Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [44]
“No,” he answered, “not yet. I’ve a few more loose ends to clear up before I’m satisfied. But I promise I’ll tell you when I’m finished here.”
“That’s fair enough,” she answered, and stood up, brushing the sand from her trousers. By the time Cormac had reached them, she was already walking away along the strand, towards the headland.
Cormac called a greeting, and looking at the boat on the shingle said as he reached Rutledge, “I see you talked the landlord out of his boat for the day. I wish I’d thought about that myself.” Then, his eyes following Rachel, where she was already out of earshot, he added, “I’ve been worried about her. She took Nicholas’ death hard. Following on the heels of Peter’s. Rachel is too level-headed to deny they’re gone, but there’s an emptiness she doesn’t quite know how to fill. Lately she’s even avoided me, and Susannah. As if the living remind her too much of the dead.” He shook his head. “I know how that is. I bury myself in my work and let the days run into each other.”
“You aren’t staying at the Hall?”
“I’d asked Mrs. Trepol to make up a bed,” he said wryly, “then couldn’t face the silence. Friends at Pervelly are putting me up.”
“Is that where Mrs. Hargrove and her husband are visiting?”
Cormac turned back to Rutledge, surprise in his face. “Is Susannah down here? Daniel swore he wasn’t letting her leave London again until she delivered. But she’s always been more strong-minded than she looks. If she wants something, he can’t stand in her way for very long. She’s probably staying with the Beatons. She was in school with Jenny Beaton. Jenny Throckmorton, she was then.”
* ‘Your sister didn’t want to hear of the investigations being reopened, either. She said there was enough disgrace in a double suicide, she didn’t want her child born into a family where murder was suspected.”
Cormac grinned. “Pregnant women are often edgy, I’m told.”
“You’ve never married?”
He walked away, his back to Rutledge, and picked up a stone to skip over the incoming waves. “No,” he said finally, “I haven’t married. Like Rachel, I have scars that haven’t healed.”
Hamish rumbled uneasily, and Rutledge tried to ignore him. He said, “I haven’t found any evidence of a crime being committed here. But I’d like to know why Nicholas Cheney died. To understand why,” he amended. “I can’t quite accept your suggestion, that Olivia didn’t want to die alone.”
Cormac came back to where Rutledge was standing. The whisper of the water running in was louder as the tide turned. “God knows,” he said tiredly. “It might have had something to do with her poetry. Or what Nicholas knew about her, about her life. Or what she thought he might do afterward— after she’d gone. Or it might have been sheer bloody-mindedness.”
“If she wanted her secrets kept, why leave her literary papers to Stephen? And surely you knew nearly as much about her history as Nicholas did. Possibly more. Killing him didn’t seal her secrets in the grave.”
“Ah, but she knew I was making a name for myself in London. That I’d go to any lengths to avoid scandal that might hurt my reputation in the City. It wasn’t very likely, was it, that I’d be eager to rattle any family skeletons? There’s a passage in one of her poems about ‘secret histories, kept to the grave, last defense of master and slave ‘gainst the final onslaught of heaven and hell, a Resurrection where the soul will tell what the tongue and the mind, in dreadful fear, had hoped against hope that none might hear.’ “ He shrugged. “The transfer of thousands of pounds is made on my handshake, the agreement to contracts and the trust of banks and investors. I’m as good as my word, and people depend on that. I had more to lose in telling than she did. She could have ruined me more easily than I could ever have ruined her.”
“But you might have ruined O. A. Manning.”
“Did she really care about O. A. Manning? She cut that part of her life short as well.”
“Unless she’d said what it was she wanted to say, and knew it was safe forever,