A Test of Wills

She was saying anxiously, “Should I offer you tea or—or coffee? I don’t know when Helena’s coming back, truly I don’t, it would be useless to wait, and there’s the cleaning still to be done….”

Taking pity on her, he left, dodging the goose again, but he was sorely tempted to sideswipe it after one last onslaught as he cranked the car. The heavy wings had caught the side of his head a nasty clip as he bent over.

“At least it wasn’t a goat,” Davies said, enjoying himself. “You’d have sailed over yon wall like one of the Captain’s aeroplanes.”

When they reached Upper Streetham again, they found a message from Dr. Warren saying that he must see them urgently.

He was in his surgery when they arrived and he took them upstairs to a small room with an iron bedstead, a table, a single chair, and a very still form under starched sheets.

“Hickam,” Warren said shortly.

“What the devil’s happened to him?” Rutledge demanded, drawing up the only chair and sitting down to stare at the closed, gray face. “He looks half dead!”

“He is. Alcoholic poisoning—he drank enough to kill himself. A miracle he didn’t. I’ve never seen a man so full of gin in all my years of practice. Hickam must have the constitution of an ox.”

Rutledge felt a surge of guilt. “Where did you find him? How?”

“I was coming home last night from the Pinters’ farm—just over the ridge, one of Haldane’s tenants, little girl’s in rough shape, and I’d stayed until the sedative finally started to work. This was about two in the morning. Hickam was lying in the middle of the road. He’d crawled that far, though God knows from where, and then passed out. I damned near ran over him, to tell you the truth of it, didn’t see him until the last minute because he was in the darker shadows cast by the trees along the High Street there, and I didn’t have my headlamps on—there’s something wrong with the fool things. I was so tired that I thought it was a sleeping dog and swerved to miss it, and damned near rammed the horse trough outside Miss Millard’s dress shop. Then I realized it was Hickam, and for a brass farthing would have just left him there in the road to sleep it off. But I got the car started again, managed to haul him into it, and brought him here. And a good thing too, or we’d have lost him for a fact.”

Rutledge could see the man’s unsteady breathing, the sheet over his chest rising and falling with soft but ragged irregularity, and said, “Are you sure he’ll live?” He found himself torn between wishing Hickam dead and keeping him alive. But if he died, and it was Rutledge’s doing—he cursed himself savagely.

Warren shrugged. “Nothing is sure in medicine. But at least the odds are on his side now. God knows, there must have been a pint of gin still in his belly when I pumped him out. And that would have killed him for certain before morning.”

“Where did he find enough money to drink that much?” Davies demanded, leaning over Rutledge’s shoulder for a closer examination of the sunken eyes, the scraggle of beard, the slack mouth.

Without answering him, Rutledge glanced up at Warren. “Did you know I’ve been looking for him? Most of this morning?”

“Forrest said something about it when I spoke to him about Hickam. That’s when I left the message for you. But if you’re thinking of questioning him now, you’re mad. He’s too weak to know what he’s saying—even if he could manage to speak.”

Rutledge nodded. He could see that much for himself. But he said, “Then I want you to keep him here until I can question him. Use any pretext you can think of, tie him to the bed if you have to, but keep him here, out of harm’s way. And no visitors, absolutely none.”

“You don’t seriously believe he can tell you anything useful!” Warren scoffed. “A man like Hickam? Nonsense!”

Rutledge’s eyes were dark with anger as he said, “Why? Because he’s a drunk? A coward? Out of his head? You might be the same in his shoes. I’ve seen more shell shock cases than you’ll ever attend, Doctor, and they’re tormented people with no way out of the prisons of their minds. You weren’t in France or Gallipoli or Palestine, and there’s nothing in your medical practice to tell you what it was like.”

“And I suppose you know?” Warren snapped.

Rutledge caught himself on the brink, realized in time where his outburst was carrying him, and said only, “I was there.”

Still angry when he reached the car, Rutledge said to Davies, “Tell Forrest I’m holding Dr. Warren responsible for Hickam, and if for any reason whatsoever he leaves the doctor’s care, he’s to be arrested on sight. Is that clear?”

“Where’ll you be, then?” Davies asked warily.

“I’m going back to Mallows.” To see what Lettice Wood might tell him, alone and with no notes being taken.

Glad not to be included in that visit, Davies hurried off to find Forrest. And Rutledge was left with Hamish’s company on the drive out to the Colonel’s home.

This time he was shown directly to Miss Wood’s sitting room, and Rutledge found it empty. She came in through a connecting door after a few minutes, still wearing black, but with her face no longer invisible to him. The drapes were drawn back, and the sun’s warm reflection filled the room with a softness that was kind to her grief-shadowed eyes.

And this time she offered him a chair facing the couch where she chose to sit, in the opposite corner, with her back to the light from the windows. More, he thought, for her own comfort than from any desire to make the interview difficult for him. But she was braced for something—he could see the tenseness in her body, the clenched line of her jaw.

“Have you brought me any news?” she asked, her voice still husky. As she looked directly at him he noticed that her eyes were not the same color. One was a smoky hazel, a green flecked with brown and gray, the other a warm green touched with gold. Startlingly odd, yet very beautiful.

“Not yet. We’re still exploring several avenues. I’m trying to build a picture in my mind of Colonel Harris. The sort of man he was, the sort of life he led.”

She brushed that aside with angry impatience. “I’ve told you. He had no enemies.”

“Someone killed him,” he reminded her. “Someone wanted him dead. He must have done something, if only that one single act, to rouse such terrible hate.”

She flinched as if he’d struck her. “But surely you’ve made progress?” she asked again after a moment. “You must have talked to other people. Laurence Royston? Mark? Inspector Forrest?”

Lettice Wood was fishing, he realized suddenly. She wanted to know what had been happening, what had been said….

“They’ve told me very little, actually. Everyone says that your guardian was a very fine man. Everyone, that is, except Mavers.” He said nothing about Carfield.

She smiled a little, more in irony than amusement. “I’d have been more surprised if he hadn’t. But Charles was a very nice man. He needn’t have been my guardian, you know. He was barely grown himself at the time, and it must have seemed a dreary job, taking on the responsibility of a parentless child—a little girl at that!—just when there was a war to go to. To me he seemed as old as my father. I was even a little frightened of him, clinging to my nanny’s skirts and wishing he’d go away. Then he dropped to one knee and held out his arms to me, and the next thing I knew I’d cried myself dry and he was ordering a tea with all my favorite things and afterward we went riding. Which scandalized the household, I can tell you, because I was supposed to be in deepest mourning, shut away in darkness and in silence. Instead I was out in the fields laughing and racing him on my pony and—” Her voice cracked, and she looked away hastily.

He gave her time to regain her composure, then asked, “What sort of mood had the Colonel been in, the last few days before his death?”

“Mood?” she repeated quickly. “What do you mean?”

“Was he happy? Tired? Worried? Irritable? Distracted?”

“He was happy,” she said, her thoughts fading where he couldn’t follow her. “Very, very happy…”

“Why?”

Disconcerted, she said, “What do you mean, why?”

“Just that. What had made him so happy?”

Lettice shook her head. “He just was.”

“Then why did he quarrel with Mark Wilton?”

She got to her feet and walked across the room. For a moment he thought she was leaving, that she would disappear into her bedroom and shut the door on him. But she went to the windows instead, looking out at the drive and seeing, he thought, very little. “How could I know the answer to that?” she countered. “You harp on it as if it was important.”

“It might be. It might decide whether we must arrest Captain Wilton or not.”

Turning back to him, a dark silhouette against the light, she said after a moment, “Because of one quarrel? When you claim you don’t even know what it was about?” Was it a statement? Or a question? He couldn’t be sure.

“We have a witness who says they quarreled again. The next morning. Not far from where your guardian was killed.”

Even with her back to the window he could see how shaken she was, her shoulders hunched suddenly, her body tense. Her hands were still. He waited, but she said nothing, as if she’d run out of words.

And still no defense offered on behalf of the man she loved.

“If Captain Wilton is guilty, you’d wish to see him hang for it, wouldn’t you?” Rutledge asked harshly. “You told me before that you wanted to see the killer hanged.”

“Then why haven’t you arrested him?” she demanded huskily. “Why have you come here instead, and told me these things, why are you adding to my grief—” She stopped, somewhere finding the will to go on, to make her voice obey her brain. “What is it you want of me, Inspector? Why are you here? Surely not to ask my opinion of quarrels I didn’t witness, or to speculate on Mark’s hanging as if he were someone I’d never met. There has to be more reason than that!” She was insistent, almost compellingly so.

“Then tell me what it is.” He was angry with her, and wasn’t sure why.

“Because,” Hamish whispered, “she’s got courage, hasn’t she? And your Jean never did….”

She crossed to the hearth, restless with pent up emotions, fingers mechanically rearranging the flowers there as if their relative positions mattered, but he knew that she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. “You’re the man from London, the one they sent to find my guardian’s murderer. What have you been doing since you got to Upper Streetham? Searching for scapegoats?”

“That’s odd,” he said quietly. “Catherine Tarrant said nearly the same thing. About making the Captain a scapegoat for someone else’s crime.”

In the mirror above the hearth he saw her face flame, the warm blood flooding under the pale skin until she seemed to be flushed with a fever, and her eyes sparkled as they met his in the glass. “Catherine? What has she to do with this?”

“She came to me to tell me straightaway that she was certain Captain Wilton was innocent.” He was intrigued with the way her eyes darkened with emotion, until you couldn’t see the difference in them. “Though why she might have done that, before anyone had actually accused him of murder, is still something of a mystery.”

Lettice Wood bit her lip. “It was to spite me,” she said, looking away from him. “I’m sorry.”

“Why should Catherine Tarrant wish to spite you? At Wilton’s expense?”

“Because she thinks I let the man she loved die. Or at least was in a sense responsible for his death. And I suppose this is her way of striking back at me. Through Mark.” She shook her head, unable to speak. Then she managed to say, “It’s rather appalling, isn’t it, considering—” She stopped again.

“Tell me about it.” When she hesitated, he said, “I’ve only to ask someone else. Miss Tarrant herself, Captain Wilton—”

“I doubt if Mark even knows the story.”

“Then tell me about her relationship with Wilton.”

“She met him before the war—when he came to Upper Streetham after Hugh Davenant’s death. And I suppose there was a mutual attraction. But nothing came of it, neither of them was ready for marriage. He could think of nothing but flying and she’s quite a fine artist, did you know? She hadn’t sold anything at that point, I don’t think she’d even tried, but soon afterward one of her paintings received a great deal of attention in a London show, and she moved up to Town.”

The name suddenly clicked. He’d seen C. Tarrant’s work, powerful, memorable studies of light and shadow, of faces with strength and suffering written in each line, or scenes where color richly defined the landscape with a boldness that brought Turner to mind. His sister Frances admired her enormously, but somehow he’d thought of the artist as older, a woman of experience and style, not the earnest girl he’d talked to in the Inn parlor.

Lettice Wood was saying, “When her father died early in 1915, she came back to run their estate on her own.”

“That must have been a heavy responsibility.”

“It was. But there was no one else to take over. And the only men left to work the land were either very old or very young. Or like Laurence Royston, were trying to keep the large estates afloat, food and meat quotas filled.” She looked down at her hands, slim and white in her lap. “I admired her—I was only a schoolgirl, and I thought she was something of a heroine. A part of the war effort, doing a man’s work when she’d rather be in London, painting, going to parties and exhibitions.”

“Was her lover someone she’d left behind in London?”

She shook her head. “You must ask Catherine, I tell you.”

He was watching her closely. She had stopped taking the sedatives, he was sure of it now. But she was still dazed, a little unsteady, as if the first shock of her guardian’s death hadn’t really worn off. Or as if something was tearing her apart inside, crowding out all other emotions except grief, and she was struggling to find a way to cope. “You brought up the subject in the first place. Why, if you won’t tell me the rest of it?”

“I was trying to explain, that’s all—that she was turning the other cheek, if you like, showing magnanimity. She was doing for me what I failed to do for her.” Lettice swallowed hard. “Or rubbing salt into the wound, for all I know.”

He continued to look at her, his face cold with speculation. Lettice lifted her chin, her eyes changing again as she refused to be intimidated. “It has nothing to do with Charles. And certainly not with Captain Wilton,” she said firmly. “It’s between Catherine and me. A debt…of a sort.”

“Nothing seems to have anything to do with Charles Harris, does it?” Rutledge stood up. “Why didn’t you go riding with your guardian that last morning?”

Her mouth opened and she gulped air, as if he had struck her in the stomach with his fist. But no words came. And then with a courage he could see, she got herself in hand and answered him. “Are you telling me that he might still be alive if I had? That’s very cruel, Inspector, even for a policeman from London!”

“There was no thought of cruelty, Miss Wood,” he said gently. “In our first interview you yourself seemed to emphasize the fact that you hadn’t gone riding that morning. I wondered why, that’s all.”

“Had I?” Her dark brows drew together and she shook her head. “I don’t remember—I don’t know in what context I might have left that impression….”

“When I asked you if you’d seen the Colonel since his quarrel with the Captain. You answered, ‘I didn’t go riding that morning.’ As if that was somehow important.”

“Important! If he had asked me, I would have gone! But I know—knew—how much his early rides meant to him, and I thought there was all the time in the world—” She checked, shook her head wordlessly, and then after a moment said in exasperation, “Oh, do sit down! We can’t both prowl this room like tigers in a small cage!”

“I’d like to speak to Mary Satterthwaite before I go, if I may.”

She said, “Of course,” as if it was a matter of indifference to her, and rang the bell, then watched him silently as they waited. Hamish, grumbling deep inside Rutledge’s mind, was uneasy with Lettice Wood, his Scottish soul disturbed by those strange eyes and the intensity that churned behind them. But Rutledge found himself drawn to her against his will, to the emotions that seethed just beneath the surface and somehow seemed to reflect his own. A woman of passion…

When Johnston answered her summons, she said, “The Inspector wishes to speak to Mary. Could you take him to the small parlor, please?”

Five minutes later, Rutledge found himself in a pleasant room overlooking the gardens and face to face with a woman of thirty, neatly dressed and primly correct. She had fair hair and pale blue eyes, and her cheeks were pink from nervousness.

Rutledge asked her to describe what she had seen and heard coming down the stairs the night of the quarrel, and she answered readily, giving him almost verbatim the same words he’d heard from Johnston. But he wanted more.

“You have no idea what the two men were quarreling about?”

“No, sir. None.”

“Was it the sort of quarrel that might have led to blows? Or to hard feelings?”

Mary frowned, trying to bring back the scene as she remembered it. “They were very angry, sir. Their voices were deeper, rougher, if you know what I mean? I wouldn’t have recognized it for the Captain’s, not if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes. It wasn’t a small matter they’d quarreled over—I’ve never seen either of them that upset. But they’re gentlemen, both of them, it would never have come to blows, however bad it was!” There was a naive certainty in her words, and Rutledge found himself suppressing a smile.

“What reason did Miss Wood give you for coming upstairs early?”

“She didn’t give any, sir, but as I was brushing her hair she said she’d left the gentlemen to discuss the marriage, and I asked if she’d be going up to London soon. She said she didn’t feel like thinking about what all had to be done in London, not tonight. So I thought she must have a headache starting, especially when she asked for a cloth to cool her face. She was that tense, the way she always is when something’s troubling her, so I helped her get ready for bed, and left her to sleep.”

“Strange, isn’t it, that she wouldn’t have wished to be present if it was an important discussion? Headache or not.”

“You must ask Miss Wood that, sir. But if they was to talk about business matters, now, the settlement or such, it wouldn’t have been proper, would it? And she’d seemed a little restive all evening, to tell the truth of it, as if there were things on her mind or the headache was coming on. The first fitting for the gown was next week, and they say brides often get edgy over that.”

“Miss Wood herself never mentioned a headache? Or that she was feeling unwell?”

“No, sir. But I can always tell when there’s something bothering her. She doesn’t need to say anything.”

“How long have you worked at Mallows?” he asked, as if that was more important to him than the evidence she had given. Her eyes flickered in surprise, but she answered readily. “Since I was twelve, sir.”

“Was the Colonel a good master?”

“The best, he was. Always considerate, always polite, saying please when he had no need to.” She bit her lip. “We’re all that upset….”

“Yes, I understand. I hear that you have a relative who is housekeeper to Miss Tarrant?”

“That’s right, yes, sir. My sister.”

“How long has she been in Miss Tarrant’s employ?”

The pale eyes narrowed warily. “Since 1910, sir, if you please. Or I should say, she was Mr. Tarrant’s housekeeper then.”

“Is she happy enough there?”

“It would seem so, sir.”

“And she met Captain Wilton when he was here in Upper Streetham before the war?”

The wariness vanished. “Oh, yes, sir. Vivian thought very highly of him.”

“He was very much interested in flying even then, I understand.”

“Indeed, sir. Mad for it, she said. And teasing Miss Catherine about taking her up, making her laugh and plead with him not to dream of it.”

“A pleasant man, was he? Good-natured, well-mannered?”

“Yes, sir. A gentleman. Not like—” She stopped short.

“Yes? Not like Charles Harris?”

She turned a deep red, and he realized that it was with anger, not embarrassment. “Oh, no, sir! The German, not the Colonel!” And then, with grave dignity, she added, “I’ll say no more, sir, if you please.”

And although he persisted for a time, she was true to her word.

8

So he went to see Catherine Tarrant, and found her in her studio. It was a tiled, high-ceilinged room that had been converted from an Edwardian conservatory, with light that illuminated without blinding. And there was an earthy smell about it, mixed with the odors of paint and of turpentine—and oddly enough, the ghostly scent of roses.

She was stretching a canvas when Vivian, who bore a faint resemblance to her sister Mary, led Rutledge there and then left, shutting the door quietly.

“I didn’t know, at the Inn,” he said, “that you were C. Tarrant. My sister is a great admirer of your work.” He looked around at the paintings drying against the wall, their colors gleaming like jewels in various corners of the room.

“That’s always nice to hear. You never tire of praise. The critics are generous enough with condemnation.” She glanced up and said, “But that isn’t what brought you here, is it? What’s happened?” Her face was tense, prepared.

“Nothing has happened, that I’m aware of. I’ve come to ask you about something that has been puzzling me, that’s all. The German.”

The slender stretcher in her hands snapped, and she stared at him with a mixture of anger and exasperation. “I might have known! As a general rule I find that men who were at the Front are the least prejudiced, in spite of what they’ve suffered. Or saw their friends suffer. I’m sorry you aren’t one of them.”

He found a smile for her, although she had made him angry in turn. “How do you know? To tell you the truth, I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to be prejudiced about. Why don’t you tell me, and then we’ll see where I stand.”

Putting down the canvas, she walked over to one of the open windows, her back to him. “As a matter of curiosity, who told you? About the German?”

“Several people have alluded to him,” he said carefully.

“Yes, I expect they have,” she answered, weary patience in her voice. “But I really don’t see what it has to do with this enquiry.” She turned around, lifted one of the paintings stacked against the wall beside her, and began to study it as if she saw something she didn’t like about it.

“How can I be sure, until I hear your side of the story?”

She glanced up wryly. “You’ve been talking to Lettice, I think. Well, everyone else has pawed over what happened with salacious enthusiasm, why not Scotland Yard? At least you’ll hear the truth from me, not wild conjectures and the embroideries of gossip.” She put that painting down and picked up another, keeping her voice coolly detached, but he could see the way her hands gripped the canvas as she held it at arm’s length.

“It’s very simple, really. During the war, when there weren’t enough men to do the heavy work on the farms, the government allowed people to take on German prisoners of war to help on the land. Most of them were glad to do it, it was better than being cooped up in camp all day with nothing to occupy them. Mallows was allowed three Germans to bring in the harvest one year.”

“And you?”

