Search the Dark - Charles Todd [71]
Rutledge threw off Johnston’s grip, kept his balance by a miracle of muscle and tendon, and protected the dress from the floor. Mowbray, looking in amazement from one to the other, as if startled into brief sanity, said quite clearly, “That’s not the pink she liked! Who gave that to her? Was it him? Was it the man with her?” He fingered it again, puzzled. “It’s the wrong color, I tell you—I knew when I saw her it was the wrong color!”
For an instant Rutledge thought Mowbray was going to lunge at his throat and choke him, but it was the dress the hands were reaching for, groping, clutching, then holding it up, peering at it in the dimness, trying to see, and turning toward the door, toward Hildebrand, who’d arrested him.
“It’s not hers, it’s a trick! She’s smaller than this, I know my own wife’s clothes! Why did the Hun want to kill her, she was never any harm to anybody, never an unkind word! I’ll make him pay, see if I don’t! I’ll kill every one of the bastards I can put hand to, I’ll grind him into the mud—pound until there’s no face left, and keep on pounding until you can’t tell brains from earth. I swear it to God, I do!”
Hildebrand managed to get the dress out of his grip without ripping it, and Johnston tried to push him back to the cot, while Rutledge stood there and watched the spate of words he’d released.
They hadn’t cleared Mowbray of murder. He may not have killed his wife, the dead woman might well be Margaret Tarlton, but he’d just described in passionate, intense detail the way the dead woman had died.
It took time to settle him down again, but when the adrenaline finally subsided and he had some small grip again on his surroundings, he sank back into the same posture they’d found him in, rocking himself with the pain and the uncertainty, as if he had no recollection of the dress, the men around him, or tensions so taut that Hamish was warning Rutledge to go—go!
But he stayed, walked back down the passage with Hildebrand and Johnston berating him in vicious terms, spilling out their own shock and horror in a tirade that left them both breathless and stumbling over each other’s words without noticing it.
Rutledge stopped at the door to the front room, and turned.
“It may have been unorthodox,” he said coldly. “It was most certainly necessary. There’s a possibility he saw Margaret Tarlton alive—and killed her thinking she was his wife.” You sacrifice the man for the woman—”Or even more likely, came across her dead body. Which may explain why he was so quick to believe the charges against him. Because Margaret Tarlton’s not in London, not in Gloucestershire, and not in Sherborne. You tell me where she is—and why we can’t find her. There’s a death certificate for Mrs. Mowbray, but it’s Miss Tarlton who’s missing! Can’t you understand what I’m telling you?”
“You’re not going to turn my case into a circus, I’ll have you recalled first—”
“How can I build any reasonable defense after what we just heard—”
“That’s beside the point,” Rutledge said. “I’m not interested in solving your problems, I’m interested in what’s at the bottom of this murder. I’m interested in saving that poor devil if he’s innocent and convicting him if he’s guilty. I want to find answers to the riddle of who’s lying in that grave in your churchyard—and why she’s there. I believe I’m on the right track. If you won’t help me prove I’m right, then for God’s sake, show me where I’m wrong.”
Johnston said, “You forced my client to all but convict himself out of his own mouth, before witnesses! I don’t see how that’s supposed to save him!”
“Did you listen at all to what he was saying? That the dress in Hildebrand’s hands isn’t Mrs. Mowbray’s color or size! But Elizabeth Napier swears it’s Margaret Tarlton’s color and size. If we were wrong about his victim, can’t you see that we may also be wrong about his part in her death?’
“Are you claiming that it’s my investigation that’s at fault? By God!”
Rutledge could feel frustration battling his need for air and space. He said, “No. We’re all in this muddle together,