A Test of Wills (19 page)

“What did you expect? Shivers of premonition?”

“No, don’t offer me sarcasm! Give me credit for a little sense, a little knowledge of the man I was planning to marry!” A flush of anger in her cheeks made her eyes glitter, the unshed tears brightening them.

“But still you called off the wedding! In my presence.”

“You don’t marry while you’re in mourning!”

“Then you’ll go ahead and marry him after you’ve mourned a decent length of time? If he isn’t hanged for murder?”

Shocked, she stared at him. “I—I don’t—”

“Lettice. You aren’t telling me all of the truth.” He gave her time to answer him, but she said nothing, her eyes holding his, unreadable, once more defiant. “Who are you protecting? Mark? Yourself? Or Charles?”

The wind had picked up, lashing at the house, sending a skirl of leaves rattling across the windows. She got up quickly and went to close them. From there, she turned to face him again. “If you want to hang Mark Wilton, you’ll have to prove he’s a murderer. In a court of law. With evidence and witnesses. If you can do that, if you can show that he was the one who shot Charles Harris, I will come to the hanging. I’ve lost Charles, and if I truly thought Mark had killed him, and no one could actually prove it, even though that was the way it had happened, I’d go through with the wedding and spend the rest of our lives making him pay for it! I care that much! But I won’t betray him. If he’s innocent, I’ll fight for him. Not because I love him—or don’t love him—but because Charles would have expected me to fight.”

“If Mark didn’t shoot Harris—who did?”

“Ah!” she said, smiling sadly. “We’re back to where we were, aren’t we? Well, I suppose it comes down to one thing, Inspector. What mattered most to Mark? Keeping me? Or killing Charles? Because he knew—he knew!—he couldn’t do both. So what did he have to gain?”

The storm broke then, rain coming down with the force of wind behind it, rattling shutters and windows and roaring down the chimney, almost shutting out the flash of the lightning and a clap of thunder that for an instant sounded as if it had broken just overhead.

17

The rain was so intense that he stopped at the end of the drive, in the shelter of overhanging trees. Rutledge’s face was wet, his hair was matted to his head, and the shoulders of his coat were dark with water. But he felt better out of that house, away from the strange eyes that told him the truth—but only part of the truth. He didn’t need Hamish whispering “She’s lying!” to tell him that whatever Lettice Wood was holding back, he’d find no way of forcing it out of her.

As the storm passed, the rain dwindled to a light drizzle, the ground steaming, the air still humid and unbreathable. He got out and started the car again, then turned away from Upper Streetham toward the Warwick road. He drove aimlessly, no goal in mind except to put as much distance between himself and the problems of Charles Harris’s murder as he could for the moment.

“You’re drawn to her, the witch,” Hamish said. “And what will Jean have to say about that?”

“No, not drawn,” Rutledge answered aloud. “It’s something else. I don’t know what it is.”

“Do you suppose, then, that she bewitched the Captain and the Colonel as well? That somewhere she had a hand in this murder?”

“I can’t see her as a murderess—”

Hamish laughed. “You ought to know, better than anyone, that people kill for the best of reasons as well as the worst.”

Rutledge shivered. What was it about Lettice Wood that reached out to him in spite of his better judgment?

Reluctantly, bit by bit, she had confirmed Hickam’s rambling words. And Wilton’s own behavior, his unwillingness to come to Mallows after the quarrel or explain what it had been about, reinforced the picture all too clearly. And it was slowly, inevitably developing. The child’s part in it still—

Rounding the bend, he saw the bicycle almost too late, coming up on it with a suddenness that left decision to reflexes rather than conscious action. He got the brake in time to skid to a stop in the mud, wheels squealing as they locked, sending him almost sideways.

Hamish swore feelingly, as if he’d been thrown across the rear seat.

Standing on the road was Catherine Tarrant, bending over her bicycle. She looked up in startled horror as he came roaring down on her, driving far faster than he’d realized, faster than the conditions of the road dictated. His bumper was not five feet from where she stood as the car came to a jarring halt, killing the engine.

Recovering from her shock, she demanded angrily, “What do you think you’re doing, you damned fool! Driving like that? You could have killed me!”

But he was getting out of the car, and she recognized him then. “Oh—Inspector Rutledge.”

“What the hell are you doing in the middle of the road? You deserve to be run down!” he responded with a matching anger, marching toward her, fists clenched against his rising temper. The unpleasant drizzle wasn’t helping.

“The chain’s broken—I don’t know if something came loose or if I jammed it when I skidded. Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t just stand there, put my bicycle in the back of your car before we’re both wet to the skin, and take me home!” She was in a foul temper as well, but dry, he noticed, as if she’d found shelter somewhere from the worst of the rain.