She turned the painting a little, as if to see it better. “Yes, I applied for one, but he didn’t work out—I don’t think he’d ever seen a cow before, much less a plow! He’d been a clerk in a milliner’s shop, and although he was willing, I spent most of my time trying to show him what he was supposed to be doing.”

Rutledge said nothing, and after a moment she went on reluctantly. “So they sent me a new man, and then someone to help him. He was marvelous. He could do anything—make repairs, plow, birth a foal, milk, whatever was needed—and he seemed to take pleasure in it. He had grown up on the land, but he hadn’t actually worked it, someone else did that for him. He was a lawyer in Bremen. Rolf was his name—Rolf Linden. And—I fell in love with him. It wasn’t an infatuation this time. It wasn’t at all like my feelings for Mark. But Rolf was a German—and as far as everyone in Upper Streetham was concerned, the only good German was a dead one. And he was a prisoner, he went back to the camp every night. Hardly the stuff of high romance, is it?”

“Nothing came of it, then?” he prompted after a time. She seemed to have forgotten the painting in her hands, and after a moment absently put it back in its place.

“Not at first. Then I realized that he loved me.”

“Did he tell you that?” If so, Rutledge thought to himself, the man was an opportunist, whatever she had been led to believe.

“No, it happened rather prosaically. He was gored by the bull we’d brought in for the dairy herd, and he couldn’t be moved. So I nursed him, and when he was too ill to know what he was saying, he said too much. After that, well, somehow we managed to keep it a secret from everyone else. But he was terrified that I’d find myself pregnant, and late in 1917 I wrote to Lettice to ask her to contact Charles for me—I thought he might use his influence to let us be married.”

She walked aimlessly across the studio, straightening the canvas on her easel, picking up a dry brush and running the tip through her fingers, frowning at a palette as if the colors on it were entirely wrong. And all the while her eyes were hidden from him. “In all fairness,” she said, as if to the palette, “I do believe Lettice when she says she wrote to him. I think she kept her promise.”

Behind the unemotional voice was a well of anguish, and Rutledge found himself thinking again of Jean. He knew what loss was, how the mind refuses to believe, the way the body aches with a need that can’t be satisfied, and the awful, endless desolation of the spirit. And as always when he was under stress, Hamish stirred into life.

“You rant about your Jean,” he said, his voice seeming to echo in the high ceiling of the studio. “What about my Fiona? She promised to wait. But I didna’ come back, did I? Not even in a box. There’s nae grave in the kirkyard to bring flowers to, so she’ll sit in her wee room and cry, with no comfort to ease her grief. Not even a kiss did we have in that room, though I saw it once….”

Desperate to silence him, Rutledge said aloud, and more brusquely than he’d intended, “Go on. What happened?”

“It all went wrong. He was taken away, sent elsewhere, they wouldn’t tell me where he had gone. And then, around Boxing Day—no one was quite certain of the date because so many people were ill and the records were all botched—he came down with influenza. No one told me that either.”

She looked up suddenly, her eyes hot with unshed tears. “It wasn’t until the war ended and I had searched half of England for him that I finally discovered he’d been dead for over a year—a year! I went a little mad, I blamed Lettice and Charles—for Rolf being taken away, for his death, for no word being sent to me—for all of it. I told myself she hadn’t tried to make Charles understand how much Rolf and I loved each other. I was certain that Charles never did anything more than glance at her letter and then send it straight to the War Office. It was the only way they could have learned the truth about Rolf and me, the only reason they would have punished us by taking him away. Charles had done nothing—except betray us.”

In the brightness of the skylight over her head, he could see that her breathing was ragged, her face settling into taut lines as she fought for control. And she won. No tears fell, because the remembrance of anger had burned them out instead.

“Did you ever ask Harris what he’d done—or not done?”

“No.” It was uncompromising. “Rolf was dead. Nothing would bring him back. I had to learn to forget, or I knew I’d be dead as well. Emotionally, I mean.”

Which gave her a powerful motive for murder. And could explain why she’d defended Wilton at the Inn.

He looked around him at Catherine Tarrant’s work, at the strength of her lights and darks, the daring use of spaces, the power of her colors. At the emotions her subjects evoked. Even the bold black of her sketches set the imagination ablaze.

A mother and child locked in each other’s arms, fierce protectiveness in the mother’s face, terror in the child’s. He had seen refugees on the roads of France who might have posed for that. An old man, clutching a folded British flag in his arms and fighting back tears as he stood in a small, overgrown country churchyard staring down at the raw earth of a new grave. If you wanted to capture the waste of war, Rutledge thought, what better expression was there than this, the very antithesis of the dashing recruitment posters? A girl in a rose-splashed gown whirling in ecstasy under the spreading limbs of an aged oak. The lost world of 1914, the innocence and brightness and abandonment to joy that was gone forever.

There were landscapes heavy with paint, storm clouds thrusting upward, wind racing wildly through a high meadow, waves lashing a rocky coast where watchers waited for stormbound ships, to lure them inland.

He saw enormous control in each work, the sure knowledge of exactly how much and how little made enough. A natural gift of talent honed to a cutting edge by long experience. The same control she had exerted just now.

But there was not a single still life among them….

As if the whirlwind in the painter’s mind couldn’t be leashed that far?

He was finding it hard to relate the woman before him and the art he could see with his own eyes.

“It’s unwomanly,” Hamish said uneasily. “I’d not take my ease with one of those hanging above my hearth!”

As if she’d heard him, Catherine seemed to collect herself with an effort. She saw Rutledge examining her work. Brushing the dark hair aside, she said with a sigh, “Yes, I know, no one expects me when the artist is introduced. Everyone thinks C. Tarrant must be a man. Or one of those masculine women who wear trousers everywhere and smoke strong Russian cigarettes. I’ve considered wearing a patch over one eye and walking about with a trained ocelot on a leash. Were you listening at all?”

“I was listening. And you’re wrong, I would have had no objection to your marriage. Not, at least, on the basis of Linden’s nationality. I didn’t know the man himself.”

“But I did. And if you believe I might have shot Charles out of some twisted need to revenge Rolf, I suppose I could have. But what good would it have done, I ask you?”

“A life for a life?”

Her mouth twisted in a sardonic smile. “Charles Harris for Rolf Linden. Do you think that’s why I came to see you about Mark? To make certain that he didn’t hang for my crime?” She laughed, but there was no amusement in it. “It would be a terrible irony, wouldn’t it, if Mark was punished for what I’d done? The two men I’ve cared for dead because of me.”

“Who were the women in Charles Harris’s life?”

The change of direction sobered her. “How should I know? He spent so little time here, and when he was at home, Mallows absorbed him completely.”

“Was he ever in love with anyone in Upper Streetham? Mrs. Davenant, for instance?”

“Why on earth do you ask that?”

“Most soldiers carry a woman’s image in their minds.”

“Like the photos of Gladys Cooper each man wore next to his heart, in the trenches?” She considered that, head on one side. “I’ve never really understood why Sally married Hugh—yes, he was attractive, if you liked the ne’er-do-well dashing romantic. Enormous fun, always exciting, and he could make your heart absolutely flutter when he wanted to be charming. But as a husband, he was hopeless. For a time Laurence Royston was in love with her, I’m sure of it. I couldn’t believe at first that Mark wasn’t! But Charles?” She shook her head slowly. “I’ll have to think about that….”

With a smile to take the sting from his words, he asked, “And you? Were you ever in love with Charles Harris?”

She laughed, this time a contralto laugh that rippled with humor. “Of course. When I was sixteen and went to my first ball. It was at the Haldanes’. And Charles rescued me from the possessive clutches of my father, who thought every man in the room must have designs on my virtue. It would have been far more exciting if they had, but Charles was there, splendid in his dress uniform, and took pity on me. So I promptly fell in love with him and slept with my dance card under my pillow for at least a month afterward. He was a terribly attractive man, not strikingly handsome like Mark, of course, but with something about the eyes, and the mouth, that you remembered.”

“How much would you say your art was influenced by your relationship with Linden. Before—and after?”

“Now there’s an interesting question!” she said, biting her lip as she gave it her attention. “I’d say he softened it, if anything. Love teaches you humility—patience—understanding. And acceptance. Charles told me once that I’d have made a good soldier on the battlefield because I didn’t know the meaning of fear. You aren’t afraid until you’ve got something to lose. But when you love someone or something, you’re terrified—there’s so much at stake, then, so much at risk, you see….”

Driving back toward Upper Streetham, Rutledge saw Laurence Royston coming toward him on a magnificent bay hunter. Royston waved, then drew rein, indicating that he wanted Rutledge to stop as well. Leaning down to speak to him, Royston said, “While you’re out in this direction, come to Mallows with me and I’ll give you that Will.”

So Rutledge followed him back to Mallows. This time he was taken to a small doorway on the western side of the house nearly hidden by a giant wisteria whose faded blossoms still bore a whisper of lingering scent. Royston unlocked it and then down a short, stone-flagged passage unlocked another heavy door.

They entered a large room, dark with paneling and bookshelves and tall cabinets, but with a pair of windows behind the desk looking out on a pleasant shrubbery. Royston went to one of the cabinets beside the desk, unlocked that with another key, and brought out several bundles of papers. Sorting them with the swiftness of familiarity, he quickly found what he was looking for and handed over a bundle tied in dark ribbon.

“Sit down, man. That’s the more comfortable chair over there. I use this one when I’ve got to read the riot act. It’s hard enough to numb the bones! You’ll notice the seal of this document hasn’t been broken. The Will is just as it was when Charles brought it up from London to put in the cabinet.”

Rutledge examined the seal carefully, and agreed. “No, it hasn’t been touched as far as I can see.” He opened it and began to read. Ten minutes later, he looked across at Royston and said, “It seems rather straightforward. The estate is left as you would expect, and there are the usual bequests in addition to that.”

Royston smiled wryly. “I hope they include a sum for the church. We’ll have Carfield ranting on the doorstep if there isn’t. He’s very determined to have a new organ, and something has to be done about the roof as well. The old parsonage could come down around his ears for all he cares, but the church is a different matter.”

A proper setting for a proper man of God.

“Why isn’t he interested in the parsonage? He lives there, doesn’t he?”

“To tell you the truth, I always believed that he had his eye on Mallows. By way of Lettice, of course. Charles said he would as soon see her married to a giant slug.”

Rutledge laughed. It was cruel but apt.

He retied the ribbons and said, “I’ll keep this if I may. When are the solicitors coming down from London?”

“Not until after the funeral. I’ve spoken with them, and there are contingency measures to see to the running of the estate, that’s no problem. Frankly, I don’t think Lettice is up to hearing the Will read, and I told them as much.”

“I expect to have the Inquest tomorrow.”

“Adjourned, of course?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

“For the time being. Yes.” Rutledge considered him. “Did you ever have a falling-out with Harris?”

Royston shrugged. “We didn’t always see eye to eye on management of the estate. But you don’t kill a man over marrows and hay. Or a new barn.”

“Did you envy him? After twenty years, Mallows must carry your imprint more than his. But Harris survived his wars. He came home, eager to take charge. If Miss Wood inherited, you’d be master here again. In all but name.”

“No,” he said tightly. “That’s ridiculous.” But then he glanced away.

“Are you in financial trouble of any sort?” There was a sizable bequest to Royston in the Will, following the recommendation that he be kept on as agent.

Royston flushed but said, “No. I don’t gamble, I haven’t time for wasting my money in other pursuits, and I’m well paid.”

“Have you ever borrowed money from Harris?”

Unprepared for that, Royston’s eyes flickered. “Once,” he said tightly. “Many years ago, when I got into the devil of a scrape and couldn’t get out of it on my own. I was twenty-one.”

“What did you do?”

Royston hesitated. “I borrowed his car without his knowledge. There was a girl I desperately wanted to see down in Dorset because I thought I was madly in love with her. Colonel Harris—Captain, he was then—was in Palestine, and at the time it didn’t seem like such a crazy thing to do, taking the car.” He stopped, and then added quickly, “There was an accident. I wasn’t a very experienced driver, and so it was my fault, whatever the law said. I paid for what I’d done—in more ways than one. And there were hospital bills. Among other things I’d badly damaged a kidney. That’s what kept me out of the war, later. Charles lent me the money to settle it all. Within five years I’d paid him back every penny.”

“It must have been a large sum.”

“Any sum is large when you’re twenty-one and frightened out of your wits. But yes—it was large. The car wasn’t mine, remember. And—someone was hurt. It took every ounce of courage I had to confess to Charles. All he said was, ‘You’ve had a bad experience. But there’s no going back to change it. So try to learn from it. That’s the only restitution you can offer.’”

“And did you?”

The eyes meeting his were level and sober. “For eight years or more I had nightmares about it. The accident, I mean. Reliving it. I don’t hold with Freud’s nonsense about dreams, but I can tell you that nightmares strip the soul.”

Rutledge found no answer for that.

Sally Davenant watched her cousin for a while, then said, “Mark, that’s the fifth time you’ve read that page. Put the book down, for God’s sake, and tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing,” he said, smiling up at her. “I was thinking, that’s all.”

“Don’t tell me ‘nothing’ when I know there is something. You’ve walked around like a man in torment for days now. And why aren’t you at Mallows? Lettice must be frantic with grief, and surely there’s something you can do for her, if only to hold her. You did that for me after Hugh died, and it was all that got me through those first ghastly days. And there are practical considerations—who’s arranging the funeral? You can’t leave it to that dreadful man Carfield, he’ll give us a sickeningly long eulogy comparing poor Charles to Pericles or Alexander. And the solicitors in London could do worse, with something coldly formal and military. Lettice will know best what Charles would have wanted—the right scripture, hymns, and so on.”

“She’s still under Dr. Warren’s care—”

“Do you think being drugged into helplessness is going to solve anything for her? What’s wrong, I ask you again. Something is! You spent every free moment at Mallows until the day Charles died, and it’s going to look decidedly odd if you aren’t there now!”

He took a deep breath, then said, “If I’m suspected of the murder—and they wouldn’t have brought in Scotland Yard, would they, if they’d believed it was Mavers, they’d have hauled him to jail and been done with it!—I can hardly go to Lettice with that sort of thing being whispered all through the county.”

She regarded him thoughtfully, half in amusement and half in exasperation. “Mark, my dear, that’s carrying good manners to absurd extremes! Do you think Lettice will care what the county believes? She’ll want you beside her, and that in itself will silence most of the gossips!”

There was such desperate grief in his eyes now that she was suddenly appalled. “Mark—,” she began, anxiety changing her voice, making it strained and wary.

“The first time I went, I was turned away—if I go again, and it happens a second time, what do you think will be made of that?”

Almost weak with relief, she said, “She’d been given a sedative! Did you expect Dr. Warren to invite you to her bedroom, with no chaperone in the house? Betrothed or not, he wouldn’t have countenanced that!” Rising from her chair, she came to kneel beside his, taking his hands in hers. “My dear. Lettice probably has no idea what’s been said. Who’s going to tell her?”

“Rutledge for one.”

She bit her lip. “Yes. Rutledge. The man’s a menace, probing and digging.”

“He’s no fool, Sally. And he won’t leave until he’s got what he wanted.”

“If only you and Charles hadn’t quarreled so publicly that last night—”

“How were we to know that the servants were still about? Besides—” He stopped, then lifted her fingers, kissed the tips, and let them go. She didn’t rise, but stayed there beside him, her hands dropping to her lap.

“I wish you would tell me what that was all about. How can I help you if I don’t know?”

He rubbed his eyes, and they burned as if he hadn’t slept for a week. They had felt that way in France, he remembered, when there was a push on, and the planes went up as long as the pilots could stay awake to man them. Until blind exhaustion sent you stumbling back to quarters and the nearest bed. “It wasn’t even a quarrel, come to that. We never got to the point of quarreling. He said something that took me completely off guard, and the next thing we knew, we were both murderously angry.”

Mark looked at her, his eyes bloodshot from the rubbing, his tiredness there for her to see. “It died with Charles. At least pray God it did,” he added vehemently.

“But the timing—”

“Yes, I know, there’s no getting around that, is there, Sally? And Rutledge will have me exactly where he wants me if he ever finds out the whole of it. Hickam was a bloody nuisance, but I could have dealt with him. As it is, Charles might still reach out from the grave and take me with him.”

She got to her feet and said with conviction, “Then you must go to Lettice! Now, before everyone in Upper Streetham notices that you aren’t there! Mark, don’t you see? You’re being very foolish!”

Rutledge went to find Johnston before he left Mallows, but instead came face-to-face with Lettice as she slowly descended the main staircase. It was, he thought, the first time she’d left her room since Dr. Warren had taken her there, and she seemed abstracted, her body moving without the volition of her mind, which was turned inward toward private visions no one else could share. Whatever they were, she drew no comfort from them, for she looked tired, empty.

“I thought you had gone away,” she said, frowning as she saw him and recognized him. “Well? Did you want something—or someone?”

“I’ve just spoken to Royston. I wanted to let you know that the Inquest will be tomorrow—”

“I won’t be there,” she said quickly, with an edge of panic. “I won’t attend!”

“I shan’t expect you to attend. There will be—we must address certain formalities, and then I intend to ask for an adjournment,” he amended, to spare her. There was no need to go into more detail than that, since Royston had identified the body, not Lettice.

She turned to go back the way she’d come, and he stopped her. “I went to see Catherine Tarrant.”

With her hand on the banister as if she gained strength from its support, she came down the rest of the stairs. “And?” she asked when she was on eye level with him. It was almost as if she thought he might be tricking her.

“She told me about Linden.”

“And?” she repeated.

“And I understand the debt you referred to this morning—your fiancé’s life for her lover’s. But there’s another aspect of the situation, one less pleasant. Could Miss Tarrant have shot Colonel Harris in revenge for Linden’s death? Brooding over what happened and convincing herself that he might have saved the German if he’d tried? Punishing him—and indirectly, you?”

Lettice Wood began to laugh, bitterly at first, and then in wild denial. “Oh, God,” she said, “that’s too diabolical to contemplate!” The laughter turned to tremors that racked her body. “No, I won’t think about it! Go away, I don’t want to talk to you anymore!”

Rutledge had seen soldiers close to the breaking point begin to shake after a battle, and he moved quickly to lead her to one of the ornate chairs standing against the wall. Once he got her seated, he gripped Lettice’s shoulders firmly and said, “Stop it! That’s enough.” His voice was quiet, but pitched to reach her through the emotional frenzy.

She fought him, then collapsed in tears, and for a moment he knelt by her chair and simply held her, offering what comfort he could. She smelled of lilies of the valley, and her hair was soft against his face.

It was not professional, and Hamish was clamoring in the back of his head about the seduction of witches, but there was nothing else he could do.

When the worst was over, he went into the drawing room to ring for Mary Satterthwaite.

Waiting for his summons to be answered, he stood by the high back of the chair with one hand on Lettice’s shoulder, knowing from experience that the warmth of human contact was often more important than words.

And thinking to himself that this rather blew to the four winds his earlier impression that Lettice Wood knew who had killed her guardian….

9

Dr. Warren had spent a harried morning in his surgery, and added to that had been a sleepless night attending to Hickam. He was tired, irritable, and behind in his schedule. As he started out on his rounds, he was grumbling about a retirement long overdue and the ingratitude of villagers who seemed to think he was on call twenty-four hours of the day.

He looked in on the new baby he had delivered and found it flourishing, but tongue-lashed the father when he discovered that the mother had spent her morning bent over a full tub of washing.

“I’ve told you Mercy had a hard birth,” Warren finished, “and you’d have seen it for yourself if you hadn’t been ten parts drunk that whole day. Now either you find someone from the village to lend a hand in the house or I’ll find a good woman and bill you for her. If Mercy hemorrhages, she’s as good as dead. And then where will you and that child be?”

He stumped back to his car and swore as he barked his knuckles trying to start it.

