A Test of Wills

by Charles Todd

  “And who pays you?”

  The grin widened. “That’s for me to know and you to discover. If you can. You’re the man from London, sent here to set us all straight.”

  There was a little dogcart standing in the road outside the Inn when Rutledge strode up the steps, and Redfern came to meet him in the hall, hastily wiping his hands on a towel. “Miss Sommers, sir. I’ve put her in the back parlor. Second door beyond the stairs.”

  “Has she been here long?”

  “Not above half an hour, sir. I brought her tea when she said she’d wait awhile.”

  Rutledge went down the passage to the small back parlor and opened the door.

  It was a pleasant room, paneled walls and drapes faded to mellow rose at the long windows. There was a writing desk in one corner, several chairs covered in shades of rose and green, and a small tea cart on wheels.

  Helena Sommers stood, back straight, at one of the windows, which overlooked a tiny herb garden busy with bees. She turned at the sound of someone at the door and said, “Hallo. Maggie told me you wanted to see me. Strangers at the house make her uncomfortable, so I thought it best to come into town.”

  Rutledge waited until she sat down in one of the chairs and then took another across from her.

  “It’s about Captain Wilton. The morning you saw him from the ridge. The morning of the murder.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “What was he carrying?”

  “Carrying?” She seemed perplexed.

  “A rucksack. A stick. Anything.”

  Helena frowned, thinking back. “He had his walking stick. Well, he always does, and that morning was no different from the other times I’ve glimpsed him.”

  “Nothing else. You’re quite sure?”

  “Should he have had something else?”

  “We’re trying to be thorough, that’s all.”

  She studied him. “You’re asking me, aren’t you, if the Captain carried a shotgun. Has your investigation narrowed down to him? Why on earth would he kill Colonel Harris? The Captain was marrying the Colonel’s ward!”

  “Wilton was there, not a mile from the meadow, shortly before the murder. We have reason to think he wasn’t on the best of terms with Colonel Harris that morning.”

  “And so the Captain marched up the hill hoping to run into Charles Harris, carrying a shotgun through the town with him, in the unlikely event he’d have an opportunity to use it? That’s absurd!”

  Rutledge was very tired. Hamish was growling restlessly at the back of his mind again.

  “Why is it absurd?” he snapped. “Someone killed the Colonel, I assure you; we’ve got a body that’s quite dead and quite clearly murdered.”

  “Yes, I understand that,” she said gently, seeming to understand too his frustration. “But why—necessarily—is the murderer someone in Upper Streetham? Colonel Harris served in a regiment on active duty. He was in France for five years, and we’ve no idea what went on in his life during the war—the people he met, the things that might have happened, the soldiers who died or were crippled because of his orders. If I wanted revenge—and expected to get away with it, of course!—I’d shoot the man on his home ground but not on mine. You can take a train to Warwick from anywhere in Britain, then walk to Upper Streetham.”

  “Carrying a shotgun?”

  She was momentarily at a loss, then rallied. “No, certainly not. Not out in the open. But people do have things they carry without arousing suspicion. A workman with his kit of tools. Salesmen with sample cases. Whatever. And you don’t wonder what’s inside, do you, when you see someone carrying something that belongs with him. You assume, don’t you, that it’s all aboveboard?”

  Rutledge nodded grudgingly. She was right.

  “I’m not suggesting that it happened this way. I’m merely pointing out that Mark Wilton needed a very powerful reason to kill his fiancée’s guardian, practically on the eve of their wedding.

  And he had heard Lettice, only hours ago, putting off the marriage. Because she was in mourning.

  It made sense, what Helena Sommers had said. And it gave him a very sound excuse for ignoring Hickam’s statement. But her argument also left him with the whole of England to choose from, and nothing to go on in the way of motive or evidence. Bowles would not be happy over that!

  Helena seemed to appreciate his dilemma. She said ruefully, “I’m sorry. I have no business interjecting my views. I’m an outsider here, I don’t know any of these people very well. But I have met them, and I’d hate to think one of them is a murderer. ‘Not someone I know, surely!’ You must have heard that often enough!”

