A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [117]
He’d stayed with Lettice an hour or more, sitting with her until she felt able to sleep. He thought it had been a relief to talk, that she’d feel better afterward. But her last words to him, as he began to close the heavy front door behind him, were, “If I had it to do over, I’d have loved him just the same. I only wish I hadn’t lost my courage now, and said more than I meant to say.”
“I know.”
She’d cocked her head to one side, looking at him, her eyes sad. “Yes. I think you do. Don’t humiliate Mark. If he’s guilty, hang him if you must, but don’t break him.”
“I give you my word,” he’d said, and Hamish had quarreled with him all the way back to Upper Streetham.
Rutledge had a hasty breakfast and went directly to the Davenant house. But Grace, the maid, informed him that the Captain had already left for Mallows, and Mrs. Davenant had gone with him as far as the church, to see to the flowers. He came back to town and found that there was already a gathering of people in the lane near the church, though it was only a little after nine. Cars and carriages were lined up, having brought guests from Warwick and elsewhere, and small groups were standing about talking quietly.
The church bell began to toll soon after nine-thirty, deep, sonorous, welling out over the countryside. The hearse had already drawn up, and the casket, oak and bronze, had been carried inside by men from Charles’s Regiment acting as pallbearers, their uniforms red as blood in the sunlight.
Rutledge walked about, looking to see if Sally was indeed in the church, and found her giving instructions about the placement of wreaths in front of the coffin. Carfield, magnificent in flowing robes, was already greeting the mourners, moving among them like a white dove in flocks of crows. He went back outside.
Catherine Tarrant arrived, saw him, nodded, and walked quickly to the church, not looking to the right or left. The women from Upper Streetham made a point of cutting her dead as she passed, but several people from London spoke to her as if they knew her.
Rutledge stopped Sergeant Davies when he arrived and asked, “Have you seen Royston? I need to speak to him.” He wanted an invitation to the reception, to keep an eye on Wilton. And he wanted to ask Royston about the place where Charles might have been killed.
Davies shook his head. “He was supposed to be here and greet these people. Mr. Haldane is over there, speaking to some of them. Beyond Carfield. The one with the fair hair.”
Rutledge could see the tall, slim figure moving quietly from group to group. Sally Davenant came out to join Haldane just as the car arrived with Lettice Wood and Mark Wilton. She got out, swathed in veils of black silk, moving gracefully toward a half dozen officers who had turned to meet her. She spoke to them, nodding, her head high, back straight, Wilton just behind her with a quiet, thoughtful expression. Someone from the War Department came over—Rutledge recognized him from London—and then she moved on, impressively calm and leaving behind her looks of admiration and warmth.
“It’s a bloody show,” Hamish was saying. “We stacked our dead like lumber, or buried them to keep them from smelling. And here’s a right spectacle that’d shame an honest soldier.”
Rutledge ignored him, scanning the gathering crowd as they moved through the lych-gate and up the walk toward the open doors of the church. Overhead the bell began to count the years of the dead man’s life, and he saw Lettice stumble. Wilton took her arm to steady her, and then she was herself again.
He let them go inside and walked down to where the Mallows car had been parked near the lych-gate, ready to take Lettice back in time for the reception.
“Where’s Royston?” Rutledge asked the neatly uniformed groom sitting in the driver’s seat. “Has he already arrived?”
“I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen him at all,” the man said, touching his cap. “Mr. Johnston was looking for him just before we left.”
Inspector Forrest came hurrying by on his