The next stop was briefer, to call on an elderly widow ill with shingles, and this time he left her a stronger powder to help with the pain from the long ropes of fluid-filled blisters that looped down her arm. It was all he could do, but the old, cataract-clouded eyes smiled up at him with a pathetic gratitude.

Finally he reached the cottage on the Haldane property where Agnes Farrell’s daughter Meg lived. Agnes was tall, spare, and capable, the most levelheaded woman he’d ever met and—in his opinion—wasted as a housemaid when she’d have made such an excellent nurse. Meg had married well; her husband, Ted Pinter, would be head groom on the estate when his father retired, and the cottage was as pretty as she could make it. Warren had always looked forward to his visits here because Meg was as healthy as her mother and had gone through two pregnancies with no trouble at all, the last one four years ago. She was also a very respectable cook and never failed to send him away with a slice of cake or scones for his tea.

But the kitchen no longer smelled of baking, and the woman who met him at the door had lost the bloom of youth and health. Meg looked forty, and her mother twice that.

Lizzie was a pretty little thing, he thought, bending over the narrow crib to peer down at the pale little face staring blankly at the wall. But she wouldn’t be for long if something didn’t work soon. She was, as far as he could tell, exactly as he’d left her the day before, and the day before that as well—he’d lost count of the string of days he had come here, and yes, nights too, trying to break through that blank stare. Lizzie reminded him even more strongly now of those round-cheeked marble cherubs that the Haldanes seemed to want carved on all their family tombs—and nearly as white and cold where once her skin had had the soft warmth of ripe peaches.

Lizzie didn’t move, she didn’t speak, she never seemed to sleep, and food pressed into her mouth dribbled out it as if she’d somehow forgotten how to swallow.

Except for an array of bruises that were already fading, there was not a mark on her. Warren had looked with great care. No sign of a head injury, spinal injury, bee sting, spider’s bite. No rash, no fever, no swellings. Just this deathly stillness that was broken by fits of wild thrashing and screaming that went on and on until Lizzie was exhausted and dropped suddenly back into stillness again.

Agnes watched him watching the child, and said, “There’s no change. Not that we can see. I got some milk into her again, and a little weak tea. Most of the broth ended up on her gown.”

Meg, her hands twisted tightly together, added, “We thought, Ma and I, that it was darkness she was afeared of, but the screaming only happens when Ted is near her. He’s got so he won’t come into the room.” After a moment she added anxiously, “Why should she be afeared of her own father?”

“She probably isn’t,” Warren said shortly. “Where’s the boy?”

“I sent him over to my sister Polly. The screaming was bothering him, he wasn’t getting any rest at all.” Teddy, six, was the image of his father and seemed to be made entirely of springs, like a jack-in-the-box.

“It doesn’t seem to disturb her when I come near her,” Warren went on thoughtfully. “Who else has been in the house? Men, I mean?”

“No one,” Agnes said. “Well, Polly’s husband, come to get Teddy. He stopped on his way home from the mill, and was too dusty to set foot in the door. But Lizzie must have heard him.” She grinned tiredly. Saul Quarles was the bass in the church choir, with a chest to match. Local wits claimed that his voice carried farther than the church’s bell. “She couldn’t miss him, could she?”

“But she didn’t cry? Scream?”

“Not a peep. Is she going to die?” Meg asked, striving for calmness and failing wretchedly. “What’s wrong with her?”

Warren shook his head. “She needs a specialist. I saw a woman like this once, early in my practice. She’d lost her baby, and couldn’t face it. The spell passed in a week, a little longer perhaps. Grief, fright, sudden changes—they can do things to the brain.”

Meg began to cry softly, and Agnes put her arm around the girl’s shaking shoulders. “There, there,” she whispered, but the words carried no comfort.

Mary Satterthwaite, answering the summons of the drawing room bell, was startled to find Rutledge back at Mallows when she’d seen him out the door two hours earlier. He was standing by one of the hall chairs, a hand on Lettice Wood’s shoulder as if holding her there, and the girl was shaking like a tree in the wind.

Bristling at the sight of her mistress in such distress, she rounded on the Inspector from Scotland Yard and said, “What’s happened, then?”

Rutledge replied quietly, “I think you should ask Miss Wood.”

Lettice had stopped crying before Mary came through the servants’ door, but she accepted the fresh handkerchief the maid thrust into her hand and pressed it to her eyes almost as if to form a barrier between herself and the two people standing over her—a shield. When she lowered it, Rutledge could see that she was thinking again, that she’d used that brief instant of withdrawal to take a firmer grip on self-control. The trembling had stopped, but shock still showed in the pinched whiteness of her face, and in the effort she was making to overcome it. She said huskily, “I’m all right, Mary. Truly I am! It’s just—”

Lettice glanced up quickly at Rutledge’s unreadable face. Mary’s sister was Catherine Tarrant’s housekeeper. Did he know that? She wasn’t sure how he might respond to the lie she was about to tell. If he would understand why. But she had to keep Catherine Tarrant out of this investigation, if she could, and the first step was preventing Mary from gossiping. “There’s to be an Inquest. And I expect—something must be done about the services—”

Mary eyed Rutledge accusingly. “Mr. Royston will see to all that for you, Miss, and the Captain! Don’t worry your head about it. The Inspector shouldn’t ought to have sprung that on you. It was ill done, sir, if you ask me!”

To Lettice’s relief, Rutledge said nothing.

“Shall I get one of Dr. Warren’s powders for you, Miss? It’ll help, I’m sure it will!”

Lettice shook her head vehemently. “No, no more of those! I can’t abide them. The Inspector is leaving, Mary. Will you see him to the door?”

She stood up in dismissal, then faltered, catching her breath, her face even whiter if that was possible, her eyes wide with alarm. Rutledge, still carefully watching her, reached out to steady her. But Mary was there before him, quickly taking Lettice’s arm and chiding, “You must eat something, Miss, to keep up your strength. I keep telling you, it won’t do, sending your tray back untouched. Sit yourself down in the small drawing room and let me talk to Cook, she’ll find something you can fancy, see if she doesn’t!”

Lettice said, “Yes, all at once I feel as if I’m floating, I hadn’t realized—” She made an effort to smile. “Anything will do, it doesn’t matter. Goodbye, Inspector.” She was gradually overcoming the shock, her training and her own fierce will coming to her aid, and as she turned to Rutledge, her chin lifted a little. Pride, he realized. “About that other matter, I’m sure you’re wrong. You took me by surprise, but it’s a horridly convoluted theory, isn’t it, and not very realistic if you actually think about it—”

The bell at the front door sounded. Rutledge could hear it pealing distantly in the servants’ hall downstairs. Lettice closed her eyes, as if shutting out the sound. “I don’t want to see anyone!” she said quickly.

Distracted, Mary turned to the policeman. “It’s my duty to answer that, sir. Mr. Johnston isn’t here just now, he’s gone into Upper Streetham—”

“Take care of your mistress, I’ll see to it,” Rutledge said curtly, and moved to the door before she could stop him. Lettice stepped just across the threshold into the drawing room, a sanctuary of sorts.

He opened the heavy door only far enough to see who was on the step, prepared to be equally curt with the caller.

It was Mark Wilton, and the man’s face mirrored his own surprise.

“Where’s Johnston? What’s happened?” the Captain said sharply, and shoved the door wide with a suddenness that caught Rutledge off guard. “Is Lettice—?”

Lettice stood in the drawing-room doorway, her pale, troubled face turned in alarm toward the sound of the Captain’s voice. Her emotions were still raw, and Rutledge had seen her reaction, swiftly covered though it was. More to the point, so had Wilton.

Stepping into the hall, he seemed suddenly at a loss for words, his eyes sweeping her with a mixture of love and something else. Concern? Or fear?

Rutledge, intensely interested, watched the pair of them. For an instant neither of them moved, neither spoke. But a question was asked, an answer given, in a wordless exchange that lasted for no more than a matter of seconds.

He would have sworn, before God and in a crowded courtroom, that it was the look of silent conspirators that he saw pass between them.

And then Mark was striding across the marble floor toward her, while Lettice came forward to meet him under the glorious painted Venus overhead.

She moved with exquisite grace, a tall, slim woman in rustling black, her hands held out before her, palms down, a blind look in her eyes, a mixture of emotions in her face.

Mark grasped her hands in his as if they were lifelines, before leaning forward to kiss her gently on her left cheek. “This is the last thing that should have happened,” he said quietly, to her alone. “You know I mean that.”

Yet Rutledge could sense the suppressed feeling in the man, an intensity that was both physical and emotional. And was confused by his own reaction to it. As if his hackles rose…Then he remembered, with a jolt, the way he’d felt the last few times he’d seen Jean—wanting to hold her, desperately in need of her warmth to keep the darkness away, and yet afraid to touch her. Afraid of her rejection.

Hamish, deep in his mind, said ominously, “She’s a witch, man, this one’ll have your soul if you let her! Are ye no’ listening!”

Mary hesitated, then quickly made herself scarce, disappearing down the passage toward the servants’ door. Rutledge, drawn into the scene before him, held his ground.

Lettice gave a quick little shake of her head, as if she couldn’t think of anything to say in response to Wilton’s words. Or in denial?

Still holding Lettice’s hands, Wilton turned to Rutledge and asked, “When will you—er—permit us to make arrangements for the funeral?” Rutledge saw Lettice flinch, in spite of Wilton’s careful words.

“Tomorrow,” he replied briefly, “after the Inquest.”

Wilton stared at him, wariness behind his eyes. But he said only, “Then I’ll speak to you later. At the Inn?”

Rutledge nodded. Wilton was right; this was neither the time nor the place to discuss what form the Inquest was going to take.

There was an awkward silence, as if no one quite knew what to say next. Then Wilton went on, speaking to Lettice now, the words stilted, meaningless, even to his own ears. “Sally sends her dearest love. She wanted to come before this, but Dr. Warren insisted you were to have quiet and rest. If there’s anything she can do, please tell me. You know how fond she was of Charles.”

Lettice said huskily, “Thank her for me, will you? I don’t know what’s to be done next—the service, for one thing. I don’t think I can face the Vicar.” She made a wry face. “Not just now! Or the lawyers. But I ought to send word to someone in the Regiment—”

“Leave Carfield to me. You needn’t see him or anyone else, if you’d rather not. And I’ll deal with the Army, if you like. They’ll want a memorial service, of course, when you’re up to it. But that can wait.”

Rutledge walked away from them, to the still-open door.

And Lettice said unexpectedly, raising her voice a little as if suddenly afraid he was leaving, “I expect you and I must also give some thought to the wedding, Mark. I can’t—the white gown—I’m in mourning. All the arrangements must be canceled, the guests notified.”

Rutledge missed the look on Wilton’s face, but the Captain said only, “My love, I’ll see to it as well, you needn’t worry about any of that now.”

But her eyes were on Rutledge, and as he stopped by the door, he could see that they were nearly the same color.

“Something must be done,” she said insistently. “I can’t go through with it. So many people—the formality—”

“No, of course not! I understand, I promise you,” Wilton said quietly. “You can trust me to take care of it.” Taking her elbow, he tried to lead her down the passage by the stairs, toward the room where Rutledge had spoken with Mary earlier that morning.

There was a frown between Lettice’s eyes now, as if they weren’t focusing properly. “Mary was going to bring me something—some soup. I haven’t eaten—I feel wretchedly lightheaded, Mark….”

“Yes, I’m not surprised. Come and sit down, then I’ll see what’s keeping her.”

Rutledge quietly let himself out, finally satisfied.

But Hamish wasn’t.

“She’s up to something!” he said uneasily. “Yon Captain, now, he’s nobody’s fool, is he? But that one will lead him a merry dance before he’s finished, wait and see. Aye, you’ll find a woman at the bottom of this business, and a terrible hate.”

“Which woman?” Rutledge asked, getting into the car. “Or haven’t you made up your mind? The witch? The painter? Or the widow?”

Hamish growled softly. “Oh, aye, I’ve made up my mind. It’s you that won’t see where the wind’s blowing. You’re the wrong man for this murder, and if you had any wit left, you’d drive straight to London and ask to be relieved!”

“I can’t—if I quit now, you’ll have won. I’ve got to see it through or put a pistol to my head.”

“But you know what will happen if you drag that poor sod, Hickam, into court. They’ll crucify him, and you along with him. Because the women will protect yon fine Captain, mark my words! And there’s no one left to protect you.”

Turning out of the gates, Rutledge said between his teeth, “When I’ve finished, there won’t be any need to drag Hickam anywhere. I’ll have other proof.”

Hamish’s derisive laughter followed him the rest of the way back to Upper Streetham.

Bowles had called from Scotland Yard.

When Rutledge rang him back, Bowles said, “You’ve had two days, what’s happened?”

“We’re holding the Inquest tomorrow. And it will be adjourned. I need more time,” he answered, trying to keep the tenseness, the uncertainty out of his voice.

There was an appreciative silence at the other end of the line, and then Bowles asked, “I’m being pushed for results myself, you know; I can’t put them off with ‘Rutledge needs more time.’ What kind of progress have you made?”

“We’ve found the shotgun. At least, I think we have. The owner has witnesses that place him elsewhere at the time of the murder, but the general consensus is, he’s got the best motive for killing the Colonel. The problem is, I don’t see what it achieved—why now? This feud between them is of long standing. Why not twenty years ago, when it all started? But the man’s house is unlocked, it’s isolated, and anyone who knew about the shotgun could have walked in and taken it. And several people did know. It would have been a simple matter to put it back afterward. I’m presently exploring who had the best opportunity.”

“Not Captain Wilton, I do hope?”

Rutledge answered reluctantly. “Among others, yes.”

“The Palace will have a collective stroke if word of that leaks out. For God’s sake, say nothing until you’re absolutely sure!”

“Which is why I need more time,” Rutledge pointed out reasonably. “Can we afford to make a mistake? Either way?”

“Very well. But keep me informed, will you? I’ve got people breathing down my neck. I can go out on a limb for you at the moment, but we’ll need something soon or heads may start to roll. Mine among them!”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll call you on Monday morning. At the latest.”

He waited, let the silence drag on, but Bowles had finished and cut the connection.

Rutledge hung up, unable to see the pleased smile at the other end of the line as Bowles replaced the receiver. The situation in Warwickshire, in Bowles’s opinion, was progressing exactly as he had planned.

Still turning their conversation over in his mind, Rutledge told himself that the exchange had gone well enough. The Yard wanted answers, yes, but it was also prepared to accept his judgment in the field rather than forcing him into hasty decisions. A sign that nothing had been held back intentionally?

Badly needed encouragement, then, whether the Yard realized it or not—he should feel only a sense of relief.

But Hamish, who had a knack for cutting to the heart of Rutledge’s moods, asked softly, “Why hasn’t he asked about Hickam, then?”

Stopping by Warren’s surgery as he walked toward the Inn, Rutledge asked the housekeeper for a report on Hickam.

“He’s still alive, if that’s any help. But he just lays there, for all the world a dead man. Do you want to know what I think?” She gave him a penetrating look. “He’s gone away, so far back into that mad war he came from that he can’t find his way home again. While he’s there on the bed, not moving, not seeing, not hearing, I keep wondering what’s happening inside his head. Where we can’t follow him.”

“God only knows,” Rutledge answered her, not wanting to think about it.

She frowned. “Do you suppose he’s afraid? I watched him on the street sometimes, and saw the anger in him, and the strangeness that unsettled everybody—well, of course it was unsettling, we didn’t know what to do about it, whether to ignore him or shout at him or lock him up! But when he was sober I saw the fear too, and that worried me. I’d not like to think that wherever he’s gone, he’s taken the fear with him, as well as the horrors of the war. When he can’t move, he can’t run from it.”

Rutledge considered her. “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “You’re probably the only person in the town who cares.”

“I’ve seen too much suffering in my life not to recognize it, even in a drunkard,” she said. “And that man suffered. Whatever he did in the war, good or evil, he’s paid for it every hour since. You’ll remember that, won’t you, when and if you can talk to him? I don’t suppose you were in the war, but pity is something even a policeman ought to understand. And like him or not, that man deserves pity.”

She grasped the door firmly, ready to shut it, her face suddenly still as if she regretted offering opinions to a stranger. “Call again after dinner, if you want. I don’t expect he’ll come around before then, if he comes around at all.” Her voice was crisp again, businesslike. “It won’t do any good to try before that, mind!” She closed the door, leaving him standing there on the pavement.

Hamish, stirring again, said, “If he dies, and it’s proved you gave him the money that brought him to his grave, a man with your past, what do you suppose they’ll do to you?”

“It will be the end of my career. If not worse.”

Hamish chuckled, a cold, bitter sound. “But no firing squad. You remember those, now, don’t you? The Army’s way of doing things. A cold gray dawn before the sun rises, because no man wants to see a shameful death. That bleak hour of morning when the soul shrivels inside you and the heart has no courage and the body shrinks with terror. You remember those, don’t you! A pity. I’d thought to remind you….”

But Rutledge was striding toward the Inn, head down, nearly blundering into a bicycle, ignoring the woman who hastily moved out of his path and the voice of someone saying his name. The world had narrowed down to the agony that drove him and the memories that devoured him. Back in France, back to the final horror, the disintegration of all he had been and might be, in the face of blazing guns.

The machine gunner was still there, and the main assault was set for dawn. He had to be stopped before then. Rutledge sent his men across again, calling to them as he ran, and watched them fall, his sergeant the first to go down, watched the remnants turn and stagger back to their lines through the darkness, cursing savagely, eyes wild with pain and fury.

“It’s no’ the dying, it’s the waste!” Corporal MacLeod screamed at him, leaping back into the trench, faces turning his way. “If they want it taken out so badly, let them shell it!”

Rutledge, pistol in hand, shouted, “If we don’t silence it, hundreds of men will die—it’s our lot coming, we can’t let them walk into that!”

“I won’t go back—you can shoot me here, I won’t go back! I won’t take another man across that line, never again, as God’s my witness!”

“I tell you, there’s no choice!” He looked at the mutiny in the wild eyes surrounding him, looked at the desolation of spirit in weary, stooped shoulders, and forced himself to ruthless anger: “There’s never a choice!”

“Aye, man, there’s a choice.” The Corporal turned and pointed to the dead and dying, caught in a no-man’s-land between the gunner and the lines. “But that’s cold-blooded murder, and I’ll no’ be a part of it again. Never again!”

He was tall and thin and very young, burned out by the fighting, battered and torn by too many offenses and too many retreats, by blood and terror and fear, tormented by a strong Calvinistic sense of right and wrong that somehow survived through it all. It wasn’t courage he lacked; Rutledge knew him too well to think him a coward. He had quite simply broken—but others had seen it. There was nothing Rutledge could do for him now, too many lives were at stake to let one more stand in the way. Grief vied with anger, and neither won.

He’d had Hamish MacLeod arrested on the spot, and then he’d led the last charge out into the icy, slippery mud, challenging them to let him do it alone, and they’d followed in a straggle, and somehow the gun had been silenced, and there was nothing left afterward but to see to the firing party. Then he’d sat with Hamish throughout what was left of that long night, listening to the wind blowing snow against the huts they’d somehow rigged in the trenches. Listening to Hamish talk.

A hideously long night. It had left him drained beyond exhaustion, and at the end of it he’d said, “I’ll give you a second chance—go out there and tell them you were wrong!”

And Hamish had shaken his head, eyes dark with fear but steadfast. “No. I haven’t got any strength left. End it while I’m still a man. For God’s sake, end it now!”

The shelling had started down the line when Rutledge summoned six men to form the firing party. It rocked the earth, shook men to their souls, pounding through the brain with a storm of sound until there was no thought left. He’d had to shout, had to drag them, reluctant, unwilling, through the falling snow, had to position them, and will them to do his bidding. And then he’d gone to fetch Hamish.

