Search the Dark - Charles Todd [70]
But Mowbray’s head was back in the cradle of his hands. He was weeping silently.
“God damn it!” Hildebrand exploded. “You’ll muddle the waters worse than they are—”
“I didn’t agree to this line of questioning!” Johnston began at the same instant.
“Hildebrand. Send the man in the corner there to bring that dress to us. I want to show it to Mowbray.”
“No, that’s out of order, I won’t—”
“I’ve got to consider the ramifications if he should identify it—we don’t know—” Johnston was blustering. “I can’t follow your reasoning!”
“I want the dress,” Rutledge said. “Send the man for it!”
“It’s on your head!” Hildebrand retorted. ”Do you hear me?”
But in the end he relented. And the heavyset constable, relief visible on his face, diffidently strode past them and was gone.
They stood in angry, volatile silence while he was away. Mowbray’s weeping had stopped, and he seemed to be asleep where he sat, his breathing very irregular and harsh, as if dreams haunted him. Then suddenly he started into full wakefulness, crying out in anguish, throwing out his hands as if to ward off what had come out of the depths of his mind.
“As ye’ll be doing one day!” Hamish reminded Rutledge, chilling his blood.
Mowbray turned and begged, “Where are my children? Have you seen my children? Oh, God, I don’t know where to look for them anymore.”
The constable returned at that instant, breaking the spell that had held the witnesses in stunned thrall. He carried a carefully wrapped bundle in his hands and looked first to Hildebrand before passing it on to Rutledge.
Rutledge opened it, concentrating on the string and the knot, on the folds that led inward, until he held a garment within the white sheets of tissue paper, dark against their paleness. After a moment, without arranging the dress or the paper, he went to kneel on the cold, hard floor in front of Mowbray.
“Will you look at this?” he asked gently, making no attempt to touch the man, who was staring blindly into nothingness again.
It was some while before he coaxed Mowbray into glancing down at the dress he held out like an offering to some vacant god.
Mowbray frowned as if he couldn’t make out what it was, much less recognize it. But Rutledge was very patient. He could feel his feet and knees beginning to ache from the awkward position, but he kept himself steady and quiet, offering no distraction.
After a time Mowbray reached out a work-hardened finger and touched the fabric of the dress as if testing to see if it was real. Lightly, not with interest so much as his inability to decide what it was. Then he saw that it had a shoulder, a sleeve—a collar—and knew.
“I thought the bombs killed her. I wasn’t there when it happened. I was in France, Captain Banner was telling me I had to go to London. That something had happened. I think they took me by car to the port. It was raining and dark and I couldn’t feel anything—not even in the service in the chapel—”
The dark bloodstains were visible now, black and stiff, a long soaked patch and the splatters, like black dots on the cloth with no attempt to place them becomingly, no sense of artistry, only marks of the intensity of the attack.
“They wouldn’t open the casket and let me see her. They said I shouldn’t. Was this what she was wearing, then? Is—oh, God, it must be her blood!” He recoiled, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets as if to keep them away from the horror. “I wanted to hold her again and they wouldn’t let me—they didn’t tell me there was so much blood!”
“Stop this,” Johnston cried, in nearly as much horror as Mowbray. “It’s inhumanly cruel, it’s—you’ve got to stop!”
He came forward, pulling at Rutledge’s shoulders, forcing him backward. Hildebrand, swearing, was trying to tell the constable to get back into that room, damn it! Their voices echoed in the cramped