Tarrant-or Linden, for that matter-came up after they'd finished the discussion of the wedding?'
The defensive barrier was there again. She answered curtly, 'I can't imagine what you're talking about! Why should they've argued about Catherine?'
'Could the Colonel have warned the Captain that Catherine Tarrant still felt strongly about Linden's death and was likely to do something rash? To harm one of them? To spoil the wedding, perhaps? Could the Captain have refused to hear anything said against her? Defended her, and made Harris very angry with him?'
'If Charles had been worried, he would have said something to me. But he didn't-'
'But you didn't go riding with him that morning. There was no opportunity to tell you what was on his mind.'
She opened her mouth to say something, and decided against it. Instead, she replied, 'You're chasing straws!'
'A witness saw them together, still arguing, that morning shortly before the Colonel died. If they weren't arguing over the wedding, then over what? Or over whom?'
With her back to the windows, her eyes shadowed by the halo of her dark hair, she said, 'You're the policeman, aren't you?'
'Then what about Mrs. Davenant?'
'Sally? What on earth does she have to do with anything?'
'She's very fond of her cousin. Your guardian might have worried about that. Or conversely, Mark Wilton might have been jealous of the place Harris held in your life-'
Lettice turned to the flowers in the vase, her fingers moving over them as if she were blind and depended on touch to know what varieties were there. 'If Mark had wanted to marry Sally, he could have done it any time these last eight years. When he had leave during the war, she went to London to meet him. He's fond of her, of course he is. He's fond of Catherine Tarrant, as well. As for Charles, Mark knows how I feel-felt-about him.' She bit her lip. 'No, feel. I won't put it in the past tense, as if everything stopped with his death! As if you stop caring, stop giving someone a place in your life. I want him back again, so desperately I ache with it. And yet I'm afraid to think about him-I can only see that awful, terrible thing-'
She lifted her head, forced back the tears. 'Do you dream of the corpses you've seen?'
Taken aback, he said before he thought, 'Sometimes.'
'I dreamed about my parents after they died. But I was too young to know what death was. I saw them as shining angels floating about heaven and watching me to see if I was good. In fact, the first time I saw the Venus above the hall here at Mallows, I thought it was my mother. It was a great comfort, oddly enough.' After a moment she said in a different voice, 'You'll have to chase your straws without me. I'm sorry. There's nothing else I can do.'
This time he knew he had to go. He stood up. 'I'd like to question your staff again before I leave. Will you tell Johnston that I have your permission?'
'Question them, then. Just put an end to this' It was a plea; her anger had drained away into pain and something else that he couldn't quite identify. And so he spent the next hour talking to the servants, but his mind was on the lonely woman shut up in grief a few walls, a few doors from wherever he went in that house.
Mary Satterthwaite nervously told him she wasn't sure what the master and the Captain were arguing about, but Miss Wood had said they were discussing the wedding, and it appeared to have given her the headache; she wanted only to go to bed and be left alone.
'Was it common for the Colonel and the Captain to argue?'
'Oh, no sir! They never did, except over a horse race or how a battle was fought, or the like. Men often quarrel rather than admit they're wrong, you know.'
He smiled. 'And who was wrong in this instance? The Colonel? The Captain?'
Mary frowned, taking him seriously. 'I don't know, sir.' She added reluctantly, 'I'd guess, sir, it was the Colonel.'
'Why?'
'He threw his glass at the door. I mean, he couldn't throw it at the Captain, being as he was already gone. But he didn't like it that the Captain had had the last word, so to speak. So he threw his glass. As if there was still anger in him, or guilt, or frustration. Men don't like to be wrong, sir. And I doubt if the Colonel was, very often.'
Which was a very perceptive observation. He asked about relations between the Captain and the Colonel. Cordial, he was told. Two quite different men, but they respected each other.
In the end, he asked to be taken upstairs to any rooms overlooking the hillside where the Colonel had been riding.
In theory, the hill was in view from a number of windows, both in the family quarters and on the servants' floor. At this time of year, with the trees fully leafed out, it was different. You'd have to be lucky, Rutledge thought, peering out from one of the maids' windows-the best of the lot-to catch a glimpse from here. You'd have to know where the Colonel was riding, and be watching for the faintest flicker of movement, and then not be certain what you'd seen was a horse and man. Possible, then. But not likely.
Tired, with Hamish grumbling in the back of his mind, Rutledge left the house and began the walk back to the meadow, the far hedge, and the lane where he'd left his car two hours or more before.
He glimpsed Maggie, the quiet Sommers cousin, hanging out a tablecloth on the line. He waved to her, but she didn't see him, the breast-high wall and the climbing roses blocking her view. He walked on. Somewhere behind her he could hear the goose honking irritably, as if it had been shut away for the morning and was not happy about it. Rutledge smiled. Served the damned bird right!
Back in the meadow where Charles Harris had been found, Rutledge ignored Hamish and began to quarter the land carefully. But there was nothing to be learned. Nothing that was out of the ordinary. Nothing of interest. He went back over the land again, moving patiently, his eyes on the ground, his mind concentrating on every blade of grass, every inch of soil. Then he moved into the copse where the killer might have stood waiting.
Still nothing. Frustrated, he stood there, looking back the way he'd come, looking at the lie of the land, the distant church steeple. Hamish was loud in his mind, demanding his attention, but he refused to heed the voice.
Nothing. Nothing Except In the lee of the hedge, near where he and the Sergeant had cut through on their first visit. Something dull and gray and unidentifiable. Something he hadn't been able to see from any other part of the meadow. What was it?
He walked down to the hedge, keeping his bearings with care, and found the place, the thing he'd seen. He squatted on his heels and looked at it, thinking it was a scrap of rotting cloth. Nothing… Ignoring the brambles, he pushed his way nearer to it. Closer to, it had shape, and staring eyes.
Reaching into the brambles, he touched it, then pulled it forward.
A doll. A small wooden doll, in a muddy, faded gown of pale blue flowered print, the kind of cloth that could be bought in any shop, cheap, cotton, and favored by mothers for children's clothes. A girl's dress, with the leftover cloth sewn into a gown for her favorite doll.
Hadn't Wilton said something about seeing a child who had lost her doll?
Rutledge picked up the little bundle of cloth and stared down at it.
Hickam might not be fit to testify against the Captain. Would a child be any more reliable as a witness? He swore. Not bloody likely!
Making his way through the hedge, Rutledge went striding down to the lane, ignoring the high grass and brambles, his mind working on how to deal with the child, and with Wilton. Hamish was silent now, but somewhere he still moved about restlessly, waiting.
When he got to his car, left in the brushy, overgrown lane, Rutledge swore again. With infinite feeling.
One of his tires was torn. As if viciously slashed with a knife or a sharp stick. Deliberately and maliciously damaged.
Rutledge didn't need a policeman to tell him who had done this.
Mavers.
