A Test of Wills (9 page)

Rutledge said nothing. Carfield sipped his coffee, then added as if he couldn’t stop himself, “Men from Warwickshire who served under him worshiped him; they tell me that on the battlefield he was charismatic, but I call it more a gift for manipulation. I don’t suppose you were in the war, Inspector, but I can tell you that sending other men into battle must rest heavily on one’s soul in the end.”

Hamish stirred but made no remark. He had no need to. Rutledge found himself saying, “Then the Kings of Israel must not be sleeping peacefully in Abraham’s bosom. As I remember, they were at war most of the time.”

Carfield nodded graciously to parishioners who had just come in, a man and his wife, then turned back to Rutledge. “Make light of it if you wish. But something deep down in Charles Harris was frightened by the man he was. He was a Gemini, you see, two forces in one body. In my opinion he needed to come home to Mallows from time to time because it brought him peace, a sense of balance, proof that he wasn’t a man who actually enjoyed killing, however good he might be at it. His much-vaunted devotion to the land was perhaps merely a charade for his troubled conscience.”

“And Captain Wilton? What do you think of him?”

“An intelligent man. And a brave one—one would have to be to fly, don’t you think? When Ezekiel saw the wheel, high in the middle of the air, he claimed it was God at work. We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we? Man has finally set himself on a par with the archangels. The question is, are we morally ready for such heights?”

Hamish made a derisive snort and Rutledge busied himself with the caramel flan. When he had choked down his amusement, Rutledge asked, “But would he kill a friend?”

“Wilton? None of us can see into the souls of others, Inspector, least of all me. I’ve always tried to understand my parishioners, but they still have the power to surprise me. Just the other day—”

“Is that a yes or a no?” Rutledge asked, looking up and catching an expression in Carfield’s eyes that interested him. The man was ably playing the role of wise village priest, enamored by the part, but his eyes were cold and hard as he answered Rutledge’s question.

“I would be lying if I said I liked the man. I don’t. He’s a private person, keeps himself to himself. I think that may be why he enjoys flying—he’s there alone in his aeroplane, out of reach and accountable to no one. And a man who likes his own company more than he ought is sometimes dangerous. Hermits have been known to come out of their isolated cells and lead crusades, haven’t they? But murder?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Possibly. If he were angry enough and determined enough, or if it was the only possible way to get exactly what he wanted. I think he’s been used to that, getting his own way. People tend to idolize handsome daredevils.”

For “people,” substitute Lettice Wood, Rutledge thought to himself. But discounting the jealousy, Carfield had offered a better evaluation of Harris and Wilton than anyone else.

Sometimes hatred saw more clearly than love.

And it might be a very good idea to add Carfield’s name to the very short list of possible suspects, though what purpose Harris’s death might have served in the Vicar’s eyes was yet to be seen.

He went over his notes after dinner, sitting in his room until the walls seemed to close in on him. No illumination came, no connections. Faces. Voices. Yes. But so far leading nowhere. Except, possibly, to Wilton? He remembered his father saying once, after a tiring day in court, “It isn’t actually a question of guilt or innocence, is it? It’s a matter of what the jury believes, once we’ve told them what evidence there is on either side. Given the proper evidence, we could probably convict God. Without it, Lucifer himself would walk free!”

It was late when he got up to walk off a restlessness that prodded him into activity, useful or not.

Before the war it had been the case that drove him night and day—partly from a gritty determination that murderers must be found and punished. He had believed deeply in that, with the single-minded idealism of youth and a strong sense of moral duty toward the victims, who could no longer speak for themselves. But the war had altered his viewpoint, had shown him that the best of men could kill, given the right circumstances, as he himself had done over and over again. Not only the enemy, but his own men, sending them out to be slaughtered even when he had known beyond any doubt that they would die and that the order to advance was madness.

And partly from his fascination with a bizarre game of wits. Like the Colonel, who was far too good at strategy, he’d had a knack for understanding the minds of some of the killers he had hunted, and he had found the excitement of the hunt itself addictive. Man, he’d read somewhere, was the ultimate prey. And the police officer had the reinforcement of Society to indulge in that chase.

Rutledge had tried to explain his reasons to Jean once, when she had begged him to leave the Yard and take up law instead, like his father before him. But she’d stared at him as if he had spoken to her in Russian or Chinese, then laughed and said, “Oh, Ian, do stop teasing me and be serious!”

