Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [14]
It was here then that Stephen FitzHugh must have fallen to his death. Rutledge walked to the stairs and began to examine them carefully, the uneven treads, the dark oak of the banisters, the ornately carved balustrade. If you fell to the left from the top, he thought, considering the possibilities, you’d come straight down, avoiding the curve. If you slipped on the right, you’d glance off the curve, slowing your momentum certainly, but with force enough to do damage anyway. But no one had said in the Inquest which direction Stephen had been coming from, his left or his right along the gallery.
The report Rutledge had read over breakfast indicated that Stephen FitzHugh hit the balustrade somewhere at the curve, broke his neck, and rolled the rest of the way to the hall, either dead already or nearly so. The doctor had noted the imprint of the carving on the back of Stephen FitzHugh’s neck, just below the cracked vertebrae that had killed him. Hawkins had also included a description of the amputation of the foot that had made the dead man’s balance uncertain at best, and possibly in this situation, prevented him from recovering it quickly enough to save himself from a nasty fall. The man’s cane had been found at the curve, jammed into the balustrade on the opposite side of the stairs. An accident ... it would be hard to quarrel with the Inquest’s results.
The house was cold, no fires lit with no one living here, and he kept his coat on as he walked through it slowly, carefully. A handsome home, not a baronial palace. The formal rooms—dining room, drawing room, a large library—were well furnished with heirlooms but looked as if they had not seen company for some time. Everything stood in its proper place, no magazines strewn about, no flowers in their tall vases, no sunlight pouring through open drapes, no dogs lolled on the hearth rugs. He remembered as a child being taken to a stately home, and a woman’s shrill echoing voice declaiming, “Here the family entertained three prime ministers, six members of the royal family, and the Queen, who was particularly fond of that blue silk chair.”
And he had twisted about, seaching in vain for them, until his father had told him to stand still and pay attention.
A back parlor, overlooking the gardens and the sea, and the kitchen quarters below, were more ordinary, as if people actually lived there, mussing up the carpet with their shoes, wearing out the upholstery with their bodies, reading the books on the low shelves. Or cooking at the big stove, washing up at the stone sink, sitting down to peel potatoes in one of the old brown wooden chairs.
He returned to the staircase. Generations had come down them, gone up them, and no one had worried about them. Until now. Hamish, stirring restlessly in the back of his mind, whispered, “I didna’ like this business. Leave the dead in their graves, man!”
Upstairs were the bedrooms. They were beautifully proportioned, with tall windows and handsome fireplaces. But old-fashioned now, as if no one had worried about the faded hangings and the worn carpets, preferring the familiar to the new.
He found the upstairs study where the suicides had occurred, thanks to the floor plan that Dawlish had sketched for him. It was a long room, windows looking out over the sea and over the gardens. A room of light and the warmth of the sun, neither a man’s nor a woman’s, but used, comfortable, ordinary. Nothing here to tell anyone where a famous poet worked, except perhaps for the typewriter sitting covered on a table by the seaward window. A guide would have to make do with the collection of books on either side of the table, set neatly on their shelves. “Here the poet found her inspiration among the works of ...”
But did she? Who could know?
Nearby was another table, where someone had been carving. The hull of a great ship lay, white and unfinished, among