Charles Todd - A test of wills

"I didn't go riding that morning…" Rutledge heard those words again in the far corners of his mind, Lettice answering his question about how Charles had behaved on the morning after the quarrel. She hadn't lied, she'd told him the truth, only in a fashion that she alone knew was an evasion. For she had seen him that morning.

"I didn't want pity. I didn't want people pointing at me, saying I'd had a love affair with Charles and was the cause of his death. I thought there would be enough evidence-some- thing-witnesses-that would lead you to his killer without me. When you came that first time, I thought the only happiness I'd ever have again was seeing Mark hang. And then I realized, with Sergeant Davies standing there by the door, that anything I said would be common knowledge in the village before dinner."

"And now? How do you feel about Wilton now?" Rut- ledge asked, breaking the silence.

Lettice shook her head. "I know he must have killed Charles. It makes sense, the way it happened. But-I still can't see Mark shooting him down in hot blood, obliterating him, wreaking such a terrible vengeance. He's not-devious by nature, not passionate or impulsive. There's an uprightness in him, a strength."

"He wouldn't have fought to keep you?"

"He'd have fought," she said quietly. "But in his own way."

It was after eight when Rutledge woke up the next morning, head heavy with sleeplessness that had pursued him most of the night. He'd heard the church clock chime the hours until it was six o'clock and light enough to see the birds in the trees outside his window before he'd drifted into a drowsing sleep that left him as tired as he'd been when he went to bed.

He'd stayed with Lettice an hour or more, sitting with her until she felt able to sleep. He thought it had been a relief to talk, that she'd feel better afterward. But her last words to him, as he began to close the heavy front door behind him, were, "If I had it to do over, I'd have loved him just the same. I only wish I hadn't lost my courage now, and said more than I meant to say." "I know."

She'd cocked her head to one side, looking at him, her eyes sad. "Yes. I think you do. Don't humiliate Mark. If he's guilty, hang him if you must, but don't break him."

"I give you my word," he'd said, and Hamish had quarreled with him all the way back to Upper Streetham.

Rutledge had a hasty breakfast and went directly to the Dav- enant house. But Grace, the maid, informed him that the Captain had already left for Mallows, and Mrs. Davenant had gone with him as far as the church, to see to the flowers. He came back to town and found that there was already a gathering of people in the lane near the church, though it was only a little after nine. Cars and carriages were lined up, having brought guests from Warwick and elsewhere, and small groups were standing about talking quietly.

The church bell began to toll soon after nine-thirty, deep, sonorous, welling out over the countryside. The hearse had already drawn up, and the casket, oak and bronze, had been carried inside by men from Charles's Regiment acting as pallbearers, their uniforms red as blood in the sunlight.

Rutledge walked about, looking to see if Sally was indeed in the church, and found her giving instructions about the placement of wreaths in front of the coffin. Carfield, magnificent in flowing robes, was already greeting the mourners, moving among them like a white dove in flocks of crows. He went back outside.

Catherine Tarrant arrived, saw him, nodded, and walked quickly to the church, not looking to the right or left. The women from Upper Streetham made a point of cutting her dead as she passed, but several people from London spoke to her as if they knew her.

Rutledge stopped Sergeant Davies when he arrived and asked, "Have you seen Royston? I need to speak to him." He wanted an invitation to the reception, to keep an eye on Wilton. And he wanted to ask Royston about the place where Charles might have been killed.

Davies shook his head. "He was supposed to be here and greet these people. Mr. Haldane is over there, speaking to some of them. Beyond Carfield. The one with the fair hair."

Rutledge could see the tall, slim figure moving quietly from group to group. Sally Davenant came out to join Hal- dane just as the car arrived with Lettice Wood and Mark Wilton. She got out, swathed in veils of black silk, moving gracefully toward a half dozen officers who had turned to meet her. She spoke to them, nodding, her head high, back straight, Wilton just behind her with a quiet, thoughtful expression. Someone from the War Department came over- Rutledge recognized him from London-and then she moved on, impressively calm and leaving behind her looks of admiration and warmth.

"It's a bloody show," Hamish was saying. "We stacked our dead like lumber, or buried them to keep them from smelling. And here's a right spectacle that'd shame an honest soldier."

Rutledge ignored him, scanning the gathering crowd as they moved through the lych-gate and up the walk toward the open doors of the church. Overhead the bell began to count the years of the dead man's life, and he saw Lettice stumble. Wilton took her arm to steady her, and then she was herself again.

He let them go inside and walked down to where the Mallows car had been parked near the lych-gate, ready to take Lettice back in time for the reception.

"Where's Royston?" Rutledge asked the neatly uniformed groom sitting in the driver's seat. "Has he already arrived?"

"I don't know, sir. I haven't seen him at all," the man said, touching his cap. "Mr. Johnston was looking for him just before we left."

Inspector Forrest came hurrying by on his way to the service. The tolling had stopped, and from inside the church the organ rose in solemn majesty, the lower notes carrying the sense of loss and sorrow that marked the beginning of a funeral's salute to the dead.

Rutledge called to him, "Keep an eye on Wilton. Don't let him out of your sight. It's important."

"I'll do that, sir," he promised over his shoulder, not stopping.

Uncertainty, that same sense of time passing, of tension and of waiting, swept him. He wasn't sure why. Looking up, he saw Mavers hurrying past the end of the Court, head down and shoulders humped.

Dr. Warren's car, turning in to the Court, moved quickly to a space in front of one of the houses across from the lych- gate. Warren got out, saying to Rutledge as he passed, "Hick- am's the same-neither better nor worse, but holding on and eating a little. Why aren't you in the church?"

"I don't know," Rutledge answered, but Warren had gone on, not hearing.

On impulse, Rutledge walked around the church, trying to see if Mavers had taken the path up to his house in the fields. But the man had vanished. He kept on walking, climbed over the churchyard wall, and struck out into the fields. But by the time he'd reached the crossbar of the H that led to the other path-the one that skirted Charles Harris's fields and Mallows land-he turned that way instead, his back to Mavers's house. Soon he came to the hedge, and the meadow and the copse of trees where the body had been found. It had seemed very different last night in the dark. Somehow thicker, more sinister, full of ominous shadows. Now-it was a copse, open and sunlit, shafts of light like spears lancing down through the trees. Butterflies danced in the meadow.

Rutledge moved on. Dozens of feet and two rainstorms had swept the land clean of any signs that might have led him to the answer he needed. Where had Charles Harris died? Where was the blood, the small fragments of bone?

The sun was warm, the air quiet and still. Some quirk of the land brought the sound of singing to him from the church, a hymn he remembered from childhood. "A Mighty Fortress." Appropriate to a soldier's death.