A Test of Wills (17 page)

“That’s just it, sir, Dr. Warren doesn’t know. Her mind’s gone, like. And she screams if Ted comes near her. Screams in the night too. Won’t eat, won’t sleep. It’s a sad case.”

The car bumped to a stop in front of the cottage, a neatly kept house with a vegetable garden in the back, flowers in narrow beds, and a pen with chickens. A large white cat sat washing herself on the flagstone steps leading to the door, ignoring them as they walked by.

Agnes Farrell opened the door to them. He could see the lines of fatigue in her face, the worry in her eyes, the premature aging of fear. But she said briskly, “Sergeant, I told you once and I’ll tell you again, I’ll not have that child worried!”

“This is Inspector Rutledge, from London, Agnes. He needs to have a look at Lizzie. It won’t be above a minute, I promise it won’t,” he cajoled. “And then we’ll be on our way.”

Agnes looked Rutledge over, her eyes weighing him as carefully—but in a different manner—as Georgina Grayson’s had done. “What’s a policeman from London want with the likes of Lizzie?” she demanded.

“I don’t know,” Rutledge said. “But I believe I’ve found the child’s doll. It was in the hedge near the meadow where Colonel Harris was killed. Captain Wilton here says he met her on his walk that morning, and she was crying for the doll. I’d like to return it, if I could.” He held out the doll, and Agnes nodded in surprise. “Aye, that’s the one, all right! Whatever was she doing in the meadow?”

“Looking for Ted, no doubt.” Meg Pinter came forward and touched the doll. Her face was drawn with lack of sleep and a very deep fear for her child. “She goes out to pick flowers, and that’s all right, she comes to no harm. But once or twice she’s gone looking for her father because he lets her sit on one of the horses in the stables, if the Haldanes aren’t about.”

Rutledge said, “Do you think she was in the meadow that morning? When the Colonel was killed?”

“Oh God!” Meg exclaimed, turning to stare at her mother. “I’d never even thought—” Agnes’s face twisted in pain, and she shook her head.

“She might have seen something,” he added, as gently as he could. “But I’d like to have a look at her, give her the doll.”

“No, I’ll take it!” Meg said quickly, tears in her eyes, but he refused to part with it.

“I found it. I’ll return it.”

The two women, uncertain what to do, turned to the Sergeant, but he shook his head, denying any responsibility. In the end, they led Rutledge through the neat house to the small room with its silent crib.

Lizzie lay as quietly as a carved child, covers tidily drawn over her body, her face turned toward the wall. It was a bright room, very pleasant with a lamp and a stool and a small doll’s bed in one corner, handmade and rather nicely carved with flowers in the headboard. It was very much like the crib, and empty. Even from the door he could see how the little girl’s face had lost flesh, the body bony under the pink coverlet. There had been so many refugee children in France with bones showing and dark, haunted eyes, frightened and cold and hungry. They had haunted him too.

Rutledge walked slowly toward the child. Wilton stayed outside the door, but the Sergeant and the two women followed him inside.

“Lizzie?” he said softly. But she made no response, as if she hadn’t heard him. As if she heard nothing. A thin thread of milk drained out of her mouth on the sheet under her head, and her eyes stared at the wall with no recognition of what she was seeing.

“Speak to her,” he said over his shoulder to Meg. She came to the bed, calling her daughter’s name, half cajoling, half commanding, but Lizzie never stirred. Rutledge reached out and touched Lizzie on the arm, without any reaction at all.

Meg’s voice dwindled, and she bit her lip against the tears. “I’d never thought,” she said softly, as if Lizzie could hear her, “that she might have been there. Poor little mite—poor thing!” She turned away, and Agnes took her in her arms.

Rutledge went around to the other side of the crib, between the child and the wall. He stooped to bring his face more in line with her eyes, and said, with a firmness that he’d learned in dealing with children, “Lizzie! Look at me.”

He thought there was a flicker of life in the staring eyes, and he said it again, louder and more peremptorily. Agnes cried out, telling him to mind what he was doing, but Rutledge ignored her. “Lizzie! I’ve found your doll. The doll you lost in the meadow. See?”

He held it out, close enough for her to see it. For an instant he thought that she wasn’t going to respond. Then her face began to work, her mouth gulping at air. She screamed, turning quickly toward the door, her eyes on the Sergeant, then on Wilton beyond. It was a wild scream, terrified and wordless, rising and falling in pitch like a banshee’s wail. Deafening in its power from such a small pair of lungs. Curdling the blood, numbing the mind. Agnes and Meg ran toward her, but with a gesture Rutledge held them back. But the screaming stopped as quickly as it had started. Lizzie reached out and Rutledge put the doll in her open arms. She clasped it to her with a force that surprised him, her eyes closing as she rocked gently from side to side. After a time one hand let go of the doll and a thumb found its way to her mouth. Sucking noisily, she clutched the doll and began a singsong moan under her breath.

