A test of wills ir-1 Page 3

  Rutledge said only, "What is your name?"

  "Johnston, sir." The words were polite, distant.

  "You may tell your mistress, Johnston, that Inspector Rutledge is here on police business. You know Sergeant Davies, I think."

  "Miss Wood is still unwell, Inspector." He cast an accusing glance at Davies, as if blaming him for Rutledge's ill-mannered persistence. "Her doctor has already informed Inspector Forrest-"

  "Yes, I understand. We won't disturb her any longer than absolutely necessary." The voice was firm, that of an army officer giving instructions, brooking no further opposition. Certainly not the voice of a lowly policeman begging entrance.

  "I'll enquire," the man replied, with a resignation that clearly indicated both personal and professional disapproval but just as clearly made no promises.

  He left them standing in the hall before a handsome staircase that divided at the first-floor landing and continued upward in two graceful arcs. These met again on the second story, above the doorway, to form an oval frame for a ceiling painting of nymphs and clouds, with a Venus of great beauty in the center. From the hall she seemed to float in cloud- cushioned luxury, far beyond the reach of mere mortals, staring down at them with a smile that was as tantalizing as it was smug.

  Johnston was gone for nearly fifteen minutes.

  Hamish, growing restive as the tension of waiting mounted, said, "I've never been inside a house like this. Look at the floor, man, it's squares of marble, enough to pave the streets in my village. And that stair-what holds it up, then? It's a marvel! And worth a murder or two."

  Rutledge ignored him and the uncomfortable stiffness of Sergeant Davies, who seemed to grow more wooden with every passing minute. The butler returned eventually and said with ill-concealed censure, "Miss Wood will receive you in her sitting room, but she asks that you will make your call brief."

  He led the way up the staircase to the first floor and then turned left down a wide, carpeted corridor to a door near the end of it. The room beyond was quite spacious, uncluttered, and ordinarily, Rutledge thought, full of light from the long windows facing the drive. But the heavy rose velvet drapes had been drawn-was it these he had seen stir?-and only one lamp, on an inlaid table, made a feeble effort to penetrate the gloom.

  Lettice Wood was tall and slim, with heavy dark hair that was pinned loosely on the top of her head, smooth wings from a central parting cupping her ears before being drawn up again. She was wearing unrelieved black, her skirts rustling slightly as she turned to watch them come toward her.

  "Inspector Rutledge?" she said, as if she couldn't distinguish between the Upper Streetham sergeant and the representative of Scotland Yard. She did not ask them to be seated, though she herself sat on a brocade couch that faced the fireplace and there were two upholstered chairs on either side of it. A seventeenth-century desk stood between two windows, and against one wall was a rosewood cabinet filled with a collection of old silver, reflecting the single lamp like watching eyes from the jungle's edge. Sergeant Davies, behind Rutledge, stayed by the door and began to fumble in his pocket for his notebook.

  For a moment the man from London and the woman in mourning considered each other in silence, each gauging temperament from the slender evidence of appearance. The lamplight reached Rutledge's face while hers was shadowed, but her voice when she spoke had been husky and strained, that of someone who had spent many hours crying. Her grief was very real-and yet something about it disturbed him. Something lurked in the dimness that he didn't want to identify.

  "I'm sorry we must intrude, Miss Wood," he found himself saying with stiff formality. "And I offer our profoundest sympathy. But I'm sure you understand the urgency of finding the person or persons responsible for your guardian's death."

  "My guardian." She said it flatly, as if it had no meaning for her. Then she added with painful vehemence, "I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him. Or why. It was a senseless, savage-" She stopped, and he could see that she had swallowed hard to hold back angry tears. "It served no purpose," she added finally in a defeated voice.

  "What has served no purpose?" Rutledge asked quietly. "His death? Or the manner of it?"

  That jolted her, as if she had been talking to herself and not to him, and was surprised to find he'd read her thoughts.