Now it was his own uncertainties that left him with no peace, his illusions as shattered as his mind. Why could he feel nothing about this murderer? Why?

He heard something in the shadowy alley to his left, between the baker’s shop and a small bootery, a muffled cough. And then Hickam stumbled out, singing to himself. Drunk again. If anything, worse than before, Rutledge thought with exasperation. But at least he wasn’t back in an imaginary France, and there might still be a chance of getting a little sense out of him.

Overtaking him in five strides, Rutledge put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him, speaking his name. Hickam shrugged it off irritably. “I want to talk to you. About Colonel Harris,” Rutledge said firmly, prepared to block his retreat down the alley or a dash across the street. “I’ve come from London—”

“London, is it?” Hickam asked, slurring the words, but Rutledge suddenly had the feeling that he wasn’t as drunk—yet—as he wished he was. “And what does London want now? A pox on sodding London! A pox on sodding everybody!”

“The morning that the Colonel died, you were in the lane, drunk. That’s where Sergeant Davies found you. Do you remember?” He forced the man to face him, could smell the alcohol on his breath, the unwashed body. The fear.

Hickam nodded. His face was ghastly in the moonlight, tired and strained and hopeless. Rutledge looked into eyes like black plums in a pudding, and flinched at what he read there, a torment much like his own. “Did you see the Colonel? Charles Harris. Or anyone else?”

“I didn’t shoot him. I had nothing to do with it!”

“No one claims you did. I’m asking if you saw him. Or saw anyone else that Monday morning.”

“I saw them—the two of them.” He frowned. “I saw them,” he added, with less certainty. “I told Forrest—”

“I know what you told Forrest. Now tell me.”

“He was angry. The Captain. Pleading. They were sending us across to take the guns, and he didn’t like it. You could hear the shells—the bombardment had started.” He was beginning to shake. “‘I won’t give up that easily,’ he said. ‘I’ll fight. Whatever you’ve done, I’ll fight you every step of the way!’ The guns were ours at first, but then the Hun answered, and they were close, I could hear the screaming and I couldn’t find my helmet. And the Colonel said, ‘Don’t be a fool. Whether you like it or not, you’ll have to learn to live with it.’ And I saw the Captain’s face, and knew we were going to die—”

He was crying, tears running down his face like the shiny trails left by garden slugs, his mouth turned down in an agony of terror. “They sent me down the sunken road, to see that the flankers found their way, and the Colonel rode off, leaving the Captain behind, and I knew he’d kill me if he caught me hiding there from the guns—I didn’t want to die—God help me—”

Arms wrapped protectively around his body, he bowed his head and wept with a bottomless grief that silently racked him, his shoulders shaking, all dignity and identity gone.

Rutledge couldn’t take any more. He fished in his pocket for coins and gave them to the man, forcing them into the hand nearest him. Hickam lifted his head, staring at him, bewildered by this interjection of reality into his desolation, feeling the coins with his fingers like a blind man. “Here. Buy yourself something else to drink, and go home. Do you hear me? Go home!”

Hickam continued to stare at him, at a loss. “They’re moving up, I can’t leave—”

“You’re out of it,” Rutledge said. “Go find the aid station and tell them you need something to drink. Tell them I said you could have it. Tell them—for God’s sake, tell them to send you home!”

And without a backward glance, Rutledge wheeled and strode angrily down the walk to the Inn, Hamish hammering at his senses like all the Furies.

Rutledge lay awake for hours, listening to the murmurs of a pair of doves nesting under the eaves. They were restless, as if a prowling cat or an owl worried them. The village was quiet, the public bar had closed, and only the big church clock, striking the quarters, disturbed the stillness of the night. He had himself under control again, and only Redfern had seen him return, taking the stairs three at a time. He’d nearly stopped to tell the man to bring him a bottle of whiskey, but had enough sense left to remember where—and who—he was.

Staring at the ceiling, he decided he would call for an immediate Inquest and have it adjourned.

Hickam had been too befuddled to know what he was saying, and God alone could imagine what sort of witness he would make in court. Yet Rutledge was sure now that there was something locked in his mind, tangled with the war, tangled with his confusion and the fumes of alcohol, and if Dr. Warren could get the man sober—and sane—long enough to question, they might get to the bottom of this business.

For all they knew, it might clear Wilton as easily as it might damn him, in spite of Forrest’s dithering.

