Search the Dark - Charles Todd [80]
For an instant she put her hands to her eyes, as if pressing them might stop the aching in her head. Or the aching in her heart. She took a deep shuddering breath, to steady herself.
“Do you even know what I’m saying? I gave him hope. I gave him something to hold in his heart until death came. My body and my love brought him a little peace before the end. Only—he lived. And he wasn’t prepared for that Or for a marriage that might last after all. Or for his father dead and Thomas Napier furious with him for jilting Elizabeth, who was desperately trying to be brave and noble about it. He came home to change—and an accounting. And I was the living symbol of how far he’d fallen from grace in the eyes of those whose good opinion was important to him.”
She turned to look up at the church tower, truncated and heavy. Like a wasted promise … When she went on, there was no self-pity in her words.
“It was very difficult for both of us. But divorce is hard to come by, you know, it leaves a stigma. And I am Catholic, there is nothing for me afterward. I believed I’d be happier trying to make my marriage work than standing at the quayside and waving good-bye, admitting that I’d failed Simon. And myself as well. I was braced to fight. But I can’t fight them all. I don’t know how. It would be much better for me to be hanged, guilty or not, sparing Simon the embarrassment of publicly acknowledging that his marriage was a mistake.”
She stopped, her body suddenly rigid. “No, I didn’t mean that! He would never harm me. He still cares. …”
But she had just given Rutledge a motive for her husband to kill.
He said carefully, after a time, “I told you before that I didn’t believe Elizabeth would stay. After this is finished. There’s nothing to keep her here, except blatant self-interest. And somehow I don’t see her confessing to that.”
“If I am convicted of murder, she will have Simon without the messy aftermath of divorce. And if I am not, she will have shown him that she still cares. It is something from the past, you see. Something he had thought he’d given up. I don’t know—”
He could see the tears glistening in her lashes. “He’d be a fool to choose Elizabeth Napier over you!”
She gave him a watery smile and said for the second time that day, “You are very kind. But you know and I know that this murder has brought to the fore more than just one woman’s death. It is something I must face. I don’t know how I shall do that. I don’t know where it will end, but I shall find the strength I need.”
He stood there, helpless, unable to touch her, unable to offer any comfort that didn’t sound like kindness.
“Mrs. Wyatt—Aurore—”
She shook her head. “No. You must not say anything. Tell me again about the giraffe in the kitchen of the Swan. Forget you’re a policeman and I am a suspect, and tell me instead how the giraffe came to wander so very far from home.” She gasped as she realized that what she’d said was a reflection of her own dilemma.
Hamish was vigorously protesting that Aurore was trying to distract him.
Rutledge ignored him. He said, “It wasn’t so very far from home. Or lost. Only misplaced for a little while. I shouldn’t worry for its sake.”
“Animals have no complexity in their lives, do they?” she agreed. “How very fortunate they are!”
She walked away, leaving him there in the trees, her back straight, her head held high. Not toward the