Agnes, watching her, said, “She does that when she’s falling to sleep—”

There was the sound of a voice, then the front door slamming. A man’s voice called, “Meg, honey—I saw the car. Who’s come? Is it that doctor Warren was going on about?”

Lizzie opened her eyes, wide and staring, and began to scream again, turning her back to the doorway. The sound ripped through the silence in the small room, ripped at the nerves of the people standing there. Meg ran out of the room, and Rutledge could hear her speaking to her husband, leading him away from Lizzie, then the slamming of the front door.

After a time, Lizzie stopped screaming and began to suck her thumb again, the doll held like a lifeline in her other hand. After a minute or so the singsong moaning began as well. The child’s eyes began to drift shut. A deep breath lifted her small chest, and then she seemed to settle into sleep. Or was it unconsciousness?

“That’s the first time she’s rested.” Agnes stood watching for a time, then shook her head slowly, grieving. “She adored her father—it’s cut him to the heart to have her like this, carrying on so when he comes into the house, not wanting him near her.”

Rutledge studied the child. “Yes, I think she really is asleep,” he said, gesturing to the Sergeant and Agnes to leave. “Let her keep the doll. But I’ll need it. Later.”

He followed them out of the room, and saw Wilton’s white face beyond the Sergeant’s stolid red one. The screams had unnerved Davies, but Rutledge thought that it was the doll, and the child’s reaction, that had worried Wilton more.

Agnes said, her voice shaking, “What’s to be done, then? If she saw the man, what’s to be done?”

“I don’t know,” Rutledge told her honestly. “I don’t know.”

Out by the car, a horse was standing, reins down. In the middle of the yard, Meg was holding her husband in her arms. As they came out of his house, he stared over her head at them, raw pain in his eyes.

“I want to know what’s going on,” he said, “what’s happening to Lizzie.”

“She—your daughter was possibly a witness to Colonel Harris’s murder,” Rutledge said. There was no easy way to break the news. “She may have seen him shot. I found her doll in the meadow there. Captain Wilton”—he gestured toward Mark—“saw Lizzie that morning as well. Crying for the doll. I’m not sure yet how all of this fits together, but that child is frightened to death of you. Can you think of any reason why?”

Ted shook his head vehemently. “I’ve nothing to do with it. She was like that when I came home Monday from the stables for lunch. Meg found her wandering lost like, and brought her home. She didn’t speak, she wasn’t herself. Meggie put her to bed, and she’s—it’s been like that ever since.” His voice was husky with feeling. “Are you sure about this? I’d not like to think of her there in that meadow with a murderer. Or a man killed. She’s never had a harsh word spoken to her in her life, she’s been a quiet, cheerful, good little thing—” He stopped, turned away.

The horse he’d been riding ambled over and nudged his shoulder. Ted reached up to its muzzle without thinking, stroking the soft nose. Rutledge watched him.

“Does your daughter like horses?”

“Horses? Aye, she’s been around them most of her life. Not to ride, but I’ve let her sit on their backs, held her in front of me. Let her touch them. She likes to touch their coats, smooth it, like. Always has.”

Rutledge gestured to Davies and Wilton to get into the car. “If you want my advice, send for Dr. Warren and let him take another look at her. And stay away from her for a few days, Pinter, if you can. There’s a chance that she can sleep now. It ought to help. When she wakes up, if she’s at all capable of talking, send for me. Do you understand? It could be very important! For your sake and for hers.”

Ted nodded, his wife and mother-in-law watchful, wary. But Rutledge, looking at them, thought they’d do it. “Stay away from her, mind!” he added. “Let her heal, if she can.”

Agnes said, “I’ll see to it. For now.”

“I’ve seen men suffer like that. In the war,” he added. “Shock can do that. If that’s what’s wrong with her. But don’t let her be frightened, don’t let her scream. That means she’s remembering. Keep her warm and quiet and at peace. Let her sleep. That’s the main thing now.”

He turned toward the car. Hamish, silent throughout the half hour in the house, said, “You ought to know about sleep. It’s the only time you’re safe….”

The drive back to Upper Streetham was quiet, only the sound of the tires along the road, and once a dog barking furiously as they passed. When they reached the Inn, Wilton said only, “God, I’m tired! It’s been a damned long day.”

