'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 Mav- ers'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.
He hadn't come forward in a heaven-sent rage to defy Mavers and protect his parishioners. He'd stood there, missing the opportunity of a lifetime to play the grand role of savior and hero, waiting in the shadows of the church door geared for flight and not for fight. Planning to make a hasty and unseen departure if need be, unwilling to do battle with the powers of darkness in the form of one wiry little loudmouth with amber goat's eyes.
A mountebank, Mavers had called him.
He looked across the churchyard and saw Rutledge watching him. With a swirl of his robes he vanished inside the church, shutting the door firmly but quietly behind him.
Rutledge walked slowly behind the last of the parishioners hurrying down the lane. By the time he reached the High Street, he was alone. That afternoon Dr. Warren allowed him to visit Daniel Hickam. Rutledge stood in the doorway, looking down at the man in the bed, thin, unshaven, but clean and as still as one of the carved Haldanes on the church tombs.
Then as Rutledge stepped into the room, the heavy eyelids opened, and Hickam frowned, knowing someone was there. He moved his head slightly, saw Rutledge, and the frown deepened, with incipient alarm behind it.
Dr. Warren moved out from behind Rutledge's shoulder and said briskly, 'Well, then, Daniel, how are you feeling, man?'
Hickam's eyes moved slowly to Warren and then back again to Rutledge. After a moment he said in a croak that would have made a frog shudder, 'Who are you?'
'I'm Rutledge. Inspector Rutledge, Scotland Yard. Do you remember why I'm here?'
Alarm widened his eyes. Warren said testily, 'Oh, for God's sake, tell the man he's done nothing wrong, that it's information you want!'
'Where am I?' Hickam asked. 'Is this France? Hampshire -the hospital?' His glance swept the room, puzzled, afraid.
Rutledge's hopes plummeted. 'You're in Upper Streetham. Dr. Warren's surgery. You've been ill. But someone has shot Colonel Harris, he's dead, and we need to ask people who might have seen him on Monday morning where he was riding and who he was with.'
Dr. Warren started to interrupt again, and this time Rut- ledge silenced him with a gesture.
'Dead?' Hickam shut his eyes. After a time he opened them again and repeated, 'Monday morning?'
'Yes, that's right. Monday morning. You'd been drunk. Do you remember? And you were still hungover when Sergeant Davies found you. You told him what you'd seen. But then you were ill, and we haven't been able to ask you to repeat your statement. We need it badly.' Rutledge kept his voice level and firm, as if questioning wounded soldiers about what they'd seen, crossing the line.
Hickam shut his eyes again. 'Was the Colonel on a horse?'
Rutledge's spirits began to rise again. 'Yes, he was out riding that morning.' He heard the echo of Lettice Wood's words in his own, then told himself to keep his mind on Hickam.
'On a horse.' Hickam shook his head. 'I don't remember Monday morning.'
'That's it, then,' Warren said quietly, still standing at Rutledge's shoulder. 'I warned you.'
'But I remember the Colonel. On a horse. In the-in the lane above Georgie's house. I-was that Monday?' The creaking voice steadied a little.
'Go on, tell me what you remember. I'll decide for myself what's important and what isn't.'
The eyelids closed once more, as if too heavy. 'The Colonel. He'd been to Georgie's-'
'He's lost it,' Warren said at that. 'Let him be now.'
'No, he's right, the Colonel had been to the Grayson house!' Rutledge told him under his breath. 'Now keep out of it!'
Hickam was still speaking. 'And someone called to him. Another officer.' He shook his head. 'I don't know his name. He-he wasn't one of our men. A-a captain, that's what he was. The Captain called to Colonel Harris, and Harris stopped. They stood there, Harris on the horse, the Captain by his stirrup.'
And then there was silence, heavy and filled only with the sound of Hickam's breathing. 'There was a push on, wasn't there? I could hear the guns, they were in my head-but it was quiet in the lane,' he began again. 'I tried,
