A Test of Wills

by Charles Todd

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

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

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

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

  “I doubt if Mark even knows the story.”

  “Then tell me about her relationship with Wilton.”

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

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

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

  “That must have been a heavy responsibility.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “No, sir. None.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Was the Colonel a good master?”

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

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

  “That’s right, yes, sir. My sister.”

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

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

  “Is she happy enough there?”

  “It would seem so, sir.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Yes? Not like Charles Harris?”

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

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

  8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “And you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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