Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [29]
“Two of her children died young.”
“Aye, they never found the little one. There was a tramp through here not many years back that reminded me of Richard Cheney. Same devil’s look in his eyes. That boy was afraid of naught, and tempted God and Satan with his antics. Ran away from home twice, nearly set the Hall on fire one Guy Fawkes Night, with a bonfire in the nursery. I was a groom at the Hall then, when they kept so many horses, and he’d beg to ride anything with four legs!”
Another customer walked into the bar, crutches still awkward under his armpits. A leg missing. The barkeep heard the uneven thump-thump, looked over his shoulder, and said, “Right with you, Will.” He turned back to Rutledge. “They say Miss Olivia wrote poetry, but I don’t know. Not in a woman’s line, is it? How’d she know about the war, then, and the suffering? Somebody’s got it all wrong.”
He went away to serve the other man, and then to speak to a pair of fishermen slumped in the corner benches, arguing dispiritedly over what had become of the pilchard runs that had once been Cornwall’s fishing wealth, and what to do about the outlanders from as far away as Yarmouth, their big boats overfishing Cornish seas. Rutledge was left looking down at the faces that stared unseeingly back at him. Remembering what the barman had said.
Was that the key? Was that why Nicholas had had to die too? Because he wrote the poetry that had made O. A. Manning famous?
Rutledge shook his head. It wasn’t what he wanted to believe.
The next morning, Rutledge kept his promise to Rachel Ash-ford and accompanied her back to the Hall. The sun was brilliant, blindingly bright at sea, and touching the land with colors that vibrated against the eye.
They walked through the copse again, coming out to stand for a moment looking up at the house. It was shimmering, like some mythical castle on a mythical hill, and Rachel said, “Odd, isn’t it? How very impressive the house is? And yet if you look at it architecturally, there must be a hundred homes in Cornwall alone that are as fine. Finer, even. This one is old and rambling and very small by most standards. But I love it with all my heart. Peter said—” she stopped, cleared her throat, and went on, “Peter said that it was in the stone, that sparkling quality. And the angle of the sun caught it sometimes.”
“Yes, that could be true,” Rutledge said. He’d thanked her for the photographs when she came to the inn, and promised to return them before he left Cornwall. But he hadn’t told her any of the thoughts that had rampaged through his head most of the night, until Hamish had clamored for peace. After that, he’d slept, but fitfully. It had seemed that he could hear the sea from his room, and the wash of the waves kept time with his heartbeats.
She looked at him. “You’ll be leaving soon. I can feel it. With nothing done about my problem.”
“I can’t find anything to keep me here,” he said. “Look, Rachel—” he realized he was using her given name, but somehow Mrs. Ashford was not how he thought of her “—there’s neither proof nor evidence to show that something’s wrong. I’m wasting the Yard’s time if I pretend there is.”
Rachel sighed. “Yes, I know.”
“Would you be happier if I did find something? That Olivia