The trouble was, there was too much circumstantial evidence and not enough hard fact. The quarrel with Harris at Mallows, the possible—probable—encounter with Harris again in the lane the next morning, the shotgun sitting in Mavers’s unlocked house, the direction Wilton had chosen for his walk, all appeared to point to the Captain. And the time sequence itself fit, all quite neatly.

But this hadn’t been a neat killing. It had been angry, vengeful, passionate, bloody.

Where, except for Mavers’s tired rhetoric, had there been such passion on a quiet June morning?

And where had it disappeared, once Charles Harris had been cut down with such savage fury? That was the mystery he was going to have to solve before he could find the killer. So much passion…it had to be there still, banked like a fire…and aroused, it might kill again….

He fell asleep on that thought, and didn’t hear the bustle in the street at two o’clock in the morning.

7

Although Rutledge went out directly after breakfast in search of him, Hickam was nowhere to be found.

After a fruitless waste of time, Rutledge decided that the man probably didn’t want to be found, and gave up, cursing his own maudlin stupidity for not hauling him directly to the doctor’s surgery last night while he had the chance, and forcibly sobering up the poor devil.

Picking up Sergeant Davies at the station after giving Forrest instructions for the Inquest, Rutledge said as they got into the motorcar, “I’ve been to the cottage, checked every street in town, and the outlying lanes as well, not to mention the churchyard and the livery stables. Is there any place I haven’t thought of?”

Davies scratched his chin. “That about covers it, I’d guess. But there’s high grass, hedgerows, and any number of sheds about, and we could send half the army out looking and still not find him. Drunks have a way of vanishing, but when he’s slept this one off and needs more gin, he’ll surface soon enough.”

He glanced at the Inspector, and decided that he hadn’t slept well. Changing the subject, he said, “I checked with the dentist in Warwick. It’s true, Royston had an appointment on the morning of the murder, but he never came in. Of course that’s not surprising.”

“No. I think I should speak to Helena Sommers again, before she hears about Mavers’s shotgun coming to light. How do we get there?”

Davies had just had a very unpleasant discussion with Inspector Forrest about duty. It was his duty to assist London, and equally his duty to stay out of Scotland Yard’s way as much as possible, which seemed to his mind a simple contradiction of terms. Forrest hadn’t been pleased either that Rutledge failed to bring his own sergeant along, and before the interview had ended, a chastened Davies was beginning to feel that that was his fault as well. But there was no escape. Constable Reardon in Lower Streetham couldn’t be spared, and Warwick wasn’t about to send over one of their men, and Constable Miliken from Upper Streetham was still at home with a leg broken in two places from the kick of a half-wit horse that had accidentally poked its nose into a hornet’s nest and run amok afterward.

Trying to make the best of a bad situation and feeling uncomfortable in the lengthening silence that was beginning to sound very loud in the car, Davies cleared his throat and offered a suggestion that he had been mulling over while shaving that morning.

“I was thinking, sir, about who might have shot Colonel Harris, and it seems to me we’ve overlooked one thing. What if the killer hadn’t come from Upper Streetham at all? I mean, someone from Warwick, or London, or as far as we might know, from Canterbury or Liverpool?”

“It’s possible, of course,” Rutledge answered. “For that reason I don’t rule it out. But we’re short on motives, aren’t we?”

“Well, sir, it seems to me we’re short on motives for everyone else. I mean, the Colonel might have done something in the war, someone might hold him responsible for the loss of a leg or a son’s death or a wrecked career. Somebody we’d never heard of in Upper Streetham. And would have no way of knowing existed.”

“Before we could leave the case as ‘person or persons unknown,’ we’d still have to clear every suspect in Upper Streetham. Including the Captain.”

Davies sighed. “Aye, that’s true.”

Rutledge glanced across at him. “Tell me something. Why is everyone so determined to believe Wilton is innocent?”

Surprised, Davies said, “He’s a war hero, isn’t he? Admired by the King and a friend of the Prince of Wales. He’s visited Sandringham, been received by Queen Mary herself! A man like that doesn’t go around killing people!”

With a wry downturn of his lips, Rutledge silently asked, How did he win his medals, you fool, if not by being so very damned good at killing?

With Davies to guide him, Rutledge found the narrow road cutting into the Haldane property that led to a small, picturesque cottage standing isolated on a hillside, surrounded by fields and trees. Wild roses climbing over low stone walls set off the grounds, their scent filling the air with sweetness. On the north side, the wall was a good two feet higher, a windbreak for the gardens that lay at its foot. Someone had made a valiant effort to rescue them from weeds, and lupines stood like sentinels behind the sweet williams and the irises.

