A Test of Wills

by Charles Todd

  And this was the time to speak to her, while Helena was at the funeral. He doubled his pace, as if afraid, now that he’d remembered her, that she might be gone before he got there. Cursing himself for his blindness, for seeing with his eyes and not with that intuitive grasp of people he’d always had.

  Ahead he could hear something, unidentifiable at first, a loud, insistent, repetitive—

  It was the goose at the Sommers cottage. Something had upset the bird, he could tell from the wild sound, rising and falling without so much as a breath in between.

  Rutledge broke into a run, ignoring the neat rows of young crops under his feet, stumbling in the soft earth, keeping his balance with an effort of will, his eyes on the rose-draped wall that separated Mallows from Haldane land and the Sommers cottage.

  Helena was coming into town for the services. Maggie was alone—

  He could hear screams now, high and wordless, and a man’s bellow of pain. He was no longer running, he was covering the ground with great leaps, risking his neck he knew, but unable to think of that as the screams reached a crescendo of something beyond pain.

  Reaching the wall, he rested his palms on the edge of it, swung his body over in one movement, paying no heed to the long thorn-laced roses that pulled at his clothes. His feet landed among Maggie’s pathetic little flowers on the far side of the wall, trampling them heedlessly.

  There was a motorcar in the drive, down by the gate. It was empty, and he ignored it, springing for the cottage.

  Seeing him coming, the goose wheeled from her stand near the cottage door and sailed toward him, wings out, neck low, prepared for the attack.

  He brushed her roughly aside, and was ten yards from the door when it burst open and a man came reeling out, his face a mask of blood, his shirt torn and soaked to crimson, his trousers slashed and smeared.

  It was Royston. Something had laid open his shoulder—Rutledge could see the blue-white sheen of bone there—and he plunged heavily off the steps and into the grass, hardly aware of Rutledge sliding to a halt almost in his path.

  Regardless of the pain he was inflicting, Rutledge caught him by his good shoulder and swung him around, anger twisting his face into a grimace as he shouted, “Damn you! What have you—”

  Inside, the screaming went on.

  “Watch her!” Royston cried. “She’s got—got an ax—” His knees buckled. “The child—the child—”

  Rutledge managed to break his fall, but Royston was losing blood rapidly, his words weaker with every breath. “The child—I killed—”

  Without waiting for any more, Rutledge was through the door, eyes seeing nothing after the glare of the sun, but ahead of him was something, a figure barely glimpsed. A woman in black, huddled on the floor at the end of the brown sofa, two darknesses blending into one like some distorted parody of humanity, humped and ugly. A primeval dread lifted the hairs along his arms.

  Reaching her, he grasped her shoulders, saying, “Are you all right? Has he hurt you? What has he done to you?”

  She stared up at him, face chalk white, eyes large and wild. In one bloody hand was an ax. His own eyes were adjusting rapidly now. The room was empty except for Maggie and the assorted furnishings of a rented house.

  He got her up on the sofa, and she leaned back, eyes closed. “Is he dead?” she asked breathlessly, in the voice of a terrified child.

  “No—I don’t think so.”

  She tried to get up, but he pressed her back against the sofa, holding her there, trying to determine how much of the blood was hers, how much Royston’s.

  “I’ll have to get help—I’ll find Helena and bring her to you—she’s at the church—”

  But Maggie was shaking her head, dazed but at least able to understand him. Her eyes turned toward the closed door at the far end of the room. “She’s in there,” Maggie whispered.

  Rutledge felt his blood run cold.

  “I’ll go—”

  “No—leave her! I hope she’s dead!”

  He mistook her meaning, thinking that she was saying that death was preferable to the cataclysm of rape.

  “I saw her kill him,” she went on, not taking her eyes from the bedroom door. “I saw her! She shot Colonel Harris. And it was for nothing, it wasn’t the right man—she’d thought it was, but Mavers said—and then that man out there admitted it was true, that he’d killed the child.”

  “What child?” he asked, thinking only of Lizzie.

