A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [14]
“And you hadn’t been into or near the drawing room between taking the tray in and coming to remove it?”
“No, sir.”
“What happened then? At ten-fifteen?”
At Rutledge’s prodding, Johnston stepped back into the hall again, pointed to a door in the shadows of the stairs, and went on reluctantly. “I came out of that door—it leads to the back of the house—and started toward the drawing room. At that moment, Mary was coming down the stairs.”
“Who is Mary?”
“There’s seven on the staff here, sir. Myself, the cook, her helper, and four maids. Before the war there were twelve of us, including footmen. Mary is one of the maids and has been here the longest, next to Mrs. Treacher and myself.”
“Go on.”
“Mary was coming down the stairs, and she said when I came into view that she was looking to see if the banisters and the marble floor needed polishing the next morning. If not, she was going to put Nancy to polishing the grates, now that we were no longer making up morning fires.”
“And?”
“And at that moment,” Johnston answered heavily, “the door of the drawing room opened, and the Captain came out. I didn’t see his face—he was looking over his shoulder back into the room—but I heard him say quite distinctly and very loudly, ‘I’ll see you in hell, first!’ Then he slammed the drawing-room door behind him and went out the front door, slamming that as well. I don’t think he saw me here, or Mary on the stairs.” He seemed to run out of words.
“Finish your story, man!” Rutledge said impatiently.
“Before the front door had slammed, I heard the Colonel shout, ‘That can be arranged!’ and the sound of glass shattering against this door.”
His hand drew their eyes to the raw nick in the glossy paint of one panel, where the glass had struck with such force that a piece of it must have wedged in the wood.
“Do you think Captain Wilton heard the Colonel?”
In spite of himself, Johnston smiled. “The Colonel, sir, was accustomed to making himself heard on a parade ground and over the din of the battlefield. I would think that the Captain heard him as clearly as I did, and slammed the front door with added emphasis because of it.”
“It was a glass that shattered, not a cup?”
“The Colonel usually had a glass of brandy with his coffee, and the Captain always joined him.”
“When you cleaned this room the next morning, did you find that two glasses had been used?”
“Yes, sir,” Johnston answered, perplexed. “Of course.”
“Which means that the two men drank together and were still on comfortable terms at that point in the evening.”
“I would venture to say so, yes.”
“Had you ever heard a quarrel between them before this particular evening?”
“No, sir, they seemed to be on the best of terms.”
“Had they drunk enough, do you think, to have become quarrelsome for no reason? Or over some petty issue?”
“With respect, sir,” Johnston said indignantly, “the Colonel was not a man to become argumentative in his cups. He held his liquor like a gentleman, and so, to my knowledge, did the Captain. Besides,” he added, rather spoiling the lofty effect he’d just created, “the level in the decanters showed no more than two drinks had been poured, one each.”
“Do you feel, having witnessed the Captain’s departure, that this was a disagreement that could have been smoothed over comfortably the next day?”
“He was very angry at the time. I can’t say how Captain Wilton might have felt the next morning. But I can tell you that the Colonel seemed in no way unsettled when he came down for his morning ride. Very much himself, as far as I could see.”
“And Miss Wood was in her bedroom throughout the quarrel? She didn’t rejoin the men in the drawing room, to your knowledge?”
“No, sir. Mary looked in on her before she came down the stairs, to see if she needed anything more, and Miss Wood appeared to be asleep. So she didn’t speak to her.”
“What did the Colonel do after the Captain left?”
“I don’t know, sir. I thought it best not to disturb him at that moment, and I came back twenty minutes later. By that time, he had gone up to bed himself, and