A Test of Wills

by Charles Todd

  “So Wilton could have reached the meadow either way—from the lane where we came up, if Hickam is right, or from the churchyard path, if Wilton walked that way, as he claims he did.”

  “Aye, but it isn’t likely, is it? Somehow I just don’t see the Captain waiting in the trees to shoot the Colonel from ambush! Besides, when Hickam saw him, he wasn’t carrying a shotgun, was he? So where did he get the gun, and where is it now?”

  “A good question, that. You’ve scoured the area looking for it?”

  “Aye, as soon as possible we had men in the trees there and in the tall grass. But by that time, who knows what might have become of the weapon. The killer’s hidden it somewhere, most likely.”

  Looking about him, Rutledge thought, It isn’t where he’s hidden it that’s half as important as where he got it.

  Davies pointed and said, “Look, if you go down this hill, over the fields yonder, and across the stile when you come to another line of hedgerows, you soon find yourself in the orchard behind Mallows, and that takes you to the gardens and the house itself. Of course, you can’t see it from here, but the going’s fairly straight if you know your way. The land’s a pie wedge, like. Mallows is out on the Warwick road, and we’ve come up from the High Street. The crust, so to speak, runs from Upper Streetham to Warwick. Up here now, we’re at the point of the wedge, having come up one side. If we followed the other side, that would be the Haldane property over there.”

  He turned to point generally in that direction, then faced the way they had just come. “Behind the church are the smallholdings you saw from the churchyard. Beyond them is Crichton land. This meadow then is farther from Mallows—the house, I mean—and the village, than any other part of the Harris property.”

  “Which means the killer chose this place because he felt sure the shot might not be heard. There aren’t any other houses in this area?”

  “No.”

  Rutledge walked around the meadow for a while longer, not knowing what he expected to find and finding nothing. Finally, satisfied, he called to Davies and they started back toward the car.

  But he changed his mind when he reached the field of marrows and said, “We’ll walk along the track—the crossbar of the H—as far as that other path coming up from the churchyard. I want to see for myself how these two connect.”

  The track meandered, but bore mainly eastward through plowed fields, crops already standing greenly after the rain. It joined the churchyard path in the middle of a stretch of fallow land, more or less out in the open. They were standing there while Davies described how they could continue over the ridge to the mill ruins when they saw a woman in the distance, her skirts blowing in the wind as she crested the ridge, her stride long and competent and graceful.

  Sergeant Davies shaded his eyes. “That’s Miss Sommers—Miss Helena Sommers. She and her cousin live in a little cottage that belongs to the Haldanes. They let it for the summer, now and again, when there’s no other tenant.”

  “She’s the woman who encountered Wilton on his walk?”

  “Aye, she’s the one.”

  Rutledge moved in her direction. “Then we’ll see if we can talk to her now.”

  Davies hailed her in a baritone that carried clearly, and she turned, acknowledging the shout with a wave.

  Miss Sommers was in her late twenties or early thirties, her face strong and her eyes a clear and untroubled gray. She stood waiting for them, calling, “Good morning!”

  “This is Inspector Rutledge from London,” Davies said, more than a little short-winded after the fast pace Rutledge had set. “He’s wanting to ask you some questions if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course. How can I help you?” She turned toward Rutledge, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked up at him.

  “Did you see or hear anything unusual on Monday morning when Colonel Harris was shot? I understand you were out walking.”

  “Yes, I was. But this part of the country is rather hilly, and the echoes do funny things with sound. I didn’t hear a gunshot, but once over the crest of the hill there, I wouldn’t be likely to if it came from this side.” She smiled, indicating the fine pair of field glasses around her neck. “I enjoy watching birds, and when I first came here, I was forever getting confused. I’d hear a song and swear my quarry was in that tree, only to discover he was nothing of the sort, he was in a bush over there. And the next time it would be just the opposite.” The smile faded. “They say Colonel Harris was shot in a meadow—the small one beyond a copse of trees. Is that true?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded. “I know where it is then. I followed a pair of nesting robins there one afternoon. I wouldn’t have been very likely to hear any sounds from there, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Captain Wilton,” she answered with some reluctance. “I didn’t speak to him, but I did see him, and he waved.”

