by Charles Todd
He whirled to face another group of emerging worshipers. “And you, lusting after your cousin, while he’s busy with moneyed ladies, sucking up to wealth, and you watching him like a starved woman!”
Sally Davenant’s face flushed with a mixture of anger and speechless embarrassment. Wilton started toward Mavers, but the man said, “And the Sergeant, there, the Inspector over yonder, quaking in their boots to arrest the King’s friend, who shot down the Colonel in cold blood with a stolen shotgun! And the man from London who lurks in shadows and tackles the pathetic likes of Daniel Hickam instead of doing his duty!”
Almost foaming at the mouth in his terrible need to hurt, Mavers paid no heed to the effect his words were having on the targets of his wrath; he poured them out in torrents, spilling over one another in a tangle. Rutledge began to move toward him, cutting across the churchyard, one eye on Mavers, the other on his feet among the damp, tilted tombstones.
“You, with the feebleminded cousin, who ought to be shut away for her own good! And that artist, the one who took a German to her bed and reveled in it—that other one with the witch’s eyes, hiding in her bedchamber, with her lascivious desires, and the Inspector yonder with his cold, sexless wife, and Tom Malone, the butcher, who keeps his thumb on his scales. The bloodless Haldanes dead and not even knowing it. Ben Sanders, whose wife killed herself rather than go on living with him, the Sergeant who—”
But Wilton and Rutledge had reached him by that time, dragging him away from the lych-gate, bending his arms behind him until he choked from pain and stopped lacerating the townspeople with a tongue as sharp as a lash. They hauled him with them down the length of the Court, his aggrieved cries echoing off the facades of the almshouses, raising the rooks in the fields beyond the trees.
The look on Wilton’s face was murderous. Behind them, Rutledge could hear Forrest running to catch up and the Sergeant’s bull roar, telling everyone at the church to pay no heed, that the fool had run mad, like a rabid dog.
But Rutledge thought he had done no such thing. Stopping at the corner to hand Mavers over to Forrest, Rutledge turned on his heel and went back to the lych-gate, searching for Royston in the crowd gathered there, silent and avoiding one another’s eyes, their faces stiff with shocked dismay, unable to think of any way out of the churchyard that wouldn’t take them past the rest of the parishioners equally paralyzed with indecision.
As Rutledge scanned their faces, he saw tears in Sally Davenant’s eyes, though her chin was high and her cheeks still flushed. Helena Sommers seemed to be trying to find something in her handbag, her expression hidden by the wide-brimmed hat she wore, her hands shaking. Georgina Grayson had moved away from the crowd to the tree where Rutledge had been standing earlier, her back to the churchyard, her head tilted to watch the rooks soaring around the church tower.
Royston was gripping a post on the lych-gate, staring at the worshipers on the other side of the wall, a defensive look in his eyes, his mouth turned down in shame.
As Rutledge reached him, he said, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told him. I should have thought about what he’d do. And now look what’s happened—I’ll never be able to face any of them again!”
“What did he want?”
Royston turned to Rutledge as if surprised to find him there. “He wanted to know if we’d read the Will. Charles’s Will. He wanted to know if his pension was going to continue.”
“Pension?”
“Yes. Charles gave him a pension years ago.”
“Why?”
Royston shrugged expressively. “It was his sense of responsibility. The other son—there were two boys and a girl in the family, the mother had worked at Mallows as a maid before she married Hugh Davenant’s gamekeeper—the other son died in South Africa. The daughter drowned herself. When Mavers ran off to join the army, Charles had him sent home. He was told that as long as he stayed there and looked after his mother, he’d be paid a pension. After the mother died, Charles didn’t stop it, he let it go on. Against my better judgment. He felt he could stop Mavers from getting into worse trouble than he had already. It was threatening to cut off the pension as much as the threat of sending him to an institution that stopped the poisoning of the cattle and Charles’s dogs. A lever. But Charles planned to let it end with his death.”
