A test of wills ir-1 Page 9

  Rutledge heard two things in Mavers's diatribe-the ring of truth, and the echo of envy. "You're talking about a boy. Twenty, perhaps? Not much older than that. And you were what? Fourteen? Fifteen?" he said carefully.

  The red flush returned to Mavers's face. "What does age have to do with it? Is there some special dispensation for cruelty if you're rich and under twenty?"

  "You know there isn't. But a man generally isn't judged by what he did as a boy, he's judged by what he did as a man."

  Mavers shrugged. "Boy or man, he's the same. Besides, the damage is done, isn't it? And the man at forty may be a saint, but the rest of us are still bleeding from what he did when he was twenty. Who's to put that right? Who's to bring Annie back, or Jeff? Or Ma. Tell me!"

  Rutledge looked around the room, at the worn, plain furniture and the threadbare carpet on the floor, half hidden by the papers, at the damp-stained walls and the windows streaked with dust, all of it dappled by the tree leaves outside as a passing wind stirred them and let in a little light. He'd met men like Mavers before. Hungry for something they didn't have, and ignorant of how to go about getting it, hating those who had had life given to them easily. Lost men, angry men, dangerous men… because they had no pride of their own to bolster their self-esteem.

  "Hating doesn't put it right either, does it?"

  The goat's eyes were hard. "It does give life a purpose, all the same."

  Preparing to go, Rutledge said, "As long as it doesn't lead to murder. There's never an excuse for murder."

  He was nearly out the door into the hall when Hamish said under his breath, "But who's a murderer, then? The man who carried that shotgun yonder, or the officer who shoots his own men?"

  Startled, Rutledge half turned as if Mavers had spoken, not the voice in his own head. And as he looked back, he saw what had been concealed behind Mavers's chair and by Mav- ers's body and by the books piled on the table-a shotgun, leaning against the wall where it met the jutting corner of the hearth, almost lost in the deep shadow there.

  6

  Satisfied after her conversation with Inspector Forrest, Catherine Tarrant rode slowly back down the High Street, threading her way through the late-afternoon shoppers and the workmen going about their business. Her eyes quickly scanned their faces, but no one spoke to her and she didn't stop to ask the whereabouts of the one person she sought. Turning her head to glance down Smithy Lane, she almost ran down a small boy dragging his dog behind him on a rope. The dog was too interested in the smells along their route to pay much heed to its master, and looked up with a wide, sloppy grin when she braked hastily to avoid them.

  "George Miller, you've got that rope too tight," she said, but the boy gave her a frightened glance and tugged all the harder. The dog followed him good-naturedly, and she sighed in exasperation. Then she saw Daniel Hickam come out of one of the run-down houses beyond the smithy.

  Upper Streetham turned a blind eye to the profession of the two women who occupied this particular house as long as they comported themselves with reasonable dignity elsewhere. It was whispered that they made a very good living at their trade because they could be depended on to pass their best customers on the High Street the next day without a flicker of recognition. Catherine had once tried to hire the older of the two, who had hair black as coal and eyes the color of the sea, to pose for a portrait she was painting of an aging courtesan, but the woman had turned her away in a fury.

  "I don't care what you're painting, I have my pride, Miss Tarrant, and I'd rather starve than take money from the likes of you."

  The words had hurt. Catherine had gone to London for her model, but within three weeks had abandoned the portrait because her vision of it had somehow gone astray. The face on the canvas had become a mockery, color and lines without a soul, technical skill without depth of expression.

  Pretending to inspect her tire to give Hickam a head start, Catherine waited until he was beyond the last house, finally disappearing among the shadows cast by the first of the hawthorns, at the end of the stand of long grass. Then she began to pedal slowly after him, taking her time so that no one would suspect what she was about to do. "Whose weapon is that?" Rutledge asked, his eyes on Mav- ers's face now. "Yours?"

  "What weapon?"

