Colonel Harris!'
Rutledge glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Davies, who clumped out and slammed the door behind him, as near as he could ever come to insubordination.
Mavers waited until he could see Davies fuming in the yard, well out of hearing, and then said, 'He thought he was lord and master around here, Harris did. Mrs. Crichton never comes to Upper Streetham, she's so old she hardly knows her arse from her elbow, and the Haldanes-well, the Hal- danes were so well bred they've nearly vanished, a bloodless lot you can't even be bothered to hate. But the Colonel, now he was something else.'
There was pent-up venom in the thick voice, and Mavers was having trouble breathing through his nose as his anger mounted, almost panting between words. 'He came into his own early, after his father had a stroke and wound up being confined to a chair for the rest of his life-which wasn't all that long-and in his eyes his precious son could do no wrong. Harris had the first motorcar in this part of Warwickshire, did you know that? Drove like a madman, terrified old ladies and horses and half the children. Then he got his commission in the family's Regiment, and he came home swaggering in his fine uniform, telling every man he met that the army life was for them. Had any girl he wanted, paid his way out of trouble, and raised hell whenever he felt like it. My older brother joined the Army to please him, and he died in South Africa with a Boer musket ball in his brain.'
He stopped, but Rutledge said nothing, and after a time, Mavers went on more quietly. 'My mother never got over that-he was her favorite. A big strapping lad like her own father. And my sister drowned herself in the pond one day because Harris stopped fancying her. I went to Mallows to horsewhip him and got thrashed by the grooms instead. Ma called me a worthless whelp for daring to blame Harris for Annie's weakness. So I ran off to join the Army myself, and somehow he found out about it, and he had me sent home for lying about my age. But he wouldn't give me my job back in the stables at Mallows-he told that bootlicking fool Royston that they didn't want me there anymore because I was a troublemaker. So that's just what I became, trouble. A thorn in his flesh! And if you believe that one fine morning I'd shoot him down, depriving myself of that lifelong pleasure, you're a greater fool than you look!'
Rutledge heard two things in Mavers's diatribe-the ring of truth, and the echo of envy. 'You're talking about a boy. Twenty, perhaps? Not much older than that. And you were what? Fourteen? Fifteen?' he said carefully.
The red flush returned to Mavers's face. 'What does age have to do with it? Is there some special dispensation for cruelty if you're rich and under twenty?'
'You know there isn't. But a man generally isn't judged by what he did as a boy, he's judged by what he did as a man.'
Mavers shrugged. 'Boy or man, he's the same. Besides, the damage is done, isn't it? And the man at forty may be a saint, but the rest of us are still bleeding from what he did when he was twenty. Who's to put that right? Who's to bring Annie back, or Jeff? Or Ma. Tell me!'
Rutledge looked around the room, at the worn, plain furniture and the threadbare carpet on the floor, half hidden by the papers, at the damp-stained walls and the windows streaked with dust, all of it dappled by the tree leaves outside as a passing wind stirred them and let in a little light. He'd met men like Mavers before. Hungry for something they didn't have, and ignorant of how to go about getting it, hating those who had had life given to them easily. Lost men, angry men, dangerous men… because they had no pride of their own to bolster their self- esteem.
'Hating doesn't put it right either, does it?'
The goat's eyes were hard. 'It does give life a purpose, all the same.'
Preparing to go, Rutledge said, 'As long as it doesn't lead to murder. There's never an excuse for murder.'
He was nearly out the door into the hall when Hamish said under his breath, 'But who's a murderer, then? The man who carried that shotgun yonder, or the officer who shoots his own men?'
Startled, Rutledge half turned as if Mavers had spoken, not the voice in his own head. And as he looked back, he saw what had been concealed behind Mavers's chair and by Mav- ers's body and by the books piled on the table-a shotgun, leaning against the wall where it met the jutting corner of the hearth, almost lost in the deep shadow there.
6
Satisfied after her conversation with Inspector Forrest, Catherine Tarrant rode slowly back down the High Street, threading her way through the late-afternoon shoppers and the workmen going about their business. Her eyes quickly scanned their faces, but no one spoke to her and she didn't stop to ask the whereabouts of the one person she sought. Turning her head to glance down Smithy Lane, she almost ran down a small boy dragging his dog behind him on a rope. The dog was too interested in the smells along their route to pay much heed to its master, and looked up with a wide, sloppy grin when she braked hastily to avoid them.
'George Miller, you've got that rope too tight,' she said, but the boy gave her a frightened glance and tugged all the harder. The dog followed him good-naturedly, and she sighed in exasperation. Then she saw Daniel Hickam come out of one of the run-down houses beyond the smithy.
Upper Streetham turned a blind eye to the profession of the two women who occupied this particular house as long as they comported themselves with reasonable dignity elsewhere. It was whispered that they made a very good living at their trade because they could be depended on to pass their best customers on the High Street the next day without a flicker of recognition. Catherine had once tried to hire the older of the two, who had hair black as coal and eyes the color of the sea, to pose for a portrait she was painting of an aging courtesan, but the woman had turned her away in a fury.
'I don't care what you're painting, I have my pride, Miss Tarrant, and I'd rather starve than take money from the likes of you.'
The words had hurt. Catherine had gone to London for her model, but within three weeks had abandoned the portrait because her vision of it had somehow gone astray. The face on the canvas had become a mockery, color and lines without a soul, technical skill without depth of expression.
Pretending to inspect her tire to give Hickam a head start, Catherine waited until he was beyond the last house, finally disappearing among the shadows cast by the first of the hawthorns, at the end of the stand of long grass. Then she began to pedal slowly after him, taking her time so that no one would suspect what she was about to do. 'Whose weapon is that?' Rutledge asked, his eyes on Mav- ers's face now. 'Yours?'
'What weapon?'
'The one just behind you,' Rutledge snapped, in no mood for the man's agile tongue. Why the hell hadn't Forrest found this shotgun? If Mavers was a suspect, then he could have obtained a warrant, if necessary.
'What if it is?' Mavers asked belligerently. 'I've a right to it, if it was left in a Will!'
'In whose Will?'
'Mr. Davenant's Will, that's whose.'
Rutledge walked across the room and carefully broke open the gun. It had been fired recently, but when? Three days ago? A week? Like the rest of the cottage, it was worn, neglected, the stock scratched and the barrel showing the first signs of rust, but the breech had been kept well oiled, as if Mavers was not above a bit of quiet poaching.
'Why did he leave the gun to you?'
There was a brief silence; then Mavers said with less than his usual abrasiveness, 'I expect it was my father he meant. My father was once his gamekeeper, and Mr. Davenant's Will said, 'I leave the old shotgun to Bert Mavers, who is a better birdman than any of us.' My father was dead by then, but the Will hadn't been changed, and Mrs. Davenant gave the gun to me, because she said it was what her husband wanted. The lawyer from London wasn't half pleased, I can tell you, but the Will didn't say which Bert Mavers, did it? Alive or dead?'
'When was the last time it was fired?'
'How should I know? Or care? The door's always open, anybody can walk in here. There's naught to steal, is there, unless you're after my chickens. Or need a shotgun in a bit of a hurry.' His normal nastiness resurfaced. 'You can't claim I used it, can you? I've got witnesses!'
'So everyone keeps telling me. But I'll take the gun for now, if you don't mind.'
