Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [102]
Walking back to the wood, he saw the old woman by the trees, standing there staring up at the house, looking for something in its shadows, needing something it could no longer give. Sadie, whose mind wandered but whose brain understood more than she was telling him. He was convinced of that. Or else, it was something she didn’t know that she knew—
She turned to stare at him as he came over the rise of the lawns and turned towards her. He thought at first she was going to leave before he reached her, disappearing so as not to be faced with more seemingly useless questions. But after a twitch of indecision she stayed her ground.
“A fine evening, isn’t it?” he asked, trying to test her mental stability, as always. “Who’s strolling on the lawns today? Which spirits do you see?”
“I see Miss Rosamund weeping. I see the Gabriel hounds sniffing around the chimneys, their big feet pattering on the roof like hailstones. Sniffing, looking, searching. They’ll howl in the night, once they’ve scented prey. I’ll be snug in my own hearth corner when they howl.”
The Gabriel hounds. Her favorite theme when her mind was disturbed. He said, “Did you see the hounds when the Light Brigade charged? Did you hear them howling and racing across the field with the guns?”
“I wasn’t there, was I? I was back in hospital, waiting for the dying. But I heard them howling. Heathen, they were, those Russians, no better than the Turks. Bloody heathen, with nothing to lose, having no souls.”
“No souls? I thought the Turks went to Paradise if they died in battle?”
“Paradise? Pshaw! A place of pools and cool water, with dancing girls no better than they ought to be, and wine to soak the brain in forgetfulness? I don’t call that much of a reward for the faithful. Endless whoring and sinfulness, that’s what it means. But fit for hounds. They know no better!”
He said, “Who are the hounds of Gabriel here? At Tre-velyan Hall?”
“The same as the others,” she said, looking away from the Hall to study his face. “Heathen.”
“Protestant? Catholic?”
“Neither, and that’s the point, now, isn’t it? An unbaptized soul, with nothing but evil filling it. Darkness, not light.”
Rutledge thought for a long moment. Olivia and Anne were twins. Was Sadie trying to tell him that one of them hadn’t been properly baptized? That with two babies screaming bloody murder by the baptismal font, one had been baptized twice and the other not at all?
He said, “Was Olivia baptized? Was Anne?”
She looked at him as if he’d run mad. “Do you think Miss Rosamund would allow it otherwise? Of course they were. I was there, I watched the babes handed to the old rector one at a time. There was blue ribbon on Miss Olivia’s christening gown, and pale green on Miss Anne’s. To be sure ‘twas all done properly!”
Green ribbon . . . a christening gown? No, he couldn’t quite see that ...
“Who burned some small personal belongings in a fire, just above the gardens? Beyond the headland, where the blaze couldn’t be seen from the village?”
“What fire?”
“Oh, come now!” Inspiration struck. “The rags you wanted, the rags that’d been promised to you by Miss Olivia. Someone used them instead to keep a fire going, because there were a number of things he—or she—wanted to burn well. A leather notebook. A leather picture frame with silver corners. A pile of letters, perhaps. Who was it who wanted such possessions destroyed?”
“It weren’t Mr. Cormac!” she said briskly. “Nor Miss Rachel. I’d have known. It could have been Mr. Nicholas. I don’t know why he’d go there in the dark to burn them, but I know it might have been him that did it, because of what I saw.”
“What did you see?” He kept his voice low, gentle. Curious, but not probing.
“I saw him with pails, going down to the sea to fill them with water. And then he set them up on the headland. Left them there. And walked back into the house with empty hands.”
Nicholas.
“Was this the night they died? Olivia and Nicholas?”
“No,’twas the