A Test of Wills
Page 25
There was no reaction in his face. “Who told you this?”
“I have two witnesses. I think they’re reliable enough. A third can prove that Harris was there, in the lane. Another saw him speaking to you.”
“And Lettice? Have you talked to her?”
“Yes. At first she denied it. Then she admitted that Charles had, for reasons of his own, changed his mind about the marriage.”
“I see.” He faced Rutledge quietly enough, but a nerve at the corner of his mouth twitched. After a time, he said, “Yes, all right, Charles changed his mind. I thought he was wrong, and I told him so. We argued. I didn’t think this was information that the world needed to know, that’s why I wouldn’t explain it to you. I felt that—given time—Lettice and I could work out the problem of what to do. Charles Harris was a very strong influence in her life. I had to keep that in mind.”
“Then she went along with his decision?”
Wilton shook his head. “I never had the chance to ask her how she felt. Charles was shot—she was given sedatives by Warren—and the wedding had to be called off anyway. My God, she was grieving, I couldn’t very well barge in there and say, ‘I love you, I still want to marry you, will you go through with it and be damned to Society!’ And then there was the funeral to discuss—hardly the proper ambience for a declaration of love, is it? Now—I haven’t much to offer her now, have I?”
Listening, Rutledge could hear the ring of truth—and the suspicion of a lie. He had to remind himself that Mark Wilton had spent four years in the air over France, surviving on his wits, surviving because he was intelligent, kept his nerve, never let himself be outwitted or outmaneuvered.
“Did she ask you if you’d shot her guardian?”
“No.” It was curt, haughty. Pride speaking.
“What will you tell her when she does? When you’ve been arrested?”
“That you’ve decided I did shoot Harris. That I’ll fight you in court, and with any luck make you look like a fool.” He frowned. “I’m not a barrister, but I’ve got a chance, I think. The evidence against me is circumstantial, no one saw me with a gun, no one saw me actually shoot the Colonel. Calling off the wedding might damn me, but we’ll see about that.” He caught the fleeting expression in Rutledge’s eyes and said, “Oh, yes, I’ve thought it all through! Most of the night. I’ve also considered something else. You’ll probably win in the long run; the trial will end with ‘not proved’ rather than an acquittal. And that doubt, that shadow will hang over me for the rest of my life. Did I or didn’t I kill Harris? In some respects that’s worse than the gallows. I can’t possibly expect Lettice to marry me, knowing she might wonder in the middle of the night if I had done it.”
“Then you won’t come with me now, and give yourself up.”
“If I do, it’s an admission of guilt. In the view of most people.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly. “I can’t afford to damn myself. You’ll have to arrest me. Without fanfare, I can promise you there will be no trouble over it. But it will have to be a warrant.”
“Why did Charles Harris change his mind about you? About the wedding? What had you done to turn him against the marriage?”
To Rutledge’s surprise, a smile flickered deep in Wilton’s eyes. “Ah. I expect that information did die with Charles Harris!”
Then the smile faded, and he said quite soberly, “I need a favor from you, Rutledge. I don’t know if you can grant it, but I’m asking you at least to consider it. I want to go to the funeral with Lettice. She needs someone besides that idiot Carfield. Or Simon Haldane, who’s kind enough but damned ineffectual. The Regiment is sending a representative, but Lettice doesn’t know him, he’s a stranger. It won’t be easy for her, with her guardian dead and her fiancé in jail. You can lock me in a room in the Inn tonight, if that’s any use. I’ll agree to any terms you like. Just let me do this one thing, and I’ll be very grateful.”
“I can’t postpone an arrest.”
“Why? Do you think I’ll shoot myself when you aren’t looking? Or run to France? The only hope I have of a normal life is proving I didn’t shoot Charles! A trial is as important to me as it is to you. Give me twenty-four hours!”
