A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [35]
But she knew the reason. The finger of suspicion must be strongly pointing toward Mark already, and everyone in Warwickshire was running for cover. There had been a dozen photographs of the King and Mark together, he’d dined with the Prince of Wales, was invited to Scotland to shoot, had even accompanied the Queen to a home for soldiers disabled by mustard gas—and questions were going to be asked when he was arrested for a bloody murder involving another war hero. Buckingham Palace would be icily furious.
Then where was their case? Not just that stupid quarrel. Surely you wouldn’t arrest a man simply because he had a roaring argument with the victim the night before. There had to be more damning evidence against him than that. And who were these people who claimed to have seen Mark near the place where Charles Harris had died? What else had they seen, if someone had the wit to ask them the right questions?…
For a moment she debated going straight to the Davenant house and asking Mark himself who the witnesses were. But Sally Davenant would be there, smiling and pretending not to notice how badly Catherine wanted to speak to Mark alone. Making the unexpected visit seem more like a ploy, an emotional excuse to come back into his life. And that would be hard to explain away.
She hadn’t told Rutledge the whole truth about Mrs. Davenant either. But she didn’t care about anyone else if Mark could be protected. She still wasn’t certain why she was so determined to help him. In the wild tangle of her emotions, he was the man who had opened her eyes to passion and prepared her for what had come later. And for that alone perhaps she owed him something.
There must be a better way of getting to the bottom of this. She’d find Inspector Forrest and make him tell her everything she wanted to know. He wouldn’t be like the Londoner, stark and unfeeling. A man to watch, that one!
Steadying the bicycle, she began to pedal, absorbed in the question of how best to handle Forrest.
Catherine met him just coming home from Lower Streetham and looking tired. He was middle-aged, thin and stooped, more the university don than a village policeman. He smiled when she hailed him, and waited by the steps of his house.
“Miss Tarrant. That’s a fetching hat you’ve got on, my dear. Don’t let my wife catch a glimpse of it or she’ll be pestering me for one just like it.”
Which was kind of him, because his wife, like many of the women in Upper Streetham, cared nothing for Catherine Tarrant, with or without a fetching hat on her head. And it gave her the excuse she needed to say, “Then will you walk along with me a little way? I’d like to speak to you.”
“I’ve missed my lunch and I’ve got a headache you could toss the churchyard through. Will it take long, this talking?”
“No, not really.” She gave him her most winning smile, and he said, “All right, then. Ten minutes!”
She had dismounted and he took the bicycle from her, leading it himself as she strode down the quiet street beside him. “What’s this all about then?”
And Catherine Tarrant began to work her wiles.
Mavers and Sergeant Davies were glaring at each other by the time that Rutledge finally drove up in front of the doctor’s surgery. They climbed into the car in silence, and Rutledge said, “How do I find your house, Mavers?”
“Like the birds in the air, you’ll have to fly to it. Or walk. I live up behind the churchyard. There’s a path to the house that way. Did you buy this car from the wages of wringing the necks of felons, or have you got private means?”
“Does it matter either way? I’m still an oppressor of the poor.”
Mavers grinned nastily, his goat’s eyes alight with the zeal of his favorite subject. “Horses earn their keep. What does this bleeding motorcar do for mankind?”
“It keeps workmen employed putting it together, and others earn their livings in the factories that supply the materials to