A Test of Wills

He promised himself that he wouldn’t return to the clinic. He wouldn’t go back to failure. There were other choices. There always were. To a man who feared living more than he feared death.

Sunday morning was overcast, a misting rain fading into low, heavy clouds that hung about Upper Streetham like ghosts. The heat was oppressive, wrapping the damp around people making their way to the church and wreathing the air inside with a breathlessness that even the open doors couldn’t drain away.

Rutledge went to see Hickam before walking down to the church. The man was sleeping when he arrived, but the housekeeper was a little more optimistic about his condition. Still, she wouldn’t let Rutledge come in.

“Stronger. That’s all I can tell you. But the doctor, now, he was dragged out to the Pinter farm last night, tired as he was, and he said it was all your doing!” Her voice was sharp with condemnation. “He’s not going to church this morning either, I can tell you that! Not if you haven’t roused him up with your banging on the door.”

“But the child’s all right? She seems better?” he asked. “Did she sleep?”

“No thanks to you! Get on with your own business, and leave doctoring to those who know what’s best!”

Rutledge thanked her and went on to the church. The last of the parishioners were hurrying through the lych-gate and he could hear the sound of the organ as he walked quickly down the Court. He’d found before the war that going to the church the victim had attended sometimes gave him a better feeling for the atmosphere of the town or the part of London in question. Anything that brought the victim into better perspective was useful.

The oppressiveness of the morning hung around the church door, and a flush of claustrophobia left him suddenly breathless. He shook his head at the usher ready to lead him down the aisle to a seat and stepped instead into the last one on the back row, where he could escape the heat and the crush of bodies.

Before the first prayer, someone slipped in beside him. Looking up, he met Catherine Tarrant’s equally surprised eyes. Then she sat down and ignored him as she fumbled for her prayer book. It was an old one, he saw, and she found her place without trouble.

The service was High Church, which befitted the image of a man like Carfield. He brought to everyone’s attention the fact that the funeral for Charles Harris would be held on Tuesday morning at ten, then spent several minutes lauding the dead man in a sonorous voice that echoed around the stone arches and through the nave. You’d have thought, Rutledge told himself, that they were burying a saint, not a soldier.

He let his eyes wander, taking in the high-vaulted ceiling, the slender pillars, and a small but very fine reredos behind the altar. Above that was a rather plain east window. The reredos was of stone, a representation of the Last Supper, and the figures had a grace about them that was pleasing.

The Haldane family tombs were just visible from where he sat; they were ornate marble, with clusters of cherubs as mourners around the bases. Several of the figures were medieval, a handful were Elizabethan, while the Victorian representations were almost lavishly ugly.

The Vicar’s sermon was on making the best of one’s life, using each idle minute with care, recognizing that death might sweep in at any moment to wipe out the hopes and dreams of the future. He never mentioned Charles Harris’s name, but Rutledge was sure that every parishioner present knew exactly what his reference was. Rutledge spent most of the long exhortation studying the townspeople in the body of the church. He could see Catherine Tarrant only out of the corner of his eye, but several rows away was Helena Sommers, with Laurence Royston just ahead of her; Captain Wilton and Sally Davenant were down near the front; and to their left were the two women Rutledge had met near the market cross the day before, Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Mobley, with their husbands. To his surprise, he caught sight of Georgina Grayson as well, sitting alone in one corner, a very fine hat on her head and wearing a dress of the most conservative cut in a most becoming but decorous summery green.

When the last prayer was said, Rutledge was on his feet and out of the church door, away from the rising tide of people coming toward him. He found a vantage point under a tree in the churchyard and watched for a time.

Catherine Tarrant had also come out almost as quickly as he had, making her way toward a car with a driver waiting by the lych-gate. But the others were taking their time. Laurence Royston came out, strode down the walk, and called to Catherine as she was getting into the car. She waited for him, and he went to speak to her. She shook her head, smiling but firm.

Mavers was lingering behind the lych-gate, watching. Rutledge saw him and wondered what had brought him there. Sergeant Davies came out of the church and stopped to speak to Carfield, effectively damming the flow of people for the moment. Royston said good-bye to Catherine Tarrant, and her driver went to the end of the Court to turn the car. Mavers came quickly to Royston and began to speak very earnestly.

Royston listened, head to one side, watching Catherine’s departure. Then his attention came back to Mavers, and after a time he began to shake his head.

Mavers’s reaction was interesting. A flush of anger spread over his face, and he began to bob almost frantically, demanding something.

But Royston seemed to take pleasure in telling him that it was no use. Rutledge was not close enough to hear, but the movements of both men told enough of the tale.

Mavers was furious. For an instant, Rutledge thought he was going to lash out with his clenched fists, and Royston must have thought so too because he stepped back, wary.

Suddenly Mavers turned toward the church and raised his voice, making himself heard by the fresh flood of people moving out into the mist.

“Has God refreshed your spirits?” he demanded, the fury mounting in him almost slurring his words. “Do you feel sanctified? Or have you seen yon fat toad for what he is, a mountebank, a fool leading other fools down the path of lies and high-flown words covering the emptiness of every soul here?”

With their attention riveted on him, he swung around to where a stunned Royston was standing, watching him, and included him in the fierce denunciation.

“There’s not a Christian in the lot of you. Not one soul not already damned, and no one safe from the fires of hell! Here’s a murderer of children, hiding behind the coattails of a man who went to wars to do his killing. Aye, you think you see the Colonel’s fine agent, but I know him for what he is, a man who paid his way out of the law’s clutches, a rich man’s money for the bloody deed, and the Colonel, like a pied piper, leading your sons off to war and maiming the lot of them in soul or body! His funeral ought to be a time of rejoicing that he’s dead before his time! And yonder’s a whore, wearing the dress of a proper lady while you—and you—and you”—he was pointing to a handful of appalled men—“make your way to her bed any chance you’ve got! Aye, I know who you are, I’ve seen you there!”

He whirled to face another group of emerging worshipers. “And you, lusting after your cousin, while he’s busy with moneyed ladies, sucking up to wealth, and you watching him like a starved woman!”

Sally Davenant’s face flushed with a mixture of anger and speechless embarrassment. Wilton started toward Mavers, but the man said, “And the Sergeant, there, the Inspector over yonder, quaking in their boots to arrest the King’s friend, who shot down the Colonel in cold blood with a stolen shotgun! And the man from London who lurks in shadows and tackles the pathetic likes of Daniel Hickam instead of doing his duty!”

Almost foaming at the mouth in his terrible need to hurt, Mavers paid no heed to the effect his words were having on the targets of his wrath; he poured them out in torrents, spilling over one another in a tangle. Rutledge began to move toward him, cutting across the churchyard, one eye on Mavers, the other on his feet among the damp, tilted tombstones.

“You, with the feebleminded cousin, who ought to be shut away for her own good! And that artist, the one who took a German to her bed and reveled in it—that other one with the witch’s eyes, hiding in her bedchamber, with her lascivious desires, and the Inspector yonder with his cold, sexless wife, and Tom Malone, the butcher, who keeps his thumb on his scales. The bloodless Haldanes dead and not even knowing it. Ben Sanders, whose wife killed herself rather than go on living with him, the Sergeant who—”

But Wilton and Rutledge had reached him by that time, dragging him away from the lych-gate, bending his arms behind him until he choked from pain and stopped lacerating the townspeople with a tongue as sharp as a lash. They hauled him with them down the length of the Court, his aggrieved cries echoing off the facades of the almshouses, raising the rooks in the fields beyond the trees.

The look on Wilton’s face was murderous. Behind them, Rutledge could hear Forrest running to catch up and the Sergeant’s bull roar, telling everyone at the church to pay no heed, that the fool had run mad, like a rabid dog.

But Rutledge thought he had done no such thing. Stopping at the corner to hand Mavers over to Forrest, Rutledge turned on his heel and went back to the lych-gate, searching for Royston in the crowd gathered there, silent and avoiding one another’s eyes, their faces stiff with shocked dismay, unable to think of any way out of the churchyard that wouldn’t take them past the rest of the parishioners equally paralyzed with indecision.

As Rutledge scanned their faces, he saw tears in Sally Davenant’s eyes, though her chin was high and her cheeks still flushed. Helena Sommers seemed to be trying to find something in her handbag, her expression hidden by the wide-brimmed hat she wore, her hands shaking. Georgina Grayson had moved away from the crowd to the tree where Rutledge had been standing earlier, her back to the churchyard, her head tilted to watch the rooks soaring around the church tower.

Royston was gripping a post on the lych-gate, staring at the worshipers on the other side of the wall, a defensive look in his eyes, his mouth turned down in shame.

As Rutledge reached him, he said, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told him. I should have thought about what he’d do. And now look what’s happened—I’ll never be able to face any of them again!”

“What did he want?”

Royston turned to Rutledge as if surprised to find him there. “He wanted to know if we’d read the Will. Charles’s Will. He wanted to know if his pension was going to continue.”

“Pension?”

“Yes. Charles gave him a pension years ago.”

“Why?”

Royston shrugged expressively. “It was his sense of responsibility. The other son—there were two boys and a girl in the family, the mother had worked at Mallows as a maid before she married Hugh Davenant’s gamekeeper—the other son died in South Africa. The daughter drowned herself. When Mavers ran off to join the army, Charles had him sent home. He was told that as long as he stayed there and looked after his mother, he’d be paid a pension. After the mother died, Charles didn’t stop it, he let it go on. Against my better judgment. He felt he could stop Mavers from getting into worse trouble than he had already. It was threatening to cut off the pension as much as the threat of sending him to an institution that stopped the poisoning of the cattle and Charles’s dogs. A lever. But Charles planned to let it end with his death.”

It wasn’t quite the same version of the story Mavers had told, but Rutledge thought that it was very likely that Royston’s was closer to the truth.

Some of the color was coming back to Royston’s face, and with it, the shuddering acceptance of the immensity of Mavers’s revenge. “I’ve never felt quite so deliberately spiteful as I did when I told him that. I was thinking that it was one of the few times in my life when I actually relished causing pain. What I didn’t realize was that I would cause so much! God, I feel—filthy!”

Rutledge answered harshly, “Don’t be a fool! They’re all so horrified they don’t know how it began or why. Leave it at that. Let them blame Mavers. Don’t give them a scapegoat! It will ruin you, and only a bloody idiot is that self-destructive.”

After a moment, Royston nodded. He turned and walked away, joining the others who were now coming, by ones and twos and threes through the lych-gate, heads down, hurrying toward the safety of home. On the church steps, Carfield was alone, staring after his flock with an empty face.

He hadn’t come forward in a heaven-sent rage to defy Mavers and protect his parishioners. He’d stood there, missing the opportunity of a lifetime to play the grand role of savior and hero, waiting in the shadows of the church door geared for flight and not for fight. Planning to make a hasty and unseen departure if need be, unwilling to do battle with the powers of darkness in the form of one wiry little loudmouth with amber goat’s eyes.

A mountebank, Mavers had called him.

He looked across the churchyard and saw Rutledge watching him. With a swirl of his robes he vanished inside the church, shutting the door firmly but quietly behind him.

Rutledge walked slowly behind the last of the parishioners hurrying down the lane. By the time he reached the High Street, he was alone.

That afternoon Dr. Warren allowed him to visit Daniel Hickam. Rutledge stood in the doorway, looking down at the man in the bed, thin, unshaven, but clean and as still as one of the carved Haldanes on the church tombs.

Then as Rutledge stepped into the room, the heavy eyelids opened, and Hickam frowned, knowing someone was there. He moved his head slightly, saw Rutledge, and the frown deepened, with incipient alarm behind it.

Dr. Warren moved out from behind Rutledge’s shoulder and said briskly, “Well, then, Daniel, how are you feeling, man?”

Hickam’s eyes moved slowly to Warren and then back again to Rutledge. After a moment he said in a croak that would have made a frog shudder, “Who are you?”

“I’m Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. Do you remember why I’m here?”

Alarm widened his eyes. Warren said testily, “Oh, for God’s sake, tell the man he’s done nothing wrong, that it’s information you want!”

“Where am I?” Hickam asked. “Is this France? Hampshire—the hospital?” His glance swept the room, puzzled, afraid.

Rutledge’s hopes plummeted. “You’re in Upper Streetham. Dr. Warren’s surgery. You’ve been ill. But someone has shot Colonel Harris, he’s dead, and we need to ask people who might have seen him on Monday morning where he was riding and who he was with.”

Dr. Warren started to interrupt again, and this time Rutledge silenced him with a gesture.

“Dead?” Hickam shut his eyes. After a time he opened them again and repeated, “Monday morning?”

“Yes, that’s right. Monday morning. You’d been drunk. Do you remember? And you were still hungover when Sergeant Davies found you. You told him what you’d seen. But then you were ill, and we haven’t been able to ask you to repeat your statement. We need it badly.” Rutledge kept his voice level and firm, as if questioning wounded soldiers about what they’d seen, crossing the line.

Hickam shut his eyes again. “Was the Colonel on a horse?”

Rutledge’s spirits began to rise again. “Yes, he was out riding that morning.” He heard the echo of Lettice Wood’s words in his own, then told himself to keep his mind on Hickam.

“On a horse.” Hickam shook his head. “I don’t remember Monday morning.”

“That’s it, then,” Warren said quietly, still standing at Rutledge’s shoulder. “I warned you.”

“But I remember the Colonel. On a horse. In the—in the lane above Georgie’s house. I—was that Monday?” The creaking voice steadied a little.

“Go on, tell me what you remember. I’ll decide for myself what’s important and what isn’t.”

The eyelids closed once more, as if too heavy. “The Colonel. He’d been to Georgie’s—”

“He’s lost it,” Warren said at that. “Let him be now.”

“No, he’s right, the Colonel had been to the Grayson house!” Rutledge told him under his breath. “Now keep out of it!”

Hickam was still speaking. “And someone called to him. Another officer.” He shook his head. “I don’t know his name. He—he wasn’t one of our men. A—a captain, that’s what he was. The Captain called to Colonel Harris, and Harris stopped. They stood there, Harris on the horse, the Captain by his stirrup.”

