A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [40]
“From what I can see, it wasn’t like the Colonel to find himself the victim of a murder either.”
“Well, no, not when you get right down to it. But he is dead, isn’t he? Either his death was accidental or it was intentional, and we have to start with murder because no one has come forward to tell us any differently. No one has said, ‘I was standing there talking to him and the horse jostled my arm, and the gun went off, and the next thing I knew the poor devil was dead.”
“Would you believe them if they did?”
Forrest sighed. “No. Only an idiot carries an unbroken shotgun.”
“Which brings us back to Mavers and his weapon. If Wilton was on either of those tracks on the morning of the murder, he could have taken the gun from Mavers’s house, fired it, then put it back before Mavers came home from the village. Hickam’s evidence is still important.”
“And if Captain Wilton could do that, so could anyone else in Upper Streetham for all we know,” Forrest retorted doggedly. “There’s still no proof.”
“There may be,” Rutledge said thoughtfully. “Captain Wilton came to stay with his cousin when her husband died. He undoubtedly knew about the Will, and the provision regarding the old shotgun. It caused some problems at the time, I understand.”
“I knew about it as well, and had forgotten it—so might he have. It’s all circumstantial! Guessing—”
“What if the Colonel was the wrong victim?”
That sent Forrest’s eyebrows up in patent disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘wrong victim’? You don’t shoot a man at point-blank range and get the wrong one! That’s foolery!”
“Yes, so it is,” Rutledge answered. “It’s also foolery that the Colonel was flawless, a man with no sins on his conscience. When people begin to tell me the truth, Captain Wilton will be far safer. Assuming, of course, that you’re right and he’s innocent.”
Leaving Sergeant Davies to check on Royston’s dental appointment in Warwick, Rutledge went searching for Hickam on his own, but the man seemed to have disappeared.
“Drunk somewhere, like enough,” Hamish said. “Yours is a dry business, man. I’d as soon have a bottle myself.”
Which was the only time Rutledge had found himself in agreement with the voice in his mind.
He turned the car toward the Inn and his thoughts toward dinner.
Which turned out to be interesting in its own way. He had hardly cut into his roast mutton when the dining room’s glass doors opened and a man with a clerical collar came in, stood for a moment surveying the room, then made his way across to where Rutledge sat.
He was nearing thirty, of medium height, with fair hair, a polished manner, and a strong sense of his own worth. Stopping by the table, he said in a rich baritone, “Inspector Rutledge? I’m Carfield. The vicar. I’ve just called again at Mallows, and Miss Wood is still unwell. Then I thought perhaps it might be wiser to ask you anyway. Can you tell me when the Colonel’s body will be released for burial?”
“We haven’t held an Inquest yet, Mr. Carfield. Sit down, won’t you? I’d like to talk to you, now that you’re here.”
Carfield accepted the offer of coffee and said, “Such a tragic business, the Colonel’s death.”
“So everyone says. Who might want to kill him?”
“Why, no one that I can think of!”
“Yet someone did.”
Studying Carfield as the man stirred cream but no sugar into his cup, Rutledge could see that he had the kind of face that would show up well on the stage, handsome and very masculine beyond the twentieth row, but too heavily boned to be called more than “strong” at close quarters. The voice too was made to carry, and grated a little in ordinary conversation. The actor was lurking there, behind the clerical collar, Sergeant Davies had been right about that.
“Tell me about Miss Wood.”
“Lettice? Very bright, with a mind of her own. She came to Mallows several years back—1917, after she’d finished school. And she’s been an ornament to the community ever since. We’re all very fond of her.”
Over the