Search the Dark - Charles Todd [98]
“We don’t know that!” Hildebrand repeated stubbornly. “A child that age in a courtroom? It would be a farce, the questioning could tangle her into knots. Are you willing to put that family through such a nightmare?”
“What are you going to do instead? Will you continue this search, widen it, go on looking until there’s nowhere else to try?”
“I fail to see that it’s any of your business! If we have found those children, you may return to London and leave the rest to the local police.”
“Then allow me one final test. Let Mowbray see them—”
“Have you run stark mad—”
“No, listen to me!” As their voices clashed, the constable on duty at the desk opened the door at the head of the passage and stared down it. He quickly shut it again at a gesture from Hildebrand. “What I want to do is this.”
An hour later it was arranged. Not without complaints from Robert Andrews and from Hildebrand and from Marcus Johnston, Mowbray’s attorney.
A call put in to Bowles in London by an irate Hildebrand caught the man in a fierce mood, not a receptive one. Even when the receiver was turned over to Rutledge, Bowles’s voice rang down the line in deafening vowels.
“I’ve had Thomas Napier calling in from his office to see what progress we’ve made toward finding Miss Tarlton,” he said shortly. “I don’t like to have politicians breathing down my neck. It’s your fault, Rutledge, for dragging the Napiers into the issue in the first place!”
“If the dead woman is Miss Tarlton, Mr. Napier will do more than breathe down our necks,” Rutledge said. “He’ll be camping in your office! From all reports he was as fond of her as he was of his own daughter.” Fonder, very likely.…
“Then find out, once and for all, if these children are Mowbray’s or not. Do you hear me? Put Hildebrand on again, I’ll set him straight.”
And so it was arranged.
When they went to fetch Mowbray, sunk in the darkness of his terrors, he came shuffling and blinking into the light in Hildebrand’s room, his face gaunt, unshaven, his hair lank and dull. He said nothing as Johnston, his own face stiff, greeted his client. A silence fell.
Mowbray seemed not to know or care who they were, what they wanted. He had been brought here. He suffered that with the same awful patience he gave to everything he did now, from eating his food to lying on his cot through the night. Nothing touched him. In the courtyard outside Hildebrand’s windows, a ball came bouncing across the debris of leaves and dust.
Johnston was talking when the first child appeared. It was the same age as Robert Andrews, and nearly the same coloring, a little boy chasing exuberantly after the red ball.
Mowbray started up, crying, “No—don’t torment me—”
Rutledge said quietly, “Is that your Bertie, Mr. Mowbray?”
“No, God, no. I killed my Bertie, you told me so yourself!”
Another small boy came running into the yard, fiercely demanding his turn with the ball, and the first turned away with it, leading to a screaming match between the two. A third boy appeared, a little older now, closer to the age the Mowbray boy would have reached if he’d lived.
Watching Mowbray carefully, Rutledge said, “You must look at them, Mr. Mowbray. You must help us know if one of these boys is your son.”
Mowbray, his eyes wet with frantic tears, turned toward Johnston for help. Johnston, shaking, said, “Inspector!” in warning.
The fourth child came reluctantly into the courtyard. Mowbray suddenly started, half rising from his chair. Johnston reached out to stop him, and Rutledge reminded him softly, “Remember! There is no way he can reach them!”
Before Johnston or Hildebrand could move, Mowbray had come across the room to the window, sinking to his knees before it, his face contorted