Drawing up in front of the cottage, Rutledge got out and was immediately attacked by an irate gray goose that took instant exception to invasion by unexpected strangers in motorcars.

Fending off the goose, he called, “Miss Sommers?”

No one answered, and after a moment, neatly outdistancing the irate fowl by doubling back the other way around the car, he made it to the steps and knocked on the cottage door.

No one came, and he was on the point of leaving when a sixth sense, that intuitive feeling that someone is there in the stillness on the other side of a door, made him knock again, louder this time. The sound attracted the goose, and she ceased her attack on her reflection in the car’s wing, bearing down on Rutledge with neck arched. But Davies had the presence of mind to blow the car’s horn, and she wheeled in midrun to hurry back to her first victim.

Finally the door was opened a narrow crack and a soft voice said, “Yes?”

“Miss Sommers? Inspector Rutledge. I’m looking for your cousin. Is she in?”

Reluctantly the door opened wider, and a pale face stared out. “She’s not here just now. There was a bird’s nest she wanted to check this morning.”

He noted the strong family resemblance in features, but this cousin was quieter, dowdier, younger. Her hair was a mousy brown, her eyes wide and fearful, her dress a muted gray-green that did nothing for her complexion or her coloring. “Do you know when she’ll be back?” he asked.

Maggie Sommers shook her head quickly, not wanting to encourage him to wait. She peered over his shoulder, saw the goose attacking the front tires of the Inspector’s car, saw Sergeant Davies laughing out of the passenger’s side, and then ducked back almost as if recoiling from any responsibility for what was happening on her lawn.

“She’s Helena’s pet,” she said defensively. “I don’t like her, she terrifies me.”

“Shall I put her in a pen or somewhere?” Rutledge asked, wondering how he was going to manage that feat, but Miss Sommers shook her head again.

“No, she’ll leave me alone if I’m not hanging out the wash. She hates that. Why do you wish to see Helena?”

“I wanted to talk with her about Captain Wilton. She saw him the morning that Colonel Harris was shot.”

Tears filled her eyes, and he thought for a moment she was going to start crying. “That was awful—I was never so terrified in my life as when I heard about it. He seemed like such a nice man.”

“You knew the Colonel?” Rutledge asked in surprise.

“Oh, no. No. But sometimes he rode this way—through the fields there,” Maggie Sommers said, pointing. “That’s his land, just beyond the high wall. The two estates meet there. If I was out in the gardens or something, he’d wave. At first I was afraid he’d want to stop and chat, but he never did, and Helena said I ought to wave back. It was—neighborly. She said he probably thought it was she anyway. She’d met him—at a dinner party.” She smiled timidly, giving her face a little more life and color, the tears forgotten. “I was invited too.”

He could see why she had been called a recluse, why there had even been the suspicion that she was simple. But she was only unimaginably shy, almost childlike. He thought that all he would have to do was shout at her in a harsh voice, and she’d scurry back inside and shut the door and hide under the bed. Torn between sympathy and irritation, he wondered where someone as brisk and active as Helena found the patience to cope with Maggie for an entire summer. Or perhaps she wasn’t quite so timorous when left alone.

She was saying anxiously, “Should I offer you tea or—or coffee? I don’t know when Helena’s coming back, truly I don’t, it would be useless to wait, and there’s the cleaning still to be done….”

Taking pity on her, he left, dodging the goose again, but he was sorely tempted to sideswipe it after one last onslaught as he cranked the car. The heavy wings had caught the side of his head a nasty clip as he bent over.

“At least it wasn’t a goat,” Davies said, enjoying himself. “You’d have sailed over yon wall like one of the Captain’s aeroplanes.”

When they reached Upper Streetham again, they found a message from Dr. Warren saying that he must see them urgently.

He was in his surgery when they arrived and he took them upstairs to a small room with an iron bedstead, a table, a single chair, and a very still form under starched sheets.

“Hickam,” Warren said shortly.

“What the devil’s happened to him?” Rutledge demanded, drawing up the only chair and sitting down to stare at the closed, gray face. “He looks half dead!”

“He is. Alcoholic poisoning—he drank enough to kill himself. A miracle he didn’t. I’ve never seen a man so full of gin in all my years of practice. Hickam must have the constitution of an ox.”

Rutledge felt a surge of guilt. “Where did you find him? How?”