  He had. But he answered, “I suppose it’s human nature.”

  As the clock in the other parlor began to chime the hour, she got up quickly. “I’ve been away longer than I intended. Maggie will be wondering what’s become of me. I must go.” Hesitating she added, “I’ve never been to war, of course, and I know nothing about it except what one reads in the news accounts. But Colonel Harris must have had to do many things as an officer that he as a man wouldn’t care to talk about—was ashamed of, even. When you find his murderer, you may discover that his death has its roots in the war. Not in the affairs of anyone we know.”

  The war.

  But if she was right, the war also brought him full circle to Mark Wilton, who had known Harris in France.

  Or to Catherine Tarrant…

  When he’d seen Helena to the dogcart and watched the Haldane pony trot off down the main street, Rutledge went back to the station to rout out Sergeant Davies. He sent him off to Warwick to find out, if he could, about anyone who had arrived there by train shortly before the murder and come on to Upper Streetham.

  A wild-goose chase, Sergeant Davies thought sourly as he set out. He knew his own ground, and there hadn’t been any unexplained strangers in Upper Streetham or even in Lower Streetham for that matter—before, during, or after the killing. Except for that dead lorry driver who’d been accounted for. There were always eyes to see, ears to hear, if anyone passed through. And news of it reached him, directly or indirectly, within a matter of hours. Strangers stood out, nobody liked them, and word was passed on. But going to Warwick, waste of time though it was, kept him out of the Inspector’s clutches, and that counted for something.

  As he was finishing his dinner, Rutledge looked up to see Mark Wilton standing out in the hall of the Inn. The Captain saw him at the same time and crossed the dining room to Rutledge’s table.

  “I’ve come to speak to you about the Inquest. And the release of the body.”

  “I was just on my way out to see Dr. Warren. But that can wait. Can I offer you a drink in the bar?”

  “Thanks.”

  They went through to the public bar, which was half empty, and found a table in one corner.

  Rutledge ordered two whiskeys and sat down. “The Inquest will be at ten o’clock. I don’t expect it will last more than half an hour. After that, you can speak to the undertakers.”

  “Have you seen the body?” Wilton asked curiously.

  “Three days after death, I didn’t expect it to tell me very much. I wasn’t there to see it in place, which is what counts.”

  “I was there. Before they moved it. Half the town came to look. I couldn’t believe he was dead. Not after going through the war unscathed.”

  “Oddly enough, that’s what Royston said.”

  Wilton nodded. “You sometimes meet people who appear to have charmed lives. There was a pilot in my outfit who was at best a mediocre flier, shouldn’t have lasted a month, but he was the damnedest, luckiest devil I’ve ever known. Invisible in the air, the Germans never could see him for some reason, and he’d find the field in any weather, instinct almost. Crashed five times, and walked away with no more than a few bruises. I’d thought of Charles as having a charmed life too. I knew my own chances for surviving were slim, but we’d plan to meet, Charles and I, in Paris on our next leave, and I always knew he’d be there, wa
iting. Whatever happened to me.” Wilton shrugged. “That was comforting, in a strange way—certainty in the midst of chaos, I suppose.”

  Rutledge knew what he meant. There had been a Sergeant in one company who always came back, and brought his men back with him, and men wanted to serve with him because of that. The Sergeant’s reputation spread across the Front, and someone would say, “It was a bad night. But Morgan made it. Pass the word along.” A talisman—bad as the assault was, it hadn’t been bad enough to stop Morgan.

  He’d asked the sergeant once how he’d managed it, when he ran into him on a mud-swallowed road out in the middle of nowhere, moving up for the next offensive. And Morgan had smiled. “Now, then, sir, if you believe anything hard enough,” he said, “you can make it happen.”

  But by that time, Rutledge had lost his own will to believe in anything, and Morgan’s secret wasn’t any help to him. He often wondered what had become of the man after the war….

  Wilton looked at the light through his glass, almost as if it held answers as well as liquid amber, then said quietly, “I was as surprised as anybody when I made it through to the end of the war.”

