A Test of Wills by Charles Todd Page A

hurt Lettice, that neither of them was the sort of man to resort to murder?”
    “Yet they quarreled. And one of them is dead.”
    “Then we’ve come full circle again, haven’t we? And I’m trying to make you understand that however angry Charles might have made him at the moment, Mark wouldn’t have harmed him—least of all, killed him so savagely!”
    “How do you know what might drive a man to murder?” he asked.
    She studied him for a moment with those dark, clear eyes, and said, “How do you? Have you ever killed a man? Deliberately and intentionally? Not counting the war, I mean.”
    Rutledge smiled grimly. “Point taken.” After a moment he added, “If we scratch Wilton from our list of suspects, have you got a name to put in his place?”
    “Mavers,” she said instantly. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could see him!”
    “But he was in the village on Monday morning. In plain view of half a hundred people.”
    She shrugged. “That’s your problem, not mine. You asked me who might have shot Charles, not how he did it.”
    “It appears that Wilton was seen by several witnesses in the vicinity of the meadow where Harris died.”
    “I don’t care where he was seen. I tell you he wouldn’t have touched Charles Harris. He’s madly in love with Lettice. Can’t I make you understand that? Why would he risk losing her?”
    “Are you still in love with him?”
    Color rose in her face, a mottled red under the soft, fair skin. The earnestness changed to a clipped tension. “I was infatuated with Mark Wilton five years ago. He came to Upper Streetham one summer, and I fell in love with him the first time I saw him—any girl with eyes in her head must have done the same! Mrs. Davenant’s husband had just died, and Mark stayed with her for a while, until the estate was settled and so on. I envied her, you know, having Mark’s company every day, from breakfast to dinner. She’s only a few years older than he is, and I was sure he’d fall in love with her, and never notice me. Then we met one Sunday after the morning service, he called on me later, and for a time, I thought he was as in love with me as I was with him.”
    She stopped suddenly, as if afraid she’d said too much, then went on in spite of herself. “We made quite a handsome pair, everyone said so. He’s so fair, and I’m so dark. And I think that was part of my infatuation too. The trouble was, Mark wanted to fly, not to find himself tied down with a wife and family, and at that point in my life I wanted a rose-covered cottage, a fairy-tale ending.”
    For a moment there was a flare of pain in her dark eyes, a passing thought that seemed to have no connection with Wilton but was directed at herself—or at her dreams. “At any rate, I had several letters from Mark after he went away, and I answered a few of them, and then we simply didn’t have anything more to say to each other. It was over. And it wouldn’t have done. For either of us. Does that answer your question?”
    “Not altogether.” Her color was still high, but he thought that it was from anger as much as anything else. And that intrigued him. He found himself wondering if Mark Wilton had been having an affair with his widowed cousin—and using Catherine Tarrant as a blind to mislead a village full of gossips. If she’d guessed that, her pride might have suffered more than her heart. And she might defend him now to protect herself, not him. “Are you still in love with him?” he asked again.
    “No,” she said after a moment. “But I’m still fond enough of him to care what happens to him. I’ve got my painting, I’ve made quite a success of that, and any man in my life now would take second place.” He could hear a bleak undercurrent of bitterness behind the proud declaration.
    “Even the fairy-tale prince?”
    She managed a smile. “Even a prince.” She had stripped off her soft leather gloves when she came into the Inn, and now she began to draw