saw a man with a shotgun.' 'Did you see a man carrying a gun, love? A big long gun that made a big noise? Did you see that, love?' Lizzie didn't stir. 'Did the noise scare you? Loud and nasty, was it?' Nothing. Agnes repeated her questions, varying the words, probing over and over again, but Lizzie was silent. And still awake. 'Ask her if she remembers losing her doll.' That elicited no response, although Agnes tried several variations on that theme too. But Lizzie began to pluck restlessly at the front of Agnes's apron. 'It's no good, sir!' 'We'll try a different tack, then. Ask her-ask her if she saw the big horse.' Agnes crooned to the child to soothe her, and then said softly in the same tones, 'Was there a big horse, my lamb? A big shining horse in the meadow? Was he standing still or riding along? Did you see the big horse?' Lizzie stopped sucking her thumb, eyes wide, tense. Listening. Rutledge could hear Meg in the kitchen, speaking to someone in a low voice or singing to herself. He couldn't tell which it was. He swore silently, irritated by the distraction. 'And a man on its back?'
'Did the big horse carry a man on its back? High in the saddle the way you ride with your pa? Did you see the man, love? Just like Papa on the horse? Did you see his face-'
The words were hardly out of her mouth before Lizzie went rigid and began to scream. The sudden change was alarming in the quiet room, and Agnes cried out, 'Now, now, lovey-don't fret! Sir!'
'Papa! Papa! Papa! Papa! No-no-don't!' Lizzie screamed, the words tumbling over one another, the doll clutched tight as she struggled in her grandmother's arms.
Meg came running, and behind her were other footsteps.
Rutledge had gone to Agnes, his back to the door and was bending over the child, speaking to her, when he was caught from behind and thrown hard against the wall, scraping his cheek and all but knocking the breath out of him. A man's voice was roaring, 'Don't touch her-let her be! Damn you, let her be!' Rutledge wheeled, and Ted Pinter, face distorted with rage, charged at him again. Lizzie was standing rigidly in her grandmother's lap, eyes squeezed shut, shrieking, 'No-no! No!' over and over again.
Rutledge was grappling with Pinter, Meg was shouting, 'Ted! Don't!', and her husband was yelling, 'She's suffered enough, God blast you, I won't have her hurt anymore!'
And then the little girl stopped screaming so suddenly that the silence shocked them all, halting Pinter in his tracks. Over his shoulder, Rutledge could see the child's face, startled, mouth wide in a forgotten scream. Her eyes were half scrunched closed, half opened. But the lids were lifting, until they were wide, unbelieving. And then she was holding her arms out, straining against her grandmother's shoulder, a huge and shining smile on her tear- streaked face. Ted had turned toward her, and as she said in wonder, 'Papa?' he made a wordless sound in his throat and went to her, pulling her into his arms against his chest. His features were crumpled with tears, his head bent over his daughter. Meg was hanging on his arm, half cradling both of them, weeping too.
Agnes, both hands over her heart as if to keep it from leaping out of her chest, was on her feet also, staring at Rut- ledge with consternation in her eyes.
Rutledge, as stunned as they were, stared back, uncertain what he'd done.
Behind his eyes, Hamish was saying over and over again, 'She's naught but a child-a child!'
19
The sunset was a thin red line on the western horizon as Rutledge drove back into Upper Streetham. His body was tired, his mind a tumult of images and probabilities. He made his way though the quiet Inn and upstairs to his room, shutting the door behind him and standing there, lost in thought.
If the child's evidence was right-and he would have wagered his life that it was-Mavers couldn't have shot Harris. Well, he'd been almost sure of that from the perspective of timing! An outside possibility, a dark horse, attractive as Mavers was as a suspect, but a close-run thing if he'd actually done the killing.
But what else had Lizzie changed?
The doll had been beside the hedge at the edge of the meadow, half hidden under the spill of branches and leaves. From that vantage point, then, Lizzie had seen a horse and rider.
The man she was most accustomed to seeing on a horse was her own father. Living in the little cottage over on the other side of the hill, at the end of a long and rutted road, the Pinter family was more or less out of the mainstream of village life. Yes, Lizzie had seen any number of horses, Lizzie had seen any number of men-and women-riding. But the man she was most accustomed to seeing…
And when she heard the horse coming toward her out there in the fields where she'd been searching for wildflowers, she had run toward the sound, expecting to find her father.
But it wasn't Tom Pinter on that horse, it was Charles Harris thundering toward her, his horse already frightened and bolting.
Only she hadn't known that, for she hadn't been able to see the rider's face.
Instead she'd seen only a bloody stump on a man's body. And if her sudden screams had startled the horse, making it shy away from her, the gruesome burden on its back might finally have fallen out of the saddle.
Face-or rather chest-down on the grass?
But Lizzie, in terror, believing that the awful thing covered in blood was her own father, had fled, dropping the doll…
Or had she been in the meadow earlier, dropped the doll, remembered where she'd left it, and on her way to fetch it, encountered the specter of death?
He wasn't sure it mattered. What did matter was that Lizzie had been in the meadow, had seen Charles Harris on horseback, already dead. But she hadn't seen the gun, she hadn't seen Wilton, she hadn't been frightened by a loud noise at close range.
And the killer hadn't seen her…
Which meant that Charles Harris might not have been killed in that meadow.
Sergeant Davies had said from the beginning that he wasn't sure exactly where Harris had been shot, but assuming that the pellets driving into his head and body had thrown him violently out of the saddle, he would have dropped no more than a few feet either way from the scene of the killing.
I should have looked at the body And something else-the fact that Harris had been found on his chest, not his back. If he'd been shot out of the saddle, he'd have gone down on his back. If he fell out of the saddle after his horse had bolted, the dead man's knees spasmodically gripping the animal's sides in the muscle contractions of death… if he fell out, he might well have gone down on his face.
Hamish, whispering in the darkness that filled the room, said, 'You remember Stevens, don't you? He was hit and ran on for a yard or more, without a head to lead him, and you had to pry the rifle out of his hands, they were gripping it so tight. As if he were still killing Germans, even though he didn't know it. And MacTavish, who was heart shot, and Taylor, who got it in the throat. Death seized them in an instant, but they held on!'
It was true, he'd seen it happen.
Moving toward the bed, he turned up the lamp and then walked across to the windows, rested his hands on the low sill, and looked out into the silent street. A cool breeze touched the trees, then brushed his face in the open window, but he didn't notice.
Where had Harris been killed?
Not that it mattered-if the Colonel hadn't been shot in the meadow, it simply gave Wilton more time to reach Mav- ers's cottage, pick up the gun, and track him down.
But closer to the house, someone might have seen him pull the trigger or heard the shot. Yet no one had come forward.
Mark Wilton had the best possible motive. Still, Rutledge had been involved with other cases where the best motive wasn't necessarily the one that counted. Mark Wilton was, by his own admission, near the scene. He'd quarreled with the Colonel because the wedding was going to be called off… which made the timing of the death right: to kill Harris before he'd made public what he'd decided to do.
All the same, Rutledge knew he'd feel better when he'd answered the final two questions: One, why had Harris called off the wedding? And two, where precisely had Harris been shot?
Rutledge straightened, pulled off his tie, and took off his coat. There wasn't very much he could do tonight. In the dark. When everyone else was sound asleep…
But he found himself retying his tie, picking up the coat again. Almost driven to action, when it wasn't
