. Does it belong to Miss Tarlton? Or to her cousins?”
“Oh, it’s Miss Tarlton’s, right enough, sir. It was two years ago she moved here, and I was engaged along with the cook and an outside man.”
Two years ago, Rutledge repeated to himself. About the time Shaw was leaving England. …
“Who pays your wages?”
“Miss Tarlton, sir, of course, sir.”
“Does she have a private income? Apart from her salary from the Napiers.”
“As to that I don’t know, sir. She said once her people never did well out of India, unlike some. Her cousins in Gloucestershire are comfortable enough, I suppose, but they don’t run to servants, just a daily woman who cleans and prepares the dinner.”
He was no closer to seeing Margaret Tarlton as a woman in her own right. Yet he couldn’t put his finger on what was missing.
It was Hamish who did.
“I’d no’ like to think,” he said, “that she lived in this house and dressed so fine but had no friends to impress wi’ it all!”
“Did she have friends?” Rutledge asked. “Women? Men?”
“She didn’t have so many women friends, but there were admirers,” Dorcas answered slowly. “Mostly young men, officers home on sick leave. One or two I thought she fancied more than the others. There was a young lord, too, took her to the theater a time or two. But ‘he’s not looking for a wife,’ she’d say. ‘His mother’s a widow, and she’ll choose for him, one that suits her.’ Still, I thought she was fond of him.”
Or of his money and position? Hamish asked.
Rutledge said, “What about the young Canadian officer?”
Dorcas grinned. “He called at the Napiers often. I liked him fine,” she said, “always a word to make me laugh. Promising to find me an Eskimo when he went home! Fancy that!”
“I understand Miss Tarlton wouldn’t see him again before he went back to his regiment. He tried to reach her, and she refused to accept his calls.”
Surprised, Dorcas said, “How did you come to know that? I thought for a time—but she’d have no part of Canada. ‘Not much better than India,’ she’d tell me, ‘and not the kind of life I intend to live.’”
“She hasn’t heard from Shaw—or seen him—since the war ended?”
“She said he’d gone home. But he hadn’t I heard Mr. Napier, not a month past, tell her he was living in Dorset. ‘Is that why you’re off to Wyatt’s museum?’ he wanted to know. ‘Because young Shaw’s there?’ They was having their tea, I was passing the cups, and she nearly spilled hers. So I thought it likely she’d not known whether Captain Shaw was alive or dead. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she told Mr. Napier. But the way she said it—I couldn’t tell, somehow, but I thought she might have been wondering if she might just see him. Now—or if she got the position at the museum.”
“What was Napier’s reaction?”
“He was fiddling with the serviette on his knee. But he was frowning, I could see that. I couldn’t help but feel he didn’t want her to go to Dorset anyway. And this was just the final straw, to his way of thinking.”
“Was Mr. Napier … fond … of