Wings of Fire - Charles Todd [51]
“What about Cormac FitzHugh?”
“He’s not a Trevelyan, is he?” she asked. “There’s no Gabriel hound wants anything he has.”
She walked off before he could ask her what had brought her to the Hall on this particular evening. Or what she knew of a fire built out on the headland. But her mind was already slipping away again, and he wasn’t sure he’d have gotten a straight answer anyway.
Still, he listened again to what she’d said. “Miss Olivia warned me once, when I spoke to her of it, and I knew to heed her. I’d die too if I told what I heard or saw.”
Miss Olivia.
He went on his way, taking his time and approaching the house as if he’d come as a guest and not an intruder.
Where would Olivia have left her papers? Not in the hallway where anyone might stumble over them, that was true enough. But would she have hidden them, or simply put them where Stephen would think to look?
He unlocked the door and went inside. Someone had left the drapes open. Cormac? The sun’s warmth had flooded the hall along with its light, and there was a brightness here that somehow made him think of Rosamund.
“There doesna’ need to be anything howling from the attics to haunt a house,” Hamish reminded him suddenly.
“No,” Rutledge answered aloud, agreeing with him. “But this brightness will fade with the dusk. What else is here?”
He went up the stairs to the study and stood in its doorway again, eyes roving the walls and furnishings. There was no place of easy concealment here. Not without moving rows of books—or Nicholas’ ships—and then shifting heavy shelves. And Nicholas shared this room, after all.
He shut the door and made his way down the gallery to Olivia’s bedroom, glancing briefly at the plan Constable Daw-lish had drawn up for him, although he knew very well which door to open.
He stood on the threshold for a moment, then crossed to open the drapes, allowing the setting sun to wash into the dimness. As he did, he caught again that elusive perfume that he’d smelled when the shawl slipped off the typewriter. And it was stronger when he opened Olivia’s closet door and looked at the clothing hanging on both sides of the deep recess. Skirts, dresses, dinner gowns, robes, coats, shawls, in neat and orderly rows, coats first, night robes last. Hatboxes stood in the back on shelves, next to half a dozen handbags. Several umbrellas hung on hooks to one side, and a cane with a heavily wrought silver head. Beneath the clothing were two rows of shoes, the right of each pair with a small metal tab like a stirrup under the instep, and straps at each end. For the brace she wore.
Without touching them he surveyed the clothes. She liked colors, rose and a particular shade of dark blue and a deep forest green, as well as crimson and winter black, summer white and pastels. Tailored clothes, evening dresses very stylish but never fussy. His sister, Frances, would have approved of them, would have pronounced Olivia Marlowe a woman of quiet good taste. Just as the rector had said. But was there another side of her? And where did it reside?
The closet had been built into what had in the past been a small dressing room. He walked into it, towards the shelves at the back, brushing against the clothing, and that perfume whirled out around him, almost in angry protest at his invasion of her privacy. Where had she found such an expressive scent? It touched the senses, lingered in the memory, confused the image he tried over and over again to draw. Elusive as she was—and more alive.
He began methodically to open each hatbox, starting at the top, and from some of them, the heavy odor of cedar shavings wafted up to him, displacing Olivia’s perfume. Sweaters in a range of colors. Woolen stockings and scarves and gloves. Leather belts and leather gloves, Italian made and very supple. A fur hat,