He was in the fields now, heavy with the scent of raw earth and sunlight.
What did she know that no one had thought to ask? She would be the last person to come forward voluntarily. That would have been unbearable agony for her. And yet-now that he was sure the murder had happened somewhere other than the meadow-her evidence could easily be critical. It could damn Wilton to the hangman-or free him, for that matter.
Maggie, he realized, could very well hold the key to this murder, and he'd overlooked it. He glanced toward the distant stone wall, seeing it with new eyes. Maggie, hanging clothes on the line on Monday mornings. Maggie working in her overgrown garden. Maggie, always at home and close enough to Mallows here to hear a horseman in the fields. Or a shotgun going off nearby. Maggie seeing the murderer, for all he knew, waiting among the trees or in the dell or coming over the rise. Maggie, anxious and afraid of strangers, watchful and wary, so that she could hide herself inside the cottage before she herself was seen. And a lurking killer, unaware of a witness he'd never even glimpsed.
And this was the time to speak to her, while Helena was at the funeral. He doubled his pace, as if afraid, now that he'd remembered her, that she might be gone before he got there. Cursing himself for his blindness, for seeing with his eyes and not with that intuitive grasp of people he'd always had.
Ahead he could hear something, unidentifiable at first, a loud, insistent, repetitive It was the goose at the Sommers cottage. Something had upset the bird, he could tell from the wild sound, rising and falling without so much as a breath in between.
Rutledge broke into a run, ignoring the neat rows of young crops under his feet, stumbling in the soft earth, keeping his balance with an effort of will, his eyes on the rose-draped wall that separated Mallows from Haldane land and the Sommers cottage.
Helena was coming into town for the services. Maggie was alone He could hear screams now, high and wordless, and a man's bellow of pain. He was no longer running, he was covering the ground with great leaps, risking his neck he knew, but unable to think of that as the screams reached a crescendo of something beyond pain.
Reaching the wall, he rested his palms on the edge of it, swung his body over in one movement, paying no heed to the long thorn-laced roses that pulled at his clothes. His feet landed among Maggie's pathetic little flowers on the far side of the wall, trampling them heedlessly.
There was a motorcar in the drive, down by the gate. It was empty, and he ignored it, springing for the cottage.
Seeing him coming, the goose wheeled from her stand near the cottage door and sailed toward him, wings out, neck low, prepared for the attack.
He brushed her roughly aside, and was ten yards from the door when it burst open and a man came reeling out, his face a mask of blood, his shirt torn and soaked to crimson, his trousers slashed and smeared.
It was Royston. Something had laid open his shoulder- Rutledge could see the blue-white sheen of bone there-and he plunged heavily off the steps and into the grass, hardly aware of Rutledge sliding to a halt almost in his path.
Regardless of the pain he was inflicting, Rutledge caught him by his good shoulder and swung him around, anger twisting his face into a grimace as he shouted, 'Damn you! What have you-'
Inside, the screaming went on.
'Watch her!' Royston cried. 'She's got-got an ax-' His knees buckled. 'The child-the child-'
Rutledge managed to break his fall, but Royston was losing blood rapidly, his words weaker with every breath. 'The child-I killed-'
Without waiting for any more, Rutledge was through the door, eyes seeing nothing after the glare of the sun, but ahead of him was something, a figure barely glimpsed. A woman in black, huddled on the floor at the end of the brown sofa, two darknesses blending into one like some distorted parody of humanity, humped and ugly. A primeval dread lifted the hairs along his arms.
Reaching her, he grasped her shoulders, saying, 'Are you all right? Has he hurt you? What has he done to you?' She stared up at him, face chalk white, eyes large and wild. In one bloody hand was an ax. His own eyes were adjusting rapidly now. The room was empty except for Maggie and the assorted furnishings of a rented house. He got her up on the sofa, and she leaned back, eyes closed. 'Is he dead?' she asked breathlessly, in the voice of a terrified child.
'No-I don't think so.'
She tried to get up, but he pressed her back against the sofa, holding her there, trying to determine how much of the blood was hers, how much Royston's.
'I'll have to get help-I'll find Helena and bring her to you-she's at the church-'
But Maggie was shaking her head, dazed but at least able to understand him. Her eyes turned toward the closed door at the far end of the room. 'She's in there,' Maggie whispered.
Rutledge felt his blood run cold.
'I'll go-'
'No-leave her! I hope she's dead!'
He mistook her meaning, thinking that she was saying that death was preferable to the cataclysm of rape.
'I saw her kill him,' she went on, not taking her eyes from the bedroom door. 'I saw her! She shot Colonel Harris. And it was for nothing, it wasn't the right man-she'd thought it was, but Mavers said-and then that man out there admitted it was true, that he'd killed the child.'
'What child?' he asked, thinking only of Lizzie.
'Why, little Helena, of course. Mr. Royston ran over her in his car-in Colonel Harris's car. And the check he sent was in the Colonel's name. So we thought-all these years we thought-but it wasn't the Colonel. Helena got it all wrong.' There was a sudden spark of triumph in her eyes, as if it gave her some obscure pleasure to think that Helena had been wrong. 'Aunt Mary and Uncle Martin always said she was better than I was, so pretty, so smart, so fearless-they said they wished the car had killed me, not Helena. I was only adopted, you see, I wasn't theirs-' There was a lifetime of suffering in her words, a lifelong misery because the wrong child had died in an accident and she had been blamed for living. 'They asked for all that money, and it wasn't enough to satisfy them, they wanted her back again. But she was dead. And I was alive.'
He wasn't interested in Maggie's childhood; he had a man bleeding to death on his hands, and God knew what behind that closed, silent bedroom door.
'So when Helena discovered that the Colonel lived here, just across the wall-that he was our neighbor-'
Getting up from his knees, his breathing still erratic and harsh, he ignored Maggie and started across the room to the bedroom, forcing himself to face what had to be faced. Hamish had been babbling for the last five minutes, a counterpoint to Maggie's slow, painful confession, but Rutledge shut him out, shut out everything but the long, bright streak of blood down the door panel, on the handle of the knob Somehow Maggie was there before him. 'No! Leave her alone, I tell you! I won't let you go near her-let her die!' And with such swiftness that he couldn't have stopped her if his own life had depended upon it, she was through the door and into the room, turning the key in the lock behind her.
'Maggie!' he shouted, pounding on the door, but he could hear only her sobbing. She'd taken the ax with her. There was nothing to do but try to break the door down with his shoulder or kick it down.
It took him three tries. When it finally swung wide on broken hinges, he was into the room before he could regain his balance.
There was only one bed, narrow, neatly made, now covered in blood. And only Maggie, collapsed across the pretty lemon-colored counterpane like a heap of rags, stained and worn. The ax was on the floor at her feet. He turned wildly, surveying the small room, finding no one else, the window closed, the closet empty. Then he was beside the woman on the bed, leaning over her, lifting her gently. Black lifeblood welled beneath her, thick and pungent. The heavy, ivory- handled knife had plunged too deep. There was nothing he could do.
Her eyes were not able to see him. But she was still alive. Just.
'I had to do it,' she said. 'I couldn't stand it anymore. She knew that. She always knew things before I ever did. But for once she was wrong-about the Colonel. She'll go to hell, won't she, for killing him? And I'll go to heaven with the angels, won't I? We couldn't share anymore. Not with that on her conscience.'
'Where did she kill him?' Rutledge asked.
