A Test of Wills by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online Page A

“You must be the man from London.” Her eyes scanned his face and his height and his clothes with cool interest.
    “Inspector Rutledge. I’d like to speak to you, if I may. And to Captain Wilton.”
    “Mark has gone for a walk. I don’t think he slept well last night, and walking always soothes him. Please, come in.”
    She led them not into the drawing room but down a passage beyond the stairs to a comfortable sitting room that still had a masculine ambience, as if it had been her late husband’s favorite part of the house. Paintings of hunting scenes hung above the fireplace and on two of the walls, while a collection of pipes in a low, glass-fronted cabinet stood beneath a small but exquisite Canaletto.
    “This is a dreadful business,” she was saying as Rutledge took the chair she offered him. Sergeant Davies went to stand by the hearth, as if her invitation to be seated had not included him. She accepted this without comment. “Simply dreadful! I can’t imagine why anyone would have wanted to kill Charles Harris. He was a thoroughly nice man.” There was a ring of sincerity in the words.
    An elderly woman in a black dress and white apron came to the doorway, and after glancing toward her, Mrs. Davenant asked, “Would you care for coffee, Inspector? Sergeant?” When they declined, she nodded to the woman and said, “That will be all, then, Grace. And close the door behind you, please.”
    When the woman had gone, Rutledge said, “Do your servants live in, Mrs. Davenant?”
    “No, Agnes and Grace come in daily to clean and to prepare meals. Agnes isn’t here just now, her granddaughter is very ill. Ben is my groom-gardener. He lives over the stables.” She lifted her eyebrows in a query, as if expecting Rutledge to explain his interest in her staff.
    “Can you tell me what state of mind Captain Wilton was in when he came home from Mallows the evening before the Colonel was killed?”
    “His state of mind?” she repeated. “I don’t know, I had already gone to bed. When he dined with Lettice and the Colonel, I didn’t wait up for him.”
    “The next morning, then?”
    “He seemed a little preoccupied over his breakfast, I suppose. But then I’ve grown used to that. Lettice and Mark are very much in love.” She smiled. “Lettice has been good for him, you know. He was so changed when he came home from France. Dark—bitter. I think he hated flying then, which is sad, because before the war—before the killing—it had been his greatest passion. Now Lettice is everything to him. I don’t think Charles could have stood in the way of this marriage if he’d wanted to!”
    Rutledge could see that she was fond of her cousin—and from her unguarded comments he gathered that it hadn’t yet occurred to her that Wilton might have killed Harris. It was interesting, he thought, that she spoke freely, warmly, and yet with an odd—detachment. Was that it? As if her own emotions were locked away and untouched by the ugliness of murder. Or as if she had held them in for so very long that it had become second nature to her. It was a response to widowhood in some women, but there could be many other reasons.
    “Did Captain Wilton go for a walk on Monday morning?”
    “Of course. He likes the exercise, and since the crash—you knew that he crashed just before the war ended?—since then riding has been difficult for him. His knee was badly smashed, and although it’s hardly noticeable now when he walks, controlling a horse is another matter.”
    Rutledge studied her. An attractive woman, with the sort of fair English beauty that men were supposed to dream about in the trenches as they died for King and Country. She was dressed in a soft rose silk that in the light from the long windows gave her skin a warm blush. The same blushit might have when stirred by passion. He found himself wondering if Charles Harris had ever been drawn to her. A man sometimes carried a picture in his mind when he spent long