Charles Todd - A test of wills

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.

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.