Frowning, she said, “You must believe this, if nothing else. Mark wouldn’t have harmed Charles Harris. Of all people.”
“Not even if Lettice now inherits Mallows?”
Startled, she laughed. “Mark inherited his own money years ago, quite a lot of it. That’s what made it possible for him to learn to fly, to buy his own aeroplane. He doesn’t need hers!”
As she rose and said good-bye, he considered for a moment whether she had come for Captain Wilton’s sake—or for some private motive. And what that motive might be. Not her own guilt, as far as he could see. If she still loved Wilton, killing Charles Harris was not the way to bring the Captain back to her. And jealousy would have been better served by shooting Wilton himself. Or Lettice.
Then why was it that the bitterness and pain he’d read in Catherine Tarrant’s voice seemed far more personal than the altruistic act of coming to a friend’s defense?
“Women,” Hamish said unexpectedly. “They always ken the cruelest way to torment a man for what’s he’s done, witting or no’.”
Rutledge thought of Jean and that day in the hospital when she had abandoned him to his nightmares. She’d intended to be kind—that’s what had hurt him most.
Outside, picking up her bicycle and leading it away from the railing, Catherine Tarrant paused, biting her lower lip, busy with her own thoughts. Mrs. Crichton’s estate agent came out of the Inn and spoke to her as he passed, but she didn’t hear him.
“Oh, damn,” she accused herself silently, “you’ve muddled everything. You should have had the sense to leave well enough alone, to stay out of it. Now he’ll start to pry and probe—” If Inspector Forrest had been handling the enquiry, he would have listened to her. He’d known her family for ages, he would have believed her without bringing up what happened in the war. Why on earth had they sent for someone from London instead of leaving this business to the local people!
But she knew the reason. The finger of suspicion must be strongly pointing toward Mark already, and everyone in Warwickshire was running for cover. There had been a dozen photographs of the King and Mark together, he’d dined with the Prince of Wales, was invited to Scotland to shoot, had even accompanied the Queen to a home for soldiers disabled by mustard gas—and questions were going to be asked when he was arrested for a bloody murder involving another war hero. Buckingham Palace would be icily furious.
Then where was their case? Not just that stupid quarrel. Surely you wouldn’t arrest a man simply because he had a roaring argument with the victim the night before. There had to be more damning evidence against him than that. And who were these people who claimed to have seen Mark near the place where Charles Harris had died? What else had they seen, if someone had the wit to ask them the right questions?…
For a moment she debated going straight to the Davenant house and asking Mark himself who the witnesses were. But Sally Davenant would be there, smiling and pretending not to notice how badly Catherine wanted to speak to Mark alone. Making the unexpected visit seem more like a ploy, an emotional excuse to come back into his life. And that would be hard to explain away.
She hadn’t told Rutledge the whole truth about Mrs. Davenant either. But she didn’t care about anyone else if Mark could be protected. She still wasn’t certain why she was so determined to help him. In the wild tangle of her emotions, he was the man who had opened her eyes to passion and prepared her for what had come later. And for that alone perhaps she owed him something.
There must be a better way of getting to the bottom of this. She’d find Inspector Forrest and make him tell her everything she wanted to know. He wouldn’t be like the Londoner, stark and unfeeling. A man to watch, that one!
Steadying the bicycle, she began to pedal, absorbed in the question of how best to handle Forrest.
Catherine met him just coming home from Lower Streetham and looking tired. He was middle-aged, thin and stooped, more the university don than a village policeman. He smiled when she hailed him, and waited by the steps of his house.
“Miss Tarrant. That’s a fetching hat you’ve got on, my dear. Don’t let my wife catch a glimpse of it or she’ll be pestering me for one just like it.”
Which was kind of him, because his wife, like many of the women in Upper Streetham, cared nothing for Catherine Tarrant, with or without a fetching hat on her head. And it gave her the excuse she needed to say, “Then will you walk along with me a little way? I’d like to speak to you.”
“I’ve missed my lunch and I’ve got a headache you could toss the churchyard through. Will it take long, this talking?”
“No, not really.” She gave him her most winning smile, and he said, “All right, then. Ten minutes!”
She had dismounted and he took the bicycle from her, leading it himself as she strode down the quiet street beside him. “What’s this all about then?”
And Catherine Tarrant began to work her wiles.
Mavers and Sergeant Davies were glaring at each other by the time that Rutledge finally drove up in front of the doctor’s surgery. They climbed into the car in silence, and Rutledge said, “How do I find your house, Mavers?”
“Like the birds in the air, you’ll have to fly to it. Or walk. I live up behind the churchyard. There’s a path to the house that way. Did you buy this car from the wages of wringing the necks of felons, or have you got private means?”
“Does it matter either way? I’m still an oppressor of the poor.”
Mavers grinned nastily, his goat’s eyes alight with the zeal of his favorite subject. “Horses earn their keep. What does this bleeding motorcar do for mankind?”
“It keeps workmen employed putting it together, and others earn their livings in the factories that supply the materials to those workmen. Have you considered that? Every person driving a motorcar is a benefactor.” He turned into the short street leading to the church.
“And those workmen could be better employed building homes for the poor and growing food for the hungry and making clothes for the naked.”
“Which of course you spend every free moment of your time doing, a shining example to us all?”
Mavers growled, “You’ll have to leave the motor here, by the lych-gate, and get your boots dirty on the path like the rest of us poor devils.”
Which they did, marching behind Mavers up the bare track that Rutledge had seen just that morning. It had begun to dry out in the sun, although a thin coating of mud clung halfheartedly to their shoes. But soon they turned off on a small, rutted path that went over another rise and across an unplowed field to a shabby cottage standing in a clump of straggling beech trees. The yard before it was bare of grass and a dozen equally shabby chickens scratched absently there, paying no heed to their owner or his visitors when the three men arrived at the cottage door.
From somewhere around back a pig grunted, and Mavers said, “He’s not mine, he belongs to one of the farmers over on the Crichton estate. Too ill-tempered an old boar to keep within sight of a sow, but he still breeds fine. And I’m not home long enough to notice the smell.” Which was a good thing, all in all. As the breeze shifted, the essence of pig was nearly breathtaking.
He went inside, and Rutledge followed. The cottage—surprisingly—was not dirty, though it was as shabby inside as the exterior and the chickens. There were four rooms opening off a short central hall, the doors to each standing open. In the first of them on the left side the only windows were overhung by beech boughs, cutting off the sunlight, and Rutledge blinked in the sudden dimness as he crossed the threshold. Papers were scattered everywhere, most of them poorly printed political tracts and handwritten tirades, covering floor and furnishings impartially like grimy snow. Mavers walked through and over them, regardless, and flung himself down in a chair by a small mahogany table at the corner of the hearth. There was a lamp on it, its smoke-blackened chimney surrounded by stacks of books, an inkstand of brass, and a much-used blotter.