Misunderstanding the horrified expression on Rut- ledge's face, Sergeant Davies nodded sympathetically. "Aye," he said, "it's hard to swallow, I know. You were in the war, then? My youngest brother was in the Balkans, lost both arms. Took it like a man. Not a shred of weakness in Tommy!"
He began to fiddle with his cup as he went on, as if to distract himself from the rest of what he had to say. "Of course we didn't know about Hickam at first, I just came across him that same morning, lying under a tree on the lane, sleeping one off. When I tried to wake him up and send him off home, he swore he was sober as a judge, and told me I could ask the Colonel and the Captain, they'd vouch for him. I thought he meant generally, you see."
The cup spun out of his fingers, clattering against the sugar bowl and almost tipping over the cream pitcher. Davies caught it, returned it to his saucer, then plowed on, trying to conceal the sense of guilt that was still plaguing him. "I didn't pay any heed to him at first, I was in a hurry to find Inspector Forrest and tell him about the murder, but Hickam's place was on my way back to Upper Streetham and he was in no shape to get there on his own. By the time I'd reached his house, listening to him ramble all the way, it was beginning to sound a bit different from what I'd first thought. So Inspector Forrest went to talk to him that afternoon and got a little straighter version, and we couldn't just shrug it off, could we? Right or wrong, we had to take note of it, didn't we?"
It was an appeal for forgiveness, an admission of responsibility for what had plunged Warwickshire and London into this present predicament. If he'd left well enough alone, if he hadn't bothered to stop in the first place, no one would ever have thought to question the likes of Hickam about the Colonel or the Captain. There would have been no reason, no need.
Rutledge, still fighting his own battle for control, managed to keep his voice level, but the words came out harsh and cold, apparently without any sympathy for the Sergeant's moral dilemma. "What did Captain Wilton have to say about Hickam's story?"
"Well, nothing. That is, he says he wasn't in the lane that morning, he was walking in a different direction. He says he's seen Hickam from time to time in the mornings, reeling home or sleeping wherever he was or having one of his crazy spells, but not on that occasion."
"Which doesn't mean that Hickam didn't see him"
Sergeant Davies was appalled. "You're saying the Captain's lying, sir?"
"People do lie, Sergeant, even those who have earned the Victoria Cross. Besides, Hickam's description of what he saw is strangely complete, isn't it? The Captain holding the Colonel's bridle, the Captain's face turning red, the Captain stepping back with clenched fists. If it didn't happen that morning, if Hickam saw the two men together on another occasion, it could mean that their quarrel on the night before the murder had its roots in an earlier confrontation. That there was more animosity between the Colonel and his ward's fiance than we know at this point."
Sergeant Davies was dubious. "Even so, Hickam might have misread what he saw, there might have been a perfectly reasonable explanation. What if the two men were in agreement instead of quarreling? What if they'd been angry at someone else, or about something that neither of them liked?"
"Then why would Wilton deny that he'd met Harris in the lane? If this encounter did have some perfectly innocent explanation? No, I think you're on the wrong track there."
"Well, what if Hickam confused what he saw with something that happened at the Front? He doesn't like officers- he might even have made mischief on purpose. You can't be really sure, can you? Hickam might be capable of anything!" The disgust in Davies' face was almost a tangible thing.
"I can't answer that until I've spoken to Hickam and the Captain." Hamish's laughter had faded, he was able to think clearly again. But his heart was still pounding hard with the shock.
"Shall we start with them, then? Instead of Miss Wood?"
"No, I want to see the Colonel's house and his ward first." The truth was, he wasn't prepared to face Hickam now. Not until he was certain he could do it without betraying himself.
Had anyone guessed in London? No, surely not! It was sheer coincidence, there were any number of shell-shocked veterans scattered across England… Rutledge got to his feet. "My car is in the back. I'll meet you there in five minutes." He nodded to Barton Redfern as he walked out of the dining room, and the young man watched the two policemen until they were out of sight, then listened to Rutledge's feet beating a quick tattoo up the carpeted stairs while the Sergeant's heavy leather heels clicked steadily down the stone passage leading to the Inn yard.