It wasn’t quite the same version of the story Mavers had told, but Rutledge thought that it was very likely that Royston’s was closer to the truth.
Some of the color was coming back to Royston’s face, and with it, the shuddering acceptance of the immensity of Mavers’s revenge. “I’ve never felt quite so deliberately spiteful as I did when I told him that. I was thinking that it was one of the few times in my life when I actually relished causing pain. What I didn’t realize was that I would cause so much! God, I feel—filthy!”
Rutledge answered harshly, “Don’t be a fool! They’re all so horrified they don’t know how it began or why. Leave it at that. Let them blame Mavers. Don’t give them a scapegoat! It will ruin you, and only a bloody idiot is that self-destructive.”
After a moment, Royston nodded. He turned and walked away, joining the others who were now coming, by ones and twos and threes through the lych-gate, heads down, hurrying toward the safety of home. On the church steps, Carfield was alone, staring after his flock with an empty face.
He hadn’t come forward in a heaven-sent rage to defy Mavers and protect his parishioners. He’d stood there, missing the opportunity of a lifetime to play the grand role of savior and hero, waiting in the shadows of the church door geared for flight and not for fight. Planning to make a hasty and unseen departure if need be, unwilling to do battle with the powers of darkness in the form of one wiry little loudmouth with amber goat’s eyes.
A mountebank, Mavers had called him.
He looked across the churchyard and saw Rutledge watching him. With a swirl of his robes he vanished inside the church, shutting the door firmly but quietly behind him.
Rutledge walked slowly behind the last of the parishioners hurrying down the lane. By the time he reached the High Street, he was alone.
That afternoon Dr. Warren allowed him to visit Daniel Hickam. Rutledge stood in the doorway, looking down at the man in the bed, thin, unshaven, but clean and as still as one of the carved Haldanes on the church tombs.
Then as Rutledge stepped into the room, the heavy eyelids opened, and Hickam frowned, knowing someone was there. He moved his head slightly, saw Rutledge, and the frown deepened, with incipient alarm behind it.
Dr. Warren moved out from behind Rutledge’s shoulder and said briskly, “Well, then, Daniel, how are you feeling, man?”
Hickam’s eyes moved slowly to Warren and then back again to Rutledge. After a moment he said in a croak that would have made a frog shudder, “Who are you?”
“I’m Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. Do you remember why I’m here?”
Alarm widened his eyes. Warren said testily, “Oh, for God’s sake, tell the man he’s done nothing wrong, that it’s information you want!”
“Where am I?” Hickam asked. “Is this France? Hampshire—the hospital?” His glance swept the room, puzzled, afraid.
Rutledge’s hopes plummeted. “You’re in Upper Streetham. Dr. Warren’s surgery. You’ve been ill. But someone has shot Colonel Harris, he’s dead, and we need to ask people who might have seen him on Monday morning where he was riding and who he was with.”
Dr. Warren started to interrupt again, and this time Rutledge silenced him with a gesture.
“Dead?” Hickam shut his eyes. After a time he opened them again and repeated, “Monday morning?”
“Yes, that’s right. Monday morning. You’d been drunk. Do you remember? And you were still hungover when Sergeant Davies found you. You told him what you’d seen. But then you were ill, and we haven’t been able to ask you to repeat your statement. We need it badly.” Rutledge kept his voice level and firm, as if questioning wounded soldiers about what they’
d seen, crossing the line.
Hickam shut his eyes again. “Was the Colonel on a horse?”
Rutledge’s spirits began to rise again. “Yes, he was out riding that morning.” He heard the echo of Lettice Wood’s words in his own, then told himself to keep his mind on Hickam.
“On a horse.” Hickam shook his head. “I don’t remember Monday morning.”
“That’s it, then,” Warren said quietly, still standing at Rutledge’s shoulder. “I warned you.”
“But I remember the Colonel. On a horse. In the—in the lane above Georgie’s house. I—was that Monday?” The creaking voice steadied a little.
