“Not at all,” Rutledge said pleasantly, stepping in before her husband could frame an answer. “I should like to borrow it. It would have been very helpful when I was asking the other villages if they’d seen her.”
She picked up a cloth and began to dry her hands. “It wasn’t taken for the police. It’s for her family or whoever comes to ask about her.”
“Yes, I do understand that. But the copy intended for the Yard appears to have gone missing. I’ve never seen it. And so I should like to borrow the other copy for a time. You must have the negative.”
He could see that she was about to refuse.
“I don’t think it’s proper to show it to everyone and his cat. Anyone who might simply be curious about her. The dead are so—vulnerable. I can’t help but feel she wouldn’t like it.”
“It’s more important, I think, to find her killer than to worry about her dignity.” He kept his voice calm, gentle.
She looked to her husband, silently asking him his opinion.
The Rector said, “I’m not happy about it either, my dear. But if he promises faithfully to take care of it and return it to us as soon as his business here is finished, then I feel we must give it to him.”
“You can’t put a name to her?” Rutledge asked her. “It would save so much time if you could.”
She faced him, drawing herself up. “If I could name that poor young woman, I would have done so, the minute I saw her. I was taking her clothing back to Dr. Mason, so that she could be suitably dressed for the undertaker’s. She wasn’t my size, and no one else had anything that would fit. Nor did the doctor’s late wife. I saw her then, and I thought it such a pity. She must have a mother somewhere—a father—someone to whom she was precious.”
“It’s to your credit that you thought about a photograph. I’ll take very good care of it, I promise you. And see that it’s returned.”
She hesitated, and then nodded.
Her husband left to fetch it. His wife looked at Rutledge for a moment and then said, “I hope you find whoever killed her. I thought Chief Inspector Leslie might, because he seemed to feel much as I did, that she was a tragic victim. I think it troubled him that he’d failed. I had a feeling that he wasn’t a man used to failure.”
She was a perceptive woman, and he asked, “If you saw her, if you worked with her clothing, even photographed her, what could you tell me about her?”
She smiled wryly. “If he’s to be successful in the living he’s sent to take up, a Rector’s wife has to understand people. Not judge them, mind you, but take them as they are and still know what they are. I noticed her shoes. She’d walked a great deal, and although she kept them polished, the soles told their own story. Her clothing was good. Neither cheap nor overly expensive. The sort of things I might buy for myself, and so there must have been money, but not a great deal of it. Still, they were proud, and careful with what they did have. One of her undergarments had been beautifully mended along one side.” She shrugged slightly, as if a little self-conscious. “Perhaps that in itself doesn’t tell you much. We all did without during the war. We had no choice. But it says something about her too. Her clothes were made for her by an excellent seamstress, and I wondered if perhaps they were French. Like the little scarf. The stitching was exquisite. I wondered perhaps if she was a refugee? We had a few of those staying with us during the war. Does that sound far-fetched?”
Not Welsh, then? It was a new bit of evidence, and Rutledge felt certain that the Rector’s wife was not lying to him.
“Not at all. In fact, I find it very helpful. Did you tell Chief Inspector Leslie these things?”
“No. He saw her body, you see. And he didn’t ask.”
The Rector returned just then with an envelope in his hand, and after the briefest hesitation, he held it out to Rutledge. He accepted the envelope but didn’t open it.
He thanked both of them, and the Rector saw him out. He said only, “Good day, Inspector.”
Rutledge turned. “Has no one come to look for her grave? Even if he didn’t speak to you about her?” It was necessary to be sure.
“How could anyone come here to look? Only her killer knows where she died.”
The door swung closed, and Rutledge found himself alone on the path from the side door to the church. As he walked back to the churchyard gate, he had the feeling that he was being watched. But he didn’t turn around. He was sure it was the Rector, already having second thoughts.
There was nowhere private where he could look at the photograph, except for the church, and he rather thought that the Rector wouldn’t follow him there.
He stepped inside, out of the wind, and walked to where enough light was coming through one of the windows that he could see properly. After the briefest hesitation, he took out the photograph.
Rutledge couldn’t have said afterward what he’d expected to see. But the woman had been described briefly in Leslie’s report, and he’d heard Mason’s comments on her appearance.
The photograph was quite clear. The Rector’s wife had taken an excellent likeness. Even in death, there was something about her. Around her throat, the pretty scarf the Vicar’s wife had kept aside was beautifully tucked into the collar of her walking dress. He could see the fleur-de-lis pattern.
The dark hair had been properly dressed in a becoming style, and against the white lining of the coffin, he could see how unusually black it was. Her face was oval, the dark lashes pointing up the paleness of her skin.
Listening to Dr. Mason and Mrs. Dunlop, he’d expected a great beauty.
Instead what he saw was something else, even in the repose of death.
She was attractive. Pretty, even. But it wasn’t that.
He moved slightly, and as he did, the clouds opened and for a moment the sun broke through, casting the rich colors of the window above his head across his hand and the photograph he held. Dark blues and greens and blood-red. And it was there now in the shifting light and shadow that he saw it.
Mrs. Dunlop was right. This woman was a threat, but not in the usual sense. Not beauty that stirred a man’s blood, turned his head, and made him do foolish things that he’d regret in the clear light of day. Nor temptation of a different sort, raw and earthy and available. Not even the sort a man coveted because with her on his arm, other men envied him.
He could feel it himself. An urge to protect her—to stand between her and whatever it was that had hurt her. To take away the sadness that was there even now.
What had happened to this woman, long before she died in a stone circle at a murderer’s hand?
A refugee? As the Rector’s wife suggested?
He remembered something that Dr. Mason had said to him while describing what he’d learned while examining the body. She’d had a child. Not recently. Some time ago.
Why had he felt there was sadness in the still features? The loss of that child?
Whose child was it, come to that? Where was the father? Had he deserted her? Died? Or was he in England, and she had come to find him?
The sun faded behind the clouds again, and it was just a photograph in his hand, in the usual tones of black and white and gray. A dead face, the eyes closed, and eyes told so much.
After a while, he put the photograph safely away, and with a last glance at the rood screen, left the church.