A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [81]
“Nor should I. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a woman. Behind it at the very least, even if she never touched the trigger.”
With a shake of his head, Carfield replied, “Women are many things, but obliterating a man’s face in that fashion is a bloody, horrible business even for a man. Catherine, Mrs. Davenant, Lettice—they are none of them farmwives who can take an ax to a chicken without blinking.”
“Catherine Tarrant ran her father’s estate throughout the war.”
“Ran it, yes, but do you suppose she butchered cattle or dressed a hen?”
“Perhaps she didn’t know how bloody the results would be. Perhaps she intended to aim lower, but the kick of the weapon lifted the barrel.”
Carfield shrugged. “Then you must take into account the fact that during the last three years of the war, Sally Davenant volunteered to nurse the wounded at a friend’s house in Gloucestershire, which had been turned into a hospital. She has no formal training, you understand, but Mrs. Davenant did tend her husband through his last illness, and the—er—intimacies of the sickbed were familiar to her. Dressing wounds, taking off bloody bedclothes, watching doctors remove stitches or clean septic flesh—I’m sure you learn to face many things when you have to.”
No one, least of all Sally Davenant, had seen fit to mention that. Rutledge swore under his breath.
“But I can’t think that it would lead her to commit a murder!” Carfield was saying. “And why should she wish to kill the Colonel, I ask you!”
“Why did anyone want to kill him?” Rutledge countered.
“Ah, now we’re back to why. Whatever the reason, I’m willing to wager that it was deeply personal. Deeply. Can you plumb that far into the soul to find it?”
“Are you telling me that as a priest you’ve heard confessions that give you the answer to this murder?”
“No, people seldom confess their blackest depths to anyone, least of all to a priest. Oh, the small sins, the silly sins, even the guilty sins, where a clean conscience relieves the weight of guilt. Adultery. Envy. Anger. Covetousness. Hate. Jealousy.”
He smiled, a rueful smile that belittled himself in a way. “But there’s fury, you know. Where someone acts in a blind rage, and only then stops to think and feel. Or fright, where there’s no time for second thoughts. Or self-defense, where you must act or be hurt. I hear of those afterward. From the man who hits a neighbor in a rage over a broken cart wheel. From the woman who takes a flatiron to her drunken husband before he beats her senseless. From the child who lashes out, bloodying a bully’s nose. And sometimes these things can also lead to murder. Well, you’ve seen it happen, I needn’t tell you about that! But what’s deeply burned into the soul, what’s buried beneath the civilized layers of the skin, is the more deadly because often there’s no warning it even exists. No warning, even to a priest.”
Which was more truth than Rutledge had expected to hear from the Vicar.
“However,” Carfield went on before Rutledge could answer him, “I’m not here to solve your problems but to attend to my own. Which brings me back again to Mallows.”
“I’d speak to Royston or to Wilton, if I were you. I’d leave Miss Wood out of it. If they agree, they can break the news to her.”
“I’m her spiritual adviser!”
“And Dr. Warren is her physician. It’s his decision, not yours.”
Carfield rose, eyes studying Rutledge, the tired face, the lines. “You carry your own heavy burdens, don’t you?” he said quietly. “I don’t envy you them. My God, I don’t! But let me tell you this much, Inspector Rutledge. When you return to London, this will still be my parish, and I must still face its people. The reception will be at Mallows. I promise you that.”
He turned and strode through the bar, ignoring Redfern. The younger man came limping across to Rutledge’s table. “Now there’s a man I’d not want to cross,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at the sound of the outer door