“Go on, tell me what you remember. I’ll decide for myself what’s important and what isn’t.”
The eyelids closed once more, as if too heavy. “The Colonel. He’d been to Georgie’s—”
“He’s lost it,” Warren said at that. “Let him be now.”
“No, he’s right, the Colonel had been to the Grayson house!” Rutledge told him under his breath. “Now keep out of it!”
Hickam was still speaking. “And someone called to him. Another officer.” He shook his head. “I don’t know his name. He—he wasn’t one of our men. A—a captain, that’s what he was. The Captain called to Colonel Harris, and Harris stopped. They stood there, Harris on the horse, the Captain by his stirrup.”
And then there was silence, heavy and filled only with the sound of Hickam’s breathing. “There was a push on, wasn’t there? I could hear the guns, they were in my head—but it was quiet in the lane,” he began again. “I tried, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I could see their faces—angry faces, low, angry voices. Clenched fists, the Colonel leaning down, the Captain staring up at him. I—I was frightened they’d find me, send me back.” He stirred under the sheet, face agitated. “So angry. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.”
He started to repeat over and over, “The guns—I couldn’t hear—I couldn’t hear—I couldn’t hear—”
Warren clucked his tongue. “Lie still, man, it’s done with, there’s nothing to be afraid of now!”
The unsteady voice faded. Then Hickam said, so softly that Rutledge had to lean toward the bed to hear him while Warren cupped his left hand around his ear: “I’ll fight you every step of the way….”
Rutledge recognized the words. Hickam had repeated them to him in the dark on the High Street the night he’d given him enough money to kill himself.
“Don’t be—fool—like it or not—learn to live with it.”
“Live with what?” Rutledge asked.
Hickam didn’t answer. Rutledge waited. Nothing. The minutes ticked past.
Finally Dr. Warren jerked his head toward the door and took Rutledge’s arm.
Rutledge nodded, turned to go.
They were already in the hall, Rutledge’s hand on the door, preparing to close it. He stopped in the act, realizing that Hickam’s lips were moving.
The thready voice was saying something. Rutledge crossed the room in two swift strides, put his ear almost to the man’s mouth.
“Not the war…it wasn’t the war.” A sense of amazement crept into the words.
“Then what? What was it?”
Hickam was silent again. Then he opened his eyes and stared directly into Rutledge’s face. “You’ll think I’m mad. In the middle of all that fighting—”
“No. I’ll believe you. I swear it. Tell me.”
“It wasn’t the war. The Colonel—he was going to call off the wedding.”
Dr. Warren said something from the doorway, harsh and disbelieving.
But Rutledge believed.
It was, finally, the reason behind the quarrel. It was, as well, the Captain’s motive for murder.
16
The Inn was remarkably quiet, but Rutledge stopped Redfern in the hall and asked to have sandwiches and coffee brought to his room. He wanted to think, without distraction or interruption, and Redfern must have sensed this, because he nodded and hurried off toward the kitchens without a word.
Rutledge took the stairs two at a time. In the passage near his room, he paused as the first rays of a sultry, overly bright sun broke through the heavy clouds. Storm signs, he thought, watching the light play across the gardens and then flicker out again. They’d had a remarkable run of good weather as it was.
His eyes caught a splash of color in the small private garden, and he looked down. A woman in a broad-brimmed hat was standing there, her back to the Inn, hands on her arms, head bowed. He tried to see who it was, but in the gray light he wasn’t sure he recognized her. Searching his mind for someone at the morning church service wearing a hat like that, he drew a blank. He’d been more interested in faces than apparel. And in reactions to Mavers’s vicious denunciations. Leaning his palms on the windowsill, he cocked his head to one side for a better line of sight.
Behind him he heard limping footsteps—Redfern bringing up his lunch. He straightened and turned to meet him.
Redfern carried a tray covered with a starched white napkin, a pot of coffee steaming to one side, cream and sugar beside it, the sandwiches a large and uneven mound.