Sergeant Davies got out stiffly and said, “I’d best say something to Inspector Forrest about this. Unless you’d rather speak to him yourself, sir?”

It was the last thing Rutledge wanted to do. He said, “No, that’s all right, I’ll see him tomorrow. There’s not much more we can do tonight anyway.”

Davies nodded to Wilton and said, “Until tomorrow, then, sir,” to Rutledge, before marching off down the street toward his own house.

Wilton waited, making no move to get out of the car, but Rutledge said nothing, leaving him to break the silence. In the end he did.

“Does the child damn me? Or clear me?”

Aware of the envelope in his pocket, Rutledge said only, “I don’t know. Do you?”

“I didn’t kill him, Inspector,” Wilton said quietly. “And I don’t know who did.” He got out, closed the car door behind him, and walked away, his limp more pronounced than usual, a measure of the tension in him.

Rutledge sighed. A child, a doll, a drunkard. The evidence was still slim. But the letter from Harris to Mrs. Grayson was something else.

It could very well send the handsome Captain to the gallows.

15

That night Rutledge lay in his bed, listening to the street noises dwindle into silence, then the sound of the church bell marking the passage of time.

He couldn’t get Lizzie out of his mind. She was terrified. But of what? The roar of a shotgun? The bloody death of a man? Of a killer she’d seen—and somehow recognized?

Then why hadn’t she screamed in terror at sight of Mark Wilton?

Her father, not the Captain, frightened her most.

Why?

He wrestled with the puzzle for an hour or more and came no closer to an answer.

Bowles. He was supposed to call London on Monday and speak to Bowles. A drunk, a child, a whore. Witnesses against the Royal Family’s favorite war hero. He, Rutledge, was going to look a right fool at the Yard!

“Aye, and is it why they’ve sent you to Warwickshire, then?” Hamish asked. “A sick man who’s not up to the business in hand? Who’ll be blamed for muddling the evidence and give them a reason to let the Captain off the hook? Is that what London wanted when it let you take on this bluidy murder?”

Rutledge felt cold. Was that the reason he’d been given this case? As the scapegoat for failure? Was that why they hadn’t mentioned Hickam? Hoping that the shock of discovering the truth might be too much for the balance of Rutledge’s mind as well? Or, alternatively, if he was successful…he was also expendable? When he brought the wrath of Buckingham Palace down on the Yard’s head, he could be quietly returned to the clinic, with regret that the experiment hadn’t worked out. For the Yard. For Rutledge. For the doctors who’d had faith in him.

It was a frightening prospect. While Hamish rattled gleefully around in the silence, Rutledge fought his anger. And his fear. And the dreadful loss of hope, a hope that’d buoyed him through the worst days at the clinic as he fought for survival and the harsh reality of returning to London….

He promised himself that he wouldn’t return to the clinic. He wouldn’t go back to failure. There were other choices. There always were. To a man who feared living more than he feared death.

Sunday morning was overcast, a misting rain fading into low, heavy clouds that hung about Upper Streetham like ghosts. The heat was oppressive, wrapping the damp around people making their way to the church and wreathing the air inside with a breathlessness that even the open doors couldn’t drain away.

Rutledge went to see Hickam before walking down to the church. The man was sleeping when he arrived, but the housekeeper was a little more optimistic about his condition. Still, she wouldn’t let Rutledge come in.

“Stronger. That’s all I can tell you. But the doctor, now, he was dragged out to the Pinter farm last night, tired as he was, and he said it was all your doing!” Her voice was sharp with condemnation. “He’s not going to church this morning either, I can tell you that! Not if you haven’t roused him up with your banging on the door.”

“But the child’s all right? She seems better?” he asked. “Did she sleep?”

“No thanks to you! Get on with your own business, and leave doctoring to those who know what’s best!”

Rutledge thanked her and went on to the church. The last of the parishioners were hurrying through the lych-gate and he could hear the sound of the organ as he walked quickly down the Court. He’d found before the war that going to the church the victim had attended sometimes gave him a better feeling for the atmosphere of the town or the part of London in question. Anything that brought the victim into better perspective was useful.

The oppressiveness of the morning hung around the church door, and a flush of claustrophobia left him suddenly breathless. He shook his head at the usher ready to lead him down the aisle to a seat and stepped instead into the last one on the back row, where he could escape the heat and the crush of bodies.