Upstairs in his room, Rutledge stood with his hands flat on the low windowsill, leaning on them and looking down into the busy street below. He was still shaken. Only a half dozen people knew about his condition, and the doctors had promised to say nothing to the Yard, to give him a year to put his life back together first. The question was, had Bowles kept silent about Hickam because he hadn't thought it was something that mattered? Or because he had known it was and might embarrass Rutledge?
No, that was impossible. It had been an oversight-or at most, Bowles had tried to make this murder investigation sound more attractive than it was. A kindness…? He remembered Bowles from before the war, good at his job, with a reputation for ruthless ambition and a cold detachment. Sergeant Fletcher, who'd died in the first gas attack on Ypres, used to claim that Bowles frightened the guilty into confessing.
"I've seen 'em! Shaking in their boots and more afraid of old Bowles than they were of the hangman! Nasty piece of work, I've never liked dealing with him. Mind you, he did his job fair and square, I'm not saying he didn't. But he wasn't above using any tool that came to hand…"
Not kindness, then, not from a man like Bowles.
Still, what London had done didn't matter now.
Because here in his own room, away from Davies' watchful eyes and Redfern's hovering, Rutledge was able to think more clearly and recognize a very tricky problem. What if Hickam turned out to be right?
If it should come to an arrest-so far there was not enough evidence to look that far ahead, but assuming there was-how could the Crown go into a court of law with a Daniel Hickam as its prime witness against a man wearing the ribbon of the Victoria Cross? It would be ludicrous, the defense would tear the case to shreds. Warwickshire would be screaming for the Yard's blood, and the Yard for his.
He had wanted an investigation complex enough to distract him from his own dilemmas. Well, now he seemed to have got his wish in spades. The question remained, was he ready for it? Were his skills too rusty to handle something as difficult as the Harris murder successfully? Worse still, was he too personally involved? If so, he should back out now. This instant. Call the Yard and ask for a replacement to be sent at once.
But that would require explanations, excuses-lies. Or the truth.
He straightened, turned from the window, and reached for his coat. If he quit now, he was finished. Professionally and emotionally. It wasn't a question of choice but of survival. He would do his best, it was all anyone could do, and if in the days to come that wasn't enough, he must find the courage to admit it. Until then he was going to have to learn exactly where he stood, what he was made of.
The words coward and weakling had stung. But what rankled in his soul was that he had said nothing, not one single word, in Hickam's defense. In betraying Hickam, he felt he had betrayed himself. Rutledge and Sergeant Davies arrived at Mallows, the Colonel's well-run estate on the Warwick road, half an hour later. The sky had cleared to a cerulean blue, the air clean and sweet with spring as the car turned in through the iron gates and went up the drive.
Completely hidden from the main road by banks of old trees, the house didn't emerge until they rounded the second bend and came out of the shadows into the sun. Then mellowed brick and tall windows, warmed to gold, reflected the early morning light. Setting them off was a wide sweep of lawn mown to crisp perfection, the flower beds sharply edged and the drive smoothly raked. One glance and you could tell that not only had pride gone into the upkeep of this house, but unabashed love as well.
To Rutledge's appreciative eye, a master's hand had created this marvelously graceful facade. For the stone cornices, quoins, and moldings around the windows enhanced rather than overwhelmed the effect of elegant simplicity that the designer had been striving for. He found himself wondering who the architect had been, for this was a small jewel. Where had such a gift taken the man after this?
But Davies couldn't say. "The Colonel, now, he would have told you, and if he wasn't too busy, he'd have taken out the old plans for you to see. That was the kind of man he was, never a stickler for rank. He knew his place, and trusted you to know yours."
