A Test of Wills - Charles Todd [99]
“Charles doted on you—he’d have given you anything you wanted. Then why not this one thing—the man you planned to marry?”
“Because,” she said softly. “Because he did put my happiness above everything else. And he finally came to believe that Mark Wilton wasn’t the right man.”
“And Wilton, who believed as strongly that he was the right man, turned on his friend, shot him out there in the meadow, and with that one act, lost any hope he might have had of marrying you! I don’t see how he gained anything by killing Charles that he couldn’t have gained by waiting. Unless there was something else—some reason powerful enough that silencing Charles Harris was worth the risk of losing you forever. Something that might have destroyed Captain Wilton personally or professionally.”
She looked up at him, eyes defensive but resolute. It was a strange test of wills, and he wasn’t sure exactly where it was leading. Or even if she knew the answer he wanted to hear.
“All right, I did think it was Mark at first—not because I saw him as a murderer, but because of my own sense of responsibility over what had happened, the feeling that he’d done it to obliterate Charles, to get even. I was half drugged, ill with grief, not knowing where to turn or what to do. Charles was dead, they’d quarreled over the marriage—one thing on the heels of the other—what else could I think? But I’m not as sure now. When Mark finally came here, I couldn’t sense guilt, I couldn’t find any response in him—or in me—that ought to have been there if he’d killed. Only—a terrible emptiness.”
“What did you expect? Shivers of premonition?”
“No, don’t offer me sarcasm! Give me credit for a little sense, a little knowledge of the man I was planning to marry!” A flush of anger in her cheeks made her eyes glitter, the unshed tears brightening them.
“But still you called off the wedding! In my presence.”
“You don’t marry while you’re in mourning!”
“Then you’ll go ahead and marry him after you’ve mourned a decent length of time? If he isn’t hanged for murder?”
Shocked, she stared at him. “I—I don’t—”
“Lettice. You aren’t telling me all of the truth.” He gave her time to answer him, but she said nothing, her eyes holding his, unreadable, once more defiant. “Who are you protecting? Mark? Yourself? Or Charles?”
The wind had picked up, lashing at the house, sending a skirl of leaves rattling across the windows. She got up quickly and went to close them. From there, she turned to face him again. “If you want to hang Mark Wilton, you’ll have to prove he’s a murderer. In a court of law. With evidence and witnesses. If you can do that, if you can show that he was the one who shot Charles Harris, I will come to the hanging. I’ve lost Charles, and if I truly thought Mark had killed him, and no one could actually prove it, even though that was the way it had happened, I’d go through with the wedding and spend the rest of our lives making him pay for it! I care that much! But I won’t betray him. If he’s innocent, I’ll fight for him. Not because I love him—or don’t love him—but because Charles would have expected me to fight.”
“If Mark didn’t shoot Harris—who did?”
“Ah!” she said, smiling sadly. “We’re back to where we were, aren’t we? Well, I suppose it comes down to one thing, Inspector. What mattered most to Mark? Keeping me? Or killing Charles? Because he knew—he knew!—he couldn’t do both. So what did he have to gain?”
The storm broke then, rain coming down with the force of wind behind it, rattling shutters and windows and roaring down the chimney, almost shutting out the flash of the lightning and a clap of thunder that for an instant sounded as if it had broken just overhead.
17
The rain was so intense that he stopped at the end of the drive, in the shelter of overhanging trees. Rutledge’s face was wet, his hair was matted to his head, and the shoulders of his coat were dark with water. But he felt better out of that house, away from the strange eyes that told him the truth—but only part of the truth. He didn’t need Hamish whispering