And then there was silence, heavy and filled only with the sound of Hickam’s breathing. “There was a push on, wasn’t there? I could hear the guns, they were in my head—but it was quiet in the lane,” he began again. “I tried, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I could see their faces—angry faces, low, angry voices. Clenched fists, the Colonel leaning down, the Captain staring up at him. I—I was frightened they’d find me, send me back.” He stirred under the sheet, face agitated. “So angry. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

He started to repeat over and over, “The guns—I couldn’t hear—I couldn’t hear—I couldn’t hear—”

Warren clucked his tongue. “Lie still, man, it’s done with, there’s nothing to be afraid of now!”

The unsteady voice faded. Then Hickam said, so softly that Rutledge had to lean toward the bed to hear him while Warren cupped his left hand around his ear: “I’ll fight you every step of the way….”

Rutledge recognized the words. Hickam had repeated them to him in the dark on the High Street the night he’d given him enough money to kill himself.

“Don’t be—fool—like it or not—learn to live with it.”

“Live with what?” Rutledge asked.

Hickam didn’t answer. Rutledge waited. Nothing. The minutes ticked past.

Finally Dr. Warren jerked his head toward the door and took Rutledge’s arm.

Rutledge nodded, turned to go.

They were already in the hall, Rutledge’s hand on the door, preparing to close it. He stopped in the act, realizing that Hickam’s lips were moving.

The thready voice was saying something. Rutledge crossed the room in two swift strides, put his ear almost to the man’s mouth.

“Not the war…it wasn’t the war.” A sense of amazement crept into the words.

“Then what? What was it?”

Hickam was silent again. Then he opened his eyes and stared directly into Rutledge’s face. “You’ll think I’m mad. In the middle of all that fighting—”

“No. I’ll believe you. I swear it. Tell me.”

“It wasn’t the war. The Colonel—he was going to call off the wedding.”

Dr. Warren said something from the doorway, harsh and disbelieving.

But Rutledge believed.

It was, finally, the reason behind the quarrel. It was, as well, the Captain’s motive for murder.

16

The Inn was remarkably quiet, but Rutledge stopped Redfern in the hall and asked to have sandwiches and coffee brought to his room. He wanted to think, without distraction or interruption, and Redfern must have sensed this, because he nodded and hurried off toward the kitchens without a word.

Rutledge took the stairs two at a time. In the passage near his room, he paused as the first rays of a sultry, overly bright sun broke through the heavy clouds. Storm signs, he thought, watching the light play across the gardens and then flicker out again. They’d had a remarkable run of good weather as it was.

His eyes caught a splash of color in the small private garden, and he looked down. A woman in a broad-brimmed hat was standing there, her back to the Inn, hands on her arms, head bowed. He tried to see who it was, but in the gray light he wasn’t sure he recognized her. Searching his mind for someone at the morning church service wearing a hat like that, he drew a blank. He’d been more interested in faces than apparel. And in reactions to Mavers’s vicious denunciations. Leaning his palms on the windowsill, he cocked his head to one side for a better line of sight.

Behind him he heard limping footsteps—Redfern bringing up his lunch. He straightened and turned to meet him.

Redfern carried a tray covered with a starched white napkin, a pot of coffee steaming to one side, cream and sugar beside it, the sandwiches a large and uneven mound.

Rutledge gestured to the woman in the garden. “Do you know who that is, down in the private garden? The woman with her back to us.”

Redfern handed the tray to Rutledge and looked out. “That’s—aye, that must be Miss Sommers. The Netherbys brought her into town for the morning services. But she’s worried about her sister with a storm coming, doesn’t want to stay for lunch after all. Jim—that’s the stable boy—went to see if Mr. Royston or the Hendersons or even the Thorntons might take her home.”

He reached for the tray again, going on into Rutledge’s room to set up the table. Rutledge stayed where he was for a moment longer.

He’d have sworn it was Catherine Tarrant.

The small table by the window overlooking the street was ready for him when he followed Redfern to his room. “If you don’t mind, sir, you can just leave the tray in the hall when you go. I’ll be back to pick it up when the dining room is closed. We’re not all that busy today, but you never know; if it starts to rain, we could be full.”

He was already out the door when Rutledge stopped him. “Redfern. Did the Colonel come here often to dine? Or did Captain Wilton bring Miss Wood?”

Redfern nodded. “Sometimes. But I think they went into Warwick as often as not, if they wanted a dinner. Lunch, now, that was different. If the Colonel had business in the town, he’d often stop in. Always left a generous tip. Never fussy. Mrs. Haldane, Simon’s mother, was the fussiest woman alive! There was no pleasing her! The Captain’s not one to demand service, but he expects you to do a proper job, and he knows when you don’t. Miss Wood”—he smiled wryly—“Miss Wood is a lady, and you don’t forget that, but she’s a pleasure to serve, never makes you feel like a wooden post, with no feelings. Nicest smile I’ve ever seen. I enjoy having her come in.”

“How did she and Wilton get on?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Comfortably. You could see that they were happy. Never holding hands or anything like that, not in public, but the way he held her coat or took her arm, the way she’d tease him—the closeness was there. I was sometimes—envious, I suppose. My own girl married another chap while I was in hospital and they thought I’d soon be having my foot taken off. When you’re lonely, it can hurt, watching others in love.” There was a wistfulness in his voice as he finished.

Hamish, in the back of Rutledge’s mind, growled. “You’d know about that, then, wouldn’t you? How it hurts? And all you’ve got to ease your loneliness is me…. If there’s a more dismal hell, I haven’t found it.”

Rutledge almost missed Redfern’s next words.

“The last time I ever saw the Colonel, he’d come here for lunch.”

“What? When was that?”

“The Tuesday before he died. It was another day like this one. Overcast, you could feel the storm coming. Everyone was jittery, even the Colonel. Didn’t say two words to me all through his meal! Frowned something ferocious when Miss Wood came in looking for him. He left his pudding and took her into that garden where you saw Miss Sommers just now. I came up here to fetch some fresh linens for the maids, and they were still there. He had his hands on her shoulders, saying something to her, and she was shaking her head as if she didn’t want to hear. Then she broke away and ran off. As I came back down the stairs, the Colonel was just walking in from the garden, looking exasperated, and he said, ‘Women!’ But I had the feeling there was—I don’t know, an exhilaration there too, as if in the end he expected to have his way. I brought him another cup of coffee, but he was restless, and after drinking half of it, he was gone.”

“You don’t know what had upset Lettice Wood? Or the Colonel?”

“It mustn’t have been too important,” Redfern answered. “I saw her the next day, looking radiant. Walking down to the churchyard with Mr. Royston. I ought to be back in the dining room—”

Rutledge let him go with a nod of thanks.

He sat there, biting into the thick beef sandwiches, not even aware of the taste or the texture, absently drinking his coffee. There was a slice of sponge cake for dessert.

Wilton had motive, he had opportunity, and he had access to a weapon. All that was left was to clear up loose ends and then make the arrest. And to explain to Bowles on Monday morning the reasons behind the decision.

Was Tuesday the day that the Colonel had told his ward what he was planning to do? To call off the wedding?

But why? It was an excellent marriage from any point of view, as far as an outsider could tell. Wilton and Lettice were well matched in every way—socially, financially, of an age. Unless there were things about Wilton that Charles Harris knew and didn’t like. Then why allow the engagement to take place seven months ago? Because he hadn’t known at the time?

What could he have learned in the last week that would have made him change his mind? Something from Wilton’s past—or present?

The only other person who could answer that question was Lettice herself.

Rutledge drove out to Mallows in sunlight that poured through large cracks in the heavy black clouds, bringing heat in waves with it.

Lettice agreed to see him, and he was taken up to the sitting room by Johnston.

There was a little more color in her face this afternoon, and she seemed stronger. As he came into the room, she turned to him as she’d done before and said at once, “Something’s happened. I can tell.”

“It’s been a rather busy morning. Mavers was on the loose as services ended at the church. He raked most everyone there over the coals, as vicious a display of hate as I’ve ever seen. Royston, the Captain, Mrs. Davenant, Miss Sommers, the Inspector—even people I don’t know.”

Lettice frowned. “Why?”

“Because he’d just discovered that his pension from Charles Harris ended with the Colonel’s death. And he was furious.”

She was genuinely surprised. “Charles paid him a pension?”

“Apparently.”

Lettice gestured to one of the chairs and sat down herself. “It’s the sort of thing Charles might do. Still—Mavers!”

“And a very good reason for Mavers not to kill him.”

“But you said Mavers didn’t know the pension would end.”

“That’s right. He stopped Royston as he came out of the church and asked if the Will had made any provision for the pension to continue. All those months when he agitated for Harris’s death, Mavers doesn’t seem to have considered the fact that he might lose his own golden goose.”

She sighed. “Well. You said there were witnesses who claimed Mavers was haranguing everyone on Monday morning. He wasn’t in the running anyway, was he?”

“I’ve discovered that he could have been. With a little planning. But he isn’t high on my list. Tell me, what did you and Charles Harris argue about on Tuesday at the Inn? Or rather, in the garden there?”

The swift change in subject caught her unprepared, and her eyes widened and darkened as she stared at him.

“You might as well tell me about it,” he said gently. “I already know what Harris and Mark Wilton quarreled about on Sunday evening after dinner. And again on Monday morning in the lane. Harris was planning to call off the wedding. I have a witness.”

Her color went from flushed to pale and back again. “How could you have a witness,” she demanded huskily. “Who is this witness?”

“It doesn’t matter. I know. That’s what’s important. Why didn’t you tell me before? Why did you pretend, when Mark Wilton came to the house, and I was there to overhear, that you were calling the wedding off because you were in mourning? If Charles had already ended your engagement?”

She met his eyes, hers defiant, challenging. “You’re fishing, Inspector. Let me meet this witness face-to-face! Let me hear it from him—or her!”

“You will. In the courtroom. I believe Mark Wilton shot Charles Harris after he was told on Sunday night that the wedding was off and the Colonel refused again on Monday morning to listen to reason. All I need to know now is why. Why your guardian changed his mind. What Wilton had done that made it necessary.”

Lettice shook her head. “You don’t go out and shoot someone because a wedding has been called off! In another year, I’d have been my own mistress. It wasn’t necessary to murder Charles—” She stopped, her voice thick with pain.

“It might have been. If the reason was such that Wilton could never have you. Mrs. Davenant has said she’d never seen him so in love—that you’d given him a measure of peace, something to live for, when he’d lost his earlier love of flying. That he’d have done anything you asked, willingly and without hesitation. A man who loves like that might well believe that in a year’s time, your guardian would have convinced you that he’d made the right decision, breaking it off. Even turned you against Wilton while he wasn’t there to defend himself. When he thought he was in love with Catherine Tarrant, Wilton waited for her because her father felt she wasn’t ready for marriage—and in the end she changed her mind. It came to nothing.”

“That was different!”

“In what way?” When she didn’t answer, he asked instead, “Is that why you didn’t go riding with your guardian Monday morning? Because you were as angry as Wilton over what was happening?”

She winced, closing her eyes against his words. But he inexorably went on. “Is that why you had a headache, and left the two men alone to discuss the wedding? Because you’d already lost the battle?”

Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, silvery in the light from the windows, and she made no attempt to wipe them away.

“I will have to arrest Wilton. You know that. I have enough evidence to do it now. But I’d prefer to spare you as much grief as I can. Tell me the truth, and I’ll try to keep you out of the courtroom.” His voice was gentle again. Behind it, Hamish was restlessly stirring.

After a moment, he took the handkerchief from his pocket and, going to her, pressed it into her hand. She buried her face in it, but didn’t sob. Outside he heard the first roll of thunder, distant and ominous. Rutledge stood by the sofa where she sat, looking down at the top of her dark head. Wondering whether she grieved for Mark Wilton. Her guardian. Herself. Or all three.

“That first day I was here, you thought, didn’t you, that Mark had shot him. I remember your words. You didn’t ask who had done the shooting—instead you were angry about how it was done. I should have guessed then that you were a part of it. That you already knew who it was.”

She looked up at him, such anguish in her face that he stepped back. “I am as guilty as Mark is,” she told him, holding her voice steady by an effort of will. “Charles—I can’t tell you why it was stopped. The wedding. But I can tell you what he said to me on that Tuesday at the Inn. He said I was too young to know my own heart. That he must be the one to decide what was best for me. All that week I begged and pleaded—and cajoled—to have my way. Saturday evening, when Mark had gone home, Charles and I sat up well into the night, thrashing it out.”

Thunder rolled again, much nearer this time, and she flinched, startled. The sunlight was fading, an early darkness creeping in. Outside the windows the birds were silent, and somewhere Rutledge could hear a rustle of leaves as if the wind had stirred, but the heat was oppressive now.

Taking a deep, shaking breath, Lettice went on. “Charles was a very strong man, Inspector. He had a fiercely defined sense of duty. What he did on Sunday evening wasn’t easy for him. He liked Mark—he respected him. It was for my sake—not because of any weakness in Mark!—that he changed his mind about the wedding.”

“Charles doted on you—he’d have given you anything you wanted. Then why not this one thing—the man you planned to marry?”

“Because,” she said softly. “Because he did put my happiness above everything else. And he finally came to believe that Mark Wilton wasn’t the right man.”

“And Wilton, who believed as strongly that he was the right man, turned on his friend, shot him out there in the meadow, and with that one act, lost any hope he might have had of marrying you! I don’t see how he gained anything by killing Charles that he couldn’t have gained by waiting. Unless there was something else—some reason powerful enough that silencing Charles Harris was worth the risk of losing you forever. Something that might have destroyed Captain Wilton personally or professionally.”

She looked up at him, eyes defensive but resolute. It was a strange test of wills, and he wasn’t sure exactly where it was leading. Or even if she knew the answer he wanted to hear.

“All right, I did think it was Mark at first—not because I saw him as a murderer, but because of my own sense of responsibility over what had happened, the feeling that he’d done it to obliterate Charles, to get even. I was half drugged, ill with grief, not knowing where to turn or what to do. Charles was dead, they’d quarreled over the marriage—one thing on the heels of the other—what else could I think? But I’m not as sure now. When Mark finally came here, I couldn’t sense guilt, I couldn’t find any response in him—or in me—that ought to have been there if he’d killed. Only—a terrible emptiness.”

