Charles Todd - A test of wills

"You will. In the courtroom. I believe Mark Wilton shot Charles Harris after he was told on Sunday night that the wedding was off and the Colonel refused again on Monday morning to listen to reason. All I need to know now is why. Why your guardian changed his mind. What Wilton had done that made it necessary."

Lettice shook her head. "You don't go out and shoot someone because a wedding has been called off! In another year, I'd have been my own mistress. It wasn't necessary to murder Charles-" She stopped, her voice thick with pain.

"It might have been. If the reason was such that Wilton could never have you. Mrs. Davenant has said she'd never seen him so in love-that you'd given him a measure of peace, something to live for, when he'd lost his earlier love of flying. That he'd have done anything you asked, willingly and without hesitation. A man who loves like that might well believe that in a year's time, your guardian would have convinced you that he'd made the right decision, breaking it off. Even turned you against Wilton while he wasn't there to defend himself. When he thought he was in love with Catherine Tarrant, Wilton waited for her because her father felt she wasn't ready for marriage-and in the end she changed her mind. It came to nothing."

"That was different!"

"In what way?" When she didn't answer, he asked instead, "Is that why you didn't go riding with your guardian Monday morning? Because you were as angry as Wilton over what was happening?"

She winced, closing her eyes against his words. But he inexorably went on. "Is that why you had a headache, and left the two men alone to discuss the wedding? Because you'd already lost the battle?"

Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, silvery in the light from the windows, and she made no attempt to wipe them away.

"I will have to arrest Wilton. You know that. I have enough evidence to do it now. But I'd prefer to spare you as much grief as I can. Tell me the truth, and I'll try to keep you out of the courtroom." His voice was gentle again. Behind it, Hamish was restlessly stirring.

After a moment, he took the handkerchief from his pocket and, going to her, pressed it into her hand. She buried her face in it, but didn't sob. Outside he heard the first roll of thunder, distant and ominous. Rutledge stood by the sofa where she sat, looking down at the top of her dark head. Wondering whether she grieved for Mark Wilton. Her guardian. Herself. Or all three.

"That first day I was here, you thought, didn't you, that Mark had shot him. I remember your words. You didn't ask who had done the shooting-instead you were angry about how it was done. I should have guessed then that you were a part of it. That you already knew who it was."

She looked up at him, such anguish in her face that he stepped back. "I am as guilty as Mark is," she told him, holding her voice steady by an effort of will. "Charles-I can't tell you why it was stopped. The wedding. But I can tell you what he said to me on that Tuesday at the Inn. He said I was too young to know my own heart. That he must be the one to decide what was best for me. All that week I begged and pleaded-and cajoled-to have my way. Saturday evening, when Mark had gone home, Charles and I sat up well into the night, thrashing it out."

Thunder rolled again, much nearer this time, and she flinched, startled. The sunlight was fading, an early darkness creeping in. Outside the windows the birds were silent, and somewhere Rutledge could hear a rustle of leaves as if the wind had stirred, but the heat was oppressive now.

Taking a deep, shaking breath, Lettice went on. "Charles was a very strong man, Inspector. He had a fiercely defined sense of duty. What he did on Sunday evening wasn't easy for him. He liked Mark-he respected him. It was for my sake- not because of any weakness in Mark!-that he changed his mind about the wedding."

"Charles doted on you-he'd have given you anything you wanted. Then why not this one thing-the man you planned to marry?"

"Because," she said softly. "Because he did put my happiness above everything else. And he finally came to believe that Mark Wilton wasn't the right man."

"And Wilton, who believed as strongly that he was the right man, turned on his friend, shot him out there in the meadow, and with that one act, lost any hope he might have had of marrying you! I don't see how he gained anything by killing Charles that he couldn't have gained by waiting. Unless there was something else-some reason powerful enough that silencing Charles Harris was worth the risk of losing you forever. Something that might have destroyed Captain Wilton personally or professionally."

She looked up at him, eyes defensive but resolute. It was a strange test of wills, and he wasn't sure exactly where it was leading. Or even if she knew the answer he wanted to hear.

"All right, I did think it was Mark at first-not because I saw him as a murderer, but because of my own sense of responsibility over what had happened, the feeling that he'd done it to obliterate Charles, to get even. I was half drugged, ill with grief, not knowing where to turn or what to do. Charles was dead, they'd quarreled over the marriage-one thing on the heels of the other-what else could I think? But I'm not as sure now. When Mark finally came here, I couldn't sense guilt, I couldn't find any response in him-or in me- that ought to have been there if he'd killed. Only-a terrible emptiness."

"What did you expect? Shivers of premonition?"

"No, don't offer me sarcasm! Give me credit for a little sense, a little knowledge of the man I was planning to marry!" A flush of anger in her cheeks made her eyes glitter, the unshed tears brightening them.

"But still you called off the wedding! In my presence."

"You don't marry while you're in mourning!"

"Then you'll go ahead and marry him after you've mourned a decent length of time? If he isn't hanged for murder?"

Shocked, she stared at him. "I-I don't-"

"Lettice. You aren't telling me all of the truth." He gave her time to answer him, but she said nothing, her eyes holding his, unreadable, once more defiant. "Who are you protecting? Mark? Yourself? Or Charles?"

The wind had picked up, lashing at the house, sending a skirl of leaves rattling across the windows. She got up quickly and went to close them. From there, she turned to face him again. "If you want to hang Mark Wilton, you'll have to prove he's a murderer. In a court of law. With evidence and witnesses. If you can do that, if you can show that he was the one who shot Charles Harris, I will come to the hanging. I've lost Charles, and if I truly thought Mark had killed him, and no one could actually prove it, even though that was the way it had happened, I'd go through with the wedding and spend the rest of our lives making him pay for it! I care that much! But I won't betray him. If he's innocent, I'll fight for him. Not because I love him-or don't love him-but because Charles would have expected me to fight."

"If Mark didn't shoot Harris-who did?"

"Ah!" she said, smiling sadly. "We're back to where we were, aren't we? Well, I suppose it comes down to one thing, Inspector. What mattered most to Mark? Keeping me? Or killing Charles? Because he knew-he knew!-he couldn't do both. So what did he have to gain?"

The storm broke then, rain coming down with the force of wind behind it, rattling shutters and windows and roaring down the chimney, almost shutting out the flash of the lightning and a clap of thunder that for an instant sounded as if it had broken just overhead.

The rain was so intense that he stopped at the end of the drive, in the shelter of overhanging trees. Rutledge's face was wet, his hair was matted to his head, and the shoulders of his coat were dark with water. But he felt better out of that house, away from the strange eyes that told him the truth- but only part of the truth. He didn't need Hamish whispering "She's lying!" to tell him that whatever Lettice Wood was holding back, he'd find no way of forcing it out of her.