But he ignored her and called Mrs. Quarles's name. She came to the top of the stairs, her face flushed with her anger. 'What do you think you're doing?'
'Come down here, or I'll come up there.'
Without a word, she came down the stairs and walked past him to the small sitting room. He followed.
'What is it you want?' She stood there, cold and straight, as if nothing more could touch her.
'There was a bequest in your husband's will. To the housemaid who looked after him. Betty Richards.'
'What business is that of yours?'
'She was never told, after the will was read. I want to know why.'
'I didn't think it was an appropriate bequest. She's not capable of handling that much money-'
'Tell me the truth. Or I'll see to it that you're taken into Cambury police station for theft.'
'It's not theft,' she retorted. 'It's my husband's money-'
'And he left it to that woman.'
'That woman, as you put it, is his widowed sister. He kept her here as a maid, and let the world think he was kind to take her on. But he did it to keep the rest of us out of his rooms and his affairs. He knew he could trust her. She's not fit to be my son's aunt, and I won't have her in this house any longer.'
'Then give her the money he left to her, and let her go.'
'For all I care, she can starve. She's a Quarles and I hate them all!'
She went past him out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Any sympathy he'd felt for her had vanished. He pulled open the door and called to Mrs. Downing.
'You'll pack Betty Richard's things and send them to Cambury to the house of Miss O'Hara. She'll be staying there until someone from the solicitor's office can be summoned. I want them there within the hour, do you hear me?'
Mrs. Downing said, 'I'll see to it-'
But he was out the door. As he looked back at the house on his way to his motorcar, he saw a face staring at him from the window. A boy, he realized, in Harold Quarles's rooms.
It was Marcus Quarles, a bewildered, frightened expression on his face.
Rutledge drove to the Home Farm and asked Tom Masters and his wife to send Betty Richards to Cambury as soon as she'd recovered.
'She's sleeping now, poor thing,' Mrs. Masters told him. 'Let her rest. It will be soon enough to take her there tomorrow.'
'You may find yourself in trouble if you take her in,' he warned. 'I'll go ahead and tell Miss O'Hara that she's to have a guest.'
Miss O'Hara frowned when he told her. 'I'm not a boardinghouse. But if you insist, then I'll keep her safe.'
'She won't be staying long. You'll be hearing from Mr. Hurley. A solicitor. He'll have instructions for her.'
'Yes, well, that may be. You owe me another dinner, then.'
Rutledge smiled. 'I'll remember.'
He didn't stop at the police station. He had nothing to say to Inspector Padgett. But on his way to speak to Miss O'Hara, he'd noticed the board outside St. Martin's Church.
Someone had covered the name of MICHAEL BRUNSWICK, ORGANIST.
In London, Rutledge went directly to the house of Davis Penrith.
He said to the man as he was shown into the study, 'You have lied to me more times than I care to count. About your father. About Quarles. About Evering. I know about South Africa now. Almost the entire story.'
'You can't possibly know.'
'About Evering burning alive? About the wounded who were shot? About the fact that you never turned Quarles in to the authorities?'
'I had no proof!'
'Of course you did. You knew how many wounded there were, or you'd have never walked across the veldt alone to find help. You and Quarles would have left that train together to find help, because there was nothing the Boers wanted from it then. But he stayed behind. I want to know why.'
'I tell you, I didn't know.'
'What was it, cowardice? Did you and Quarles get cold feet when the Boers attacked, and hide under the carriages? Was that why you survived? They were dead shots, the Boers. How was it that neither you nor Quarles was wounded, and yet everyone else on that train died?'
'I don't remember. When the train was stopped, I was knocked down. I don't remember.'
'How did Quarles burn his hands? If he was in that carriage with Evering, why were only his hands burned?'
'I wasn't there.'
'But you knew when you walked away and left Quarles there-with no wounds, mind you-that Evering was alive. Wounded, perhaps, but alive. The Boers didn't burn men to death.'
'It was the lantern in the last carriage. It was hit and broken. I don't know why it burned, but it did.'
'You surely knew Ronald Evering was the brother of the man Quarles killed. Why did he come to you to invest his money?'
'I can't answer that. Coincidence-one in a thousand odds-'
'I think he must have learned something, and he came to you to find out the rest.' It was a battering of questions, and Rutledge could tell that Penrith couldn't sustain it.
'He couldn't have known anything, no one did. We never told anyone we'd been in the army. Not even Mr. James.'
'What were you trying to hide, if it wasn't cowardice?'
'We were hiding nothing. Nothing.'
'Why did you write a letter to Ronald Evering, just in the last few days? It arrived on St. Anne's the same time I did, and I carried it to the house myself.'
'I-he'd said something about wanting to invest with me again. I told him that the opportunities he spoke of had not turned out the way he'd hoped, and I thought he would be wise to look elsewhere.'
'How odd, that after Cumberline, he would wish to trust you again with any sum of money.'
'Yes, I thought the same-' Penrith broke off. 'That's to say, I found it odd myself.'
'You've lied to me about many things. Why did you lie to me about Scotland?'
It came out of nowhere, a shot in the dark from Rutledge that shook Penrith to the core. 'I was in Scotland. I swear to you I was! There's the letter from my wife.'
'But not that whole weekend. She says something about it being such a brief visit, and that you'd arrived just in time to dine with the Douglases. I think you reached Scotland on Sunday afternoon, not on Friday. And you're letting an innocent man hang in your place. You were in Cambury on that Saturday night. You quarreled with your former partner first on Minton Street, where you'd followed him from Hallowfields, and then you went ahead of him, knowing he was on foot. And you killed him, because you were afraid of him, and what he knew about your past. He was doing things that you didn't approve of, that you feared would ruin both of you. The Cumberline stocks, his outrageous behavior in Cambury, refusing to listen to you-' 'It wasn't that way, you've got it wrong-'
'Why did you strike your partner down, and then carry his body to the tithe barn and hoist him to the ceiling in that angel's harness, where no one would think to look for him? Did you hope that this would give you time to reach Scotland before anyone could accuse you of killing him?'
'I never put him in that harness-you're lying-' 'But that's how he was found. And someone did it. If it wasn't you, then who would do such an ugly thing?' 'I never put him in anything-'
'An innocent man is going to hang,' Rutledge said again. 'And it will be on your conscience. Perhaps you weren't there when Quarles shot the wounded-or when he burned Evering alive. It may be that you've nothing on your conscience but protecting a friend. But this death is on your hands. When Brunswick hangs, it will be you who slides the hood over his head and the rope tight around his neck-'
'Stop it!' Penrith put his hands over his ears, trying to shut out Rutledge's unrelenting voice. 'I am not guilty. I've never killed anyone. Harold Quarles was still alive when I left him-'
'You wouldn't have left Quarles alive. Not if he knew it was you who struck him. He was a bad enemy. A dangerous man. You had proof of that, whatever you want to deny about South Africa.'