  She leaned forward slightly and he could see her face then, blotched with crying and sleeplessness. But most unusual nevertheless, with a high-bridged nose and a sensitive mouth and heavy-lidded eyes. He couldn't tell their color, but they were not dark. Sculpted cheekbones, a determined chin, a long, slender throat. And yet somehow she managed to convey an odd impression of warm sensuality. He remembered how the Sergeant had hesitated over the word "attractive," as if uncertain how to classify her. She was not, in the ordinary sense, beautiful. At the same time, she was far, very far, from plain.

  "I don't see how you can separate them," she answered after a moment, a black-edged handkerchief twisting in her long, slim fingers. "He wasn't simply killed, was he? He was destroyed, blotted out. It was deliberate, vengeful. Even Scotland Yard can't change that. But the man who did this will be hanged. That's the only comfort I've got." There was a deeper note in her voice as she spoke of hanging, as if she relished the image of it in her mind.

  "Then perhaps we ought to begin with last Monday morning. Did you see your guardian before he left the house?"

  She hesitated, then said, "I didn't go riding that morning."

  Before he could take her up on that stark reply, she added, "Charles loved Mallows, loved the land. He said those rides made up, a little, for all the months he spent away. So he usually went out alone, and it was never a fixed route, you see, just wherever his list for that day took him-it might be inspecting a crop or a tenant's roof or the state of the hedges or livestock, anything. And he came back feeling-fulfilled, I suppose. It was a way of healing after all he'd been through."

  "How many people knew what was on his list each day?"

  "It wasn't written down, it was in his head. Laurence Royston might be aware that Charles was planning to look into a particular problem, if they'd discussed it. But for the most part it was Charles's own interests that guided him. I don't suppose you were a soldier, Inspector, but Charles once said that the greatest crime of the war was ruining the French countryside for a generation. Not the slaughter of armies, but the slaughter of the land." She leaned back, out of the light again, as if realizing that she was running on and had lost his attention.

  I didn't go riding that morning Rutledge considered those words, ignoring the rest of what she had said. It was as if that one fact separated her entirely from what had happened. But in what way? He had heard soldiers offer the same excuse to avoid discussing what they had witnessed on the battlefield but had not been a part of: "I wasn't in that assault." I don't know and I don't want to know…

  A denial, then. But was it a washing of hands, or a means of telling the absolute but not the whole truth?

  Her face was still, but she was watching him, waiting in the security of the darkness for him to ask his next question. Her grief appeared to be genuine, and yet she was doing nothing whatsoever to help him. He could feel her resistance like a physical barrier, as if they were adversaries, not joined in a mutual hunt for a murderer.

  She in her turn was silently counting her heartbeats, willing them to a steady rhythm so that her breathing didn't betray her. In feeling lay disaster. Not for this London stranger with his chill, impersonal eyes was she going to lay out her most private emotions, and watch them probed and prodded for meaning! Let him do the job he had been sent to do. And why was it taking so bloody long? Charles had been gone for three days!

  The silence lengthened. Sergeant Davies cleared his throat, as if made uneasy by undercurrents he couldn't understand.

  For they were there, strong undercurrents, emotions so intense they were like ominous shadows in the room. Even Hamish was silent.

  Changing his
tactics abruptly, Rutledge asked, "What did your fiance, Captain Wilton, and your guardian discuss after dinner on Sunday, the night before the Colonel's death?"

  Her attention returned to him with a swift wariness. The heavy-lidded eyes opened wide for an instant, but she answered, "Surely you've spoken to Mark about that?"

  "I'd prefer to hear what you have to say first. I understand that whatever it was led to a quarrel?"

  "A quarrel?" Her voice was sharp now. "I went upstairs after dinner, I-didn't feel well. Charles and Mark were in the drawing room when I left them, talking about one of the guests invited to the wedding. Neither of them liked the man, but both felt they had to include him. An officer they'd served with, my guardian in the Boer War and Mark in France. I can't imagine them quarreling over that."

  "Yet the servants told Inspector Forrest that there had been angry words between the two men, that, in fact, Captain Wilton had stormed out of the house in a rage, and that Colonel Harris flung his wineglass at the door the Captain had slammed behind him."