  “Why, little Helena, of course. Mr. Royston ran over her in his car—in Colonel Harris’s car. And the check he sent was in the Colonel’s name. So we thought—all these years we thought—but it wasn’t the Colonel. Helena got it all wrong.” There was a sudden spark of triumph in her eyes, as if it gave her some obscure pleasure to think that Helena had been wrong. “Aunt Mary and Uncle Martin always said she was better than I was, so pretty, so smart, so fearless—they said they wished the car had killed me, not Helena. I was only adopted, you see, I wasn’t theirs—” There was a lifetime of suffering in her words, a lifelong misery because the wrong child had died in an accident and she had been blamed for living. “They asked for all that money, and it wasn’t enough to satisfy them, they wanted her back again. But she was dead. And I was alive.”

  He wasn’t interested in Maggie’s childhood; he had a man bleeding to death on his hands, and God knew what behind that closed, silent bedroom door.

  “So when Helena discovered that the Colonel lived here, just across the wall—that he was our neighbor—”

  Getting up from his knees, his breathing still erratic and harsh, he ignored Maggie and started across the room to the bedroom, forcing himself to face what had to be faced. Hamish had been babbling for the last five minutes, a counterpoint to Maggie’s slow, painful confession, but Rutledge shut him out, shut out everything but the long, bright streak of blood down the door panel, on the handle of the knob—

  Somehow Maggie was there before him. “No! Leave her alone, I tell you! I won’t let you go near her—let her die!” And with such swiftness that he couldn’t have stopped her if his own life had depended upon it, she was through the door and into the room, turning the key in the lock behind her.

  “Maggie!” he shouted, pounding on the door, but he could hear only her sobbing. She’d taken the ax with her. There was nothing to do but try to break the door down with his shoulder or kick it down.

  It took him three tries. When it finally swung wide on broken hinges, he was into the room before he could regain his balance.

  There was only one bed, narrow, neatly made, now covered in blood. And only Maggie, collapsed across the pretty lemon-colored counterpane like a heap of rags, stained and worn. The ax was on the floor at her feet. He turned wildly, surveying the small room, finding no one else, the window closed, the closet empty. Then he was beside the woman on the bed, leaning over her, lifting her gently. Black lifeblood welled beneath her, thick and pungent. The heavy, ivory-handled knife had plunged too deep. There was nothing he could do.

  Her eyes were not able to see him. But she was still alive. Just.

  “I had to do it,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. She knew that. She always knew things before I ever did. But for once she was wrong—about the Colonel. She’ll go to hell, won’t she, for killing him? And I’ll go to heaven with the angels, won’t I? We couldn’t share anymore. Not with that on her conscience.”

  “Where did she kill him?” Rutledge asked.

  “By the wall. When he came to speak to Maggie. She had the shotgun hidden there, among the roses, where he couldn’t see it. And she tried to ask him if he’d been the one driving the car that killed Helena. But he wouldn’t listen, he told her not to be a fool, that she was upset and not thinking clearly. So she shot him—she lifted the gun and shot him and his head flew everywhere, and the horse bolted before he’d stopped bleeding, and it was the most awful…”

  Her voice faded. He could see the blood trickling out of her mouth. The way the
body lay, graceless and heavy. It would only be a matter of minutes. There was nothing he could do to stop the bleeding, nothing anyone could do to put the torn flesh back together. But he sat there beside her until her eyes told him she was dead. Then he got to his feet and began to search the cottage.

  He found the shotgun in a closet. And signs of one breakfast on the table. And only one bedroom occupied, the other with the mattress still rolled up and wrapped in a sheet. Two trunks holding clothes. He went through each cupboard and closet, looked under anything that might hide a body. But there was no one.

  He wasn’t surprised.

  Taking a sheet with him, he hurried out to bind up Royston’s bloody shoulder. The goose, smelling the blood, had backed off behind the car in the drive. Royston’s car. He’d come to take Helena to church….

