Charles Todd - A test of wills

Hamish, who had been quiet, tense, and watchful in his mind, like something waiting to pounce in the vast, secretive recesses of emotion, said suddenly, "I don't like it. I've been on patrol on nights when the Huns were filtering like smoke out of the trenches, and my skin crawled with fear."

"It isn't night," Rutledge said aloud. The sound of his voice was no comfort, only intensifying his sense of something wrong.

He moved from field to field. It hadn't taken long, not more than twenty minutes since he'd left the churchyard. Unconsciously he'd lengthened his stride early on, and now he was sweating with the effort. But he couldn't slow down, it was almost as if something drove him. The saplings were not far now.

But what was it? What was behind this dreadful sense of urgency?

From the start he'd been afraid he'd lost any skills he'd once had. He'd tried to listen-too hard perhaps-for any signs that they'd survived. And found only emptiness. And yet-last night he'd come close to feeling the intuition that had once been his gift. He'd followed his instincts, not the dictates of others. They'd been certain Harris had died where he'd fallen. They'd been certain that no one in the village could have killed the Colonel. They'd been certain there was no case against Wilton, and he'd found one.

He had his murderer. Didn't he? Then why didn't he feel the satisfaction that ordinarily came with the solution of a vicious crime? Because his evidence was circumstantial, not solid? Or because there was still something he'd overlooked, something that he'd have seen, five years ago. Something that-but for his own emotional tensions-he'd have thought of long before this?

He went through the stand of saplings without being aware of them, his feet guiding him without conscious volition.

Something was missing. Or someone? Yes, that was it! He'd spoken to everyone of consequence in his interviews- except one.

He'd never asked Maggie Sommers what she'd seen or heard that last morning of Charles Harris's life. He'd assumed she knew nothing. And yet she lived across a stone wall from Mallows land, and Colonel Harris sometimes rode that way- she'd learned to return his wave, shy as she was.

Had Harris passed the cottage that last morning? Had Maggie seen anyone else!

Rutledge swore. Impatient with her timidity, he'd treated her-as everyone else did!-as all but witless.

He was in the fields now, heavy with the scent of raw earth and sunlight.

What did she know that no one had thought to ask? She would be the last person to come forward voluntarily. That would have been unbearable agony for her. And yet-now that he was sure the murder had happened somewhere other than the meadow-her evidence could easily be critical. It could damn Wilton to the hangman-or free him, for that matter.

Maggie, he realized, could very well hold the key to this murder, and he'd overlooked it. He glanced toward the distant stone wall, seeing it with new eyes. Maggie, hanging clothes on the line on Monday mornings. Maggie working in her overgrown garden. Maggie, always at home and close enough to Mallows here to hear a horseman in the fields. Or a shotgun going off nearby. Maggie seeing the murderer, for all he knew, waiting among the trees or in the dell or coming over the rise. Maggie, anxious and afraid of strangers, watchful and wary, so that she could hide herself inside the cottage before she herself was seen. And a lurking killer, unaware of a witness he'd never even glimpsed.

And this was the time to speak to her, while Helena was at the funeral. He doubled his pace, as if afraid, now that he'd remembered her, that she might be gone before he got there. Cursing himself for his blindness, for seeing with his eyes and not with that intuitive grasp of people he'd always had.

Ahead he could hear something, unidentifiable at first, a loud, insistent, repetitive It was the goose at the Sommers cottage. Something had upset the bird, he could tell from the wild sound, rising and falling without so much as a breath in between.

Rutledge broke into a run, ignoring the neat rows of young crops under his feet, stumbling in the soft earth, keeping his balance with an effort of will, his eyes on the rose-draped wall that separated Mallows from Haldane land and the Sommers cottage.

Helena was coming into town for the services. Maggie was alone He could hear screams now, high and wordless, and a man's bellow of pain. He was no longer running, he was covering the ground with great leaps, risking his neck he knew, but unable to think of that as the screams reached a crescendo of something beyond pain.

Reaching the wall, he rested his palms on the edge of it, swung his body over in one movement, paying no heed to the long thorn-laced roses that pulled at his clothes. His feet landed among Maggie's pathetic little flowers on the far side of the wall, trampling them heedlessly.

There was a motorcar in the drive, down by the gate. It was empty, and he ignored it, springing for the cottage.

Seeing him coming, the goose wheeled from her stand near the cottage door and sailed toward him, wings out, neck low, prepared for the attack.

He brushed her roughly aside, and was ten yards from the door when it burst open and a man came reeling out, his face a mask of blood, his shirt torn and soaked to crimson, his trousers slashed and smeared.

It was Royston. Something had laid open his shoulder- Rutledge could see the blue-white sheen of bone there-and he plunged heavily off the steps and into the grass, hardly aware of Rutledge sliding to a halt almost in his path.

Regardless of the pain he was inflicting, Rutledge caught him by his good shoulder and swung him around, anger twisting his face into a grimace as he shouted, "Damn you! What have you-"

Inside, the screaming went on.

"Watch her!" Royston cried. "She's got-got an ax-" His knees buckled. "The child-the child-"

Rutledge managed to break his fall, but Royston was losing blood rapidly, his words weaker with every breath. "The child-I killed-"

Without waiting for any more, Rutledge was through the door, eyes seeing nothing after the glare of the sun, but ahead of him was something, a figure barely glimpsed. A woman in black, huddled on the floor at the end of the brown sofa, two darknesses blending into one like some distorted parody of humanity, humped and ugly. A primeval dread lifted the hairs along his arms.

Reaching her, he grasped her shoulders, saying, "Are you all right? Has he hurt you? What has he done to you?" She stared up at him, face chalk white, eyes large and wild. In one bloody hand was an ax. His own eyes were adjusting rapidly now. The room was empty except for Maggie and the assorted furnishings of a rented house. He got her up on the sofa, and she leaned back, eyes closed. "Is he dead?" she asked breathlessly, in the voice of a terrified child.

"No-I don't think so."

She tried to get up, but he pressed her back against the sofa, holding her there, trying to determine how much of the blood was hers, how much Royston's.

"I'll have to get help-I'll find Helena and bring her to you-she's at the church-"

But Maggie was shaking her head, dazed but at least able to understand him. Her eyes turned toward the closed door at the far end of the room. "She's in there," Maggie whispered.

Rutledge felt his blood run cold.

"I'll go-"

"No-leave her! I hope she's dead!"

He mistook her meaning, thinking that she was saying that death was preferable to the cataclysm of rape.

"I saw her kill him," she went on, not taking her eyes from the bedroom door. "I saw her! She shot Colonel Harris. And it was for nothing, it wasn't the right man-she'd thought it was, but Mavers said-and then that man out there admitted it was true, that he'd killed the child."