Rutledge looked at him, trying to read the man. Behind the handsome face was an extraordinary strength. And a gambler’s instincts? High in the clouds, pitting his wits against another man, with death as the price of losing, he had come through duel after duel almost unscathed. It was a remarkable record, and his nerve had never broken—
Hamish, who’d been silent most of the morning, stirred to life. “But yours did! That’s why you’ve lost your skills, man, you’ve broken. Nerve, mind, spirit. You aren’t the hunter anymore, you’re the prey!”
He forced himself to think, ignoring the voice in the back of his mind. Wilton was waiting, patient, watchful. He wanted this very badly. And he didn’t like begging.
Dredging up his own instincts, Rutledge sorted them out. And made his decision.
“All right, then. Twenty-four hours. But if you trick me, by God I’ll crucify you!”
Wilton shook his head. “It isn’t for me. It’s for Lettice.”
And driving back to the Inn, Hamish was raging. “The witch again! She’s cast a spell on you with those strange eyes, and you’ve lost your soul—”
“No,” Rutledge said, concentrating on the road. “I’m beginning to think”—he dodged a big yellow dog ambling peacefully across his path—“I’m beginning to think I might have found it.”
“You’ve got the man—witnesses—the shotgun—the reason why yon fine Colonel needed to die that morning. You’ve done your work, man, don’t throw it away!”
“On the contrary. I’ve stumbled around in the dark, letting other people tell me what was happening. I’ve been terrified that someone might see my own terrors and turn them against me. I’ve dreaded failure and done very little to prevent it. I was lost—lost!—and couldn’t find my way back to 1914. If I can’t do any better than this, I deserve to be locked away in that damned clinic with the other wretched dregs of humanity. If I want to survive, I’ve got to fight for it….”
He spent the day organizing his evidence, finishing his report. Before he began he put in a call to Bowles in London and said, “I’ve got enough proof to ask for a warrant. Tomorrow at noon. The case is as strong as I can make it, but not without some problems. I think a good KC can fill them in, and we’ll have our conviction.”
Bowles, listening, finally interrupted. “I hope to God you aren’t telling me we’re going to arrest Wilton! The Palace called this morning; they want to know whether to send a representative to the funeral. Wilton’s marrying Harris’s ward—”
“Tell them to send someone who knew Harris. He was a good soldier, he served the King well. It doesn’t matter about Wilton.”
“Rutledge, if you’ve got this wrong, the Yard will have your head. Do you hear me? Leave the man alone unless you’ve got such proof that Christ Himself couldn’t find a way out of it! I won’t be responsible if you humiliate the Palace and disgrace the Yard!”
“I won’t,” Rutledge said, with more firmness than he felt. “If I do, you’ll have my resignation on your desk by Wednesday morning.”
“A hell of a lot of good that will be, man! After the damage is done!”
“I know. That’s why I’m taking my time.” Rutledge hung up. So much for the confidence and support of his superiors. He felt suddenly isolated, alone.
But loneliness was also a strength. When you trusted, you were more vulnerable. You gave yourself away. He would have told someone about Hamish long ago, if he’d trusted. As long as it was his own private hell, he was, in a sense, far safer. No one could reach him. No one could destroy him. Except he himself, in the muddle that was now his life.
By late afternoon he’d covered sheet after sheet with notes and a framework for his evidence. Satisfied that he’d been thorough, he reread the pages. It wasn’t a clever work of detection, nor was it complete,
since there were no eyewitnesses to the death itself.
Except for the child, and the doll. She had been in the meadow. Not surprisingly, the shock of what she’d seen had frightened her into the blankness of withdrawal, the secure world of no feeling, no thought, no memory.
And yet she hadn’t responded to Wilton at all when he came to her room. It was her father who terrified her, her father who couldn’t come near her without provoking wild and mindless screams.
He got up from the table he’d been using as a desk and moved restlessly around the room. He’d never been a man to enjoy being shut up indoors all day long; he thought that that had, unconsciously, been one of several reasons why he’d failed to follow in his father’s footsteps at the bar. But the war, the aftermath of being buried alive in a trench, had turned an ordinary dislike into an almost rabid claustrophobia, and police work at least took him outside much of the time, before the walls began to close in upon him. As they were now.