“What did you expect? Shivers of premonition?”

“No, don’t offer me sarcasm! Give me credit for a little sense, a little knowledge of the man I was planning to marry!” A flush of anger in her cheeks made her eyes glitter, the unshed tears brightening them.

“But still you called off the wedding! In my presence.”

“You don’t marry while you’re in mourning!”

“Then you’ll go ahead and marry him after you’ve mourned a decent length of time? If he isn’t hanged for murder?”

Shocked, she stared at him. “I—I don’t—”

“Lettice. You aren’t telling me all of the truth.” He gave her time to answer him, but she said nothing, her eyes holding his, unreadable, once more defiant. “Who are you protecting? Mark? Yourself? Or Charles?”

The wind had picked up, lashing at the house, sending a skirl of leaves rattling across the windows. She got up quickly and went to close them. From there, she turned to face him again. “If you want to hang Mark Wilton, you’ll have to prove he’s a murderer. In a court of law. With evidence and witnesses. If you can do that, if you can show that he was the one who shot Charles Harris, I will come to the hanging. I’ve lost Charles, and if I truly thought Mark had killed him, and no one could actually prove it, even though that was the way it had happened, I’d go through with the wedding and spend the rest of our lives making him pay for it! I care that much! But I won’t betray him. If he’s innocent, I’ll fight for him. Not because I love him—or don’t love him—but because Charles would have expected me to fight.”

“If Mark didn’t shoot Harris—who did?”

“Ah!” she said, smiling sadly. “We’re back to where we were, aren’t we? Well, I suppose it comes down to one thing, Inspector. What mattered most to Mark? Keeping me? Or killing Charles? Because he knew—he knew!—he couldn’t do both. So what did he have to gain?”

The storm broke then, rain coming down with the force of wind behind it, rattling shutters and windows and roaring down the chimney, almost shutting out the flash of the lightning and a clap of thunder that for an instant sounded as if it had broken just overhead.

17

The rain was so intense that he stopped at the end of the drive, in the shelter of overhanging trees. Rutledge’s face was wet, his hair was matted to his head, and the shoulders of his coat were dark with water. But he felt better out of that house, away from the strange eyes that told him the truth—but only part of the truth. He didn’t need Hamish whispering “She’s lying!” to tell him that whatever Lettice Wood was holding back, he’d find no way of forcing it out of her.

As the storm passed, the rain dwindled to a light drizzle, the ground steaming, the air still humid and unbreathable. He got out and started the car again, then turned away from Upper Streetham toward the Warwick road. He drove aimlessly, no goal in mind except to put as much distance between himself and the problems of Charles Harris’s murder as he could for the moment.

“You’re drawn to her, the witch,” Hamish said. “And what will Jean have to say about that?”

“No, not drawn,” Rutledge answered aloud. “It’s something else. I don’t know what it is.”

“Do you suppose, then, that she bewitched the Captain and the Colonel as well? That somewhere she had a hand in this murder?”

“I can’t see her as a murderess—”

Hamish laughed. “You ought to know, better than anyone, that people kill for the best of reasons as well as the worst.”

Rutledge shivered. What was it about Lettice Wood that reached out to him in spite of his better judgment?

Reluctantly, bit by bit, she had confirmed Hickam’s rambling words. And Wilton’s own behavior, his unwillingness to come to Mallows after the quarrel or explain what it had been about, reinforced the picture all too clearly. And it was slowly, inevitably developing. The child’s part in it still—

Rounding the bend, he saw the bicycle almost too late, coming up on it with a suddenness that left decision to reflexes rather than conscious action. He got the brake in time to skid to a stop in the mud, wheels squealing as they locked, sending him almost sideways.

Hamish swore feelingly, as if he’d been thrown across the rear seat.

Standing on the road was Catherine Tarrant, bending over her bicycle. She looked up in startled horror as he came roaring down on her, driving far faster than he’d realized, faster than the conditions of the road dictated. His bumper was not five feet from where she stood as the car came to a jarring halt, killing the engine.

Recovering from her shock, she demanded angrily, “What do you think you’re doing, you damned fool! Driving like that? You could have killed me!”

But he was getting out of the car, and she recognized him then. “Oh—Inspector Rutledge.”

“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the road? You deserve to be run down!” he responded with a matching anger, marching toward her, fists clenched against his rising temper. The unpleasant drizzle wasn’t helping.

“The chain’s broken—I don’t know if something came loose or if I jammed it when I skidded. Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t just stand there, put my bicycle in the back of your car before we’re both wet to the skin, and take me home!” She was in a foul temper as well, but dry, he noticed, as if she’d found shelter somewhere from the worst of the rain.

They stared at each other, faces tight with self-absorbed emotions; then she managed a wry smile. “Look, we’d better both get out of the way, or someone else will fly around that bend and finish us off! Take me home and I’ll offer you some tea. You look as if you could use it. I know I could.”

He walked past her, lifted the bicycle, and carried it to his car. She helped him put it in the back—he had an instant’s sharp sense of the ridiculous, thinking that it would crowd Hamish out—and then came around to the passenger side, not waiting for him to open her door.

He cranked the car, got in, and said, “Did you miss the rain?”

“I was at the Haldanes’ house. They’re away, I just went by to pick up a book Simon promised to lend me.” She lifted a large, heavily wrapped parcel out of the basket behind her and set it in her lap. “He brought it back from Paris and thought I might want to see it. Something on the Impressionists. Do you know them?”

They talked about art as he backed the car and drove to her house, and she left a servant to deal with the bicycle, striding past the handsome staircase and down the hallway toward her studio without looking over her shoulder to see if he followed. Setting the borrowed book on a stool, she took off her hat and coat, then said, “Get out of that coat, it will dry faster if you aren’t in it.”

Rutledge did as he was told, looking about for a chair back to drape it on.

Catherine sighed. “Well, Mavers most certainly put the wind up everyone in Upper Streetham this morning! What did you think of his little show?”

“Was it a show? Or was he upset?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? The damage is done. I think he rather enjoyed it too. Lashing out. It’s the only way he can hurt back, with words. Nobody pays any attention to his ideas.”

“Which is one of the reasons he might have shot Charles Harris.”

“Yes, I suppose it is—to make us sit up and take notice. Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing him arrested for murder and taken off to London or wherever! I didn’t enjoy having my own life stripped for the delectation of half of Upper Streetham—the whole of it, come to that! Everyone will talk. Not about what he said of them, but about everyone else. Those who weren’t there will soon be of the opinion that they were.” Catherine moved about her paintings, touching them, not seeing them, needing only the comfort of knowing they were there.

“That’s a very bitter view of human nature.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve learned that life is never what you expect it will be. Just as you come to the fringes of happiness, touching it, feeling it, tasting it—and desperately hoping for the rest of it—it’s jerked away.”

“You have your art.”

“Yes, but that’s a compulsion, not happiness. I paint because I must. I love because I want to be loved in return. Wanted to be.”

“Did you ever paint Rolf Linden?”

Startled, she stopped in midstride. “Once. Only—once.”

“Could I see what you did?”

Hesitating, she finally moved across to a cabinet in one wall, unlocking it with a key she took from her pocket. She reached inside and drew out a large canvas wrapped in cloth. He moved forward to help her with it, but she gestured to him to stay where he was. There was a little light coming in through the glass panes overhead, and she kicked an easel to face it, then set the painting on it. After a moment, she reached up and undid the wrappings.

Rutledge came around to see it better, and felt his breath stop in his throat as his eyes took it in.

There was a scene of storm and light, heavy, dark clouds nearer the viewer, a delicate light fading into the distance. A man stood halfway between, looking over his shoulder, a smile on his face. It was somehow the most desolate painting that Rutledge had ever seen. He’d expected turbulence, a denial, a fierce struggle between love and loss, something dramatic with grief. But instead she’d captured annihilation, an emptiness so complete that it echoed with anguish.

He knew that anguish. And suddenly he was convinced that Lettice Wood knew it also. That that was what he’d responded to in her.

Catherine was watching his face, unable to hear Hamish but seeing the flicker of fear and recognition and a deep stirring of response, while Hamish—Hamish wept.

“It’s never been shown—” It was all he could manage to say into the silence.

“No,” she answered with certainty. “And never will be.”

A maid brought in the tea, and Catherine quickly covered the painting, putting it carefully back into its vault, like a mausoleum for her love. Turning back to pour a cup for Rutledge and then for herself, she said unsteadily, “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

“The war?”

“Yes. But she’s still alive. Sometimes that’s worse.”

She put sugar into her tea and handed him the bowl. He helped himself, finding relief in the ordinary movements of his hands, then accepted the cream.

“Where were you going when you nearly ran me down?” she asked, finally sitting down, allowing him to do the same. It was an overt change of subject. She had closed the door between them again.

“Anywhere. Out of Upper Streetham.”

“Why?”

He reached for one of the small, iced tea cakes as an excuse not to meet her eyes. “To think.”

“What about?”

“Whether or not I have enough evidence to arrest Mark Wilton tomorrow morning. For Harris’s murder.”

He could hear her suck in her breath, but she didn’t say anything.

Looking up, he asked, “Why did you track down Daniel Hickam? On the Thursday you spoke to me? No, don’t bother to deny it! I have witnesses. You stopped him, talked to him, and then gave him money.”

“I felt sorry for him…. Most people have forgotten that before the war he was a very good cabinetmaker. Better than his father ever was. He made the frames for my first paintings. And that easel. Now—he probably shakes too much to drive a nail straight, much less do finer work. I try to keep an eye on him.”

“No. You wanted to know what he’d said about Wilton. I don’t know yet how you found out about Hickam. Possibly from Forrest.” He watched that guess go home. She wasn’t as good at hiding her thoughts as Lettice Wood.

“Yes, all right. I was afraid for Mark. I still am. He wouldn’t have killed Charles! You come in here from London, asking questions, making assumptions. You judge people even though you know very well they’re under a great deal of stress. But it isn’t the same as getting under the skin, is it? You can’t do that, you can’t know them. Not in a few days’ time. You haven’t got that skill!”

He’d had it. Once. Refusing to be sidetracked, Rutledge said only, “He had means. Opportunity. Motive. It’s all there now. Out into the open.”

“Then why are you telling me this? If you know so much!” She cocked her head to one side, considering him. “Why were you driving out on the Warwick road when you had all the evidence you need? Why are you involving me?”

“Because I wanted to know what you would say when you heard.”

She set down her teacup. “And are you satisfied?” He didn’t answer. After a moment she asked, “Have you told London yet?”

“No. Not yet. I’ll call Superintendent Bowles early tomorrow morning. I’d prefer to have everything finished before the funeral services on Tuesday. Upper Streetham will be full of people then. Harris’s friends, fellow officers, dignitaries. They shouldn’t be distracted from their mourning by police business.”

“There’ll be a great hue and cry when you do it. It will upset the King, and everyone else, including the Prime Minister. He’s got enough on his plate right now, with the peace talks. It will bring the wrath of Scotland Yard down on your head. It will ruin Mark. It could very well ruin you! I’d be very careful before I did something I couldn’t undo.”

She was a very perceptive woman. And she knew London.

“That doesn’t matter. If he shot Charles Harris, why should Mark Wilton go scot-free?”

“He couldn’t have shot Charles! He’s marrying the man’s ward! You don’t seem to understand the importance of that!”

“The wedding has been called off.”

“Of course it has, Lettice is in mourning. But by next spring—or in a quiet ceremony at Christmas, since she’s got no family and needs Mark’s support—”

“No. Charles himself stopped the wedding. And that’s why he was killed.”

Catherine shook her head. “Called off the wedding? Before he died? You can’t be serious!”

“Why would he joke about that? Why should I?”

“No, Mark was going to marry her! And he will, once this nonsense is finished. I’ll help him find someone in London to take his case if you go through with this. I refuse to believe that Mark could have done anything of the sort! Or Charles, for that matter! Whoever told you such a thing is either crazy or vindictive. Or both. I absolutely refuse to believe it!”

He left soon afterward, stiffly thanking her for the tea and then finding his own way out. Catherine said good-bye with equal reserve, and added as he reached the solarium doorway, his coat over his arm, “Don’t be hasty, Inspector. You owe that to Mark. You owe it to Charles. Be very sure before you act!”

Rutledge drove back to Upper Streetham and left the car at the rear of the Inn, going in by the door he’d used on the night of his arrival. The back stairs were empty, the Inn silent.

He felt bone weary. Emotion was drained out of him, and his body ached with tension.

I need to find Forrest, he told himself. I need to attend to that warrant, bring Wilton in. The sooner the better.

“And where’s he going?” Hamish demanded. “He’s no’ the kind of man who’ll run, or he wouldn’t have been so good at killing Germans.”

“Shut up and keep out of it! I thought you wanted to see the dashing Captain hanged!”

“Aye,” Hamish said, “I do. But I’m not ready to see you crawl back to yon clinic, and doctors that will stuff your mind full of drugs. Easing you into oblivion where there’s no pain and no memory and no guilt to savage you. I’ve not finished with you yet, Ian Rutledge, and until I have, I won’t let you crawl away and hide!”

An hour later, Rutledge found himself at Sally Davenant’s door. The maid Grace opened it to his knock and said, “Yes, sir?”

“I’ve come to see Captain Wilton. Will you tell him Inspector Rutledge is here. On official business.”

She caught the nuances in his voice and her face lost its trained mask of politeness. Concern filled her eyes, and she said, “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

“Just tell the Captain I’m here, if you please.”

“But he’s in Warwick, sir. He and Mrs. Davenant have gone to dine there. She wasn’t herself all afternoon, and the Captain suggested an outing to take her mind off the unpleasantness at the church this morning. I doubt they’ll be back much before eleven o’clock, sir.”

He swore under his breath. “Very well. Tell him I’ll expect to see him here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.” He nodded and walked off down the scented path, among the peonies and the roses.

There was, actually, a certain irony about that appointment, he thought, driving back to the Inn. It was exactly one week from the time Charles Harris died.

The rain came back in the night, and Rutledge lay there listening to it, unable to sleep, his mind turning over everything he’d learned in the past four days. Thinking about the people, the evidence, the way it was coming out now. One or two loose ends to finish tomorrow, and then he’d be on his way back to London.