One last time, he’d said, “It isn’t too late, man!”

And Hamish had smiled. “Is it my death you’re fearing, then? I don’t see why; they’ll all die before this day’s out! What’s one more bloody corpse on your soul? Or do you worry I’ll haunt you? Is it that?”

“Damn you! Do your duty—rejoin your men. The Sergeant’s dead, they’ll need you, the push will come in less than an hour!”

“But without me. I’d rather die now than go out there ever again!” He shivered, shrugging deeper into his greatcoat.

It was the darkness that blinded them, and the snow. But dawn would come soon enough, and Rutledge had no choice, the example had to be made. One way or another. He took Hamish’s arm and led him up the slick, creaking steps and to the narrow, level place where men gathered before an assault.

“Do you want a blindfold?” He had had to bring his mouth to Hamish’s ear to be heard. He was shaking with cold, they both were.

“No. And for the love of God, untie me!”

Rutledge hesitated, then did as he asked.

There was a rumble of voices, strangely audible below the deafness of the shelling. Watchers he couldn’t see, somewhere behind the firing party. The six men didn’t look around, standing close together for comfort. Rutledge fumbled in his pocket and found an envelope to mark the center of Hamish’s breast, moving by rote, not thinking at all. He pinned it to the man’s coat, looked into those steady eyes a last time, then stepped away.

He could hear Hamish praying, breathless words, and then a girl’s name. Rutledge raised his hand, dropped it sharply. There was an instant in which he thought the men wouldn’t obey him, relief leaping fiercely through him, and then the guns blazed, too bright in the darkness and the snow. He turned, looked for Hamish. For a moment he could see nothing. And then he found the dark, huddled body. He was on the ground.

Rutledge reached him in two swift strides, barely aware of the shifting of the noises around him. The firing party had melted away quickly, awkward and ashamed. Kneeling, he could see that in spite of the white square on the man’s breast, the shots had not entirely found their mark. Hamish was bleeding heavily, and still alive. Blood leaked from his mouth as he tried to speak, eyes dark pools in his white, strained face, agony written in the depths, begging.

The shelling was coming closer—no, the Germans were responding, rapidly shifting their range, some falling short. But Rutledge knelt there in the dirty snow, trying to find the words to ask forgiveness. Hamish’s hand clutched at his arm, a death grip, and the eyes begged, without mercy for either of them.

Rutledge drew his pistol, placed it at Hamish’s temple, and he could have sworn that the grimacing lips tried to smile. The fallen man never spoke, and yet inside Rutledge’s skull Hamish was screaming, “End it! For pity’s sake!”

The pistol roared, the smell of the powder and blood enveloping Rutledge. The pleading eyes widened and then went dark, still, empty. Accusing.

And the next German shell exploded in a torrent of heat and light, searing his sight before the thick, viscous, unspeakable mud rose up like a tidal wave to engulf him.

Rutledge’s last coherent thought as he was swallowed into black, smothering eternity was, “Direct hit—Oh, God, if only—a little sooner—it would have been over for both of us—”

And afterward—afterward, London had given him a bloody medal—

10

It was an hour or more later that Rutledge walked down the stairs to the dining room for his lunch. He wasn’t sure how he had reached the Inn, how he’d made it to his room, whom he might have encountered on the way. It had been the worst flash of memory he’d suffered since he left the hospital, and it had unnerved him, shaken his fragile grip on stability. But as the doctor had promised him, in the end it had passed, leaving him very tired, very empty.

Bracing himself as he opened the French doors, he was prepared for Redfern to comment, or worse still, for the other diners to stare at him in speculation and disgust. But the room was nearly empty, and Redfern had a tight, inward look about his eyes. The limp was more pronounced as he came to take Rutledge’s order, and he leaned against the table.

“Been on it too much,” he said, aware of Rutledge’s perception. Then he shrugged. “It’s the stairs that are the worst. The doctors say it will pass in time.”

But he sounded dejected, as if he had stopped believing in them.

Rutledge spent what was left of the afternoon talking to Inspector Forrest in his office about the names in his notebook. It was better than being alone, better than letting Hamish reach him again too soon, and it was a way of thinking aloud that might lead to something that the local man knew and he didn’t. An idle hope, he realized, when he’d finished and Forrest sat there in silence, reflectively scratching his chin and staring at the ceiling as if half expecting to find an answer written there.

“What do you think?” Rutledge repeated, trying to keep his impatience out of his voice.

“None of them is likely to be your murderer,” Forrest said, unwittingly emphasizing your as if setting himself apart from the whole business. “Take Miss Wood, for a start. I’ve never seen a cross word pass between her and the Colonel, no, nor ever heard of one. And he’d have given her whatever she wanted; there’d be no need for trouble over it.”

“What if she wanted what he couldn’t give her?”

Forrest laughed. “And what would that be? I can’t think of a thing she didn’t already have! She’s a lovely girl, nothing mean or selfish or strong-headed about her.”

“Well, then, Wilton?”

“He was marrying the girl. The surest way to lose her would be doing a harm to the Colonel, much less killing him. Here, just before the wedding? It would be insanity! And what if they did argue the night before the murder? What if it is true? You can’t make much out of that—not enough for murder, if you ask me! Not without more evidence than we’ve got.”

“Then why won’t Wilton come straight out with the truth and tell me what caused the quarrel?”

Forrest shrugged. “It could be something that happened in France, something only the two of them know about. Maybe something that Captain Wilton thinks the Colonel wouldn’t want known, even after his death. A personal matter.”

“Yes, that’s what he said,” Rutledge replied, and got up to pace, unable to sit still while he talked. “But we don’t know, do we, and as long as we don’t, I intend to keep the quarrel in mind. Mrs. Davenant?”

“A very well respected lady. She wouldn’t be very likely to have a hand in murder. And what reason could she have for it anyway?”

“I don’t know. Was she ever in love with the Colonel? Or with Wilton?”

“There’s never been a hint of gossip. If she was in love with anyone but her husband, she kept it to herself. And somehow I can’t picture her stalking the Colonel with a loaded shotgun in her hand. If she was jealous of Lettice Wood, killing the Colonel wouldn’t help her any.”

“Unless the Captain—or Lettice Wood—was blamed for it.”

“If the Captain’s blamed for it, she’s going to lose him to the hangman, isn’t she? And I can’t see how she’d put the blame onto Miss Wood. Besides, if there was any real threat to Miss Wood, I can see Wilton stepping in and saying it was his doing, the Colonel’s death—to protect the girl. And Mrs. Davenant ought to know that as well as I do. It would be a risk, wouldn’t it? One she’d have to consider.”

“And Catherine Tarrant?”

Forrest was suddenly wary. “What’s she got to do with this, then?”

“I know about the German. Linden. She wanted to marry him, and she wanted Harris to clear the way for them. Instead, Linden was taken away and he died. Women have killed for less, and what she felt for Linden wasn’t a girl’s infatuation, it was passionate and real.”

“You’re on the wrong track! Miss Tarrant might have wanted somebody else to suffer too, once she found out what had happened to the German—she was that upset. Yes, I’ll grant you that much. But you don’t bide your time, you don’t wait for a year or two, not when you feel the way she did then! You come in a rage for revenge, hot and furious.”

“Then you think she’s capable of seeking revenge?”

Forrest flushed. “Don’t put words into my mouth where Catherine Tarrant is concerned! I said she was that hurt, she might have done something foolish straightaway, out of sheer mad grief and shock. But not murder.”

Rutledge studied him. “You like her, don’t you? You don’t want to think of her as a killer.”

Forrest answered stiffly, “I’ve always been fond of the girl, there’s nothing wrong in that. And you don’t know how people in Upper Streetham shunned her when they found out about her and the German. Treated her like dirt, the lot of them. My wife among them. As if she’d done something unforgivable.”

“How did they find out? About Linden?”

“I never did learn how. But I had my suspicions. She tried to move heaven and earth to find out where they’d sent the German, and people started to talk. Gossip, speculation, but nothing anybody could pin the truth on. So I think Carfield was to blame—he was in Warwick when she came back from London on the train, and he offered to drive her home. She was half sick with grief—she may have blurted out the whole story without thinking. And he’s one to pry, he could have gotten around her. At any rate he made some pious remarks on the next Sunday about loving our enemies and healing the wounds of war, just when the reality of the war was coming home to all of us, the cripples and the wounded—and the dead. And the next thing I knew, the story was racing all over Upper Streetham that Catherine had been expecting to marry the prisoner, only he’d died. That there had been something between them. That she’d even slept with him. And the damage was done.”

“I’ve heard Carfield was courting Lettice Wood.”

“Oh, yes, indeed. He’d have liked to marry the Colonel’s ward—but how much he cared for Miss Wood is anybody’s guess. There are those would say it was little enough, that he isn’t capable of loving anybody but himself. And it’s true, I’ve never seen a man so set on his own comfort.” His mouth turned down in distaste. “All right, he’s a man of God, but I don’t like him, I never have.”

“Royston? What do you know about him?”

“A good man. Hardworking, reliable. There was a time when he sowed his share of wild oats, his place at Mallows going to his head a bit, and he was one for the girls too. But he settled down and got on with his life soon enough.” Forrest smiled. “Well, we’re none of us free of that charge.”

“Nothing between him and the Colonel that you know about, which might have led to murder?”

“I can’t think of any reason for Mr. Royston to shoot anybody.”

“He hasn’t married?”

“He’s married to Mallows, you might say. There was a girl years back. When he was about twenty-six or-seven. Alice Netherby, a Lower Streetham lass, pretty as they come and sweet with it, but frail. She died of consumption and that was that. He’s always gotten on very well with Catherine Tarrant, but he’s not her sort, if you know what I mean. A countryman. And she’s a lady. A famous artist. I’ve a cousin, living in London. He says her work’s all the rage.”

“Which brings us back to Mavers, doesn’t it?”

“Aye,” Forrest answered with regret. “And it doesn’t seem very likely that we’ll prove anything against him, worst luck!”

The interview with Forrest left Rutledge feeling dissatisfied, a mood reinforced by an encounter with Mavers on his way back to the Inn.

“You don’t look like a successful man,” Mavers said, his goat’s eyes gleaming with maliciousness. “You’ve got my shotgun, but you haven’t got me. And you won’t, mark my words. I’ve got witnesses, as many as you like.”

“So you keep reminding me,” Rutledge said, taking his own malicious pleasure in the sight of Mavers’s swollen nose. “I wonder why?”

“Because I enjoy seeing the oppressors of the masses oppressed in their turn. And you might say that I have an interest in this business—a professional interest, you could even call it.”

Rutledge studied him. “You enjoy trouble, that’s all.”

“The fact is, I like to think I can take some of the credit for the Colonel’s death. That all those hours of standing in the market square speaking out against the landlords and capitalists—while those village fools reviled me—weren’t wasted. Who knows, I might have put the idea into some mind, the first glimmer of the Rising to come, and the salvation of the masses from the tyranny of the few.” He cocked his head, considering the possibility. “Aye, who knows? It might just have its roots in my words, the Colonel’s killing!”

“Which makes you an accessory, I think?”

“But it won’t stand up in a court of law, will it? I bid you a good day—but I hope you won’t be having one!” He started to walk off, pleased with himself.

Rutledge stopped him. “Mavers. You said something the other day. About your pension. Is that how you live? A pension?”

Mavers turned around. “Aye. The wages of guilt, that’s all it is.”

“And who pays you?”

The grin widened. “That’s for me to know and you to discover. If you can. You’re the man from London, sent here to set us all straight.”

There was a little dogcart standing in the road outside the Inn when Rutledge strode up the steps, and Redfern came to meet him in the hall, hastily wiping his hands on a towel. “Miss Sommers, sir. I’ve put her in the back parlor. Second door beyond the stairs.”

“Has she been here long?”

“Not above half an hour, sir. I brought her tea when she said she’d wait awhile.”

Rutledge went down the passage to the small back parlor and opened the door.

It was a pleasant room, paneled walls and drapes faded to mellow rose at the long windows. There was a writing desk in one corner, several chairs covered in shades of rose and green, and a small tea cart on wheels.

Helena Sommers stood, back straight, at one of the windows, which overlooked a tiny herb garden busy with bees. She turned at the sound of someone at the door and said, “Hallo. Maggie told me you wanted to see me. Strangers at the house make her uncomfortable, so I thought it best to come into town.”

Rutledge waited until she sat down in one of the chairs and then took another across from her.

“It’s about Captain Wilton. The morning you saw him from the ridge. The morning of the murder.”

“Yes, of course.”

“What was he carrying?”

“Carrying?” She seemed perplexed.

“A rucksack. A stick. Anything.”

Helena frowned, thinking back. “He had his walking stick. Well, he always does, and that morning was no different from the other times I’ve glimpsed him.”

“Nothing else. You’re quite sure?”

“Should he have had something else?”

“We’re trying to be thorough, that’s all.”

She studied him. “You’re asking me, aren’t you, if the Captain carried a shotgun. Has your investigation narrowed down to him? Why on earth would he kill Colonel Harris? The Captain was marrying the Colonel’s ward!”

“Wilton was there, not a mile from the meadow, shortly before the murder. We have reason to think he wasn’t on the best of terms with Colonel Harris that morning.”

“And so the Captain marched up the hill hoping to run into Charles Harris, carrying a shotgun through the town with him, in the unlikely event he’d have an opportunity to use it? That’s absurd!”

Rutledge was very tired. Hamish was growling restlessly at the back of his mind again.

“Why is it absurd?” he snapped. “Someone killed the Colonel, I assure you; we’ve got a body that’s quite dead and quite clearly murdered.”

“Yes, I understand that,” she said gently, seeming to understand too his frustration. “But why—necessarily—is the murderer someone in Upper Streetham? Colonel Harris served in a regiment on active duty. He was in France for five years, and we’ve no idea what went on in his life during the war—the people he met, the things that might have happened, the soldiers who died or were crippled because of his orders. If I wanted revenge—and expected to get away with it, of course!—I’d shoot the man on his home ground but not on mine. You can take a train to Warwick from anywhere in Britain, then walk to Upper Streetham.”

“Carrying a shotgun?”

She was momentarily at a loss, then rallied. “No, certainly not. Not out in the open. But people do have things they carry without arousing suspicion. A workman with his kit of tools. Salesmen with sample cases. Whatever. And you don’t wonder what’s inside, do you, when you see someone carrying something that belongs with him. You assume, don’t you, that it’s all aboveboard?”

Rutledge nodded grudgingly. She was right.

“I’m not suggesting that it happened this way. I’m merely pointing out that Mark Wilton needed a very powerful reason to kill his fiancée’s guardian, practically on the eve of their wedding.

And he had heard Lettice, only hours ago, putting off the marriage. Because she was in mourning.

It made sense, what Helena Sommers had said. And it gave him a very sound excuse for ignoring Hickam’s statement. But her argument also left him with the whole of England to choose from, and nothing to go on in the way of motive or evidence. Bowles would not be happy over that!

Helena seemed to appreciate his dilemma. She said ruefully, “I’m sorry. I have no business interjecting my views. I’m an outsider here, I don’t know any of these people very well. But I have met them, and I’d hate to think one of them is a murderer. ‘Not someone I know, surely!’ You must have heard that often enough!”

He had. But he answered, “I suppose it’s human nature.”

As the clock in the other parlor began to chime the hour, she got up quickly. “I’ve been away longer than I intended. Maggie will be wondering what’s become of me. I must go.” Hesitating she added, “I’ve never been to war, of course, and I know nothing about it except what one reads in the news accounts. But Colonel Harris must have had to do many things as an officer that he as a man wouldn’t care to talk about—was ashamed of, even. When you find his murderer, you may discover that his death has its roots in the war. Not in the affairs of anyone we know.”

The war.

But if she was right, the war also brought him full circle to Mark Wilton, who had known Harris in France.

Or to Catherine Tarrant…

When he’d seen Helena to the dogcart and watched the Haldane pony trot off down the main street, Rutledge went back to the station to rout out Sergeant Davies. He sent him off to Warwick to find out, if he could, about anyone who had arrived there by train shortly before the murder and come on to Upper Streetham.

A wild-goose chase, Sergeant Davies thought sourly as he set out. He knew his own ground, and there hadn’t been any unexplained strangers in Upper Streetham or even in Lower Streetham for that matter—before, during, or after the killing. Except for that dead lorry driver who’d been accounted for. There were always eyes to see, ears to hear, if anyone passed through. And news of it reached him, directly or indirectly, within a matter of hours. Strangers stood out, nobody liked them, and word was passed on. But going to Warwick, waste of time though it was, kept him out of the Inspector’s clutches, and that counted for something.

As he was finishing his dinner, Rutledge looked up to see Mark Wilton standing out in the hall of the Inn. The Captain saw him at the same time and crossed the dining room to Rutledge’s table.

“I’ve come to speak to you about the Inquest. And the release of the body.”

“I was just on my way out to see Dr. Warren. But that can wait. Can I offer you a drink in the bar?”

“Thanks.”

They went through to the public bar, which was half empty, and found a table in one corner.

Rutledge ordered two whiskeys and sat down. “The Inquest will be at ten o’clock. I don’t expect it will last more than half an hour. After that, you can speak to the undertakers.”

“Have you seen the body?” Wilton asked curiously.

“Three days after death, I didn’t expect it to tell me very much. I wasn’t there to see it in place, which is what counts.”

“I was there. Before they moved it. Half the town came to look. I couldn’t believe he was dead. Not after going through the war unscathed.”

“Oddly enough, that’s what Royston said.”

Wilton nodded. “You sometimes meet people who appear to have charmed lives. There was a pilot in my outfit who was at best a mediocre flier, shouldn’t have lasted a month, but he was the damnedest, luckiest devil I’ve ever known. Invisible in the air, the Germans never could see him for some reason, and he’d find the field in any weather, instinct almost. Crashed five times, and walked away with no more than a few bruises. I’d thought of Charles as having a charmed life too. I knew my own chances for surviving were slim, but we’d plan to meet, Charles and I, in Paris on our next leave, and I always knew he’d be there, waiting. Whatever happened to me.” Wilton shrugged. “That was comforting, in a strange way—certainty in the midst of chaos, I suppose.”

Rutledge knew what he meant. There had been a Sergeant in one company who always came back, and brought his men back with him, and men wanted to serve with him because of that. The Sergeant’s reputation spread across the Front, and someone would say, “It was a bad night. But Morgan made it. Pass the word along.” A talisman—bad as the assault was, it hadn’t been bad enough to stop Morgan.

He’d asked the sergeant once how he’d managed it, when he ran into him on a mud-swallowed road out in the middle of nowhere, moving up for the next offensive. And Morgan had smiled. “Now, then, sir, if you believe anything hard enough,” he said, “you can make it happen.”

But by that time, Rutledge had lost his own will to believe in anything, and Morgan’s secret wasn’t any help to him. He often wondered what had become of the man after the war….

Wilton looked at the light through his glass, almost as if it held answers as well as liquid amber, then said quietly, “I was as surprised as anybody when I made it through to the end of the war.”

Rutledge nodded in understanding. He himself had gone from being terrified he’d die to not caring either way, and then to the final stage, wishing it would happen, bringing him to a peace that was more desirable than life itself.

Returning to Charles Harris, as if he found murder an easier subject than war memories, Wilton cleared his throat and went on. “As I said, I had to see for myself. My first thought was, My God, Lettice, and my second was, I still don’t believe it’s true—”

He stopped. “Sorry, you can ignore that,” he went on, when Rutledge made no comment. “I wasn’t trying to sway your judgment.”

“No.”

Wilton took a deep breath. “I hear that Hickam is dead drunk at Dr. Warren’s. Or ill. The story varies, depending on which gossip you listen to.”

“What else does gossip say?”

