Charles Todd - A test of wills

"You recognized her?"

"Oh, aye, I did. Well, why not? I grew up in Upper Streetham!"

"And she never said anything? Then or later, when you'd both come back here, to the village?"

"No, and I can tell you it was a relief the first time she passed me on the High Street without so much as a blink! We've spoken since, of course, when she's been here to dine, just good evening, and what will you have, and thank you- no more nor less than is needed."

"Did she work primarily with the surgical patients, or only wherever she was most useful?"

"I asked one of the younger sisters about her. She said that Mrs. Davenant had shown a skill with handling the worst cases, and the doctors often asked for her. No nonsense, and no fainting, Tilly said. She was best with fliers, she knew how to talk to them. And we got any number of those. Of course, with her own cousin one of them, I expect it was natural for her to find it easy to talk to them."

"Amputations, cleaning septic wounds, burns-she didn't shirk them?"

"No, not that I ever saw. But she's not one the lads would feel free to chat up and laugh with, not the way you did with Tilly. Good-natured nonsense, that's all it was, but not with the likes of Mrs. Davenant!"

"Yet the fliers were comfortable with her?"

"Yes. She'd ask news of the Captain, and then they'd soon be easy around her."

She'd ask news of the Captain…

It always came back to the Captain. But he was beginning to think that whatever her feelings about Mark Wilton, it would take more skill than he possessed to bring them to the surface.

Rutledge went upstairs and along the passage to his room. The sun was bright, showing the worn carpet to worst advantage, dust motes dancing in the light as he passed the windows. The vegetable garden looked like a vegetable garden again, not a sea of temples. He thought the onions had grown inches since his arrival. Even the flowers in the small private garden between the Inn and the drive, surrounded by shrubbery, were no longer flat and drooping from the rain, but stood tall and full of blossom heads. The lupines were particularly glorious. His mother had liked them and filled the house with them as soon as they began to bloom. She'd had a way with flowers, a natural instinct for what made them thrive. His sister Frances, on the other hand, couldn't have grown weeds in a basket. But she was known throughout London for her exquisite flower arrangements, and was begged to lend her eye for color and form to friends for parties and weddings and balls.

His door was ajar, the maid finishing making his bed. She apologized shyly when he stepped in, saying that luncheon had been such a busy time they'd needed her in the kitchens.

"No matter," he said, but she hastily finished her task, picked up her broom and the pile of dirty linens, and bobbed a curtsy of sorts as she left. Rutledge sat down by the windows, wondering what he would say to Bowles on Monday.

Possibilities weren't evidence. Possibilities weren't guilt. Bowles would have a fit if he knew how few facts Rutledge possessed.

He wondered what luck Wilton would have tracking down the child who'd lost the doll. He set it on the windowsill and looked at it. Too bad you couldn't bring a doll into the courtroom. What could it tell? What had it seen, lying there in the hedgerow? Or heard? Rutledge grimaced. A drunken, shell- shocked man, a small child, and a doll, versus a war hero wearing the ribbon of the Victoria Cross. Every newspaper in the country would have a field day!

He needed a motive… a reason for murder. A reason why the Colonel, riding out that sunny morning, had to die. What had brought about his death? Something now, something in the war, something in a life spent largely out of England? So far such questions had gotten him nowhere.

Rutledge leaned his head against the back of the chair, then closed his eyes. He needed to find a young sergeant at the Yard and train him. Someone he could trust. He'd ask Bowles for names of likely men. Someone who could work with him. Davies was too busy trying to stay out of sight. Davies had his own commitments to Upper Streetham, and like the Vicar, he had to live here long after Rutledge was gone. It was understandable. But he needed someone to talk to about this case. Someone who was impartial, whose only interest was finding the killer and getting on with it. Someone to share the loneliness "And what would you tell yon bonny Sergeant about me? Would you be honest with him? I'll not go away, you can't shut me out, I'm not your unhappy Jean, who wants to be shut out. I'm your conscience, man, and it wouldn't be long before yon bonny young Sergeant knows you for what you are!"

Getting quickly to his feet, Rutledge swore. All right, then, he'd do it alone. But do it he would! Outside the Inn, he met Laurence Royston. Royston nodded, and was about to walk on, when Rutledge said, "Have you spoken with the Vicar?"

Royston turned. "Damned fool! But yes, I have, and yes, he's right. Charles would have expected to have the reception at Mallows. I've told him I'll take the responsibility, and I'll see to the arrangements. He needn't disturb Lettice. Miss Wood."

"Can you tell me if Sally Davenant worked as a nurse during the war? At a convalescent hospital?"

"Yes, she did. In a friend's home in Gloucestershire. Charles ran into her there once or twice, visiting one of his wounded staff officers. He felt she was very capable, very good at what she did."

"Why do you think she volunteered?"

"Actually, she spoke to me about it before she wrote to Mrs. Carlyle." He grinned. "I told her she'd hate it. Well, I thought she might, you see, and if she expected to hate it, it wouldn't be quite such a letdown. She said then that she wasn't cut out to run a farm the way Catherine Tarrant was doing, and she was damned if she'd roll bandages or serve tea to the troop trains leaving London-ladies' make-work, she called it. But she thought she might be useful with the wounded. And she was worried about her cousin. Pilots didn't have a long life expectancy; by rights Wilton should have been killed in the first year-eighteen months. She felt that staying busy would make the news easier to bear. When it came."

There was a commotion in the street as two boys came swooping past, chasing a dog with a bone nearly as large as its head in its mouth. A woman on the other side of the street called, "Jimmy! If you've let that animal into the house-"

Royston watched the boys. "Father died on the Somme. They're growing up wild as hellions. What was I saying? Oh, about Mrs. Davenant. I couldn't serve," he went on quietly. "I have only the one kidney, as I told you. The army wouldn't have any part of me, and I suppose it was for the best. Hard on a man, when everyone else is serving, even the women. Charles told me I was doing my bit keeping Mallows and the Davenant lands productive."

"You worked Mrs. Davenant's land?"

"Yes, her steward left before Christmas in 1914. Mad to fight, mad to be there before it was all over. He never came back. And the old steward wasn't up to the work. I did it, and he kept an eye on things when I couldn't be there."

"Did you know Hugh Davenant well?"

Royston shrugged. "Well enough. Hugh Davenant made a wreck of his marriage. One of those selfish, careless bastards who go through life leaving grief in their wake, never taking notice."

"Was she ever in love with her cousin?"

He frowned. "I've wondered. Well, it was natural, I suppose, to wonder. But there was never anything to support speculation. She's fond of him."

"What was Wilton planning to do after he married Let- tice? Live here at Mallows?"

"No, he has a home of his own in Somerset-I've seen it, a handsome house, good rich land."

"I can't picture the Captain quietly growing lettuces and wheat."