Charles Todd - A test of wills

"I'd hardly describe slamming a door in anger or breaking a crystal glass against it as coolheaded. But we'll have the answer to that in good time," Rutledge responded, noting with interest that she hadn't rushed to Captain Wilton's defense when she had been given the perfect opening to do just that. Yet she must have realized where such questions were leading?

Oddly enough, he thought she had. And discounted it. Or ignored it? Accustomed to reaching beyond words into emotional responses, he found her elusiveness puzzling. But he couldn't be sure whether that was his fault-or hers.

He took another tack, giving her a second opening but in a different direction. "Do you believe this man Mavers might have killed the Colonel? Apparently he's caused trouble for your guardian for a number of years."

She blinked, then said, "Mavers? He's been a troublemaker all his life. He seems to thrive on it. He sows dissent for the sheer, simple pleasure of it." Glancing at Sergeant Davies, she said, "But turning to murder? Risking the gallows? I can't see him going that far. Can you?" She frowned. "Unless, of course, it might be just what he wanted," she added thoughtfully.

"In what way?"

"He's been everything from a conscientious objector to a roaring Bolshevik-whatever might stir up people, make them angry. But everyone has more or less grown used to his ranting. Sometimes I even forget he's there. Laurence-Mr. Royston-always said it was the best way to take the wind out of his sails. But Charles felt that it might tip Mavers over the line, that being ignored was the one thing he dreaded. That it was anybody's guess what he might do then. Charles was a good judge of character, he knew Mavers better than the rest of us did. Still, if I were you I'd be wary of any confession Mavers made, unless it was backed up by indisputable proof."

Which was a decidedly puzzling remark. She had just been offered a ready-made scapegoat, and she had refused it. In his mind, Rutledge went back over what she'd just said, listening for nuances. Well, if she was trying to shift the direction of the enquiry, she had done it with an odd subtlety that was only just short of brilliant. Davies, out of her range of vision, was nodding as if he agreed with her about Mavers being the killer, and she'd said nothing of the sort.

If it hadn't occurred to her that the Captain needed defending, why had questions about the quarrel made her so wary? Had Harris been at fault there, and she was trying to preserve his good name, his reputation? Rutledge moved to the mantel, hoping that the change in angles might help him see her more clearly in the shadows. But her face was closed, her thoughts so withdrawn from him that he might as well try to read the engraving on the silver bowl at her elbow. The pallid light reached neither of them.

"Is there anyone else in the village to your knowledge with a reason to wish your guardian dead?"

"Charles had no enemies." She sighed. "There are those who might wish Mark dead, if you believe the gossips. But Charles? He was never here long enough to make enemies. He was a soldier, and leave was a rare thing, a time of respite, not for stirring up trouble."

"No land disputes, no boundary quarrels, no toes stepped on in the county?"

"I've not heard of them. But ask Laurence Royston, his agent. He can tell you about running the estate and whether there were disputes that might have festered. I can't help you there. I only came here to live near the end of the war, when I'd finished school. Before that, I was allowed to visit on school holidays when Charles had leave. Otherwise, I went home with one of my classmates."

Questioning her was like fencing with a will-o'-the-wisp. I don't know, I can't help you there, I didn't go riding that morning- And yet he had believed her when she said that hanging the murderer would bring her comfort. In his experience, the shock of sudden, violent death often aroused anger and a thirst for vengeance. But it seemed to be the only natural, anticipated reaction he'd gotten from her. Why did she keep drifting away from him?

He was reminded by a shifting of feet that Sergeant Da- vies was in the room, a witness to everything she said. A man who lived in Upper Streetham, who presumably had a wife and friends… was that the problem? He, Rutledge, was a private person himself; he understood the fierce need for privacy in others. And if that was the case, he was wasting his time now.

"How did you spend the morning? Before the news was brought to you?"

She was frowning, trying to remember as if that had been years ago, not a matter of days. "I bathed and dressed, came down to breakfast, the usual. Then I had a number of letters to write, and was just coming out of the library to see if Mr. Royston might take them into Warwick for me, when-" She stopped abruptly, then continued in a harsh voice. "I really don't recall what happened after that."

"You didn't leave the house, go to the stables?"

"Of course not, why on earth should I tell you I did one thing when I'd done another?" Rutledge took his leave soon afterward. Davies seemed relieved to be on his way downstairs at the butler's heels, showing an almost indecent haste to be gone.

But Rutledge felt unsatisfied, as if somehow he had been neatly outmaneuvered in that darkened room. Thinking back over what the girl had said, he couldn't pinpoint any particular reason for disbelieving anything she'd told him, but doubt nagged at him. She couldn't be more than twenty- one or twenty-two, and yet she had shown a self-possession that was uncommon at that age-or any other. And he hadn't been able to break through to the person underneath. To the emotions that must be there. To the unspoken words he'd wanted to hear but that she had managed to hold back.

Her detachment, then. That was what disturbed him. As if she didn't connect the reality of violent death with the questions that the police were asking her. No passionate defense of her fiance, no rush to push Mavers forward in his place, no speculation about the nature of the killer at all.

It was almost, he thought with one of those leaps of intuition that had served him so well in the past, as if she already knew who the killer was-and was planning her own private retribution… "I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him," she'd said. Not who-how.

Then as he reached the foot of the stairs he remembered something else. Both Sergeant Davies and the butler had mentioned a doctor. Had the girl been given sedatives that left her in this sleepwalker's state, detached from grief and from reality too? He'd seen men in hospital talk quietly of unspeakable horrors when they'd been given drugs: stumbling to describe terrors they couldn't endure to think about until they were so heavily sedated that the pain and the frantic anxiety were finally dulled.

He himself had confessed to Hamish's presence only under the influence of such drugs. Nothing else would have dragged that out of him, and afterward he had tried to kill the doctor for tricking him. They'd had to pull him off the man, and he'd fought every inch of the way back to his room.

It might be a good idea, then, to speak to the family's doctor before deciding what to do about Lettice Wood.

Before the butler could see them safely out the door, Rut- ledge turned to him and asked, "What was your name again? Johnston?"

"Yes, sir."

"Can you show me the drawing room, please. Where the quarrel between the Captain and the Colonel took place?"

Johnston turned and walked silently across the polished marble to a door on his left. He opened it, showing them into a room of cool greens and gold, reflecting the morning light without absorbing it. "Miss Wood had coffee brought in here after dinner, and when the gentlemen joined her, she dismissed me. Soon afterward she went upstairs, sending for one of the maids and saying that she had a headache and would like a cool cloth for her head. That was around nine o'clock, perhaps a quarter past. At ten-fifteen I came here to take away the coffee tray and to see if anything else was needed before I locked up for the night."