  She was rigid, her attention fixed on him with fierce intensity. Even the handkerchief no longer unconsciously threaded itself through her fingers. He suddenly had the impression that this was news to her, that she had been unaware of what had happened in the hall. But she said only, "If they heard that much, they must have been able to tell you what it was all about."

  "Unfortunately, they witnessed only the end of it."

  "I see." As if distracted by some thought of her own, she said nothing for a time, and Rutledge waited, wishing he could know what was going on behind those long-lashed eyes. Then she roused herself and repeated, "Yes, that is unfortunate, isn't it? Still, you must know that neither Charles nor Mark is a hotheaded man."

  "I'd hardly describe slamming a door in anger or breaking a crystal glass against it as coolheaded. But we'll have the answer to that in good time," Rutledge responded, noting with interest that she hadn't rushed to Captain Wilton's defense when she had been given the perfect opening to do just that. Yet she must have realized where such questions were leading?

  Oddly enough, he thought she had. And discounted it. Or ignored it? Accustomed to reaching beyond words into emotional responses, he found her elusiveness puzzling. But he couldn't be sure whether that was his fault-or hers.

  He took another tack, giving her a second opening but in a different direction. "Do you believe this man Mavers might have killed the Colonel? Apparently he's caused trouble for your guardian for a number of years."

  She blinked, then said, "Mavers? He's been a troublemaker all his life. He seems to thrive on it. He sows dissent for the sheer, simple pleasure of it." Glancing at Sergeant Davies, she said, "But turning to murder? Risking the gallows? I can't see him going that far. Can you?" She frowned. "Unless, of course, it might be just what he wanted," she added thoughtfully.

  "In what way?"

  "He's been everything from a conscientious objector to a roaring Bolshevik-whatever might stir up people, make them angry. But everyone has more or less grown used to his ranting. Sometimes I even forget he's there. Laurence-Mr. Royston-always said it was the best way to take the wind out of his sails. But Charles felt that it might tip Mavers over the line, that being ignored was the one thing he dreaded. That it was anybody's guess what he might do then. Charles was a good judge of character, he knew Mavers better than the rest of us did. Still, if I were you I'd be wary of any confession Mavers made, unless it was backed up by indisputable proof."

  Which was a decidedly puzzling remark. She had just been offered a ready-made scapegoat, and she had refused it. In his mind, Rutledge went back over what she'd just said, listening for nuances. Well, if she was trying to shift the direction of the enquiry, she had done it with an odd subtlety that was only just short of brilliant. Davies, out of her range of vision, was nodding as if he agreed with her about Mavers being the killer, and she'd said nothing of the sort.

  If it hadn't occurred to her that the Captain needed defending, why had questions about the quarrel made her so wary? Had Harris been at fault there, and she was trying to preserve his good name, his reputation? Rutledge moved to the mantel, hoping that the change in angles might help him see her more clearly in the shadows. But her face was closed, her thoughts so withdrawn from him that he might as well try to read the engraving on the silver bowl at her elbow. The pallid light reached neither of them.

  "Is there anyone else in the village to your knowledge with a reason to wish your guardian dead?"

  "Charles had no enemies." She sighed. "There are those who might wish Mark dead, if you believe the gossips. But Charles? He was never here long enough to make enemies. He was a soldier, and leave was a rare thing, a time of respite, not for stirring up trouble."

  "No land disputes, no boundary quarrels, no toes stepped on in the county?"

  "I've not heard of them. But ask Laurence Royston, his agent. He can tell you about running the estate and whether there were disputes that might have festered. I can't help you there. I only came here to live near the end of the war, when I'd finished school. Before that, I was allowed to visit on school holidays when Charles had leave. Otherwise, I went home with one of my classmates."

  Questioning her was like fencing with a will-o'-the-wisp. I don't know, I can't help you there, I didn't go riding that morning- And yet he had believed her when she said that hanging the murderer would bring her comfort. In his experience, the shock of sudden, violent death often aroused anger and a thirst for vengeance. But it seemed to be the only natural, anticipated reaction he'd gotten from her. Why did she keep drifting away from him?