But the funeral was on Tuesday, and he found himself wanting to be there, to watch Lettice walk down the aisle of the church on—on whose arm? To see her one more time, and in the light. To exorcise the witchery Hamish had been so worried about? He could contrive it; there was enough to do, he needn’t hurry back to that tiny cubicle in London, where his mind was dulled by routine and Hamish had freer rein.

It wasn’t a night for sleeping, in spite of the rain drumming lightly on house roofs and muffling the normal sounds of the village. Rutledge could hear the gutters running, a soft, ominous rush that echoed in his head, and once, a carriage rattling down the High Street. The church clock tolled the quarter hours, and still his mind moved restlessly in a kaleidoscope of images.

Of Catherine Tarrant’s paintings, vivid reflections of her inner force. Of Lettice Wood’s unusual eyes, darkening with emotion. Of Royston’s shame as he watched the faces of parishioners outside the church. Of Carfield’s swift retreat from confrontation. Of Wilton’s lonely grief, and a child’s terror. Of a woman hanging out clothes in the sunlight, a goose penned in the yard behind her. Of Sally Davenant’s cool shell, hiding emotions she couldn’t afford to feel. Of Charles Harris, man and monster, alive and bloodily dead…Of Mavers with his amber goat’s eyes…

At Mallows, Lettice Wood lay on her bed and wished with the fervor of despair that she could turn back the slowly moving hands of the ornate porcelain clock on the table by her pillow. Turn them back to that moment when she had said, with the blitheness of loving, “I’ve never known such happiness—I want it to go on and on forever—I want to feel it in old age, and look back on years full of it, and you, in the center of it.”

And his warm indulgent voice, laughing at her, promising. “My dear girl, when have I ever been able to deny you anything you wanted? We’ll be together always, as long as the seas run and the stars shine and the earth lasts. Is that pledge enough for you?”

The seas still ran, the stars still shone, and the earth was there still. But her happiness had poured out with a man’s blood in a field of wildflowers, and there was no way she could put it back again. And there was nothing—nothing—that would turn back time to that single, glorious gift of love.

Catherine Tarrant sat in her studio, in a darkness lit by heat lightning, the patter of rain on the surrounding glass a counterpoint to her tears. On the easel in front of her was the wrapped portrait of Rolf Linden. She didn’t need to take the cloth off, she knew it by heart. But it was Mark Wilton she was thinking about, and Charles Harris—and how the body ached with longing for a man who would never come back to her. She could forget, sometimes, when she was painting, or in London. Somehow Charles’s death and Mark’s dilemma had stirred her feelings into life again, and left her vulnerable. While memories, like long-buried ghosts, crept around her in the silence, she made herself remember too what she owed Mark.

He was awake as well, metaphorically setting his house in order, arranging his affairs and steeling himself to meet what was coming. There was no way out for him, he had to accept that. Still, he’d found the courage he needed in France, and it hadn’t deserted him yet. It would be there when he needed it now. From hero to gallows’ bait, a great comedown for a proud man, he thought with heavy irony. If only he could guess what Lettice would do—But there was one final duty to perform, and after a while, he decided that the best way to achieve it was with honesty rather than guile….

But in a cottage on a hillside above Upper Streetham, a small child slept with the deepness of death, without dreams for the first time in days.

18

The rain had drifted away by morning, and a watery sun soon broke through the clouds, strengthening rapidly until there was a misty, apricot light that warmed the church tower and touched the trees with gold.

Rutledge walked out of the Inn door and stood for a moment watching the early market goers hurrying to set up booths or find a bargain. A low murmur of voices and laughter, the noises of traffic, people coming and going—he’d seen markets like this in a hundred English towns, peaceful and bustling. A week ago a man had died on market day, Mavers had made his way through the crowds shouting, agitating, locked in hatred, and a child had been frightened nearly to death. But a traveler, strolling through Upper Streetham this pleasant summer morning, wouldn’t hear about it, wouldn’t be touched by it. None of the drama, none of the misery, none of the lasting pain showed.

He turned and moved briskly down the sidewalk, stopping at Dr. Warren’s for a report on Hickam. The man had had rather a restless night, Warren’s housekeeper reported, but he’d eaten a decent enough breakfast and seemed a little stronger.

“That’s when the craving for gin will return, as he improves,” she added. “The poor soul isn’t out of the woods yet, I can tell you! And what he’ll do with himself when he’s well enough to go home is another worry.”

“I’m told he was a cabinetmaker before the war,” Rutledge said.

Surprise spread across her face. “Aye, that’s true. I’d forgotten. And very good he was! But not anymore, not with hands that shake like leaves.” She picked up the broom she’d leaned against the wall while talking to him. “They’ve already started. The tremors. But he’s stronger than he looks, which is a good thing!”

Rutledge thanked her and turned back to the Inn, walking around past the small gardens to the car. Ten minutes later he was pulling up in front of the Davenant house.

Grace let him in, and Sally Davenant came to meet him as soon as she heard his voice. She quickly glanced behind him to see if Rutledge had brought Sergeant Davies with him, looking decidedly relieved to discover that he was alone. “Good morning, Inspector! We’ve been sitting on the terrace, having a last cup of coffee. Won’t you join us?”

He let her lead him to the French doors that opened onto a slate-floored stone terrace overlooking the gardens. There was a wide sweep of lawn, edged by trees and set with beautifully manicured borders, a graceful and pleasing design that someone—he wondered if it had been Mrs. Davenant herself—had chosen to match the architectural grace of the house. An air of peace pervaded it, with birds singing in the trees and a low hum of bees working their way through the blossoms.

Beyond the balustrade, the flower beds looked rather bedraggled from the storm, but the scent of stock and peonies and lavender drifted softly on the morning air. Someone had swept the rain from the terrace and a set of white chairs cushioned in a pattern of gray, rose, and white encircled a wrought-iron table. The breakfast things had already been taken away, but a coffee tray gleamed brightly in the center.

Wilton got to his feet as they came out into the sunlight and stood by the table, not speaking, his eyes on Rutledge.

“Another cup for the Inspector, please, Grace,” Sally was saying over her shoulder. Then, “Do sit down, Inspector. Mark.” They sat, and when the cup came, Sally poured Rutledge’s coffee, passing it to him with a practiced smile.

“Well, I don’t suppose that half of Upper Streetham will dare to show their faces at market this morning!” she began, hiding her own feelings quite well under a pose of wry humor. “I told you before, that man Bert Mavers is a danger to himself and everyone else! How Charles—” She stopped, then said, “How anyone put up with him for this many years is a mystery to me!”

“I don’t think the Inspector came to discuss Mavers,” Wilton said. “You wanted to see me last night, Rutledge?”

He tasted his coffee and then answered, “Yes, as a matter of fact. But it will keep. For the moment. Have you and Royston and Carfield completed the arrangements for tomorrow’s services?”

Wilton stared out over the lawns. “Yes, everything’s in hand. I—was planning to see Lettice this morning, to show her what we’d done, what was expected of her, who would be here. There has been a great deal of mail, telephone calls, wires. Royston and Johnston have kept up with it between them, but I know most of these people personally. Who they are, what they represent. Sally can help Lettice with the proper acknowledgments afterward. As for the reception, we’ve kept Carfield out of it as much as possible.” Disgust tightened his mouth as he turned to Rutledge. “The man’s a threat to sanity! He told Johnston he’d be there most of today to oversee the preparations, the flowers, and so on. Royston had to tell him to his face that he wasn’t needed, that the church was his responsibility and nothing else. And he’ll do that well enough! Writing the funeral oration probably kept him awake most of the night.”

Sally said generously, “He means well, Mark. He’s been a great comfort to Agnes, worried about poor little Lizzie. And when Mary Thornton’s mother died he took care of everything. But I understand how you feel; he’s had his eye on Lettice since she came here in 1917.”

Wilton glanced at Rutledge but said nothing. Rutledge finished his coffee and pushed back his chair. “I’d like to speak to you, privately, Wilton. If you don’t mind.”

Sally rose. “No, no, stay here, I’ve things to see to.”

But there were too many windows overlooking the gardens and the terrace, voices carried. Wilton put his hand on her arm. “Enjoy the sun, my dear; I won’t be long.”

He couldn’t see the look she gave him as he got to his feet and courteously waited for Rutledge to follow. It was a mixture of emotions. Dread. Love. And indecision.

Wilton took Rutledge to the small parlor where they’d talked on his first visit and closed the door, standing there, his back to it, as he said, “I expected you to come with the Sergeant. And a warrant for my arrest.”

“I had planned to. But it occurred to me that marching you to jail in front of all those people coming in to market would cause Miss Wood and your cousin unnecessary embarrassment. If you go with me now, of your own accord, we’ll see to this business as quietly as possible.”

“So it’s finished, is it?” He moved away from the door and crossed to a chair, gesturing impatiently for Rutledge to be seated.

“I know what you and Harris quarreled about. After dinner Sunday evening. In the lane Monday morning. He was calling off the marriage, and you were furious with him.”

There was no reaction in his face. “Who told you this?”

“I have two witnesses. I think they’re reliable enough. A third can prove that Harris was there, in the lane. Another saw him speaking to you.”

“And Lettice? Have you talked to her?”

“Yes. At first she denied it. Then she admitted that Charles had, for reasons of his own, changed his mind about the marriage.”

“I see.” He faced Rutledge quietly enough, but a nerve at the corner of his mouth twitched. After a time, he said, “Yes, all right, Charles changed his mind. I thought he was wrong, and I told him so. We argued. I didn’t think this was information that the world needed to know, that’s why I wouldn’t explain it to you. I felt that—given time—Lettice and I could work out the problem of what to do. Charles Harris was a very strong influence in her life. I had to keep that in mind.”

“Then she went along with his decision?”

Wilton shook his head. “I never had the chance to ask her how she felt. Charles was shot—she was given sedatives by Warren—and the wedding had to be called off anyway. My God, she was grieving, I couldn’t very well barge in there and say, ‘I love you, I still want to marry you, will you go through with it and be damned to Society!’ And then there was the funeral to discuss—hardly the proper ambience for a declaration of love, is it? Now—I haven’t much to offer her now, have I?”

Listening, Rutledge could hear the ring of truth—and the suspicion of a lie. He had to remind himself that Mark Wilton had spent four years in the air over France, surviving on his wits, surviving because he was intelligent, kept his nerve, never let himself be outwitted or outmaneuvered.

“Did she ask you if you’d shot her guardian?”

“No.” It was curt, haughty. Pride speaking.

“What will you tell her when she does? When you’ve been arrested?”

“That you’ve decided I did shoot Harris. That I’ll fight you in court, and with any luck make you look like a fool.” He frowned. “I’m not a barrister, but I’ve got a chance, I think. The evidence against me is circumstantial, no one saw me with a gun, no one saw me actually shoot the Colonel. Calling off the wedding might damn me, but we’ll see about that.” He caught the fleeting expression in Rutledge’s eyes and said, “Oh, yes, I’ve thought it all through! Most of the night. I’ve also considered something else. You’ll probably win in the long run; the trial will end with ‘not proved’ rather than an acquittal. And that doubt, that shadow will hang over me for the rest of my life. Did I or didn’t I kill Harris? In some respects that’s worse than the gallows. I can’t possibly expect Lettice to marry me, knowing she might wonder in the middle of the night if I had done it.”

“Then you won’t come with me now, and give yourself up.”

“If I do, it’s an admission of guilt. In the view of most people.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I can’t afford to damn myself. You’ll have to arrest me. Without fanfare, I can promise you there will be no trouble over it. But it will have to be a warrant.”

“Why did Charles Harris change his mind about you? About the wedding? What had you done to turn him against the marriage?”

To Rutledge’s surprise, a smile flickered deep in Wilton’s eyes. “Ah. I expect that information did die with Charles Harris!”

Then the smile faded, and he said quite soberly, “I need a favor from you, Rutledge. I don’t know if you can grant it, but I’m asking you at least to consider it. I want to go to the funeral with Lettice. She needs someone besides that idiot Carfield. Or Simon Haldane, who’s kind enough but damned ineffectual. The Regiment is sending a representative, but Lettice doesn’t know him, he’s a stranger. It won’t be easy for her, with her guardian dead and her fiancé in jail. You can lock me in a room in the Inn tonight, if that’s any use. I’ll agree to any terms you like. Just let me do this one thing, and I’ll be very grateful.”

“I can’t postpone an arrest.”

“Why? Do you think I’ll shoot myself when you aren’t looking? Or run to France? The only hope I have of a normal life is proving I didn’t shoot Charles! A trial is as important to me as it is to you. Give me twenty-four hours!”

Rutledge looked at him, trying to read the man. Behind the handsome face was an extraordinary strength. And a gambler’s instincts? High in the clouds, pitting his wits against another man, with death as the price of losing, he had come through duel after duel almost unscathed. It was a remarkable record, and his nerve had never broken—

Hamish, who’d been silent most of the morning, stirred to life. “But yours did! That’s why you’ve lost your skills, man, you’ve broken. Nerve, mind, spirit. You aren’t the hunter anymore, you’re the prey!”

He forced himself to think, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind. Wilton was waiting, patient, watchful. He wanted this very badly. And he didn’t like begging.

Dredging up his own instincts, Rutledge sorted them out. And made his decision.

“All right, then. Twenty-four hours. But if you trick me, by God I’ll crucify you!”

Wilton shook his head. “It isn’t for me. It’s for Lettice.”

And driving back to the Inn, Hamish was raging. “The witch again! She’s cast a spell on you with those strange eyes, and you’ve lost your soul—”

“No,” Rutledge said, concentrating on the road. “I’m beginning to think”—he dodged a big yellow dog ambling peacefully across his path—“I’m beginning to think I might have found it.”

“You’ve got the man—witnesses—the shotgun—the reason why yon fine Colonel needed to die that morning. You’ve done your work, man, don’t throw it away!”

