A Test of Wills (15 page)

One of his tires was torn. As if viciously slashed with a knife or a sharp stick. Deliberately and maliciously damaged.

Rutledge didn’t need a policeman to tell him who had done this.

Mavers.

13

Rutledge sent the blacksmith to bring his car back to the village and then went to find Inspector Forrest. But he wasn’t in—he’d been called back to Lower Streetham on the matter of the lorry accident. Fortuitously, Rutledge told himself irritably.

It was long past time for luncheon, and Rutledge turned back toward the Inn. After a hasty meal, he crossed to Dr. Warren’s surgery to look in on Hickam. He was no better—awake, but without any awareness in his eyes. A dead man’s stare was focused on the ceiling of the tiny room, blank and without knowledge or pain or grief.

Dr. Warren came in as Rutledge was leaving. “You’ve seen him? Well, it’s something that he’s still alive, I suppose. I’ve got enough on my hands—I can’t stand over him. You might see if the Vicar will pray for him”—he snorted—“it’s about all he’s good for!”

“Can you tell me if any young children live near the meadow where Harris was found?”

“Children?” Dr. Warren stared at him.

“Girls, then. Young enough to play with something like this.” He held out the muddy wooden doll.

Dr. Warren transferred his gaze to the object in Rutledge’s hand. “There must be seven or eight on the estate itself, servants’ and tenants’ children. More, scattered on the farms thereabouts. The gentry have china dolls, not wooden ones. As a rule. Why?”

“I found this under a hedge. Captain Wilton says he saw a child that morning, that she’d lost her doll.”

“Then ask the Captain to find her for you! I’ve got a breech birth to see to, and after that, a farmer whose ax slipped and damned near took off his foot. If I save the limb, it’ll be a miracle. And he won’t have the Army to provide him with a false one if I don’t.”

Rutledge stood aside and let him walk into the small surgery, where Warren restocked his bag and then set it on the scrubbed table. “You understand, don’t you, that if Hickam lives, he may not have enough of a mind left to testify at all? Everything that’s happened could be wiped out?”

Rutledge replied, “Yes. I know. You’ve served the people of this town for most of your life. Who do you believe might have killed Charles Harris?”

Warren shrugged. “Mavers, of course. That would be my first thought. I don’t know your Captain well enough to judge him. Still, Lettice was going to marry him, and Charles was damned careful where she was concerned; he wouldn’t have stood by and let a fool sweep her off her feet.”

“Catherine Tarrant?”

Warren shook his head. “Because of the German? Don’t be an idiot, man. I can’t see her lurking behind a tree with a shotgun, can you? If she had wanted Harris dead, she’d have come for him at Mallows, the first day he was back from the war. Why wait until now? But I’m not paid to find murderers. That’s your job. And if you ask me, you’re damned slow going about it!”

Hamish, chuckling deep in his mind, said derisively, “You’re half the man you were, that’s what it is. Ye left the better half in the mud and terror, and brought back only the broken bits. And London knows it!”

Rutledge turned on his heel and strode out, the doll still in his hand.

He tracked down Wilton having a whiskey in the Inn’s bar, morosely staring at the glass in his hand. Rutledge sat down at the small corner table and said, “Early in the day for that?”

“Not when you’ve come from the undertaker’s,” Wilton said, turning his glass around and around in his fingers. “The fool had never dealt with a headless man before. He was half titillated, half revolted. Would we be wanting the Colonel in his dress uniform? And how was that cut, sir, with a high collar or low? Would we wish a silk scarf to cover what was—er—the remains? Would we wish for a pillow in the coffin? To rest the shoulders upon, of course, sir. And will you be wanting to inspect the—er—deceased, before the services?” The Captain shuddered. “My good God!” He looked at Rutledge. “When Davenant died, the old vicar was still alive, and he went with me to attend to matters. Before we left, Davenant’s valet handed us a box with suitable clothing in it, and that was that. It was civilized, simple.”

“An ordinary death.” Rutledge shook his head as Redfern started toward them, to indicate that he didn’t wish to be disturbed. Then he put the doll on the table.

Mark Wilton stared at it, frowning. “What the hell is that?”

“A child’s doll.”

“A doll?”

“You told me that on the morning Harris was killed, you ran into a child who’d lost her doll. On the path near the meadow.”

“Oh, yes. I remember her. She’d been picking flowers or some such thing, and then couldn’t find the doll—she’d put it down somewhere or other. I see she found it.”

