There was one other stop Rutledge wished to make in Charlbury. The inn. It was the pulse of village life, oftentimes the place where gossip and conjecture made their first rounds. The question was, would Denton tell him what was being said, or as the outsider would he be shut out of knowledge any villager might be given for the asking?
Nodding to Benson, who was still polishing the boot as if he had nothing better to fill his time, Rutledge stepped into the Wyatt Arms. He saw that Denton’s nephew, Shaw, was sitting at a table alone, an empty pint glass in front of him, idly tracing one finger through the rings left by other pints. He looked up, recognized Rutledge, and said, “Why in God’s name couldn’t you have told me that Margaret Tarlton was missing! Damn it, I had to hear it from that Prescott bitch!” The words were slurred, but behind them was deep anger.
“I didn’t know, when I was here yesterday, that she was missing.”
“Then you’re a damned poor policeman! God, it’s been over a week !”
“How did you come to know her?” Rutledge pulled out the empty chair across from him and looked around. There was no one else in the shadows of the small room, but he could hear voices from the bar, down the passage.
“Not from Charlbury, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Then where? London?”
“That’s right,” he answered grudgingly, as if the alcohol in him wanted to talk and the reticence of the man tried to hold on to silence. “I was on a troop train, on my way to the coast. She was one of those women offering hot tea and sandwiches as we came through. I didn’t even know her name! Just that she had the loveliest face I’d ever seen.” He frowned. “I took it to Egypt with me. I thought, if I die, at least I’ve seen her-touched her hand. And if I live, I’ll find her. Call it a promise to myself…” A bargain with fate.
Rutledge looked away. How well he knew what bargains might be made with fate. To keep a man alive one day longer, one battle longer…
“Or come between a man and wanting to die,” Hamish reminded him.
“Two years later I was back in London. Sooner than I’d expected. Shipped like a sausage, strapped to a stretcher, out of my head most of the time. A fever. No one, least of all the doctors, could decide what it was or how best to treat it. They sent me home to die. But I was one of the lucky ones, it burned itself out. The first day they let me stand on my feet, all I could think of was getting back to that railway station, finding her somehow. A fool’s dream, that!”
“She must have spoken to a hundred men on each train. It’s not very likely she’d remember one of them in particular.”
“No, you’ve got it wrong! There was a benefit performance at one of the theaters, and I didn’t want to go, but a friend wouldn’t take no for an answer-and there she was, sitting in one of the boxes across from me! I couldn’t tell you, if my life was on the line, what the program was about. There was a woman singing, Italian arias or something. I thought she’d never finish! At the interval I managed to speak to Margaret. It took some doing to separate her from her party, but I wasn’t about to lose her a second time!” There was an echo of triumph in his voice and a lift to his shoulders, as if the memory were still alive in his mind.
Rutledge waited. Silence was sometimes more effective than a question.
“I’d talked to her that day about Canada-how it was out there. I don’t know why-it seemed to catch her imagination, and I was afraid she’d move on to the next window if I stopped. I told her about the place where a group of us were planting apple orchards on the slopes facing south and how we’d built the long irrigation lines, wooden troughs, but they worked. How the high peaks were heavy with snow, even into May. Whatever came into my head, to keep that look on her face! The first thing she said to me at the theater was ‘Hallo, you’re the man who lives with grizzly bears and elk!’ “
He stopped, frowned at his empty glass. “I’ve lost count,” he said. “I’ve muddled the rings too. Can’t depend on ’em anymore.” Looking up, he said, “You aren’t drinking. Why not?”
“I’m on duty,” Rutledge reminded him. “What happened after the theater?”
“I escorted her everywhere she’d let me. Riding one day, tennis another, dinner-any excuse to be with her. I was falling in love with her. What I didn’t know, couldn’t judge, was whether she cared for me. Or if I was just an available man when she needed a presentable escort, someone with both legs and two arms, who could dance with her. The doctors raised hell, they said the pace I was setting was getting in the way of my recovery. I didn’t care. The longer I was in England, the happier I was!”
Denton came in. “I heard voices,” he said, looking from Shaw’s strained face to Rutledge’s. “Thought it might be custom.”
