Charles Todd - A test of wills

"And you hadn't been into or near the drawing room between taking the tray in and coming to remove it?"

"No, sir."

"What happened then? At ten-fifteen?"

At Rutledge's prodding, Johnston stepped back into the hall again, pointed to a door in the shadows of the stairs, and went on reluctantly. "I came out of that door-it leads to the back of the house-and started toward the drawing room. At that moment, Mary was coming down the stairs."

"Who is Mary?"

"There's seven on the staff here, sir. Myself, the cook, her helper, and four maids. Before the war there were twelve of us, including footmen. Mary is one of the maids and has been here the longest, next to Mrs. Treacher and myself."

"Go on."

"Mary was coming down the stairs, and she said when I came into view that she was looking to see if the banisters and the marble floor needed polishing the next morning. If not, she was going to put Nancy to polishing the grates, now that we were no longer making up morning fires."

"And?"

"And at that moment," Johnston answered heavily, "the door of the drawing room opened, and the Captain came out. I didn't see his face-he was looking over his shoulder back into the room-but I heard him say quite distinctly and very loudly, 'I'll see you in hell, first!' Then he slammed the drawing-room door behind him and went out the front door, slamming that as well. I don't think he saw me here, or Mary on the stairs." He seemed to run out of words. "Finish your story, man!" Rutledge said impatiently. "Before the front door had slammed, I heard the Colonel shout, 'That can be arranged!' and the sound of glass shattering against this door." His hand drew their eyes to the raw nick in the glossy paint of one panel, where the glass had struck with such force that a piece of it must have wedged in the wood. "Do you think Captain Wilton heard the Colonel?" In spite of himself, Johnston smiled. "The Colonel, sir, was accustomed to making himself heard on a parade ground and over the din of the battlefield. I would think that the Captain heard him as clearly as I did, and slammed the front door with added emphasis because of it." "It was a glass that shattered, not a cup?" "The Colonel usually had a glass of brandy with his coffee, and the Captain always joined him." "When you cleaned this room the next morning, did you find that two glasses had been used?" "Yes, sir," Johnston answered, perplexed. "Of course." "Which means that the two men drank together and were still on comfortable terms at that point in the evening." "I would venture to say so, yes." "Had you ever heard a quarrel between them before this particular evening?" "No, sir, they seemed to be on the best of terms." "Had they drunk enough, do you think, to have become quarrelsome for no reason? Or over some petty issue?" "With respect, sir," Johnston said indignantly, "the Colonel was not a man to become argumentative in his cups. He held his liquor like a gentleman, and so, to my knowledge, did the Captain. Besides," he added, rather spoiling the lofty effect he'd just created, "the level in the decanters showed no more than two drinks had been poured, one each." "Do you feel, having witnessed the Captain's departure, that this was a disagreement that could have been smoothed over comfortably the next day?"

"He was very angry at the time. I can't say how Captain Wilton might have felt the next morning. But I can tell you that the Colonel seemed in no way unsettled when he came down for his morning ride. Very much himself, as far as I could see."

"And Miss Wood was in her bedroom throughout the quarrel? She didn't rejoin the men in the drawing room, to your knowledge?"

"No, sir. Mary looked in on her before she came down the stairs, to see if she needed anything more, and Miss Wood appeared to be asleep. So she didn't speak to her."

"What did the Colonel do after the Captain left?"

"I don't know, sir. I thought it best not to disturb him at that moment, and I came back twenty minutes later. By that time, he had gone up to bed himself, and I went about my nightly duties before turning in at eleven. Would you like to see Mary now, sir?"

"I'll talk to Mary and the rest of the staff later," Rutledge said, and walked to the door. There he turned to look back at the drawing room and then at the staircase. Under ordinary circumstances, Wilton would have noticed Johnston and the maid as soon as he came out of the drawing-room door. But if he had been looking back at Charles Harris instead, he might not have been aware of either servant, silent and unobtrusive behind him.

With a nod, Rutledge opened the front door before Johnston could reach it to see him out, and with Sergeant Davies hurrying after him, walked down the broad, shallow stone steps and across the drive to the car.

Hamish, growling irritably, said, "I don't like yon butler. I don't hold with the rich anyway, or their toadies."

"It's a better job than you ever held," Rutledge retorted, and then swore under his breath. But Davies had been getting into the car and heard only the sound of his voice, not his words. He looked up to say, "I beg pardon, sir?" The heavy drapes of the sitting room upstairs parted a little, and Lettice Wood watched Rutledge climb into the car and start the engine. When it had passed out of sight around the first bend of the drive, she let the velvet fall back into place and wandered aimlessly to the table where the lamp still burned. She flicked it off and stood there in the darkness.

If only she could think clearly! He would be back, she was certain of that, prying into everything, wanting to know about Charles, asking about Mark. And he wasn't like the elderly Forrest; there would be no deference or fatherly concern from him, not with those cold eyes. She must have her wits about her then! The problem was, what would Mark tell them? How was she to know?

She put her hands to her head, pressing cold fingers into her temples. He looked as if he'd been ill, this inspector from Scotland Yard. And such people were often difficult. Why had Forrest sent for him? Why had it been necessary to drag London into this business, awful enough already without strangers trampling about.

Why hadn't they left it to Inspector Forrest? "Will we speak to Mavers now, sir?"

"No, Captain Wilton next, I think."

"He's staying with his cousin, Mrs. Davenant. She's a widow, has a house just on the outskirts of town, the other end of Upper Streetham from Mallows."

He gave Rutledge directions and then began to scan his notebook as if checking to make certain he had put down the salient points of the conversations with Lettice Wood and Johnston.

"I thought," Rutledge said, "that the servants claimed that the argument between the Colonel and the Captain concerned the wedding. Johnston said nothing about it."

"It was the maid, Mary Satterthwaite, who mentioned that, sir."

"Then why didn't you say so while we were there? I'd have spoken to her straightaway."

Davies flipped back through his notebook to a page near the beginning. "She said she went up to Miss Wood's room to bring a cold cloth for her head, and Miss Wood was telling her that she had left the gentlemen to discuss the marriage. But the way Miss Wood said it led Mary to think it wasn't going to be a friendly discussion."

"And then, having seen the end of the quarrel, the maid merely jumped to the conclusion that that was what they were still talking about?"

"Apparently so, sir."

Which was no evidence at all. "When is the wedding?"

Davies flipped several more pages. "On the twenty-second of September, sir. And Miss Wood and the Captain have been engaged for seven months."

Rutledge considered that. In an hour's time-from the moment that Lettice Wood left the pair together until Johnston had seen Wilton storming out of the house-the subject of conversation could have ranged far and wide. If there had been a discussion of the wedding at nine-fifteen, surely it would not have lasted an hour, and developed into a quarrel at this stage, the details having been ironed out seven months ago and the arrangements for September already well in hand…