“That you haven’t found much to go on. That you’re floundering in the dark. But that’s not true. I know what’s in the back of your mind.” He smiled wryly.

“If you didn’t kill Harris, who did?”

“The comfortable answer would be, ‘Mavers,’ wouldn’t it?”

“Why not Hickam, who claims he saw you speaking to Harris—arguing heatedly with him, in his words—in the lane? Why isn’t it possible that he knew where to find a shotgun, and decided, in that confused mind of his, that he was off to shoot the Boche? Or to kill an officer he hated? He wouldn’t be the first enlisted man to do that. In fact, he might just as easily have chosen you as his target as Charles Harris. A toss-up, given his drunken state.”

The look of stark surprise on Wilton’s face was quickly covered, but it told Rutledge one thing—that Hickam’s story might very well be true, that he’d seen the Captain and the Colonel quarreling. For Wilton had taken the bait without even questioning it. He’d immediately recognized the twist that could be put on Hickam’s evidence, and his mind had been busily considering that possibility just as alarm bells had gone off reminding him that—in his own statement—Hickam hadn’t witnessed any meeting at all, angry or not.

“I suppose I’d never thought he was capable of such a thing,” Mark answered lamely. “Shell-shocked—mad, perhaps—but not particularly dangerous.” Feeling his way carefully, he added, “And it probably wouldn’t matter whether he actually saw Charles that morning or just thought he did. Well, it does make a certain sense out of this business. I can’t imagine anyone in his right mind shooting Charles. It would have to be a Mavers. Or a Hickam.”

Which was all very interesting. Taking another shot in the dark, Rutledge said, “Tell me about Catherine Tarrant.”

Wilton shook his head. “No.” It was quiet, firm, irreversible. He emptied his glass and set it down.

“You knew her well when you were in Upper Streetham before the war. You were, in fact, in love with her.”

“No, I thought I was in love with her. But her father was wise enough to see that it wouldn’t do, and he asked us to wait a year or two before we came to any formal understanding.” He turned in his chair, easing his stiff knee. “And he was right; a few months apart, a dozen letters on each side, and we soon discovered that they were getting harder and harder to write. I think we both realized what was happening, but there was never any formal ending. The letters got shorter, then further apart. I’m still quite fond of Catherine Tarrant, I admire her, and I like her work.”

“Was she painting then?” There was a clatter in the kitchens, someone dropping a tray, and then Redfern’s voice, sharply taking whoever it was to task.

“Oddly enough, nobody seemed to recognize how talented she was. Yes, she’d mention something about a painting. But you know how it was before the war, most well-bred girls tried their hand at watercolors or music—it was rather expected of them.”

Rutledge recalled his sister’s lessons, and smiled. Frances could sing beautifully, but her watercolors had generally been a welter of slapdash color sent running over the paper with an enthusiastic and generous hand. Not one, to his certain knowledge, had ever seen a frame. She had studied assiduously, searching for subjects and giving grandiose names to her work, but her teacher had finally written, “Miss Rutledge makes up in spirit what she lacks in talent,” and to everyone’s relief, the lessons had ended there.

Wilton was saying, “And no one thought anything about it when Catherine said, ‘I’m doing a portrait of that old woman who used to milk cows for us, remember her? She’s got a wonderful face.’” He glanced wryly at Rutledge. “Least of all me! I wasn’t interested in anything that didn’t have wings to it! But that one later won a prize in London. When I went to her first exhibit, I was stunned. I wondered where in God’s name Catherine had found such power of expression, such depth of feeling. How she’d come to change so much in such a short time. But she hadn’t changed—it was there all along, and apparently I’d been blind to it. I suppose that’s the difference between infatuation and love, if you come down to it.”

“And Linden? Had he brought any of these changes about? Found the woman somewhere inside the sweet, untouched girl you’d met before the war?”

Wilton’s mouth was grim. “I’ve told you. Ask Miss Tarrant about her personal life.”

“Then you disapproved of the affair?”

“I was in France, trying to stay alive. I couldn’t have approved or disapproved, I didn’t know. Until much later. In fact, it was Charles who told me, the first time he brought me down to Mallows. He thought I should be aware of it, before I ran into her. But Catherine has never spoken of Linden to me.”

“Did she blame Colonel Harris for not handling their case properly with the Army? Or blame Lettice for not making it clear to her guardian that Catherine was serious about this man?”

“I don’t know, I tell you. Except that Charles would have done what he could. If he’d known. For Catherine’s sake if nothing else. He’d been fond of her.”

“But he didn’t know?”

“I can’t answer that. I can tell you his headquarters was swamped with people’s letters, wanting news about their sons, their husbands, their lovers. He said once it was the hardest part of his job, reading such letters. Sometimes they were sent to the wrong place, or lost.”

“Surely not a letter from his ward? That wouldn’t have been shoved in a sack with dozens of others and forgotten?”

This time Wilton stood up. “You’re putting words into my mouth, Rutledge. I don’t know what went wrong over Linden. I don’t suppose anyone does. I’m sure that Charles would have done his best for the pair of them, he would try to help Catherine. My God, he did what he could for anyone in Upper Streetham in one way or another, so why not her? What the War Office did is anybody’s guess. Some ignorant fool sitting at a cluttered desk in Whitehall might have felt it his personal duty to prevent any relationship between prisoners and the home population, whatever the Colonel said about it. Bad for morale and all that. And come to that, it wouldn’t have mattered; the war was nearly over, and if he’d lived, Linden could have spoken for himself. Who could have guessed that Linden would die of influenza. Still, it decimated the country, for God’s sake, no one was immune.”

“But because he was sent from here, he died alone, and no one told Catherine. Not until long afterward.”

Wilton laughed harshly. “In war you can’t keep up with every poor sod you send out to die. I was a squadron leader, I knew the hell of that. A man’s blown to bits in a trench, shot down in flames, chokes on gas and lies rotting in the mud. You do your best, you write letters about his bravery, how much he’d done for his country, how much his comrades looked to him for an example—and you don’t even recall his name, much less his face! Linden took his chances, like any soldier. At least she knows what became of him, where he’s buried!”

Rutledge watched his face, remembering how Catherine Tarrant had looked when she spoke of searching for Linden. And remembering what Sally Davenant had said about Wilton’s love of flying changing to agony in the heat of battle and death and fear.

“That’s cold comfort to a grieving, passionate woman.”

“Is it? After all the killing, I came home to a hero’s welcome. Safe and whole. Invited to the Palace and to Sandringham. Treated like royalty, myself. But I was there in a hospital in Dorset when they brought in a man they’d found wandering in France. Didn’t even know who he was, whether he was British or German—a shell of a man, starving and begging on the roadside for a year or more, more animal than human, worse than Hickam, and I looked at him, and thought, I used to have nightmares about burning to death in a crash, but there are worse things than that! Worse than being blind or without a limb, lungs seared with gas, face shot away, guts rotted. Coming home safe—and not knowing it’s over—that’s the bleakest hell I’m capable of picturing!”

Rutledge felt the blood run cold in his body. Wilton nodded and walked away, unaware of what he’d done.

In the dark recesses of his mind he heard Hamish laughing, and finished his whiskey at a gulp. It burned going down, almost bringing tears to his eyes as he fought to keep from choking. Or were the tears for himself?

Think of anything, he commanded himself roughly. Anything but that! His mind roiled with emotion, then settled into the dull pain of grief and despair. Think, man, for God’s sake!

What was it they’d been talking about? No, who? Catherine Tarrant.

What to do about Catherine Tarrant, then, how to find a key to her? Waving Redfern away and getting to his feet, the whiskey still searing his throat, he walked out of the bar.

The person to answer that question was another woman. Sally Davenant.

11

The next morning just before the Inquest Rutledge had an opportunity to ask Inspector Forrest if he knew the source of Mavers’s pension. But Forrest shook his head.

“I didn’t know he had one. But that explains why he’s never had to lift his hand to a stroke of work if he didn’t feel like it. His father served the Davenants. Ask Mrs. Davenant if she knows anything about it.”

The Inquest, held in one of the Inn’s parlors, was crowded with a cross-section of spectators who settled in early for the best seats and waited with patient expectation for something interesting to happen. They quietly took note of who was—and was not—present, and wondered aloud how the man from London would present his findings, and more importantly, what they would be. No one knew anything about an arrest—never a good sign—but rumor claimed that Sergeant Davies had spent most of the night in Warwick, and this could mean that the killer hadn’t been an Upper Streetham man after all. More than a few had pinned their hopes on Bert Mavers. Such expectations were destined for disappointment.

The Coroner’s Court progressed with smooth timeliness, from the finding of the body to the request for an adjournment while the police pursued their inquiries. Half an hour, and it was finished. The coroner, an elderly man from Warwick, agreed to the police request, stood up with decision, and said, “That’s it, then,” before nodding to Forrest and walking out to find his carriage. A murmur of dissatisfaction trailed him like ghostly robes as he went.

Sergeant Davies had returned from Warwick around six o’clock that morning, since he had to give evidence about finding the Colonel’s body. It had been a long night, he was tired and irritable, and his trip had been for nothing.

“There’s no reason to believe the killer came on the trains,” he said. “All strangers are accounted for, and there aren’t any reports of stragglers along the road from Warwick. That’s not to say someone couldn’t have come from another direction, but I’d give you any odds you like that he didn’t arrive from Warwick.”

Which was more or less what Rutledge had expected. He thanked the Sergeant and then hurried to catch up with Sally Davenant, who was walking along with another woman, dark haired and neatly dressed in gray. They parted just as Rutledge reached them, and Sally turned to him, smiling politely.

“Good morning, Inspector.”

It was a beautiful morning, the sky that particular shade of blue that comes only in June. The air was scented with roses, wild in the hedgerows and blooming in gardens, birds everywhere, children laughing. Not a day to consider the ramifications of a man’s death.

“I’d like to speak with you,” he said. “May I offer you a cup of tea?”

“Yes, I’d like one, after that ordeal.” She turned to walk with him back toward the Shepherd’s Crook. “I only came for Mark’s sake. I’m glad you didn’t require Lettice’s presence. Mark says she’s had a very rough time.”

Refusing to be drawn, Rutledge said, “I wanted to ask you about Mavers. About a pension he may have received from your husband. Or rather, a pension that might have been left to his father, as the shotgun was.”

Sally frowned. “I don’t know anything about a pension, Inspector. Hugh had a very high regard for the man’s father—he was dependable, honest, and knew his job. Quite different from his son. In every respect. I can tell you, Hugh had no such regard for the Mavers you’ve met.”

“Yet he left him a shotgun.”

“He left it to the father, and no one ever thought to change that article in the Will. When the Will was read, I made no objection to letting the shotgun go to the son because it was easier at the time than trying to fight over it. I had many problems with my husband, Inspector. He was a man who could charm anyone, but he wasn’t easy to live with. That doesn’t mean I didn’t love him—I did. But his death was a difficult time for me. Emotionally. I was torn between grief and relief, to be honest. And the problem of dealing with someone like Mavers was beyond me. I’d never have heard the end of it anyway, whatever the lawyers promised, and I wasn’t going to put up with a lifelong vendetta, as Charles did. How that man endured the endless bickering and trouble I’ll never know! Probably because he was never here long enough to be driven crazy. But I was, you see.”

When they were seated in the dining room, where Redfern was trying to keep up with the demand for refreshment, Rutledge ordered tea, then said to Mrs. Davenant, “What can you tell me about Catherine Tarrant?”

Her surprise showed in her face. “Catherine? Whatever does she have to do with Charles’s death?”

“I don’t know. I’d like a woman’s opinion of her.”

Sally Davenant laughed wryly. “Ah yes, the men flock to her defense, don’t they? I don’t know why. Not that they shouldn’t, you understand!” she added quickly. “It’s just that men and women see things quite differently.”

Which still told him very little about Catherine.

When the tea things had been set before them, and Sally had poured, Rutledge tried again. “Did you know the German? Linden?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. He worked on her land, and several times when I went to call he came around to take my horse. Tall, fair, quite strong.” She hesitated, then added, “He was a little like Mark, you know. I don’t know quite how to put my finger on the likeness. I’d never have mistaken one for the other. But a fleeting resemblance—something you felt rather than saw?”

Rutledge said nothing, reaching for one of the little cakes on a gold-rimmed china plate. They were amazingly good, he discovered.

After a moment, she went on, “He was an educated man—a solicitor, I was told later—and in the ordinary way, an acceptable suitor. If he’d been one of the refugees, Belgian or French, there wouldn’t have been any comment at all. Well, very little! But he was German, you see, those horrible monsters who shot Edith Cavell, spitted babies on their bayonets, killed and maimed British soldiers—the casualty lists were awful, and when they came out, you sighed with relief because someone you loved or knew wasn’t on it this time—then felt guilty for feeling relieved! We hated the Germans, and to think of loving one—of marrying one—seemed—unnatural.” A woman coming through the dining room spoke to Sally and walked on.

Rutledge waited until she was out of hearing. “I understood that no one knew of their relationship at the time Linden was taken away.”

“That’s true. But there was no doubt how Catherine felt, after the war. She went a little mad, trying to find him, and then when she learned he was dead, she was hardly herself for months. Carfield made matters worse by trying to make them better, and the town has shunned her ever since. Most of the women, and more than a few of the men, won’t even speak her name.”

“You said that Linden reminded you of Mark. Did he remind Catherine too? Was she, do you think, still in love with Mark?”

Sally Davenant shook her head. “No, that was over long ago. I could have told you at the time that it wouldn’t last. Mark always falls in love with the wrong women—” She stopped, her mouth closing firmly, her eyes defying him.

Rutledge waited. She shrugged after a moment and went on. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds, of course.”

But he thought she had. “What did you mean?”

“Catherine hadn’t discovered her talent when she met Mark. She painted, yes, but it wasn’t the focus of her life, if you see what I mean. I think it would have come between them, when she did. And she hated his flying. Even if the war hadn’t come along to separate them, what chance would such a marriage have?” Carfield came in, smiled warmly at Mrs. Davenant, then nodded briskly to Rutledge.

“And Lettice?”

She hesitated, then answered carefully. “I don’t think it would have worked. Not in the end. There was Charles, you see, and Lettice was devoted to him. No man enjoys living in the shadow of such a devotion. If he’d been older, yes, Mark could have relegated him to the father’s role. Mark could never bear to be second best. It would have been ‘Charles this’ and ‘Charles that’ every time he turned around.”

“Did Lettice fall in love with Wilton because he was the handsome hero her guardian had brought home for her? An infatuation, like Catherine’s, years ago?”

“No, of course not. She’s rather mature for her years, have you noticed? Probably it has to do with being orphaned so young, she had to learn to be independent early on. Charles more or less cultivated that too. Well, he could have been killed at any time, and he wanted her to be capable of carrying on alone! She wasn’t a dewy-eyed girl, and I think that’s what attracted Mark to her. He’s been through too much to fall in love with a silly twit who thought he was dashing and exciting. And Mark is a very private man, he would have to be, to spend so much time alone in the air. Charles seemed so—open. Where Hugh had devastating charm, shallow though it was, Charles was the most—I don’t know, the most physically compelling man. He could walk into a room and somehow dominate it just by being there. Men deferred to him, women found him sympathetic. That combination of strength and tenderness that’s quite rare.”

“But of the three, Mark Wilton was surely the most attractive?”

She laughed as she poured herself another cup of tea, then refilled his cup. “Oh, by far. If he came in here right now, every woman in the room would be aware of it! And preen. I’ve seen it happen too many times! Hugh had charm, Mark has looks, Charles had charisma. The difference is that Hugh and Charles knew how to wield what they’d been given. Mark isn’t a peacock, and never has been. It’s his greatest failing. People expect too much from beauty.”

“Which is why you feel he couldn’t have lived in Charles Harris’s shadow.”

“Of course. I think that’s why he never fell in love with me—Hugh was one of those men who dominated with charm. To tell you the truth, Hugh used it as a weapon to have his own way. Sending you to the skies one minute, tearing your heart out the next. And although I was close to hating him at the end, it was too late, I’d lost the ability to trust. I’d have made a shrew of a wife for Mark Wilton! And he knew it.”

The words were said lightly, with a smile, but there was pain behind them, in her eyes and in her voice. Rutledge heard it, but his mind was occupied by what she’d told him the first day he’d spoken to her—that Mark Wilton would have been a fool to harm Lettice’s guardian, it was the surest way to lose her.

And yet just now she’d contradicted that.

Whether she had realized it or not, she’d given him a motive for murder—not her own motive, but Mark Wilton’s.

Unless you turned it the other way about—and asked yourself if the most complete revenge was to destroy all three of them, Lettice, Charles, and the Captain, in one single bloody act whose repercussions would leave Lettice as alone and empty as Sally Davenant herself. Could she also have betrayed Catherine and her German lover? Women often sensed such things—his sister Frances always knew before the gossips what the latest scandal was.

Almost as if she heard his thoughts, Sally said quietly, “But you wanted to hear about Catherine, not me. Her father taught her to shoot, you know. If she’d wanted to shoot Charles, she’d have known how to go about it. But why now? Why after all this time? I’d always thought of her as hot-blooded, to paint like that. Not cold-blooded…” She let the thought trail off.

It was a wearing day. Hickam was still too ill to question, and Dr. Warren was testy from lack of sleep. A child he was tending was dying, and he didn’t know why. When Rutledge tried to prod him over Hickam, he said, “Come with me and see this child, and then tell me, damn you, that Hickam’s life is worth hers!”

So Rutledge went back to the meadow, walking up and down it, trying to see the murder, the frightened horse, the falling man. He tried to feel the hatred that had led to murder, worked out angles to see how the horseman and the killer had come together here in this one spot. How long had the killer waited? How sure had he been that Charles Harris would come this way? Had he known, somehow, where the Colonel was riding that morning? Which would bring suspicion back to Royston, surely. Or Lettice. Unless, before the quarrel, something had been said over dinner about his plans, and Wilton had remembered. Or perhaps the killer had simply followed Harris from the lane. Wilton again. Or Hickam? What would bring Catherine Tarrant out so early on that particular June morning, shotgun in hand, murder on her mind? Or Mrs. Davenant?

The damnable thing was, except for Catherine Tarrant’s dead lover and Mark Wilton’s quarrel, and possibly Mrs. Davenant’s jealousy, there was nothing to make Colonel Harris a target. Not if Mavers was out of the running, and Rutledge had to admit there was too little chance there of proving opportunity.

Why couldn’t he get a grip on the emotions of this case?

Because there was something he hadn’t learned? Questions he should have asked and hadn’t? Relationships he hadn’t found?

Or because his own ragged emotions kept getting in his way?

Why had he lost that strong vein of intuition that once had made him particularly good at understanding why the victim had to die? At understanding why one human being had been driven to kill another. Was it lost innocence, the knowledge that he himself was now no better than the killers he hunted? No longer siding with the angels, cut off from what he once had been?

He laughed sourly. Maybe it had only been a trick, a game he was good at when he could stand back dispassionately from the searing flame of emotions. A trick he’d used so often he’d come to believe in it himself. He could hardly bring back an image of the man he’d been in 1914. A realist, he’d told himself then, accustomed to the darkest corners of human experience. Well, he’d discovered in the trenches of France that hell itself was not half so frightening as the darkest corners of the human mind.

Not that it mattered. All they expected of him now was that he do his job. No frills, no flamboyance, no magician’s artifice, just answers.

If he couldn’t do his job, what would he do with his life?

He began to walk, making his way from the meadow down to Mallows, trying to think which way the horse might have come, what path had led Harris here.

But that didn’t work, did it? If Harris had been in the lane speaking to Wilton, he must have been returning to Mallows, not starting out on his ride! And why hadn’t Lettice chosen to go riding with her guardian that morning? Why had she said, with such pain, “I didn’t go riding with him,” as if in her mind this time had been somehow different?