“No, it’s all right, Uncle Jack.”
Denton nodded and left. After a moment, Shaw said, “I’d have married her. But she wasn’t interested in living in a wilderness, no matter how beautiful or exotic it might be. She’d grown up in India. ‘I don’t want to be exiled again,’ she said. “Not if I can help it!’ ” He managed, somehow, to capture the light tones of a woman’s voice. And a subtle hint of selfishness, as if Margaret Tarlton didn’t mind how she might have hurt him.
It was the first real glimpse Rutledge had had of the missing woman.
“I asked her- begged her-to tell me if there was another man, and she shook her head and kissed me and said I was being silly. But there was. I could see his eyes following her. I could see the look on his face when he came into a room and she was there. God, he was a mirror of what I was feeling! And I was stupid enough to confront her with it. The day before I was to sail. She wouldn’t see me afterward, wouldn’t answer my calls or my letters. It was-that was the last time. When I was sent home again, half my guts cut away, I knew it was finished. How could I go back to her-how could I even tell her I was alive?”
Hamish had stirred, already sure of the answer.
More sure than Rutledge was. “Who was the other man?”
Shaw grimaced, as if the tension of the last ten minutes had brought back the pain in his body. His arms were lightly clasped around his middle, to hold it in. He seemed completely sober now, eyes dark circled and heavy with memory, a man with only a past and no future.
“Thomas Napier. If he hadn’t had a daughter a year older than she was, I think he’d have married her himself. He wanted her badly enough! It was there, raw and hot, sometimes, when I’d bring her home and we were laughing, clinging to each other as we made our way up the steps, more tipsy with excitement than wine, but how could he know? When I saw her getting out of the Wyatts’ motorcar last week, I thought for one horrible instant she’d come looking for me! Out of misplaced pity or duty. But Mrs. Prescott soon put an end to that rash hope. She mentioned to Denton that it was the museum that had brought Margaret. Something about coming here as Simon’s assistant. Besides, there was no way she could have known I was here. Very few people do!”
“Did you speak to her, before she left Charlbury?”
“God, no! When I can barely stand straight, even now, without all the fires of hell lit in my belly? I’ve got some pride left, damn it! She wouldn’t have me before. What could I say that might have changed her mind now?”
“She wasn’t married to Napier, for one thing.”
“No.” Shaw looked at the dark ceiling, where the beams wore a collection of polished horse buttons. Studying them as if they were more important than anything he was thinking or feeling. A bitter concentration.
“There’s the other side of it as well-she was considering moving here, leaving the Napier household for another position.”
Shaw laughed, a rough, hollow sound. “She’d have to, wouldn’t she, if she was planning to marry him? Margaret has been Elizabeth’s secretary for years. Not Napier’s social equal, that. But if she were here, under Simon’s wing, she’d be safe enough from gossip. People wouldn’t be so fast to jump to ugly conclusions. That’s the sort of thing Margaret would think of. She must have known very well how to handle him. It was Elizabeth who stood in the way.”
His mind occupied on his way out of Charlbury, Rutledge almost missed the woman standing by the road clearly hoping to catch his eye.
She was wearing a faded housedress, the blues nearly gray now, and her hair was pinned back stringendy, as if it were being punished for trying to curl in the dampness. Was she one of the women he’d passed on the street? He couldn’t be sure. She’d have dressed differendy, going to market.
Rutledge pulled over and said, “Were you looking for me?”
“Aye! You’re the policeman from London, they say!”
“Inspector Rutledge. Yes.” Behind her, in the doorway, he could see three small children peering out with large, sober eyes. Whatever it was their mother wanted, they’d been told to stay out of the way and make no noise. Or the policeman would get them? It was a threat used often enough in some quarters of London, to keep children quiet. “Be’ave now, or I’ll fetch the copper on yer!”
The woman nodded, then hesitated, as if reluctant to give her name. But they were just outside her house, with paint peeling around the windows and a look of shabbiness about the roof where it needed rethatching. He could find her again, easily. She said, “Hazel Dixon. I heard tell you was looking for information about that woman guest at the Wyatts’. How she left Charlbury on the fifteenth.”
