A test of wills ir-1 Page 11

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "And I suppose you know?" Warren snapped.

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

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

  "Where'll you be, then?" Davies asked warily.

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

  Glad not to be included in that visit, Davies hurried off to find Forrest. And Rutledge was left with Hamish's company on the drive out to the Colonel's home. This time he was shown directly to Miss Wood's sitting room, and Rutledge found it empty. She came in through a connecting door after a few minutes, still wearing black, but with her face no longer invisible to him. The drapes were drawn back, and the sun's warm reflection filled the room with a softness that was kind to her grief-shadowed eyes.

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

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

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

  She brushed that aside with angry impatience. "I've told you. He had no enemies."

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

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

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

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

  She smiled a little, more in irony than amusement. "I'd have been more surprised if he hadn't. But Charles was a very nice man. He needn't have been my guardian, you know. He was barely grown himself at the time, and it must have seemed a dreary job, taking on the responsibility of a parent- less child-a little girl at that!-just when there was a war to go to. To me he seemed as old as my father. I was even a little frightened of him, clinging to my nanny's skirts and wishing he'd go away. Then he dropped to one knee and held out his arms to me, and the next thing I knew I'd cried myself dry and he was ordering a tea with all my favorite things and afterward we went riding. Which scandalized the household, I can tell you, because I was supposed to be in deepest mourning, shut away in darkness and in silence. Instead I was out in the fields laughing and racing him on my pony and-" Her voice cracked, and she looked away hastily. He gave her time to regain her composure, then asked, "What sort of mood had the Colonel been in, the last few days before his death?" "Mood?" she repeated quickly. "What do you mean?" "Was he happy? Tired? Worried? Irritable? Distracted?" "He was happy," she said, her thoughts fading where he couldn't follow her. "Very, very happy…" "Why?" Disconcerted, she said, "What do you mean, why?" "Just that. What had made him so happy?" Lettice shook her head. "He just was." "Then why did he quarrel with Mark Wilton?" She got to her feet and walked across the room. For a moment he thought she was leaving, that she would disappear into her bedroom and shut the door on him. But she went to the windows instead, looking out at the drive and seeing, he thought, very little. "How could I know the answer to that?" she countered. "You harp on it as if it was important." "It might be. It might decide whether we must arrest Captain Wilton or not." Turning back to him, a dark silhouette against the light, she said after a moment, "Because of one quarrel? When you claim you don't even know what it was about?" Was it a statement? Or a question? He couldn't be sure. "We have a witness who says they quarreled again. The next morning. Not far from where your guardian was killed."

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

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

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

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

  "Then tell me what it is." He was angry with her, and wasn't sure why.

  "Because," Hamish whispered, "she's got courage, hasn't she? And your Jean never did…"

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

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

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

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

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

  "Why should Catherine Tarrant wish to spite you? At Wilton's expense?"

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

  "Tell me about it." When she hesitated, he said, "I've only to ask someone else. Miss Tarrant herself, Captain Wilton-"

  "I doubt if Mark even knows the story."

  "Then tell me about her relationship with Wilton."

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

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

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

  "That must have been a heavy responsibility."

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

  "Was her lover someone she'd left behind in London?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Had I?" Her dark brows drew together and she shook her head. "I don't remember-I don't know in what context I might have left that impression…"

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

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

  "I'd like to speak to Mary Satterthwaite before I go, if I may."

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

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

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

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

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

  "No, sir. None."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Was the Colonel a good master?"

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

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

  "That's right, yes, sir. My sister."

  "How long has she been in Miss Tarrant's employ?"

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

  "Is she happy enough there?" "It would seem so, sir." "And she met Captain Wilton when he was here in Upper Streetham before the war?" The wariness vanished. "Oh, yes, sir. Vivian thought very highly of him." "He was very much interested in flying even then, I understand." "Indeed, sir. Mad for it, she said. And teasing Miss Catherine about taking her up, making her laugh and plead with him not to dream of it." "A pleasant man, was he? Good-natured, well-mannered?" "Yes, sir. A gentleman. Not like-" She stopped short. "Yes? Not like Charles Harris?" She turned a deep red, and he realized that it was with anger, not embarrassment. "Oh, no, sir! The German, not the Colonel!" And then, with grave dignity, she added, "I'll say no more, sir, if you please." And although he persisted for a time, she was true to her word.