A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [32]
Rutledge smiled. Mavers said, “Can I go now?”
Warren washed his hands. “Yes, be off with you, I’ve got more important things to do. Ungrateful fool!”
Rutledge led him outside and said, “Don’t be in any hurry, Mavers, I want to talk to you.”
“About the Colonel’s death?” He grinned, the bloodshot eyes as yellow as a goat’s. Mavers was not a big man, and had the wizened look of poor food and bad health in early childhood, his face pointed and sallow, his hair thin and a dusty brown. But his eyes were vivid, their color giving his face its only character. “You can’t accuse me of touching him. I was here in Upper Streetham that morning, lecturing all those busy market goers on the evils of capitalism. Ask anybody, they’ll tell you as much.”
But there was a gloating in the way he said it that made Rutledge wonder what he was hiding. Mavers was very pleased with himself, and not above taunting the police.
A born troublemaker, just as everyone had said. Still, such a man could put that sort of reputation to good use, hiding behind it quite easily. People might shake their heads in disgust, but their perception of Mavers gave him the freedom to make a nuisance of himself without fear of retribution. “What do you expect? That’s Mavers for you!” or “What’s the damned fool going to get up to next?” People ignored him, expecting the worst and getting it. Half the time not seeing him, seeing only their own image of him…
“What do you do for a living?”
Caught off guard, Mavers shot Rutledge a glance out of the corner of those goat’s eyes. “What do you mean?”
“How do you find the money to live?”
Mavers grinned again. “Oh, I manage well enough on my pension.”
“Pension?”
Sergeant Davies came running toward them, a smear of mustard like a yellow mustache across his upper lip. “I’ve taken care of that lot,” he said. “Damned fools! What have you been about this time, Mavers? The Inspector yonder should have let them hang you and be done with it!”
Mavers’s grin broadened. “And you’d get fat, wouldn’t you, without me to keep you from your dinner?”
“The trouble is,” Davies went on, paying no heed to Mavers, “they’ve all been in the war, or had family that was, and the Colonel was looked up to. He tried to tell them the Colonel had squandered the poor sod in the trenches while keeping his own hide safe, but they know better. The Colonel kept up with every man from the village, and visited them in hospital and saw to the families of the ones that didn’t come back, and found work for the cripples. People remember that.”
“Money’s cheap,” Hamish put in suddenly. “Or was he thinking of standing for Parliament? Our fine Colonel?”
But no one heard him except Rutledge.
It was decided to take Mavers home, to give the villagers time to cool off without further provocation, and Rutledge went back to the Shepherd’s Crook for his car. He had just reached the walk in front of the door when someone called, “Inspector?”
He turned to see a young woman astride a bicycle, her cheeks flushed from riding and her dark hair pinned up inside a very becoming gray hat with curling pheasant’s feathers that swept down to touch her cheek.
“I’m Rutledge, yes.”
She dismounted from the bicycle and propped it up against the railing by the horse trough. “I’m Catherine Tarrant, and I’d like to talk to you, if you have the time.”
The name meant nothing to him at first, and then he remembered—she was the woman Captain Wilton had courted before the war. He led her inside the Inn and found a quiet corner of the old-fashioned parlor where they wouldn’t be interrupted. Waiting until