  Royston was very weak, but alive. Rutledge, with some experience in war wounds, did what he could to stop the bleeding, and then called his name, trying to rouse him.

  Royston opened his eyes, stared at Rutledge with a frown, then groaned with the mounting pain. “In there,” he managed hoarsely.

  “It’s over,” Rutledge said curtly.

  “I got here a little early. I was talking to Maggie, and she began to ask me about the—accident. All those years ago. Mavers had said something, Helena had told her about it, she said. Then she went into the bedroom to fetch Helena. And Helena came out with the ax. I didn’t—there was nothing I could do. If you hadn’t come—”

  “Stop talking.”

  “You can’t leave Maggie here! Not with that madwoman!”

  “Maggie’s dead.”

  “Gentle God!”

  “And Helena died with her.”

  “What? She killed her cousin?”

  “You killed Helena. In Colonel Harris’s car. When you were twenty. You told me so yourself.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “There never was a Helena. Only—Maggie, and years of being told that Helena was better and brighter and stronger than she was—until she believed it. And tried to be Helena herself. And couldn’t. But somehow she created Helena inside herself.” He shivered, thinking of Hamish, wondering if one day in the future, he’d create the man’s image in his own flesh and be a divided soul, like Maggie Sommers. “And it was—Helena—who shot Charles Harris.”

  He got Royston to his feet and somehow to the car. Then he was driving as fast as he could toward Upper Streetham, watching the man’s face, watching the rough breathing.

  Someone fetched the doctor from the church, and then Warren threw them all out of his surgery as he worked over Laurence Royston. All except Rutledge, who stood in the doorway watching the gentle, swift hands moving across the savage wounds of the ax. “I don’t know how this happened,” Warren said over his shoulder. “It will be touch and go, if he lives. But he’s got a strong constitution. I think we can save him. I won’t give up without a fight—”

  The front door opened and Rutledge could hear Wilton’s voice, and then Forrest’s.

  He went out to speak to them, leaving Warren to his work.

  Later, he called London. Bowles growled at him, wanting to know what he’d done about Wilton.

  “Nothing. He’s in the clear. I’ve found the murderer. She’s dead—”

  “What do you mean? She? What she?”

  So Rutledge told him. Bowles listened, grunting from time to time. At the end of it, he said, “I don’t understand any of this business—”

  “I know. But the poor woman lived in such wretchedness that I can’t blame her for trying to bring Helena back to life. You’ll have to check with the police in Dorset, see what’s known about Maggie. It’s going to be routine, I think. I don’t expect any surprises.”

  “How can two women live in one body?”

  Rutledge was silent. How could he explain? Without betraying himself? And oddly enough, he’d liked Helena…. Someday, would other people like Hamish better than Ian Rutledge? It was a frightening thought. The doctor had told him he wasn’t mad to hear Hamish—because he, Rutledge, knew that Hamish didn’t exist. But Maggie was different. She’d wanted Helena to exist. Not out of madness but out of a bleak and lonely need to satisfy two vicious, selfish adults, trying to become the daughter they’d lost and mourned, a desperate bid for love by a shy, bewildered child…until she’d made Helena live again. And one day, coming across Charles Harris in a town far from home, suddenly Helena wanted vengeance. Maggie lost control—was in danger of losing herself—and when Helena attacked Laurence Royston, Maggie had somehow found the strength to stop it. Once and for all.

  Bowles was saying, “—and I don’t really care. What matters is that I’ve got the Palace off my back now. We can close the case, sweep it all under the rug, clear the Captain’s good name—and we’re all back where we started from.”

  Except for Colonel Harris, Rutledge thought.

  And Maggie Sommers…

  …and Lettice.

  He felt waves of black depression settling over him, swamping him.

  No! he told himself fiercely.

  No, I won’t give into it. I’ll fight. And by God, somehow I’ll survive! I solved this murder. The skills are there, I’ve touched them—and I will use them again! Whatever else I’ve lost, this one triumph is mine.

