'Yes. She'd ask news of the Captain, and then they'd soon be easy around her.'
She'd ask news of the Captain…
It always came back to the Captain. But he was beginning to think that whatever her feelings about Mark Wilton, it would take more skill than he possessed to bring them to the surface.
Rutledge went upstairs and along the passage to his room. The sun was bright, showing the worn carpet to worst advantage, dust motes dancing in the light as he passed the windows. The vegetable garden looked like a vegetable garden again, not a sea of temples. He thought the onions had grown inches since his arrival. Even the flowers in the small private garden between the Inn and the drive, surrounded by shrubbery, were no longer flat and drooping from the rain, but stood tall and full of blossom heads. The lupines were particularly glorious. His mother had liked them and filled the house with them as soon as they began to bloom. She'd had a way with flowers, a natural instinct for what made them thrive. His sister Frances, on the other hand, couldn't have grown weeds in a basket. But she was known throughout London for her exquisite flower arrangements, and was begged to lend her eye for color and form to friends for parties and weddings and balls.
His door was ajar, the maid finishing making his bed. She apologized shyly when he stepped in, saying that luncheon had been such a busy time they'd needed her in the kitchens.
'No matter,' he said, but she hastily finished her task, picked up her broom and the pile of dirty linens, and bobbed a curtsy of sorts as she left. Rutledge sat down by the windows, wondering what he would say to Bowles on Monday.
Possibilities weren't evidence. Possibilities weren't guilt. Bowles would have a fit if he knew how few facts Rutledge possessed.
He wondered what luck Wilton would have tracking down the child who'd lost the doll. He set it on the windowsill and looked at it. Too bad you couldn't bring a doll into the courtroom. What could it tell? What had it seen, lying there in the hedgerow? Or heard? Rutledge grimaced. A drunken, shell- shocked man, a small child, and a doll, versus a war hero wearing the ribbon of the Victoria Cross. Every newspaper in the country would have a field day!
He needed a motive… a reason for murder. A reason why the Colonel, riding out that sunny morning, had to die. What had brought about his death? Something now, something in the war, something in a life spent largely out of England? So far such questions had gotten him nowhere.
Rutledge leaned his head against the back of the chair, then closed his eyes. He needed to find a young sergeant at the Yard and train him. Someone he could trust. He'd ask Bowles for names of likely men. Someone who could work with him. Davies was too busy trying to stay out of sight. Davies had his own commitments to Upper Streetham, and like the Vicar, he had to live here long after Rutledge was gone. It was understandable. But he needed someone to talk to about this case. Someone who was impartial, whose only interest was finding the killer and getting on with it. Someone to share the loneliness 'And what would you tell yon bonny Sergeant about me? Would you be honest with him? I'll not go away, you can't shut me out, I'm not your unhappy Jean, who wants to be shut out. I'm your conscience, man, and it wouldn't be long before yon bonny young Sergeant knows you for what you are!'
Getting quickly to his feet, Rutledge swore. All right, then, he'd do it alone. But do it he would! Outside the Inn, he met Laurence Royston. Royston nodded, and was about to walk on, when Rutledge said, 'Have you spoken with the Vicar?'
Royston turned. 'Damned fool! But yes, I have, and yes, he's right. Charles would have expected to have the reception at Mallows. I've told him I'll take the responsibility, and I'll see to the arrangements. He needn't disturb Lettice. Miss Wood.'
'Can you tell me if Sally Davenant worked as a nurse during the war? At a convalescent hospital?'
'Yes, she did. In a friend's home in Gloucestershire. Charles ran into her there once or twice, visiting one of his wounded staff officers. He felt she was very capable, very good at what she did.'
'Why do you think she volunteered?'
'Actually, she spoke to me about it before she wrote to Mrs. Carlyle.' He grinned. 'I told her she'd hate it. Well, I thought she might, you see, and if she expected to hate it, it wouldn't be quite such a letdown. She said then that she wasn't cut out to run a farm the way Catherine Tarrant was doing, and she was damned if she'd roll bandages or serve tea to the troop trains leaving London-ladies' make-work, she called it. But she thought she might be useful with the wounded. And she was worried about her cousin. Pilots didn't have a long life expectancy; by rights Wilton should have been killed in the first year-eighteen months. She felt that staying busy would make the news easier to bear. When it came.'
There was a commotion in the street as two boys came swooping past, chasing a dog with a bone nearly as large as its head in its mouth. A woman on the other side of the street called, 'Jimmy! If you've let that animal into the house-'
Royston watched the boys. 'Father died on the Somme. They're growing up wild as hellions. What was I saying? Oh, about Mrs. Davenant. I couldn't serve,' he went on quietly. 'I have only the one kidney, as I told you. The army wouldn't have any part of me, and I suppose it was for the best. Hard on a man, when everyone else is serving, even the women. Charles told me I was doing my bit keeping Mallows and the Davenant lands productive.'
'You worked Mrs. Davenant's land?'
'Yes, her steward left before Christmas in 1914. Mad to fight, mad to be there before it was all over. He never came back. And the old steward wasn't up to the work. I did it, and he kept an eye on things when I couldn't be there.'
'Did you know Hugh Davenant well?'
Royston shrugged. 'Well enough. Hugh Davenant made a wreck of his marriage. One of those selfish, careless bastards who go through life leaving grief in their wake, never taking notice.'
'Was she ever in love with her cousin?'
He frowned. 'I've wondered. Well, it was natural, I suppose, to wonder. But there was never anything to support speculation. She's fond of him.'
'What was Wilton planning to do after he married Let- tice? Live here at Mallows?'
'No, he has a home of his own in Somerset-I've seen it, a handsome house, good rich land.'
'I can't picture the Captain quietly growing lettuces and wheat.'
With a laugh Royston said, 'His father was an architect, his mother's family's in banking in the City. Even if he never flies again, he'll hardly be reduced to growing lettuces.'
But when he came back to Warwickshire, he'd stay at Mallows, not with his cousin…
'Right, thank you, Royston.' Rutledge stepped out of the way of a woman pushing a pram. She acknowledged Royston with a pleasant smile and walked on, glancing at Rutledge out of the corner of her eyes at the last minute.
Royston waited until she was out of hearing. 'You've made no progress, then?' He shook his head. 'I keep thinking about it-how someone could shoot the Colonel down and then disappear so completely. Unless he's left the County. But if he's still here, there's been no change in his manner, nothing to point to him. It was a bloody, vindictive sort of crime, Inspector. And yet it doesn't seem to have changed the killer at all. Either to make him happier or make him angrier. Somehow I find that particularly horrifying. Don't you? That someone could kill and not be marked by it?'
14
Rutledge watched Laurence Royston walk away down the busy street, then brought his mind back to the task he'd set himself. He stepped out into the afternoon traffic, following a woman with a pram. Standing by the market cross, he looked up and down the main street. Two boys on bicycles passed him, grinning, trying to attract his attention, but he ignored them.
Mavers, that Monday morning when Harris was shot, had been busily haranguing the market goers. Both Mavers and any number of witnesses had sworn to it.
But Sally Davenant, for one, had suggested that it was possible for him to disappear for a short time without
