“Yes, I know, and I’m sorry. But I think she’d rather see me now than just as she’s leaving for the church.”
It took persuasion, and a pulling of rank, but in the end Johnston went up the stairs into the darkness, leaving Rutledge in the half-lit hall.
After a time he could hear someone coming, heels tapping on the floor. It was Lettice, face still flushed with sleep, hair falling in dark waves down her back, a dark green dressing gown on over her night wear. She came slowly down the stairs with her eyes on him, and he said, “I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have come if it hadn’t been so important. It won’t take long, I promise you.”
“What’s wrong, is something wrong?” she asked.
“No. Yes. I’m in a quandary of sorts. I need to talk to you.”
She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, looked toward the door of the drawing room, then made up her mind. “Come this way. To the small parlor.”
He followed her there, and she found the lights, bringing an almost blinding brightness into the room. Turning in the middle of the floor, she gestured to a chair for him and then curled up on the sofa, drawing her legs under her as if for warmth. Without the sun the room did seem chill, comfortable to him after his long walk in the fields, but cold to her after the warmth of bed. As he sat down he saw that the soles of his shoes and one trouser leg had mud on them. She saw it too, and asked, “Where have you been?”
“Walking. Thinking. Look, I’ll tell you what’s bothering me. I went to arrest Captain Wilton this—yesterday—morning, and he asked me to wait until after the funeral tomorrow—this—morning. It made sense. I could see no reason to cause any more grief or embarrassment for you.”
Frowning, she said, “Yes, that’s true, I’d rather not face it alone. But you’re telling me that the man who’s accompanying me to the services is Charles’s murderer. The man who’ll be sitting beside me while I grieve—I don’t see how that will make it any easier for me. Or for Mark! Do you think I only care about appearances? I survived last Monday morning alone. I can survive this.”
“I hadn’t expected to be telling you any of this. Not until afterward. But you know where my suspicions—and the evidence—have been pointing.”
She brushed a heavy fall of hair out of her face and said quietly, “Yes.”
“You know I’ve learned about the source of the quarrel. That the marriage was being called off. You told me yourself that Charles had decided to do it.”
“Yes.”
“It’s motive, Miss Wood. It explains why Charles had to die that particular morning—that Monday, not seventeen years ago or six months from now or next Friday.”
“All right. I can see that. I—I’d considered it myself.”
Which brought him back to his first impression of her—that she’d known who the killer was.
“But I need to know why your guardian called off the marriage.”
“What does Mark say?” she countered.
Rutledge leaned forward in his chair, trying to reach her with his words, with the sense of haste driving him. “He says the reason isn’t important. That it died with Charles. But I think it may be very important. In fact, it’s crucial. I’m concerned, you see, that if the cause was serious enough, Wilton might prefer not to stand trial and have it brought out into the open, afraid that in the end we’d discover what it was and use it in court, and the whole world would hear what it was. I’m afraid that he might—choose the gentleman’s solution instead.”
“Shoot himself?” Tears came to her eyes, darkening them, but hovered behind the lids, not spilling over. “Are you quite sure, Inspector?”
“I wouldn’t have come tonight if I hadn’t been sure it could happen. Not that it would—but that it could,” he said, forcing himself to honesty.
“But if I tell you—you’re the police, you’ll know what it is, and then it’ll happen just as he’s afraid it might. And I’ll be the cause of it!” Before he could deny it, she said, “No, I can’t tell you something, and then afterward say that I didn’t mean it, that you must forget I’d said it. You can’t forget it. It’s your job, you see—there’s no separating the man from the job!”
“Lettice—” He wasn’t even aware that he’d used her name.
“No! I’ve lost Charles, nothing will ever bring him back. I’m going to lose Mark, one way or another. I feel enough guilt already, I won’t add to it, I tell you I won’t!” The tears spilled over, and she ignored them, her eyes on his face. “Have you ever been in love, Inspector, so in love that your very life’s blood belonged to someone else, and then just when it seemed that everything was wrapped in joy, and you were the luckiest, most fortunate, most cherished person in the world, had it snatched away without warning, stripped from you without hope or sense or explanation, just taken?”
“Yes,” he said, getting to his feet and walking to the window where she couldn’t see his face. “It would be easy to say that the war came between us, Jean and me. All those years of separation. But I know it’s something deeper than that. She’s frightened by the—the man who came back. The Ian Rutledge she wanted to marry went away in 1914, and the Army sent a stranger home in his place five years later. She doesn’t even recognize him anymore. As far as that goes, I’m not sure that she’s the girl I remember. Somehow she’s grown into a woman who lives in a world I’ve lost touch with. And I can’t find my way back to it. I came home expecting to turn back the clock. You can’t. It doesn’t work that way.” He stopped, realizing that he’d never even told Frances that much.
“No,” she said simply, watching him, seeing—although he wasn’t aware of it—his reflection in the dark glass. “You can’t turn back the clock. To where it’s safe and comfortable again.”
His back was still toward her, his thoughts far away. She said, “Don’t put this burden on me, Inspector Rutledge. Don’t ask me to make a decision for Mark Wilton.”
“I already have. Just by coming here.”
“Damn you!”
He turned, saw the flush of anger and hurt on her face.
And then, out of nowhere he had his answer, as if it had come through the night to touch him, but he knew how it had come—from his own recognition of the pain and the loss he’d sensed from the start in her.
Lettice Wood wasn’t grieving for Mark Wilton. She was grieving for Charles Harris. And it was Charles Harris that she loved, who had come between her and the wedding in September, who had called off the wedding because he wanted his ward and—she wanted him.
She saw something in his expression that warned her just in the last split second. She was off the sofa in a flash, on her way out of the room, running away from him to the safety and comfort of her own apartments.
Rutledge caught her arm, swung her around, held her with a grip that was bruising, but she didn’t notice, she was struggling to free herself, her dark hair flying in swirls around his face and hands.
“It’s true, isn’t it? Tell me!”
“No—no, let me go. I won’t be a part of this. I’ve killed Charles, I’ve got his blood on my soul, and I won’t kill Mark as well! Let me go!”
“You loved him—didn’t you!” he demanded, shaking her.
“God help me—oh, yes, I loved him!”
“Were you ever in love with Mark?”
She stopped struggling, standing almost frozen in his hands. Then she began speaking, wearily, disjointedly, as if it took more strength than she could muster. And yet she didn’t try to hide her face or those strange, remarkable eyes.
“Did I ever love him? Oh, yes—I thought I did. Charles brought him home, he believed I’d like him, love him. And I did. I told myself that what I’d felt for Charles was only a girl’s crush, a silly thing you grow out of, and I’d better hurry before I’d harmed what we’d had between us since the beginning, when I was a small, frightened child—an affection that was deep and caring and wonderfully comforting.”