“Whose weapon is that?” Rutledge asked, his eyes on Mavers’s face now. “Yours?”
“What weapon?”
“The one just behind you,” Rutledge snapped, in no mood for the man’s agile tongue. Why the hell hadn’t Forrest found this shotgun? If Mavers was a suspect, then he could have obtained a warrant, if necessary.
“What if it is?” Mavers asked belligerently. “I’ve a right to it, if it was left in a Will!”
“In whose Will?”
“Mr. Davenant’s Will, that’s whose.”
Rutledge walked across the room and carefully broke open the gun. It had been fired recently, but when? Three days ago? A week? Like the rest of the cottage, it was worn, neglected, the stock scratched and the barrel showing the first signs of rust, but the breech had been kept well oiled, as if Mavers was not above a bit of quiet poaching.
“Why did he leave the gun to you?”
There was a brief silence; then Mavers said with less than his usual abrasiveness, “I expect it was my father he meant. My father was once his gamekeeper, and Mr. Davenant’s Will said, ‘I leave the old shotgun to Bert Mavers, who is a better birdman than any of us.’ My father was dead by then, but the Will hadn’t been changed, and Mrs. Davenant gave the gun to me, because she said it was what her husband wanted. The lawyer from London wasn’t half pleased, I can tell you, but the Will didn’t say which Bert Mavers, did it? Alive or dead?”
“When was the last time it was fired?”
“How should I know? Or care? The door’s always open, anybody can walk in here. There’s naught to steal, is there, unless you’re after my chickens. Or need a shotgun in a bit of a hurry.” His normal nastiness resurfaced. “You can’t claim I used it, can you? I’ve got witnesses!”
“So everyone keeps telling me. But I’ll take the gun for now, if you don’t mind.”
“First I’ll have a piece of paper saying you’ll bring it back!”
Rutledge took a sheet from his notebook and scribbled a sentence on it, then signed it under the man’s baleful eye. Mavers watched him leave, and then folded the single sheet carefully and put it in a small metal box on the mantel.
Inspector Forrest was waiting for them in the magpie cottage beyond the greengrocer’s shop that served as the Upper Streetham police station. There was a small anteroom, a pair of offices, and another room at the back used as a holding cell. Seldom occupied by more serious felons than drunks and disturbers of the peace, an occasional wife beater or petty thief, this cell still had a heavy, almost medieval lock on its door, with the big iron key hanging nearby on a nail. The furnishings were old, the paint showing wear, the color of the carpet on the floors almost nondescript now, but the rooms were spotless.
Leaning across a battered desk to shake hands, Forrest introduced himself to Rutledge and said, “I’m sorry about this morning. Three dead in Lower Streetham, another in critical condition, two more seriously injured, and half the village in an uproar. I didn’t like to leave until things had settled a bit. I hope Sergeant Davies has told you everything you wanted to know.” He saw the shotgun in Rutledge’s left hand and said, “Hello, what have we here?”
“Bert Mavers says this was left to him in a Will—or rather, left to his father.”
“Good Lord! So it was! I’d forgotten about that. And Mrs. Davenant didn’t mention it either, when I went to see her about her husband’s Italian guns. It’s been years—” His face was a picture of shock and chagrin.
“We probably can’t prove it’s the murder weapon, but I’m ready to wager it was.”
Reaching for the shotgun, Forrest said with sudden enthusiasm, “Used by Mavers, do you think?”
“If so, why didn’t he have the wit to put it out of sight afterward?”
“You never know with Mavers. Nothing he does makes much sense.” Forrest examined it carefully, as if half expecting it to confess. “Yes, it’s been fired, you can see that, but there’s no saying when, is there? Still—”
“Everyone claims he was in the village all morning. Is that true?”
“Unfortunately, it appears to be.” Forrest fished in the center drawer of his desk and said, “Here’s a list of people I’ve talked to. You can see for yourself.”
Rutledge took the neatly written sheet and glanced at the names, nearly two dozen of them. Most were unfamiliar to him, but Mrs. Davenant’s was among them, and Royston’s. And Catherine Tarrant’s.
“Each of these people heard him ranting. That’s clear enough,” Forrest went on. “He was plaguing everyone who came within earshot, and each one will swear to that. Although the shopkeepers were too busy to pay much heed to him, they remember that he was making the usual nuisance of himself, and their customers were commenting on it. Putting it all together, you can see that he arrived in the market square early on and was still there at midmorning.” He rubbed his pounding temples and gestured to the two barrel-backed oak chairs across from the desk. “Sit down, sit down.”
Rutledge shook his head. “I must find Daniel Hickam.”
Inspector Forrest said, “Surely you don’t intend to take his statement seriously? There’s bound to be other evidence more worthy of your time than anything Hickam can say! If we keep looking hard enough?” He could see that the man from London was far from well, and suddenly found himself worrying about that. You don’t have the patience and the energy to give to a thorough investigation, is that it? he thought to himself. You want an easy answer, then back to the comforts of London. That’s why the Yard sent you, then, to sweep it all under the rug for them. And it’s my fault….
“I won’t know that until I’ve spoken to him, will I?”
“He can’t tell you what day of the week it is half the time, much less where he came from before you ran into him or where he might be going next. Mind’s a wasteland. Pity he didn’t die when that shell exploded—no good to himself or anyone else in his condition!”
“You took down his statement,” Rutledge pointed out. Hamish, relishing Forrest’s remark, was repeating it softly, an echo whispering across a void of fear. “…no good to himself or anyone else in his condition….” He turned away abruptly to shield his face from Forrest’s sharp gaze, and unintentionally left the impression that he was putting the blame squarely where it belonged.
“I don’t see what else I could have done. Sergeant Davies reported the conversation, and after that I had to pursue the matter,” Forrest answered defensively, “whether Hickam is mad or not. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe him. I can’t see how Wilton could be guilty of this murder. You’ve met him. It’s just not like the man, is it?”
“From what I can see, it wasn’t like the Colonel to find himself the victim of a murder either.”
“Well, no, not when you get right down to it. But he is dead, isn’t he? Either his death was accidental or it was intentional, and we have to start with murder because no one has come forward to tell us any differently. No one has said, ‘I was standing there talking to him and the horse jostled my arm, and the gun went off, and the next thing I knew the poor devil was dead.”
“Would you believe them if they did?”
Forrest sighed. “No. Only an idiot carries an unbroken shotgun.”
“Which brings us back to Mavers and his weapon. If Wilton was on either of those tracks on the morning of the murder, he could have taken the gun from Mavers’s house, fired it, then put it back before Mavers came home from the village. Hickam’s evidence is still important.”
“And if Captain Wilton could do that, so could anyone else in Upper Streetham for all we know,” Forrest retorted doggedly. “There’s still no proof.”