“On the contrary. I’ve stumbled around in the dark, letting other people tell me what was happening. I’ve been terrified that someone might see my own terrors and turn them against me. I’ve dreaded failure and done very little to prevent it. I was lost—lost!—and couldn’t find my way back to 1914. If I can’t do any better than this, I deserve to be locked away in that damned clinic with the other wretched dregs of humanity. If I want to survive, I’ve got to fight for it….”

He spent the day organizing his evidence, finishing his report. Before he began he put in a call to Bowles in London and said, “I’ve got enough proof to ask for a warrant. Tomorrow at noon. The case is as strong as I can make it, but not without some problems. I think a good KC can fill them in, and we’ll have our conviction.”

Bowles, listening, finally interrupted. “I hope to God you aren’t telling me we’re going to arrest Wilton! The Palace called this morning; they want to know whether to send a representative to the funeral. Wilton’s marrying Harris’s ward—”

“Tell them to send someone who knew Harris. He was a good soldier, he served the King well. It doesn’t matter about Wilton.”

“Rutledge, if you’ve got this wrong, the Yard will have your head. Do you hear me? Leave the man alone unless you’ve got such proof that Christ Himself couldn’t find a way out of it! I won’t be responsible if you humiliate the Palace and disgrace the Yard!”

“I won’t,” Rutledge said, with more firmness than he felt. “If I do, you’ll have my resignation on your desk by Wednesday morning.”

“A hell of a lot of good that will be, man! After the damage is done!”

“I know. That’s why I’m taking my time.” Rutledge hung up. So much for the confidence and support of his superiors. He felt suddenly isolated, alone.

But loneliness was also a strength. When you trusted, you were more vulnerable. You gave yourself away. He would have told someone about Hamish long ago, if he’d trusted. As long as it was his own private hell, he was, in a sense, far safer. No one could reach him. No one could destroy him. Except he himself, in the muddle that was now his life.

By late afternoon he’d covered sheet after sheet with notes and a framework for his evidence. Satisfied that he’d been thorough, he reread the pages. It wasn’t a clever work of detection, nor was it complete, since there were no eyewitnesses to the death itself.

Except for the child, and the doll. She had been in the meadow. Not surprisingly, the shock of what she’d seen had frightened her into the blankness of withdrawal, the secure world of no feeling, no thought, no memory.

And yet she hadn’t responded to Wilton at all when he came to her room. It was her father who terrified her, her father who couldn’t come near her without provoking wild and mindless screams.

He got up from the table he’d been using as a desk and moved restlessly around the room. He’d never been a man to enjoy being shut up indoors all day long; he thought that that had, unconsciously, been one of several reasons why he’d failed to follow in his father’s footsteps at the bar. But the war, the aftermath of being buried alive in a trench, had turned an ordinary dislike into an almost rabid claustrophobia, and police work at least took him outside much of the time, before the walls began to close in upon him. As they were now.

Picking up his coat, he went out and down the stairs, planning to walk no farther than the lane in front of the church.

Outside the Inn the market was drawing to a close, stalls shut up and ready to load on wagons, the last of the market goers straggling from shop to shop. In front of the milliner’s he saw Helena Sommers in earnest conversation with Laurence Royston. She was standing on the sidewalk and he was in one of Charles Harris’s cars. And she was wearing the same hat Rutledge had glimpsed in the Inn garden on Sunday after Mavers’s malicious attack on everyone in the churchyard.

Then she smiled at Royston, stood back, and he drove on. Noticing Rutledge on the sidewalk, he waved.

Charles Harris had been fortunate in his steward, Rutledge thought. Few men worked so devotedly on another man’s property without a stake in it for themselves. He’d probably spent more time and love on Mallows than Harris had ever been able to give. Was that because he’d never had a wife to lavish time and love on? It was an interesting possibility.

Helena crossed the street, saw Rutledge, and paused. “Good afternoon, Inspector.” She indicated a large box in her left hand. “I didn’t bring a black hat with me. And I felt I ought to attend the funeral tomorrow. I didn’t know the Colonel well, but I was a guest in his home. It seems—courteous—to attend. Mr. Royston has been kind enough to promise to send a car for me.”

She looked tired. As if aware of it, she added, “The storm yesterday left us mired in mud. I had to walk into town today, there was no way to take out my bicycle. Maggie is always terrified of thunder, so she didn’t sleep much, and neither did I. But it seems to have cleared the air, in more ways than one.”

“A beautiful day,” he agreed.

“And I’ve spent enough of it indulging myself. I’ll be on my way.”

“Before you go, I wonder—did you notice a child out in the fields, a little girl picking wildflowers, on the morning of Harris’s death? Either before or after you saw Captain Wilton on the path?”

She frowned thoughtfully. “No. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. I was using my field glasses. I could well have missed her. There are often children about, and I try to avoid them—well, they frighten off the birds I’m watching! The Pinter children are usually wandering here and there. The little girl is a charmer, but with any encouragement at all, the boy talks your ear off.” She smiled wryly to take the sting out of her words. “He’ll make his mark as a politician, I’ve no doubt at all about that! Maggie will be looking for me, I must go.”

She walked away with a countrywoman’s clean, swift stride. He watched her, wondering again how much of her interest in birds was real and how much was an excuse to be out of the cottage as often as she could. Or perhaps her cousin preferred to have the house to herself. Safe, familiar ground in a rather frightening world. Make-believe in the place of reality. He felt a sense of pity, knowing how harsh life could be for the Maggies, ill-equipped to cope with anything more demanding than domestic chores and small comforts.

Glancing at his watch, he saw that he’d have time for a drink before dinner. He’d earned it. Time enough afterward for the last task on his list.

Rutledge was greeted at the door of the Pinter house by a wary Agnes Farrell. Long rays of the sun, still warm at nine-thirty, gave her face a glow that faded as soon as she stepped back to allow him to enter. The thinness of long nights of no sleep, the sallowness of stress were marked in the dimness of the narrow passage between the door and the parlor.

“How is the child?” he asked, smiling down at her, trying to be reassuring.

“Well enough,” she answered doubtfully. “Eating. Sleeping. But grieving somehow, clutching that doll as if it was a lifeline.”

Meg appeared behind her mother, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Inspector?” she asked anxiously. The child’s illness had worn her too, the confidence of youth lost, the dread of death haunting her, buoyed only by a blind hope that soon it would all be back as it had been, normal and comforting.

“Good evening, Mrs. Pinter. I’ve come to have a look at Lizzie,” he said, as if it was an ordinary thing to do on a Monday evening. “If I may?”

She glanced at her mother and then said, uncertainly, “Yes, sir?” Both women stepped back, allowing him to enter, and from their attitude he gathered that they were alone in the house, that Ted Pinter hadn’t returned from the Haldane stables. He had chosen his time well, he thought with relief.

He began to move toward Lizzie’s small room, saying something about the lovely day that had followed the rain, in an attempt to set them at ease. They followed, close together for comfort. A lamp was burning on the low table, and the child stared up at him as he came in with large, sober dark blue eyes. He wasn’t really sure she saw him, in the sense of comprehending that he was a stranger, someone she didn’t know and wasn’t used to, because there was no spark of curiosity, no quick look at her mother to see if all was well. Instead there was an apathy about her still. But she wasn’t screaming, and he took that as a good sign.

“What did Dr. Warren have to say?” he asked over his shoulder.

Agnes answered, “He said it was what he’d hoped might happen, but didn’t expect. And we’d have to see if this new quietness lasted. In truth, sir, I think he was more than worried she might die, she was wasting so fast.”

Meg added, “She’s not in the clear yet—” as if hoping Rutledge might take the hint and go, now that he’d done what he came to do.

Instead he walked over to the bed. “Lizzie? I’m—er—a friend of Dr. Warren’s. He asked me to come and see you tonight. In his place.”

Her eyes had followed him, watched him, but she said nothing.

He went on, talking to her for several minutes, telling her he’d seen a woman with a basket of strawberries at market, and a man with a dog that did tricks. But nothing touched the blankness on her face.

Rutledge wasn’t accustomed to children. But he’d seen enough of the sad refugees on the roads of France—hungry, frightened, tired—to know that it wasn’t very likely that he’d be able to break through the barrier of her silence on his own. Not without days of careful groundwork to gain her confidence.

He thought about it for a time, watching those blue eyes, wondering what the best way of reaching her might be. He didn’t have days to give.

Hamish said softly, “Your Jean has such eyes; your children might have been fair and very like Lizzie….”

Turning to Agnes, Rutledge said, “Do you have a rocking chair?”

Surprised, she answered, “Aye, sir, a nursing rocker. In the kitchen.”

“Show me.” She did, and he saw that he had come just at the end of their meal; there was a chicken partly carved on the counter, a bowl of potatoes sat on the table next to a half loaf of bread and a plate of pickles, and dishes were stacked in a wash pan in the sink, while a big kettle whistled softly on the stove. The nursing rocker—small and without arms to allow a woman to breast-feed comfortably—stood by the hearth, worn but serviceable.

He carried it back to the bedroom, turned it with its back to the doorway, and said to Meg, “You’ll want to finish in the kitchen. Then I’ll have a cup of tea, if I may. And a few questions for you.”

She didn’t want to leave, but Agnes said, “Go on, Meg. I’ll call you if I need you.” But Meg still went out reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder at Rutledge with worried eyes.

Rutledge waited until he could hear the familiar clatter of dishes and then said to Agnes, “I don’t want to frighten the child. Or make her uncomfortable. But if you’ll sit here and hold her, rock her as you must do, sometimes?” She nodded. “Good! I’ll be here by the door. And when she’s settled, at ease, I’ll tell you what to say to her.”

“I don’t know, sir!”

“It won’t harm her. It might help. And—I need to know what she saw! There in the meadow where Colonel Harris was shot!”

“I can’t take the chance! What if she saw the murder? What if that’s the thing that sent her into this decline? We don’t want to lose her! Not now!” She was an intelligent woman; she knew the risk he was going to run.

“Trust me,” he told her gently. “Let me at least try.”

And so she went to the bed, lifted the child in her arms, talking in that soft singsong mothers the world over know by heart. Lizzie whimpered, but seemed content enough when Agnes went no farther than the chair, sat down, and began slowly to rock, humming under her breath.

Afraid she’d soon put the child to sleep—in fact, he thought that might be her intention—Rutledge said quietly, “Ask her if she saw a man with a shotgun.”

“Did you see a man carrying a gun, love? A big long gun that made a big noise? Did you see that, love?”

Lizzie didn’t stir.

“Did the noise scare you? Loud and nasty, was it?”

Nothing.

Agnes repeated her questions, varying the words, probing over and over again, but Lizzie was silent. And still awake.

“Ask her if she remembers losing her doll.”

That elicited no response, although Agnes tried several variations on that theme too. But Lizzie began to pluck restlessly at the front of Agnes’s apron.

“It’s no good, sir!”

“We’ll try a different tack, then. Ask her—ask her if she saw the big horse.”

Agnes crooned to the child to soothe her, and then said softly in the same tones, “Was there a big horse, my lamb? A big shining horse in the meadow? Was he standing still or riding along? Did you see the big horse?”

Lizzie stopped sucking her thumb, eyes wide, tense. Listening.

Rutledge could hear Meg in the kitchen, speaking to someone in a low voice or singing to herself. He couldn’t tell which it was. He swore silently, irritated by the distraction. “And a man on its back?”

“Did the big horse carry a man on its back? High in the saddle the way you ride with your pa? Did you see the man, love? Just like Papa on the horse? Did you see his face—”

The words were hardly out of her mouth before Lizzie went rigid and began to scream. The sudden change was alarming in the quiet room, and Agnes cried out, “Now, now, lovey—don’t fret! Sir!”

“Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! No—no—don’t!” Lizzie screamed, the words tumbling over one another, the doll clutched tight as she struggled in her grandmother’s arms.

Meg came running, and behind her were other footsteps.

Rutledge had gone to Agnes, his back to the door and was bending over the child, speaking to her, when he was caught from behind and thrown hard against the wall, scraping his cheek and all but knocking the breath out of him. A man’s voice was roaring, “Don’t touch her—let her be! Damn you, let her be!” Rutledge wheeled, and Ted Pinter, face distorted with rage, charged at him again. Lizzie was standing rigidly in her grandmother’s lap, eyes squeezed shut, shrieking, “No—no! No!” over and over again.

Rutledge was grappling with Pinter, Meg was shouting, “Ted! Don’t!”, and her husband was yelling, “She’s suffered enough, God blast you, I won’t have her hurt anymore!”

And then the little girl stopped screaming so suddenly that the silence shocked them all, halting Pinter in his tracks. Over his shoulder, Rutledge could see the child’s face, startled, mouth wide in a forgotten scream. Her eyes were half scrunched closed, half opened. But the lids were lifting, until they were wide, unbelieving. And then she was holding her arms out, straining against her grandmother’s shoulder, a huge and shining smile on her tear-streaked face. Ted had turned toward her, and as she said in wonder, “Papa?” he made a wordless sound in his throat and went to her, pulling her into his arms against his chest. His features were crumpled with tears, his head bent over his daughter. Meg was hanging on his arm, half cradling both of them, weeping too.

Agnes, both hands over her heart as if to keep it from leaping out of her chest, was on her feet also, staring at Rutledge with consternation in her eyes.

Rutledge, as stunned as they were, stared back, uncertain what he’d done.

Behind his eyes, Hamish was saying over and over again, “She’s naught but a child—a child!”

19

The sunset was a thin red line on the western horizon as Rutledge drove back into Upper Streetham. His body was tired, his mind a tumult of images and probabilities. He made his way though the quiet Inn and upstairs to his room, shutting the door behind him and standing there, lost in thought.

If the child’s evidence was right—and he would have wagered his life that it was—Mavers couldn’t have shot Harris. Well, he’d been almost sure of that from the perspective of timing! An outside possibility, a dark horse, attractive as Mavers was as a suspect, but a close-run thing if he’d actually done the killing.

But what else had Lizzie changed?

The doll had been beside the hedge at the edge of the meadow, half hidden under the spill of branches and leaves. From that vantage point, then, Lizzie had seen a horse and rider.

