A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [84]
“You worked Mrs. Davenant’s land?”
“Yes, her steward left before Christmas in 1914. Mad to fight, mad to be there before it was all over. He never came back. And the old steward wasn’t up to the work. I did it, and he kept an eye on things when I couldn’t be there.”
“Did you know Hugh Davenant well?”
Royston shrugged. “Well enough. Hugh Davenant made a wreck of his marriage. One of those selfish, careless bastards who go through life leaving grief in their wake, never taking notice.”
“Was she ever in love with her cousin?”
He frowned. “I’ve wondered. Well, it was natural, I suppose, to wonder. But there was never anything to support speculation. She’s fond of him.”
“What was Wilton planning to do after he married Lettice? Live here at Mallows?”
“No, he has a home of his own in Somerset—I’ve seen it, a handsome house, good rich land.”
“I can’t picture the Captain quietly growing lettuces and wheat.”
With a laugh Royston said, “His father was an architect, his mother’s family’s in banking in the City. Even if he never flies again, he’ll hardly be reduced to growing lettuces.”
But when he came back to Warwickshire, he’d stay at Mallows, not with his cousin….
“Right, thank you, Royston.” Rutledge stepped out of the way of a woman pushing a pram. She acknowledged Royston with a pleasant smile and walked on, glancing at Rutledge out of the corner of her eyes at the last minute.
Royston waited until she was out of hearing. “You’ve made no progress, then?” He shook his head. “I keep thinking about it—how someone could shoot the Colonel down and then disappear so completely. Unless he’s left the County. But if he’s still here, there’s been no change in his manner, nothing to point to him. It was a bloody, vindictive sort of crime, Inspector. And yet it doesn’t seem to have changed the killer at all. Either to make him happier or make him angrier. Somehow I find that particularly horrifying. Don’t you? That someone could kill and not be marked by it?”
14
Rutledge watched Laurence Royston walk away down the busy street, then brought his mind back to the task he’d set himself. He stepped out into the afternoon traffic, following a woman with a pram. Standing by the market cross, he looked up and down the main street. Two boys on bicycles passed him, grinning, trying to attract his attention, but he ignored them.
Mavers, that Monday morning when Harris was shot, had been busily haranguing the market goers. Both Mavers and any number of witnesses had sworn to it.
But Sally Davenant, for one, had suggested that it was possible for him to disappear for a short time without anyone noticing his absence.
Rutledge considered first of all Mavers’s cunning, and the distance from here to the meadow where Harris died.
The gun was a problem. If Mavers went to his house first, retrieved the shotgun, then went to the meadow, waited for Harris, shot him, put the gun back, and returned to Upper Streetham, he would need at the very least some ninety minutes, possibly even two hours.
Too long. He’d have been missed.
All right then, what if he’d taken the shotgun and left it somewhere along the hedge before coming down to the village? Harangued the crowds, disappeared, and after the killing, concealed the shotgun again in the high grass before returning to his post? A long hour? Could he have done it that quickly? It was a risk, a calculated risk, and Rutledge wasn’t sure that Mavers was willing to run it. On the other hand, Mavers liked nothing better than thumbing his nose at his betters….
Rutledge nodded to the woman he’d seen earlier with Sally Davenant, his attention on Mavers’s movements. And then he brought himself up sharply and caught up with her as she crossed the street in the direction of the greengrocer’s. Touching her arm to attract her attention, he introduced himself and said, “Were you in Upper Streetham last