A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [56]
“Rutledge for one.”
She bit her lip. “Yes. Rutledge. The man’s a menace, probing and digging.”
“He’s no fool, Sally. And he won’t leave until he’s got what he wanted.”
“If only you and Charles hadn’t quarreled so publicly that last night—”
“How were we to know that the servants were still about? Besides—” He stopped, then lifted her fingers, kissed the tips, and let them go. She didn’t rise, but stayed there beside him, her hands dropping to her lap.
“I wish you would tell me what that was all about. How can I help you if I don’t know?”
He rubbed his eyes, and they burned as if he hadn’t slept for a week. They had felt that way in France, he remembered, when there was a push on, and the planes went up as long as the pilots could stay awake to man them. Until blind exhaustion sent you stumbling back to quarters and the nearest bed. “It wasn’t even a quarrel, come to that. We never got to the point of quarreling. He said something that took me completely off guard, and the next thing we knew, we were both murderously angry.”
Mark looked at her, his eyes bloodshot from the rubbing, his tiredness there for her to see. “It died with Charles. At least pray God it did,” he added vehemently.
“But the timing—”
“Yes, I know, there’s no getting around that, is there, Sally? And Rutledge will have me exactly where he wants me if he ever finds out the whole of it. Hickam was a bloody nuisance, but I could have dealt with him. As it is, Charles might still reach out from the grave and take me with him.”
She got to her feet and said with conviction, “Then you must go to Lettice! Now, before everyone in Upper Streetham notices that you aren’t there! Mark, don’t you see? You’re being very foolish!”
Rutledge went to find Johnston before he left Mallows, but instead came face-to-face with Lettice as she slowly descended the main staircase. It was, he thought, the first time she’d left her room since Dr. Warren had taken her there, and she seemed abstracted, her body moving without the volition of her mind, which was turned inward toward private visions no one else could share. Whatever they were, she drew no comfort from them, for she looked tired, empty.
“I thought you had gone away,” she said, frowning as she saw him and recognized him. “Well? Did you want something—or someone?”
“I’ve just spoken to Royston. I wanted to let you know that the Inquest will be tomorrow—”
“I won’t be there,” she said quickly, with an edge of panic. “I won’t attend!”
“I shan’t expect you to attend. There will be—we must address certain formalities, and then I intend to ask for an adjournment,” he amended, to spare her. There was no need to go into more detail than that, since Royston had identified the body, not Lettice.
She turned to go back the way she’d come, and he stopped her. “I went to see Catherine Tarrant.”
With her hand on the banister as if she gained strength from its support, she came down the rest of the stairs. “And?” she asked when she was on eye level with him. It was almost as if she thought he might be tricking her.
“She told me about Linden.”
“And?” she repeated.
“And I understand the debt you referred to this morning—your fiancé’s life for her lover’s. But there’s another aspect of the situation, one less pleasant. Could Miss Tarrant have shot Colonel Harris in revenge for Linden’s death? Brooding over what happened and convincing herself that he might have saved the German if he’d tried? Punishing him—and indirectly, you?”
Lettice Wood began to laugh, bitterly at first, and then in wild denial. “Oh, God,” she said, “that’s too diabolical to contemplate!” The laughter turned to tremors that racked her body. “No, I won’t think about it! Go away, I don’t want to talk to you anymore!”
Rutledge had seen soldiers close to the breaking point