A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [58]
Except for an array of bruises that were already fading, there was not a mark on her. Warren had looked with great care. No sign of a head injury, spinal injury, bee sting, spider’s bite. No rash, no fever, no swellings. Just this deathly stillness that was broken by fits of wild thrashing and screaming that went on and on until Lizzie was exhausted and dropped suddenly back into stillness again.
Agnes watched him watching the child, and said, “There’s no change. Not that we can see. I got some milk into her again, and a little weak tea. Most of the broth ended up on her gown.”
Meg, her hands twisted tightly together, added, “We thought, Ma and I, that it was darkness she was afeared of, but the screaming only happens when Ted is near her. He’s got so he won’t come into the room.” After a moment she added anxiously, “Why should she be afeared of her own father?”
“She probably isn’t,” Warren said shortly. “Where’s the boy?”
“I sent him over to my sister Polly. The screaming was bothering him, he wasn’t getting any rest at all.” Teddy, six, was the image of his father and seemed to be made entirely of springs, like a jack-in-the-box.
“It doesn’t seem to disturb her when I come near her,” Warren went on thoughtfully. “Who else has been in the house? Men, I mean?”
“No one,” Agnes said. “Well, Polly’s husband, come to get Teddy. He stopped on his way home from the mill, and was too dusty to set foot in the door. But Lizzie must have heard him.” She grinned tiredly. Saul Quarles was the bass in the church choir, with a chest to match. Local wits claimed that his voice carried farther than the church’s bell. “She couldn’t miss him, could she?”
“But she didn’t cry? Scream?”
“Not a peep. Is she going to die?” Meg asked, striving for calmness and failing wretchedly. “What’s wrong with her?”
Warren shook his head. “She needs a specialist. I saw a woman like this once, early in my practice. She’d lost her baby, and couldn’t face it. The spell passed in a week, a little longer perhaps. Grief, fright, sudden changes—they can do things to the brain.”
Meg began to cry softly, and Agnes put her arm around the girl’s shaking shoulders. “There, there,” she whispered, but the words carried no comfort.
Mary Satterthwaite, answering the summons of the drawing room bell, was startled to find Rutledge back at Mallows when she’d seen him out the door two hours earlier. He was standing by one of the hall chairs, a hand on Lettice Wood’s shoulder as if holding her there, and the girl was shaking like a tree in the wind.
Bristling at the sight of her mistress in such distress, she rounded on the Inspector from Scotland Yard and said, “What’s happened, then?”
Rutledge replied quietly, “I think you should ask Miss Wood.”
Lettice had stopped crying before Mary came through the servants’ door, but she accepted the fresh handkerchief the maid thrust into her hand and pressed it to her eyes almost as if to form a barrier between herself and the two people standing over her—a shield. When she lowered it, Rutledge could see that she was thinking again, that she’d used that brief instant of withdrawal to take a firmer grip on self-control. The trembling had stopped, but shock still showed in the pinched whiteness of her face, and in the effort she was making to overcome it. She said huskily, “I’m all right, Mary. Truly I am! It’s just—”
Lettice glanced up quickly at Rutledge’s unreadable face. Mary’s sister was Catherine Tarrant’s housekeeper. Did he know that? She wasn’t sure how he might respond to the lie she was about to tell. If he would understand why. But she had to keep Catherine Tarrant out of this investigation, if she could, and the first step was preventing Mary from gossiping. “There’s to be an Inquest. And I expect—something must be done about the services—”
Mary eyed Rutledge accusingly. “Mr. Royston will see to all that for you, Miss, and the Captain! Don’t worry your head about it. The Inspector shouldn’t ought to have sprung that on you. It was ill done, sir, if you ask me!”
To Lettice’s relief, Rutledge