As Rutledge got out of the car, he found himself looking up at the windows above. One of the heavy drapes had twitched, he thought, the slight movement catching the corner of his eye. In France, where life itself depended on quick reflexes, you learned to see your enemy first or you died. It was as simple as that.
The staff had already placed a heavy black wreath on the broad wooden door, its streamers lifting gently in the light breeze. A butler answered the bell. He was a thin man of middle height, fifty-five or thereabouts, his face heavy with grief as if he mourned the Colonel personally. He informed Rutledge and Sergeant Davies in tones of polished regret that Miss Wood was not receiving anyone today.
Rutledge said only, "What is your name?"
"Johnston, sir." The words were polite, distant.
"You may tell your mistress, Johnston, that Inspector Rutledge is here on police business. You know Sergeant Davies, I think."
"Miss Wood is still unwell, Inspector." He cast an accusing glance at Davies, as if blaming him for Rutledge's ill-mannered persistence. "Her doctor has already informed Inspector Forrest-"
"Yes, I understand. We won't disturb her any longer than absolutely necessary." The voice was firm, that of an army officer giving instructions, brooking no further opposition. Certainly not the voice of a lowly policeman begging entrance.
"I'll enquire," the man replied, with a resignation that clearly indicated both personal and professional disapproval but just as clearly made no promises.
He left them standing in the hall before a handsome staircase that divided at the first-floor landing and continued upward in two graceful arcs. These met again on the second story, above the doorway, to form an oval frame for a ceiling painting of nymphs and clouds, with a Venus of great beauty in the center. From the hall she seemed to float in cloud- cushioned luxury, far beyond the reach of mere mortals, staring down at them with a smile that was as tantalizing as it was smug.
Johnston was gone for nearly fifteen minutes.
Hamish, growing restive as the tension of waiting mounted, said, "I've never been inside a house like this. Look at the floor, man, it's squares of marble, enough to pave the streets in my village. And that stair-what holds it up, then? It's a marvel! And worth a murder or two."
Rutledge ignored him and the uncomfortable stiffness of Sergeant Davies, who seemed to grow more wooden with every passing minute. The butler returned eventually and said with ill-concealed censure, "Miss Wood will receive you in her sitting room, but she asks that you will make your call brief."
He led the way up the staircase to the first floor and then turned left down a wide, carpeted corridor to a door near the end of it. The room beyond was quite spacious, uncluttered, and ordinarily, Rutledge thought, full of light from the long windows facing the drive. But the heavy rose velvet drapes had been drawn-was it these he had seen stir?-and only one lamp, on an inlaid table, made a feeble effort to penetrate the gloom.
Lettice Wood was tall and slim, with heavy dark hair that was pinned loosely on the top of her head, smooth wings from a central parting cupping her ears before being drawn up again. She was wearing unrelieved black, her skirts rustling slightly as she turned to watch them come toward her.
"Inspector Rutledge?" she said, as if she couldn't distinguish between the Upper Streetham sergeant and the representative of Scotland Yard. She did not ask them to be seated, though she herself sat on a brocade couch that faced the fireplace and there were two upholstered chairs on either side of it. A seventeenth-century desk stood between two windows, and against one wall was a rosewood cabinet filled with a collection of old silver, reflecting the single lamp like watching eyes from the jungle's edge. Sergeant Davies, behind Rutledge, stayed by the door and began to fumble in his pocket for his notebook.
For a moment the man from London and the woman in mourning considered each other in silence, each gauging temperament from the slender evidence of appearance. The lamplight reached Rutledge's face while hers was shadowed, but her voice when she spoke had been husky and strained, that of someone who had spent many hours crying. Her grief was very real-and yet something about it disturbed him. Something lurked in the dimness that he didn't want to identify.
"I'm sorry we must intrude, Miss Wood," he found himself saying with stiff formality. "And I offer our profoundest sympathy. But I'm sure you understand the urgency of finding the person or persons responsible for your guardian's death."
