Charles Todd - A test of wills

Without warning, he found himself thinking of Jean, of their own engagement in that hot, emotion-torn summer of 1914, a lifetime ago. Of the endless letters passing back and forth to France as they dreamed and planned. Of the acute longing that had kept him alive when nothing else had mattered. Of the wedding that had never taken place Of Jean's white face in his hospital room when he had offered her the chance to break off the engagement. She had smiled nervously and taken it, murmuring something about the war having changed both of them. While he sat there, still aching with love and his need for her, trying with every ounce of his being to hide it from her, she'd said, "I'm not the girl you remember in 1914. I loved you so madly-I think anything would have been possible then. But too much time has passed, too much has happened to both of us-we were apart so long… I don't even know myself anymore… Of course I still care, but-I don't think I should marry anyone just now-it wouldn't be fair to marry anyone…"

Yet despite the quiet voice and the scrupulously chosen words that tried desperately to spare both of them pain, he could see the truth in her eyes.

It was fear.

She was deathly afraid of him…

Mrs. Davenant lived in a Georgian brick house standing well back from the road. It was surrounded by an ivy- clad wall with ornate iron gates and set in a pleasant garden already bright with early color. Roses and larkspur drooped over the narrow brick walk, so heavy with rain from the night before that they left a speckled pattern of dampness on Rutledge's trousers as he brushed past them on his way to the door.

Surprisingly, Mrs. Davenant answered the bell herself. She was a slender, graceful woman in her thirties, her fair hair cut becomingly short around her face but drawn into a bun on the back of her neck. Tendrils escaping its rigorous pinning curled delicately against very fine skin, giving her a fragile quality like rare porcelain. Her eyes were dark blue with naturally dark lashes, making them appear deep set and almost violet.

She nodded a greeting to Sergeant Davies and then said to Rutledge, "You must be the man from London." Her eyes scanned his face and his height and his clothes with cool interest.

"Inspector Rutledge. I'd like to speak to you, if I may. And to Captain Wilton."

"Mark has gone for a walk. I don't think he slept well last night, and walking always soothes him. Please, come in."

She led them not into the drawing room but down a passage beyond the stairs to a comfortable sitting room that still had a masculine ambience, as if it had been her late husband's favorite part of the house. Paintings of hunting scenes hung above the fireplace and on two of the walls, while a collection of pipes in a low, glass-fronted cabinet stood beneath a small but exquisite Canaletto.

"This is a dreadful business," she was saying as Rutledge took the chair she offered him. Sergeant Davies went to stand by the hearth, as if her invitation to be seated had not included him. She accepted this without comment. "Simply dreadful! I can't imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill Charles Harris. He was a thoroughly nice man." There was a ring of sincerity in the words.

An elderly woman in a black dress and white apron came to the doorway, and after glancing toward her, Mrs. Dav- enant asked, "Would you care for coffee, Inspector? Sergeant?" When they declined, she nodded to the woman and said, "That will be all, then, Grace. And close the door behind you, please."

When the woman had gone, Rutledge said, "Do your servants live in, Mrs. Davenant?"

"No, Agnes and Grace come in daily to clean and to prepare meals. Agnes isn't here just now, her granddaughter is very ill. Ben is my groom-gardener. He lives over the stables." She lifted her eyebrows in a query, as if expecting Rut- ledge to explain his interest in her staff.

"Can you tell me what state of mind Captain Wilton was in when he came home from Mallows the evening before the Colonel was killed?"

"His state of mind?" she repeated. "I don't know, I had already gone to bed. When he dined with Lettice and the Colonel, I didn't wait up for him."

"The next morning, then?"

"He seemed a little preoccupied over his breakfast, I suppose. But then I've grown used to that. Lettice and Mark are very much in love." She smiled. "Lettice has been good for him, you know. He was so changed when he came home from France. Dark-bitter. I think he hated flying then, which is sad, because before the war-before the killing-it had been his greatest passion. Now Lettice is everything to him. I don't think Charles could have stood in the way of this marriage if he'd wanted to!"

Rutledge could see that she was fond of her cousin-and from her unguarded comments he gathered that it hadn't yet occurred to her that Wilton might have killed Harris. It was interesting, he thought, that she spoke freely, warmly, and yet with an odd-detachment. Was that it? As if her own emotions were locked away and untouched by the ugliness of murder. Or as if she had held them in for so very long that it had become second nature to her. It was a response to widowhood in some women, but there could be many other reasons.

"Did Captain Wilton go for a walk on Monday morning?"

"Of course. He likes the exercise, and since the crash- you knew that he crashed just before the war ended?-since then riding has been difficult for him. His knee was badly smashed, and although it's hardly noticeable now when he walks, controlling a horse is another matter."

Rutledge studied her. An attractive woman, with the sort of fair English beauty that men were supposed to dream about in the trenches as they died for King and Country. She was dressed in a soft rose silk that in the light from the long windows gave her skin a warm blush. The same blush it might have when stirred by passion. He found himself wondering if Charles Harris had ever been drawn to her. A man sometimes carried a picture in his mind when he spent long years abroad-a tie with home, whether real or fancied.

"Where does Captain Wilton usually walk?"

She shrugged. "I can't tell you that. Where the spirit takes him, I daresay. One day as I came home from the village, I saw a farm cart dropping him off at our gate, and he told me he had walked to Lower Streetham and halfway to Bampton beyond! Along the way he'd picked a small posy of wildflow- ers for Lettice, but it had wilted by then. A pity."

"I understand that he had a quarrel with Charles Harris on Sunday evening after dinner. Do you have any idea what that was about?"

With a sigh of exasperation, she said, "Inspector Forrest asked me the same question, when he came about the shotguns. I can't imagine Charles and Mark quarreling. Oh, good-naturedly, about a horse or military tactics or the like, but not a serious argument. They got along famously, the two of them, ever since they met in France, on leave in Paris."

"I understand that the Captain had spent some time here before 1914. He and Colonel Harris weren't acquainted then?"

"Charles was in Egypt, I think, the summer my husband died. And Lettice of course was away at school."

"The wedding arrangements, then. They appeared to be progressing smoothly?"

"As far as I know. Lettice has ordered her gown, and next week she was to go to London for the first fitting. The invitations have been sent to the printer, flowers chosen for the wedding breakfast, plans for the wedding trip made-I doubt if Mark would have objected if Lettice had wished to go to the moon! And Charles doted on her, he wouldn't have begrudged her anything her heart desired. She only needed to ask. What was there to quarrel about?"

Mrs. Davenant made the marriage sound idyllic, such a piece of high romance that even death couldn't stand in its way. And yet in the three days since Charles Harris had been found murdered, Lettice had apparently not asked to see Wilton. Nor, as far as he, Rutledge, knew, had Wilton gone to Mallows.