Picking up his coat, he went out and down the stairs, planning to walk no farther than the lane in front of the church.
Outside the Inn the market was drawing to a close, stalls shut up and ready to load on wagons, the last of the market goers straggling from shop to shop. In front of the milliner’s he saw Helena Sommers in earnest conversation with Laurence Royston. She was standing on the sidewalk and he was in one of Charles Harris’s cars. And she was wearing the same hat Rutledge had glimpsed in the Inn garden on Sunday after Mavers’s malicious attack on everyone in the churchyard.
Then she smiled at Royston, stood back, and he drove on. Noticing Rutledge on the sidewalk, he waved.
Charles Harris had been fortunate in his steward, Rutledge thought. Few men worked so devotedly on another man’s property without a stake in it for themselves. He’d probably spent more time and love on Mallows than Harris had ever been able to give. Was that because he’d never had a wife to lavish time and love on? It was an interesting possibility.
Helena crossed the street, saw Rutledge, and paused. “Good afternoon, Inspector.” She indicated a large box in her left hand. “I didn’t bring a black hat with me. And I felt I ought to attend the funeral tomorrow. I didn’t know the Colonel well, but I was a guest in his home. It seems—courteous—to attend. Mr. Royston has been kind enough to promise to send a car for me.”
She looked tired. As if aware of it, she added, “The storm yesterday left us mired in mud. I had to walk into town today, there was no way to take out my bicycle. Maggie is always terrified of thunder, so she didn’t sleep much, and neither did I. But it seems to have cleared the air, in more ways than one.”
“A beautiful day,” he agreed.
“And I’ve spent enough of it indulging myself. I’ll be on my way.”
“Before you go, I wonder—did you notice a child out in the fields, a little girl picking wildflowers, on the morning of Harris’s death? Either before or after you saw Captain Wilton on the path?”
She frowned thoughtfully. “No. But that doesn’t mean she wasn’t there. I was using my field glasses. I could well have missed her. There are often children about, and I try to avoid them—well, they frighten off the birds I’m watching! The Pinter children are usually wandering here and there. The little girl is a charmer, but with any encouragement at all, the boy talks your ear off.” She smiled wryly to take the sting out of her words. “He’ll make his mark as a politician, I’ve no doubt at all about that! Maggie will be looking for me, I must go.”
She walked away with a countrywoman’s clean, swift stride. He watched her, wondering again how much of her interest in birds was real and how much was an excuse to be out of the cottage as often as she could. Or perhaps her cousin preferred to have the house to herself. Safe, familiar ground in a rather frightening world. Make-believe in the place of reality. He felt a sense of pity, knowing how harsh life could be for the Maggies, ill-equipped to cope with anything more demanding than domestic chores and small comforts.
Glancing at his watch, he saw that he’d have time for a drink before dinner. He’d earned it. Time enough afterward for the last task on his list.
Rutledge was greeted at the door of the Pinter house by a wary Agnes Farrell. Long rays of the sun, still warm at nine-thirty, gave her face a glow that faded as soon as she stepped back to allow him to enter. The thinness of long nights of no sleep, the sallowness of stress were marked in the dimness of the narrow passage between the door and the parlor.
“How is the child?” he asked, smiling down at her, trying to be reassuring.
“Well enough,” she answered doubtfully. “Eating. Sleeping. But grieving somehow, clutching that doll as if it was a lifeline.”
Meg appeared behind her mother, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Inspector?” she asked anxiously. The child’s illness had worn her too, the confidence of youth lost, the dread of death haunting her, buoyed only by a blind hope that soon it would all be back as it had been, normal and comforting.
“Good evening, Mrs. Pinter. I’ve come to have a look at Lizzie,” he said, as if it was an ordinary thing to do on a Monday evening. “If I may?”
She glanced at her mother and then said, uncertainly, “Yes, sir?” Both women stepped back, allowing him to enter, and from their attitude he gathered that they were alone in the house, that Ted Pinter hadn’t returned from the Haldane stables. He had chosen his time well, he thought with relief.