“I found it. Now I want to find her.”

Wilton smiled tiredly. “To ask her if I was carrying a shotgun when she and I crossed paths? First a drunken madman, then a child. Good God!”

“Nevertheless.”

“I have no idea who she was, or what her name was. Small, fair, cheerful—a child. I’ve had very little experience with them. I’m not even certain I’d know her again if I saw her.”

“But you won’t mind accompanying the Sergeant to visit the tenants on Mallows’ land and in the farms above the church.” It was not a question.

Wilton regarded him for a time. “You’re quite serious about this?”

“Entirely.”

Mark Wilton sighed. “Very well.”

“That night, when Lettice Wood left you and Harris together in the drawing room, she said you were discussing the wedding. Where did the conversation turn after that? To Catherine Tarrant?”

Wilton was surprised. “Catherine? Why on earth should we have discussed her—much less quarreled over her? Charles and I admired her.”

“If not Catherine Tarrant, what about Mrs. Davenant?”

Wilton laughed. “You are in desperate straits, aren’t you? Did you think I’d shoot Harris over the good name of my cousin? What has she done to merit your attention?”

Rutledge shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I grasp at straws?” He realized that he was quoting Lettice Wood. Had her words rankled that much? “There hasn’t been a rush of people breaking down the police-station door to volunteer information about Harris’s killer, has there? I’ve decided there’s a conspiracy to keep me from finding out what’s best hidden.”

Wilton stared at him, eyes sharp and searching. The thin, weary face before him was closed and unreadable. What had made this man so ill, consumption? War wounds? The sickly often had a way of piercing to the heart of a matter, as if their close brush with death made them more sensitive to the very air around them.

Rutledge had spoken out of irritation, exasperated with Wilton and himself. But the reaction had been completely unexpected.

“Yon pretty hero isn’t what he seems,” Hamish growled. “Unlucky in love and good for nothing but killing. But very good at that….”

Finally Wilton said carefully, “A conspiracy to murder Harris?”

“A conspiracy to hide the truth. Whatever it may be,” Rutledge amended.

Wilton finished his whiskey. “I thought you were an experienced man, one of the best London had. That’s what Forrest told us. If you can find one person in Warwickshire—other than that fool Mavers—who wanted Harris dead, I’ll willingly be damned to the far reaches of hell! Meanwhile, I’ll find the Sergeant and we’ll tour the nurseries of Upper Streetham for this child who lost a doll. Little good may it do you!”

He left, lifting a hand to summon Redfern. Rutledge sat where he was, watching the stiff, angry set of his shoulders as the Captain stalked off. “Unlucky in love,” Hamish had said.

He considered that again. Catherine Tarrant’s German. Lettice Wood’s guardian. And Sally Davenant, who might not have forgotten what had become of her husband’s old shotgun.

If Charles Harris had died of poison, Rutledge might believe in simple jealousy more easily. But a shotgun? That took rage, hatred, a need to obliterate, as Lettice had put it.

He could feel the fatigue dragging at him, the stress and the loneliness. The fear. Looking around for Redfern, Rutledge saw that he was alone in the bar. And then Carfield was coming through the doorway, glancing his way.

“Inspector. I’ve spoken with Mark Wilton,” he said, crossing over to Rutledge’s table. “We’ve settled on Tuesday for the services. I understand that Dr. Warren hasn’t lifted his embargo on visits to Lettice. I really feel, as her spiritual adviser, I should go to her, offer her comfort, prepare her for the very difficult task of attending the funeral. Could you use your good offices to persuade him that seclusion is the worst possible thing for a young woman with no family to support her?”

Rutledge smiled. Pompous ass didn’t begin to describe the Vicar. “I have no right to overturn a medical decision unless it has a bearing on my duties,” he said, remembering Lettice’s dread of having to cope with Carfield.

“And there’s the matter of the reception after the service. It should be held at Mallows. I sincerely believe Charles would have wished that. Naturally I shall take charge; I know the staff well enough, they’ll do my bidding.”

“Why not at the Vicarage?” Rutledge asked. “After Miss Wood has greeted the guests, she can go quietly home. Wilton will see to that, or Royston.”

Carfield sat down uninvited. “My dear man, one doesn’t serve the funeral’s cold baked meats at the Vicarage for a man like Charles Harris, who has his own quite fine residence! That’s what staff is for, you know, to do the labor. One doesn’t expect dear Lettice to shoulder such a burden.”

