Charles Todd - A test of wills

"Did you see anyone?"

"Captain Wilton," she answered with some reluctance. "I didn't speak to him, but I did see him, and he waved."

"At what time was this?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Early, I think. Around eight, I imagine, or a little after. I was engrossed in tracking a cuckoo and was mainly glad that Wilton wasn't the sort who'd want to stop and chatter."

"Which way was he going?"

"The same way you are."

"Toward the old mill, then."

"Yes, I suppose so. I wasn't really paying much attention, he was just walking along here. I saw him, realized who it was, waved, and then went on my way."

"Did you know the Colonel well?"

"Hardly at all. We've been here since April, and he very kindly asked us to dinner one evening. But my cousin is shy, almost a recluse, and she didn't want to go. I did, enjoyed the evening, and that was that. We spoke to each other on the High Street, and I waved if I saw him out riding, but that's about all I can tell you."

"And you know the Captain well enough to be certain you did see him and not someone else?"

She smiled, the gray eyes lighting within. "A woman doesn't forget Mark Wilton, once she's seen him. He's very handsome."

"How would you describe the Colonel?"

She considered his question, as if she hadn't given much thought to the Colonel before now. "He was younger than I expected. And rather attractive in a quiet way. Widely read for a military man-we had a very interesting discussion over dinner about American poets, and he seemed to know Whitman quite well." She brushed a strand of windblown hair out of her face. "He seemed a likable man, on short acquaintance. A very gracious host. I can't tell you much more, because I talked mostly to Lettice Wood after dinner and then to Mrs. Davenant, and shortly after that, the party broke up."

"How would you describe relations between Wilton and Colonel Harris?"

"Relations? I hardly know." She thought back to that evening for a moment, then said, "They seemed comfortable with each other, like men who have known each other over a long period of time. That's all I can remember."

"Thank you, Miss Sommers. If you should think of anything else that might help us, please get in touch with Sergeant Davies or me."

"Yes, of course." She hesitated, then asked, "I've gone on with my walks. I suppose that's all right? My cousin frets and begs me to stay home, but I hate being cooped up. There's no-well, danger-is there?"

"From the Colonel's killer?"

She nodded.

"I doubt that you have anything to fear, Miss Sommers. All the same, you might exercise reasonable caution. We still don't know why the Colonel was killed, or by whom."

"Well, I wish you luck in finding him," she said, and went striding off.

"A pleasant lady," Davies said, watching her go. "Her cousin, now, she's as timid as a mouse. Never shows her face in the village, but keeps the cottage as clean as a pin. Mrs. Haldane was saying that she thought the poor girl was a halfwit at first, but went over to the cottage one day to ask how they were settling in, and saw that she's just shy, as Miss Sommers said, and on the plain side."

Rutledge was not interested in the shy Miss Sommers. He was tired and hungry, and Hamish had been mumbling under his breath for the last half hour, a certain sign of tumult in his own mind. It was time to turn back.

What bothered him most, he thought, striding along in silence, was the Colonel himself. He'd actually seen the man, heard him inspire troops who had no spirit and no strength left to fight. A tall persuasive figure in an officer's greatcoat, his voice pitched to carry in the darkness before dawn, his own physical force somehow filling the cold, frightened emptiness in the faces before him. Convincing them that they had one more charge left in them, that together they could carry the assault and take the gun emplacement and save a thousand lives the next morning-two thousand-when the main thrust came. And the remnants of a battered force did as he had asked, only to see the main attack fail, and the hill abandoned to the Hun again within twenty-four hours.

Yet here in Upper Streetham Charles Harris seemed to be no more than a faint shadow of that officer, a quiet and "thoroughly nice" man, as Mrs. Davenant had put it. Surely not a man who was likely to be murdered.

How do you put your fingers on the pulse of a dead man and bring him to life? Rutledge had been able to do that at one time, had in the first several cases of his career shown an uncanny knack for seeing the victim from the viewpoint of the murderer and understanding why he or she had had to die. Because the solution to a murder was sometimes just that-finding out why the victim had to die. But here in Warwickshire the Colonel seemed to elude him…

Except to acknowledge the fact that once more he would be dealing with death, he, Rutledge, had never really thought through the problems of resuming his career at the Yard. At least not while he was still at the clinic, locked in despair and his own fears. To be honest about it, he'd seen his return mainly as the answer to his desperate need to stay busy, to shut out Hamish, to shut out Jean, to shut out, indeed, the shambles of his life.

Even back in London, he had never really considered whether or not he was good enough still at his work to return to it. He hadn't considered whether the skills and the intuitive grasp of often frail threads of information, which had been his greatest asset, had been damaged along with the balance of his mind by the horrors of the war. Whether he could be a good policeman again. He'd simply expected his ability to come back without effort, like remembering how to ride or how to swim, rusty skills that needed only a new honing…

Now, suddenly, he was worried about that. One more worry, one more point of stress, and it was stress that gave Hamish access to his conscious mind. The doctors had told him that.

He sighed, and Sergeant Davies, clumping along through the grass beside him, said, "Aye, it's been a long morning, and we've gotten nowhere."

"Haven't we?" Rutledge asked, forcing his attention back to the business in hand. "Miss Sommers said she did see Wilton walking this track. But where was he coming from? The churchyard, as he claims? Or had he walked by way of the lane, as Hickam claims, met the Colonel, and then crossed over this way? Or-did he go after Harris, follow him to the meadow, with murder on his mind?"

"But this way leads to the ruins by the old bridge, just as he told us, and Miss Sommers saw him here around eight, she thought. So we're no nearer to the truth than we were before."

"Yes, all right, but since Miss Sommers saw him here, he'd be bound to tell us that he was heading for the mill, wouldn't he? No matter where he'd actually been-or was actually going."

"Do you think he's guilty, then?" Sergeant Davies couldn't keep the disappointment out of his voice.

"There isn't enough information at this point to make any decision at all. But it's possible, yes." They had reached the car again, and Rutledge opened his door, then stopped to pick the worst of the burrs from his trousers. Davies was standing by the bonnet, fanning himself with his hat, his face red from the exertion.

Still following a train of thought, Rutledge said, "If Miss Sommers is right and Wilton was up there in the high grass early on, say eight o'clock, he might well have been a good distance from the meadow by the time the Colonel was shot. Assuming, as we must, that the horse came straight home and the Colonel died somewhere between nine-thirty and ten o'clock, when Royston went down to the stables looking for him."

"Aye, he would have reached the ruins and the bridge in that time, it's true. So you're saying then that it still hangs on Hickam's word that Captain Wilton was in the lane, and when that was."