“Money’s cheap,” Hamish put in suddenly. “Or was he thinking of standing for Parliament? Our fine Colonel?”
But no one heard him except Rutledge.
It was decided to take Mavers home, to give the villagers time to cool off without further provocation, and Rutledge went back to the Shepherd’s Crook for his car. He had just reached the walk in front of the door when someone called, “Inspector?”
He turned to see a young woman astride a bicycle, her cheeks flushed from riding and her dark hair pinned up inside a very becoming gray hat with curling pheasant’s feathers that swept down to touch her cheek.
“I’m Rutledge, yes.”
She dismounted from the bicycle and propped it up against the railing by the horse trough. “I’m Catherine Tarrant, and I’d like to talk to you, if you have the time.”
The name meant nothing to him at first, and then he remembered—she was the woman Captain Wilton had courted before the war. He led her inside the Inn and found a quiet corner of the old-fashioned parlor where they wouldn’t be interrupted. Waiting until she seated herself in one of the faded, chintz-covered chairs, he took the other across from her and then said, “What can I do for you, Miss Tarrant?” Behind him a tall clock ticked loudly, the pendulum catching sunlight from the windows at each end of its swing.
She had had the kind of face that men often fall in love with in their youth, fresh and sweet and softly feminine. Rutledge was suddenly reminded of girls in white gowns with blue sashes around trim waists, broad-brimmed hats pinned to high-piled curls, who had played tennis and strolled on cropped green lawns and laughed lightheartedly in the summer of 1914, then disappeared forever. Catherine Tarrant had changed with them. There was a firmness to her jaw and her mouth now, signs of suffering and emerging character that in the end would make her more attractive if less pretty. Her dark eyes were level, with intelligence clearly visible in their swift appraisal of him.
“I have nothing to tell you that will help your enquiries,” she said at once. “I don’t know anything about Colonel Harris’s death except what I’ve heard. But my housekeeper is Mary Satterthwaite’s sister, and Mary has told her about the quarrel between the Colonel and Captain Wilton. I know,” she added quickly, “Mary shouldn’t have. But she did, and Vivian told me. I just want to say to you that I’ve known Mark—Captain Wilton—for some years, and I can’t imagine him killing anyone, least of all Lettice Wood’s guardian! Lettice adored Charles, he was her knight in shining armor, a father and brother all in one. And Mark adores Lettice. He’d never let himself be provoked into doing anything so foolish!”
“You think, then, that the quarrel was serious enough to make us believe that the Captain is under suspicion?”
That shook her quiet intensity. She had come in defense of Wilton and found herself apparently on the brink of damning him. Then she collected her wits and with a lift of her chin, she said, “I’m not a policeman, Inspector. I don’t know what is important in a murder enquiry and what isn’t. But I should think that a quarrel between two men the night before one of them is killed will be given your thorough consideration. And you don’t know those two as well as I do—did.”
“Then perhaps you should tell me about them.”
“Tell you what? That neither of them had a vile temper, that neither of them would hurt Lettice, that neither of them was the sort of man to resort to murder?”
“Yet they quarreled. And one of them is dead.”
“Then we’ve come full circle again, haven’t we? And I’m trying to make you understand that however angry Charles might have made him at the moment, Mark wouldn’t have harmed him—least of all, killed him so savagely!”
“How do you know what might drive a man to murder?” he asked.
She studied him for a moment with those dark, clear eyes, and said, “How do you? Have you ever killed a man? Deliberately and intentionally? Not counting the war, I mean.”
Rutledge smiled grimly. “Point taken.” After a moment he added, “If we scratch Wilton from our list of suspects, have you got a name to put in his place?”
“Mavers,” she said instantly. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could see him!”
“But he was in the village on Monday morning. In plain view of half a hundred people.”
She shrugged. “That’s your problem, not mine. You asked me who might have shot Charles, not how he did it.”
“It appears that Wilton was seen by several witnesses in the vicinity of the meadow where Harris died.”
“I don’t care where he was seen. I tell you he wouldn’t have touched Charles Harris. He’s madly in love with Lettice. Can’t I make you understand that? Why would he risk losing her?”
“Are you still in love with him?”
Color rose in her face, a mottled red under the soft, fair skin. The earnestness changed to a clipped tension. “I was infatuated with Mark Wilton five years ago. He came to Upper Streetham one summer, and I fell in love with him the first time I saw him—any girl with eyes in her head must have done the same! Mrs. Davenant’s husband had just died, and Mark stayed with her for a while, until the estate was settled and so on. I envied her, you know, having Mark’s company every day, from breakfast to dinner. She’s only a few years older than he is, and I was sure he’d fall in love with her, and never notice me. Then we met one Sunday after the morning service, he called on me later, and for a time, I thought he was as in love with me as I was with him.”
She stopped suddenly, as if afraid she’d said too much, then went on in spite of herself. “We made quite a handsome pair, everyone said so. He’s so fair, and I’m so dark. And I think that was part of my infatuation too. The trouble was, Mark wanted to fly, not to find himself tied down with a wife and family, and at that point in my life I wanted a rose-covered cottage, a fairy-tale ending.”
For a moment there was a flare of pain in her dark eyes, a passing thought that seemed to have no connection with Wilton but was directed at herself—or at her dreams. “At any rate, I had several letters from Mark after he went away, and I answered a few of them, and then we simply didn’t have anything more to say to each other. It was over. And it wouldn’t have done. For either of us. Does that answer your question?”
“Not altogether.” Her color was still high, but he thought that it was from anger as much as anything else. And that intrigued him. He found himself wondering if Mark Wilton had been having an affair with his widowed cousin—and using Catherine Tarrant as a blind to mislead a village full of gossips. If she’d guessed that, her pride might have suffered more than her heart. And she might defend him now to protect herself, not him. “Are you still in love with him?” he asked again.
“No,” she said after a moment. “But I’m still fond enough of him to care what happens to him. I’ve got my painting, I’ve made quite a success of that, and any man in my life now would take second place.” He could hear a bleak undercurrent of bitterness behind the proud declaration.
“Even the fairy-tale prince?”
She managed a smile. “Even a prince.” She had stripped off her soft leather gloves when she came into the Inn, and now she began to draw them on again. “I have the feeling I’ve only made matters worse. Have I?”
“For Captain Wilton? Not really. So far you haven’t told me anything that would point in his direction—or away from it. Nothing has changed, as far as I can see.”