Charles Todd - A test of wills

But at one of the doors, the woman who answered raised her eyebrows at finding him on her doorstep. "You're the man from London, then. What can I do for you?" She looked him up and down with cool eyes.

He didn't need to be told what she was, although she was respectably dressed in a dark blue gown that was very becoming to her dark hair and her sea-colored eyes. A tall woman of middle age and wide experience, who saw the world as it was, but more important, seemed to take it as it was.

Rutledge asked his questions, and she listened carefully to each before shaking her head. No, she hadn't seen Hickam. No, she'd not seen the Captain that morning, nor Mavers. But the Colonel had been here.

"Colonel Harris?" Rutledge asked, keeping his voice level as Hamish clamored excitedly. "What brought him this way, do you know?"

"He came to leave a message by the door, knowing it was an early hour for Betsy and me, but he wanted to put our minds at rest about the quarrel we'd had with the Vicar." Her mouth twisted, half in exasperation, half in humor. "Mr. Carfield is often of a mind to meddle; he likes to be seen as a thunderbolt, you might say, flinging the moneylenders out of the temple, the whores out of the camp. Not that there's that much to go on about in Upper Streetham. It's not what you'd call a regular Sodom and Gomorrah."

She caught the responsive gleam in Rutledge's eyes. "The Colonel, now, he was a very decent man. We pay our rent, regular as the day, but Vicar had been onto that Mr. Jameson about us, and he called around, talking eviction. I could have told him who put him up to it! But there was no changing his mind. So the next time I saw the Colonel on the street, I stopped him and asked him please to have a word with Mr. Jameson about it."

"Jameson?"

"Aye, he's the agent for old Mrs. Crichton, who lives in London, and he manages her holdings in Upper Streetham. Well, the short of it was, Mr. Jameson agreed he'd been a little hasty over the evicting."

"Do you still have the message?"

She turned and called over her shoulder to someone else in the house. "Betsy? Could you find that letter of the Colonel's for me, love?"

In a moment a thinner, smaller woman came to the door, apprehension in her eyes and a cream-colored envelope in her hand. She handed it silently to the older woman. "Is everything all right, Georgie?"

"Yes, yes, the Inspector is asking about the Colonel, that's all." She gave the envelope to Rutledge, adding, "He never came here-as a caller. He was a proper gentleman, the Colonel, but fair. Always fair. If you'd asked me, I'd have said I knew most of the men in Upper Streetham better than their own wives, and I can't think of one who'd want to shoot Colonel Harris!"

There were two words on the front: Mrs. Grayson.

"That's me, Georgina Grayson."

Rutledge took the letter out of its envelope, saw the Colonel's name engraved at the top, and the date, written in a bold black hand. Monday. He scanned it. It said, simply, "I've spoken to Jameson. You needn't worry, he's agreed to take care of the matter with Carfield. If there should be any other trouble, let me know of it." It was signed "Harris."

"Could I keep this?" he asked, speaking to Mrs. Grayson.

"I'd like it back," she said. "But yes, if it'll help."

Turning to Betsy, Rutledge went over the same questions he'd asked earlier, but she'd seen no one, not Mavers-"He knows better than to show his face around here!"-not Hickam, not Harris, not Wilton-"More's the pity!" with a saucy grin. "But," she added, a sudden touch of venom in her voice, "I did see Miss Hoity-toity just the other day, Thursday it was, following after that poor sot, Daniel Hickam. He'd spent the night on the floor here, too drunk to find his way home, and we got a little food into him, then let him go. She was onto him like a bee onto the honey, slinking after him into the high grass toward the trees." She pointed, as if they had only just disappeared from sight, down toward the track that eventually led up the hill to Mallows.

The one called Georgie smiled wryly at Rutledge. "Catherine Tarrant."

"What did she want with Hickam?" Rutledge asked. Thursday was the day she'd come into town to speak to him about Captain Wilton.

Betsy shrugged. "How should I know? Maybe to pose for her-she asked Georgie to do it once, and Georgie told her sharpish what she thought about that! But it was him she did want! She caught up with him where she didn't think I could see, and stopped him, talking to him, and him shaking his head, over and over. Then she took something from her pocket and held it out to him-money enough to get drunk again, I'll wager! He turned away from her, but after only a few steps turned back and began speaking to her. She interrupted him a time or two, and then she gave him whatever it was she was holding, and he shambled off into the trees. She walked back down to where she'd left her bicycle, head high as you please, like the cat that got the cream, and then she was gone. She's a German lover, that one. Maybe she's got a taste for drunks as well!"

The eyes of hate and jealousy…

Mrs. Grayson said, "Now, then, Betsy, it won't help the Inspector to do his job if you run on like that. Miss Tarrant's business is none of ours!"

He left them, the letter in his pocket, his mind on what it represented-the fact that the Colonel had been in the lane on Monday morning, just when Hickam had said he was. And Catherine Tarrant had given Hickam money… When Rutledge arrived at the Inn, Wilton and Sergeant Davies were waiting. There was a distinctly sulfurous air about them, as if it hadn't been a pleasant afternoon for either of them. But Sergeant Davies got to his feet as soon as he saw Rutledge, and said, "We think we've found the child, sir."

Turning to Wilton, Rutledge said, "What does he mean? Aren't you sure?"

Wilton's temper flashed. "As far as I can be! She's-differ- ent. But yes, I feel she must be the one. None of the others matched as well. The problem is-"

Rutledge cut him short. "I'll only be a minute, then." He went up to his room, got the doll, and came down again, saying, "Let's be on our way!"

"Back there?" Wilton asked, and the Sergeant looked mutinous.

"Back there," Rutledge said, walking down the rear hallway toward his car. He gave them no choice but to follow. "I want to see this child for myself."

He said nothing about Georgina Grayson as he drove to the cottage. While it was, as the crow flies, only a little farther from Upper Streetham than the meadow where the Colonel's body had been found, it was necessary to go out the main road by Mallows, through the Haldanes' estate, and up the hill, the last hundred yards on rutted road that nearly scraped the underpinnings of the car.

On the way, he asked instead for information about the child's family.

"She's Agnes Farrell's granddaughter," Davies answered. "Mrs. Davenant's maid."

"The one we met at her house on Thursday morning?"

"No sir, that was Grace. Agnes was home with the child. Lizzie's mother is Agnes's daughter, and the father is Ted Pinter, one of the grooms at the Haldanes'. They live in a cottage just over the crest of the hill from where the Captain says he was walking when he saw Lizzie and Miss Sommers that Monday morning. When Meg Pinter is busy, the little girl sometimes wanders about on her own, picking wildflowers. But she's quite ill, now, sir. Like to die, Agnes says."

Rutledge swore under his breath. When one door opened, another seemed to close. "What's the matter with her?"

"That's just it, sir, Dr. Warren doesn't know. Her mind's gone, like. And she screams if Ted comes near her. Screams in the night too. Won't eat, won't sleep. It's a sad case."

The car bumped to a stop in front of the cottage, a neatly kept house with a vegetable garden in the back, flowers in narrow beds, and a pen with chickens. A large white cat sat washing herself on the flagstone steps leading to the door, ignoring them as they walked by.