A Test of Wills by Charles Todd Read Free Book Online

just on the outskirts of town, the other end of Upper Streetham from Mallows.”
    He gave Rutledge directions and then began to scan his notebook as if checking to make certain he had put down the salient points of the conversations with Lettice Wood and Johnston.
    “I thought,” Rutledge said, “that the servants claimed that the argument between the Colonel and the Captain concerned the wedding. Johnston said nothing about it.”
    “It was the maid, Mary Satterthwaite, who mentioned that, sir.”
    “Then why didn’t you say so while we were there? I’d have spoken to her straightaway.”
    Davies flipped back through his notebook to a page near the beginning. “She said she went up to Miss Wood’s room to bring a cold cloth for her head, and Miss Wood was telling her that she had left the gentlemen to discuss the marriage. But the way Miss Wood said it led Mary to think it wasn’t going to be a friendly discussion.”
    “And then, having seen the end of the quarrel, the maid merely jumped to the conclusion that that was what they were still talking about?”
    “Apparently so, sir.”
    Which was no evidence at all. “When is the wedding?”
    Davies flipped several more pages. “On the twenty-second of September, sir. And Miss Wood and the Captain have been engaged for seven months.”
    Rutledge considered that. In an hour’s time—from the moment that Lettice Wood left the pair together until Johnston had seen Wilton storming out of the house—the subject of conversation could have ranged far and wide. If there had been a discussion of the wedding at nine-fifteen, surely it would not have lasted an hour, and developed into a quarrel at this stage, the details having been ironed out seven months ago and the arrangements for September already well in hand….
    Without warning, he found himself thinking of Jean, of their own engagement in that hot, emotion-torn summer of 1914, a lifetime ago. Of the endless letters passing back and forth to France as they dreamed and planned. Of the acute longing that had kept him alive when nothing else had mattered. Of the wedding that had never taken place—
    Of Jean’s white face in his hospital room when he had offered her the chance to break off the engagement. She had smiled nervously and taken it, murmuring something about the war having changed both of them. While he sat there, still aching with love and his need for her, trying with every ounce of his being to hide it from her, she’d said, “I’m not the girl you remember in 1914. I loved you so madly—I think anything would have been possible then. But too much time has passed, too much has happened to both of us—we were apart so long…. I don’t even know myself anymore…. Of course I still care, but—I don’t think I should marry anyone just now—it wouldn’t be fair to marry anyone….”
    Yet despite the quiet voice and the scrupulously chosen words that tried desperately to spare both of them pain, he could see the truth in her eyes.
    It was fear.
    She was deathly afraid of him….

3
    Mrs. Davenant lived in a Georgian brick house standing well back from the road. It was surrounded by an ivy-clad wall with ornate iron gates and set in a pleasant garden already bright with early color. Roses and larkspur drooped over the narrow brick walk, so heavy with rain from the night before that they left a speckled pattern of dampness on Rutledge’s trousers as he brushed past them on his way to the door.
    Surprisingly, Mrs. Davenant answered the bell herself. She was a slender, graceful woman in her thirties, her fair hair cut becomingly short around her face but drawn into a bun on the back of her neck. Tendrils escaping its rigorous pinning curled delicately against very fine skin, giving her a fragile quality like rare porcelain. Her eyes were dark blue with naturally dark lashes, making them appear deep set and almost violet.
    She nodded a greeting to Sergeant Davies and then said to Rutledge, “You