  “At what time was this?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Early, I think. Around eight, I imagine, or a little after. I was engrossed in tracking a cuckoo and was mainly glad that Wilton wasn’t the sort who’d want to stop and chatter.”

  “Which way was he going?”

  “The same way you are.”

  “Toward the old mill, then.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I wasn’t really paying much attention, he was just walking along here. I saw him, realized who it was, waved, and then went on my way.”

  “Did you know the Colonel well?”

  “Hardly at all. We’ve been here since April, and he very kindly asked us to dinner one evening. But my cousin is shy, almost a recluse, and she didn’t want to go. I did, enjoyed the evening, and that was that. We spoke to each other on the High Street, and I waved if I saw him out riding, but that’s about all I can tell you.”

  “And you know the Captain well enough to be certain you did see him and not someone else?”

  She smiled, the gray eyes lighting within. “A woman doesn’t forget Mark Wilton, once she’s seen him. He’s very handsome.”

  “How would you describe the Colonel?”

  She considered his question, as if she hadn’t given much thought to the Colonel before now. “He was younger than I expected. And rather attractive in a quiet way. Widely read for a military man—we had a very interesting discussion over dinner about American poets, and he seemed to know Whitman quite well.” She brushed a strand of windblown hair out of her face. “He seemed a likable man, on short acquaintance. A very gracious host. I can’t tell you much more, because I talked mostly to Lettice Wood after dinner and then to Mrs. Davenant, and shortly after that, the party broke up.”

  “How would you describe relations between Wilton and Colonel Harris?”

  “Relations? I hardly know.” She thought back to that evening for a moment, then said, “They seemed comfortable with each other, like men who have known each other over a long period of time. That’s all I can remember.”

  “Thank you, Miss Sommers. If you should think of anything else that might help us, please get in touch with Sergeant Davies or me.”

  “Yes, of course.” She hesitated, then asked, “I’ve gone on with my walks. I suppose that’s all right? My cousin frets and begs me to stay home, but I hate being cooped up. There’s no—well, danger—is there?”

  “From the Colonel’s killer?”

  She nodded.

  “I doubt that you have anything to fear, Miss Sommers. All the same, you might exercise reasonable caution. We still don’t know why the Colonel was killed, or by whom.”

  “Well, I wish you luck in finding him,” she said, and went striding off.

  “A pleasant lady,” Davies said, watching her go. “Her cousin, now, she’s as timid as a mouse. Never shows her face in the village, but keeps the cottage as clean as a pin. Mrs. Haldane was saying that she thought the poor girl was a half-wit at first, but went over to the cottage one day to ask how they were settling in, and saw that she’s just shy, as Mi
ss Sommers said, and on the plain side.”

  Rutledge was not interested in the shy Miss Sommers. He was tired and hungry, and Hamish had been mumbling under his breath for the last half hour, a certain sign of tumult in his own mind. It was time to turn back.

  What bothered him most, he thought, striding along in silence, was the Colonel himself. He’d actually seen the man, heard him inspire troops who had no spirit and no strength left to fight. A tall persuasive figure in an officer’s greatcoat, his voice pitched to carry in the darkness before dawn, his own physical force somehow filling the cold, frightened emptiness in the faces before him. Convincing them that they had one more charge left in them, that together they could carry the assault and take the gun emplacement and save a thousand lives the next morning—two thousand—when the main thrust came. And the remnants of a battered force did as he had asked, only to see the main attack fail, and the hill abandoned to the Hun again within twenty-four hours.

  Yet here in Upper Streetham Charles Harris seemed to be no more than a faint shadow of that officer, a quiet and “thoroughly nice” man, as Mrs. Davenant had put it. Surely not a man who was likely to be murdered.

