possible to take any action at all. Buffeted by the strongest feeling that time was running out.
Wilton had said he wouldn't shoot himself, he wouldn't take the gentleman's way out before he was arrested, convicted, and hanged. But that was assuming he was innocent, and could see that there was truly a chance for a very bright barrister to prove that there wasn't enough evidence to bring in a conviction. If he was guilty, however Rutledge was almost sure that Wilton wouldn't do anything rash before the funeral. For Lettice's sake, rather than his own. But afterward…
Bowles and the Yard-and the King-would probably rejoice if Wilton never came to trial. But Rutledge, far from wanting his pound of flesh, was determined to have that trial. To prove or disprove his evidence, to finish what he'd begun. With a carefully constructed suicide note left behind, Wilton could appear to be the victim, not the villain. He could leave behind enough doubt to overshadow anything Hickam and that child and Mrs. Grayson might say. The case couldn't be closed in such uncertain circumstances.
Without turning down the lamp, Rutledge walked out of the room, down the stairs, and out the garden door to his car. It made a racket starting up in the stillness, but there was nothing he could do about it. The first of the funeral guests to arrive were probably sleeping and wouldn't hear it anyway.
He turned toward Mallows, driving fast, his headlamps scouring the road with brightness. But at the estate gates, he changed his mind and stopped just inside them, turning off his headlamps and pulling off into the rhododendrons that grew high and thick under the trees. Getting out of the car, he stood still for a time, listening.
A dog barking off in the far distance. A lonely bark, not an alarm. An owl calling from the trees behind the house. The light breeze sighing overhead. He started to walk then, giving the house as wide a berth as he could, and soon found himself in the fields above it, lying between Mallows proper and the Haldane lands.
Moving through the darkness, minding where he put his feet, he kept the house to his right. It was dark, and the windows of Lettice's rooms shone like black silver in the night. In the back there was a single light in one of the upper rooms, where he'd seen the servants' quarters. He could hear horses moving quietly in the stables, stamping a foot, rustling about in the straw, and somewhere a groom coughed. He'd done enough reconnaissance missions during the war to move as silently as the night around him, his dark clothes blending with the trees and the shrubs and the hedges, and he was careful never to cast long shadows or hurry.
For an hour or more he roamed the fields above Mallows, looking for a likely place where a killer was safe, out of sight of the house, out of hearing, where none of the tenants might stumble over him accidentally and see that shotgun. But there was nothing that spoke to him, no vantage point that caught his fancy.
Look at it again, Rutledge told himself. You were a ground soldier. You'd see it differently. Wilton flew. His eye for terrain might not be as sharp as yours.
All right, then. A clump of saplings here. A high hedge full of summer-nesting birds there. A dip in the land, like a bowl or dell, where someone might quietly loiter. A section of the rose-clotted wall that separated the Haldane land from Mallows. They were all possibilities. The saplings in particular offered a shield from the house and thick brambles in which to conceal a shotgun. And the hedgerow in one or two spots was almost as good. For the most part the wall was too open, especially on this side, and the dell had no cover at all.
Another thought struck him. Betrothed to Lettice or not, Wilton would attract more notice on Mallows land than would, say, Royston, who had every reason to move about in his daily tasks. Or Lettice, who lived there and had had the run of the place since she was a child. In the spring with the fields plowed and the crops growing, you left tracks But Davies and Forrest had assumed that Charles was killed in the meadow, and hadn't looked for tracks. Or blood. Or bits of flesh and bone…
Finally he turned back, still uneasy, still driven by something he couldn't define. Not so much knowledge as a sense of alarm, a distinct frisson that rippled along his nerves like the breeze rippling softly through his hair.
In front of Mallows, in the open where there was just enough ambient light, he looked at his watch. It was after two.
'Decent Christian folk are all in their beds,' Hamish began.
Rutledge ignored him. Mallows was a house of mourning, and Charles had no close relatives. Most of the funeral's guests would be staying the night in Warwick, or at the Shepherd's Crook in Upper Streetham. Lettice would be alone, as she had been for the past week since her guardian's death.
There wouldn't be an opportunity to see her in the morning before the services began-and it would be callous to try. Afterward there was the reception that the Vicar had his heart set upon. No opportunity to speak to her then… and after the reception, time might have run out…
He turned and walked across the gravel of the drive to the front door with its black wreath darker than the night on the wooden panels. After a moment, he rang the bell, and in the stillness, fancied he heard it echo through the house like some gothic tale of late-night callers bringing bad tidings. His sister had gone through a stage of reading them just before bedtime, shivering under the covers with a mixture of horror and delight, or scratching at his door for comfort when she'd succeeded in terrifying herself too much to sleep.
Rutledge was still smiling when Johnston opened the door, eyes heavy with sleep, clothes stuffed on haphazardly.
He stared at Rutledge, recognizing him after a moment, then said, 'What's happened?'
'I have to speak to Miss Wood, it's urgent. But don't frighten her, there's nothing wrong.'
'Inspector! Do you know what time it is, man! I can't wake Miss Wood at this hour-there's the funeral tomorrow, she'll need her sleep!'
'Yes, I know, and I'm sorry. But I think she'd rather see me now than just as she's leaving for the church.'
It took persuasion, and a pulling of rank, but in the end Johnston went up the stairs into the darkness, leaving Rut- ledge in the half-lit hall.
After a time he could hear someone coming, heels tapping on the floor. It was Lettice, face still flushed with sleep, hair falling in dark waves down her back, a dark green dressing gown on over her night wear. She came slowly down the stairs with her eyes on him, and he said, 'I'm sorry. I wouldn't have come if it hadn't been so important. It won't take long, I promise you.'
'What's wrong, is something wrong?' she asked.
'No. Yes. I'm in a quandary of sorts. I need to talk to you.'
She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looked toward the door of the drawing room, then made up her mind. 'Come this way. To the small parlor.'
He followed her there, and she found the lights, bringing an almost blinding brightness into the room. Turning in the middle of the floor, she gestured to a chair for him and then curled up on the sofa, drawing her legs under her as if for warmth. Without the sun the room did seem chill, comfortable to him after his long walk in the fields, but cold to her after the warmth of bed. As he sat down he saw that the soles of his shoes and one trouser leg had mud on them. She saw it too, and asked, 'Where have you been?'
'Walking. Thinking. Look, I'll tell you what's bothering me. I went to arrest Captain Wilton this-yesterday- morn- ing, and he asked me to wait until after the funeral tomor- row-this-morning. It made sense. I could see no reason to cause any more grief or embarrassment for you.'
Frowning, she said, 'Yes, that's true, I'd rather not face it alone. But you're telling me that the man who's accompanying me to the services is Charles's murderer. The man who'll be sitting beside me while I grieve-I don't see how that will make it any easier for me. Or for Mark! Do you think I only care about appearances? I survived last Monday morning alone. I can survive this.'
'I hadn't expected to be telling you any of this. Not until afterward. But you know where my suspicions-and the evidence-have been pointing.'
She brushed a heavy fall of hair out of her face and said quietly, 'Yes.'
'You know I've learned about the source of the quarrel. That the marriage was being called off. You told me yourself that Charles had decided to do it.'
'Yes.'
'It's motive, Miss Wood. It explains why Charles had to die that particular morning-that Monday, not seventeen years ago or six months from now or next Friday.'
'All right. I can see that. I-I'd considered it myself.'
Which brought him back to his first impression of her- that she'd known who the killer was.
'But I need to know why your guardian called off the marriage.'