The man she was most accustomed to seeing on a horse was her own father. Living in the little cottage over on the other side of the hill, at the end of a long and rutted road, the Pinter family was more or less out of the mainstream of village life. Yes, Lizzie had seen any number of horses, Lizzie had seen any number of men—and women—riding. But the man she was most accustomed to seeing…

And when she heard the horse coming toward her out there in the fields where she’d been searching for wildflowers, she had run toward the sound, expecting to find her father.

But it wasn’t Tom Pinter on that horse, it was Charles Harris thundering toward her, his horse already frightened and bolting.

Only she hadn’t known that, for she hadn’t been able to see the rider’s face.

Instead she’d seen only a bloody stump on a man’s body. And if her sudden screams had startled the horse, making it shy away from her, the gruesome burden on its back might finally have fallen out of the saddle.

Face—or rather chest—down on the grass?

But Lizzie, in terror, believing that the awful thing covered in blood was her own father, had fled, dropping the doll….

Or had she been in the meadow earlier, dropped the doll, remembered where she’d left it, and on her way to fetch it, encountered the specter of death?

He wasn’t sure it mattered. What did matter was that Lizzie had been in the meadow, had seen Charles Harris on horseback, already dead. But she hadn’t seen the gun, she hadn’t seen Wilton, she hadn’t been frightened by a loud noise at close range.

And the killer hadn’t seen her….

Which meant that Charles Harris might not have been killed in that meadow.

Sergeant Davies had said from the beginning that he wasn’t sure exactly where Harris had been shot, but assuming that the pellets driving into his head and body had thrown him violently out of the saddle, he would have dropped no more than a few feet either way from the scene of the killing.

I should have looked at the body—

And something else—the fact that Harris had been found on his chest, not his back. If he’d been shot out of the saddle, he’d have gone down on his back. If he fell out of the saddle after his horse had bolted, the dead man’s knees spasmodically gripping the animal’s sides in the muscle contractions of death…if he fell out, he might well have gone down on his face.

Hamish, whispering in the darkness that filled the room, said, “You remember Stevens, don’t you? He was hit and ran on for a yard or more, without a head to lead him, and you had to pry the rifle out of his hands, they were gripping it so tight. As if he were still killing Germans, even though he didn’t know it. And MacTavish, who was heart shot, and Taylor, who got it in the throat. Death seized them in an instant, but they held on!”

It was true, he’d seen it happen.

Moving toward the bed, he turned up the lamp and then walked across to the windows, rested his hands on the low sill, and looked out into the silent street. A cool breeze touched the trees, then brushed his face in the open window, but he didn’t notice.

Where had Harris been killed?

Not that it mattered—if the Colonel hadn’t been shot in the meadow, it simply gave Wilton more time to reach Mavers’s cottage, pick up the gun, and track him down.

But closer to the house, someone might have seen him pull the trigger or heard the shot. Yet no one had come forward.

Mark Wilton had the best possible motive. Still, Rutledge had been involved with other cases where the best motive wasn’t necessarily the one that counted. Mark Wilton was, by his own admission, near the scene. He’d quarreled with the Colonel because the wedding was going to be called off…which made the timing of the death right: to kill Harris before he’d made public what he’d decided to do.

All the same, Rutledge knew he’d feel better when he’d answered the final two questions: One, why had Harris called off the wedding? And two, where precisely had Harris been shot?

Rutledge straightened, pulled off his tie, and took off his coat. There wasn’t very much he could do tonight. In the dark. When everyone else was sound asleep…

But he found himself retying his tie, picking up the coat again. Almost driven to action, when it wasn’t possible to take any action at all. Buffeted by the strongest feeling that time was running out.

Wilton had said he wouldn’t shoot himself, he wouldn’t take the gentleman’s way out before he was arrested, convicted, and hanged. But that was assuming he was innocent, and could see that there was truly a chance for a very bright barrister to prove that there wasn’t enough evidence to bring in a conviction. If he was guilty, however—

Rutledge was almost sure that Wilton wouldn’t do anything rash before the funeral. For Lettice’s sake, rather than his own. But afterward…

Bowles and the Yard—and the King—would probably rejoice if Wilton never came to trial. But Rutledge, far from wanting his pound of flesh, was determined to have that trial. To prove or disprove his evidence, to finish what he’d begun. With a carefully constructed suicide note left behind, Wilton could appear to be the victim, not the villain. He could leave behind enough doubt to overshadow anything Hickam and that child and Mrs. Grayson might say. The case couldn’t be closed in such uncertain circumstances.

Without turning down the lamp, Rutledge walked out of the room, down the stairs, and out the garden door to his car. It made a racket starting up in the stillness, but there was nothing he could do about it. The first of the funeral guests to arrive were probably sleeping and wouldn’t hear it anyway.

He turned toward Mallows, driving fast, his headlamps scouring the road with brightness. But at the estate gates, he changed his mind and stopped just inside them, turning off his headlamps and pulling off into the rhododendrons that grew high and thick under the trees. Getting out of the car, he stood still for a time, listening.

A dog barking off in the far distance. A lonely bark, not an alarm. An owl calling from the trees behind the house. The light breeze sighing overhead. He started to walk then, giving the house as wide a berth as he could, and soon found himself in the fields above it, lying between Mallows proper and the Haldane lands.

Moving through the darkness, minding where he put his feet, he kept the house to his right. It was dark, and the windows of Lettice’s rooms shone like black silver in the night. In the back there was a single light in one of the upper rooms, where he’d seen the servants’ quarters. He could hear horses moving quietly in the stables, stamping a foot, rustling about in the straw, and somewhere a groom coughed. He’d done enough reconnaissance missions during the war to move as silently as the night around him, his dark clothes blending with the trees and the shrubs and the hedges, and he was careful never to cast long shadows or hurry.

For an hour or more he roamed the fields above Mallows, looking for a likely place where a killer was safe, out of sight of the house, out of hearing, where none of the tenants might stumble over him accidentally and see that shotgun. But there was nothing that spoke to him, no vantage point that caught his fancy.

Look at it again, Rutledge told himself. You were a ground soldier. You’d see it differently. Wilton flew. His eye for terrain might not be as sharp as yours.

All right, then. A clump of saplings here. A high hedge full of summer-nesting birds there. A dip in the land, like a bowl or dell, where someone might quietly loiter. A section of the rose-clotted wall that separated the Haldane land from Mallows. They were all possibilities. The saplings in particular offered a shield from the house and thick brambles in which to conceal a shotgun. And the hedgerow in one or two spots was almost as good. For the most part the wall was too open, especially on this side, and the dell had no cover at all.

Another thought struck him. Betrothed to Lettice or not, Wilton would attract more notice on Mallows land than would, say, Royston, who had every reason to move about in his daily tasks. Or Lettice, who lived there and had had the run of the place since she was a child. In the spring with the fields plowed and the crops growing, you left tracks—

But Davies and Forrest had assumed that Charles was killed in the meadow, and hadn’t looked for tracks. Or blood. Or bits of flesh and bone…

Finally he turned back, still uneasy, still driven by something he couldn’t define. Not so much knowledge as a sense of alarm, a distinct frisson that rippled along his nerves like the breeze rippling softly through his hair.

In front of Mallows, in the open where there was just enough ambient light, he looked at his watch. It was after two.

“Decent Christian folk are all in their beds,” Hamish began.

Rutledge ignored him. Mallows was a house of mourning, and Charles had no close relatives. Most of the funeral’s guests would be staying the night in Warwick, or at the Shepherd’s Crook in Upper Streetham. Lettice would be alone, as she had been for the past week since her guardian’s death.

There wouldn’t be an opportunity to see her in the morning before the services began—and it would be callous to try. Afterward there was the reception that the Vicar had his heart set upon. No opportunity to speak to her then…and after the reception, time might have run out….

He turned and walked across the gravel of the drive to the front door with its black wreath darker than the night on the wooden panels. After a moment, he rang the bell, and in the stillness, fancied he heard it echo through the house like some gothic tale of late-night callers bringing bad tidings. His sister had gone through a stage of reading them just before bedtime, shivering under the covers with a mixture of horror and delight, or scratching at his door for comfort when she’d succeeded in terrifying herself too much to sleep.

Rutledge was still smiling when Johnston opened the door, eyes heavy with sleep, clothes stuffed on haphazardly.

He stared at Rutledge, recognizing him after a moment, then said, “What’s happened?”

“I have to speak to Miss Wood, it’s urgent. But don’t frighten her, there’s nothing wrong.”

“Inspector! Do you know what time it is, man! I can’t wake Miss Wood at this hour—there’s the funeral tomorrow, she’ll need her sleep!”

“Yes, I know, and I’m sorry. But I think she’d rather see me now than just as she’s leaving for the church.”

It took persuasion, and a pulling of rank, but in the end Johnston went up the stairs into the darkness, leaving Rutledge in the half-lit hall.

After a time he could hear someone coming, heels tapping on the floor. It was Lettice, face still flushed with sleep, hair falling in dark waves down her back, a dark green dressing gown on over her night wear. She came slowly down the stairs with her eyes on him, and he said, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been so important. It won’t take long, I promise you.”

“What’s wrong, is something wrong?” she asked.

“No. Yes. I’m in a quandary of sorts. I need to talk to you.”

She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looked toward the door of the drawing room, then made up her mind. “Come this way. To the small parlor.”

He followed her there, and she found the lights, bringing an almost blinding brightness into the room. Turning in the middle of the floor, she gestured to a chair for him and then curled up on the sofa, drawing her legs under her as if for warmth. Without the sun the room did seem chill, comfortable to him after his long walk in the fields, but cold to her after the warmth of bed. As he sat down he saw that the soles of his shoes and one trouser leg had mud on them. She saw it too, and asked, “Where have you been?”

“Walking. Thinking. Look, I’ll tell you what’s bothering me. I went to arrest Captain Wilton this—yesterday—morning, and he asked me to wait until after the funeral tomorrow—this—morning. It made sense. I could see no reason to cause any more grief or embarrassment for you.”

Frowning, she said, “Yes, that’s true, I’d rather not face it alone. But you’re telling me that the man who’s accompanying me to the services is Charles’s murderer. The man who’ll be sitting beside me while I grieve—I don’t see how that will make it any easier for me. Or for Mark! Do you think I only care about appearances? I survived last Monday morning alone. I can survive this.”

“I hadn’t expected to be telling you any of this. Not until afterward. But you know where my suspicions—and the evidence—have been pointing.”

She brushed a heavy fall of hair out of her face and said quietly, “Yes.”

“You know I’ve learned about the source of the quarrel. That the marriage was being called off. You told me yourself that Charles had decided to do it.”

“Yes.”

“It’s motive, Miss Wood. It explains why Charles had to die that particular morning—that Monday, not seventeen years ago or six months from now or next Friday.”

“All right. I can see that. I—I’d considered it myself.”

Which brought him back to his first impression of her—that she’d known who the killer was.

“But I need to know why your guardian called off the marriage.”

“What does Mark say?” she countered.

Rutledge leaned forward in his chair, trying to reach her with his words, with the sense of haste driving him. “He says the reason isn’t important. That it died with Charles. But I think it may be very important. In fact, it’s crucial. I’m concerned, you see, that if the cause was serious enough, Wilton might prefer not to stand trial and have it brought out into the open, afraid that in the end we’d discover what it was and use it in court, and the whole world would hear what it was. I’m afraid that he might—choose the gentleman’s solution instead.”

“Shoot himself?” Tears came to her eyes, darkening them, but hovered behind the lids, not spilling over. “Are you quite sure, Inspector?”

“I wouldn’t have come tonight if I hadn’t been sure it could happen. Not that it would—but that it could,” he said, forcing himself to honesty.

“But if I tell you—you’re the police, you’ll know what it is, and then it’ll happen just as he’s afraid it might. And I’ll be the cause of it!” Before he could deny it, she said, “No, I can’t tell you something, and then afterward say that I didn’t mean it, that you must forget I’d said it. You can’t forget it. It’s your job, you see—there’s no separating the man from the job!”

“Lettice—” He wasn’t even aware that he’d used her name.

“No! I’ve lost Charles, nothing will ever bring him back. I’m going to lose Mark, one way or another. I feel enough guilt already, I won’t add to it, I tell you I won’t!” The tears spilled over, and she ignored them, her eyes on his face. “Have you ever been in love, Inspector, so in love that your very life’s blood belonged to someone else, and then just when it seemed that everything was wrapped in joy, and you were the luckiest, most fortunate, most cherished person in the world, had it snatched away without warning, stripped from you without hope or sense or explanation, just taken?”

“Yes,” he said, getting to his feet and walking to the window where she couldn’t see his face. “It would be easy to say that the war came between us, Jean and me. All those years of separation. But I know it’s something deeper than that. She’s frightened by the—the man who came back. The Ian Rutledge she wanted to marry went away in 1914, and the Army sent a stranger home in his place five years later. She doesn’t even recognize him anymore. As far as that goes, I’m not sure that she’s the girl I remember. Somehow she’s grown into a woman who lives in a world I’ve lost touch with. And I can’t find my way back to it. I came home expecting to turn back the clock. You can’t. It doesn’t work that way.” He stopped, realizing that he’d never even told Frances that much.

“No,” she said simply, watching him, seeing—although he wasn’t aware of it—his reflection in the dark glass. “You can’t turn back the clock. To where it’s safe and comfortable again.”

His back was still toward her, his thoughts far away. She said, “Don’t put this burden on me, Inspector Rutledge. Don’t ask me to make a decision for Mark Wilton.”

“I already have. Just by coming here.”

“Damn you!”

He turned, saw the flush of anger and hurt on her face.

And then, out of nowhere he had his answer, as if it had come through the night to touch him, but he knew how it had come—from his own recognition of the pain and the loss he’d sensed from the start in her.

Lettice Wood wasn’t grieving for Mark Wilton. She was grieving for Charles Harris. And it was Charles Harris that she loved, who had come between her and the wedding in September, who had called off the wedding because he wanted his ward and—she wanted him.

She saw something in his expression that warned her just in the last split second. She was off the sofa in a flash, on her way out of the room, running away from him to the safety and comfort of her own apartments.

Rutledge caught her arm, swung her around, held her with a grip that was bruising, but she didn’t notice, she was struggling to free herself, her dark hair flying in swirls around his face and hands.

“It’s true, isn’t it? Tell me!”