  How do you put your fingers on the pulse of a dead man and bring him to life? Rutledge had been able to do that at one time, had in the first several cases of his career shown an uncanny knack for seeing the victim from the viewpoint of the murderer and understanding why he or she had had to die. Because the solution to a murder was sometimes just that—finding out why the victim had to die. But here in Warwickshire the Colonel seemed to elude him….

  Except to acknowledge the fact that once more he would be dealing with death, he, Rutledge, had never really thought through the problems of resuming his career at the Yard. At least not while he was still at the clinic, locked in despair and his own fears. To be honest about it, he’d seen his return mainly as the answer to his desperate need to stay busy, to shut out Hamish, to shut out Jean, to shut out, indeed, the shambles of his life.

  Even back in London, he had never really considered whether or not he was good enough still at his work to return to it. He hadn’t considered whether the skills and the intuitive grasp of often frail threads of information, which had been his greatest asset, had been damaged along with the balance of his mind by the horrors of the war. Whether he could be a good policeman again. He’d simply expected his ability to come back without effort, like remembering how to ride or how to swim, rusty skills that needed only a new honing….

  Now, suddenly, he was worried about that. One more worry, one more point of stress, and it was stress that gave Hamish access to his conscious mind. The doctors had told him that.

  He sighed, and Sergeant Davies, clumping along through the grass beside him, said, “Aye, it’s been a long morning, and we’ve gotten nowhere.”

  “Haven’t we?” Rutledge asked, forcing his attention back to the business in hand. “Miss Sommers said she did see Wilton walking this track. But where was he coming from? The churchyard, as he claims? Or had he walked by way of the lane, as Hickam claims, met the Colonel, and then crossed over this way? Or—did he go after Harris, follow him to the meadow, with murder on his mind?”

  “But this way leads to the ruins by the old bridge, just as he told us, and Miss Sommers saw him here around eight, she thought. So we’re no nearer to the truth than we were before.”

  “Yes, all right, but since Miss Sommers saw him here, he’d be bound to tell us that he was heading for the mill, wouldn’t he? No matter where he’d actually been—or was actually going.”

  “Do you think he’s guilty, then?” Sergeant Davies couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice.

  “There isn’t enough information at this point to make any decision at all. But it’s possible, yes.” They had reached the car again, and Rutledge opened his door, then stopped to pick the worst of the burrs from his trousers. Davies was standing by the bonnet, fanning himself with his hat, his face red from the exertion.

  Still following a train of thought, Rutledge said, “If Miss Sommers is right and Wilton was up there in the high grass early on, say eight o’clock, he might well have been a good distance from the meadow by the time the Colonel was shot. Assuming, as we must, that the horse came straight home and the Colonel died somewhere between nine-thirty and ten o’clock, when Royston went down to the stables looking for him.”

  “Aye, he would have reached the ruins and the bridge in that time, it’s true. So you’re saying then that it still hangs on Hickam’s word that Captain Wilton was in the lane, and when that was.”

  “It appears that way. Without Hickam, there’s no evidence where the Captain had come from before he ran into Miss Sommers. No evidence of a further quarrel. And no real reason except for what Johnston and Mary overheard in the hall at Mallows for us to believe that the Captain had any cause to shoot Harris.”

  Sergeant Davies brightened. “And no jury in this county is going to take a Daniel Hickam’s word over that of a man holding the Victoria Cross.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Sergeant,” Rutledge said, climbing into the car.

  “What’s that, sir?” Davies asked anxiously, coming around and peering into the car from the passenger side so that he could see Rutledge’s face.

  “If Wilton didn’t shoot Harris, then who did? And who turned the corpse over?”

  After lunch at the Shepherd’s Crook, Rutledge took out the small leather notebook, made a number of entries, and then considered what he should do next. He had sent Davies home to his wife for lunch, while he lingered over his own coffee in the dining room, enjoying the brief solitude.

  What was Harris like? That seemed to be the key. What lay buried somewhere in the man’s life that was to bring him to a bloody death in a sunlit meadow?