Hamish stirred, and Rutledge tried to keep his own expression bland. “That’s right.” Let her tell it in her own way, or she might change her mind…
Suddenly there was a hot intensity in the pale blue eyes watching him. “It was her. Mrs. Wyatt. I saw the car. Going on toward noon, it was, two days after that Miss Tarlton came here. I heard the motor and looked out my window, and I saw it passing, in the direction of the crossroads and Singleton Magna.”
“Could you see the driver?” he asked. She would have been on the far side of the car, as he was now.
“Well, it was her, wasn’t it? She’s the one drives the car! Mr. Wyatt, he don’t care to drive himself, he’s used to having people at his beck and call. I’ve seen her, with a scarf blowing out like some banner announcing her! And the men too, turning to look, wanting in their eyes. It’s indecent, lustful! Most of ’em, including my Bill, know what she’s like. They was in France and those women had no men of their own, I know what went on! My Bill didn’t learn to-”
She stopped, this time with a rising flush. She hadn’t meant to say such things, she’d allowed herself to be led on by his way of listening.
There were shadows, moving a little, behind the children, and Rutledge realized that other women-at least two? he thought, possibly three-were in the dimly lit front room, moral support for her confession but not intended to hear whatever it was that Bill had-or had not-been taught by any Frenchwomen he’d encountered abroad.
It was a common enough anxiety of wives in wartime. That men far from home, fighting a war against loneliness and fear as well as the enemy, might have found comfort of a sort in the local women. And picked up disease or new tastes. The music halls were filled with jokes and songs about the French.
“It was her!” she repeated fiercely. “I’d swear to it!”
“Was there anyone in the motorcar with her?”
Mrs. Dixon bit her lip. “I saw something rosy-with lavender in it! Must have been that Miss Tarlton. Well, it stands to reason! Who else would have been in that car with Mrs. Wyatt!”
But he thought she might be lying now. Had she seen Margaret Tarlton at the Wyatt gate and known what she was wearing? Or was she so determined to indict Aurore Wyatt that she was piecing together bits of information garnered from the other women listening and invisible inside her house? “What kind of hat was Miss Tarlton wearing?”
Mrs. Dixon stared at him. Then she said, too quickly, “The way that Mrs. Wyatt drives her husband’s motorcar, you’d be a fool to wear a hat! It’d be blown off your head before you was out of Charlbury!”
And it was true, as Hamish was busy pointing out, that Aurore herself hadn’t been wearing a hat the first time Rutledge had seen her. But he couldn’t recall if there had been one in the seat beside her…
“They say that that Miss Tarlton’s missing. What do they think’s become of her?” Mrs. Dixon asked, unable to stop herself. Curiosity was driving her now. “That man in Singleton Magna, he’s already killed his wife-”
“We want to locate Miss Tarlton because she arrived on the same train with Mowbray. She might have seen him, or his family.”
“They say he killed his children!” She shuddered, caught up in her own fears, glancing over her shoulder uneasily. “I’ve kept mine close, I can tell you, since I heard of that.”
“I don’t believe you have anything to fear from him now. He’s in custody.”
She turned to go. “I saw that Miss Tarlton the day she came. I was along to my sister’s house. If I’d stolen another woman’s husband, like some I know, I’d not want such a pretty face at my breakfast table! Tempting fate all over again, that’s what it is. And Mr. Simon already regretting his choice!”
“Regretting? What do you mean?” It was sharper than he’d intended.
But Hazel Dixon wouldn’t be drawn into that topic. “I’ve said enough. I saw the car, and Mrs. Wyatt in it! And that other woman. If that’s any good to you, I’m glad!”
Rutledge thought as he let off the brake that Elizabeth Napier’s presence in Charlbury was bearing its bitter fruit. In a village already rife with speculation about Simon’s wife, rumor had spread from house to house, and Hazel Dixon, encouraged and supported by her friends, was now casting the second stone at Aurore Wyatt. She wouldn’t have spoken out if the village had maintained its wall of silence, an undivided front. Elizabeth Napier, breaking the seal by openly showing her anxiety over Margaret Tarlton’s disappearance and allowing the bloody events of the Mowbray murder to find their way-even if topsy-turvy-into the story, had already shadowed Simon’s mind with doubt. And as if by osmosis, the Hazel Dixons of Charlbury had picked up the strong scent of distrust and were emboldened to strike out.
