A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [36]
“And those workmen could be better employed building homes for the poor and growing food for the hungry and making clothes for the naked.”
“Which of course you spend every free moment of your time doing, a shining example to us all?”
Mavers growled, “You’ll have to leave the motor here, by the lych-gate, and get your boots dirty on the path like the rest of us poor devils.”
Which they did, marching behind Mavers up the bare track that Rutledge had seen just that morning. It had begun to dry out in the sun, although a thin coating of mud clung halfheartedly to their shoes. But soon they turned off on a small, rutted path that went over another rise and across an unplowed field to a shabby cottage standing in a clump of straggling beech trees. The yard before it was bare of grass and a dozen equally shabby chickens scratched absently there, paying no heed to their owner or his visitors when the three men arrived at the cottage door.
From somewhere around back a pig grunted, and Mavers said, “He’s not mine, he belongs to one of the farmers over on the Crichton estate. Too ill-tempered an old boar to keep within sight of a sow, but he still breeds fine. And I’m not home long enough to notice the smell.” Which was a good thing, all in all. As the breeze shifted, the essence of pig was nearly breathtaking.
He went inside, and Rutledge followed. The cottage—surprisingly—was not dirty, though it was as shabby inside as the exterior and the chickens. There were four rooms opening off a short central hall, the doors to each standing open. In the first of them on the left side the only windows were overhung by beech boughs, cutting off the sunlight, and Rutledge blinked in the sudden dimness as he crossed the threshold. Papers were scattered everywhere, most of them poorly printed political tracts and handwritten tirades, covering floor and furnishings impartially like grimy snow. Mavers walked through and over them, regardless, and flung himself down in a chair by a small mahogany table at the corner of the hearth. There was a lamp on it, its smoke-blackened chimney surrounded by stacks of books, an inkstand of brass, and a much-used blotter.
“Welcome to Mavers Manor,” he said, adding with heavy sarcasm, “Are you planning to stay to dinner? We don’t dress here, you’ll do as you are.” He didn’t ask them to sit.
“Who killed Colonel Harris?” Rutledge asked. “Do you know?”
“Why should I? Know, I mean?”
“Somebody knows something. It might be you.”
“If I knew anything I’d more likely shake the fool’s hand than turn him in to you.”
Which Rutledge believed. “Why did you feud with the Colonel? All those years?”
Suddenly Mavers’s face turned a mottled red, which gave the darkening bruises a garish air, and he snarled, “Because he was an arrogant bastard who thought he was God, and never cared what he did to other people. Send that great lump, Davies, out into the yard with the rest of the dumb animals and I’ll tell you all about your fine Colonel Harris!”
Rutledge glanced over his shoulder and nodded at Davies, who clumped out and slammed the door behind him, as near as he could ever come to insubordination.
Mavers waited until he could see Davies fuming in the yard, well out of hearing, and then said, “He thought he was lord and master around here, Harris did. Mrs. Crichton never comes to Upper Streetham, she’s so old she hardly knows her arse from her elbow, and the Haldanes—well, the Haldanes were so well bred they’ve nearly vanished, a bloodless lot you can’t even be bothered to hate. But the Colonel, now he was something else.”
There was pent-up venom in the thick voice, and Mavers was having trouble breathing through his nose as his anger mounted, almost panting between words. “He came into his own early, after his father had a stroke and wound up being confined to a chair for the rest of his life—which wasn’t all that long—and in his eyes his precious son could do no wrong.