Free A Test of Wills by Charles Todd Page B

fields of young wheat beyond.
    “We’re on Mallows land now,” he said. The edges of the fields where they walked were still heavy with wet earth, clinging to their boots in great clots. The hayfield higher up was a wall of tall wet stalks rimmed with weeds. Burrs stuck to their trousers and wild roses caught at their coats. Davies swore once with fervent imagination as he was stung by nettles, and then they were in the copse, where walkingwas easier, almost silent on a cushion of damp leaves. They came out of the stand of trees into a small, sunny meadow, where the sound of bees filled the air.
    The rain had washed away any signs of blood, but the grass was still bruised and trampled from the many feet that had milled around the body.
    “He lay just about there, chest down, toward the wood, one arm under him and the other out-flung. His legs were straight, slightly bent at the knees but that’s all. I’d say he fell from the horse and never moved, not even a twitch. So his attacker must have come out of the trees, just as we did. Say, just here ,” Davies explained, moving a few feet away from where the body had been found. “Not more than ten feet, anyway, from where the body fell, depending on whether the shot knocked him out of the saddle or he fell out of it.”
    “If he was knocked out of it, why was he on his face—chest? If he was shot from the front, the force of the blast would have driven him out of the saddle backward. Even if the horse had bolted in terror, his feet would slip out of the stirrups and he’d have come off backward. On his back , Sergeant! Or his side. But not facedown.”
    Davies chewed his lip. “I thought about that myself. That Harris must have been shot from the back, to fall forward on his chest. But that doesn’t fit with the horse—I saw it, there was blood all over the saddle and its haunches, but not on its ears or mane. You’d have thought, if Harris’s head had exploded from behind, not the front, that the horse’s mane would have been matted with blood and brains.”
    “Then someone turned him over. The search party?”
    “They swear they never touched the corpse. And there was no question but that he was dead—they didn’t need to move him.”
    “The killer, then?”
    Davies shook his head. “Why would he do that? He’d bewanting to get as far away as he could, in case someone heard the shot and came to see what it was.”
    Rutledge looked around. “We’ve come two miles, or thereabouts. How far is the other track from this wood?”
    “Two miles, a little more than that. Shorter if you don’t mind rougher going than we just had.”
    “So Wilton could have reached the meadow either way—from the lane where we came up, if Hickam is right, or from the churchyard path, if Wilton walked that way, as he claims he did.”
    “Aye, but it isn’t likely, is it? Somehow I just don’t see the Captain waiting in the trees to shoot the Colonel from ambush! Besides, when Hickam saw him, he wasn’t carrying a shotgun, was he? So where did he get the gun, and where is it now?”
    “A good question, that. You’ve scoured the area looking for it?”
    “Aye, as soon as possible we had men in the trees there and in the tall grass. But by that time, who knows what might have become of the weapon. The killer’s hidden it somewhere, most likely.”
    Looking about him, Rutledge thought, It isn’t where he’s hidden it that’s half as important as where he got it.
    Davies pointed and said, “Look, if you go down this hill, over the fields yonder, and across the stile when you come to another line of hedgerows, you soon find yourself in the orchard behind Mallows, and that takes you to the gardens and the house itself. Of course, you can’t see it from here, but the going’s fairly straight if you know your way. The land’s a pie wedge, like. Mallows is out on the Warwick road, and we’ve come up from the High Street. The crust, so to speak, runs from Upper Streetham