He was never sure how such things actually worked in a village. But work they did.
Aurore had been absolutely right. Seeing her in his company, even for so brief a time, had fed the hungry maws of gossip.
Hamish, from his accustomed place deep in Rutledge’s mind, asked, “Are you sae certain, then, it’s gossip and no’ the truth?”
Constable Truit still hadn’t returned from the search party he’d been summoned to join. Tired of waiting for him, Rutledge left Charlbury and halfway back to Singleton Magna made up his mind.
It began to rain long before he reached London, and the streets were shining with wet, the trees drooping heavily, when he found the house in Chelsea that he was looking for.
It was small, with a narrow porch, silk drapes crossing the windows, and on the steps pots of geraniums in a shade that complemented the brick. Even in the dull light it possessed a decided charm. At the same time it wasn’t a house that a young woman on her own could afford. Unless there was money in the family to draw on.
The maid who answered the door was small and dark, with Welsh ancestry in her round face. But her voice was pure London. Rutledge told her who he was. She led him into a small parlor attractively decorated with rosewood furnishings, a French carpet, and pre-Raphaelite prints on the walls. He recognized several of them. Either Margaret Tarlton liked the romantic aura they represented, or she knew its value as a setting. And yet, oddly, he hadn’t imagined her as a romantic. Was Thomas Napier? Sometimes men of power and prestige had buried in them a streak of the quixotic when it came to their preferences in women.
The maid offered him a chair and stood before him in her stiff black dress, hands cupped in front of her, feet together, like a child anticipating a reprimand. Worry drew her dark brows together and her face was strained, tired. He asked her name. It was Dorcas Williams. She had been employed as a second parlor maid by the Napiers before coming here to work for Miss Tarlton.
“I don’t know what I can say, sir! Scotland Yard has come twice, and still there’s no word from my mistress-I’ve told them all I can think of. There’s no news?” she asked diffidently. “Mr. Napier has been here this morning, asking!”
“Not yet. The fact is, I’m more interested in Miss Tarlton herself. Sometimes in searching for someone who’s gone missing, it helps to know more about the person. We have a better feeling for where to look.”
“Yes, sir.” She regarded him expectantly, as if prepared to cooperate in any way. But behind her eagerness, the shadow of fear still lurked.
“Let’s begin,” Rutledge said as if it had just occurred to him, “with her work for Miss Napier. Did she like what she did-did she get along well with her employers?”
“She liked her work well enough,” the girl answered willingly. “She was good at it, at organizing. Seeing to flowers and caterers and invitations being printed-finding the right musicians. Writing thank-you notes. Sometimes she’d say, ‘You’ll never guess, Dorcas, who’s coming to the luncheon on Thursday!’” She smiled. “Oftentimes I’d get it right too!”
“There was nothing she disliked about her work?”
The smiled faded. “I’ve heard her say she didn’t want to spend a lifetime planning parties in the houses of other people.”
“Did she get on well with Elizabeth Napier?”
“Yes, sir. Mostly. I think-I think there was some disagreement over her changing jobs. But I didn’t understand the rights of that. Miss Tarlton, she didn’t want it to be Dorset, and Miss Napier, she said it was just the thing.”
“Why was she against going to Dorset? Do you know?”
“No, sir.” Her face creased with the effort to remember. “I don’t think she ever spoke of that to me.”
“This house. Does it belong to Miss Tarlton? Or to her cousins?”
“Oh, it’s Miss Tarlton’s, right enough, sir. It was two years ago she moved here, and I was engaged along with the cook and an outside man.”
Two years ago, Rutledge repeated to himself. About the time Shaw was leaving England…
“Who pays your wages?”
“Miss Tarlton, sir, of course, sir.”
“Does she have a private income? Apart from her salary from the Napiers.”