“No—no, let me go. I won’t be a part of this. I’ve killed Charles, I’ve got his blood on my soul, and I won’t kill Mark as well! Let me go!”

“You loved him—didn’t you!” he demanded, shaking her.

“God help me—oh, yes, I loved him!”

“Were you ever in love with Mark?”

She stopped struggling, standing almost frozen in his hands. Then she began speaking, wearily, disjointedly, as if it took more strength than she could muster. And yet she didn’t try to hide her face or those strange, remarkable eyes.

“Did I ever love him? Oh, yes—I thought I did. Charles brought him home, he believed I’d like him, love him. And I did. I told myself that what I’d felt for Charles was only a girl’s crush, a silly thing you grow out of, and I’d better hurry before I’d harmed what we’d had between us since the beginning, when I was a small, frightened child—an affection that was deep and caring and wonderfully comforting.”

She took a deep breath as if steadying herself. “But Tuesday—two weeks ago now—I was in the drawing room, just finishing with flowers for the vases there, and Charles came in, and I—I don’t know, one of the bowls slipped somehow as I was lifting it back onto the bookshelf, and he reached for me before it could fall on me and hurt me, and the next thing I knew—I was in his arms, I was being held against his heart and I could hear it beating as wildly as mine, and he kissed me.”

Her eyes closed for a moment, reliving that kiss; then they opened, and he saw emptiness in them, pain. “He stopped, swearing at himself, telling me it was nothing—nothing! And he was gone, just like that. I searched everywhere. I finally found him, he was having lunch at the Inn, and he took me outside into the garden where no one could overhear and he said it wasn’t love. It was just that he’d been away from London too long, he’d needed a woman too long, and touching me had made him forget who I was, it was only his need speaking. But it wasn’t true, it wasn’t Charles, it was what we both felt, and I was sure of it. He wouldn’t speak to me about it for days, wouldn’t listen to me, stayed away from me as if I had the plague or something, and then on Saturday—I waited until he’d gone up to his room, and I came to the door and said I wasn’t marrying Mark, that it wasn’t fair to Mark, and that the wedding would have to be called off anyway. And he just said, ‘All right,’ as if I’d told him the cat had just had kittens or the rain had brought grasshoppers with it—something that didn’t matter…. But on Sunday—on Sunday I went to his room again when he was dressing for dinner, and he didn’t hear me come in, I caught him by surprise, standing there buttoning his cuff links, and when he looked up—and I saw his face—I ran. There was such—such depth of love in his eyes as he looked up at me, I couldn’t bear it. He came after me, told me he was sorry he’d frightened me, and then he was kissing me again, and the room was whirling about, and I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think—Mark had never, ever made me feel like that, he—he was aloof, somehow, as if his head was still in the clouds, with his planes. As if his heart was shut off somewhere and I couldn’t touch it. But Charles wasn’t that way, and I didn’t care then whether Charles married me or not, there wouldn’t be anyone else in my life. He let me go, he told me to think clearly and carefully, not to make a quick judgment, that there was such a difference in our ages that I couldn’t be sure, and neither could he, what we were feeling. He talked about honor and duty—about going away for a while—and I smiled and said I’d not be hasty. But I knew I didn’t need to consider, and I was the happiest—the happiest woman on earth at that moment. I didn’t even think about Mark! And I paid for it the next morning, because we had one night together, Charles and I, and that was all. All that I’ll have to take with me as far as my grave, because it was beyond anything I’ve ever known and could ever hope to feel, whatever happens to me….”

“I didn’t go riding that morning….” Rutledge heard those words again in the far corners of his mind, Lettice answering his question about how Charles had behaved on the morning after the quarrel. She hadn’t lied, she’d told him the truth, only in a fashion that she alone knew was an evasion. For she had seen him that morning.

“I didn’t want pity. I didn’t want people pointing at me, saying I’d had a love affair with Charles and was the cause of his death. I thought there would be enough evidence—something—witnesses—that would lead you to his killer without me. When you came that first time, I thought the only happiness I’d ever have again was seeing Mark hang. And then I realized, with Sergeant Davies standing there by the door, that anything I said would be common knowledge in the village before dinner.”

“And now? How do you feel about Wilton now?” Rutledge asked, breaking the silence.

Lettice shook her head. “I know he must have killed Charles. It makes sense, the way it happened. But—I still can’t see Mark shooting him down in hot blood, obliterating him, wreaking such a terrible vengeance. He’s not—devious by nature, not passionate or impulsive. There’s an uprightness in him, a strength.”

“He wouldn’t have fought to keep you?”

“He’d have fought,” she said quietly. “But in his own way.”

20

It was after eight when Rutledge woke up the next morning, head heavy with sleeplessness that had pursued him most of the night. He’d heard the church clock chime the hours until it was six o’clock and light enough to see the birds in the trees outside his window before he’d drifted into a drowsing sleep that left him as tired as he’d been when he went to bed.

He’d stayed with Lettice an hour or more, sitting with her until she felt able to sleep. He thought it had been a relief to talk, that she’d feel better afterward. But her last words to him, as he began to close the heavy front door behind him, were, “If I had it to do over, I’d have loved him just the same. I only wish I hadn’t lost my courage now, and said more than I meant to say.”

“I know.”

She’d cocked her head to one side, looking at him, her eyes sad. “Yes. I think you do. Don’t humiliate Mark. If he’s guilty, hang him if you must, but don’t break him.”

“I give you my word,” he’d said, and Hamish had quarreled with him all the way back to Upper Streetham.

Rutledge had a hasty breakfast and went directly to the Davenant house. But Grace, the maid, informed him that the Captain had already left for Mallows, and Mrs. Davenant had gone with him as far as the church, to see to the flowers. He came back to town and found that there was already a gathering of people in the lane near the church, though it was only a little after nine. Cars and carriages were lined up, having brought guests from Warwick and elsewhere, and small groups were standing about talking quietly.

The church bell began to toll soon after nine-thirty, deep, sonorous, welling out over the countryside. The hearse had already drawn up, and the casket, oak and bronze, had been carried inside by men from Charles’s Regiment acting as pallbearers, their uniforms red as blood in the sunlight.

Rutledge walked about, looking to see if Sally was indeed in the church, and found her giving instructions about the placement of wreaths in front of the coffin. Carfield, magnificent in flowing robes, was already greeting the mourners, moving among them like a white dove in flocks of crows. He went back outside.

Catherine Tarrant arrived, saw him, nodded, and walked quickly to the church, not looking to the right or left. The women from Upper Streetham made a point of cutting her dead as she passed, but several people from London spoke to her as if they knew her.

Rutledge stopped Sergeant Davies when he arrived and asked, “Have you seen Royston? I need to speak to him.” He wanted an invitation to the reception, to keep an eye on Wilton. And he wanted to ask Royston about the place where Charles might have been killed.

Davies shook his head. “He was supposed to be here and greet these people. Mr. Haldane is over there, speaking to some of them. Beyond Carfield. The one with the fair hair.”

Rutledge could see the tall, slim figure moving quietly from group to group. Sally Davenant came out to join Haldane just as the car arrived with Lettice Wood and Mark Wilton. She got out, swathed in veils of black silk, moving gracefully toward a half dozen officers who had turned to meet her. She spoke to them, nodding, her head high, back straight, Wilton just behind her with a quiet, thoughtful expression. Someone from the War Department came over—Rutledge recognized him from London—and then she moved on, impressively calm and leaving behind her looks of admiration and warmth.

“It’s a bloody show,” Hamish was saying. “We stacked our dead like lumber, or buried them to keep them from smelling. And here’s a right spectacle that’d shame an honest soldier.”

Rutledge ignored him, scanning the gathering crowd as they moved through the lych-gate and up the walk toward the open doors of the church. Overhead the bell began to count the years of the dead man’s life, and he saw Lettice stumble. Wilton took her arm to steady her, and then she was herself again.

He let them go inside and walked down to where the Mallows car had been parked near the lych-gate, ready to take Lettice back in time for the reception.

“Where’s Royston?” Rutledge asked the neatly uniformed groom sitting in the driver’s seat. “Has he already arrived?”

“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen him at all,” the man said, touching his cap. “Mr. Johnston was looking for him just before we left.”

Inspector Forrest came hurrying by on his way to the service. The tolling had stopped, and from inside the church the organ rose in solemn majesty, the lower notes carrying the sense of loss and sorrow that marked the beginning of a funeral’s salute to the dead.

Rutledge called to him, “Keep an eye on Wilton. Don’t let him out of your sight. It’s important.”

“I’ll do that, sir,” he promised over his shoulder, not stopping.

Uncertainty, that same sense of time passing, of tension and of waiting, swept him. He wasn’t sure why. Looking up, he saw Mavers hurrying past the end of the Court, head down and shoulders humped.

Dr. Warren’s car, turning in to the Court, moved quickly to a space in front of one of the houses across from the lych-gate. Warren got out, saying to Rutledge as he passed, “Hickam’s the same—neither better nor worse, but holding on and eating a little. Why aren’t you in the church?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge answered, but Warren had gone on, not hearing.

On impulse, Rutledge walked around the church, trying to see if Mavers had taken the path up to his house in the fields. But the man had vanished. He kept on walking, climbed over the churchyard wall, and struck out into the fields. But by the time he’d reached the crossbar of the H that led to the other path—the one that skirted Charles Harris’s fields and Mallows land—he turned that way instead, his back to Mavers’s house. Soon he came to the hedge, and the meadow and the copse of trees where the body had been found. It had seemed very different last night in the dark. Somehow thicker, more sinister, full of ominous shadows. Now—it was a copse, open and sunlit, shafts of light like spears lancing down through the trees. Butterflies danced in the meadow.

Rutledge moved on. Dozens of feet and two rainstorms had swept the land clean of any signs that might have led him to the answer he needed. Where had Charles Harris died? Where was the blood, the small fragments of bone?

The sun was warm, the air quiet and still. Some quirk of the land brought the sound of singing to him from the church, a hymn he remembered from childhood. “A Mighty Fortress.” Appropriate to a soldier’s death.

Hamish, who had been quiet, tense, and watchful in his mind, like something waiting to pounce in the vast, secretive recesses of emotion, said suddenly, “I don’t like it. I’ve been on patrol on nights when the Huns were filtering like smoke out of the trenches, and my skin crawled with fear.”

“It isn’t night,” Rutledge said aloud. The sound of his voice was no comfort, only intensifying his sense of something wrong.

He moved from field to field. It hadn’t taken long, not more than twenty minutes since he’d left the churchyard. Unconsciously he’d lengthened his stride early on, and now he was sweating with the effort. But he couldn’t slow down, it was almost as if something drove him. The saplings were not far now.

But what was it? What was behind this dreadful sense of urgency?

From the start he’d been afraid he’d lost any skills he’d once had. He’d tried to listen—too hard perhaps—for any signs that they’d survived. And found only emptiness. And yet—last night he’d come close to feeling the intuition that had once been his gift. He’d followed his instincts, not the dictates of others. They’d been certain Harris had died where he’d fallen. They’d been certain that no one in the village could have killed the Colonel. They’d been certain there was no case against Wilton, and he’d found one.

He had his murderer. Didn’t he? Then why didn’t he feel the satisfaction that ordinarily came with the solution of a vicious crime? Because his evidence was circumstantial, not solid? Or because there was still something he’d overlooked, something that he’d have seen, five years ago. Something that—but for his own emotional tensions—he’d have thought of long before this?

He went through the stand of saplings without being aware of them, his feet guiding him without conscious volition.

Something was missing. Or someone? Yes, that was it! He’d spoken to everyone of consequence in his interviews—except one.

He’d never asked Maggie Sommers what she’d seen or heard that last morning of Charles Harris’s life. He’d assumed she knew nothing. And yet she lived across a stone wall from Mallows land, and Colonel Harris sometimes rode that way—she’d learned to return his wave, shy as she was.

Had Harris passed the cottage that last morning? Had Maggie seen anyone else!

Rutledge swore. Impatient with her timidity, he’d treated her—as everyone else did!—as all but witless.

He was in the fields now, heavy with the scent of raw earth and sunlight.

What did she know that no one had thought to ask? She would be the last person to come forward voluntarily. That would have been unbearable agony for her. And yet—now that he was sure the murder had happened somewhere other than the meadow—her evidence could easily be critical. It could damn Wilton to the hangman—or free him, for that matter.

Maggie, he realized, could very well hold the key to this murder, and he’d overlooked it. He glanced toward the distant stone wall, seeing it with new eyes. Maggie, hanging clothes on the line on Monday mornings. Maggie working in her overgrown garden. Maggie, always at home and close enough to Mallows here to hear a horseman in the fields. Or a shotgun going off nearby. Maggie seeing the murderer, for all he knew, waiting among the trees or in the dell or coming over the rise. Maggie, anxious and afraid of strangers, watchful and wary, so that she could hide herself inside the cottage before she herself was seen. And a lurking killer, unaware of a witness he’d never even glimpsed.

And this was the time to speak to her, while Helena was at the funeral. He doubled his pace, as if afraid, now that he’d remembered her, that she might be gone before he got there. Cursing himself for his blindness, for seeing with his eyes and not with that intuitive grasp of people he’d always had.

Ahead he could hear something, unidentifiable at first, a loud, insistent, repetitive—

It was the goose at the Sommers cottage. Something had upset the bird, he could tell from the wild sound, rising and falling without so much as a breath in between.

Rutledge broke into a run, ignoring the neat rows of young crops under his feet, stumbling in the soft earth, keeping his balance with an effort of will, his eyes on the rose-draped wall that separated Mallows from Haldane land and the Sommers cottage.

Helena was coming into town for the services. Maggie was alone—

He could hear screams now, high and wordless, and a man’s bellow of pain. He was no longer running, he was covering the ground with great leaps, risking his neck he knew, but unable to think of that as the screams reached a crescendo of something beyond pain.

Reaching the wall, he rested his palms on the edge of it, swung his body over in one movement, paying no heed to the long thorn-laced roses that pulled at his clothes. His feet landed among Maggie’s pathetic little flowers on the far side of the wall, trampling them heedlessly.

There was a motorcar in the drive, down by the gate. It was empty, and he ignored it, springing for the cottage.

