good, he discovered.
After a moment, she went on, 'He was an educated man- a solicitor, I was told later-and in the ordinary way, an acceptable suitor. If he'd been one of the refugees, Belgian or French, there wouldn't have been any comment at all. Well, very little! But he was German, you see, those horrible monsters who shot Edith Cavell, spitted babies on their bayonets, killed and maimed British soldiers-the casualty lists were awful, and when they came out, you sighed with relief because someone you loved or knew wasn't on it this time- then felt guilty for feeling relieved! We hated the Germans, and to think of loving one-of marrying one-seemed-un- natural.' A woman coming through the dining room spoke to Sally and walked on.
Rutledge waited until she was out of hearing. 'I understood that no one knew of their relationship at the time Linden was taken away.'
'That's true. But there was no doubt how Catherine felt, after the war. She went a little mad, trying to find him, and then when she learned he was dead, she was hardly herself for months. Carfield made matters worse by trying to make them better, and the town has shunned her ever since. Most of the women, and more than a few of the men, won't even speak her name.'
'You said that Linden reminded you of Mark. Did he remind Catherine too? Was she, do you think, still in love with Mark?'
Sally Davenant shook her head. 'No, that was over long ago. I could have told you at the time that it wouldn't last. Mark always falls in love with the wrong women-' She stopped, her mouth closing firmly, her eyes defying him.
Rutledge waited. She shrugged after a moment and went on. 'I didn't mean that the way it sounds, of course.'
But he thought she had. 'What did you mean?'
'Catherine hadn't discovered her talent when she met Mark. She painted, yes, but it wasn't the focus of her life, if you see what I mean. I think it would have come between them, when she did. And she hated his flying. Even if the war hadn't come along to separate them, what chance would such a marriage have?' Carfield came in, smiled warmly at Mrs. Davenant, then nodded briskly to Rutledge.
'And Lettice?'
She hesitated, then answered carefully. 'I don't think it would have worked. Not in the end. There was Charles, you see, and Lettice was devoted to him. No man enjoys living in the shadow of such a devotion. If he'd been older, yes, Mark could have relegated him to the father's role. Mark could never bear to be second best. It would have been 'Charles this' and 'Charles that' every time he turned around.'
'Did Lettice fall in love with Wilton because he was the handsome hero her guardian had brought home for her? An infatuation, like Catherine's, years ago?'
'No, of course not. She's rather mature for her years, have you noticed? Probably it has to do with being orphaned so young, she had to learn to be independent early on. Charles more or less cultivated that too. Well, he could have been killed at any time, and he wanted her to be capable of carrying on alone! She wasn't a dewy-eyed girl, and I think that's what attracted Mark to her. He's been through too much to fall in love with a silly twit who thought he was dashing and exciting. And Mark is a very private man, he would have to be, to spend so much time alone in the air. Charles seemed so-open. Where Hugh had devastating charm, shallow though it was, Charles was the most-I don't know, the most physically compelling man. He could walk into a room and somehow dominate it just by being there. Men deferred to him, women found him sympathetic. That combination of strength and tenderness that's quite rare.'
'But of the three, Mark Wilton was surely the most attractive?'
She laughed as she poured herself another cup of tea, then refilled his cup. 'Oh, by far. If he came in here right now, every woman in the room would be aware of it! And preen. I've seen it happen too many times! Hugh had charm, Mark has looks, Charles had charisma. The difference is that Hugh and Charles knew how to wield what they'd been given. Mark isn't a peacock, and never has been. It's his greatest failing. People expect too much from beauty.'
'Which is why you feel he couldn't have lived in Charles Harris's shadow.'
'Of course. I think that's why he never fell in love with me-Hugh was one of those men who dominated with charm. To tell you the truth, Hugh used it as a weapon to have his own way. Sending you to the skies one minute, tearing your heart out the next. And although I was close to hating him at the end, it was too late, I'd lost the ability to trust. I'd have made a shrew of a wife for Mark Wilton! And he knew it.'
The words were said lightly, with a smile, but there was pain behind them, in her eyes and in her voice. Rutledge heard it, but his mind was occupied by what she'd told him the first day he'd spoken to her-that Mark Wilton would have been a fool to harm Lettice's guardian, it was the surest way to lose her.
And yet just now she'd contradicted that.
Whether she had realized it or not, she'd given him a motive for murder-not her own motive, but Mark Wilton's.
Unless you turned it the other way about-and asked yourself if the most complete revenge was to destroy all three of them, Lettice, Charles, and the Captain, in one single bloody act whose repercussions would leave Lettice as alone and empty as Sally Davenant herself. Could she also have betrayed Catherine and her German lover? Women often sensed such things-his sister Frances always knew before the gossips what the latest scandal was.
Almost as if she heard his thoughts, Sally said quietly, 'But you wanted to hear about Catherine, not me. Her father taught her to shoot, you know. If she'd wanted to shoot Charles, she'd have known how to go about it. But why now? Why after all this time? I'd always thought of her as hot- blooded, to paint like that. Not cold-blooded…' She let the thought trail off. It was a wearing day. Hickam was still too ill to question, and Dr. Warren was testy from lack of sleep. A child he was tending was dying, and he didn't know why. When Rutledge tried to prod him over Hickam, he said, 'Come with me and see this child, and then tell me, damn you, that Hickam's life is worth hers!'
So Rutledge went back to the meadow, walking up and down it, trying to see the murder, the frightened horse, the falling man. He tried to feel the hatred that had led to murder, worked out angles to see how the horseman and the killer had come together here in this one spot. How long had the killer waited? How sure had he been that Charles Harris would come this way? Had he known, somehow, where the Colonel was riding that morning? Which would bring suspicion back to Royston, surely. Or Lettice. Unless, before the quarrel, something had been said over dinner about his plans, and Wilton had remembered. Or perhaps the killer had simply followed Harris from the lane. Wilton again. Or Hickam? What would bring Catherine Tarrant out so early on that particular June morning, shotgun in hand, murder on her mind? Or Mrs. Davenant?
The damnable thing was, except for Catherine Tarrant's dead lover and Mark Wilton's quarrel, and possibly Mrs. Davenant's jealousy, there was nothing to make Colonel Harris a target. Not if Mavers was out of the running, and Rutledge had to admit there was too little chance there of proving opportunity.
Why couldn't he get a grip on the emotions of this case?
Because there was something he hadn't learned? Questions he should have asked and hadn't? Relationships he hadn't found?
Or because his own ragged emotions kept getting in his way?
Why had he lost that strong vein of intuition that once had made him particularly good at understanding why the victim had to die? At understanding why one human being had been driven to kill another. Was it lost innocence, the knowledge that he himself was now no better than the killers he hunted? No longer siding with the angels, cut off from what he once had been?
He laughed sourly. Maybe it had only been a trick, a game he was good at when he could stand back dispassionately from the searing flame of emotions. A trick he'd used so often he'd come to believe in it himself. He could hardly bring back an image of the man he'd been in 1914. A realist, he'd told himself then, accustomed to the darkest corners of human experience. Well, he'd discovered in the trenches of France that hell itself was not half so frightening as the darkest corners of the human mind.
Not that it mattered. All they expected of him now was that he do his job. No frills, no flamboyance, no magician's artifice, just answers.
If he couldn't do his job, what would he do with his life?
He began to walk, making his way from the meadow down to Mallows, trying to think which way the horse