Before the first prayer, someone slipped in beside him. Looking up, he met Catherine Tarrant’s equally surprised eyes. Then she sat down and ignored him as she fumbled for her prayer book. It was an old one, he saw, and she found her place without trouble.

The service was High Church, which befitted the image of a man like Carfield. He brought to everyone’s attention the fact that the funeral for Charles Harris would be held on Tuesday morning at ten, then spent several minutes lauding the dead man in a sonorous voice that echoed around the stone arches and through the nave. You’d have thought, Rutledge told himself, that they were burying a saint, not a soldier.

He let his eyes wander, taking in the high-vaulted ceiling, the slender pillars, and a small but very fine reredos behind the altar. Above that was a rather plain east window. The reredos was of stone, a representation of the Last Supper, and the figures had a grace about them that was pleasing.

The Haldane family tombs were just visible from where he sat; they were ornate marble, with clusters of cherubs as mourners around the bases. Several of the figures were medieval, a handful were Elizabethan, while the Victorian representations were almost lavishly ugly.

The Vicar’s sermon was on making the best of one’s life, using each idle minute with care, recognizing that death might sweep in at any moment to wipe out the hopes and dreams of the future. He never mentioned Charles Harris’s name, but Rutledge was sure that every parishioner present knew exactly what his reference was. Rutledge spent most of the long exhortation studying the townspeople in the body of the church. He could see Catherine Tarrant only out of the corner of his eye, but several rows away was Helena Sommers, with Laurence Royston just ahead of her; Captain Wilton and Sally Davenant were down near the front; and to their left were the two women Rutledge had met near the market cross the day before, Mrs. Thornton and Mrs. Mobley, with their husbands. To his surprise, he caught sight of Georgina Grayson as well, sitting alone in one corner, a very fine hat on her head and wearing a dress of the most conservative cut in a most becoming but decorous summery green.

When the last prayer was said, Rutledge was on his feet and out of the church door, away from the rising tide of people coming toward him. He found a vantage point under a tree in the churchyard and watched for a time.

Catherine Tarrant had also come out almost as quickly as he had, making her way toward a car with a driver waiting by the lych-gate. But the others were taking their time. Laurence Royston came out, strode down the walk, and called to Catherine as she was getting into the car. She waited for him, and he went to speak to her. She shook her head, smiling but firm.

Mavers was lingering behind the lych-gate, watching. Rutledge saw him and wondered what had brought him there. Sergeant Davies came out of the church and stopped to speak to Carfield, effectively damming the flow of people for the moment. Royston said good-bye to Catherine Tarrant, and her driver went to the end of the Court to turn the car. Mavers came quickly to Royston and began to speak very earnestly.

Royston listened, head to one side, watching Catherine’s departure. Then his attention came back to Mavers, and after a time he began to shake his head.

Mavers’s reaction was interesting. A flush of anger spread over his face, and he began to bob almost frantically, demanding something.

But Royston seemed to take pleasure in telling him that it was no use. Rutledge was not close enough to hear, but the movements of both men told enough of the tale.

Mavers was furious. For an instant, Rutledge thought he was going to lash out with his clenched fists, and Royston must have thought so too because he stepped back, wary.

Suddenly Mavers turned toward the church and raised his voice, making himself heard by the fresh flood of people moving out into the mist.

“Has God refreshed your spirits?” he demanded, the fury mounting in him almost slurring his words. “Do you feel sanctified? Or have you seen yon fat toad for what he is, a mountebank, a fool leading other fools down the path of lies and high-flown words covering the emptiness of every soul here?”

With their attention riveted on him, he swung around to where a stunned Royston was standing, watching him, and included him in the fierce denunciation.

“There’s not a Christian in the lot of you. Not one soul not already damned, and no one safe from the fires of hell! Here’s a murderer of children, hiding behind the coattails of a man who went to wars to do his killing. Aye, you think you see the Colonel’s fine agent, but I know him for what he is, a man who paid his way out of the law’s clutches, a rich man’s money for the bloody deed, and the Colonel, like a pied piper, leading your sons off to war and maiming the lot of them in soul or body! His funeral ought to be a time of rejoicing that he’s dead before his time! And yonder’s a whore, wearing the dress of a proper lady while you—and you—and you”—he was pointing to a handful of appalled men—“make your way to her bed any chance you’ve got! Aye, I know who you are, I’ve seen you there!”

He whirled to face another group of emerging worshipers. “And you, lusting after your cousin, while he’s busy with moneyed ladies, sucking up to wealth, and you watching him like a starved woman!”

