Mrs. Mobley was saying to Rutledge, “Is that any help at all?”
“Yes, very much so. What was on his mind that morning? Do you recall anything he might have been saying?”
Mrs. Mobley shook her head. “He was running on about the Russians, you can usually depend on that. Something about the Czar and his family. I remember something about unemployment too, because I was thinking to myself that he was a lovely one to talk! The strikes in London.”
“You don’t really listen, do you? He’s not a very pleasant man at the best of times!” Mrs. Thornton put in. “And riding his hobbyhorse, he’s—repellent. As Helena Sommers put it, any good he might do is lost with every word that comes out of his mouth!”
“Was Miss Sommers here on Monday?”
“Yes, just around noon, I think it was, buying some lace for her cousin,” Mrs. Mobley said. “I put her down for two cakes; I was glad to have them.”
Mrs. Thornton bit her lip, then said, “You’ll think it silly of me, but I don’t feel it’s safe for two women in a cottage in the middle of nowhere. Since the Colonel’s death, I mean. Since we don’t know—And Helena might as well be alone, her cousin is such a ninny! I went out there to call one afternoon, and Margaret was working in the garden. Well, that goose gave my horse such a fright, and she was absolutely too terrified even to drive the silly thing away with a broom!”
“I think they’re probably safe enough,” Rutledge said, refusing to be drawn.
“If you say so.” Mrs. Thornton seemed unconvinced. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Inspector?”
He thanked them both and went back to the market cross, threading his way between a buggy and a wagon piled with lumber.
If Mavers had moved from place to place that Monday morning, and given some forethought to the shotgun, he might—just might—have killed Harris and gotten away with it….
From the market cross, Rutledge made his way to the lane where Hickam had seen the Captain and the Colonel together. Where Sergeant Davies had found Hickam drunk and rambling about the two men.
He looked about the lane for several minutes, then walked to the first house and knocked on the door, asking questions.
Did you see Daniel Hickam in this lane on the Monday morning that Colonel Harris was shot? Did you see Captain Wilton in this lane, walking? Did you see the Colonel, on his horse, riding through here, stopping to talk to anyone? Did you see Bert Mavers anywhere in the lane, coming or going toward the main street?
The answer was the same at every house. No. No. No. And no.
But at one of the doors, the woman who answered raised her eyebrows at finding him on her doorstep. “You’re the man from London, then. What can I do for you?” She looked him up and down with cool eyes.
He didn’t need to be told what she was, although she was respectably dressed in a dark blue gown that was very becoming to her dark hair and her sea-colored eyes. A tall woman of middle age and wide experience, who saw the world as it was, but more important, seemed to take it as it was.
Rutledge asked his questions, and she listened carefully to each before shaking her head. No, she hadn’t seen Hickam. No, she’d not seen the Captain that morning, nor Mavers. But the Colonel had been here.
“Colonel Harris?” Rutledge asked, keeping his voice level as Hamish clamored excitedly. “What brought him this way, do you know?”
“He came to leave a message by the door, knowing it was an early hour for Betsy and me, but he wanted to put our minds at rest about the quarrel we’d had with the Vicar.” Her mouth twisted, half in exasperation, half in humor. “Mr. Carfield is often of a mind to meddle; he likes to be seen as a thunderbolt, you might say, flinging the moneylenders out of the temple, the whores out of the camp. Not that there’s that much to go on about in Upper Streetham. It’s not what you’d call a regular Sodom and Gomorrah.”
She caught the responsive gleam in Rutledge’s eyes. “The Colonel, now, he was a very decent man. We pay our rent, regular as the day, but Vicar had been onto that Mr. Jameson about us, and he called around, talking eviction. I could have told him who put him up to it! But there was no changing his mind. So the next time I saw the Colonel on the street, I stopped him and asked him please to have a word with Mr. Jameson about it.”
“Jameson?”
“Aye, he’s the agent for old Mrs. Crichton, who lives in London, and he manages her holdings in Upper Streetham. Well, the short of it was, Mr. Jameson agreed he’d been a little hasty over the evicting.”
“Do you still have the message?”
She turned and called over her shoulder to someone else in the house. “Betsy? Could you find that letter of the Colonel’s for me, love?”
In a moment a thinner, smaller woman came to the door, apprehension in her eyes and a cream-colored envelope in her hand. She handed it silently to the older woman. “Is everything all right, Georgie?”
“Yes, yes, the Inspector is asking about the Colonel, that’s all.” She gave the envelope to Rutledge, adding, “He never came here—as a caller. He was a proper gentleman, the Colonel, but fair. Always fair. If you’d asked me, I’d have said I knew most of the men in Upper Streetham better than their own wives, and I can’t think of one who’d want to shoot Colonel Harris!”
There were two words on the front: Mrs. Grayson.
“That’s me, Georgina Grayson.”
Rutledge took the letter out of its envelope, saw the Colonel’s name engraved at the top, and the date, written in a bold black hand. Monday. He scanned it. It said, simply, “I’ve spoken to Jameson. You needn’t worry, he’s agreed to take care of the matter with Carfield. If there should be any other trouble, let me know of it.” It was signed “Harris.”
“Could I keep this?” he asked, speaking to Mrs. Grayson.
“I’d like it back,” she said. “But yes, if it’ll help.”
Turning to Betsy, Rutledge went over the same questions he’d asked earlier, but she’d seen no one, not Mavers—“He knows better than to show his face around here!”—not Hickam, not Harris, not Wilton—“More’s the pity!” with a saucy grin. “But,” she added, a sudden touch of venom in her voice, “I did see Miss Hoity-toity just the other day, Thursday it was, following after that poor sot, Daniel Hickam. He’d spent the night on the floor here, too drunk to find his way home, and we got a little food into him, then let him go. She was onto him like a bee onto the honey, slinking after him into the high grass toward the trees.” She pointed, as if they had only just disappeared from sight, down toward the track that eventually led up the hill to Mallows.
The one called Georgie smiled wryly at Rutledge. “Catherine Tarrant.”
“What did she want with Hickam?” Rutledge asked. Thursday was the day she’d come into town to speak to him about Captain Wilton.
Betsy shrugged. “How should I know? Maybe to pose for her—she asked Georgie to do it once, and Georgie told her sharpish what she thought about that! But it was him she did want! She caught up with him where she didn’t think I could see, and stopped him, talking to him, and him shaking his head, over and over. Then she took something from her pocket and held it out to him—money enough to get drunk again, I’ll wager! He turned away from her, but after only a few steps turned back and began speaking to her. She interrupted him a time or two, and then she gave him whatever it was she was holding, and he shambled off into the trees. She walked back down to where she’d left her bicycle, head high as you please, like the cat that got the cream, and then she was gone. She’s a German lover, that one. Maybe she’s got a taste for drunks as well!”
The eyes of hate and jealousy…