"My guardian." She said it flatly, as if it had no meaning for her. Then she added with painful vehemence, "I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him. Or why. It was a senseless, savage-" She stopped, and he could see that she had swallowed hard to hold back angry tears. "It served no purpose," she added finally in a defeated voice.
"What has served no purpose?" Rutledge asked quietly. "His death? Or the manner of it?"
That jolted her, as if she had been talking to herself and not to him, and was surprised to find he'd read her thoughts.
She leaned forward slightly and he could see her face then, blotched with crying and sleeplessness. But most unusual nevertheless, with a high-bridged nose and a sensitive mouth and heavy-lidded eyes. He couldn't tell their color, but they were not dark. Sculpted cheekbones, a determined chin, a long, slender throat. And yet somehow she managed to convey an odd impression of warm sensuality. He remembered how the Sergeant had hesitated over the word "attractive," as if uncertain how to classify her. She was not, in the ordinary sense, beautiful. At the same time, she was far, very far, from plain.
"I don't see how you can separate them," she answered after a moment, a black-edged handkerchief twisting in her long, slim fingers. "He wasn't simply killed, was he? He was destroyed, blotted out. It was deliberate, vengeful. Even Scotland Yard can't change that. But the man who did this will be hanged. That's the only comfort I've got." There was a deeper note in her voice as she spoke of hanging, as if she relished the image of it in her mind.
"Then perhaps we ought to begin with last Monday morning. Did you see your guardian before he left the house?"
She hesitated, then said, "I didn't go riding that morning."
Before he could take her up on that stark reply, she added, "Charles loved Mallows, loved the land. He said those rides made up, a little, for all the months he spent away. So he usually went out alone, and it was never a fixed route, you see, just wherever his list for that day took him-it might be inspecting a crop or a tenant's roof or the state of the hedges or livestock, anything. And he came back feeling-fulfilled, I suppose. It was a way of healing after all he'd been through."
"How many people knew what was on his list each day?"
"It wasn't written down, it was in his head. Laurence Royston might be aware that Charles was planning to look into a particular problem, if they'd discussed it. But for the most part it was Charles's own interests that guided him. I don't suppose you were a soldier, Inspector, but Charles once said that the greatest crime of the war was ruining the French countryside for a generation. Not the slaughter of armies, but the slaughter of the land." She leaned back, out of the light again, as if realizing that she was running on and had lost his attention.
I didn't go riding that morning Rutledge considered those words, ignoring the rest of what she had said. It was as if that one fact separated her entirely from what had happened. But in what way? He had heard soldiers offer the same excuse to avoid discussing what they had witnessed on the battlefield but had not been a part of: "I wasn't in that assault." I don't know and I don't want to know…
A denial, then. But was it a washing of hands, or a means of telling the absolute but not the whole truth?
Her face was still, but she was watching him, waiting in the security of the darkness for him to ask his next question. Her grief appeared to be genuine, and yet she was doing nothing whatsoever to help him. He could feel her resistance like a physical barrier, as if they were adversaries, not joined in a mutual hunt for a murderer.
She in her turn was silently counting her heartbeats, willing them to a steady rhythm so that her breathing didn't betray her. In feeling lay disaster. Not for this London stranger with his chill, impersonal eyes was she going to lay out her most private emotions, and watch them probed and prodded for meaning! Let him do the job he had been sent to do. And why was it taking so bloody long? Charles had been gone for three days!
The silence lengthened. Sergeant Davies cleared his throat, as if made uneasy by undercurrents he couldn't understand.
For they were there, strong undercurrents, emotions so intense they were like ominous shadows in the room. Even Hamish was silent.
Changing his tactics abruptly, Rutledge asked, "What did your fiance, Captain Wilton, and your guardian discuss after dinner on Sunday, the night before the Colonel's death?"
Her attention returned to him with a swift wariness. The heavy-lidded eyes opened wide for an instant, but she answered, "Surely you've spoken to Mark about that?"
"I'd prefer to hear what you have to say first. I understand that whatever it was led to a quarrel?"