He walked on, following the contour of the land, using his sense of direction to lead him toward the house. In the distance he could see the chimneys of the cottage the two Sommers women had rented for the summer, and from one particular spot, the church steeple rising among the treetops, marking the village. Could you also see this part of Mallows’ land from the church tower? It was an interesting thought….

And farther along, the distant rooftops of Mallows itself, and the stables. What could be seen of the hillside from that vantage point?

Could you follow Colonel Harris’s progress and be certain of meeting him at one particular place? Or had the encounter been happenstance? No, because the killer had come armed, ready to kill….

Skirting the plowed fields where new growth was dark green and strong, he found the orchards, and the stile, and a shrub-bordered path. At a fork that divided into one path of hard-packed earth pointing in the direction of the stables and sheds, the other paved now and passing through a hedge to the landscaped grounds, he came first to the kitchen gardens, the herbs, the flowers for cutting, and then the formal beds that marked the lawns.

Sure of his way now, Rutledge strode around a hedge, badly startling a gardener on his knees in a patch of vegetables. The man scrambled to his feet, pulled off his cap, and stared. Rutledge smiled. “I’ve come to see Mr. Royston.”

“I—he’s not at home, sir, Mr. Royston isn’t, he hasn’t come back from the Inquest that I know.”

“Then I’ll go along to the house and wait. Thank you.” He nodded, and the gardener stood staring after him, perspiration unheeded running into the frown lines on his sun-red forehead.

Rutledge crossed the lawns to the drive and rang the bell, finding himself asking to see Lettice, not Laurence Royston.

12

To Rutledge’s surprise, Lettice Wood asked him to come up to the small sitting room and was waiting for him there in the sunlight from the windows.

“The Inquest is over, Miss Wood,” he said formally. “I haven’t any information to give you.”

“No, I can see that,” she told him quietly, gesturing for him to be seated. There was a large crystal bowl of flowers on the table. From Sally Davenant’s gardens? Or from Mallows’? Next to the severe black of her mourning the colors were richly bright, making her face all the paler. “Is it so hard a thing, to find a murderer?”

“Sometimes. When he—or she—doesn’t want to be found, and the trail is cold, as it were.” He sat down in the chair facing her, back to the window.

Her eyes were dark with pain. “Have you seen my—the Colonel’s body?”

Caught off guard, he said, “No. I haven’t.”

“Neither have I.” She stopped. “I read a story once, when I was a child. It was about medieval Norway or perhaps Scotland—an outlandish place, it sounded to me, where people didn’t behave as Englishmen did. There was a death in the village, and the chief couldn’t discover who’d killed the person. And so he ordered everyone who came to the funeral to walk past the bier where the body lay, and put their hand on the wound. Everyone did, and nothing happened. But the chief wasn’t satisfied, and then he found a man hiding under an overturned boat. He didn’t want to see or touch the dead, he was afraid of what might happen if he did. Afraid the wound would cry out and accuse him of a sin that had nothing to do with murder. And so he’d run away. I was too young to understand when I read the story. I thought the frightened man was wiser than the rest—not to want to touch the dead.” She had been toying with a small silver box she had taken up from the table beside her. Now she looked up at him. “But I wanted to go to Charles. Hold him—tell him again that I loved him—tell him good-bye. That’s when the doctor explained what had been done to him. And now I can’t bear the thought of it—I can’t bear to think of Charles at all, because when I do, I see a—a monster. You can’t imagine how guilty it makes me feel—how bereft of comfort of any kind.”

Rutledge remembered the first corpses he’d seen in France, obscene, smelling things, inhuman grotesques that haunted his dreams. Stiff, awkward, ugly—you couldn’t feel compassion for them, only disgust, and the dreadful fear that you’d turn out like them, carted off in the back of a truck, like boards.

“Death is seldom tidy,” he said after a moment. “Sometimes for the very old, perhaps. Nothing is finished by a murder, whatever the killer may expect.”

She shook her head. “Laurence Royston told me that he had killed a child once. Quite accidentally. She’d run in front of his motorcar, there was nothing he could do, it was over in an instant. But he still remembers it quite vividly, the faces of the parents, the grief, the small crumpled body. Two children, playing a game, and suddenly, death.” She smiled wryly at Rutledge. “It was meant to help me see that none of us is spared pain. Meant kindly. He’s a very kind man. But it was small comfort.” A bird began to sing in the trees beyond an open window. The sound was sweet, liquid, but oddly out of place as a background to a quiet discussion of death.

“Do you still wish to see Charles’s murderer hang?” He watched her face.

Lettice sighed and asked instead, “Do you truly believe Catherine Tarrant could have killed him?”

“I don’t know. The field is still wide. Catherine Tarrant? Mark Wilton? Or Mrs. Davenant. Royston. Hickam. Mavers.”

She made a dismissive gesture. “Then you’ve made no progress at all. You’re whistling in the dark.”

“You, then.” He couldn’t decide if the scent that wafted to him on the slight breeze coming in the window was her perfume or from the flowers.

“Me?”

Rutledge said only, “I must keep an open mind, Miss Wood.”

“If I were planning to kill anyone—for any reason—I would not have used a shotgun! Not in the face!”

“There are many ways to kill,” he said, thinking suddenly of Jean. “Cruelty will do very well.”

Her face flamed, as if he’d struck her. On her feet in an instant, she stood there poised to leave. “What are you talking about? No, I don’t want to hear it! Please—just leave, I’ve nothing more to say to you.” Her odd eyes were alight with defensive anger, giving her face a wild and passionate force. “Do what you came to do, and go back to London!”

“I’m sorry—that wasn’t what I intended to—” He found himself apologizing quickly, a hand out as if to stop her from ringing the bell for Johnston.

Hamish stirred. “She’ll enchant ye, wait and see! Go while you can!”

But Rutledge paid him no heed. “Look at this from my point of view,” he went on. “So far, the best evidence I can find leads me to Mark Wilton. I don’t want to make a mistake, I don’t want to arrest him now and then have to let him go for lack of proof. Can you see what that could do to his life? Or yours, if you marry him, now or later. Chances are, you knew Charles Harris as well if not better than anyone. The man, not the soldier, not the landowner, not the employer. Help me find the Colonel’s killer! If you loved him at all.”

She stared at him, still very angry. But she hadn’t rung the bell. Instead, she walked with that long graceful stride toward the window, swinging around, making him turn as well to see her. “What is it you want, then? For me to damn someone else?”

“No. Just to help me see that last evening as clearly as I can.”

“I wasn’t there when the quarrel began!”

“But you can judge what might have happened. If I ask the right questions.”

She didn’t answer him, and he made himself think clearly, made himself consider what might have happened.

Three women. Three men. Catherine Tarrant, Lettice Wood, Sally Davenant. Charles Harris, Mark Wilton, and a German called Linden. He hadn’t found a link that satisfied him. And yet there were ties between them, of love and hate. Linden was dead. Harris was dead. And if Hickam’s testimony in court was damning enough, Wilton would be hanged. The men gone. All three of them.

Which in a way brought him back again to Catherine Tarrant….

“Is it possible,” he began slowly, “that, whatever they may have discussed just after you went up to your room, your guardian and Captain Wilton argued that night over Miss Tarrant? That somehow the subject of Miss Tarrant—or Linden, for that matter—came up after they’d finished the discussion of the wedding?”

The defensive barrier was there again. She answered curtly, “I can’t imagine what you’re talking about! Why should they’ve argued about Catherine?”

“Could the Colonel have warned the Captain that Catherine Tarrant still felt strongly about Linden’s death and was likely to do something rash? To harm one of them? To spoil the wedding, perhaps? Could the Captain have refused to hear anything said against her? Defended her, and made Harris very angry with him?”

“If Charles had been worried, he would have said something to me. But he didn’t—”

“But you didn’t go riding with him that morning. There was no opportunity to tell you what was on his mind.”

She opened her mouth to say something, and decided against it. Instead, she replied, “You’re chasing straws!”

“A witness saw them together, still arguing, that morning shortly before the Colonel died. If they weren’t arguing over the wedding, then over what? Or over whom?”

With her back to the windows, her eyes shadowed by the halo of her dark hair, she said, “You’re the policeman, aren’t you?”

“Then what about Mrs. Davenant?”

“Sally? What on earth does she have to do with anything?”

“She’s very fond of her cousin. Your guardian might have worried about that. Or conversely, Mark Wilton might have been jealous of the place Harris held in your life—”

Lettice turned to the flowers in the vase, her fingers moving over them as if she were blind and depended on touch to know what varieties were there. “If Mark had wanted to marry Sally, he could have done it any time these last eight years. When he had leave during the war, she went to London to meet him. He’s fond of her, of course he is. He’s fond of Catherine Tarrant, as well. As for Charles, Mark knows how I feel—felt—about him.” She bit her lip. “No, feel. I won’t put it in the past tense, as if everything stopped with his death! As if you stop caring, stop giving someone a place in your life. I want him back again, so desperately I ache with it. And yet I’m afraid to think about him—I can only see that awful, terrible thing—”

She lifted her head, forced back the tears. “Do you dream of the corpses you’ve seen?”

Taken aback, he said before he thought, “Sometimes.”

“I dreamed about my parents after they died. But I was too young to know what death was. I saw them as shining angels floating about heaven and watching me to see if I was good. In fact, the first time I saw the Venus above the hall here at Mallows, I thought it was my mother. It was a great comfort, oddly enough.” After a moment she said in a different voice, “You’ll have to chase your straws without me. I’m sorry. There’s nothing else I can do.”

This time he knew he had to go. He stood up. “I’d like to question your staff again before I leave. Will you tell Johnston that I have your permission?”

“Question them, then. Just put an end to this.” It was a plea; her anger had drained away into pain and something else that he couldn’t quite identify.

And so he spent the next hour talking to the servants, but his mind was on the lonely woman shut up in grief a few walls, a few doors from wherever he went in that house.

Mary Satterthwaite nervously told him she wasn’t sure what the master and the Captain were arguing about, but Miss Wood had said they were discussing the wedding, and it appeared to have given her the headache; she wanted only to go to bed and be left alone.

“Was it common for the Colonel and the Captain to argue?”

“Oh, no sir! They never did, except over a horse race or how a battle was fought, or the like. Men often quarrel rather than admit they’re wrong, you know.”

He smiled. “And who was wrong in this instance? The Colonel? The Captain?”

Mary frowned, taking him seriously. “I don’t know, sir.” She added reluctantly, “I’d guess, sir, it was the Colonel.”

“Why?”

“He threw his glass at the door. I mean, he couldn’t throw it at the Captain, being as he was already gone. But he didn’t like it that the Captain had had the last word, so to speak. So he threw his glass. As if there was still anger in him, or guilt, or frustration. Men don’t like to be wrong, sir. And I doubt if the Colonel was, very often.”

Which was a very perceptive observation. He asked about relations between the Captain and the Colonel. Cordial, he was told. Two quite different men, but they respected each other.

In the end, he asked to be taken upstairs to any rooms overlooking the hillside where the Colonel had been riding.

In theory, the hill was in view from a number of windows, both in the family quarters and on the servants’ floor. At this time of year, with the trees fully leafed out, it was different. You’d have to be lucky, Rutledge thought, peering out from one of the maids’ windows—the best of the lot—to catch a glimpse from here. You’d have to know where the Colonel was riding, and be watching for the faintest flicker of movement, and then not be certain what you’d seen was a horse and man. Possible, then. But not likely.

Tired, with Hamish grumbling in the back of his mind, Rutledge left the house and began the walk back to the meadow, the far hedge, and the lane where he’d left his car two hours or more before.

He glimpsed Maggie, the quiet Sommers cousin, hanging out a tablecloth on the line. He waved to her, but she didn’t see him, the breast-high wall and the climbing roses blocking her view. He walked on. Somewhere behind her he could hear the goose honking irritably, as if it had been shut away for the morning and was not happy about it. Rutledge smiled. Served the damned bird right!

Back in the meadow where Charles Harris had been found, Rutledge ignored Hamish and began to quarter the land carefully. But there was nothing to be learned. Nothing that was out of the ordinary. Nothing of interest. He went back over the land again, moving patiently, his eyes on the ground, his mind concentrating on every blade of grass, every inch of soil. Then he moved into the copse where the killer might have stood waiting.

Still nothing. Frustrated, he stood there, looking back the way he’d come, looking at the lie of the land, the distant church steeple. Hamish was loud in his mind, demanding his attention, but he refused to heed the voice.

Nothing. Nothing—

Except—

In the lee of the hedge, near where he and the Sergeant had cut through on their first visit. Something dull and gray and unidentifiable. Something he hadn’t been able to see from any other part of the meadow. What was it?

He walked down to the hedge, keeping his bearings with care, and found the place, the thing he’d seen. He squatted on his heels and looked at it, thinking it was a scrap of rotting cloth. Nothing…Ignoring the brambles, he pushed his way nearer to it. Closer to, it had shape, and staring eyes.

Reaching into the brambles, he touched it, then pulled it forward.

A doll. A small wooden doll, in a muddy, faded gown of pale blue flowered print, the kind of cloth that could be bought in any shop, cheap, cotton, and favored by mothers for children’s clothes. A girl’s dress, with the leftover cloth sewn into a gown for her favorite doll.

Hadn’t Wilton said something about seeing a child who had lost her doll?

Rutledge picked up the little bundle of cloth and stared down at it.

Hickam might not be fit to testify against the Captain. Would a child be any more reliable as a witness? He swore. Not bloody likely!

Making his way through the hedge, Rutledge went striding down to the lane, ignoring the high grass and brambles, his mind working on how to deal with the child, and with Wilton. Hamish was silent now, but somewhere he still moved about restlessly, waiting.

When he got to his car, left in the brushy, overgrown lane, Rutledge swore again. With infinite feeling.

One of his tires was torn. As if viciously slashed with a knife or a sharp stick. Deliberately and maliciously damaged.

Rutledge didn’t need a policeman to tell him who had done this.

Mavers.

13

Rutledge sent the blacksmith to bring his car back to the village and then went to find Inspector Forrest. But he wasn’t in—he’d been called back to Lower Streetham on the matter of the lorry accident. Fortuitously, Rutledge told himself irritably.

It was long past time for luncheon, and Rutledge turned back toward the Inn. After a hasty meal, he crossed to Dr. Warren’s surgery to look in on Hickam. He was no better—awake, but without any awareness in his eyes. A dead man’s stare was focused on the ceiling of the tiny room, blank and without knowledge or pain or grief.

Dr. Warren came in as Rutledge was leaving. “You’ve seen him? Well, it’s something that he’s still alive, I suppose. I’ve got enough on my hands—I can’t stand over him. You might see if the Vicar will pray for him”—he snorted—“it’s about all he’s good for!”

“Can you tell me if any young children live near the meadow where Harris was found?”

“Children?” Dr. Warren stared at him.

“Girls, then. Young enough to play with something like this.” He held out the muddy wooden doll.

Dr. Warren transferred his gaze to the object in Rutledge’s hand. “There must be seven or eight on the estate itself, servants’ and tenants’ children. More, scattered on the farms thereabouts. The gentry have china dolls, not wooden ones. As a rule. Why?”

“I found this under a hedge. Captain Wilton says he saw a child that morning, that she’d lost her doll.”

“Then ask the Captain to find her for you! I’ve got a breech birth to see to, and after that, a farmer whose ax slipped and damned near took off his foot. If I save the limb, it’ll be a miracle. And he won’t have the Army to provide him with a false one if I don’t.”

Rutledge stood aside and let him walk into the small surgery, where Warren restocked his bag and then set it on the scrubbed table. “You understand, don’t you, that if Hickam lives, he may not have enough of a mind left to testify at all? Everything that’s happened could be wiped out?”

Rutledge replied, “Yes. I know. You’ve served the people of this town for most of your life. Who do you believe might have killed Charles Harris?”

Warren shrugged. “Mavers, of course. That would be my first thought. I don’t know your Captain well enough to judge him. Still, Lettice was going to marry him, and Charles was damned careful where she was concerned; he wouldn’t have stood by and let a fool sweep her off her feet.”

“Catherine Tarrant?”

Warren shook his head. “Because of the German? Don’t be an idiot, man. I can’t see her lurking behind a tree with a shotgun, can you? If she had wanted Harris dead, she’d have come for him at Mallows, the first day he was back from the war. Why wait until now? But I’m not paid to find murderers. That’s your job. And if you ask me, you’re damned slow going about it!”

Hamish, chuckling deep in his mind, said derisively, “You’re half the man you were, that’s what it is. Ye left the better half in the mud and terror, and brought back only the broken bits. And London knows it!”

Rutledge turned on his heel and strode out, the doll still in his hand.

He tracked down Wilton having a whiskey in the Inn’s bar, morosely staring at the glass in his hand. Rutledge sat down at the small corner table and said, “Early in the day for that?”

“Not when you’ve come from the undertaker’s,” Wilton said, turning his glass around and around in his fingers. “The fool had never dealt with a headless man before. He was half titillated, half revolted. Would we be wanting the Colonel in his dress uniform? And how was that cut, sir, with a high collar or low? Would we wish a silk scarf to cover what was—er—the remains? Would we wish for a pillow in the coffin? To rest the shoulders upon, of course, sir. And will you be wanting to inspect the—er—deceased, before the services?” The Captain shuddered. “My good God!” He looked at Rutledge. “When Davenant died, the old vicar was still alive, and he went with me to attend to matters. Before we left, Davenant’s valet handed us a box with suitable clothing in it, and that was that. It was civilized, simple.”

“An ordinary death.” Rutledge shook his head as Redfern started toward them, to indicate that he didn’t wish to be disturbed. Then he put the doll on the table.

Mark Wilton stared at it, frowning. “What the hell is that?”

“A child’s doll.”

“A doll?”

“You told me that on the morning Harris was killed, you ran into a child who’d lost her doll. On the path near the meadow.”

“Oh, yes. I remember her. She’d been picking flowers or some such thing, and then couldn’t find the doll—she’d put it down somewhere or other. I see she found it.”

“I found it. Now I want to find her.”

Wilton smiled tiredly. “To ask her if I was carrying a shotgun when she and I crossed paths? First a drunken madman, then a child. Good God!”

“Nevertheless.”

“I have no idea who she was, or what her name was. Small, fair, cheerful—a child. I’ve had very little experience with them. I’m not even certain I’d know her again if I saw her.”

“But you won’t mind accompanying the Sergeant to visit the tenants on Mallows’ land and in the farms above the church.” It was not a question.

Wilton regarded him for a time. “You’re quite serious about this?”

“Entirely.”

Mark Wilton sighed. “Very well.”

“That night, when Lettice Wood left you and Harris together in the drawing room, she said you were discussing the wedding. Where did the conversation turn after that? To Catherine Tarrant?”

Wilton was surprised. “Catherine? Why on earth should we have discussed her—much less quarreled over her? Charles and I admired her.”

“If not Catherine Tarrant, what about Mrs. Davenant?”

Wilton laughed. “You are in desperate straits, aren’t you? Did you think I’d shoot Harris over the good name of my cousin? What has she done to merit your attention?”

Rutledge shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I grasp at straws?” He realized that he was quoting Lettice Wood. Had her words rankled that much? “There hasn’t been a rush of people breaking down the police-station door to volunteer information about Harris’s killer, has there? I’ve decided there’s a conspiracy to keep me from finding out what’s best hidden.”

Wilton stared at him, eyes sharp and searching. The thin, weary face before him was closed and unreadable. What had made this man so ill, consumption? War wounds? The sickly often had a way of piercing to the heart of a matter, as if their close brush with death made them more sensitive to the very air around them.

Rutledge had spoken out of irritation, exasperated with Wilton and himself. But the reaction had been completely unexpected.

“Yon pretty hero isn’t what he seems,” Hamish growled. “Unlucky in love and good for nothing but killing. But very good at that….”