They stared at each other, faces tight with self-absorbed emotions; then she managed a wry smile. “Look, we’d better both get out of the way, or someone else will fly around that bend and finish us off! Take me home and I’ll offer you some tea. You look as if you could use it. I know I could.”

He walked past her, lifted the bicycle, and carried it to his car. She helped him put it in the back—he had an instant’s sharp sense of the ridiculous, thinking that it would crowd Hamish out—and then came around to the passenger side, not waiting for him to open her door.

He cranked the car, got in, and said, “Did you miss the rain?”

“I was at the Haldanes’ house. They’re away, I just went by to pick up a book Simon promised to lend me.” She lifted a large, heavily wrapped parcel out of the basket behind her and set it in her lap. “He brought it back from Paris and thought I might want to see it. Something on the Impressionists. Do you know them?”

They talked about art as he backed the car and drove to her house, and she left a servant to deal with the bicycle, striding past the handsome staircase and down the hallway toward her studio without looking over her shoulder to see if he followed. Setting the borrowed book on a stool, she took off her hat and coat, then said, “Get out of that coat, it will dry faster if you aren’t in it.”

Rutledge did as he was told, looking about for a chair back to drape it on.

Catherine sighed. “Well, Mavers most certainly put the wind up everyone in Upper Streetham this morning! What did you think of his little show?”

“Was it a show? Or was he upset?”

She shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? The damage is done. I think he rather enjoyed it too. Lashing out. It’s the only way he can hurt back, with words. Nobody pays any attention to his ideas.”

“Which is one of the reasons he might have shot Charles Harris.”

“Yes, I suppose it is—to make us sit up and take notice. Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing him arrested for murder and taken off to London or wherever! I didn’t enjoy having my own life stripped for the delectation of half of Upper Streetham—the whole of it, come to that! Everyone will talk. Not about what he said of them, but about everyone else. Those who weren’t there will soon be of the opinion that they were.” Catherine moved about her paintings, touching them, not seeing them, needing only the comfort of knowing they were there.

“That’s a very bitter view of human nature.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve learned that life is never what you expect it will be. Just as you come to the fringes of happiness, touching it, feeling it, tasting it—and desperately hoping for the rest of it—it’s jerked away.”

“You have your art.”

“Yes, but that’s a compulsion, not happiness. I paint because I must. I love because I want to be loved in return. Wanted to be.”

“Did you ever paint Rolf Linden?”

Startled, she stopped in midstride. “Once. Only—once.”

“Could I see what you did?”

Hesitating, she finally moved across to a cabinet in one wall, unlocking it with a key she took from her pocket. She reached inside and drew out a large canvas wrapped in cloth. He moved forward to help her with it, but she gestured to him to stay where he was. There was a little light coming in through the glass panes overhead, and she kicked an easel to face it, then set the painting on it. After a moment, she reached up and undid the wrappings.

Rutledge came around to see it better, and felt his breath stop in his throat as his eyes took it in.

There was a scene of storm and light, heavy, dark clouds nearer the viewer, a delicate light fading into the distance. A man stood halfway between, looking over his shoulder, a smile on his face. It was somehow the most desolate painting that Rutledge had ever seen. He’d expected turbulence, a denial, a fierce struggle between love and loss, something dramatic with grief. But instead she’d captured annihilation, an emptiness so complete that it echoed with anguish.

He knew that anguish. And suddenly he was convinced that Lettice Wood knew it also. That that was what he’d responded to in her.

Catherine was watching his face, unable to hear Hamish but seeing the flicker of fear and recognition and a deep stirring of response, while Hamish—Hamish wept.

“It’s never been shown—” It was all he could manage to say into the silence.

“No,” she answered with certainty. “And never will be.”

A maid brought in the tea, and Catherine quickly covered the painting, putting it carefully back into its vault, like a mausoleum for her love. Turning back to pour a cup for Rutledge and then for herself, she said unsteadily, “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

“The war?”

“Yes. But she’s still alive. Sometimes that’s worse.”

She put sugar into her tea and handed him the bowl. He helped himself, finding relief in the ordinary movements of his hands, then accepted the cream.

“Where were you going when you nearly ran me down?” she asked, finally sitting down, allowing him to do the same. It was an overt change of subject. She had closed the door between them again.

“Anywhere. Out of Upper Streetham.”

“Why?”

He reached for one of the small, iced tea cakes as an excuse not to meet her eyes. “To think.”

“What about?”

“Whether or not I have enough evidence to arrest Mark Wilton tomorrow morning. For Harris’s murder.”

He could hear her suck in her breath, but she didn’t say anything.

Looking up, he asked, “Why did you track down Daniel Hickam? On the Thursday you spoke to me? No, don’t bother to deny it! I have witnesses. You stopped him, talked to him, and then gave him money.”