  Rutledge nodded in understanding. He himself had gone from being terrified he’d die to not caring either way, and then to the final stage, wishing it would happen, bringing him to a peace that was more desirable than life itself.

  Returning to Charles Harris, as if he found murder an easier subject than war memories, Wilton cleared his throat and went on. “As I said, I had to see for myself. My first thought was, My God, Lettice, and my second was, I still don’t believe it’s true—”

  He stopped. “Sorry, you can ignore that,” he went on, when Rutledge made no comment. “I wasn’t trying to sway your judgment.”

  “No.”

  Wilton took a deep breath. “I hear that Hickam is dead drunk at Dr. Warren’s. Or ill. The story varies, depending on which gossip you listen to.”

  “What else does gossip say?”

  “That you haven’t found much to go on. That you’re floundering in the dark. But that’s not true. I know what’s in the back of your mind.” He smiled wryly.

  “If you didn’t kill Harris, who did?”

  “The comfortable answer would be, ‘Mavers,’ wouldn’t it?”

  “Why not Hickam, who claims he saw you speaking to Harris—arguing heatedly with him, in his words—in the lane? Why isn’t it possible that he knew where to find a shotgun, and decided, in that confused mind of his, that he was off to shoot the Boche? Or to kill an officer he hated? He wouldn’t be the first enlisted man to do that. In fact, he might just as easily have chosen you as his target as Charles Harris. A toss-up, given his drunken state.”

  The look of stark surprise on Wilton’s face was quickly covered, but it told Rutledge one thing—that Hickam’s story might very well be true, that he’d seen the Captain and the Colonel quarreling. For Wilton had taken the bait without even questioning it. He’d immediately recognized the twist that could be put on Hickam’s evidence, and his mind had been busily considering that possibility just as alarm bells had gone off reminding him that—in his own statement—Hickam hadn’t witnessed any meeting at all, angry or not.

  “I suppose I’d never thought he was capable of such a thing,” Mark answered lamely. “Shell-shocked—mad, perhaps—but not particularly dangerous.” Feeling his way carefully, he added, “And it probably wouldn’t matter whether he actually saw Charles that morning or just thought he did. Well, it does make a certain sense out of this business. I can’t imagine anyone in his right mind shooting Charles. It would have to be a Mavers. Or a Hickam.”

  Which was all very interesting. Taking another shot in the dark, Rutledge said, “Tell me about Catherine Tarrant.”

  Wilton shook his head. “No.” It was quiet, firm, irreversible. He emptied his glass and set it down.

  “You knew her well when you were in Upper Streetham before the war. You were, in fact, in love with her.”

  “No, I thought I was in love with her. But her father was wise enough to see that it wouldn’t do, and he asked us to wait a year or two before we came to any formal understanding.” He turned in his chair, easing his stiff knee. “And he was right; a few months apart, a dozen letters on each side, and we soon discovered that they were getting harder and harder to write. I think we both realized what was happening, but there was never any formal ending. The letters got shorter, then further apart. I’m still quite fond of Catherine Tarrant, I admire her, and I like her work.”

  “Was she painting then?” There was a clatter in the kitchens, someone dropping a tray, and then Redfern’s voice, sharply taking whoever it was to task.

  “Oddly enough, nobody seemed to recognize how talented she was. Yes, she’d mention something about a painting. But you know how it was before the war, most well-bred girls tried their hand at watercolors or music—it was rather expected of them.”

  Rutledge recalled his sister’s lessons, and smiled. Frances could sing beautifully, but her watercolors had generally been a welter of slapdash color sent running over the paper with an enthusiastic and generous hand. Not one, to his certain knowledge, had ever seen a frame. She had studied assiduously, searching for subjects and giving grandiose names to her work, but her teacher had finally written, “Miss Rutledge makes up in spirit what she lacks in talent,” and to everyone’s relief, the lessons had ended there.