“As to that I don’t know, sir. She said once her people never did well out of India, unlike some. Her cousins in Gloucestershire are comfortable enough, I suppose, but they don’t run to servants, just a daily woman who cleans and prepares the dinner.”
He was no closer to seeing Margaret Tarlton as a woman in her own right. Yet he couldn’t put his finger on what was missing.
It was Hamish who did.
“I’d no’ like to think,” he said, “that she lived in this house and dressed so fine but had no friends to impress wi’ it all!”
“Did she have friends?” Rutledge asked. “Women? Men?”
“She didn’t have so many women friends, but there were admirers,” Dorcas answered slowly. “Mostly young men, officers home on sick leave. One or two I thought she fancied more than the others. There was a young lord, too, took her to the theater a time or two. But ‘he’s not looking for a wife,’ she’d say. ‘His mother’s a widow, and she’ll choose for him, one that suits her.’ Still, I thought she was fond of him.”
Or of his money and position? Hamish asked.
Rutledge said, “What about the young Canadian officer?”
Dorcas grinned. “He called at the Napiers often. I liked him fine,” she said, “always a word to make me laugh. Promising to find me an Eskimo when he went home! Fancy that!”
“I understand Miss Tarlton wouldn’t see him again before he went back to his regiment. He tried to reach her, and she refused to accept his calls.”
Surprised, Dorcas said, “How did you come to know that? I thought for a time-but she’d have no part of Canada. ‘Not much better than India,’ she’d tell me, ‘and not the kind of life I intend to live.’”
“She hasn’t heard from Shaw-or seen him-since the war ended?”
“She said he’d gone home. But he hadn’t I heard Mr. Napier, not a month past, tell her he was living in Dorset. ‘Is that why you’re off to Wyatt’s museum?’ he wanted to know. ‘Because young Shaw’s there?’ They was having their tea, I was passing the cups, and she nearly spilled hers. So I thought it likely she’d not known whether Captain Shaw was alive or dead. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she told Mr. Napier. But the way she said it-I couldn’t tell, somehow, but I thought she might have been wondering if she might just see him. Now-or if she got the position at the museum.”
“What was Napier’s reaction?”
“He was fiddling with the serviette on his knee. But he was frowning, I could see that. I couldn’t help but feel he didn’t want her to go to Dorset anyway. And this was just the final straw, to his way of thinking.”
“Was Mr. Napier… fond… of Miss Tarlton?”
“He was very kind to her, she said so often enough. ‘But kindness isn’t the answer,’ she’d say. ‘I don’t want kindness, I want a house and a place in society, and children of my own, and to hold my head up, looking people in the eye, instead of being treated like a servant !’ That was last May, when she had a bad throat and was in bed for nearly a week. It was the newspaper started it, and I’ve never seen her in such an ill temper. I said, ‘I can’t think Mr. Napier and his daughter have ever treated you in such a fashion.’ And her answer was ‘No, but all their acquaintance do! I thought it would be the best possible way to move into better circles, working for Elizabeth. And it was the gravest mistake I’ve ever made.’ So when Miss Tarlton had finished with it, I looked through the newspaper, to see what it was that upset her.” She hesitated. “There was a photograph of Mr. Napier and a lady at a garden party, and speculation that Mr. Napier might be thinking of remarrying. I’d heard her say she disliked the lady intensely. ‘Madame Condescension,’ she calls her. I don’t believe she’d care to work for Miss Napier if Mrs. Clairmont became the second Mrs. Napier.”
Afterward, Rutledge walked through the house, still searching for the nature of the missing woman. In the bedroom were a number of photographs: of the Napiers at parties or on horseback; of (according to Dorcas) the cousins in Gloucestershire, wearing country clothes and shy smiles; of a small child in long skirts, seated on a rocking horse or playing with a ball, the cousins hovering protectively in the background.
In the closets hung an array of clothes, all of excellent cut and beautiful fabrics, but without designer labels. Rutledge had the feeling, touching a silk sleeve here and a linen shoulder there, that they had all been sewn by the same seamstress. Miss Tarlton had had the taste to recognize the best but not the money to buy it. It was even possible that she had made most of the clothes herself. The tailoring and needlework showed considerable skill.