“I felt sorry for him…. Most people have forgotten that before the war he was a very good cabinetmaker. Better than his father ever was. He made the frames for my first paintings. And that easel. Now—he probably shakes too much to drive a nail straight, much less do finer work. I try to keep an eye on him.”

“No. You wanted to know what he’d said about Wilton. I don’t know yet how you found out about Hickam. Possibly from Forrest.” He watched that guess go home. She wasn’t as good at hiding her thoughts as Lettice Wood.

“Yes, all right. I was afraid for Mark. I still am. He wouldn’t have killed Charles! You come in here from London, asking questions, making assumptions. You judge people even though you know very well they’re under a great deal of stress. But it isn’t the same as getting under the skin, is it? You can’t do that, you can’t know them. Not in a few days’ time. You haven’t got that skill!”

He’d had it. Once. Refusing to be sidetracked, Rutledge said only, “He had means. Opportunity. Motive. It’s all there now. Out into the open.”

“Then why are you telling me this? If you know so much!” She cocked her head to one side, considering him. “Why were you driving out on the Warwick road when you had all the evidence you need? Why are you involving me?”

“Because I wanted to know what you would say when you heard.”

She set down her teacup. “And are you satisfied?” He didn’t answer. After a moment she asked, “Have you told London yet?”

“No. Not yet. I’ll call Superintendent Bowles early tomorrow morning. I’d prefer to have everything finished before the funeral services on Tuesday. Upper Streetham will be full of people then. Harris’s friends, fellow officers, dignitaries. They shouldn’t be distracted from their mourning by police business.”

“There’ll be a great hue and cry when you do it. It will upset the King, and everyone else, including the Prime Minister. He’s got enough on his plate right now, with the peace talks. It will bring the wrath of Scotland Yard down on your head. It will ruin Mark. It could very well ruin you! I’d be very careful before I did something I couldn’t undo.”

She was a very perceptive woman. And she knew London.

“That doesn’t matter. If he shot Charles Harris, why should Mark Wilton go scot-free?”

“He couldn’t have shot Charles! He’s marrying the man’s ward! You don’t seem to understand the importance of that!”

“The wedding has been called off.”

“Of course it has, Lettice is in mourning. But by next spring—or in a quiet ceremony at Christmas, since she’s got no family and needs Mark’s support—”

“No. Charles himself stopped the wedding. And that’s why he was killed.”

Catherine shook her head. “Called off the wedding? Before he died? You can’t be serious!”

“Why would he joke about that? Why should I?”

“No, Mark was going to marry her! And he will, once this nonsense is finished. I’ll help him find someone in London to take his case if you go through with this. I refuse to believe that Mark could have done anything of the sort! Or Charles, for that matter! Whoever told you such a thing is either crazy or vindictive. Or both. I absolutely refuse to believe it!”

He left soon afterward, stiffly thanking her for the tea and then finding his own way out. Catherine said good-bye with equal reserve, and added as he reached the solarium doorway, his coat over his arm, “Don’t be hasty, Inspector. You owe that to Mark. You owe it to Charles. Be very sure before you act!”

Rutledge drove back to Upper Streetham and left the car at the rear of the Inn, going in by the door he’d used on the night of his arrival. The back stairs were empty, the Inn silent.

He felt bone weary. Emotion was drained out of him, and his body ached with tension.

I need to find Forrest, he told himself. I need to attend to that warrant, bring Wilton in. The sooner the better.

“And where’s he going?” Hamish demanded. “He’s no’ the kind of man who’ll run, or he wouldn’t have been so good at killing Germans.”

“Shut up and keep out of it! I thought you wanted to see the dashing Captain hanged!”

“Aye,” Hamish said, “I do. But I’m not ready to see you crawl back to yon clinic, and doctors that will stuff your mind full of drugs. Easing you into oblivion where there’s no pain and no memory and no guilt to savage you. I’ve not finished with you yet, Ian Rutledge, and until I have, I won’t let you crawl away and hide!”

An hour later, Rutledge found himself at Sally Davenant’s door. The maid Grace opened it to his knock and said, “Yes, sir?”

“I’ve come to see Captain Wilton. Will you tell him Inspector Rutledge is here. On official business.”

She caught the nuances in his voice and her face lost its trained mask of politeness. Concern filled her eyes, and she said, “Is there anything wrong, sir?”

“Just tell the Captain I’m here, if you please.”

“But he’s in Warwick, sir. He and Mrs. Davenant have gone to dine there. She wasn’t herself all afternoon, and the Captain suggested an outing to take her mind off the unpleasantness at the church this morning. I doubt they’ll be back much before eleven o’clock, sir.”

He swore under his breath. “Very well. Tell him I’ll expect to see him here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.” He nodded and walked off down the scented path, among the peonies and the roses.