Charles Todd: Author Interview

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It was very late, and Rutledge, unable to sleep, finally got up and dressed and let himself out of the inn in the darkness of a fading moon, his pockets filled with candies and matches from his room.

He tramped through the silent streets, where not even a dog roused up to bark at him, but there was an owl in the darker woods who spoke softly as he passed. Death omens, owls had been called, but he'd always found a strange comfort in their lonely sounds.

There was no light in the house, no indications that Cormac was in residence. Deep in his own thoughts and problems, Rutledge hadn't considered that impediment. But somehow he knew that the house was empty the instant he put his hand on the latch and turned the key. Stepping inside and closing the door behind him, he fumbled for a candle and the matches. It flared brightly, startling him—in the trenches it could bring a sniper's bullet in its wake—but he managed not to drop it. Hamish, grumbling with dislike, waited until he'd lighted the candle and said, "Try the library first. Not the study. She'd not keep them there!"

But Rutledge knew that the study was where he was heading, and he climbed the stairs slowly, quietly, to walk along the gallery and stop for a moment to listen to whispers that seemed to follow him. It was only the sea, and he recognized it at once, but a shiver passed through him all the same. He thought of Rachel and her ghosts. What was there in this house that had marked it so strongly?

He opened the study door and was surprised that the moonlight poured so intently through the room's windows. No one had closed the curtains here, and he stopped to count back. Yes—there must have been a full moon on that Saturday night. Olivia and Nicholas could well have died in its light, for it would have poured through these windows like a silver sea—

Hamish, unsettled and arguing fiercely with Rutledge, blotted out the sounds of the waves coming in against the headland. But they were there, an undercurrent that somehow soothed. As if the vastness of the sea dwarfed human griefs and sorrows and pain.

Who had been the first to die? he wondered again, looking at the couch in the candle's faint glow. The man or the woman? The killer—or the victim? Or were they both—somehow—victims?

After a time he went over to the bookshelves by the typewriter, and looked through the volumes there. Surely the others had had their own copies, they wouldn't have needed to take hers?

The candle's light moved along the shelves, stirred by his breath. And there on the spine of a slim dark blue book were letters that gleamed like molten gold: WINGS OF FIRE. He pulled it out, then began his search again. A wine-dark volume, like blood in this shadowy corner, and written in silver: LUCIFER. The one his sister Frances had said set London on its ear. Trust her to know what Society felt about the new, the different, the timely.

Soon afterwards he found LIGHT AND DARK, then THE SCENT OF VIOLETS. And when he'd nearly given up, SHADOWS.

The candle was dripping hot wax on his fingers. He swore, collected his booty, and stood up. Something seemed to move in the darkness, and in its wake stirred a faint scent of sandalwood and roses.

END