A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [101]
Rutledge did as he was told, looking about for a chair back to drape it on.
Catherine sighed. “Well, Mavers most certainly put the wind up everyone in Upper Streetham this morning! What did you think of his little show?”
“Was it a show? Or was he upset?”
She shrugged. “Who knows? Who cares? The damage is done. I think he rather enjoyed it too. Lashing out. It’s the only way he can hurt back, with words. Nobody pays any attention to his ideas.”
“Which is one of the reasons he might have shot Charles Harris.”
“Yes, I suppose it is—to make us sit up and take notice. Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing him arrested for murder and taken off to London or wherever! I didn’t enjoy having my own life stripped for the delectation of half of Upper Streetham—the whole of it, come to that! Everyone will talk. Not about what he said of them, but about everyone else. Those who weren’t there will soon be of the opinion that they were.” Catherine moved about her paintings, touching them, not seeing them, needing only the comfort of knowing they were there.
“That’s a very bitter view of human nature.”
“Oh, yes. I’ve learned that life is never what you expect it will be. Just as you come to the fringes of happiness, touching it, feeling it, tasting it—and desperately hoping for the rest of it—it’s jerked away.”
“You have your art.”
“Yes, but that’s a compulsion, not happiness. I paint because I must. I love because I want to be loved in return. Wanted to be.”
“Did you ever paint Rolf Linden?”
Startled, she stopped in midstride. “Once. Only—once.”
“Could I see what you did?”
Hesitating, she finally moved across to a cabinet in one wall, unlocking it with a key she took from her pocket. She reached inside and drew out a large canvas wrapped in cloth. He moved forward to help her with it, but she gestured to him to stay where he was. There was a little light coming in through the glass panes overhead, and she kicked an easel to face it, then set the painting on it. After a moment, she reached up and undid the wrappings.
Rutledge came around to see it better, and felt his breath stop in his throat as his eyes took it in.
There was a scene of storm and light, heavy, dark clouds nearer the viewer, a delicate light fading into the distance. A man stood halfway between, looking over his shoulder, a smile on his face. It was somehow the most desolate painting that Rutledge had ever seen. He’d expected turbulence, a denial, a fierce struggle between love and loss, something dramatic with grief. But instead she’d captured annihilation, an emptiness so complete that it echoed with anguish.
He knew that anguish. And suddenly he was convinced that Lettice Wood knew it also. That that was what he’d responded to in her.
Catherine was watching his face, unable to hear Hamish but seeing the flicker of fear and recognition and a deep stirring of response, while Hamish—Hamish wept.
“It’s never been shown—” It was all he could manage to say into the silence.
“No,” she answered with certainty. “And never will be.”
A maid brought in the tea, and Catherine quickly covered the painting, putting it carefully back into its vault, like a mausoleum for her love. Turning back to pour a cup for Rutledge and then for herself, she said unsteadily, “You’ve been there, haven’t you?”
He nodded.
“The war?”
“Yes. But she’s still alive. Sometimes that’s worse.”
She put sugar into her tea and handed him the bowl. He helped himself, finding relief in the ordinary movements of his hands, then accepted the cream.
“Where were you going when you nearly ran me down?” she asked, finally sitting down, allowing him to do the same. It was an overt change of subject. She had closed the door between them again.
“Anywhere. Out of Upper Streetham.”
“Why?”
He reached for one of the small, iced tea cakes as an excuse not to meet her eyes. “To think.”
“What about?”
“Whether or not I have enough evidence to arrest Mark Wilton tomorrow morning. For Harris’s murder.”
He could hear her