A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [48]
“Why?”
Disconcerted, she said, “What do you mean, why?”
“Just that. What had made him so happy?”
Lettice shook her head. “He just was.”
“Then why did he quarrel with Mark Wilton?”
She got to her feet and walked across the room. For a moment he thought she was leaving, that she would disappear into her bedroom and shut the door on him. But she went to the windows instead, looking out at the drive and seeing, he thought, very little. “How could I know the answer to that?” she countered. “You harp on it as if it was important.”
“It might be. It might decide whether we must arrest Captain Wilton or not.”
Turning back to him, a dark silhouette against the light, she said after a moment, “Because of one quarrel? When you claim you don’t even know what it was about?” Was it a statement? Or a question? He couldn’t be sure.
“We have a witness who says they quarreled again. The next morning. Not far from where your guardian was killed.”
Even with her back to the window he could see how shaken she was, her shoulders hunched suddenly, her body tense. Her hands were still. He waited, but she said nothing, as if she’d run out of words.
And still no defense offered on behalf of the man she loved.
“If Captain Wilton is guilty, you’d wish to see him hang for it, wouldn’t you?” Rutledge asked harshly. “You told me before that you wanted to see the killer hanged.”
“Then why haven’t you arrested him?” she demanded huskily. “Why have you come here instead, and told me these things, why are you adding to my grief—” She stopped, somewhere finding the will to go on, to make her voice obey her brain. “What is it you want of me, Inspector? Why are you here? Surely not to ask my opinion of quarrels I didn’t witness, or to speculate on Mark’s hanging as if he were someone I’d never met. There has to be more reason than that!” She was insistent, almost compellingly so.
“Then tell me what it is.” He was angry with her, and wasn’t sure why.
“Because,” Hamish whispered, “she’s got courage, hasn’t she? And your Jean never did….”
She crossed to the hearth, restless with pent up emotions, fingers mechanically rearranging the flowers there as if their relative positions mattered, but he knew that she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. “You’re the man from London, the one they sent to find my guardian’s murderer. What have you been doing since you got to Upper Streetham? Searching for scapegoats?”
“That’s odd,” he said quietly. “Catherine Tarrant said nearly the same thing. About making the Captain a scapegoat for someone else’s crime.”
In the mirror above the hearth he saw her face flame, the warm blood flooding under the pale skin until she seemed to be flushed with a fever, and her eyes sparkled as they met his in the glass. “Catherine? What has she to do with this?”
“She came to me to tell me straightaway that she was certain Captain Wilton was innocent.” He was intrigued with the way her eyes darkened with emotion, until you couldn’t see the difference in them. “Though why she might have done that, before anyone had actually accused him of murder, is still something of a mystery.”
Lettice Wood bit her lip. “It was to spite me,” she said, looking away from him. “I’m sorry.”
“Why should Catherine Tarrant wish to spite you? At Wilton’s expense?”
“Because she thinks I let the man she loved die. Or at least was in a sense responsible for his death. And I suppose this is her way of striking back at me. Through Mark.” She shook her head, unable to speak. Then she managed to say, “It’s rather appalling, isn’t it, considering—” She stopped again.
“Tell me about it.” When she hesitated, he said, “I’ve only to ask someone else. Miss Tarrant herself, Captain Wilton—”
“I doubt if Mark even knows the story.”
“Then tell me about her relationship with Wilton.”
“She met him before the war—when he came to Upper Streetham after Hugh Davenant’s death. And I suppose there was a mutual attraction. But nothing came of it, neither of them was ready for marriage. He could think of nothing but flying and she’s quite a fine artist,