"A quarrel?" Her voice was sharp now. "I went upstairs after dinner, I-didn't feel well. Charles and Mark were in the drawing room when I left them, talking about one of the guests invited to the wedding. Neither of them liked the man, but both felt they had to include him. An officer they'd served with, my guardian in the Boer War and Mark in France. I can't imagine them quarreling over that."
"Yet the servants told Inspector Forrest that there had been angry words between the two men, that, in fact, Captain Wilton had stormed out of the house in a rage, and that Colonel Harris flung his wineglass at the door the Captain had slammed behind him."
She was rigid, her attention fixed on him with fierce intensity. Even the handkerchief no longer unconsciously threaded itself through her fingers. He suddenly had the impression that this was news to her, that she had been unaware of what had happened in the hall. But she said only, "If they heard that much, they must have been able to tell you what it was all about."
"Unfortunately, they witnessed only the end of it."
"I see." As if distracted by some thought of her own, she said nothing for a time, and Rutledge waited, wishing he could know what was going on behind those long-lashed eyes. Then she roused herself and repeated, "Yes, that is unfortunate, isn't it? Still, you must know that neither Charles nor Mark is a hotheaded man."
"I'd hardly describe slamming a door in anger or breaking a crystal glass against it as coolheaded. But we'll have the answer to that in good time," Rutledge responded, noting with interest that she hadn't rushed to Captain Wilton's defense when she had been given the perfect opening to do just that. Yet she must have realized where such questions were leading?
Oddly enough, he thought she had. And discounted it. Or ignored it? Accustomed to reaching beyond words into emotional responses, he found her elusiveness puzzling. But he couldn't be sure whether that was his fault-or hers.
He took another tack, giving her a second opening but in a different direction. "Do you believe this man Mavers might have killed the Colonel? Apparently he's caused trouble for your guardian for a number of years."
She blinked, then said, "Mavers? He's been a troublemaker all his life. He seems to thrive on it. He sows dissent for the sheer, simple pleasure of it." Glancing at Sergeant Davies, she said, "But turning to murder? Risking the gallows? I can't see him going that far. Can you?" She frowned. "Unless, of course, it might be just what he wanted," she added thoughtfully.
"In what way?"
"He's been everything from a conscientious objector to a roaring Bolshevik-whatever might stir up people, make them angry. But everyone has more or less grown used to his ranting. Sometimes I even forget he's there. Laurence-Mr. Royston-always said it was the best way to take the wind out of his sails. But Charles felt that it might tip Mavers over the line, that being ignored was the one thing he dreaded. That it was anybody's guess what he might do then. Charles was a good judge of character, he knew Mavers better than the rest of us did. Still, if I were you I'd be wary of any confession Mavers made, unless it was backed up by indisputable proof."
Which was a decidedly puzzling remark. She had just been offered a ready-made scapegoat, and she had refused it. In his mind, Rutledge went back over what she'd just said, listening for nuances. Well, if she was trying to shift the direction of the enquiry, she had done it with an odd subtlety that was only just short of brilliant. Davies, out of her range of vision, was nodding as if he agreed with her about Mavers being the killer, and she'd said nothing of the sort.
If it hadn't occurred to her that the Captain needed defending, why had questions about the quarrel made her so wary? Had Harris been at fault there, and she was trying to preserve his good name, his reputation? Rutledge moved to the mantel, hoping that the change in angles might help him see her more clearly in the shadows. But her face was closed, her thoughts so withdrawn from him that he might as well try to read the engraving on the silver bowl at her elbow. The pallid light reached neither of them.
"Is there anyone else in the village to your knowledge with a reason to wish your guardian dead?"
"Charles had no enemies." She sighed. "There are those who might wish Mark dead, if you believe the gossips. But Charles? He was never here long enough to make enemies. He was a soldier, and leave was a rare thing, a time of respite, not for stirring up trouble."
"No land disputes, no boundary quarrels, no toes stepped on in the county?"
