Search the Dark - Charles Todd [74]
Hildebrand said, “Hard to say.” He squatted on his heels as the constable had done. “There’s injury here. Nose damaged, and that right cheekbone. But the teeth aren’t broken, nor the forehead. We can’t be sure a beating’s what killed her. Could be there’s a stab wound in the body. Or a bullet. Doctor will tell us that.” He got to his feet. “All right, lads, send that crowd away, and let’s get her back to Singleton Magna.” He paused and looked at Rutledge. “Anything you want to add?”
Rutledge shook his head.
“Then it’s my business, Dorset business, not part of what brought you here.” It was a warning. Stand clear.
Time enough to challenge that, Rutledge told himself, when and if there was a need to do it. Not now. Not in front of Hildebrand’s subordinates.
“So far I’ve seen nothing to show me that this involves the Yard,” he answered neutrally. Because he hadn’t. Still, the words were carefully chosen, not signifying capitulation, while reserving the right at any point to change his mind.
Hildebrand chose to regard them as a promise, not as a provisional agreement. More to the point, a promise before witnesses. He was pleased to be magnanimous and added, “Your suggestion that we search a wider area brought her to light. I’m grateful. Look, you’d better drive back to Singleton Magna. I’ll stay here until we’ve got her sorted out, and then I’ll send these men on about their search. Could be an hour or so before we bring her in.”
Rutledge, politely dismissed, left. But Hamish was already considering the connection between this body and the last one. As Rutledge put up the crank and got into the driver’s seat, Hamish said, “It’s no’ to do with Charlbury. No’ the same manner of death. And this woman was put in the ground, not left in a field for anyone to find.”
“Yes, that’s what interests me. Whoever killed her must have known that she wouldn’t be missed. It was safe to hide her body. No search—and there wasn’t one, was there?—and no notice taken of her absence from wherever she came from. But in the case of the body outside Singleton Magna, I’m beginning to think she wasn’t hidden because there was a scapegoat available—Mowbray—and because Margaret Tarlton would be missed. By a number of people, one of them with the power to raise heaven and earth looking for her.” He drove sedately through Stoke Newton, where small knots of villagers stood on the street gossiping, as if the news had finally reached them and speculation was rife. Once on the high road again he added, “But I can’t believe that was the reason our body’s face was battered. I think there was passion behind it, not an attempt to hide her identity. It served that purpose of course—but it wasn’t the intention.”
“Aye. Which means you’re one body short and yon Hildebrand is one body long! Better him than you!”
Rutledge shook his head. “I’d have been happier if that corpse had solved the puzzle of ours. If it meant those children were safe. And that the killer, whoever he or she was, had nothing to do with that poor bedeviled soul in the cell.” He couldn’t seem to get Mowbray out of his mind.
“You did na’ need yon second dead lassie to prove that. You know and I know where the answers are. And I do na’ think she’ll change what’s happened in Charlbury. You’ve got a murderer to find there, and the sooner the better! Unless, like Hildebrand, ye’re satisfied to put it on Mowbray’s head.”
He couldn’t. Even Hamish knew that it was impossible.
By the time Rutledge arrived at Charlbury—breakfastless and in a moody frame of mind—the news had flown before him. In the form of a man in the pub of the Wyatt Arms who had enjoyed regaling anyone who would listen with all the gruesome details.
From the sound of them, Rutledge knew, the man had not seen the body.
“Another killing,” he was telling a fresh recruit to his gathering audience, “just like the one in Singleton Magna. That man they’ve got in jail there—might not be the first time he’s gone looking for his missing wife. Left a trail of bodies