Charles Todd - A test of wills

"What the hell were you trying to do out there, take on half the village?" Rutledge asked, standing in the entrance hall waiting for the housekeeper to come back, one eye on the street.

"I told the fools what they didn't want to hear. I told them the truth." His voice was thick and muffled from the swelling nose, like a man with a head cold.

"Which was?"

"That they were too blind to see their chance and take it. That their precious war hero had feet of clay. That the Colonel was nothing but an oppressor of the workingman and deserved what he got." Warming to his theme, he went on, "It's the fate of all landlords, to be taken out and shot and their lands given to the peasants. And here somebody has already gone and done the peasants' bloody work for them."

"I'm sure Matt Wilmore liked being called a peasant," Dr. Warren said, coming through the door behind Rutledge, "just when he's bought his own farm and is proud as punch of it." His housekeeper arrived with a basin of water and wads of lint to use packing Mavers's nose, but it wasn't broken, only thoroughly bloodied. "That was Tom Dillingham's fist, I'll wager," Warren said with some satisfaction as he cleaned up Mavers's truculent face. "He's something of a legend around here," he added to Rutledge, "made enough money as a pugilist to buy a bit of land down by the Ware. He's not likely to take to being called a peasant either. Even those who are tenants-Haldane's or Mrs. Crichton's-aren't going to swallow it. Peasants went out with Wat Tyler in 1340 or whenever the hell it was."

Rutledge smiled. Mavers said, "Can I go now?"

Warren washed his hands. "Yes, be off with you, I've got more important things to do. Ungrateful fool!"

Rutledge led him outside and said, "Don't be in any hurry, Mavers, I want to talk to you."

"About the Colonel's death?" He grinned, the bloodshot eyes as yellow as a goat's. Mavers was not a big man, and had the wizened look of poor food and bad health in early childhood, his face pointed and sallow, his hair thin and a dusty brown. But his eyes were vivid, their color giving his face its only character. "You can't accuse me of touching him. I was here in Upper Streetham that morning, lecturing all those busy market goers on the evils of capitalism. Ask anybody, they'll tell you as much."

But there was a gloating in the way he said it that made Rutledge wonder what he was hiding. Mavers was very pleased with himself, and not above taunting the police.

A born troublemaker, just as everyone had said. Still, such a man could put that sort of reputation to good use, hiding behind it quite easily. People might shake their heads in disgust, but their perception of Mavers gave him the freedom to make a nuisance of himself without fear of retribution. "What do you expect? That's Mavers for you!" or "What's the damned fool going to get up to next?" People ignored him, expecting the worst and getting it. Half the time not seeing him, seeing only their own image of him…

"What do you do for a living?"

Caught off guard, Mavers shot Rutledge a glance out of the corner of those goat's eyes. "What do you mean?"

"How do you find the money to live?"

Mavers grinned again. "Oh, I manage well enough on my pension."

"Pension?"

Sergeant Davies came running toward them, a smear of mustard like a yellow mustache across his upper lip. "I've taken care of that lot," he said. "Damned fools! What have you been about this time, Mavers? The Inspector yonder should have let them hang you and be done with it!"

Mavers's grin broadened. "And you'd get fat, wouldn't you, without me to keep you from your dinner?"

"The trouble is," Davies went on, paying no heed to Mav- ers, "they've all been in the war, or had family that was, and the Colonel was looked up to. He tried to tell them the Colonel had squandered the poor sod in the trenches while keeping his own hide safe, but they know better. The Colonel kept up with every man from the village, and visited them in hospital and saw to the families of the ones that didn't come back, and found work for the cripples. People remember that."

"Money's cheap," Hamish put in suddenly. "Or was he thinking of standing for Parliament? Our fine Colonel?"

But no one heard him except Rutledge. It was decided to take Mavers home, to give the villagers time to cool off without further provocation, and Rutledge went back to the Shepherd's Crook for his car. He had just reached the walk in front of the door when someone called, "Inspector?"

He turned to see a young woman astride a bicycle, her cheeks flushed from riding and her dark hair pinned up inside a very becoming gray hat with curling pheasant's feathers that swept down to touch her cheek.

"I'm Rutledge, yes."

She dismounted from the bicycle and propped it up against the railing by the horse trough. "I'm Catherine Tarrant, and I'd like to talk to you, if you have the time."

The name meant nothing to him at first, and then he re- membered-she was the woman Captain Wilton had courted before the war. He led her inside the Inn and found a quiet corner of the old-fashioned parlor where they wouldn't be interrupted. Waiting until she seated herself in one of the faded, chintz-covered chairs, he took the other across from her and then said, "What can I do for you, Miss Tarrant?" Behind him a tall clock ticked loudly, the pendulum catching sunlight from the windows at each end of its swing.

She had had the kind of face that men often fall in love with in their youth, fresh and sweet and softly feminine. Rut- ledge was suddenly reminded of girls in white gowns with blue sashes around trim waists, broad-brimmed hats pinned to high-piled curls, who had played tennis and strolled on cropped green lawns and laughed lightheartedly in the summer of 1914, then disappeared forever. Catherine Tarrant had changed with them. There was a firmness to her jaw and her mouth now, signs of suffering and emerging character that in the end would make her more attractive if less pretty. Her dark eyes were level, with intelligence clearly visible in their swift appraisal of him.

"I have nothing to tell you that will help your enquiries," she said at once. "I don't know anything about Colonel Harris's death except what I've heard. But my housekeeper is Mary Satterthwaite's sister, and Mary has told her about the quarrel between the Colonel and Captain Wilton. I know," she added quickly, "Mary shouldn't have. But she did, and Vivian told me. I just want to say to you that I've known Mark-Captain Wilton-for some years, and I can't imagine him killing anyone, least of all Lettice Wood's guardian! Lettice adored Charles, he was her knight in shining armor, a father and brother all in one. And Mark adores Lettice. He'd never let himself be provoked into doing anything so foolish!"

"You think, then, that the quarrel was serious enough to make us believe that the Captain is under suspicion?"

That shook her quiet intensity. She had come in defense of Wilton and found herself apparently on the brink of damning him. Then she collected her wits and with a lift of her chin, she said, "I'm not a policeman, Inspector. I don't know what is important in a murder enquiry and what isn't. But I should think that a quarrel between two men the night before one of them is killed will be given your thorough consideration. And you don't know those two as well as I do-did."

"Then perhaps you should tell me about them."

"Tell you what? That neither of them had a vile temper, that neither of them would hurt Lettice, that neither of them was the sort of man to resort to murder?"

"Yet they quarreled. And one of them is dead."

"Then we've come full circle again, haven't we? And I'm trying to make you understand that however angry Charles might have made him at the moment, Mark wouldn't have harmed him-least of all, killed him so savagely!"