“There may be,” Rutledge said thoughtfully. “Captain Wilton came to stay with his cousin when her husband died. He undoubtedly knew about the Will, and the provision regarding the old shotgun. It caused some problems at the time, I understand.”
“I knew about it as well, and had forgotten it—so might he have. It’s all circumstantial! Guessing—”
“What if the Colonel was the wrong victim?”
That sent Forrest’s eyebrows up in patent disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘wrong victim’? You don’t shoot a man at point-blank range and get the wrong one! That’s foolery!”
“Yes, so it is,” Rutledge answered. “It’s also foolery that the Colonel was flawless, a man with no sins on his conscience. When people begin to tell me the truth, Captain Wilton will be far safer. Assuming, of course, that you’re right and he’s innocent.”
Leaving Sergeant Davies to check on Royston’s dental appointment in Warwick, Rutledge went searching for Hickam on his own, but the man seemed to have disappeared.
“Drunk somewhere, like enough,” Hamish said. “Yours is a dry business, man. I’d as soon have a bottle myself.”
Which was the only time Rutledge had found himself in agreement with the voice in his mind.
He turned the car toward the Inn and his thoughts toward dinner.
Which turned out to be interesting in its own way. He had hardly cut into his roast mutton when the dining room’s glass doors opened and a man with a clerical collar came in, stood for a moment surveying the room, then made his way across to where Rutledge sat.
He was nearing thirty, of medium height, with fair hair, a polished manner, and a strong sense of his own worth. Stopping by the table, he said in a rich baritone, “Inspector Rutledge? I’m Carfield. The vicar. I’ve just called again at Mallows, and Miss Wood is still unwell. Then I thought perhaps it might be wiser to ask you anyway. Can you tell me when the Colonel’s body will be released for burial?”
“We haven’t held an Inquest yet, Mr. Carfield. Sit down, won’t you? I’d like to talk to you, now that you’re here.”
Carfield accepted the offer of coffee and said, “Such a tragic business, the Colonel’s death.”
“So everyone says. Who might want to kill him?”
“Why, no one that I can think of!”
“Yet someone did.”
Studying Carfield as the man stirred cream but no sugar into his cup, Rutledge could see that he had the kind of face that would show up well on the stage, handsome and very masculine beyond the twentieth row, but too heavily boned to be called more than “strong” at close quarters. The voice too was made to carry, and grated a little in ordinary conversation. The actor was lurking there, behind the clerical collar, Sergeant Davies had been right about that.
“Tell me about Miss Wood.”
“Lettice? Very bright, with a mind of her own. She came to Mallows several years back—1917, after she’d finished school. And she’s been an ornament to the community ever since. We’re all very fond of her.”
Over the rim of his cup, Carfield was quickly assessing the Inspector, noting his thinness, the lines of tiredness about the mouth, the tense muscles around the eyes that betrayed the strain behind his mask of polite interest. But Carfield misunderstood these signs, putting them down to a man out of his depth, one who might prove useful.
“She’s taken her guardian’s death very hard.”
“After all, he was her only family. Girls are often very attached to their fathers, you know.”
“Harris could hardly be termed that,” Rutledge commented dryly.
With a graceful wave of his hand, Carfield dismissed the quibble over ages. “In loco parentis, of course.”
“From all I hear, he may well have walked on water.”
Carfield laughed, but it had an edge to it. “Harris? No, if anyone fits that description it’s Simon Haldane, not the Colonel. He was too good at killing, you know. Some men become soldiers because they’ve no imagination, they don’t know how to be afraid. But Charles Harris had an uncanny aptitude for war. I asked him about that once, and he said that his skills, such as they were, came from reading history and learning its lessons, but I found that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“The Colonel was the finest chess player I’ve ever met, and I have no mean skills at the game myself. He was born with a talent for strategy that few of us are given, and he made the choice about how to use it. He fully understood that choice, that war meant playing with men’s lives, not with prettily carved pieces on a game board, but battle was an addiction he couldn’t rid himself of.”
Rutledge said nothing. Carfield sipped his coffee, then added as if he couldn’t stop himself, “Men from Warwickshire who served under him worshiped him; they tell me that on the battlefield he was charismatic, but I call it more a gift for manipulation. I don’t suppose you were in the war, Inspector, but I can tell you that sending other men into battle must rest heavily on one’s soul in the end.”
Hamish stirred but made no remark. He had no need to. Rutledge found himself saying, “Then the Kings of Israel must not be sleeping peacefully in Abraham’s bosom. As I remember, they were at war most of the time.”
Carfield nodded graciously to parishioners who had just come in, a man and his wife, then turned back to Rutledge. “Make light of it if you wish. But something deep down in Charles Harris was frightened by the man he was. He was a Gemini, you see, two forces in one body. In my opinion he needed to come home to Mallows from time to time because it brought him peace, a sense of balance, proof that he wasn’t a man who actually enjoyed killing, however good he might be at it. His much-vaunted devotion to the land was perhaps merely a charade for his troubled conscience.”
“And Captain Wilton? What do you think of him?”
“An intelligent man. And a brave one—one would have to be to fly, don’t you think? When Ezekiel saw the wheel, high in the middle of the air, he claimed it was God at work. We’ve come a long way since then, haven’t we? Man has finally set himself on a par with the archangels. The question is, are we morally ready for such heights?”
Hamish made a derisive snort and Rutledge busied himself with the caramel flan. When he had choked down his amusement, Rutledge asked, “But would he kill a friend?”
“Wilton? None of us can see into the souls of others, Inspector, least of all me. I’ve always tried to understand my parishioners, but they still have the power to surprise me. Just the other day—”
“Is that a yes or a no?” Rutledge asked, looking up and catching an expression in Carfield’s eyes that interested him. The man was ably playing the role of wise village priest, enamored by the part, but his eyes were cold and hard as he answered Rutledge’s question.
“I would be lying if I said I liked the man. I don’t. He’s a private person, keeps himself to himself. I think that may be why he enjoys flying—he’s there alone in his aeroplane, out of reach and accountable to no one. And a man who likes his own company more than he ought is sometimes dangerous. Hermits have been known to come out of their isolated cells and lead crusades, haven’t they? But murder?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Possibly. If he were angry enough and determined enough, or if it was the only possible way to get exactly what he wanted. I think he’s been used to that, getting his own way. People tend to idolize handsome daredevils.”
For “people,” substitute Lettice Wood, Rutledge thought to himself. But discounting the jealousy, Carfield had offered a better evaluation of Harris and Wilton than anyone else.
Sometimes hatred saw more clearly than love.
And it might be a very good idea to add Carfield’s name to the very short list of possible suspects, though what purpose Harris’s death might have served in the Vicar’s eyes was yet to be seen.