Rutledge gestured to the woman in the garden. “Do you know who that is, down in the private garden? The woman with her back to us.”
Redfern handed the tray to Rutledge and looked out. “That’s—aye, that must be Miss Sommers. The Netherbys brought her into town for the morning services. But she’s worried about her sister with a storm coming, doesn’t want to stay for lunch after all. Jim—that’s the stable boy—went to see if Mr. Royston or the Hendersons or even the Thorntons might take her home.”
He reached for the tray again, going on into Rutledge’s room to set up the table. Rutledge stayed where he was for a moment longer.
He’d have sworn it was Catherine Tarrant.
The small table by the window overlooking the street was ready for him when he followed Redfern to his room. “If you don’t mind, sir, you can just leave the tray in the hall when you go. I’ll be back to pick it up when the dining room is closed. We’re not all that busy today, but you never know; if it starts to rain, we could be full.”
He was already out the door when Rutledge stopped him. “Redfern. Did the Colonel come here often to dine? Or did Captain Wilton bring Miss Wood?”
Redfern nodded. “Sometimes. But I think they went into Warwick as often as not, if they wanted a dinner. Lunch, now, that was different. If the Colonel had business in the town, he’d often stop in. Always left a generous tip. Never fussy. Mrs. Haldane, Simon’s mother, was the fussiest woman alive! There was no pleasing her! The Captain’s not one to demand service, but he expects you to do a proper job, and he knows when you don’t. Miss Wood”—he smiled wryly—“Miss Wood is a lady, and you don’t forget that, but she’s a pleasure to serve, never makes you feel like a wooden post, with no feelings. Nicest smile I’ve ever seen. I enjoy having her come in.”
“How did she and Wilton get on?”
He thought about it for a moment. “Comfortably. You could see that they were happy. Never holding hands or anything like that, not in public, but the way he held her coat or took her arm, the way she’d tease him—the closeness was there. I was sometimes—envious, I suppose. My own girl married another chap while I was in hospital and they thought I’d soon be having my foot taken off. When you’re lonely, it can hurt, watching others in love.” There was a wistfulness in his voice as he finished.
Hamish, in the back of Rutledge’s mind, growled. “You’d know about that, then, wouldn’t you? How it hurts? And all you’ve got to ease your loneliness is me…. If there’s a more dismal hell, I haven’t found it.”
Rutledge almost missed Redfern’s next words.
“The last time I ever saw the Colonel, he’d come here for lunch.”
“What? When was that?”
“The Tuesday before he died. It was another day like this one. Overcast, you could feel the storm coming. Everyone was jittery, even the
Colonel. Didn’t say two words to me all through his meal! Frowned something ferocious when Miss Wood came in looking for him. He left his pudding and took her into that garden where you saw Miss Sommers just now. I came up here to fetch some fresh linens for the maids, and they were still there. He had his hands on her shoulders, saying something to her, and she was shaking her head as if she didn’t want to hear. Then she broke away and ran off. As I came back down the stairs, the Colonel was just walking in from the garden, looking exasperated, and he said, ‘Women!’ But I had the feeling there was—I don’t know, an exhilaration there too, as if in the end he expected to have his way. I brought him another cup of coffee, but he was restless, and after drinking half of it, he was gone.”
“You don’t know what had upset Lettice Wood? Or the Colonel?”
“It mustn’t have been too important,” Redfern answered. “I saw her the next day, looking radiant. Walking down to the churchyard with Mr. Royston. I ought to be back in the dining room—”
Rutledge let him go with a nod of thanks.
He sat there, biting into the thick beef sandwiches, not even aware of the taste or the texture, absently drinking his coffee. There was a slice of sponge cake for dessert.
Wilton had motive, he had opportunity, and he had access to a weapon. All that was left was to clear up loose ends and then make the arrest. And to explain to Bowles on Monday morning the reasons behind the decision.