Sally Davenant’s face flushed with a mixture of anger and speechless embarrassment. Wilton started toward Mavers, but the man said, “And the Sergeant, there, the Inspector over yonder, quaking in their boots to arrest the King’s friend, who shot down the Colonel in cold blood with a stolen shotgun! And the man from London who lurks in shadows and tackles the pathetic likes of Daniel Hickam instead of doing his duty!”

Almost foaming at the mouth in his terrible need to hurt, Mavers paid no heed to the effect his words were having on the targets of his wrath; he poured them out in torrents, spilling over one another in a tangle. Rutledge began to move toward him, cutting across the churchyard, one eye on Mavers, the other on his feet among the damp, tilted tombstones.

“You, with the feebleminded cousin, who ought to be shut away for her own good! And that artist, the one who took a German to her bed and reveled in it—that other one with the witch’s eyes, hiding in her bedchamber, with her lascivious desires, and the Inspector yonder with his cold, sexless wife, and Tom Malone, the butcher, who keeps his thumb on his scales. The bloodless Haldanes dead and not even knowing it. Ben Sanders, whose wife killed herself rather than go on living with him, the Sergeant who—”

But Wilton and Rutledge had reached him by that time, dragging him away from the lych-gate, bending his arms behind him until he choked from pain and stopped lacerating the townspeople with a tongue as sharp as a lash. They hauled him with them down the length of the Court, his aggrieved cries echoing off the facades of the almshouses, raising the rooks in the fields beyond the trees.

The look on Wilton’s face was murderous. Behind them, Rutledge could hear Forrest running to catch up and the Sergeant’s bull roar, telling everyone at the church to pay no heed, that the fool had run mad, like a rabid dog.

But Rutledge thought he had done no such thing. Stopping at the corner to hand Mavers over to Forrest, Rutledge turned on his heel and went back to the lych-gate, searching for Royston in the crowd gathered there, silent and avoiding one another’s eyes, their faces stiff with shocked dismay, unable to think of any way out of the churchyard that wouldn’t take them past the rest of the parishioners equally paralyzed with indecision.

As Rutledge scanned their faces, he saw tears in Sally Davenant’s eyes, though her chin was high and her cheeks still flushed. Helena Sommers seemed to be trying to find something in her handbag, her expression hidden by the wide-brimmed hat she wore, her hands shaking. Georgina Grayson had moved away from the crowd to the tree where Rutledge had been standing earlier, her back to the churchyard, her head tilted to watch the rooks soaring around the church tower.

Royston was gripping a post on the lych-gate, staring at the worshipers on the other side of the wall, a defensive look in his eyes, his mouth turned down in shame.

As Rutledge reached him, he said, “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have told him. I should have thought about what he’d do. And now look what’s happened—I’ll never be able to face any of them again!”

“What did he want?”

Royston turned to Rutledge as if surprised to find him there. “He wanted to know if we’d read the Will. Charles’s Will. He wanted to know if his pension was going to continue.”

“Pension?”

“Yes. Charles gave him a pension years ago.”

“Why?”

Royston shrugged expressively. “It was his sense of responsibility. The other son—there were two boys and a girl in the family, the mother had worked at Mallows as a maid before she married Hugh Davenant’s gamekeeper—the other son died in South Africa. The daughter drowned herself. When Mavers ran off to join the army, Charles had him sent home. He was told that as long as he stayed there and looked after his mother, he’d be paid a pension. After the mother died, Charles didn’t stop it, he let it go on. Against my better judgment. He felt he could stop Mavers from getting into worse trouble than he had already. It was threatening to cut off the pension as much as the threat of sending him to an institution that stopped the poisoning of the cattle and Charles’s dogs. A lever. But Charles planned to let it end with his death.”

It wasn’t quite the same version of the story Mavers had told, but Rutledge thought that it was very likely that Royston’s was closer to the truth.

Some of the color was coming back to Royston’s face, and with it, the shuddering acceptance of the immensity of Mavers’s revenge. “I’ve never felt quite so deliberately spiteful as I did when I told him that. I was thinking that it was one of the few times in my life when I actually relished causing pain. What I didn’t realize was that I would cause so much! God, I feel—filthy!”

Rutledge answered harshly, “Don’t be a fool! They’re all so horrified they don’t know how it began or why. Leave it at that. Let them blame Mavers. Don’t give them a scapegoat! It will ruin you, and only a bloody idiot is that self-destructive.”

After a moment, Royston nodded. He turned and walked away, joining the others who were now coming, by ones and twos and threes through the lych-gate, heads down, hurrying toward the safety of home. On the church steps, Carfield was alone, staring after his flock with an empty face.