Charles Todd - A test of wills

"Miss Tarrant. That's a fetching hat you've got on, my dear. Don't let my wife catch a glimpse of it or she'll be pestering me for one just like it."

Which was kind of him, because his wife, like many of the women in Upper Streetham, cared nothing for Catherine Tarrant, with or without a fetching hat on her head. And it gave her the excuse she needed to say, "Then will you walk along with me a little way? I'd like to speak to you."

"I've missed my lunch and I've got a headache you could toss the churchyard through. Will it take long, this talking?"

"No, not really." She gave him her most winning smile, and he said, "All right, then. Ten minutes!"

She had dismounted and he took the bicycle from her, leading it himself as she strode down the quiet street beside him. "What's this all about then?"

And Catherine Tarrant began to work her wiles. Mavers and Sergeant Davies were glaring at each other by the time that Rutledge finally drove up in front of the doctor's surgery. They climbed into the car in silence, and Rutledge said, "How do I find your house, Mavers?"

"Like the birds in the air, you'll have to fly to it. Or walk. I live up behind the churchyard. There's a path to the house that way. Did you buy this car from the wages of wringing the necks of felons, or have you got private means?"

"Does it matter either way? I'm still an oppressor of the poor."

Mavers grinned nastily, his goat's eyes alight with the zeal of his favorite subject. "Horses earn their keep. What does this bleeding motorcar do for mankind?"

"It keeps workmen employed putting it together, and others earn their livings in the factories that supply the materials to those workmen. Have you considered that? Every person driving a motorcar is a benefactor." He turned into the short street leading to the church.

"And those workmen could be better employed building homes for the poor and growing food for the hungry and making clothes for the naked."

"Which of course you spend every free moment of your time doing, a shining example to us all?"

Mavers growled, "You'll have to leave the motor here, by the lych-gate, and get your boots dirty on the path like the rest of us poor devils."

Which they did, marching behind Mavers up the bare track that Rutledge had seen just that morning. It had begun to dry out in the sun, although a thin coating of mud clung halfheartedly to their shoes. But soon they turned off on a small, rutted path that went over another rise and across an unplowed field to a shabby cottage standing in a clump of straggling beech trees. The yard before it was bare of grass and a dozen equally shabby chickens scratched absently there, paying no heed to their owner or his visitors when the three men arrived at the cottage door.

From somewhere around back a pig grunted, and Mavers said, "He's not mine, he belongs to one of the farmers over on the Crichton estate. Too ill-tempered an old boar to keep within sight of a sow, but he still breeds fine. And I'm not home long enough to notice the smell." Which was a good thing, all in all. As the breeze shifted, the essence of pig was nearly breathtaking.

He went inside, and Rutledge followed. The cottage- surprisingly-was not dirty, though it was as shabby inside as the exterior and the chickens. There were four rooms opening off a short central hall, the doors to each standing open. In the first of them on the left side the only windows were overhung by beech boughs, cutting off the sunlight, and Rutledge blinked in the sudden dimness as he crossed the threshold. Papers were scattered everywhere, most of them poorly printed political tracts and handwritten tirades, covering floor and furnishings impartially like grimy snow. Mav- ers walked through and over them, regardless, and flung himself down in a chair by a small mahogany table at the corner of the hearth. There was a lamp on it, its smoke-blackened chimney surrounded by stacks of books, an inkstand of brass, and a much-used blotter.

"Welcome to Mavers Manor," he said, adding with heavy sarcasm, "Are you planning to stay to dinner? We don't dress here, you'll do as you are." He didn't ask them to sit.

"Who killed Colonel Harris?" Rutledge asked. "Do you know?"

"Why should I? Know, I mean?"

"Somebody knows something. It might be you."

"If I knew anything I'd more likely shake the fool's hand than turn him in to you."

Which Rutledge believed. "Why did you feud with the Colonel? All those years?"

Suddenly Mavers's face turned a mottled red, which gave the darkening bruises a garish air, and he snarled, "Because he was an arrogant bastard who thought he was God, and never cared what he did to other people. Send that great lump, Davies, out into the yard with the rest of the dumb animals and I'll tell you all about your fine Colonel Harris!"

Rutledge glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Davies, who clumped out and slammed the door behind him, as near as he could ever come to insubordination.

Mavers waited until he could see Davies fuming in the yard, well out of hearing, and then said, "He thought he was lord and master around here, Harris did. Mrs. Crichton never comes to Upper Streetham, she's so old she hardly knows her arse from her elbow, and the Haldanes-well, the Hal- danes were so well bred they've nearly vanished, a bloodless lot you can't even be bothered to hate. But the Colonel, now he was something else."

There was pent-up venom in the thick voice, and Mavers was having trouble breathing through his nose as his anger mounted, almost panting between words. "He came into his own early, after his father had a stroke and wound up being confined to a chair for the rest of his life-which wasn't all that long-and in his eyes his precious son could do no wrong. Harris had the first motorcar in this part of Warwickshire, did you know that? Drove like a madman, terrified old ladies and horses and half the children. Then he got his commission in the family's Regiment, and he came home swaggering in his fine uniform, telling every man he met that the army life was for them. Had any girl he wanted, paid his way out of trouble, and raised hell whenever he felt like it. My older brother joined the Army to please him, and he died in South Africa with a Boer musket ball in his brain."

He stopped, but Rutledge said nothing, and after a time, Mavers went on more quietly. "My mother never got over that-he was her favorite. A big strapping lad like her own father. And my sister drowned herself in the pond one day because Harris stopped fancying her. I went to Mallows to horsewhip him and got thrashed by the grooms instead. Ma called me a worthless whelp for daring to blame Harris for Annie's weakness. So I ran off to join the Army myself, and somehow he found out about it, and he had me sent home for lying about my age. But he wouldn't give me my job back in the stables at Mallows-he told that bootlicking fool Royston that they didn't want me there anymore because I was a troublemaker. So that's just what I became, trouble. A thorn in his flesh! And if you believe that one fine morning I'd shoot him down, depriving myself of that lifelong pleasure, you're a greater fool than you look!"

Rutledge heard two things in Mavers's diatribe-the ring of truth, and the echo of envy. "You're talking about a boy. Twenty, perhaps? Not much older than that. And you were what? Fourteen? Fifteen?" he said carefully.

The red flush returned to Mavers's face. "What does age have to do with it? Is there some special dispensation for cruelty if you're rich and under twenty?"

"You know there isn't. But a man generally isn't judged by what he did as a boy, he's judged by what he did as a man."

Mavers shrugged. "Boy or man, he's the same. Besides, the damage is done, isn't it? And the man at forty may be a saint, but the rest of us are still bleeding from what he did when he was twenty. Who's to put that right? Who's to bring Annie back, or Jeff? Or Ma. Tell me!"