A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [89]
Rutledge went around to the other side of the crib, between the child and the wall. He stooped to bring his face more in line with her eyes, and said, with a firmness that he’d learned in dealing with children, “Lizzie! Look at me.”
He thought there was a flicker of life in the staring eyes, and he said it again, louder and more peremptorily. Agnes cried out, telling him to mind what he was doing, but Rutledge ignored her. “Lizzie! I’ve found your doll. The doll you lost in the meadow. See?”
He held it out, close enough for her to see it. For an instant he thought that she wasn’t going to respond. Then her face began to work, her mouth gulping at air. She screamed, turning quickly toward the door, her eyes on the Sergeant, then on Wilton beyond. It was a wild scream, terrified and wordless, rising and falling in pitch like a banshee’s wail. Deafening in its power from such a small pair of lungs. Curdling the blood, numbing the mind. Agnes and Meg ran toward her, but with a gesture Rutledge held them back. But the screaming stopped as quickly as it had started. Lizzie reached out and Rutledge put the doll in her open arms. She clasped it to her with a force that surprised him, her eyes closing as she rocked gently from side to side. After a time one hand let go of the doll and a thumb found its way to her mouth. Sucking noisily, she clutched the doll and began a singsong moan under her breath.
Agnes, watching her, said, “She does that when she’s falling to sleep—”
There was the sound of a voice, then the front door slamming. A man’s voice called, “Meg, honey—I saw the car. Who’s come? Is it that doctor Warren was going on about?”
Lizzie opened her eyes, wide and staring, and began to scream again, turning her back to the doorway. The sound ripped through the silence in the small room, ripped at the nerves of the people standing there. Meg ran out of the room, and Rutledge could hear her speaking to her husband, leading him away from Lizzie, then the slamming of the front door.
After a time, Lizzie stopped screaming and began to suck her thumb again, the doll held like a lifeline in her other hand. After a minute or so the singsong moaning began as well. The child’s eyes began to drift shut. A deep breath lifted her small chest, and then she seemed to settle into sleep. Or was it unconsciousness?
“That’s the first time she’s rested.” Agnes stood watching for a time, then shook her head slowly, grieving. “She adored her father—it’s cut him to the heart to have her like this, carrying on so when he comes into the house, not wanting him near her.”
Rutledge studied the child. “Yes, I think she really is asleep,” he said, gesturing to the Sergeant and Agnes to leave. “Let her keep the doll. But I’ll need it. Later.”
He followed them out of the room, and saw Wilton’s white face beyond the Sergeant’s stolid red one. The screams had unnerved Davies, but Rutledge thought that it was the doll, and the child’s reaction, that had worried Wilton more.
Agnes said, her voice shaking, “What’s to be done, then? If she saw the man, what’s to be done?”
“I don’t know,” Rutledge told her honestly. “I don’t know.”
Out by the car, a horse was standing, reins down. In the middle of the yard, Meg was holding her husband in her arms. As they came out of his house, he stared over her head at them, raw pain in his eyes.
“I want to know what’s going on,” he said, “what’s happening to Lizzie.”
“She—your daughter was possibly a witness to Colonel Harris’s murder,” Rutledge said. There was no easy way to break the news. “She may have seen him shot. I found her doll in the meadow there. Captain Wilton”—he gestured toward Mark—“saw Lizzie that morning as well. Crying for the doll. I’m not sure yet how all of this fits together, but that child is frightened to death of you. Can you think of any reason why?”
Ted shook his head vehemently. “I’ve nothing to do with it. She was like that when I came home Monday from the stables for lunch. Meg found her wandering lost like, and brought her home. She didn’t speak, she wasn’t herself.