  "The one just behind you," Rutledge snapped, in no mood for the man's agile tongue. Why the hell hadn't Forrest found this shotgun? If Mavers was a suspect, then he could have obtained a warrant, if necessary.

  "What if it is?" Mavers asked belligerently. "I've a right to it, if it was left in a Will!"

  "In whose Will?"

  "Mr. Davenant's Will, that's whose."

  Rutledge walked across the room and carefully broke open the gun. It had been fired recently, but when? Three days ago? A week? Like the rest of the cottage, it was worn, neglected, the stock scratched and the barrel showing the first signs of rust, but the breech had been kept well oiled, as if Mavers was not above a bit of quiet poaching.

  "Why did he leave the gun to you?"

  There was a brief silence; then Mavers said with less than his usual abrasiveness, "I expect it was my father he meant. My father was once his gamekeeper, and Mr. Davenant's Will said, 'I leave the old shotgun to Bert Mavers, who is a better birdman than any of us.' My father was dead by then, but the Will hadn't been changed, and Mrs. Davenant gave the gun to me, because she said it was what her husband wanted. The lawyer from London wasn't half pleased, I can tell you, but the Will didn't say which Bert Mavers, did it? Alive or dead?"

  "When was the last time it was fired?"

  "How should I know? Or care? The door's always open, anybody can walk in here. There's naught to steal, is there, unless you're after my chickens. Or need a shotgun in a bit of a hurry." His normal nastiness resurfaced. "You can't claim I used it, can you? I've got witnesses!"

  "So everyone keeps telling me. But I'll take the gun for now, if you don't mind."

  "First I'll have a piece of paper saying you'll bring it back!"

  Rutledge took a sheet from his notebook and scribbled a sentence on it, then signed it under the man's baleful eye. Mavers watched him leave, and then folded the single sheet carefully and put it in a small metal box on the mantel. Inspector Forrest was waiting for them in the magpie cottage beyond the greengrocer's shop that served as the Upper Streetham police station. There was a small anteroom, a pair of offices, and another room at the back used as a holding cell. Seldom occupied by more serious felons than drunks and disturbers of the peace, an occasional wife beater or petty thief, this cell still had a heavy, almost medieval lock on its door, with the big iron key hanging nearby on a nail. The furnishings were old, the paint showing wear, the color of the carpet on the floors almost nondescript now, but the rooms were spotless.

  Leaning across a battered desk to shake hands, Forrest introduced himself to Rutledge and said, "I'm sorry about this morning. Three dead in Lower Streetham, another in critical condition, two more seriously injured, and half the village in an uproar. I didn't like to leave until things had settled a bit. I hope Sergeant Davies has told you everything you wanted to know." He saw the shotgun in Rutledge's left hand and said, "Hello, what have we here?"

  "Bert Mavers says this was left to him in a Will-or rather, left to his father."

  "Good Lord! So it was! I'd forgotten about that. And Mrs. Davenant didn't mention it either, when I went to see her about her husband's Italian guns. It's been years-" His face was a picture of shock and chagrin.

  "We probably can't prove it's the murder weapon, but I'm ready to wager it was."

  Reaching for the shotgun, Forrest said with sudden enthusiasm, "Used by Mavers, do you think?"

  "If so, why didn't he have the wit to put it out of sight afterward?"

  "You never know with Mavers. Nothing he does makes much sense." Forrest examined it carefully, as if half expecting it to confess. "Yes, it's been fired, you can see that, but there's no saying when, is there? Still-"

  "Everyone claims he w
as in the village all morning. Is that true?"

  "Unfortunately, it appears to be." Forrest fished in the center drawer of his desk and said, "Here's a list of people I've talked to. You can see for yourself."

  Rutledge took the neatly written sheet and glanced at the names, nearly two dozen of them. Most were unfamiliar to him, but Mrs. Davenant's was among them, and Royston's. And Catherine Tarrant's.

