Rutledge shrugged. “Why shouldn’t I grasp at straws?” He realized that he was quoting Lettice Wood. Had her words rankled that much? “There hasn’t been a rush of people breaking down the police-station door to volunteer information about Harris’s killer, has there? I’ve decided there’s a conspiracy to keep me from finding out what’s best hidden.”
Wilton stared at him, eyes sharp and searching. The thin, weary face before him was closed and unreadable. What had made this man so ill, consumption? War wounds? The sickly often had a way of piercing to the heart of a matter, as if their close brush with death made them more sensitive to the very air around them.
Rutledge had spoken out of irritation, exasperated with Wilton and himself. But the reaction had been completely unexpected.
“Yon pretty hero isn’t what he seems,” Hamish growled. “Unlucky in love and good for nothing but killing. But very good at that….”
Finally Wilton said carefully, “A conspiracy to murder Harris?”
“A conspiracy to hide the truth. Whatever it may be,” Rutledge amended.
Wilton finished his whiskey. “I thought you were an experienced man, one of the best London had. That’s what Forrest told us. If you can find one person in Warwickshire—other than that fool Mavers—who wanted Harris dead, I’ll willingly be damned to the far reaches of hell! Meanwhile, I’ll find the Sergeant and we’ll tour the nurseries of Upper Streetham for this child who lost a doll. Little good may it do you!”
He left, lifting a hand to summon Redfern. Rutledge sat where he was, watching the stiff, angry set of his shoulders as the Captain stalked off. “Unlucky in love,” Hamish had said.
He considered that again. Catherine Tarrant’s German. Lettice Wood’s guardian. And Sally Davenant, who might not have forgotten what had become of her husband’s old shotgun.
If Charles Harris had died of poison, Rutledge might believe in simple jealousy more easily. But a shotgun? That took rage, hatred, a need to obliterate, as Lettice had put it.
He could feel the fatigue dragging at him, the stress and the loneliness. The fear. Looking around for Redfern, Rutledge saw that he was alone in the bar. And then Carfield was coming through the doorway, glancing his way.
“Inspector. I’ve spoken with Mark Wilton,” he said, crossing over to Rutledge’s table. “We’ve settled on Tuesday for the services. I understand that Dr. Warren hasn’t lifted his embargo on visits to Lettice. I really feel, as her spiritual adviser, I should go to her, offer her comfort, prepare her for the very difficult task of attending the funeral. Could you use your good offices to persuade him that seclusion is the worst possible thing for a young woman with no family to support her?”
Rutledge smiled. Pompous ass didn’t begin to describe the Vicar. “I have no right to overturn a medical decision unless it has a bearing on my duties,” he said, remembering Lettice’s dread of having to cope with Carfield.
“And there’s the matter of the reception after the service. It should be held at Mallows. I sincerely believe Charles would have wished that. Naturally I shall take charge; I know the staff well enough, they’ll do my bidding.”
“Why not at the Vicarage?” Rutledge asked. “After Miss Wood has greeted the guests, she can go quietly home. Wilton will see to that, or Royston.”
Carfield sat down uninvited. “My dear man, one doesn’t serve the funeral’s cold baked meats at the Vicarage for a man like Charles Harris, who has his own quite fine residence! That’s what staff is for, you know, to do the labor. One doesn’t expect dear Lettice to shoulder such a burden.”
“Have you suggested to Wilton that you wish to arrange the reception at Mallows?”
Carfield’s eyebrows rose. “It isn’t his home, is it? The decision is for others to make, not for Captain Wilton.”
“I see.” He considered the Vicar for a moment. “Who told Upper Streetham that Miss Tarrant was in love with a German prisoner of war and wished to marry him?”
The heavily handsome face was closed. “I have no idea. I tried to make the village see that she had done nothing wrong, that loving our enemies is part of God’s plan. But people are sometimes narrow-minded about such matters. Why do you ask?”
“Could she have killed Charles Harris?”
Carfield smiled. “Why not ask me if Mrs. Davenant did it?”
“All right. Did she?”
The smile disappeared. “You’re quite serious?”
“Murder is a serious business. I want to solve this one.”
“Ah, yes, I can understand your dilemma, with Wilton so closely connected to the Royal Family,” Carfield answered with a shrewdness that narrowly escaped shrewishness as well. “I shouldn’t have thought that a shotgun was a woman’s weapon.”
“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.