"I've not heard of them. But ask Laurence Royston, his agent. He can tell you about running the estate and whether there were disputes that might have festered. I can't help you there. I only came here to live near the end of the war, when I'd finished school. Before that, I was allowed to visit on school holidays when Charles had leave. Otherwise, I went home with one of my classmates."
Questioning her was like fencing with a will-o'-the-wisp. I don't know, I can't help you there, I didn't go riding that morning- And yet he had believed her when she said that hanging the murderer would bring her comfort. In his experience, the shock of sudden, violent death often aroused anger and a thirst for vengeance. But it seemed to be the only natural, anticipated reaction he'd gotten from her. Why did she keep drifting away from him?
He was reminded by a shifting of feet that Sergeant Da- vies was in the room, a witness to everything she said. A man who lived in Upper Streetham, who presumably had a wife and friends… was that the problem? He, Rutledge, was a private person himself; he understood the fierce need for privacy in others. And if that was the case, he was wasting his time now.
"How did you spend the morning? Before the news was brought to you?"
She was frowning, trying to remember as if that had been years ago, not a matter of days. "I bathed and dressed, came down to breakfast, the usual. Then I had a number of letters to write, and was just coming out of the library to see if Mr. Royston might take them into Warwick for me, when-" She stopped abruptly, then continued in a harsh voice. "I really don't recall what happened after that."
"You didn't leave the house, go to the stables?"
"Of course not, why on earth should I tell you I did one thing when I'd done another?" Rutledge took his leave soon afterward. Davies seemed relieved to be on his way downstairs at the butler's heels, showing an almost indecent haste to be gone.
But Rutledge felt unsatisfied, as if somehow he had been neatly outmaneuvered in that darkened room. Thinking back over what the girl had said, he couldn't pinpoint any particular reason for disbelieving anything she'd told him, but doubt nagged at him. She couldn't be more than twenty- one or twenty-two, and yet she had shown a self-possession that was uncommon at that age-or any other. And he hadn't been able to break through to the person underneath. To the emotions that must be there. To the unspoken words he'd wanted to hear but that she had managed to hold back.
Her detachment, then. That was what disturbed him. As if she didn't connect the reality of violent death with the questions that the police were asking her. No passionate defense of her fiance, no rush to push Mavers forward in his place, no speculation about the nature of the killer at all.
It was almost, he thought with one of those leaps of intuition that had served him so well in the past, as if she already knew who the killer was-and was planning her own private retribution… "I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him," she'd said. Not who-how.
Then as he reached the foot of the stairs he remembered something else. Both Sergeant Davies and the butler had mentioned a doctor. Had the girl been given sedatives that left her in this sleepwalker's state, detached from grief and from reality too? He'd seen men in hospital talk quietly of unspeakable horrors when they'd been given drugs: stumbling to describe terrors they couldn't endure to think about until they were so heavily sedated that the pain and the frantic anxiety were finally dulled.
He himself had confessed to Hamish's presence only under the influence of such drugs. Nothing else would have dragged that out of him, and afterward he had tried to kill the doctor for tricking him. They'd had to pull him off the man, and he'd fought every inch of the way back to his room.
It might be a good idea, then, to speak to the family's doctor before deciding what to do about Lettice Wood.
Before the butler could see them safely out the door, Rut- ledge turned to him and asked, "What was your name again? Johnston?"
"Yes, sir."
"Can you show me the drawing room, please. Where the quarrel between the Captain and the Colonel took place?"
Johnston turned and walked silently across the polished marble to a door on his left. He opened it, showing them into a room of cool greens and gold, reflecting the morning light without absorbing it. "Miss Wood had coffee brought in here after dinner, and when the gentlemen joined her, she dismissed me. Soon afterward she went upstairs, sending for one of the maids and saying that she had a headache and would like a cool cloth for her head. That was around nine o'clock, perhaps a quarter past. At ten-fifteen I came here to take away the coffee tray and to see if anything else was needed before I locked up for the night."