  "Each of these people heard him ranting. That's clear enough," Forrest went on. "He was plaguing everyone who came within earshot, and each one will swear to that. Although the shopkeepers were too busy to pay much heed to him, they remember that he was making the usual nuisance of himself, and their customers were commenting on it. Putting it all together, you can see that he arrived in the market square early on and was still there at midmorning." He rubbed his pounding temples and gestured to the two barrel-backed oak chairs across from the desk. "Sit down, sit down."

  Rutledge shook his head. "I must find Daniel Hickam."

  Inspector Forrest said, "Surely you don't intend to take his statement seriously? There's bound to be other evidence more worthy of your time than anything Hickam can say! If we keep looking hard enough?" He could see that the man from London was far from well, and suddenly found himself worrying about that. You don't have the patience and the energy to give to a thorough investigation, is that it? he thought to himself. You want an easy answer, then back to the comforts of London. That's why the Yard sent you, then, to sweep it all under the rug for them. And it's my fault…

  "I won't know that until I've spoken to him, will I?"

  "He can't tell you what day of the week it is half the time, much less where he came from before you ran into him or where he might be going next. Mind's a wasteland. Pity he didn't die when that shell exploded-no good to himself or anyone else in his condition!"

  "You took down his statement," Rutledge pointed out. Hamish, relishing Forrest's remark, was repeating it softly, an echo whispering across a void of fear. "… no good to himself or anyone else in his condition…" He turned away abruptly to shield his face from Forrest's sharp gaze, and unintentionally left the impression that he was putting the blame squarely where it belonged.

  "I don't see what else I could have done. Sergeant Davies reported the conversation, and after that I had to pursue the matter," Forrest answered defensively, "whether Hickam is mad or not. But that doesn't mean we have to believe him. I can't see how Wilton could be guilty of this murder. You've met him. It's just not like the man, is it?"

  "From what I can see, it wasn't like the Colonel to find himself the victim of a murder either."

  "Well, no, not when you get right down to it. But he is dead, isn't he? Either his death was accidental or it was intentional, and we have to start with murder because no one has come forward to tell us any differently. No one has said, 'I was standing there talking to him and the horse jostled my arm, and the gun went off, and the next thing I knew the poor devil was dead."

  "Would you believe them if they did?"

  Forrest sighed. "No. Only an idiot carries an unbroken shotgun."

  "Which brings us back to Mavers and his weapon. If Wilton was on either of those tracks on the morning of the murder, he could have taken the gun from Mavers's house, fired it, then put it back before Mavers came home from the village. Hickam's evidence is still important."

  "And if Captain Wilton could do that, so could anyone else in Upper Streetham for all we know," Forrest retorted doggedly. "There's still no proof."

  "There may be," Rutledge said thoughtfully. "Captain Wilton came to stay with his cousin when her husband died. He undoubtedly knew about the Will, and the provision regarding the old shotgun. It caused some problems at the time, I understand."

  "I knew about it as well, and had forgotten it-so might he have. It's all circumstantial! Guessing-"

  "What if the Colonel was the wrong victim?"

  That sent Forrest's eyebrows up in patent disbelief. "What do you mean, 'wrong victim'? You don't shoot a man at point- blank range and get the wrong one! That's foolery!"

  "Yes, so it is," Rutledge answered. "It's also foolery that the Colonel was flawless, a man with no sins on his conscience. When people begin to tell me the truth, Captain Wilton will be far safer. Assuming, of course, that you're right and he's innocent." Leaving Sergeant Davies to check on Royston's dental appointment in Warwick, Rutledge went searching for Hickam on his own, but the man seemed to have disappeared.

  "Drunk somewhere, like enough," Hamish said. "Yours is a dry business, man. I'd as soon have a bottle myself."

  Which was the only time Rutledge had found himself in agreement with the voice in his mind.

  He turned the car toward the Inn and his thoughts toward dinner. Which turned out to be interesting in its own way. He had hardly cut into his roast mutton when the dining room's glass doors opened and a man with a clerical collar came in, stood for a moment surveying the room, then made his way across to where Rutledge sat.

