Elizabeth, pushing her way past both of them, reached the threshold, and for an instant Rutledge thought she was about to faint. She swayed on her feet, grasped the door’s edge, and began to whimper with soft, short breaths.

Aurore broke away and went into the room.

Rutledge knew what it held. He had seen. In that one brief, anguished glance, he had seen it all in the lamplight. Simon Wyatt, seated at the desk, a sheet of paper on the top in front of him, a pen beside it, and his blood blown across it by the impact of the bullet to his temple. The pistol on the floor beside his chair was German, a war souvenir.

The Germans, Rutledge thought helplessly, had got him after all.

And Hamish, aware of the grief and the pain and the horror of what had happened, said, “Look well. See yoursel’. If it’s no’ the Germans waiting, it will be me.”

Rutledge stood there for an instant, frozen, seeing in his mind’s eye his own shattered face lying on one arm out-flung across the bare wood.

Chapter Twenty Seven

27

Rutledge made himself walk into the room and look at the sheet of paper under Simon’s arm, although he had guessed what was written on it. It was addressed to Hildebrand. It said only, “You were wrong. I blacked out and killed them both. She didn’t know. It is better this way.” And the signature read, with a flourish, Simon Wyatt.

Rutledge softly swore, the waste of a man’s life shocking him.

Aurore was kneeling beside her husband, her arm across his shoulder, saying “He’s still warm, there must be a pulse, if I can stop the bleeding—”

Elizabeth was clinging to the door frame, sobbing heavily, her eyes unable to look away.

Rutledge bent to Aurore, touched her shining hair briefly, gently, then forced her to let Simon go, lifting her to her feet, turning her to face him. “He’s dead, Aurore. He’s dead, there’s nothing you can do.”

She buried her face against him then, and he thought she was going to cry, like Elizabeth. But she was only searching for strength, her body at the point of breaking, her mind already broken.

She said, “I was so afraid. I was so afraid that one day—And now I’ll never need to be afraid again.”

She let him lead her out of the room but seemed unaware of the chair he seated her on or the handkerchief he thrust into her hands.

Elizabeth refused to go, clinging to the door, her eyes unable to leave the crumpled shoulders, the untidy fair hair, the great black stain of blood.

Rutledge finally got her to move back into the museum, and that was when she straightened, seeming to tower in her anger, and loosed the storm of it at Aurore.