"And you hadn't been into or near the drawing room between taking the tray in and coming to remove it?"
"No, sir."
"What happened then? At ten-fifteen?"
At Rutledge's prodding, Johnston stepped back into the hall again, pointed to a door in the shadows of the stairs, and went on reluctantly. "I came out of that door-it leads to the back of the house-and started toward the drawing room. At that moment, Mary was coming down the stairs."
"Who is Mary?"
"There's seven on the staff here, sir. Myself, the cook, her helper, and four maids. Before the war there were twelve of us, including footmen. Mary is one of the maids and has been here the longest, next to Mrs. Treacher and myself."
"Go on."
"Mary was coming down the stairs, and she said when I came into view that she was looking to see if the banisters and the marble floor needed polishing the next morning. If not, she was going to put Nancy to polishing the grates, now that we were no longer making up morning fires."
"And?"
"And at that moment," Johnston answered heavily, "the door of the drawing room opened, and the Captain came out. I didn't see his face-he was looking over his shoulder back into the room-but I heard him say quite distinctly and very loudly, 'I'll see you in hell, first!' Then he slammed the drawing-room door behind him and went out the front door, slamming that as well. I don't think he saw me here, or Mary on the stairs." He seemed to run out of words. "Finish your story, man!" Rutledge said impatiently. "Before the front door had slammed, I heard the Colonel shout, 'That can be arranged!' and the sound of glass shattering against this door." His hand drew their eyes to the raw nick in the glossy paint of one panel, where the glass had struck with such force that a piece of it must have wedged in the wood. "Do you think Captain Wilton heard the Colonel?" In spite of himself, Johnston smiled. "The Colonel, sir, was accustomed to making himself heard on a parade ground and over the din of the battlefield. I would think that the Captain heard him as clearly as I did, and slammed the front door with added emphasis because of it." "It was a glass that shattered, not a cup?" "The Colonel usually had a glass of brandy with his coffee, and the Captain always joined him." "When you cleaned this room the next morning, did you find that two glasses had been used?" "Yes, sir," Johnston answered, perplexed. "Of course." "Which means that the two men drank together and were still on comfortable terms at that point in the evening." "I would venture to say so, yes." "Had you ever heard a quarrel between them before this particular evening?" "No, sir, they seemed to be on the best of terms." "Had they drunk enough, do you think, to have become quarrelsome for no reason? Or over some petty issue?" "With respect, sir," Johnston said indignantly, "the Colonel was not a man to become argumentative in his cups. He held his liquor like a gentleman, and so, to my knowledge, did the Captain. Besides," he added, rather spoiling the lofty effect he'd just created, "the level in the decanters showed no more than two drinks had been poured, one each." "Do you feel, having witnessed the Captain's departure, that this was a disagreement that could have been smoothed over comfortably the next day?"
"He was very angry at the time. I can't say how Captain Wilton might have felt the next morning. But I can tell you that the Colonel seemed in no way unsettled when he came down for his morning ride. Very much himself, as far as I could see."
"And Miss Wood was in her bedroom throughout the quarrel? She didn't rejoin the men in the drawing room, to your knowledge?"
"No, sir. Mary looked in on her before she came down the stairs, to see if she needed anything more, and Miss Wood appeared to be asleep. So she didn't speak to her."
"What did the Colonel do after the Captain left?"
"I don't know, sir. I thought it best not to disturb him at that moment, and I came back twenty minutes later. By that time, he had gone up to bed himself, and I went about my nightly duties before turning in at eleven. Would you like to see Mary now, sir?"
"I'll talk to Mary and the rest of the staff later," Rutledge said, and walked to the door. There he turned to look back at the drawing room and then at the staircase. Under ordinary circumstances, Wilton would have noticed Johnston and the maid as soon as he came out of the drawing-room door. But if he had been looking back at Charles Harris instead, he might not have been aware of either servant, silent and unobtrusive behind him.
