Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [106]
He’d learned, in the war, to move silently in the darkness. Snipers, trip wires, booby traps, mines—every step might bring sudden death. Where you put your feet and how decided whether you came back safely and unseen, or not at all. And so he walked with stealth and care, leaving the village, circling well out of his way, letting the starlight and his own sense of direction guide him. After half an hour he came to the small cottage half-nestled, half-crouched in its narrow valley. There was lamplight at one of the windows, and he stood in the shadows of the hillside, waiting and listening.
Women like Sadie sometimes had a sixth sense. And the cat she kept would hear him if she didn’t. The lift of its head, the twitching ears, the eyes narrowed and still—it was as good as any alarm.
After a time, moving with extreme care, the wind blowing towards him to carry both scent and sound away, he searched the gardens,
When he’d asked whether or not she grew pansies, Sadie had answered that they didn’t dry well. That was probably true. But he’d taken it to mean that she didn’t have any of the plants in her garden. And that had been his mistake.
How much did the old woman know?
Or, perhaps more to the point, how much had she known? She hadn’t always been senile . . . there might have been a time when she was a willing party to what was happening. But just as it was impossible to turn back the clock, it was nearly impossible to lift the veil in that old and tired brain.
Well, then, make some assumptions. Could Richard have been brought here without in any way involving Sadie?
If the boy had been buried here, could Sadie have been told that a small patch of pansies set apart from her own flowers was a reminder of a brother lost, a private place to grieve? Possible, yes. Likely, no. On the other hand, she might have pretended to believe. And whatever suspicions she might have harbored deep in her unsettled mind, she’d have kept them to herself. It all came down to how much she understood about the killings at the Hall. And whether she knew the face of a murderer.
He made each step with minute attention to the ground, so as not to leave prints in the earth or crushed blossoms in his wake, his eyes roving this way and then that. Not near the cottage, no, and not where the herbs and flowers grew best. Not where heavy rains might wash the bones out, nor where the boy wouldn’t be under the eye of his mentally frail and possibly unwitting guardian. And disguised, somehow, the kind of place that wouldn’t draw attention to itself or tempt anyone to rearrange it.
And he found it on the hillside, just where a small natural outcropping formed the anchor of an asymmetrical rock garden. It was no more than a few feet wide in any direction, yet large enough for a child’s curled body. A spill of unusual white stones brought from somewhere else lay like a small river tucked in among the flowers. Pansies, and some sort of small, narrow leafed things that formed a mat. Plants that would reseed themselves, half tame, half wild, clinging among the stones and holding the earth with their roots.
He squatted there in the darkness, studying the rock garden.
Very simple, not the sort of thing that would catch the eye of a casual observer, a little patch of color above an outcropping that lent itself to this one use only, wild and half-neglected, unimportant and oddly touching.
There was the sound of a door opening, and he froze, keeping his silhouette low and dark against the greater darkness of the hillside.
Sadie stood for a moment, a hunched figure against the lamplight behind her, in the open doorway. Rutledge could feel her eyes on him, although he knew she couldn’t possibly see him where he was.
‘‘Who’s there?” she called. After a moment, she went on, “Have you come for me?”
His mouth tightened in anger at himself for disturbing her, giving her a fright. It had been the last thing he’d wanted.
“But she has a sixth sense,” Hamish reminded him.
“I’m going to bed,” she said, when