A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [16]
Without warning, he found himself thinking of Jean, of their own engagement in that hot, emotion-torn summer of 1914, a lifetime ago. Of the endless letters passing back and forth to France as they dreamed and planned. Of the acute longing that had kept him alive when nothing else had mattered. Of the wedding that had never taken place—
Of Jean’s white face in his hospital room when he had offered her the chance to break off the engagement. She had smiled nervously and taken it, murmuring something about the war having changed both of them. While he sat there, still aching with love and his need for her, trying with every ounce of his being to hide it from her, she’d said, “I’m not the girl you remember in 1914. I loved you so madly—I think anything would have been possible then. But too much time has passed, too much has happened to both of us—we were apart so long…. I don’t even know myself anymore…. Of course I still care, but—I don’t think I should marry anyone just now—it wouldn’t be fair to marry anyone….”
Yet despite the quiet voice and the scrupulously chosen words that tried desperately to spare both of them pain, he could see the truth in her eyes.
It was fear.
She was deathly afraid of him….
3
Mrs. Davenant lived in a Georgian brick house standing well back from the road. It was surrounded by an ivy-clad wall with ornate iron gates and set in a pleasant garden already bright with early color. Roses and larkspur drooped over the narrow brick walk, so heavy with rain from the night before that they left a speckled pattern of dampness on Rutledge’s trousers as he brushed past them on his way to the door.
Surprisingly, Mrs. Davenant answered the bell herself. She was a slender, graceful woman in her thirties, her fair hair cut becomingly short around her face but drawn into a bun on the back of her neck. Tendrils escaping its rigorous pinning curled delicately against very fine skin, giving her a fragile quality like rare porcelain. Her eyes were dark blue with naturally dark lashes, making them appear deep set and almost violet.
She nodded a greeting to Sergeant Davies and then said to Rutledge, “You must be the man from London.” Her eyes scanned his face and his height and his clothes with cool interest.
“Inspector Rutledge. I’d like to speak to you, if I may. And to Captain Wilton.”
“Mark has gone for a walk. I don’t think he slept well last night, and walking always soothes him. Please, come in.”
She led them not into the drawing room but down a passage beyond the stairs to a comfortable sitting room that still had a masculine ambience, as if it had been her late husband’s favorite part of the house. Paintings of hunting scenes hung above the fireplace and on two of the walls, while a collection of pipes in a low, glass-fronted cabinet stood beneath a small but exquisite Canaletto.
“This is a dreadful business,” she was saying as Rutledge took the chair she offered him. Sergeant Davies went to stand by the hearth, as if her invitation to be seated had not included him. She accepted this without comment. “Simply dreadful! I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill Charles Harris. He was a thoroughly nice man.” There was a ring of sincerity in the words.
An elderly woman in a black dress and white apron came to the doorway, and after glancing toward her, Mrs. Davenant asked, “Would you care for coffee, Inspector? Sergeant?” When they declined, she nodded to the woman and said, “That will be all, then, Grace. And close the door behind you, please.”
When the woman had gone, Rutledge said, “Do your servants live in, Mrs. Davenant?”
“No, Agnes and Grace come in daily to clean and to prepare meals. Agnes isn’t here just now, her granddaughter is very ill. Ben is my groom-gardener. He lives over the stables.” She lifted her eyebrows in a query, as if expecting Rutledge to explain his interest in her staff.
“Can you tell me what state of mind Captain Wilton was in when he came home from Mallows the evening before the Colonel was killed?”
“His state of mind?” she repeated. “I don