A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [47]
“And I suppose you know?” Warren snapped.
Rutledge caught himself on the brink, realized in time where his outburst was carrying him, and said only, “I was there.”
Still angry when he reached the car, Rutledge said to Davies, “Tell Forrest I’m holding Dr. Warren responsible for Hickam, and if for any reason whatsoever he leaves the doctor’s care, he’s to be arrested on sight. Is that clear?”
“Where’ll you be, then?” Davies asked warily.
“I’m going back to Mallows.” To see what Lettice Wood might tell him, alone and with no notes being taken.
Glad not to be included in that visit, Davies hurried off to find Forrest. And Rutledge was left with Hamish’s company on the drive out to the Colonel’s home.
This time he was shown directly to Miss Wood’s sitting room, and Rutledge found it empty. She came in through a connecting door after a few minutes, still wearing black, but with her face no longer invisible to him. The drapes were drawn back, and the sun’s warm reflection filled the room with a softness that was kind to her grief-shadowed eyes.
And this time she offered him a chair facing the couch where she chose to sit, in the opposite corner, with her back to the light from the windows. More, he thought, for her own comfort than from any desire to make the interview difficult for him. But she was braced for something—he could see the tenseness in her body, the clenched line of her jaw.
“Have you brought me any news?” she asked, her voice still husky. As she looked directly at him he noticed that her eyes were not the same color. One was a smoky hazel, a green flecked with brown and gray, the other a warm green touched with gold. Startlingly odd, yet very beautiful.
“Not yet. We’re still exploring several avenues. I’m trying to build a picture in my mind of Colonel Harris. The sort of man he was, the sort of life he led.”
She brushed that aside with angry impatience. “I’ve told you. He had no enemies.”
“Someone killed him,” he reminded her. “Someone wanted him dead. He must have done something, if only that one single act, to rouse such terrible hate.”
She flinched as if he’d struck her. “But surely you’ve made progress?” she asked again after a moment. “You must have talked to other people. Laurence Royston? Mark? Inspector Forrest?”
Lettice Wood was fishing, he realized suddenly. She wanted to know what had been happening, what had been said….
“They’ve told me very little, actually. Everyone says that your guardian was a very fine man. Everyone, that is, except Mavers.” He said nothing about Carfield.
She smiled a little, more in irony than amusement. “I’d have been more surprised if he hadn’t. But Charles was a very nice man. He needn’t have been my guardian, you know. He was barely grown himself at the time, and it must have seemed a dreary job, taking on the responsibility of a parentless child—a little girl at that!—just when there was a war to go to. To me he seemed as old as my father. I was even a little frightened of him, clinging to my nanny’s skirts and wishing he’d go away. Then he dropped to one knee and held out his arms to me, and the next thing I knew I’d cried myself dry and he was ordering a tea with all my favorite things and afterward we went riding. Which scandalized the household, I can tell you, because I was supposed to be in deepest mourning, shut away in darkness and in silence. Instead I was out in the fields laughing and racing him on my pony and—” Her voice cracked, and she looked away hastily.
He gave her time to regain her composure, then asked, “What sort of mood had the Colonel been in, the last few days before his death?”
“Mood?” she repeated quickly. “What do you mean?”
“Was he happy? Tired? Worried? Irritable? Distracted?”
“He was happy,” she said, her thoughts fading where he couldn’t follow