Charles Todd: Author Interview

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"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 exercised 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 saw 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 asked her questions about it. Come to that, we only knew at the very end that she was O.A. Manning. It'd been kept a dark secret, even from her family. I'd say Nicholas knew, and that was it."

"But if she had such understanding and such spirit, why keep it secret?"

"Well, Inspector, I take it you have no secrets—painful or otherwise—that you prefer to hide from the world? Not immoral secrets, not terrible secrets, perhaps, but those that wound your spirit?"

Which was too damned close for comfort. Rutledge began to reassess his earlier opinion of the priest. Hamish was murmuring viciously, rubbing salt into the fresh wound. But then it was always fresh...

"Her paralysis, then?"

"She found it confining," Smedley said pensively. "But never a cross to bear. What she feared most, I think, was to be judged on that account, and not on her work. You've read the literary magazines since the news broke, I suppose? Everyone scrambling to understand the woman, and not the verse. Delving into her life as if it held answers. Making an issue of her condition."

"Was she ugly? Misshapen? Did she not know how to dress well? To do her hair? Talk to people? Is that what she ran away from, and buried in her genius?"

Mr. Smedley began to laugh before Rutledge finished his catalog. "I have a very poor opinion of the women you've known, Inspector! If that's how you judge the fair sex! Even as a churchman I knew better than that!"

"Then describe her to me!" Rutledge said irritably.

Smedley leaned on his hoe and looked up at the dormers of his house. "For one thing, her mother was beautiful. Rosamund. In Olivia, it came out in other ways. You found you couldn't forget her, yet you couldn't say why that was. She had lovely eyes, inherited from her father. I suppose her strength may have come from him as well, although Rosamund had great strength too. Transport Olivia to London, and except for the useless limb, she'd not be that much different from any young woman you found there. She'd have had more than her share of beaus, if the men in the city had half the sense they were born with! No, Olivia wasn't ugly or misshapen. She dressed like any other countrywoman. No floating scarves, none of those shiny black gowns or exotic feathers. No literary pretensions at all. A warm manner, a pleasant nature, but never serene. Serenity had not been granted to her." He shrugged. "Her hair, always one of her glories, was darker than Rosamund's, that shade of brown that turns to gold in the sunlight. More like her father's. George Marlowe was a very fine man, Rosamund adored him, and she was bereft when he died in India. She told me herself that they feared for her health, and sanity, for a time. Her courage saw her through. And her faith."

Rutledge felt his confusion deepen. Did everyone see Olivia in a different light? And if they did—where was the real woman?

"I was surprised when she took her life," Smedley said after a moment. "Olivia. I wouldn't have expected it of her. For Nicholas to follow her seemed—oddly—reasonable enough, I can't tell you why—it just did. But for Olivia to die by her own hand—it shook me deeply. It was as if a bedrock from which I drew my own strength had suddenly been shaken to its roots and crumbled. I wept," he said, as if that still surprised him and left him uncertain of himself, "I wept not only for myself and for her—but for what was lost, with her going. She was the most remarkable woman I've ever known. Or ever hope to know."

"And Nicholas?"

"He was an enigma," Smedley replied slowly. "In all the years I'd known him, I never really knew the man. He had great depths, great passion. A wonderful mind, we played chess and argued over the war, and discussed politics. And I was never allowed behind the wall of his patience."

When Rutledge didn't respond, Smedley added almost to himself, "I don't know that Nicholas wasn't my greatest failure..."