He began to move toward Lizzie’s small room, saying something about the lovely day that had followed the rain, in an attempt to set them at ease. They followed, close together for comfort. A lamp was burning on the low table, and the child stared up at him as he came in with large, sober dark blue eyes. He wasn’t really sure she saw him, in the sense of comprehending that he was a stranger, someone she didn’t know and wasn’t used to, because there was no spark of curiosity, no quick look at her mother to see if all was well. Instead there was an apathy about her still. But she wasn’t screaming, and he took that as a good sign.
“What did Dr. Warren have to say?” he asked over his shoulder.
Agnes answered, “He said it was what he’d hoped might happen, but didn’t expect. And we’d have to see if this new quietness lasted. In truth, sir, I think he was more than worried she might die, she was wasting so fast.”
Meg added, “She’s not in the clear yet—” as if hoping Rutledge might take the hint and go, now that he’d done what he came to do.
Instead he walked over to the bed. “Lizzie? I’m—er—a friend of Dr. Warren’s. He asked me to come and see you tonight. In his place.”
Her eyes had followed him, watched him, but she said nothing.
He went on, talking to her for several minutes, telling her he’d seen a woman with a basket of strawberries at market, and a man with a dog that did tricks. But nothing touched the blankness on her face.
Rutledge wasn’t accustomed to children. But he’d seen enough of the sad refugees on the roads of France—hungry, frightened, tired—to know that it wasn’t very likely that he’d be able to break through the barrier of her silence on his own. Not without days of careful groundwork to gain her confidence.
He thought about it for a time, watching those blue eyes, wondering what the best way of reaching her might be. He didn’t have days to give.
Hamish said softly, “Your Jean has such eyes; your children might have been fair and very like Lizzie….”
Turning to Agnes, Rutledge said, “Do you have a rocking chair?”
Surprised, she answered, “Aye, sir, a nursing rocker. In the kitchen.”
“Show me.” She did, and he saw that he had come just at the end of their meal; there was a chicken partly carved on the counter, a bowl of potatoes sat on the table next to a half loaf of bread and a plate of pickles, and dishes were stacked in a wash pan in the sink, while a big kettle whistled softly on the stove. The nursing rocker—small and without arms to allow a woman to breast-feed comfortably—stood by the hearth, worn but serviceable.
She didn’t want to leave, but Agnes said, “Go on, Meg. I’ll call you if I need you.” But Meg still went out reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder at Rutledge with worried eyes.
Rutledge waited until he could hear the familiar clatter of dishes and then said to Agnes, “I don’t want to frighten the child. Or make her uncomfortable. But if you’ll sit here and hold her, rock her as you must do, sometimes?” She nodded. “Good! I’ll be here by the door. And when she’s settled, at ease, I’ll tell you what to say to her.”
“I don’t know, sir!”
“It won’t harm her. It might help. And—I need to know what she saw! There in the meadow where Colonel Harris was shot!”
“I can’t take the chance! What if she saw the murder? What if that’s the thing that sent her into this decline? We don’t want to lose her! Not now!” She was an intelligent woman; she knew the risk he was going to run.
“Trust me,” he told her gently. “Let me at least try.”
And so she went to the bed, lifted the child in her arms, talking in that soft singsong mothers the world over know by heart. Lizzie whimpered, but seemed content enough when Agnes went no farther than the chair, sat down, and began slowly to rock, humming under her breath.
Afraid she’d soon put the child to sleep—in fact, he thought that might be her intention—Rutledge said quietly, “Ask her if she saw a man with a shotgun.”
“Did you see a man carrying a gun, love? A big long gun that made a big noise? Did you see that, love?”
Lizzie didn’t stir.
“Did the noise scare you? Loud and nasty, was it?”
Nothing.
Agnes repeated her questions, varying the words, probing over and over again, but Lizzie was silent. And still awake.
“Ask her if she remembers losing her doll.”