Charles Todd: Author Interview

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Shadowed, the headland on his left was massive and dark, white water creaming at its base. And the house was invisible from here, only the line of the roof and the clipped lawns foretelling its presence.

There was the sound of footsteps on the shingle behind him, and he turned to see Rachel Ashford coming towards him. He waited for her, and she said, "Has he gone yet?"

"Cormac FitzHugh? No, I left him in the house."

Chewing her lip for a moment, she thought about it. "Well, I'll just have to wait until tomorrow, won't I? For the ships." Then she looked up at him, shading her eyes with her hand. "I know!" she said, answering what she read in his face. "I wasn't actually ready to fetch them anyway. It's just—" After a moment, she went on in different voice, "You've been in there. What did you feel?"

She meant, the study upstairs. And he couldn't pretend to misunderstand.

He said, looking out to sea, "I don't know."

But Hamish said, very clearly, "The lassie didn't ask for lies!"

Startled, Rutledge turned back to her and said, "What makes you think there's anything to feel?"

It was her turn to be evasive. "I—you don't make decisions like that, and expect no trace of them to survive. I'm not fanciful, you know. But when I go inside that house, I hear the silence. And I can't tell what it's whispering to me. But I'm frightened."

"Would you like me to fetch the ships for you? Put them out in the gallery, where you could box them up without going inside the study?" He couldn't have said, afterward, why he'd volunteered to do it. Except that he could sense her pain. And pain he understood.

Surprised, she said, "Would you? I couldn't impose on Mrs. Trepol. Or ask the others, they'd have laughed at me. But if you could—when Cormac has gone? It—it would be very kind of you!"

He couldn't stop the next question. It came out more bluntly than he'd intended. Because, he knew, it disturbed him deeply. "Do you think Olivia Marlowe could have murdered her half-brother, then killed herself?"

For an instant he thought she was going to faint, her face turned so white, and she took several gasping breaths, as if to steady herself. He reached out to catch her arm, but she shook him off.

"You—is that what you feel in that room?"

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"I've been asked to look into the deaths of three of your patients. Stephen FitzHugh, Olivia Marlowe, and Nicholas Cheney."

Hawkins stared at him, then threw his pen on the desk with such force that it bounced and nearly rolled off the edge. "Those deaths are history. Closed. The Inquest agreed with my first impressions and my considered opinion. An accident and a double suicide. Surely you've read the medical report?"

"I have, and it's very thorough. All the same, there are questions I must ask. And that you are required to answer."

"I know damned well what I'm required to do," Hawkins said irritably. "And I've done it." His eyes narrowed and he looked at Rutledge with sudden suspicion. "You aren't planning to dig up the bodies, are you? That's all I need right now!"

"In what way?"

"Look, I've been a good doctor here. I took over from my wife's father, who's nearly gaga now, war finished him, too much to do, too little energy to do it. I've built a decent practice, and I'm being considered for a partnership in Plymouth. I learned my craft in the war, doing things I'd never thought in school I'd be expected to do. Sew up the dying, send the living back to the Front, find a way to keep the shell-shock cases from being shot for cowardice—" he saw Rutledge flinch, and added with relish, "—and even deliver 47 babies to refugees who had no place to sleep themselves, much less with infants to nurse! I've paid my dues, I've earned the right to move on to better things, and if my future partners get wind of the fact that three—three!—of my cases are being exhumed, under Scotland Yard's eager eye, I'll be dead, stuck here forever. No chance at Plymouth, no hope of London in the end!"

"The fact that Scotland Yard has an interest in these deaths in no way is a reflection on you—"

"The hell it isn't! For God's sake, man, I filled out the death certificates! It has everything to do with me!"

#

Rutledge left the doctor's office, thinking over what he'd been told that morning.

Damn all, if you came right down to it!

No crimes, no murderers, no reason for a seasoned Scotland Yard Inspector to waste his time here.

"But just what ye're good for—nithing," Hamish declared. "What if Warwickshire was only a bit of luck, and none of your doing? What if you failed there, and haven't had the sense yet to see it? What if ye're failing now, because you haven't got the skills to tell whether there's murder here or no'? That house is haunted, man, and if you don't find out why, ye'll be defeated by your own fears!"