Charles Todd - A test of wills

She fought him, then collapsed in tears, and for a moment he knelt by her chair and simply held her, offering what comfort he could. She smelled of lilies of the valley, and her hair was soft against his face.

It was not professional, and Hamish was clamoring in the back of his head about the seduction of witches, but there was nothing else he could do.

When the worst was over, he went into the drawing room to ring for Mary Satterthwaite.

Waiting for his summons to be answered, he stood by the high back of the chair with one hand on Lettice's shoulder, knowing from experience that the warmth of human contact was often more important than words.

And thinking to himself that this rather blew to the four winds his earlier impression that Lettice Wood knew who had killed her guardian…

Dr. Warren had spent a harried morning in his surgery, and added to that had been a sleepless night attending to Hickam. He was tired, irritable, and behind in his schedule. As he started out on his rounds, he was grumbling about a retirement long overdue and the ingratitude of villagers who seemed to think he was on call twenty-four hours of the day.

He looked in on the new baby he had delivered and found it flourishing, but tongue-lashed the father when he discovered that the mother had spent her morning bent over a full tub of washing.

"I've told you Mercy had a hard birth," Warren finished, "and you'd have seen it for yourself if you hadn't been ten parts drunk that whole day. Now either you find someone from the village to lend a hand in the house or I'll find a good woman and bill you for her. If Mercy hemorrhages, she's as good as dead. And then where will you and that child be?"

He stumped back to his car and swore as he barked his knuckles trying to start it.

The next stop was briefer, to call on an elderly widow ill with shingles, and this time he left her a stronger powder to help with the pain from the long ropes of fluid-filled blisters that looped down her arm. It was all he could do, but the old, cataract-clouded eyes smiled up at him with a pathetic gratitude.

Finally he reached the cottage on the Haldane property where Agnes Farrell's daughter Meg lived. Agnes was tall, spare, and capable, the most levelheaded woman he'd ever met and-in his opinion-wasted as a housemaid when she'd have made such an excellent nurse. Meg had married well; her husband, Ted Pinter, would be head groom on the estate when his father retired, and the cottage was as pretty as she could make it. Warren had always looked forward to his visits here because Meg was as healthy as her mother and had gone through two pregnancies with no trouble at all, the last one four years ago. She was also a very respectable cook and never failed to send him away with a slice of cake or scones for his tea.

But the kitchen no longer smelled of baking, and the woman who met him at the door had lost the bloom of youth and health. Meg looked forty, and her mother twice that.

Lizzie was a pretty little thing, he thought, bending over the narrow crib to peer down at the pale little face staring blankly at the wall. But she wouldn't be for long if something didn't work soon. She was, as far as he could tell, exactly as he'd left her the day before, and the day before that as well- he'd lost count of the string of days he had come here, and yes, nights too, trying to break through that blank stare. Lizzie reminded him even more strongly now of those round- cheeked marble cherubs that the Haldanes seemed to want carved on all their family tombs-and nearly as white and cold where once her skin had had the soft warmth of ripe peaches.

Lizzie didn't move, she didn't speak, she never seemed to sleep, and food pressed into her mouth dribbled out it as if she'd somehow forgotten how to swallow.

Except for an array of bruises that were already fading, there was not a mark on her. Warren had looked with great care. No sign of a head injury, spinal injury, bee sting, spider's bite. No rash, no fever, no swellings. Just this deathly stillness that was broken by fits of wild thrashing and screaming that went on and on until Lizzie was exhausted and dropped suddenly back into stillness again.

Agnes watched him watching the child, and said, "There's no change. Not that we can see. I got some milk into her again, and a little weak tea. Most of the broth ended up on her gown."

Meg, her hands twisted tightly together, added, "We thought, Ma and I, that it was darkness she was afeared of, but the screaming only happens when Ted is near her. He's got so he won't come into the room." After a moment she added anxiously, "Why should she be afeared of her own father?"

"She probably isn't," Warren said shortly. "Where's the boy?"

"I sent him over to my sister Polly. The screaming was bothering him, he wasn't getting any rest at all." Teddy, six, was the image of his father and seemed to be made entirely of springs, like a jack-in-the-box.

"It doesn't seem to disturb her when I come near her," Warren went on thoughtfully. "Who else has been in the house? Men, I mean?"

"No one," Agnes said. "Well, Polly's husband, come to get Teddy. He stopped on his way home from the mill, and was too dusty to set foot in the door. But Lizzie must have heard him." She grinned tiredly. Saul Quarles was the bass in the church choir, with a chest to match. Local wits claimed that his voice carried farther than the church's bell. "She couldn't miss him, could she?"

"But she didn't cry? Scream?"

"Not a peep. Is she going to die?" Meg asked, striving for calmness and failing wretchedly. "What's wrong with her?"

Warren shook his head. "She needs a specialist. I saw a woman like this once, early in my practice. She'd lost her baby, and couldn't face it. The spell passed in a week, a little longer perhaps. Grief, fright, sudden changes-they can do things to the brain."

Meg began to cry softly, and Agnes put her arm around the girl's shaking shoulders. "There, there," she whispered, but the words carried no comfort. Mary Satterthwaite, answering the summons of the drawing room bell, was startled to find Rutledge back at Mallows when she'd seen him out the door two hours earlier. He was standing by one of the hall chairs, a hand on Lettice Wood's shoulder as if holding her there, and the girl was shaking like a tree in the wind.

Bristling at the sight of her mistress in such distress, she rounded on the Inspector from Scotland Yard and said, "What's happened, then?"

Rutledge replied quietly, "I think you should ask Miss Wood."

Lettice had stopped crying before Mary came through the servants' door, but she accepted the fresh handkerchief the maid thrust into her hand and pressed it to her eyes almost as if to form a barrier between herself and the two people standing over her-a shield. When she lowered it, Rutledge could see that she was thinking again, that she'd used that brief instant of withdrawal to take a firmer grip on self-control. The trembling had stopped, but shock still showed in the pinched whiteness of her face, and in the effort she was making to overcome it. She said huskily, "I'm all right, Mary. Truly I am! It's just-"

Lettice glanced up quickly at Rutledge's unreadable face. Mary's sister was Catherine Tarrant's housekeeper. Did he know that? She wasn't sure how he might respond to the lie she was about to tell. If he would understand why. But she had to keep Catherine Tarrant out of this investigation, if she could, and the first step was preventing Mary from gossiping. "There's to be an Inquest. And I expect-something must be done about the services-"

Mary eyed Rutledge accusingly. "Mr. Royston will see to all that for you, Miss, and the Captain! Don't worry your head about it. The Inspector shouldn't ought to have sprung that on you. It was ill done, sir, if you ask me!"