There was nothing in the house from India except for a small elephant, trunk uplifted, carved in sandalwood, and a photograph of a man, woman, and two children seated in a tropical garden. She hadn’t taken pride in her roots, she had shoved them out of sight. Margaret Tarlton had created a new self for London society, clever, sophisticated, elegant-and reaching for heights she couldn’t climb alone.
Rutledge thanked Dorcas and promised to send her word as soon as he could tell her what had become of her mistress.
As the door shut behind him, he found himself wondering if ambition-or accident-had brought Margaret Tarlton to her death.
Rutledge stopped briefly at his sister’s house before leaving London.
“You look tired,” Frances said, scanning his face on the threshold. “Working too hard, that’s what it is! Give up that wretched flat of yours and come back here, where you can be looked after properly.”
Here was the London house Frances had lived in since their mother’s death. It had been left to brother and sister jointly. Tall, gracious, handsomely furnished, situated in a quiet square of similar houses, it made a proper setting for Frances, whose dark unusual beauty was complemented by a clever brain and a formidable knowledge of people that she kept carefully hidden.
He smiled. “And have you fussing over me morning and night? No, I thank you!” He followed her into the comfortable blue-and-cream drawing room.
“Fiddle! I never fuss and you know it. Well, what brings you here in the rain, my company or Father’s whisky?” She crossed to an olivewood cabinet.
“His whisky. I came, as well, for information.” He took his accustomed chair, feeling the tiredness she’d already taken note of.
She made a face at him as she poured his neat but listened to what he was saying without interruption. She had always been a good listener, it was a trait their father had cultivated in her. “A woman who pays close attention flatters a man, my dear, and that’s the first step in ruling him!”
Even as he spoke, Rutledge found himself thinking that Frances had taken stillness and turned it into an asset, whereas in Aurore it was more than likely a shield against pain. Or a waiting… but for what?
“Matilda Clairmont is the widow of James Heddiston Clairmont,” she told him when he’d finished, steepling her slender fingers as she dredged her memory. “He was something to do with the Exchequer well before the war. Thoroughly nice man. She’s the most terrible woman you can imagine, sugary sweet to everyone, just the most helpful and ingratiating way with her I’ve ever come across. If she’s likely to be hanged for murder, I can name you fifty women in town who would rejoice! And send the most expensive wreaths they can lay hands on to the funeral afterward!”
He grinned. “What’s wrong with being sweet and helpful?”
Frances shook her head. “Darling, you aren’t another woman, or you’d know. Females like Matilda are deadly. The kind who can drip venom with such graciousness you’d never scotch the rumors she’s set about.” Mimicking, her normally very attractive contralto became light and very innocent. “’My dear, I’ve been told the most dreadful thing about someone, and I can’t bear to believe it could be true! If you swear not to repeat a word, I’ll confide in you-I haven’t been able to sleep a wink since I learned that-’” She returned to her natural voice. “And by the time she’s finished, reputations are in ruins.”
“Is there any likelihood that Thomas Napier might consider marrying Mrs. Clairmont? I’m told there was some hint of it in the newspapers in the spring.”
Her eyebrows rose in interested speculation. “Now that’s a rumor that Matilda herself probably started. I haven’t heard it from a reliable source. And if you want my honest opinion, I’d say he’s very likely got a mistress tucked away. He doesn’t strike me as a man on the loose. One can always tell, you know.”
“Could his mistress be his daughter’s secretary?”
She considered that. “She might be. But she isn’t. I only know Margaret Tarlton to speak to, but she’s not one to waste herself in a boudoir. She’s ambitious, Ian. There’s not a breath of scandal about her, which is the surest proof.”
“Who bought the house in Chelsea she lives in?”
“That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? The money, I’m told, came from a trust fund her father had set up. But somehow I doubt it. He was a very junior civil servant in Delhi, and her mother was a Saddler, from Norfolk. No money there either! Whoever her sponsor is, he’s been very careful.”
“Could it be Napier?” he asked a second time.