Finally Wilton said carefully, “A conspiracy to murder Harris?”

“A conspiracy to hide the truth. Whatever it may be,” Rutledge amended.

Wilton finished his whiskey. “I thought you were an experienced man, one of the best London had. That’s what Forrest told us. If you can find one person in Warwickshire—other than that fool Mavers—who wanted Harris dead, I’ll willingly be damned to the far reaches of hell! Meanwhile, I’ll find the Sergeant and we’ll tour the nurseries of Upper Streetham for this child who lost a doll. Little good may it do you!”

He left, lifting a hand to summon Redfern. Rutledge sat where he was, watching the stiff, angry set of his shoulders as the Captain stalked off. “Unlucky in love,” Hamish had said.

He considered that again. Catherine Tarrant’s German. Lettice Wood’s guardian. And Sally Davenant, who might not have forgotten what had become of her husband’s old shotgun.

If Charles Harris had died of poison, Rutledge might believe in simple jealousy more easily. But a shotgun? That took rage, hatred, a need to obliterate, as Lettice had put it.

He could feel the fatigue dragging at him, the stress and the loneliness. The fear. Looking around for Redfern, Rutledge saw that he was alone in the bar. And then Carfield was coming through the doorway, glancing his way.

“Inspector. I’ve spoken with Mark Wilton,” he said, crossing over to Rutledge’s table. “We’ve settled on Tuesday for the services. I understand that Dr. Warren hasn’t lifted his embargo on visits to Lettice. I really feel, as her spiritual adviser, I should go to her, offer her comfort, prepare her for the very difficult task of attending the funeral. Could you use your good offices to persuade him that seclusion is the worst possible thing for a young woman with no family to support her?”

Rutledge smiled. Pompous ass didn’t begin to describe the Vicar. “I have no right to overturn a medical decision unless it has a bearing on my duties,” he said, remembering Lettice’s dread of having to cope with Carfield.

“And there’s the matter of the reception after the service. It should be held at Mallows. I sincerely believe Charles would have wished that. Naturally I shall take charge; I know the staff well enough, they’ll do my bidding.”

“Why not at the Vicarage?” Rutledge asked. “After Miss Wood has greeted the guests, she can go quietly home. Wilton will see to that, or Royston.”

Carfield sat down uninvited. “My dear man, one doesn’t serve the funeral’s cold baked meats at the Vicarage for a man like Charles Harris, who has his own quite fine residence! That’s what staff is for, you know, to do the labor. One doesn’t expect dear Lettice to shoulder such a burden.”

“Have you suggested to Wilton that you wish to arrange the reception at Mallows?”

Carfield’s eyebrows rose. “It isn’t his home, is it? The decision is for others to make, not for Captain Wilton.”

“I see.” He considered the Vicar for a moment. “Who told Upper Streetham that Miss Tarrant was in love with a German prisoner of war and wished to marry him?”

The heavily handsome face was closed. “I have no idea. I tried to make the village see that she had done nothing wrong, that loving our enemies is part of God’s plan. But people are sometimes narrow-minded about such matters. Why do you ask?”

“Could she have killed Charles Harris?”

Carfield smiled. “Why not ask me if Mrs. Davenant did it?”

“All right. Did she?”

The smile disappeared. “You’re quite serious?”

“Murder is a serious business. I want to solve this one.”

“Ah, yes, I can understand your dilemma, with Wilton so closely connected to the Royal Family,” Carfield answered with a shrewdness that narrowly escaped shrewishness as well. “I shouldn’t have thought that a shotgun was a woman’s weapon.”

“Nor should I. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a woman. Behind it at the very least, even if she never touched the trigger.”

With a shake of his head, Carfield replied, “Women are many things, but obliterating a man’s face in that fashion is a bloody, horrible business even for a man. Catherine, Mrs. Davenant, Lettice—they are none of them farmwives who can take an ax to a chicken without blinking.”

“Catherine Tarrant ran her father’s estate throughout the war.”

“Ran it, yes, but do you suppose she butchered cattle or dressed a hen?”

“Perhaps she didn’t know how bloody the results would be. Perhaps she intended to aim lower, but the kick of the weapon lifted the barrel.”

Carfield shrugged. “Then you must take into account the fact that during the last three years of the war, Sally Davenant volunteered to nurse the wounded at a friend’s house in Gloucestershire, which had been turned into a hospital. She has no formal training, you understand, but Mrs. Davenant did tend her husband through his last illness, and the—er—intimacies of the sickbed were familiar to her. Dressing wounds, taking off bloody bedclothes, watching doctors remove stitches or clean septic flesh—I’m sure you learn to face many things when you have to.”

No one, least of all Sally Davenant, had seen fit to mention that. Rutledge swore under his breath.

“But I can’t think that it would lead her to commit a murder!” Carfield was saying. “And why should she wish to kill the Colonel, I ask you!”

“Why did anyone want to kill him?” Rutledge countered.

“Ah, now we’re back to why. Whatever the reason, I’m willing to wager that it was deeply personal. Deeply. Can you plumb that far into the soul to find it?”

“Are you telling me that as a priest you’ve heard confessions that give you the answer to this murder?”

“No, people seldom confess their blackest depths to anyone, least of all to a priest. Oh, the small sins, the silly sins, even the guilty sins, where a clean conscience relieves the weight of guilt. Adultery. Envy. Anger. Covetousness. Hate. Jealousy.”

He smiled, a rueful smile that belittled himself in a way. “But there’s fury, you know. Where someone acts in a blind rage, and only then stops to think and feel. Or fright, where there’s no time for second thoughts. Or self-defense, where you must act or be hurt. I hear of those afterward. From the man who hits a neighbor in a rage over a broken cart wheel. From the woman who takes a flatiron to her drunken husband before he beats her senseless. From the child who lashes out, bloodying a bully’s nose. And sometimes these things can also lead to murder. Well, you’ve seen it happen, I needn’t tell you about that! But what’s deeply burned into the soul, what’s buried beneath the civilized layers of the skin, is the more deadly because often there’s no warning it even exists. No warning, even to a priest.”

Which was more truth than Rutledge had expected to hear from the Vicar.

“However,” Carfield went on before Rutledge could answer him, “I’m not here to solve your problems but to attend to my own. Which brings me back again to Mallows.”

“I’d speak to Royston or to Wilton, if I were you. I’d leave Miss Wood out of it. If they agree, they can break the news to her.”

“I’m her spiritual adviser!”

“And Dr. Warren is her physician. It’s his decision, not yours.”

Carfield rose, eyes studying Rutledge, the tired face, the lines. “You carry your own heavy burdens, don’t you?” he said quietly. “I don’t envy you them. My God, I don’t! But let me tell you this much, Inspector Rutledge. When you return to London, this will still be my parish, and I must still face its people. The reception will be at Mallows. I promise you that.”

He turned and strode through the bar, ignoring Redfern. The younger man came limping across to Rutledge’s table. “Now there’s a man I’d not want to cross,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of the outer door slamming. “I’d turn Chapel before I’d tell him what was going on in my head!”

Rutledge laughed wryly. He wondered if Redfern had overheard part of the conversation or was simply, unwittingly, confirming the Vicar’s words.

Redfern picked up the empty glasses and wiped the table with his cloth. “It isn’t easy, is it? Being from London and not knowing what’s happening here. But I’ll tell you, there’s no reason I can think of for any of us to shoot Colonel Harris. Save Mavers, of course. Born troublemaker! There was a private in my company, a sour-faced devil from the stews of Glasgow, who was bloody-minded as they come! Never gave us any peace, until the day the Germans got him. I heard later that the ambulance carrying him to hospital was strafed. Everybody killed. I was sorry about that, but I was relieved that Sammy wasn’t coming back. Ever. Tongue as rough as the shelling, by God!”

“I understand that Mrs. Davenant was a nurse during the war. Is that true?”

It was Redfern’s turn to laugh, embarrassed. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when she walked into the ward the day I was brought in, still too groggy from what they’d been doing to my foot to know where I was. God, I thought somehow I’d landed back home! The next day she was there again, changing dressings. I told the sister on duty I’d not hear of her touching me! Sister said that was enough nonsense out of me. Still, they must have spoken of it, because she left me alone.”

“You recognized her?”

“Oh, aye, I did. Well, why not? I grew up in Upper Streetham!”

“And she never said anything? Then or later, when you’d both come back here, to the village?”

“No, and I can tell you it was a relief the first time she passed me on the High Street without so much as a blink! We’ve spoken since, of course, when she’s been here to dine, just good evening, and what will you have, and thank you—no more nor less than is needed.”

“Did she work primarily with the surgical patients, or only wherever she was most useful?”

“I asked one of the younger sisters about her. She said that Mrs. Davenant had shown a skill with handling the worst cases, and the doctors often asked for her. No nonsense, and no fainting, Tilly said. She was best with fliers, she knew how to talk to them. And we got any number of those. Of course, with her own cousin one of them, I expect it was natural for her to find it easy to talk to them.”

“Amputations, cleaning septic wounds, burns—she didn’t shirk them?”

“No, not that I ever saw. But she’s not one the lads would feel free to chat up and laugh with, not the way you did with Tilly. Good-natured nonsense, that’s all it was, but not with the likes of Mrs. Davenant!”

“Yet the fliers were comfortable with her?”

“Yes. She’d ask news of the Captain, and then they’d soon be easy around her.”

She’d ask news of the Captain….

It always came back to the Captain. But he was beginning to think that whatever her feelings about Mark Wilton, it would take more skill than he possessed to bring them to the surface.

Rutledge went upstairs and along the passage to his room. The sun was bright, showing the worn carpet to worst advantage, dust motes dancing in the light as he passed the windows. The vegetable garden looked like a vegetable garden again, not a sea of temples. He thought the onions had grown inches since his arrival. Even the flowers in the small private garden between the Inn and the drive, surrounded by shrubbery, were no longer flat and drooping from the rain, but stood tall and full of blossom heads. The lupines were particularly glorious. His mother had liked them and filled the house with them as soon as they began to bloom. She’d had a way with flowers, a natural instinct for what made them thrive. His sister Frances, on the other hand, couldn’t have grown weeds in a basket. But she was known throughout London for her exquisite flower arrangements, and was begged to lend her eye for color and form to friends for parties and weddings and balls.

His door was ajar, the maid finishing making his bed. She apologized shyly when he stepped in, saying that luncheon had been such a busy time they’d needed her in the kitchens.

“No matter,” he said, but she hastily finished her task, picked up her broom and the pile of dirty linens, and bobbed a curtsy of sorts as she left. Rutledge sat down by the windows, wondering what he would say to Bowles on Monday.

Possibilities weren’t evidence. Possibilities weren’t guilt. Bowles would have a fit if he knew how few facts Rutledge possessed.

He wondered what luck Wilton would have tracking down the child who’d lost the doll. He set it on the windowsill and looked at it. Too bad you couldn’t bring a doll into the courtroom. What could it tell? What had it seen, lying there in the hedgerow? Or heard? Rutledge grimaced. A drunken, shell-shocked man, a small child, and a doll, versus a war hero wearing the ribbon of the Victoria Cross. Every newspaper in the country would have a field day!

He needed a motive…a reason for murder. A reason why the Colonel, riding out that sunny morning, had to die. What had brought about his death? Something now, something in the war, something in a life spent largely out of England? So far such questions had gotten him nowhere.

Rutledge leaned his head against the back of the chair, then closed his eyes. He needed to find a young sergeant at the Yard and train him. Someone he could trust. He’d ask Bowles for names of likely men. Someone who could work with him. Davies was too busy trying to stay out of sight. Davies had his own commitments to Upper Streetham, and like the Vicar, he had to live here long after Rutledge was gone. It was understandable. But he needed someone to talk to about this case. Someone who was impartial, whose only interest was finding the killer and getting on with it. Someone to share the loneliness—

“And what would you tell yon bonny Sergeant about me? Would you be honest with him? I’ll not go away, you can’t shut me out, I’m not your unhappy Jean, who wants to be shut out. I’m your conscience, man, and it wouldn’t be long before yon bonny young Sergeant knows you for what you are!”

Getting quickly to his feet, Rutledge swore. All right, then, he’d do it alone. But do it he would!

Outside the Inn, he met Laurence Royston. Royston nodded, and was about to walk on, when Rutledge said, “Have you spoken with the Vicar?”

Royston turned. “Damned fool! But yes, I have, and yes, he’s right. Charles would have expected to have the reception at Mallows. I’ve told him I’ll take the responsibility, and I’ll see to the arrangements. He needn’t disturb Lettice. Miss Wood.”

“Can you tell me if Sally Davenant worked as a nurse during the war? At a convalescent hospital?”

“Yes, she did. In a friend’s home in Gloucestershire. Charles ran into her there once or twice, visiting one of his wounded staff officers. He felt she was very capable, very good at what she did.”

“Why do you think she volunteered?”

“Actually, she spoke to me about it before she wrote to Mrs. Carlyle.” He grinned. “I told her she’d hate it. Well, I thought she might, you see, and if she expected to hate it, it wouldn’t be quite such a letdown. She said then that she wasn’t cut out to run a farm the way Catherine Tarrant was doing, and she was damned if she’d roll bandages or serve tea to the troop trains leaving London—ladies’ make-work, she called it. But she thought she might be useful with the wounded. And she was worried about her cousin. Pilots didn’t have a long life expectancy; by rights Wilton should have been killed in the first year—eighteen months. She felt that staying busy would make the news easier to bear. When it came.”

There was a commotion in the street as two boys came swooping past, chasing a dog with a bone nearly as large as its head in its mouth. A woman on the other side of the street called, “Jimmy! If you’ve let that animal into the house—”

Royston watched the boys. “Father died on the Somme. They’re growing up wild as hellions. What was I saying? Oh, about Mrs. Davenant. I couldn’t serve,” he went on quietly. “I have only the one kidney, as I told you. The army wouldn’t have any part of me, and I suppose it was for the best. Hard on a man, when everyone else is serving, even the women. Charles told me I was doing my bit keeping Mallows and the Davenant lands productive.”

“You worked Mrs. Davenant’s land?”

“Yes, her steward left before Christmas in 1914. Mad to fight, mad to be there before it was all over. He never came back. And the old steward wasn’t up to the work. I did it, and he kept an eye on things when I couldn’t be there.”

“Did you know Hugh Davenant well?”

Royston shrugged. “Well enough. Hugh Davenant made a wreck of his marriage. One of those selfish, careless bastards who go through life leaving grief in their wake, never taking notice.”

“Was she ever in love with her cousin?”

He frowned. “I’ve wondered. Well, it was natural, I suppose, to wonder. But there was never anything to support speculation. She’s fond of him.”

“What was Wilton planning to do after he married Lettice? Live here at Mallows?”

“No, he has a home of his own in Somerset—I’ve seen it, a handsome house, good rich land.”

“I can’t picture the Captain quietly growing lettuces and wheat.”

With a laugh Royston said, “His father was an architect, his mother’s family’s in banking in the City. Even if he never flies again, he’ll hardly be reduced to growing lettuces.”

But when he came back to Warwickshire, he’d stay at Mallows, not with his cousin….

“Right, thank you, Royston.” Rutledge stepped out of the way of a woman pushing a pram. She acknowledged Royston with a pleasant smile and walked on, glancing at Rutledge out of the corner of her eyes at the last minute.

Royston waited until she was out of hearing. “You’ve made no progress, then?” He shook his head. “I keep thinking about it—how someone could shoot the Colonel down and then disappear so completely. Unless he’s left the County. But if he’s still here, there’s been no change in his manner, nothing to point to him. It was a bloody, vindictive sort of crime, Inspector. And yet it doesn’t seem to have changed the killer at all. Either to make him happier or make him angrier. Somehow I find that particularly horrifying. Don’t you? That someone could kill and not be marked by it?”

14

Rutledge watched Laurence Royston walk away down the busy street, then brought his mind back to the task he’d set himself. He stepped out into the afternoon traffic, following a woman with a pram. Standing by the market cross, he looked up and down the main street. Two boys on bicycles passed him, grinning, trying to attract his attention, but he ignored them.

Mavers, that Monday morning when Harris was shot, had been busily haranguing the market goers. Both Mavers and any number of witnesses had sworn to it.

But Sally Davenant, for one, had suggested that it was possible for him to disappear for a short time without anyone noticing his absence.

Rutledge considered first of all Mavers’s cunning, and the distance from here to the meadow where Harris died.

The gun was a problem. If Mavers went to his house first, retrieved the shotgun, then went to the meadow, waited for Harris, shot him, put the gun back, and returned to Upper Streetham, he would need at the very least some ninety minutes, possibly even two hours.

Too long. He’d have been missed.

All right then, what if he’d taken the shotgun and left it somewhere along the hedge before coming down to the village? Harangued the crowds, disappeared, and after the killing, concealed the shotgun again in the high grass before returning to his post? A long hour? Could he have done it that quickly? It was a risk, a calculated risk, and Rutledge wasn’t sure that Mavers was willing to run it. On the other hand, Mavers liked nothing better than thumbing his nose at his betters….

Rutledge nodded to the woman he’d seen earlier with Sally Davenant, his attention on Mavers’s movements. And then he brought himself up sharply and caught up with her as she crossed the street in the direction of the greengrocer’s. Touching her arm to attract her attention, he introduced himself and said, “Were you in Upper Streetham last Monday morning? Did you by any chance hear the man Mavers speaking out here in the street?”

She was a pleasant-faced woman, dressed well and carrying a small basket nearly full of parcels. But she grimaced as Rutledge asked his question. “You can’t miss him during one of his tirades,” she said. “More’s the pity!”

“Could you tell me if he was there, by the market cross?”

“Yes, he was, as a matter of fact.”

“All the time? Part of the time?”

She frowned, considering, and then called to another woman just coming out of the ironmonger’s shop. “Eleanor, dear—”

Eleanor was in her fifties, with short iron gray hair and a look of competence about her. She came across to them, head to one side, her stride as brisk as her manner.

“Inspector Rutledge from London, Eleanor,” the first woman said. “This is Eleanor Mobley, Inspector. She might be able to help you more than I can—I was here only very early that morning.”

Rutledge remembered the name Mobley from Forrest’s list of witnesses. He repeated his questions, and Mrs. Mobley watched his face as she listened. “Oh, yes, he was here by the market cross very early on. At least part of the time. He went down along the street there, closer to the shops and the Inn, for a while. Later I saw him near the turning to the church. But he came back to the cross, he usually does.” She gave him a wry smile. “I was trying to line up tables for the Vicar’s summer fete. A fund-raiser for the church. You know how it is, everyone promises to contribute something for the sale. All the same, you can’t let it go at that, can you—you have to pin them down. Not my favorite task, but this year I’m on the committee, and market day brings most everyone into town, I just catch them as I can. I must have been up and down this street a dozen times or more.”

“He moved from place to place, but as far as you know, he didn’t leave? To go to the pub, for instance, or step into the Inn?”

“Not as far as I know. But since I wasn’t paying him much heed, I can’t be certain that I’m right about that. He just seemed to be underfoot wherever I turned, putting people’s backs up, spoiling a perfectly lovely morning.”

Someone passing by spoke to the other woman, calling her Mrs. Thornton. She acknowledged his greeting, adding, “I’ll be along directly, tell Judith for me, will you, Tom?”

Mrs. Mobley was saying to Rutledge, “Is that any help at all?”

“Yes, very much so. What was on his mind that morning? Do you recall anything he might have been saying?”

Mrs. Mobley shook her head. “He was running on about the Russians, you can usually depend on that. Something about the Czar and his family. I remember something about unemployment too, because I was thinking to myself that he was a lovely one to talk! The strikes in London.”

“You don’t really listen, do you? He’s not a very pleasant man at the best of times!” Mrs. Thornton put in. “And riding his hobbyhorse, he’s—repellent. As Helena Sommers put it, any good he might do is lost with every word that comes out of his mouth!”

