The words coward and weakling had stung. But what rankled in his soul was that he had said nothing, not one single word, in Hickam's defense. In betraying Hickam, he felt he had betrayed himself. Rutledge and Sergeant Davies arrived at Mallows, the Colonel's well-run estate on the Warwick road, half an hour later. The sky had cleared to a cerulean blue, the air clean and sweet with spring as the car turned in through the iron gates and went up the drive.
Completely hidden from the main road by banks of old trees, the house didn't emerge until they rounded the second bend and came out of the shadows into the sun. Then mellowed brick and tall windows, warmed to gold, reflected the early morning light. Setting them off was a wide sweep of lawn mown to crisp perfection, the flower beds sharply edged and the drive smoothly raked. One glance and you could tell that not only had pride gone into the upkeep of this house, but unabashed love as well.
To Rutledge's appreciative eye, a master's hand had created this marvelously graceful facade. For the stone cornices, quoins, and moldings around the windows enhanced rather than overwhelmed the effect of elegant simplicity that the designer had been striving for. He found himself wondering who the architect had been, for this was a small jewel. Where had such a gift taken the man after this?
But Davies couldn't say. 'The Colonel, now, he would have told you, and if he wasn't too busy, he'd have taken out the old plans for you to see. That was the kind of man he was, never a stickler for rank. He knew his place, and trusted you to know yours.'
As Rutledge got out of the car, he found himself looking up at the windows above. One of the heavy drapes had twitched, he thought, the slight movement catching the corner of his eye. In France, where life itself depended on quick reflexes, you learned to see your enemy first or you died. It was as simple as that.
The staff had already placed a heavy black wreath on the broad wooden door, its streamers lifting gently in the light breeze. A butler answered the bell. He was a thin man of middle height, fifty-five or thereabouts, his face heavy with grief as if he mourned the Colonel personally. He informed Rutledge and Sergeant Davies in tones of polished regret that Miss Wood was not receiving anyone today.
Rutledge said only, 'What is your name?'
'Johnston, sir.' The words were polite, distant.
'You may tell your mistress, Johnston, that Inspector Rutledge is here on police business. You know Sergeant Davies, I think.'
'Miss Wood is still unwell, Inspector.' He cast an accusing glance at Davies, as if blaming him for Rutledge's ill-mannered persistence. 'Her doctor has already informed Inspector Forrest-'
'Yes, I understand. We won't disturb her any longer than absolutely necessary.' The voice was firm, that of an army officer giving instructions, brooking no further opposition. Certainly not the voice of a lowly policeman begging entrance.
'I'll enquire,' the man replied, with a resignation that clearly indicated both personal and professional disapproval but just as clearly made no promises.
He left them standing in the hall before a handsome staircase that divided at the first-floor landing and continued upward in two graceful arcs. These met again on the second story, above the doorway, to form an oval frame for a ceiling painting of nymphs and clouds, with a Venus of great beauty in the center. From the hall she seemed to float in cloud- cushioned luxury, far beyond the reach of mere mortals, staring down at them with a smile that was as tantalizing as it was smug.
Johnston was gone for nearly fifteen minutes.
Hamish, growing restive as the tension of waiting mounted, said, 'I've never been inside a house like this. Look at the floor, man, it's squares of marble, enough to pave the streets in my village. And that stair-what holds it up, then? It's a marvel! And worth a murder or two.'
Rutledge ignored him and the uncomfortable stiffness of Sergeant Davies, who seemed to grow more wooden with every passing minute. The butler returned eventually and said with ill-concealed censure, 'Miss Wood will receive you in her sitting room, but she asks that you will make your call brief.'
He led the way up the staircase to the first floor and then turned left down a wide, carpeted corridor to a door near the end of it. The room beyond was quite spacious, uncluttered, and ordinarily, Rutledge thought, full of light from the long windows facing the drive. But the heavy rose velvet drapes had been drawn-was it these he had seen stir?-and only one lamp, on an inlaid table, made a feeble effort to penetrate the gloom.
Lettice Wood was tall and slim, with heavy dark hair that was pinned loosely on the top of her head, smooth wings from a central parting cupping her ears before being drawn up again. She was wearing unrelieved black, her skirts rustling slightly as she turned to watch them come toward her.
'Inspector Rutledge?' she said, as if she couldn't distinguish between the Upper Streetham sergeant and the representative of Scotland Yard. She did not ask them to be seated, though she herself sat on a brocade couch that faced the fireplace and there were two upholstered chairs on either side of it. A seventeenth-century desk stood between two windows, and against one wall was a rosewood cabinet filled with a collection of old silver, reflecting the single lamp like watching eyes from the jungle's edge. Sergeant Davies, behind Rutledge, stayed by the door and began to fumble in his pocket for his notebook.
For a moment the man from London and the woman in mourning considered each other in silence, each gauging temperament from the slender evidence of appearance. The lamplight reached Rutledge's face while hers was shadowed, but her voice when she spoke had been husky and strained, that of someone who had spent many hours crying. Her grief was very real-and yet something about it disturbed him. Something lurked in the dimness that he didn't want to identify.
'I'm sorry we must intrude, Miss Wood,' he found himself saying with stiff formality. 'And I offer our profoundest sympathy. But I'm sure you understand the urgency of finding the person or persons responsible for your guardian's death.'
'My guardian.' She said it flatly, as if it had no meaning for her. Then she added with painful vehemence, 'I can't imagine how anyone could have done such a terrible thing to him. Or why. It was a senseless, savage-' She stopped, and he could see that she had swallowed hard to hold back angry tears. 'It served no purpose,' she added finally in a defeated voice.
'What has served no purpose?' Rutledge asked quietly. 'His death? Or the manner of it?'
That jolted her, as if she had been talking to herself and not to him, and was surprised to find he'd read her thoughts.
She leaned forward slightly and he could see her face then, blotched with crying and sleeplessness. But most unusual nevertheless, with a high-bridged nose and a sensitive mouth and heavy-lidded eyes. He couldn't tell their color, but they were not dark. Sculpted cheekbones, a determined chin, a long, slender throat. And yet somehow she managed to convey an odd impression of warm sensuality. He remembered how the Sergeant had hesitated over the word 'attractive,' as if uncertain how to classify her. She was not, in the ordinary sense, beautiful. At the same time, she was far, very far, from plain.
'I don't see how you can separate them,' she answered after a moment, a black-edged handkerchief twisting in her long, slim fingers. 'He wasn't simply killed, was he? He was destroyed, blotted out. It was deliberate, vengeful. Even Scotland Yard can't change that. But the man who did this will be hanged. That's the only comfort I've got.' There was a deeper note in her voice as she spoke of hanging, as if she relished the image of it in her mind.
'Then perhaps we ought to begin with last Monday morning. Did you see your guardian before he left the house?'
She hesitated, then said, 'I didn't go riding that morning.'
Before he could take her up on that stark reply, she added, 'Charles loved Mallows, loved the land. He said those rides made up, a little, for all the months he spent away. So he usually went out alone, and it was never a fixed route, you see, just wherever his list for that day took him-it might be inspecting a crop or a tenant's roof or the state of the hedges or livestock, anything. And he came back feeling-fulfilled, I suppose. It was a way of healing after all he'd been through.'
'How many people knew what was on his list each day?'
'It wasn't written down, it was in his head. Laurence Royston might be aware that Charles was planning to look into a particular problem, if they'd discussed it. But for the most part it was Charles's own interests that guided him. I don't suppose you were a soldier, Inspector, but Charles once said that the greatest crime of the war was ruining the French countryside for a generation. Not the slaughter of armies, but the slaughter of the land.' She