She tilted her head to one side, considering. The lamplight caught her dark blue eyes, and they sparkled like sapphires. “Ian, are you sure about this?”
“No. It’s supposition, based on bits of conjecture, not solid fact.”
“Thomas Napier is a very fine man. Highly regarded in London, and of course with a political following that makes a false step dangerous. For you-and for him. Why this sudden interest in the Napiers and Margaret?”
“I think she’s dead. Murdered, very likely, but whether by the man we have in custody in Dorset or by someone else, I’m not sure.”
“But that’s horrible! In Dorset, you say? I don’t understand!”
“It’s still only a theory, mind you. But it has to be carefully investigated. She came down to Charlbury to apply for the position of assistant to Simon Wyatt and apparently no one has seen her since then. That’s all we have to go on now. Wyatt’s opening a museum of artifacts his grandfather brought home from the East.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about that. He’s husband to the fascinating Aurore-everyone is dying to meet her! The woman he chucked a promising political career for. Have you seen her? Is she as intriguing as everyone expects?”
“She’s-very attractive. An intelligent woman-” He broke off uneasily. The last thing he wanted was Frances on the wrong scent. “Hardly the sensational sort. If that’s the only reason for attending the museum’s opening, I expect most people will be sadly disappointed. Will they come just for that, do you think?”
But Frances was busy pursuing another thought “That Chelsea house
… Richard Wyatt, Simon’s father, was absolutely mortified when he discovered Simon was married-it was social suicide, a complete disregard for the proprieties. I remember the uproar at the time- and how quickly it ended. But the timing isn’t right, is it?” She tapped her fingers lightly on the arm of her chair, musing. “Still, do you suppose Napier went to Wyatt saying Margaret has found a house she wants-it will only be for a year or two, Elizabeth will marry Simon and I’ll be free to speak. Then the house will be sold. Lend her the money, to keep Elizabeth from suspecting anything, and I’ll see it’s repaid in good time. Then-when the news came about Aurore-Wyatt called in his favor, and Napier spread the story that Elizabeth had broken the engagement first. Of course that salvaged her pride but it also seemed to salvage Simon’s reputation. Elizabeth is well thought of in London, people felt he’d treated her very shabbily!” She saw her brother’s expression and stopped. “What is it? You feel all of that is completely far-fetched?”
“No, but none of it makes any sense. If it came out that either man’s name was associated with the Chelsea property, it would ruin Margaret Tarlton too. I don’t see Napier taking such a risk.” He was playing devil’s advocate.
“Well, there are several ways around that. Buying a house for someone leaves traces, I grant you. On the other hand, if that someone buys it for herself, who’s to say where the actual pounds came from? Enemies could subject Napier’s finances to the closest scutiny and find nothing-they’d never think of looking into Wyatt’s bank balance, would they? And here’s another small bit of the puzzle. Rumor said that Simon Wyatt’s inheritance wasn’t as grand as he’d expected. Bad investments during the war, or so the story goes. I’ve heard that Simon had to sell the Wyatts’ London house to pay for that museum of his! Well, that wouldn’t be surprising, if Napier wasn’t able to keep to his own plans and marry Margaret-after all, Elizabeth is still unwed, so the house couldn’t be sold. It might also explain why Margaret got fed up and decided to change jobs.”
“It’s an interesting possibility. Still, even if you’re right that Napier borrowed the money from Wyatt, I can’t see any direct connection from that to Margaret Tarlton’s murder. How would it benefit anyone?” He stood up, the whisky failing to penetrate the gloom he felt settling around him. “For that matter, so far I haven’t found a sound reason for anyone to want to kill her. Except mistaken identity.”
“No, but you will.” She smiled as she held out her hand for his empty glass. “If there is one.”
As she walked with him to the door, Rutledge said, “If you had to dispose of a suitcase that might connect you with a murder, where would you hide it?”
“A suitcase? I’d put it in the one place everyone expects to find luggage-a hotel or a railway station.”
“Would you? A hall porter or a stationmaster would come across it in the long run and try to locate the owner.”
“Well, then-the one place no one ever goes.”
It was a thought that followed him all the way back to Dorset