A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [0]
The First Inspector Ian Rutledge Novel
Charles Todd
Contents
1
In this quiet part of Warwickshire death came as frequently…
2
Misunderstanding the horrified expression on Rutledge’s face, Sergeant Davies nodded…
3
Mrs. Davenant lived in a Georgian brick house standing well…
4
You can see he’s half out of his head,” Davies…
5
Mavers, sprawled in the dust by the worn shaft of…
6
Satisfied after her conversation with Inspector Forrest, Catherine Tarrant rode…
7
Although Rutledge went out directly after breakfast in search of…
8
So he went to see Catherine Tarrant, and found her…
9
Dr. Warren had spent a harried morning in his surgery,…
10
It was an hour or more later that Rutledge walked…
11
The next morning just before the Inquest Rutledge had an…
12
To Rutledge’s surprise, Lettice Wood asked him to come up…
13
Rutledge sent the blacksmith to bring his car back to…
14
Rutledge watched Laurence Royston walk away down the busy street,…
15
That night Rutledge lay in his bed, listening to the…
16
The Inn was remarkably quiet, but Rutledge stopped Redfern in…
17
The rain was so intense that he stopped at the…
18
The rain had drifted away by morning, and a watery…
19
The sunset was a thin red line on the western…
20
It was after eight when Rutledge woke up the next…
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Charles Todd
Copyright
About the Publisher
1
In this quiet part of Warwickshire death came as frequently as it did anywhere else in England, no stranger to the inhabitants of towns, villages, or countryside. Sons and fathers had died in the Great War; the terrible influenza epidemic had scythed the county—man, woman, and child—just as it had cut down much of Europe; and murder was not unheard of even here in Upper Streetham.
But one fine June morning, as the early mists rose lazily in the warm sunlight like wraiths in no hurry to be gone, Colonel Harris was killed in cold blood in a meadow fringed with buttercups and cowslips, and his last coherent thought was anger. Savage, wild, black fury ripped through him in one stark instant of realization before oblivion swept it all away, and his body, rigid with it, survived the shotgun blast long enough to dig spurs into the mare’s flanks while his hands clenched the reins in a muscular spasm as strong as iron.
He died hard, unwilling, railing at God, and his ragged cry raised echoes in the quiet woods and sent the rooks flying even as the gun roared.
In London, where rain dripped from eaves and ran black in the gutters, a man named Bowles, who had never heard of Colonel Harris, came into possession of a piece of information that was the reward of very determined and quite secret probing into the history of a fellow policeman at Scotland Yard.
He sat at his desk in the grim old brick building and stared at the letter on his blotter. It was written on cheap stationery in heavy ink by a rounded, rather childish hand, but he was almost afraid to touch it. Its value to him was beyond price, and if he had begged whatever gods he believed in to give him the kind of weapon he craved, they couldn’t have managed anything sweeter than this.
He smiled, delight spreading slowly across his fair-skinned face and narrowing the hard, amber-colored eyes.
If this was true—and he had every reason to believe it was—he had been absolutely right about Ian Rutledge. He, Bowles, was vindicated by six lines of unwittingly damaging girlish scrawl.
Reading the letter for the last time, he refolded it carefully and replaced it in its envelope, locking it in his desk drawer.
Now the question was how best to make use of this bit of knowledge without burning himself in the fire he wanted to raise.
If only those same gods had thought to provide a way…
But it seemed, after all, that they had.
Twenty-four hours later, the request for assistance arrived from Warwickshire, and Superintendent Bowles happened, by the merest chance, to be in the right place at the right time to make a simple, apparently constructive suggestion. The gods