  “Ye’ll no’ triumph over me!” Hamish said. “I’m a scar on your bluidy soul.”

  “That may be,” Rutledge told him harshly. “But I’ll find out before it’s finished what we’re both made of!”

  Afterward, staring at the telephone, Bowles swore savagely. Somehow, against all expectation, Rutledge had pulled it off.

  Scotland Yard would be overjoyed with the results, they’d bring the man home as a hero, and he, Bowles, would be left to bask in reflected glory once more. That nonsense about the dead woman—she’d probably committed suicide and Rutledge had been smart enough to see his chance. To put the blame on her, not Wilton. And no one in the Yard would dare to question it. Not when so many reputations had been saved…

  Well. There’s always a next time. Beginner’s luck, that’s what it was. And next time, no convenient scapegoat would spoil the game….

  About the Author

  CHARLES TODD is the author of nine Ian Rutledge mysteries—A False Mirror, A Long Shadow, A Cold Treachery, A Fearsome Doubt, Watchers of Time, Legacy of the Dead, Search the Dark, Wings of Fire, and A Test of Wills—and one stand-alone novel, The Murder Stone. This mother-and-son writing team lives in Delaware and North Carolina, respectively. Visit their website at www.charlestodd.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Resounding praise for

  CHARLES TODD’s

  A TEST OF WILLS

  and other INSPECTOR IAN RUTLEDGE

  novels

  “One of the best historical series being written today.”

  Washington Post Book World

  “Remarkable…. Todd, an American, seems to have perfect pitch in his ability to capture the tenor and nuances of English country life with its clearly defined social strata. A Test of Wills may on the surface be another whodunit, but Todd raises disturbing issues of war and peace that still confront us today. The author promises that Rutledge will return, which is good news for lovers of literary thrillers.”

  Orlando Sentinel

  “A first novel that speaks out, urgently and compassionately, for a long-dead generation…. A Test of Wills is both a meticulously wrought puzzle and a harrowing psychological drama about a man’s struggle to raise himself from the dead…. Mr. Todd gives us a superb characterization of a man whose wounds have made him a stranger in his own land, and a disturbing portrait of a country intolerant of all strangers.”

  New York Times Book Review

  “One of the most respected writers in the genre.”

  Denver Post

  “The essential pleasures of the well-crafted puzzle are found in this debut, [an] abso
rbing story.”

  Bergen Record

  “No mystery series I can think of captures the sadness and loss that swept over England after World War I with the heart-breaking force of Charles Todd’s books about Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “In A Test of Wills, Charles Todd gives us a Golden Age crime story in its proper historical setting. This is an intelligent, controlled, and well-organized first novel, rich with promise of a bright future. I look forward to the next.”

  Reginald Hill, author of The Stranger House

  “Strong, elegant prose, detailed surroundings, and sound plotting characterize this debut historical…. Highly recommended.”

  Library Journal

  “Somehow I missed Test when it came out in hardback—but I won’t make the same mistake for the second outing of Mr. Todd’s fascinating character.”

  Washington Times

  “Expert plotting and keen insight into the human psyche [are] hallmarks of this series.”

  Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

  “War-wounded Britain in 1919 is beautifully conveyed in an intricately plotted mystery. With this remarkable debut, Charles Todd breaks new ground in the historical crime novel.”

  Peter Lovesey, author of The Circle

  “Like P. D. James and Ruth Rendell, Charles Todd writes novels that transcend genre. They are well-plotted mysteries, taut with psychological suspense. They are also fine literature, with fully developed characters and evocative descriptions. Above all, these stories peer deeply into human nature.”

  Winston-Salem Journal

  “More than an ordinary whodunit, this literate thriller raises disturbing issues of war and peace.”

  Charleston Gazette

  “The debut of Charles Todd’s Inspector Ian Rutledge is an auspicious one. In a novel full of complex and believable characters, perhaps the most complex of all is the Great War itself, which backlights this mystery with its monumental horrors.”

  Gaylord Dold, author of The Last Man in Berlin