  He was nearing thirty, of medium height, with fair hair, a polished manner, and a strong sense of his own worth. Stopping by the table, he said in a rich baritone, "Inspector Rut- ledge? I'm Carfield. The vicar. I've just called again at Mallows, and Miss Wood is still unwell. Then I thought perhaps it might be wiser to ask you anyway. Can you tell me when the Colonel's body will be released for burial?"

  "We haven't held an Inquest yet, Mr. Carfield. Sit down, won't you? I'd like to talk to you, now that you're here."

  Carfield accepted the offer of coffee and said, "Such a tragic business, the Colonel's death."

  "So everyone says. Who might want to kill him?"

  "Why, no one that I can think of!"

  "Yet someone did."

  Studying Carfield as the man stirred cream but no sugar into his cup, Rutledge could see that he had the kind of face that would show up well on the stage, handsome and very masculine beyond the twentieth row, but too heavily boned to be called more than "strong" at close quarters. The voice too was made to carry, and grated a little in ordinary conversation. The actor was lurking there, behind the clerical collar, Sergeant Davies had been right about that.

  "Tell me about Miss Wood."

  "Lettice? Very bright, with a mind of her own. She came to Mallows several years back-1917, after she'd finished school. And she's been an ornament to the community ever since. We're all very fond of her."

  Over the rim of his cup, Carfield was quickly assessing the Inspector, noting his thinness, the lines of tiredness about the mouth, the tense muscles around the eyes that betrayed the strain behind his mask of polite interest. But Carfield misunderstood these signs, putting them down to a man out of his depth, one who might prove useful.

  "She's taken her guardian's death very hard."

  "After all, he was her only family. Girls are often very attached to their fathers, you know."

  "Harris could hardly be termed that," Rutledge commented dryly.

  With a graceful wave of his hand, Carfield dismissed the quibble over ages. "In loco parentis, of course."

  "From all I hear, he may well have walked on water."

  Carfield laughed, but it had an edge to it. "Harris? No, if anyone fits that description it's Simon Haldane, not the Colonel. He was too good at killing, you know. Some men become soldiers because they've no imagination, they don't know how to be afraid. But Charles Harris had an uncanny aptitude for war. I asked him about that once, and he said that his skills, such as they were, came from reading history and learning its lessons, but I found that hard to believe."

  "Why?"

  "The Colonel was the finest chess player I've ever met, and I have no mean skills at the game myself. He was born with a talent for strategy that few of us are given, and he made the choice about how to use it. He fully understood that choice, that war meant playing with men's lives, not with prettily carved pieces on a game board, but battle was an addiction he couldn't rid himself of."

  Rutledge said nothing. Carfield s
ipped his coffee, then added as if he couldn't stop himself, "Men from Warwickshire who served under him worshiped him; they tell me that on the battlefield he was charismatic, but I call it more a gift for manipulation. I don't suppose you were in the war, Inspector, but I can tell you that sending other men into battle must rest heavily on one's soul in the end."

  Hamish stirred but made no remark. He had no need to. Rutledge found himself saying, "Then the Kings of Israel must not be sleeping peacefully in Abraham's bosom. As I remember, they were at war most of the time."

  Carfield nodded graciously to parishioners who had just come in, a man and his wife, then turned back to Rutledge. "Make light of it if you wish. But something deep down in Charles Harris was frightened by the man he was. He was a Gemini, you see, two forces in one body. In my opinion he needed to come home to Mallows from time to time because it brought him peace, a sense of balance, proof that he wasn't a man who actually enjoyed killing, however good he might be at it. His much-vaunted devotion to the land was perhaps merely a charade for his troubled conscience."

  "And Captain Wilton? What do you think of him?"

  "An intelligent man. And a brave one-one would have to be to fly, don't you think? When Ezekiel saw the wheel, high in the middle of the air, he claimed it was God at work. We've come a long way since then, haven't we? Man has finally set himself on a par with the archangels. The question is, are we morally ready for such heights?"