lyrical, with undercurrents of dark humor at times, and subtle contrasts that caught people and emotions with such precision that lines stayed with you long afterward, like personal memories. She’d written about the war too, and he’d read some of those poems in the trenches, marveling that anyone could have captured so clearly what men felt out there in the bloody shambles of France. Could have found the courage to put it into words. He hadn’t known then that O. A. Manning was a woman.
But of course the Wings of Fire poems were different, and perhaps it was those that Dawlish’s wife knew. Love poems, and unlike the poems Shakespeare had written to his dark lady, these were light and warmth and beauty intermingled with such passion that they sang in the heart as you read them. Wings of Fire had touched him in a way that few things had.
Hamish growled, his voice a low rumble in the back of Rutledge’s mind. “Thought of your Jean, did you, as you read those lines? She’s no’ worthy of that kind of love! My Fiona was. She gave me the book before I took the troop train to London. They found it in my pocket, wet with my blood, when they dug out my corpse.”
Nearly choking on his tea, Rutledge coughed and said, “Leaving the suicides for the moment, none of the four atthe house that last day had anything to gain from killing Stephen FitzHugh?”
“As to Mr. Cormac FitzHugh, nothing. He has no rights in the house. Miss Rachel and Mr. and Mrs. Hargrove will receive a larger share of the sale now, but we looked into that. Their finances are in order, and there’s no reason to think they needed the extra money.”
“Where money’s concerned, people will do strange things. All right, I think you’ve told me all I need to hear for the moment. Where am I staying?”
“I’ve put you at The Three Bells, sir. Not far from the church. You can’t miss it.”
“Thank Mrs. Dawlish for the tea.” Rutledge collected the papers on the table and added a good night. It was raining again, and he dashed to his car, reaching it and climbing inside just as a wind-driven downpour swept over the headland and rattled against the picket fence like distant machine gun fire.
“Do ye think it was witchcraft that made yon woman write as she did?” Hamish asked, still intrigued with Olivia Marlowe. “She knew the war too well, man! It’s unnatural!”
“It wasn’t witchcraft, it was genius,” he answered before he could stop himself. It was a habit too hard to break, responding to Hamish.
Rutledge got out as the squall passed, started the engine, and drove too fast though the slanting rain. The inn came up before he expected it, and he nearly skidded as he came to a splashing stop in front of it. Beyond it he could see the spire of the church rising like a spear against the backdrop of storm clouds and wind-tossed trees.
“With your luck, you’d survive the car crash. And live in a chair for the rest of your days, with no one but me for company,” Hamish pointed out, and Rutledge swore.
The inn was small, sway-backed gray stone under a dark slate roof that seemed to be slowly pushing the whole building deeper into the earth from sheer weight. He was expected, and the landlord gave him a room overlooking a small cultivated enclosure in the back, more a tangle of overgrownroses and rhododendron than anything that could be dignified by the name of “garden.” He unpacked with swift efficiency and in ten minutes was abed and asleep.
He was never afraid to sleep. Hamish couldn’t follow him there.
But Jean could.
In the darkness, hours later, the wind shifted, and the sea’s breath drifted in the half-open window, bringing with it the softness of summer. Rutledge stirred, turned over, and began to dream of the woman he’d loved—and who’d wanted no part of the shattered remnants of the man she’d promised to marry. Jean, who in her own way haunted him too.
She touched his arm, and led him down a path he