  Or to turn it another way, why did he have to die that morning? Why not last week—last year—ten years from now?

  Something had triggered the chain of events that ended in that meadow. Something said—or left unsaid. Something done—or left undone. Something felt, something glimpsed, something misunderstood, something that had festered into an angry explosion of gunpowder and shot.

  Royston, Wilton, Mrs. Davenant, Lettice Wood. Four different people with four vastly different relationships to the dead man. Royston an employee, Wilton a friend, Mrs. Davenant a neighbor, and Lettice Wood his ward. Surely he must have shown a different personality to each of them. It was human nature to color your moods and your conversations and your temperament to suit your company. Surely one of the four must have seen a side to his character that would lead the police to an answer.

  It was hard to believe that Charles Harris had no sins heavy on his conscience, no faces haunting his dreams, no shadows on his soul. There was no such thing as a perfect English gentleman—

  Hamish had started humming a tune, and Rutledge tried to ignore it, but it was familiar, and in the way of songs that run unbidden through the mind, it dragged his attention away from his own speculations. And then suddenly he realized what it was—a half-forgotten Victorian ballad called “The Proper English Gentleman” written by a less well known contemporary of Kipling’s—less popular perhaps because his sentiments were bitter and lacked Kipling’s fine sense of what the reading public would put up with, and what it would turn from. But the ballad had been popular enough in the trenches during the war:

  He’s a proper English gentleman who never spills

  his beer.

  He dines with all the ladies and never shows his fear

  Of picking up the wrong fork or swearing at the soup

  When it’s hot enough to burn him, or jumping

  through the hoop

  Of English society, and all it represents.

  But he’s a damned good soldier in front of all the

  troops

  And marches like a gentleman in his fine leather

  boots

  And eats in the reg’lar mess and calls the men by

&nbs
p; name

  And shares the dirty work with ’em, what’s called

  the killing game

  Of English Imperialism and all it represents.

  But by his own hearthside he’s a very different sort

  And he beats his tenants quarterly and no one dares

  retort,

  He takes their wives and daughters, and never stops

  to think

  That a man might someday shoot him when he’s

  had enough to drink!

  Of English duplicity, and all it represents,

  He’s the finest of examples, and there’s others of his

  kind

  Who keep their secrets closely and never seem to mind

  That the man who sits at table and has their deepest

  trust

  Might carry in his bosom the foulest kind of lust,

  Not English respectability, and all it represents.

  So watch your step, my laddies, keep your distance,

  ladies dear,

  Watch out for English gentlemen and don’t ever let

  them near.

  Their faces won’t betray them, their deeds are fine

  and true,

  But put them near temptation and it really will not

  do—

  For certain English gentlemen and all they represent.

  What was the secret behind Charles Harris’s very proper face? What had he done, this apparently “thoroughly nice” man, that had made someone want to obliterate him, and to choose a shotgun at point-blank range to do it?

  Barton Redfern was just removing the coffee things and turning to limp back to the kitchen when Dr. Warren came through the dining-room door and, seeing Rutledge at the table by the window, crossed hurriedly to him.

  “You’d better come,” he said. “They’re about to lynch that stupid devil Mavers!”

  5

  Mavers, sprawled in the dust by the worn shaft of the village’s market cross, was bloody and defiant, spitting curses as a dozen men tried to kick and drag him toward the broad oak tree that stood outside a row of shops. There was murder in the angry faces encircling him, and someone had found a length of rope, although Rutledge wasn’t sure whether the initial intent was to hang Mavers or tie him to the tree for a sound thrashing. One man was carrying a horsewhip, and when in the confusion a heavy blow intended for Mavers caught him on the shin instead, he wheeled and lashed out in retaliation. The whip flicked across several heads, and for an instant it looked as if a general battle might ensue, while Mavers called them all every unprintable name he could think of. It was noisy, dangerous chaos on the verge of turning even nastier as other men came running toward the scene, shouting encouragement.