  Wilton was saying, “And no one thought anything about it when Catherine said, ‘I’m doing a portrait of that old woman who used to milk cows for us, remember her? She’s got a wonderful face.’” He glanced wryly at Rutledge. “Least of all me! I wasn’t interested in anything that didn’t have wings to it! But that one later won a prize in London. When I went to her first exhibit, I was stunned. I wondered where in God’s name Catherine had found such power of expression, such depth of feeling. How she’d come to change so much in such a short time. But she hadn’t changed—it was there all along, and apparently I’d been blind to it. I suppose that’s the difference between infatuation and love, if you come down to it.”

  “And Linden? Had he brought any of these changes about? Found the woman somewhere inside the sweet, untouched girl you’d met before the war?”

  Wilton’s mouth was grim. “I’ve told you. Ask Miss Tarrant about her personal life.”

  “Then you disapproved of the affair?”

  “I was in France, trying to stay alive. I couldn’t have approved or disapproved, I didn’t know. Until much later. In fact, it was Charles who told me, the first time he brought me down to Mallows. He thought I should be aware of it, before I ran into her. But Catherine has never spoken of Linden to me.”

  “Did she blame Colonel Harris for not handling their case properly with the Army? Or blame Lettice for not making it clear to her guardian that Catherine was serious about this man?”

  “I don’t know, I tell you. Except that Charles would have done what he could. If he’d known. For Catherine’s sake if nothing else. He’d been fond of her.”

  “But he didn’t know?”

  “I can’t answer that. I can tell you his headquarters was swamped with people’s letters, wanting news about their sons, their husbands, their lovers. He said once it was the hardest part of his job, reading such letters. Sometimes they were sent to the wrong place, or lost.”

  “Surely not a letter from his ward? That wouldn’t have been shoved in a sack with dozens of others and forgotten?”

  This time Wilton stood up. “You’re putting words into my mouth, Rutledge. I don’t know what went wrong over Linden. I don’t suppose anyone does. I’m sure that Charles would have done his best for the pair of them, he would try to help Catherine. My God, he did what he could for anyone in Upper Streetham in one way or another, so why not her? What the War Office did is anybody’s guess. Some ignorant fool sitting at a cluttered desk in Whitehall might have felt it his personal duty to prevent any relationship between prisoners and the home population
, whatever the Colonel said about it. Bad for morale and all that. And come to that, it wouldn’t have mattered; the war was nearly over, and if he’d lived, Linden could have spoken for himself. Who could have guessed that Linden would die of influenza. Still, it decimated the country, for God’s sake, no one was immune.”

  “But because he was sent from here, he died alone, and no one told Catherine. Not until long afterward.”

  Wilton laughed harshly. “In war you can’t keep up with every poor sod you send out to die. I was a squadron leader, I knew the hell of that. A man’s blown to bits in a trench, shot down in flames, chokes on gas and lies rotting in the mud. You do your best, you write letters about his bravery, how much he’d done for his country, how much his comrades looked to him for an example—and you don’t even recall his name, much less his face! Linden took his chances, like any soldier. At least she knows what became of him, where he’s buried!”

  Rutledge watched his face, remembering how Catherine Tarrant had looked when she spoke of searching for Linden. And remembering what Sally Davenant had said about Wilton’s love of flying changing to agony in the heat of battle and death and fear.

  “That’s cold comfort to a grieving, passionate woman.”

  “Is it? After all the killing, I came home to a hero’s welcome. Safe and whole. Invited to the Palace and to Sandringham. Treated like royalty, myself. But I was there in a hospital in Dorset when they brought in a man they’d found wandering in France. Didn’t even know who he was, whether he was British or German—a shell of a man, starving and begging on the roadside for a year or more, more animal than human, worse than Hickam, and I looked at him, and thought, I used to have nightmares about burning to death in a crash, but there are worse things than that! Worse than being blind or without a limb, lungs seared with gas, face shot away, guts rotted. Coming home safe—and not knowing it’s over—that’s the bleakest hell I’m capable of picturing!”

  Rutledge felt the blood run cold in his body. Wilton nodded and walked away, unaware of what he’d done.