  He was reminded by a shifting of feet that Sergeant Da- vies was in the room, a witness to everything she said. A man who lived in Upper Streetham, who presumably had a wife and friends… was that the problem? He, Rutledge, was a private person himself; he understood the fierce need for privacy in others. And if that was the case, he was wasting his time now.

  "How did you spend the morning? Before the news was brought to you?"

  She was frowning, trying to remember as if that had been years ago, not a matter of days. "I bathed and dressed, came down to breakfast, the usual. Then I had a number of letters to write, and was just coming out of the library to see if Mr. Royston might take them into Warwick for me, when-" She stopped abruptly, then continued in a harsh voice. "I really don't recall what happened after that."

  "You didn't leave the house, go to the stables?"

  "Of course not, why on earth should I tell you I did one thing when I'd done another?" Rutledge took his leave soon afterward. Davies seemed relieved to be on his way downstairs at the butler's heels, showing an almost indecent haste to be gone.

  But Rutledge felt unsatisfied, as if somehow he had been neatly outmaneuvered in that darkened room. Thinking back over what the girl had said, he couldn't pinpoint any particular reason for disbelieving anything she'd told him, but doubt nagged at him. She couldn't be more than twenty- one or twenty-two, and yet she had shown a self-possession that was uncommon at that age-or any other. And he hadn't been able to break through to the person underneath. To the emotions that must be there. To the unspoken words he'd wanted to hear but that she had managed to hold back.

  Her detachment, then. That was what disturbed him. As if she didn't connect the reality of violent death with the questions that the police were asking her. No passionate defense of her fiance, no rush to push Mavers forward in his place, no speculation about the nature of the killer at all.

  It was almost, he thought with one of those leaps of intuition that had served him so well in the past, as if she already knew who the killer was-and was planning her own private retribution… "I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him," she'd said. Not who-how.

  Then as he reached the foot of the stairs he remembered something else. Both Sergeant Davies and the butler had mentioned a doctor. Had the girl been given sedatives that left her in this sleepwalker's state, detached from g
rief and from reality too? He'd seen men in hospital talk quietly of unspeakable horrors when they'd been given drugs: stumbling to describe terrors they couldn't endure to think about until they were so heavily sedated that the pain and the frantic anxiety were finally dulled.

  He himself had confessed to Hamish's presence only under the influence of such drugs. Nothing else would have dragged that out of him, and afterward he had tried to kill the doctor for tricking him. They'd had to pull him off the man, and he'd fought every inch of the way back to his room.

  It might be a good idea, then, to speak to the family's doctor before deciding what to do about Lettice Wood.

  Before the butler could see them safely out the door, Rut- ledge turned to him and asked, "What was your name again? Johnston?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Can you show me the drawing room, please. Where the quarrel between the Captain and the Colonel took place?"

  Johnston turned and walked silently across the polished marble to a door on his left. He opened it, showing them into a room of cool greens and gold, reflecting the morning light without absorbing it. "Miss Wood had coffee brought in here after dinner, and when the gentlemen joined her, she dismissed me. Soon afterward she went upstairs, sending for one of the maids and saying that she had a headache and would like a cool cloth for her head. That was around nine o'clock, perhaps a quarter past. At ten-fifteen I came here to take away the coffee tray and to see if anything else was needed before I locked up for the night."

  "And you hadn't been into or near the drawing room between taking the tray in and coming to remove it?"

  "No, sir."

  "What happened then? At ten-fifteen?"

  At Rutledge's prodding, Johnston stepped back into the hall again, pointed to a door in the shadows of the stairs, and went on reluctantly. "I came out of that door-it leads to the back of the house-and started toward the drawing room. At that moment, Mary was coming down the stairs."

  "Who is Mary?"

  "There's seven on the staff here, sir. Myself, the cook, her helper, and four maids. Before the war there were twelve of us, including footmen. Mary is one of the maids and has been here the longest, next to Mrs. Treacher and myself."