Free Wings of Fire by Charles Todd Page B

the look of him—to working in the ground than preaching from a pulpit. He straightened up when he saw Rutledge coming across the strip of lawn between the vegetables and the flowers. “Good afternoon,” he said, neither effusively nor coolly, but with the manner of a man who’d rather be about his own business just now than God’s.
    “Inspector Rutledge, from London,” he replied. “Mr. Smedley?”
    “Aye, that’s right,” the rector said with a sigh and put down his hoe.
    “No, keep working, if you like. I’d prefer to stay out here and talk than go inside.” The housekeeper, if he was any judge, had long ears. “It isn’t a matter for a priest so much as a question of information that I need.”
    “Well, then, if you don’t mind?” He picked up his hoeand began to chip at the weeds between rows of what appeared to be marigolds and asters next to a line of sweet peas.
    “I’m here because London has a few remaining questions about several deaths in May. At Trevelyan Hall.”
    The rector glanced at him with a smile. “So gossip was right this morning. And you’d hardly set foot in the place.”
    “Yes, but the questions I’m about to ask you aren’t for the ears of gossips. Good intentioned or ill. I want to know about the people who died. The woman and the two men. What they were like, how they lived, why they should die, so close together.”
    The rector’s back was to Rutledge now, as he turned to come down the other row. “Ah. Well, that’s a long story. Do you know much about the family?”
    “About the grandfather who owned the Hall. About the daughter who had three husbands and six children, only one of whom is still living. About the cousin. And about the stepson who lives in London and made his fortune. I could have learned all this from the shopkeepers and the housewives on their way to market. I need more. To satisfy London that all’s well.”
    “And why should London doubt that?”
    “The Home Office has been going through reports. They like to be thorough. Three deaths in one family in such a short time raises…doubts?”
    “None of those here, I can tell you that much! I don’t know of any questions raised when Olivia and Nicholas were discovered, nor any gossip that’s flown about since. And in a village like this, it’s your surest sign that all’s well. As for the death of Stephen FitzHugh, the man fell in an empty house, all the members of his party outside and accounted for. Unless you believe in ghosts, I don’t suppose there’s much to be suspicious of in that.”
    “Strange that you should mention ghosts,” Rutledge said idly. “I’m told the Hall is haunted. And not by anything that can be exorcised by the church.”
    The rector straightened again and looked at him. “Who has told you these tales?”
    “A Scotsman, for one,” Rutledge answered.
    The rector smiled. “They’re great ones for the Sight, the Scots. Has he also told you whether murder has been done?”
    Touché.
    “Has murder been done? Now—or in the far past?”
    “Not to my knowledge,” the rector said. “And I include the confessional in that answer. No one has confessed to me, and no gossip has reached me. The house has seen a good deal of sorrow in its time. But show me a house that hasn’t been touched by grief. Especially not with the war and the influenza epidemic. You’ll see the wounded for yourself. We were spared the sickness here—the worst of it, anyway. We lost only three souls to it. But even three is too many in a village this size.”
    “Tell me if you will how a woman like Olivia Marlowe, who was reclusive and knew very little of the outside world, could write such poetry?”
    He went back to his hoeing. “There’s a question only God can answer. But who says she knew very little of the world? I’ve read the poems. They speak to me of a frightening knowledge of the human condition. Of the human soul. And yet she never spoke of her writing to me. And I never