With a nod, Rutledge opened the front door before Johnston could reach it to see him out, and with Sergeant Davies hurrying after him, walked down the broad, shallow stone steps and across the drive to the car.
Hamish, growling irritably, said, "I don't like yon butler. I don't hold with the rich anyway, or their toadies."
"It's a better job than you ever held," Rutledge retorted, and then swore under his breath. But Davies had been getting into the car and heard only the sound of his voice, not his words. He looked up to say, "I beg pardon, sir?" The heavy drapes of the sitting room upstairs parted a little, and Lettice Wood watched Rutledge climb into the car and start the engine. When it had passed out of sight around the first bend of the drive, she let the velvet fall back into place and wandered aimlessly to the table where the lamp still burned. She flicked it off and stood there in the darkness.
If only she could think clearly! He would be back, she was certain of that, prying into everything, wanting to know about Charles, asking about Mark. And he wasn't like the elderly Forrest; there would be no deference or fatherly concern from him, not with those cold eyes. She must have her wits about her then! The problem was, what would Mark tell them? How was she to know?
She put her hands to her head, pressing cold fingers into her temples. He looked as if he'd been ill, this inspector from Scotland Yard. And such people were often difficult. Why had Forrest sent for him? Why had it been necessary to drag London into this business, awful enough already without strangers trampling about.
Why hadn't they left it to Inspector Forrest? "Will we speak to Mavers now, sir?"
"No, Captain Wilton next, I think."
"He's staying with his cousin, Mrs. Davenant. She's a widow, has a house just on the outskirts of town, the other end of Upper Streetham from Mallows."
He gave Rutledge directions and then began to scan his notebook as if checking to make certain he had put down the salient points of the conversations with Lettice Wood and Johnston.
"I thought," Rutledge said, "that the servants claimed that the argument between the Colonel and the Captain concerned the wedding. Johnston said nothing about it."
"It was the maid, Mary Satterthwaite, who mentioned that, sir."
"Then why didn't you say so while we were there? I'd have spoken to her straightaway."
Davies flipped back through his notebook to a page near the beginning. "She said she went up to Miss Wood's room to bring a cold cloth for her head, and Miss Wood was telling her that she had left the gentlemen to discuss the marriage. But the way Miss Wood said it led Mary to think it wasn't going to be a friendly discussion."
"And then, having seen the end of the quarrel, the maid merely jumped to the conclusion that that was what they were still talking about?"
"Apparently so, sir."
Which was no evidence at all. "When is the wedding?"
Davies flipped several more pages. "On the twenty-second of September, sir. And Miss Wood and the Captain have been engaged for seven months."
Rutledge considered that. In an hour's time-from the moment that Lettice Wood left the pair together until Johnston had seen Wilton storming out of the house-the subject of conversation could have ranged far and wide. If there had been a discussion of the wedding at nine-fifteen, surely it would not have lasted an hour, and developed into a quarrel at this stage, the details having been ironed out seven months ago and the arrangements for September already well in hand…
Without warning, he found himself thinking of Jean, of their own engagement in that hot, emotion-torn summer of 1914, a lifetime ago. Of the endless letters passing back and forth to France as they dreamed and planned. Of the acute longing that had kept him alive when nothing else had mattered. Of the wedding that had never taken place Of Jean's white face in his hospital room when he had offered her the chance to break off the engagement. She had smiled nervously and taken it, murmuring something about the war having changed both of them. While he sat there, still aching with love and his need for her, trying with every ounce of his being to hide it from her, she'd said, "I'm not the girl you remember in 1914. I loved you so madly-I think anything would have been possible then. But too much time has passed, too much has happened to both of us-we were apart so long… I don't even know myself anymore… Of course I still care, but-I don't think I should marry anyone just now-it wouldn't be fair to marry anyone…"
Yet despite the quiet voice and the scrupulously chosen words that tried desperately to spare both of them pain, he could see the truth in her eyes.
It was fear.
She was deathly afraid of him…