“Was Miss Sommers here on Monday?”

“Yes, just around noon, I think it was, buying some lace for her cousin,” Mrs. Mobley said. “I put her down for two cakes; I was glad to have them.”

Mrs. Thornton bit her lip, then said, “You’ll think it silly of me, but I don’t feel it’s safe for two women in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Since the Colonel’s death, I mean. Since we don’t know—And Helena might as well be alone, her cousin is such a ninny! I went out there to call one afternoon, and Margaret was working in the garden. Well, that goose gave my horse such a fright, and she was absolutely too terrified even to drive the silly thing away with a broom!”

“I think they’re probably safe enough,” Rutledge said, refusing to be drawn.

“If you say so.” Mrs. Thornton seemed unconvinced. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Inspector?”

He thanked them both and went back to the market cross, threading his way between a buggy and a wagon piled with lumber.

If Mavers had moved from place to place that Monday morning, and given some forethought to the shotgun, he might—just might—have killed Harris and gotten away with it….

From the market cross, Rutledge made his way to the lane where Hickam had seen the Captain and the Colonel together. Where Sergeant Davies had found Hickam drunk and rambling about the two men.

He looked about the lane for several minutes, then walked to the first house and knocked on the door, asking questions.

Did you see Daniel Hickam in this lane on the Monday morning that Colonel Harris was shot? Did you see Captain Wilton in this lane, walking? Did you see the Colonel, on his horse, riding through here, stopping to talk to anyone? Did you see Bert Mavers anywhere in the lane, coming or going toward the main street?

The answer was the same at every house. No. No. No. And no.

But at one of the doors, the woman who answered raised her eyebrows at finding him on her doorstep. “You’re the man from London, then. What can I do for you?” She looked him up and down with cool eyes.

He didn’t need to be told what she was, although she was respectably dressed in a dark blue gown that was very becoming to her dark hair and her sea-colored eyes. A tall woman of middle age and wide experience, who saw the world as it was, but more important, seemed to take it as it was.

Rutledge asked his questions, and she listened carefully to each before shaking her head. No, she hadn’t seen Hickam. No, she’d not seen the Captain that morning, nor Mavers. But the Colonel had been here.

“Colonel Harris?” Rutledge asked, keeping his voice level as Hamish clamored excitedly. “What brought him this way, do you know?”

“He came to leave a message by the door, knowing it was an early hour for Betsy and me, but he wanted to put our minds at rest about the quarrel we’d had with the Vicar.” Her mouth twisted, half in exasperation, half in humor. “Mr. Carfield is often of a mind to meddle; he likes to be seen as a thunderbolt, you might say, flinging the moneylenders out of the temple, the whores out of the camp. Not that there’s that much to go on about in Upper Streetham. It’s not what you’d call a regular Sodom and Gomorrah.”

She caught the responsive gleam in Rutledge’s eyes. “The Colonel, now, he was a very decent man. We pay our rent, regular as the day, but Vicar had been onto that Mr. Jameson about us, and he called around, talking eviction. I could have told him who put him up to it! But there was no changing his mind. So the next time I saw the Colonel on the street, I stopped him and asked him please to have a word with Mr. Jameson about it.”

“Jameson?”

“Aye, he’s the agent for old Mrs. Crichton, who lives in London, and he manages her holdings in Upper Streetham. Well, the short of it was, Mr. Jameson agreed he’d been a little hasty over the evicting.”

“Do you still have the message?”

She turned and called over her shoulder to someone else in the house. “Betsy? Could you find that letter of the Colonel’s for me, love?”

In a moment a thinner, smaller woman came to the door, apprehension in her eyes and a cream-colored envelope in her hand. She handed it silently to the older woman. “Is everything all right, Georgie?”

“Yes, yes, the Inspector is asking about the Colonel, that’s all.” She gave the envelope to Rutledge, adding, “He never came here—as a caller. He was a proper gentleman, the Colonel, but fair. Always fair. If you’d asked me, I’d have said I knew most of the men in Upper Streetham better than their own wives, and I can’t think of one who’d want to shoot Colonel Harris!”

There were two words on the front: Mrs. Grayson.

“That’s me, Georgina Grayson.”

Rutledge took the letter out of its envelope, saw the Colonel’s name engraved at the top, and the date, written in a bold black hand. Monday. He scanned it. It said, simply, “I’ve spoken to Jameson. You needn’t worry, he’s agreed to take care of the matter with Carfield. If there should be any other trouble, let me know of it.” It was signed “Harris.”

“Could I keep this?” he asked, speaking to Mrs. Grayson.

“I’d like it back,” she said. “But yes, if it’ll help.”

Turning to Betsy, Rutledge went over the same questions he’d asked earlier, but she’d seen no one, not Mavers—“He knows better than to show his face around here!”—not Hickam, not Harris, not Wilton—“More’s the pity!” with a saucy grin. “But,” she added, a sudden touch of venom in her voice, “I did see Miss Hoity-toity just the other day, Thursday it was, following after that poor sot, Daniel Hickam. He’d spent the night on the floor here, too drunk to find his way home, and we got a little food into him, then let him go. She was onto him like a bee onto the honey, slinking after him into the high grass toward the trees.” She pointed, as if they had only just disappeared from sight, down toward the track that eventually led up the hill to Mallows.

The one called Georgie smiled wryly at Rutledge. “Catherine Tarrant.”

“What did she want with Hickam?” Rutledge asked. Thursday was the day she’d come into town to speak to him about Captain Wilton.

Betsy shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe to pose for her—she asked Georgie to do it once, and Georgie told her sharpish what she thought about that! But it was him she did want! She caught up with him where she didn’t think I could see, and stopped him, talking to him, and him shaking his head, over and over. Then she took something from her pocket and held it out to him—money enough to get drunk again, I’ll wager! He turned away from her, but after only a few steps turned back and began speaking to her. She interrupted him a time or two, and then she gave him whatever it was she was holding, and he shambled off into the trees. She walked back down to where she’d left her bicycle, head high as you please, like the cat that got the cream, and then she was gone. She’s a German lover, that one. Maybe she’s got a taste for drunks as well!”

The eyes of hate and jealousy…

Mrs. Grayson said, “Now, then, Betsy, it won’t help the Inspector to do his job if you run on like that. Miss Tarrant’s business is none of ours!”

He left them, the letter in his pocket, his mind on what it represented—the fact that the Colonel had been in the lane on Monday morning, just when Hickam had said he was. And Catherine Tarrant had given Hickam money….

When Rutledge arrived at the Inn, Wilton and Sergeant Davies were waiting. There was a distinctly sulfurous air about them, as if it hadn’t been a pleasant afternoon for either of them. But Sergeant Davies got to his feet as soon as he saw Rutledge, and said, “We think we’ve found the child, sir.”

Turning to Wilton, Rutledge said, “What does he mean? Aren’t you sure?”

Wilton’s temper flashed. “As far as I can be! She’s—different. But yes, I feel she must be the one. None of the others matched as well. The problem is—”

Rutledge cut him short. “I’ll only be a minute, then.” He went up to his room, got the doll, and came down again, saying, “Let’s be on our way!”

“Back there?” Wilton asked, and the Sergeant looked mutinous.

“Back there,” Rutledge said, walking down the rear hallway toward his car. He gave them no choice but to follow. “I want to see this child for myself.”

He said nothing about Georgina Grayson as he drove to the cottage. While it was, as the crow flies, only a little farther from Upper Streetham than the meadow where the Colonel’s body had been found, it was necessary to go out the main road by Mallows, through the Haldanes’ estate, and up the hill, the last hundred yards on rutted road that nearly scraped the underpinnings of the car.

On the way, he asked instead for information about the child’s family.

“She’s Agnes Farrell’s granddaughter,” Davies answered. “Mrs. Davenant’s maid.”

“The one we met at her house on Thursday morning?”

“No sir, that was Grace. Agnes was home with the child. Lizzie’s mother is Agnes’s daughter, and the father is Ted Pinter, one of the grooms at the Haldanes’. They live in a cottage just over the crest of the hill from where the Captain says he was walking when he saw Lizzie and Miss Sommers that Monday morning. When Meg Pinter is busy, the little girl sometimes wanders about on her own, picking wildflowers. But she’s quite ill, now, sir. Like to die, Agnes says.”

Rutledge swore under his breath. When one door opened, another seemed to close. “What’s the matter with her?”

“That’s just it, sir, Dr. Warren doesn’t know. Her mind’s gone, like. And she screams if Ted comes near her. Screams in the night too. Won’t eat, won’t sleep. It’s a sad case.”

The car bumped to a stop in front of the cottage, a neatly kept house with a vegetable garden in the back, flowers in narrow beds, and a pen with chickens. A large white cat sat washing herself on the flagstone steps leading to the door, ignoring them as they walked by.

Agnes Farrell opened the door to them. He could see the lines of fatigue in her face, the worry in her eyes, the premature aging of fear. But she said briskly, “Sergeant, I told you once and I’ll tell you again, I’ll not have that child worried!”

“This is Inspector Rutledge, from London, Agnes. He needs to have a look at Lizzie. It won’t be above a minute, I promise it won’t,” he cajoled. “And then we’ll be on our way.”

Agnes looked Rutledge over, her eyes weighing him as carefully—but in a different manner—as Georgina Grayson’s had done. “What’s a policeman from London want with the likes of Lizzie?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Rutledge said. “But I believe I’ve found the child’s doll. It was in the hedge near the meadow where Colonel Harris was killed. Captain Wilton here says he met her on his walk that morning, and she was crying for the doll. I’d like to return it, if I could.” He held out the doll, and Agnes nodded in surprise. “Aye, that’s the one, all right! Whatever was she doing in the meadow?”

“Looking for Ted, no doubt.” Meg Pinter came forward and touched the doll. Her face was drawn with lack of sleep and a very deep fear for her child. “She goes out to pick flowers, and that’s all right, she comes to no harm. But once or twice she’s gone looking for her father because he lets her sit on one of the horses in the stables, if the Haldanes aren’t about.”

Rutledge said, “Do you think she was in the meadow that morning? When the Colonel was killed?”

“Oh God!” Meg exclaimed, turning to stare at her mother. “I’d never even thought—” Agnes’s face twisted in pain, and she shook her head.

“She might have seen something,” he added, as gently as he could. “But I’d like to have a look at her, give her the doll.”

“No, I’ll take it!” Meg said quickly, tears in her eyes, but he refused to part with it.

“I found it. I’ll return it.”

The two women, uncertain what to do, turned to the Sergeant, but he shook his head, denying any responsibility. In the end, they led Rutledge through the neat house to the small room with its silent crib.

Lizzie lay as quietly as a carved child, covers tidily drawn over her body, her face turned toward the wall. It was a bright room, very pleasant with a lamp and a stool and a small doll’s bed in one corner, handmade and rather nicely carved with flowers in the headboard. It was very much like the crib, and empty. Even from the door he could see how the little girl’s face had lost flesh, the body bony under the pink coverlet. There had been so many refugee children in France with bones showing and dark, haunted eyes, frightened and cold and hungry. They had haunted him too.

Rutledge walked slowly toward the child. Wilton stayed outside the door, but the Sergeant and the two women followed him inside.

“Lizzie?” he said softly. But she made no response, as if she hadn’t heard him. As if she heard nothing. A thin thread of milk drained out of her mouth on the sheet under her head, and her eyes stared at the wall with no recognition of what she was seeing.

“Speak to her,” he said over his shoulder to Meg. She came to the bed, calling her daughter’s name, half cajoling, half commanding, but Lizzie never stirred. Rutledge reached out and touched Lizzie on the arm, without any reaction at all.

Meg’s voice dwindled, and she bit her lip against the tears. “I’d never thought,” she said softly, as if Lizzie could hear her, “that she might have been there. Poor little mite—poor thing!” She turned away, and Agnes took her in her arms.

Rutledge went around to the other side of the crib, between the child and the wall. He stooped to bring his face more in line with her eyes, and said, with a firmness that he’d learned in dealing with children, “Lizzie! Look at me.”

He thought there was a flicker of life in the staring eyes, and he said it again, louder and more peremptorily. Agnes cried out, telling him to mind what he was doing, but Rutledge ignored her. “Lizzie! I’ve found your doll. The doll you lost in the meadow. See?”

He held it out, close enough for her to see it. For an instant he thought that she wasn’t going to respond. Then her face began to work, her mouth gulping at air. She screamed, turning quickly toward the door, her eyes on the Sergeant, then on Wilton beyond. It was a wild scream, terrified and wordless, rising and falling in pitch like a banshee’s wail. Deafening in its power from such a small pair of lungs. Curdling the blood, numbing the mind. Agnes and Meg ran toward her, but with a gesture Rutledge held them back. But the screaming stopped as quickly as it had started. Lizzie reached out and Rutledge put the doll in her open arms. She clasped it to her with a force that surprised him, her eyes closing as she rocked gently from side to side. After a time one hand let go of the doll and a thumb found its way to her mouth. Sucking noisily, she clutched the doll and began a singsong moan under her breath.

Agnes, watching her, said, “She does that when she’s falling to sleep—”

There was the sound of a voice, then the front door slamming. A man’s voice called, “Meg, honey—I saw the car. Who’s come? Is it that doctor Warren was going on about?”

Lizzie opened her eyes, wide and staring, and began to scream again, turning her back to the doorway. The sound ripped through the silence in the small room, ripped at the nerves of the people standing there. Meg ran out of the room, and Rutledge could hear her speaking to her husband, leading him away from Lizzie, then the slamming of the front door.

After a time, Lizzie stopped screaming and began to suck her thumb again, the doll held like a lifeline in her other hand. After a minute or so the singsong moaning began as well. The child’s eyes began to drift shut. A deep breath lifted her small chest, and then she seemed to settle into sleep. Or was it unconsciousness?

“That’s the first time she’s rested.” Agnes stood watching for a time, then shook her head slowly, grieving. “She adored her father—it’s cut him to the heart to have her like this, carrying on so when he comes into the house, not wanting him near her.”

Rutledge studied the child. “Yes, I think she really is asleep,” he said, gesturing to the Sergeant and Agnes to leave. “Let her keep the doll. But I’ll need it. Later.”

He followed them out of the room, and saw Wilton’s white face beyond the Sergeant’s stolid red one. The screams had unnerved Davies, but Rutledge thought that it was the doll, and the child’s reaction, that had worried Wilton more.

Agnes said, her voice shaking, “What’s to be done, then? If she saw the man, what’s to be done?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge told her honestly. “I don’t know.”

Out by the car, a horse was standing, reins down. In the middle of the yard, Meg was holding her husband in her arms. As they came out of his house, he stared over her head at them, raw pain in his eyes.

“I want to know what’s going on,” he said, “what’s happening to Lizzie.”

“She—your daughter was possibly a witness to Colonel Harris’s murder,” Rutledge said. There was no easy way to break the news. “She may have seen him shot. I found her doll in the meadow there. Captain Wilton”—he gestured toward Mark—“saw Lizzie that morning as well. Crying for the doll. I’m not sure yet how all of this fits together, but that child is frightened to death of you. Can you think of any reason why?”

Ted shook his head vehemently. “I’ve nothing to do with it. She was like that when I came home Monday from the stables for lunch. Meg found her wandering lost like, and brought her home. She didn’t speak, she wasn’t herself. Meggie put her to bed, and she’s—it’s been like that ever since.” His voice was husky with feeling. “Are you sure about this? I’d not like to think of her there in that meadow with a murderer. Or a man killed. She’s never had a harsh word spoken to her in her life, she’s been a quiet, cheerful, good little thing—” He stopped, turned away.

The horse he’d been riding ambled over and nudged his shoulder. Ted reached up to its muzzle without thinking, stroking the soft nose. Rutledge watched him.

“Does your daughter like horses?”

“Horses? Aye, she’s been around them most of her life. Not to ride, but I’ve let her sit on their backs, held her in front of me. Let her touch them. She likes to touch their coats, smooth it, like. Always has.”

Rutledge gestured to Davies and Wilton to get into the car. “If you want my advice, send for Dr. Warren and let him take another look at her. And stay away from her for a few days, Pinter, if you can. There’s a chance that she can sleep now. It ought to help. When she wakes up, if she’s at all capable of talking, send for me. Do you understand? It could be very important! For your sake and for hers.”

Ted nodded, his wife and mother-in-law watchful, wary. But Rutledge, looking at them, thought they’d do it. “Stay away from her, mind!” he added. “Let her heal, if she can.”

Agnes said, “I’ll see to it. For now.”

“I’ve seen men suffer like that. In the war,” he added. “Shock can do that. If that’s what’s wrong with her. But don’t let her be frightened, don’t let her scream. That means she’s remembering. Keep her warm and quiet and at peace. Let her sleep. That’s the main thing now.”

He turned toward the car. Hamish, silent throughout the half hour in the house, said, “You ought to know about sleep. It’s the only time you’re safe….”

The drive back to Upper Streetham was quiet, only the sound of the tires along the road, and once a dog barking furiously as they passed. When they reached the Inn, Wilton said only, “God, I’m tired! It’s been a damned long day.”

Sergeant Davies got out stiffly and said, “I’d best say something to Inspector Forrest about this. Unless you’d rather speak to him yourself, sir?”

It was the last thing Rutledge wanted to do. He said, “No, that’s all right, I’ll see him tomorrow. There’s not much more we can do tonight anyway.”

Davies nodded to Wilton and said, “Until tomorrow, then, sir,” to Rutledge, before marching off down the street toward his own house.

Wilton waited, making no move to get out of the car, but Rutledge said nothing, leaving him to break the silence. In the end he did.

“Does the child damn me? Or clear me?”

Aware of the envelope in his pocket, Rutledge said only, “I don’t know. Do you?”

“I didn’t kill him, Inspector,” Wilton said quietly. “And I don’t know who did.” He got out, closed the car door behind him, and walked away, his limp more pronounced than usual, a measure of the tension in him.

Rutledge sighed. A child, a doll, a drunkard. The evidence was still slim. But the letter from Harris to Mrs. Grayson was something else.

It could very well send the handsome Captain to the gallows.

15

That night Rutledge lay in his bed, listening to the street noises dwindle into silence, then the sound of the church bell marking the passage of time.

He couldn’t get Lizzie out of his mind. She was terrified. But of what? The roar of a shotgun? The bloody death of a man? Of a killer she’d seen—and somehow recognized?

Then why hadn’t she screamed in terror at sight of Mark Wilton?

Her father, not the Captain, frightened her most.

Why?

He wrestled with the puzzle for an hour or more and came no closer to an answer.

Bowles. He was supposed to call London on Monday and speak to Bowles. A drunk, a child, a whore. Witnesses against the Royal Family’s favorite war hero. He, Rutledge, was going to look a right fool at the Yard!

“Aye, and is it why they’ve sent you to Warwickshire, then?” Hamish asked. “A sick man who’s not up to the business in hand? Who’ll be blamed for muddling the evidence and give them a reason to let the Captain off the hook? Is that what London wanted when it let you take on this bluidy murder?”

Rutledge felt cold. Was that the reason he’d been given this case? As the scapegoat for failure? Was that why they hadn’t mentioned Hickam? Hoping that the shock of discovering the truth might be too much for the balance of Rutledge’s mind as well? Or, alternatively, if he was successful…he was also expendable? When he brought the wrath of Buckingham Palace down on the Yard’s head, he could be quietly returned to the clinic, with regret that the experiment hadn’t worked out. For the Yard. For Rutledge. For the doctors who’d had faith in him.

It was a frightening prospect. While Hamish rattled gleefully around in the silence, Rutledge fought his anger. And his fear. And the dreadful loss of hope, a hope that’d buoyed him through the worst days at the clinic as he fought for survival and the harsh reality of returning to London….