A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [98]
She met his eyes, hers defiant, challenging. “You’re fishing, Inspector. Let me meet this witness face-to-face! Let me hear it from him—or her!”
“You will. In the courtroom. I believe Mark Wilton shot Charles Harris after he was told on Sunday night that the wedding was off and the Colonel refused again on Monday morning to listen to reason. All I need to know now is why. Why your guardian changed his mind. What Wilton had done that made it necessary.”
Lettice shook her head. “You don’t go out and shoot someone because a wedding has been called off! In another year, I’d have been my own mistress. It wasn’t necessary to murder Charles—” She stopped, her voice thick with pain.
“It might have been. If the reason was such that Wilton could never have you. Mrs. Davenant has said she’d never seen him so in love—that you’d given him a measure of peace, something to live for, when he’d lost his earlier love of flying. That he’d have done anything you asked, willingly and without hesitation. A man who loves like that might well believe that in a year’s time, your guardian would have convinced you that he’d made the right decision, breaking it off. Even turned you against Wilton while he wasn’t there to defend himself. When he thought he was in love with Catherine Tarrant, Wilton waited for her because her father felt she wasn’t ready for marriage—and in the end she changed her mind. It came to nothing.”
“That was different!”
“In what way?” When she didn’t answer, he asked instead, “Is that why you didn’t go riding with your guardian Monday morning? Because you were as angry as Wilton over what was happening?”
She winced, closing her eyes against his words. But he inexorably went on. “Is that why you had a headache, and left the two men alone to discuss the wedding? Because you’d already lost the battle?”
Tears rolled silently down her cheeks, silvery in the light from the windows, and she made no attempt to wipe them away.
“I will have to arrest Wilton. You know that. I have enough evidence to do it now. But I’d prefer to spare you as much grief as I can. Tell me the truth, and I’ll try to keep you out of the courtroom.” His voice was gentle again. Behind it, Hamish was restlessly stirring.
After a moment, he took the handkerchief from his pocket and, going to her, pressed it into her hand. She buried her face in it, but didn’t sob. Outside he heard the first roll of thunder, distant and ominous. Rutledge stood by the sofa where she sat, looking down at the top of her dark head. Wondering whether she grieved for Mark Wilton. Her guardian. Herself. Or all three.
“That first day I was here, you thought, didn’t you, that Mark had shot him. I remember your words. You didn’t ask who had done the shooting—instead you were angry about how it was done. I should have guessed then that you were a part of it. That you already knew who it was.”
She looked up at him, such anguish in her face that he stepped back. “I am as guilty as Mark is,” she told him, holding her voice steady by an effort of will. “Charles—I can’t tell you why it was stopped. The wedding. But I can tell you what he said to me on that Tuesday at the Inn. He said I was too young to know my own heart. That he must be the one to decide what was best for me. All that week I begged and pleaded—and cajoled—to have my way. Saturday evening, when Mark had gone home, Charles and I sat up well into the night, thrashing it out.”
Thunder rolled again, much nearer this time, and she flinched, startled. The sunlight was fading, an early darkness creeping in. Outside the windows the birds were silent, and somewhere Rutledge could hear a rustle of leaves as if the wind had stirred, but the heat was oppressive now.
Taking a deep, shaking breath, Lettice went on. “Charles was a very strong man, Inspector. He had a fiercely defined sense of duty. What he did on Sunday evening wasn’t easy for him. He liked Mark—he respected him. It was for my sake—not because of any weakness in Mark!—that he changed