That night Rutledge lay in his bed, listening to the street noises dwindle into silence, then the sound of the church bell marking the passage of time. He couldn't get Lizzie out of his mind. She was terrified. But of what? The roar of a shotgun? The bloody death of a man? Of a killer she'd seen-and somehow recognized? Then why hadn't she screamed in terror at sight of Mark Wilton? Her father, not the Captain, frightened her most. Why? He wrestled with the puzzle for an hour or more and came no closer to an answer. Bowles. He was supposed to call London on Monday and speak to Bowles. A drunk, a child, a whore. Witnesses against the Royal Family's favorite war hero. He, Rutledge, was going to look a right fool at the Yard! "Aye, and is it why they've sent you to Warwickshire, then?" Hamish asked. "A sick man who's not up to the business in hand? Who'll be blamed for muddling the evidence and give them a reason to let the Captain off the hook? Is that what London wanted when it let you take on this bluidy murder?"
Rutledge felt cold. Was that the reason he'd been given this case? As the scapegoat for failure? Was that why they hadn't mentioned Hickam? Hoping that the shock of discovering the truth might be too much for the balance of Rutledge's mind as well? Or, alternatively, if he was successful… he was also expendable? When he brought the wrath of Buckingham Palace down on the Yard's head, he could be quietly returned to the clinic, with regret that the experiment hadn't worked out. For the Yard. For Rutledge. For the doctors who'd had faith in him.
It was a frightening prospect. While Hamish rattled gleefully around in the silence, Rutledge fought his anger. And his fear. And the dreadful loss of hope, a hope that'd buoyed him through the worst days at the clinic as he fought for survival and the harsh reality of returning to London…
He promised himself that he wouldn't return to the clinic. He wouldn't go back to failure. There were other choices. There always were. To a man who feared living more than he feared death. Sunday morning was overcast, a misting rain fading into low, heavy clouds that hung about Upper Streetham like ghosts. The heat was oppressive, wrapping the damp around people making their way to the church and wreathing the air inside with a breathlessness that even the open doors couldn't drain away.
Rutledge went to see Hickam before walking down to the church. The man was sleeping when he arrived, but the housekeeper was a little more optimistic about his condition. Still, she wouldn't let Rutledge come in.
"Stronger. That's all I can tell you. But the doctor, now, he was dragged out to the Pinter farm last night, tired as he was, and he said it was all your doing!" Her voice was sharp with condemnation. "He's not going to church this morning either, I can tell you that! Not if you haven't roused him up with your banging on the door."
"But the child's all right? She seems better?" he asked. "Did she sleep?"
"No thanks to you! Get on with your own business, and leave doctoring to those who know what's best!"
Rutledge thanked her and went on to the church. The last of the parishioners were hurrying through the lych-gate and he could hear the sound of the organ as he walked quickly down the Court. He'd found before the war that going to the church the victim had attended sometimes gave him a better feeling for the atmosphere of the town or the part of London in question. Anything that brought the victim into better perspective was useful.
The oppressiveness of the morning hung around the church door, and a flush of claustrophobia left him suddenly breathless. He shook his head at the usher ready to lead him down the aisle to a seat and stepped instead into the last one on the back row, where he could escape the heat and the crush of bodies.
Before the first prayer, someone slipped in beside him. Looking up, he met Catherine Tarrant's equally surprised eyes. Then she sat down and ignored him as she fumbled for her prayer book. It was an old one, he saw, and she found her place without trouble.
The service was High Church, which befitted the image of a man like Carfield. He brought to everyone's attention the fact that the funeral for Charles Harris would be held on Tuesday morning at ten, then spent several minutes lauding the dead man in a sonorous voice that echoed around the stone arches and through the nave. You'd have thought, Rutledge told himself, that they were burying a saint, not a soldier.
He let his eyes wander, taking in the high-vaulted ceiling, the slender pillars, and a small but very fine reredos behind the altar. Above that was a rather plain east window. The rere- dos was of stone, a representation of the Last Supper, and the figures had a grace about them that was pleasing.
The Haldane family tombs were just visible from where he sat; they were ornate marble, with clusters of cherubs as mourners around the bases. Several of the figures were medieval, a handful were Elizabethan, while the Victorian representations were almost lavishly ugly.
The Vicar's sermon was on making the best of one's life, using each idle minute with care, recognizing that death might sweep in at any moment to wipe out the hopes and dreams of the future. He never mentioned Charles Harris's name, but Rutledge was sure that every parishioner present knew exactly what his reference was. Rutledge spent most of the long exhortation studying the townspeople in the body of the church. He could see Catherine Tarrant only out of the corner of his eye, but several rows away was Helena Som- mers, with Laurence Royston just ahead of her; Captain Wilton and Sally Davenant were down near the front; and to their left were the two women Rutledge had met near the market cross the day before, Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Mobley, with their husbands. To his surprise, he caught sight of Georgina Grayson as well, sitting alone in one corner, a very fine hat on her head and wearing a dress of the most conservative cut in a most becoming but decorous summery green.
When the last prayer was said, Rutledge was on his feet and out of the church door, away from the rising tide of people coming toward him. He found a vantage point under a tree in the churchyard and watched for a time.
Catherine Tarrant had also come out almost as quickly as he had, making her way toward a car with a driver waiting by the lych-gate. But the others were taking their time. Laurence Royston came out, strode down the walk, and called to Catherine as she was getting into the car. She waited for him, and he went to speak to her. She shook her head, smiling but firm.
Mavers was lingering behind the lych-gate, watching. Rut- ledge saw him and wondered what had brought him there. Sergeant Davies came out of the church and stopped to speak to Carfield, effectively damming the flow of people for the moment. Royston said good-bye to Catherine Tarrant, and her driver went to the end of the Court to turn the car. Mavers came quickly to Royston and began to speak very earnestly.
Royston listened, head to one side, watching Catherine's departure. Then his attention came back to Mavers, and after a time he began to shake his head.
Mavers's reaction was interesting. A flush of anger spread over his face, and he began to bob almost frantically, demanding something.
But Royston seemed to take pleasure in telling him that it was no use. Rutledge was not close enough to hear, but the movements of both men told enough of the tale.
Mavers was furious. For an instant, Rutledge thought he was going to lash out with his clenched fists, and Royston must have thought so too because he stepped back, wary.
Suddenly Mavers turned toward the church and raised his voice, making himself heard by the fresh flood of people moving out into the mist.
"Has God refreshed your spirits?" he demanded, the fury mounting in him almost slurring his words. "Do you feel sanctified? Or have you seen yon fat toad for what he is, a mountebank, a fool leading other fools down the path of lies and high-flown words covering the emptiness of every soul here?"
With their attention riveted on him, he swung around to where a stunned Royston was standing, watching him, and included him in the fierce denunciation.
"There's not a Christian in the lot of you. Not one soul not already damned, and no one safe from the fires of hell! Here's a murderer of children, hiding behind the coattails of a man who went to wars to do his killing. Aye, you think you see the Colonel's fine agent, but I know him for what he is, a man who paid his way out of the law's clutches, a rich man's money for the bloody deed, and the Colonel, like a pied piper, leading your sons off to war and maiming the lot of them in soul or body! His funeral ought to be a time of rejoicing that he's dead before his time! And yonder's a whore, wearing the dress of a proper lady while you-and you-and you"-he was pointing to a handful of appalled men-"make your way to her bed any chance you've got! Aye, I know who you are, I've seen you there!"
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 Mav- ers'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 Rut- ledge 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.