“I was coming home last night from the Pinters’ farm—just over the ridge, one of Haldane’s tenants, little girl’s in rough shape, and I’d stayed until the sedative finally started to work. This was about two in the morning. Hickam was lying in the middle of the road. He’d crawled that far, though God knows from where, and then passed out. I damned near ran over him, to tell you the truth of it, didn’t see him until the last minute because he was in the darker shadows cast by the trees along the High Street there, and I didn’t have my headlamps on—there’s something wrong with the fool things. I was so tired that I thought it was a sleeping dog and swerved to miss it, and damned near rammed the horse trough outside Miss Millard’s dress shop. Then I realized it was Hickam, and for a brass farthing would have just left him there in the road to sleep it off. But I got the car started again, managed to haul him into it, and brought him here. And a good thing too, or we’d have lost him for a fact.”

Rutledge could see the man’s unsteady breathing, the sheet over his chest rising and falling with soft but ragged irregularity, and said, “Are you sure he’ll live?” He found himself torn between wishing Hickam dead and keeping him alive. But if he died, and it was Rutledge’s doing—he cursed himself savagely.

Warren shrugged. “Nothing is sure in medicine. But at least the odds are on his side now. God knows, there must have been a pint of gin still in his belly when I pumped him out. And that would have killed him for certain before morning.”

“Where did he find enough money to drink that much?” Davies demanded, leaning over Rutledge’s shoulder for a closer examination of the sunken eyes, the scraggle of beard, the slack mouth.

Without answering him, Rutledge glanced up at Warren. “Did you know I’ve been looking for him? Most of this morning?”

“Forrest said something about it when I spoke to him about Hickam. That’s when I left the message for you. But if you’re thinking of questioning him now, you’re mad. He’s too weak to know what he’s saying—even if he could manage to speak.”

Rutledge nodded. He could see that much for himself. But he said, “Then I want you to keep him here until I can question him. Use any pretext you can think of, tie him to the bed if you have to, but keep him here, out of harm’s way. And no visitors, absolutely none.”

“You don’t seriously believe he can tell you anything useful!” Warren scoffed. “A man like Hickam? Nonsense!”

Rutledge’s eyes were dark with anger as he said, “Why? Because he’s a drunk? A coward? Out of his head? You might be the same in his shoes. I’ve seen more shell shock cases than you’ll ever attend, Doctor, and they’re tormented people with no way out of the prisons of their minds. You weren’t in France or Gallipoli or Palestine, and there’s nothing in your medical practice to tell you what it was like.”

“And I suppose you know?” Warren snapped.

Rutledge caught himself on the brink, realized in time where his outburst was carrying him, and said only, “I was there.”

Still angry when he reached the car, Rutledge said to Davies, “Tell Forrest I’m holding Dr. Warren responsible for Hickam, and if for any reason whatsoever he leaves the doctor’s care, he’s to be arrested on sight. Is that clear?”

“Where’ll you be, then?” Davies asked warily.

“I’m going back to Mallows.” To see what Lettice Wood might tell him, alone and with no notes being taken.

Glad not to be included in that visit, Davies hurried off to find Forrest. And Rutledge was left with Hamish’s company on the drive out to the Colonel’s home.

This time he was shown directly to Miss Wood’s sitting room, and Rutledge found it empty. She came in through a connecting door after a few minutes, still wearing black, but with her face no longer invisible to him. The drapes were drawn back, and the sun’s warm reflection filled the room with a softness that was kind to her grief-shadowed eyes.

And this time she offered him a chair facing the couch where she chose to sit, in the opposite corner, with her back to the light from the windows. More, he thought, for her own comfort than from any desire to make the interview difficult for him. But she was braced for something—he could see the tenseness in her body, the clenched line of her jaw.

“Have you brought me any news?” she asked, her voice still husky. As she looked directly at him he noticed that her eyes were not the same color. One was a smoky hazel, a green flecked with brown and gray, the other a warm green touched with gold. Startlingly odd, yet very beautiful.

“Not yet. We’re still exploring several avenues. I’m trying to build a picture in my mind of Colonel Harris. The sort of man he was, the sort of life he led.”

She brushed that aside with angry impatience. “I’ve told you. He had no enemies.”

“Someone killed him,” he reminded her. “Someone wanted him dead. He must have done something, if only that one single act, to rouse such terrible hate.”

She flinched as if he’d struck her. “But surely you’ve made progress?” she asked again after a moment. “You must have talked to other people. Laurence Royston? Mark? Inspector Forrest?”