Seeing him coming, the goose wheeled from her stand near the cottage door and sailed toward him, wings out, neck low, prepared for the attack.

He brushed her roughly aside, and was ten yards from the door when it burst open and a man came reeling out, his face a mask of blood, his shirt torn and soaked to crimson, his trousers slashed and smeared.

It was Royston. Something had laid open his shoulder—Rutledge could see the blue-white sheen of bone there—and he plunged heavily off the steps and into the grass, hardly aware of Rutledge sliding to a halt almost in his path.

Regardless of the pain he was inflicting, Rutledge caught him by his good shoulder and swung him around, anger twisting his face into a grimace as he shouted, “Damn you! What have you—”

Inside, the screaming went on.

“Watch her!” Royston cried. “She’s got—got an ax—” His knees buckled. “The child—the child—”

Rutledge managed to break his fall, but Royston was losing blood rapidly, his words weaker with every breath. “The child—I killed—”

Without waiting for any more, Rutledge was through the door, eyes seeing nothing after the glare of the sun, but ahead of him was something, a figure barely glimpsed. A woman in black, huddled on the floor at the end of the brown sofa, two darknesses blending into one like some distorted parody of humanity, humped and ugly. A primeval dread lifted the hairs along his arms.

Reaching her, he grasped her shoulders, saying, “Are you all right? Has he hurt you? What has he done to you?”

She stared up at him, face chalk white, eyes large and wild. In one bloody hand was an ax. His own eyes were adjusting rapidly now. The room was empty except for Maggie and the assorted furnishings of a rented house.

He got her up on the sofa, and she leaned back, eyes closed. “Is he dead?” she asked breathlessly, in the voice of a terrified child.

“No—I don’t think so.”

She tried to get up, but he pressed her back against the sofa, holding her there, trying to determine how much of the blood was hers, how much Royston’s.

“I’ll have to get help—I’ll find Helena and bring her to you—she’s at the church—”

But Maggie was shaking her head, dazed but at least able to understand him. Her eyes turned toward the closed door at the far end of the room. “She’s in there,” Maggie whispered.

Rutledge felt his blood run cold.

“I’ll go—”

“No—leave her! I hope she’s dead!”

He mistook her meaning, thinking that she was saying that death was preferable to the cataclysm of rape.

“I saw her kill him,” she went on, not taking her eyes from the bedroom door. “I saw her! She shot Colonel Harris. And it was for nothing, it wasn’t the right man—she’d thought it was, but Mavers said—and then that man out there admitted it was true, that he’d killed the child.”

“What child?” he asked, thinking only of Lizzie.

“Why, little Helena, of course. Mr. Royston ran over her in his car—in Colonel Harris’s car. And the check he sent was in the Colonel’s name. So we thought—all these years we thought—but it wasn’t the Colonel. Helena got it all wrong.” There was a sudden spark of triumph in her eyes, as if it gave her some obscure pleasure to think that Helena had been wrong. “Aunt Mary and Uncle Martin always said she was better than I was, so pretty, so smart, so fearless—they said they wished the car had killed me, not Helena. I was only adopted, you see, I wasn’t theirs—” There was a lifetime of suffering in her words, a lifelong misery because the wrong child had died in an accident and she had been blamed for living. “They asked for all that money, and it wasn’t enough to satisfy them, they wanted her back again. But she was dead. And I was alive.”

He wasn’t interested in Maggie’s childhood; he had a man bleeding to death on his hands, and God knew what behind that closed, silent bedroom door.

“So when Helena discovered that the Colonel lived here, just across the wall—that he was our neighbor—”

Getting up from his knees, his breathing still erratic and harsh, he ignored Maggie and started across the room to the bedroom, forcing himself to face what had to be faced. Hamish had been babbling for the last five minutes, a counterpoint to Maggie’s slow, painful confession, but Rutledge shut him out, shut out everything but the long, bright streak of blood down the door panel, on the handle of the knob—

Somehow Maggie was there before him. “No! Leave her alone, I tell you! I won’t let you go near her—let her die!” And with such swiftness that he couldn’t have stopped her if his own life had depended upon it, she was through the door and into the room, turning the key in the lock behind her.

“Maggie!” he shouted, pounding on the door, but he could hear only her sobbing. She’d taken the ax with her. There was nothing to do but try to break the door down with his shoulder or kick it down.

It took him three tries. When it finally swung wide on broken hinges, he was into the room before he could regain his balance.

There was only one bed, narrow, neatly made, now covered in blood. And only Maggie, collapsed across the pretty lemon-colored counterpane like a heap of rags, stained and worn. The ax was on the floor at her feet. He turned wildly, surveying the small room, finding no one else, the window closed, the closet empty. Then he was beside the woman on the bed, leaning over her, lifting her gently. Black lifeblood welled beneath her, thick and pungent. The heavy, ivory-handled knife had plunged too deep. There was nothing he could do.

Her eyes were not able to see him. But she was still alive. Just.

“I had to do it,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. She knew that. She always knew things before I ever did. But for once she was wrong—about the Colonel. She’ll go to hell, won’t she, for killing him? And I’ll go to heaven with the angels, won’t I? We couldn’t share anymore. Not with that on her conscience.”

“Where did she kill him?” Rutledge asked.

“By the wall. When he came to speak to Maggie. She had the shotgun hidden there, among the roses, where he couldn’t see it. And she tried to ask him if he’d been the one driving the car that killed Helena. But he wouldn’t listen, he told her not to be a fool, that she was upset and not thinking clearly. So she shot him—she lifted the gun and shot him and his head flew everywhere, and the horse bolted before he’d stopped bleeding, and it was the most awful…”

Her voice faded. He could see the blood trickling out of her mouth. The way the body lay, graceless and heavy. It would only be a matter of minutes. There was nothing he could do to stop the bleeding, nothing anyone could do to put the torn flesh back together. But he sat there beside her until her eyes told him she was dead. Then he got to his feet and began to search the cottage.

He found the shotgun in a closet. And signs of one breakfast on the table. And only one bedroom occupied, the other with the mattress still rolled up and wrapped in a sheet. Two trunks holding clothes. He went through each cupboard and closet, looked under anything that might hide a body. But there was no one.

He wasn’t surprised.

Taking a sheet with him, he hurried out to bind up Royston’s bloody shoulder. The goose, smelling the blood, had backed off behind the car in the drive. Royston’s car. He’d come to take Helena to church….

Royston was very weak, but alive. Rutledge, with some experience in war wounds, did what he could to stop the bleeding, and then called his name, trying to rouse him.

Royston opened his eyes, stared at Rutledge with a frown, then groaned with the mounting pain. “In there,” he managed hoarsely.

“It’s over,” Rutledge said curtly.

“I got here a little early. I was talking to Maggie, and she began to ask me about the—accident. All those years ago. Mavers had said something, Helena had told her about it, she said. Then she went into the bedroom to fetch Helena. And Helena came out with the ax. I didn’t—there was nothing I could do. If you hadn’t come—”

“Stop talking.”

“You can’t leave Maggie here! Not with that madwoman!”

“Maggie’s dead.”

“Gentle God!”

“And Helena died with her.”

“What? She killed her cousin?”

“You killed Helena. In Colonel Harris’s car. When you were twenty. You told me so yourself.”

“I don’t understand—”

“There never was a Helena. Only—Maggie, and years of being told that Helena was better and brighter and stronger than she was—until she believed it. And tried to be Helena herself. And couldn’t. But somehow she created Helena inside herself.” He shivered, thinking of Hamish, wondering if one day in the future, he’d create the man’s image in his own flesh and be a divided soul, like Maggie Sommers. “And it was—Helena—who shot Charles Harris.”

He got Royston to his feet and somehow to the car. Then he was driving as fast as he could toward Upper Streetham, watching the man’s face, watching the rough breathing.

Someone fetched the doctor from the church, and then Warren threw them all out of his surgery as he worked over Laurence Royston. All except Rutledge, who stood in the doorway watching the gentle, swift hands moving across the savage wounds of the ax. “I don’t know how this happened,” Warren said over his shoulder. “It will be touch and go, if he lives. But he’s got a strong constitution. I think we can save him. I won’t give up without a fight—”

The front door opened and Rutledge could hear Wilton’s voice, and then Forrest’s.

He went out to speak to them, leaving Warren to his work.

Later, he called London. Bowles growled at him, wanting to know what he’d done about Wilton.

“Nothing. He’s in the clear. I’ve found the murderer. She’s dead—”

“What do you mean? She? What she?”

So Rutledge told him. Bowles listened, grunting from time to time. At the end of it, he said, “I don’t understand any of this business—”

“I know. But the poor woman lived in such wretchedness that I can’t blame her for trying to bring Helena back to life. You’ll have to check with the police in Dorset, see what’s known about Maggie. It’s going to be routine, I think. I don’t expect any surprises.”

“How can two women live in one body?”

Rutledge was silent. How could he explain? Without betraying himself? And oddly enough, he’d liked Helena…. Someday, would other people like Hamish better than Ian Rutledge? It was a frightening thought. The doctor had told him he wasn’t mad to hear Hamish—because he, Rutledge, knew that Hamish didn’t exist. But Maggie was different. She’d wanted Helena to exist. Not out of madness but out of a bleak and lonely need to satisfy two vicious, selfish adults, trying to become the daughter they’d lost and mourned, a desperate bid for love by a shy, bewildered child…until she’d made Helena live again. And one day, coming across Charles Harris in a town far from home, suddenly Helena wanted vengeance. Maggie lost control—was in danger of losing herself—and when Helena attacked Laurence Royston, Maggie had somehow found the strength to stop it. Once and for all.

Bowles was saying, “—and I don’t really care. What matters is that I’ve got the Palace off my back now. We can close the case, sweep it all under the rug, clear the Captain’s good name—and we’re all back where we started from.”

Except for Colonel Harris, Rutledge thought.

And Maggie Sommers…

…and Lettice.

He felt waves of black depression settling over him, swamping him.

No! he told himself fiercely.

No, I won’t give into it. I’ll fight. And by God, somehow I’ll survive! I solved this murder. The skills are there, I’ve touched them—and I will use them again! Whatever else I’ve lost, this one triumph is mine.

“Ye’ll no’ triumph over me!” Hamish said. “I’m a scar on your bluidy soul.”

“That may be,” Rutledge told him harshly. “But I’ll find out before it’s finished what we’re both made of!”

Afterward, staring at the telephone, Bowles swore savagely. Somehow, against all expectation, Rutledge had pulled it off.

Scotland Yard would be overjoyed with the results, they’d bring the man home as a hero, and he, Bowles, would be left to bask in reflected glory once more. That nonsense about the dead woman—she’d probably committed suicide and Rutledge had been smart enough to see his chance. To put the blame on her, not Wilton. And no one in the Yard would dare to question it. Not when so many reputations had been saved…

Well. There’s always a next time. Beginner’s luck, that’s what it was. And next time, no convenient scapegoat would spoil the game….

About the Author

CHARLES TODD is the author of nine Ian Rutledge mysteries—A False Mirror, A Long Shadow, A Cold Treachery, A Fearsome Doubt, Watchers of Time, Legacy of the Dead, Search the Dark, Wings of Fire, and A Test of Wills—and one stand-alone novel, The Murder Stone. This mother-and-son writing team lives in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively. Visit their website at www.charlestodd.com.

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Resounding praise for

CHARLES TODD’s

A TEST OF WILLS

and other INSPECTOR IAN RUTLEDGE

novels

“One of the best historical series being written today.”

Washington Post Book World

“Remarkable…. Todd, an American, seems to have perfect pitch in his ability to capture the tenor and nuances of English country life with its clearly defined social strata. A Test of Wills may on the surface be another whodunit, but Todd raises disturbing issues of war and peace that still confront us today. The author promises that Rutledge will return, which is good news for lovers of literary thrillers.”

Orlando Sentinel

“A first novel that speaks out, urgently and compassionately, for a long-dead generation…. A Test of Wills is both a meticulously wrought puzzle and a harrowing psychological drama about a man’s struggle to raise himself from the dead…. Mr. Todd gives us a superb characterization of a man whose wounds have made him a stranger in his own land, and a disturbing portrait of a country intolerant of all strangers.”

New York Times Book Review

“One of the most respected writers in the genre.”

Denver Post

“The essential pleasures of the well-crafted puzzle are found in this debut, [an] absorbing story.”

Bergen Record

“No mystery series I can think of captures the sadness and loss that swept over England after World War I with the heart-breaking force of Charles Todd’s books about Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.”

Chicago Tribune

“In A Test of Wills, Charles Todd gives us a Golden Age crime story in its proper historical setting. This is an intelligent, controlled, and well-organized first novel, rich with promise of a bright future. I look forward to the next.”

Reginald Hill, author of The Stranger House

“Strong, elegant prose, detailed surroundings, and sound plotting characterize this debut historical…. Highly recommended.”

Library Journal

“Somehow I missed Test when it came out in hardback—but I won’t make the same mistake for the second outing of Mr. Todd’s fascinating character.”

Washington Times

“Expert plotting and keen insight into the human psyche [are] hallmarks of this series.”

Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

“War-wounded Britain in 1919 is beautifully conveyed in an intricately plotted mystery. With this remarkable debut, Charles Todd breaks new ground in the historical crime novel.”

Peter Lovesey, author of The Circle

“Like P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Charles Todd writes novels that transcend genre. They are well-plotted mysteries, taut with psychological suspense. They are also fine literature, with fully developed characters and evocative descriptions. Above all, these stories peer deeply into human nature.”

Winston-Salem Journal

“More than an ordinary whodunit, this literate thriller raises disturbing issues of war and peace.”

Charleston Gazette

“The debut of Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge is an auspicious one. In a novel full of complex and believable characters, perhaps the most complex of all is the Great War itself, which backlights this mystery with its monumental horrors.”

Gaylord Dold, author of The Last Man in Berlin

By Charles Todd

A FALSE MIRROR

A LONG SHADOW

A COLD TREACHERY

THE MURDER STONE

A FEARSOME DOUBT

WATCHERS OF TIME

LEGACY OF THE DEAD

SEARCH THE DARK

WINGS OF FIRE

A TEST OF WILLS