“Have you suggested to Wilton that you wish to arrange the reception at Mallows?”

Carfield’s eyebrows rose. “It isn’t his home, is it? The decision is for others to make, not for Captain Wilton.”

“I see.” He considered the Vicar for a moment. “Who told Upper Streetham that Miss Tarrant was in love with a German prisoner of war and wished to marry him?”

The heavily handsome face was closed. “I have no idea. I tried to make the village see that she had done nothing wrong, that loving our enemies is part of God’s plan. But people are sometimes narrow-minded about such matters. Why do you ask?”

“Could she have killed Charles Harris?”

Carfield smiled. “Why not ask me if Mrs. Davenant did it?”

“All right. Did she?”

The smile disappeared. “You’re quite serious?”

“Murder is a serious business. I want to solve this one.”

“Ah, yes, I can understand your dilemma, with Wilton so closely connected to the Royal Family,” Carfield answered with a shrewdness that narrowly escaped shrewishness as well. “I shouldn’t have thought that a shotgun was a woman’s weapon.”

“Nor should I. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a woman. Behind it at the very least, even if she never touched the trigger.”

With a shake of his head, Carfield replied, “Women are many things, but obliterating a man’s face in that fashion is a bloody, horrible business even for a man. Catherine, Mrs. Davenant, Lettice—they are none of them farmwives who can take an ax to a chicken without blinking.”

“Catherine Tarrant ran her father’s estate throughout the war.”

“Ran it, yes, but do you suppose she butchered cattle or dressed a hen?”

“Perhaps she didn’t know how bloody the results would be. Perhaps she intended to aim lower, but the kick of the weapon lifted the barrel.”

Carfield shrugged. “Then you must take into account the fact that during the last three years of the war, Sally Davenant volunteered to nurse the wounded at a friend’s house in Gloucestershire, which had been turned into a hospital. She has no formal training, you understand, but Mrs. Davenant did tend her husband through his last illness, and the—er—intimacies of the sickbed were familiar to her. Dressing wounds, taking off bloody bedclothes, watching doctors remove stitches or clean septic flesh—I’m sure you learn to face many things when you have to.”

No one, least of all Sally Davenant, had seen fit to mention that. Rutledge swore under his breath.

“But I can’t think that it would lead her to commit a murder!” Carfield was saying. “And why should she wish to kill the Colonel, I ask you!”

“Why did anyone want to kill him?” Rutledge countered.

“Ah, now we’re back to why. Whatever the reason, I’m willing to wager that it was deeply personal. Deeply. Can you plumb that far into the soul to find it?”

“Are you telling me that as a priest you’ve heard confessions that give you the answer to this murder?”

“No, people seldom confess their blackest depths to anyone, least of all to a priest. Oh, the small sins, the silly sins, even the guilty sins, where a clean conscience relieves the weight of guilt. Adultery. Envy. Anger. Covetousness. Hate. Jealousy.”

He smiled, a rueful smile that belittled himself in a way. “But there’s fury, you know. Where someone acts in a blind rage, and only then stops to think and feel. Or fright, where there’s no time for second thoughts. Or self-defense, where you must act or be hurt. I hear of those afterward. From the man who hits a neighbor in a rage over a broken cart wheel. From the woman who takes a flatiron to her drunken husband before he beats her senseless. From the child who lashes out, bloodying a bully’s nose. And sometimes these things can also lead to murder. Well, you’ve seen it happen, I needn’t tell you about that! But what’s deeply burned into the soul, what’s buried beneath the civilized layers of the skin, is the more deadly because often there’s no warning it even exists. No warning, even to a priest.”

Which was more truth than Rutledge had expected to hear from the Vicar.

“However,” Carfield went on before Rutledge could answer him, “I’m not here to solve your problems but to attend to my own. Which brings me back again to Mallows.”

“I’d speak to Royston or to Wilton, if I were you. I’d leave Miss Wood out of it. If they agree, they can break the news to her.”

“I’m her spiritual adviser!”

“And Dr. Warren is her physician. It’s his decision, not yours.”

Carfield rose, eyes studying Rutledge, the tired face, the lines. “You carry your own heavy burdens, don’t you?” he said quietly. “I don’t envy you them. My God, I don’t! But let me tell you this much, Inspector Rutledge. When you return to London, this will still be my parish, and I must still face its people. The reception will be at Mallows. I promise you that.”