Search the Dark - Charles Todd [88]
“But he was proposing to hire an assistant. She would have been in the house and the museum day after day.”
She said angrily, “I don’t know! Explain it however you will!”
“Do you want to come with me?”
Aurore shook her head. “No. I’ll stay. In the event …” She let the sentence run into silence again. In the event he returns of his own accord… and needs me.
He walked past her, near enough to smell the fragrance of her hair and perfume. Lily of the valley … But she didn’t turn, she didn’t say anything more.
At first he quartered Charlbury, down toward the inn, up toward the church. He saw Elizabeth Napier speaking to someone by the church door and thought it might be Joanna Daulton. Nothing.
He went on to the motorcar and began to drive toward the farm, thinking that it was a logical place for Wyatt to escape to if he wanted peace from the two women who drew him first this way and then that.
Jimson had seen him in the night—it has happened before. Rutledge didn’t need Hamish to tell him. He had already gotten there on his own.
For some reason the old man must have thought the ghosts of the Wyatts were walking their farmland again, unable to rest in peace. Peering out a window in the night, seeing the shadowy figure crossing the moonlit yard, he wouldn’t have questioned it, he would have accepted its right to be there.
The farmhouse was dark, save for a single light—a lamp—in a back room that must mark Jimson’s bedchamber. The barn too was empty save for the animals that belonged there. No one challenged Rutledge as he moved about. And the only sounds were those that belonged to the night, not to restless spirits.
Turning the other way, back toward Charlbury, he drove through the town and slowed, peering beyond his lights into the fields, trying to pin any tall, manlike shadow against the sky. He’d been good at that, in the war, as Hamish reminded him. Spotting scouts or the first wave of a silent attack coming across no-man’s-land. Swift vision sometimes made the difference in surprise….
He was close to where he’d seen the dog earlier when he realized that a tree in the middle distance had what appeared to be a double trunk. Rutledge pulled off the road and left the car, crossing the fields with swift, long strides. The figure didn’t move. It wasn’t leaning against a tree, it was simply standing beside it, as if in conversation with it Talking to trees…
“He’s mad, no better than you are,” Hamish was saying tensely.
Rutledge ignored the voice. As he slowed his pace and moved silently nearer, the figure didn’t look up or show any sign of awareness. It simply stood, a black line against the horizon, as if put there by a sculptor’s hand.
Rutledge was now within five yards. He said, “Wyatt?”
Nothing. No response at all.
He came within reach, he could have put out a hand and touched the still, straight shoulder. It was uncanny. The silence went on, unbroken except for the sound of their breathing.
Unnerving. He’d spent too many nights on the Front, listening to the sound of breathing as men waited. But what was this one waiting for?
“Wyatt?” He spoke gently, firmly, trying not to startle the other man.
Nothing. Except Hamish, growling a warning.
Undecided, he stood there, observing, peering into the darkness at the expressionless face, the rigidity of the body. Simon Wyatt was oblivious to his surroundings. Wherever he was in spirit, he neither heard nor saw anything.
After a time Rutledge touched the man’s arm, lightly, undemandingly, no more than one man would touch another in the way of acknowledgment, comfort.
Simon stirred.
Rutledge said quietly, without fuss, “It’s Inspector Rutledge. From Singleton Magna. Can I give you a lift to Charlbury? I’ve got my car. Over there.”
The sentences were short, the tone of voice neutral.
Simon turned to look at him, but even in the starlight Rutledge was sure the blank eyes were not actually seeing him. Wherever Simon was, it was a very long distance from here.
Then he said,