Charles Todd - A False Mirror

She had slowly come to understand that he liked this part of England, that he intended to live here because it was where he’d hoped to live in his retirement. It had been too late then to undo the first impression she must have made, and her pride kept her from acknowledging her error to the likes of Miss Trining. But she should have swallowed her pride and made the effort, if need be she should have walked on hot coals barefoot for Matthew’s sake. Instead, Matthew’s charm had become the key to her acceptance here, and she had no illusions about that now, when she was in need of kindness.

The Restons and Miss Trining and the others would relish watching her being dragged through the mire. It was what happened to older men who lost their heads and married unwisely, they would say. A beauty, perhaps, but look what such beauty came to, in the end. So sordid.

Desperate now, she added, “Someone in London, do you think? Friends of your uncle, the bishop?”

But his uncle the bishop had died in the autumn.

“No, they’d be useless.” He paused, then said with obvious reluctance, “Scotland Yard.” Even as he did, Stephen Mallory knew what Dr. Beatie would tell him: Don’t open that wound again. You aren’t healed yet, you can’t take the risk.

He got to his feet, unable to sit still.

He wouldn’t have to deal with the man, surely?

He could just put his case to the Yard, and they’d send someone.

No, they wouldn’t, not when they heard what Bennett had to say.

He could feel his body tighten and his mind shut itself away. Even if he sent for the Captain, the man wouldn’t come, not when he realized who was asking for help. Yet where else could they turn, he and Felicity, after what he’d done and she had compounded this day?

But not the Captain-please God, not the Captain!

He stood there looking down into Felicity’s face, despair sweeping him with such force he felt sick.

For her sake, he had to do something. He must get her out of this nightmare unscathed, whatever the cost. And then he could go into the garden. It wouldn’t matter anymore.

He couldn’t hide behind her skirts much longer. He shuddered to think what half the town was whispering already.

“Stephen?” Her eyes were pleading with him. “I don’t know anyone at Scotland Yard. Do you?”

He held out his hand for the key to the desk. “There’s someone-I need stationery, an envelope.”

She handed him the key reluctantly, uncertain what he was going to do with it.

He rummaged in the drawer, ignoring the weapon, and drew out several sheets of stationery. Matthew Hamilton’s family crest stared back at him, but he ignored it. Felicity pointed out the pen and ink, and he began to write.

After a moment he stopped, tore up the sheet, and began again.

On the third try he appeared to be satisfied. He handed her the sheet while he wrote a direction on the envelope.

She held the sheet of paper like a lifeline, reading and rereading it:

Bennett, I refuse to surrender to anyone other than Inspector Ian Rutledge of Scotland Yard. Bring him to me, here, as fast as you can. I won’t be had with promises.

And he’d signed it, simply, Mallory.

“Who is this man Rutledge?” she asked, frowning. “A policeman? He’ll be sure to side with Inspector Bennett. There must be someone else? Someone in the Foreign Office-they’ll take Matthew’s side, won’t they?” She rubbed her eyes with her hands. “I daren’t tell my mother. She’s not well. It will kill her.”

“You wouldn’t know this man. We-we served together in France. And just sending for him will give us a little time, don’t you see? When Matthew comes to his senses and tells Bennett the truth, I won’t need the Yard or anyone else.” It was sheer bravado. His reward was a tiny flicker of hope in her eyes. It faded as quickly as it had flared.

“But will this man travel all the way from London just to let you surrender to him? And what if he does? And Matthew is dead and can’t ever speak? There must be some other way. We’ve got to find a way.”

She looked at him, her face flushed with distress and her eyes filling now with tears. He wanted more than anything to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right.

If Rutledge wouldn’t come, there was always the revolver in the drawer. He had seen the lock. It was flimsy, it could be broken. And when he was dead, Felicity would be safe. She could tell them whatever she pleased, and it wouldn’t matter how she must blacken his character.

He said none of that to her. But there was bitterness in his voice when he finally answered her.

“There isn’t another way. You should have thought of the consequences before you stopped Inspector Bennett from coming in. It’s too late now, we don’t have many choices left to us.”

Bowles was livid.

“Where have you been? Not where you ought to be, that’s certain. I sent men to the park to find you. You were away from your post, damn it!”

“I think I may have-”

“I don’t give a dance in hell what you think, man! You’re off the case.”

“If you will listen to me-sir-”

“Look at this.” Bowles shot a sheet of paper across the desk. “Know this man, do you?”

Rutledge scanned the message. It had come in as a telephone call from the south coast.

One Stephen Mallory holding two women at point of gun, refuses to surrender to local authorities, will speak only to Inspector Rutledge. Wanted for severely beating one Matthew Hamilton and leaving him for dead, for assaulting a police officer in the course of his duties, presently threatening to murder his first victim’s wife and her maid, if Rutledge does not come in person.

Stephen Mallory. His memory rejected the name. Drew a deliberate blank.

But Hamish said roughly, “Lieutenant Mallory.” Reminding him against his will.

The war. So many things came round to the war. He couldn’t escape it, no matter where he turned. For him it had really never ended.

He could feel himself sliding back there again. To the trenches, to the Somme. And Lieutenant Mallory, standing in the summer rain, cursing him, cursing the war, cursing the killing. Rutledge could smell the foulness of the mud and the fear of his men, heard the noise that threatened to deafen him-the constant rattle of machine-gun fire and the sharpness of rifle fire and the heavy pounding of the shelling. Men were screaming all around him, and the dead or dying were everywhere he looked, along the top of the trench, under foot, out in the wire and in shell holes. The first day of that bloody battle, when so many men died. Twenty thousand of them in one day.

Hamish brought him out of the nightmare, his voice loud in Rutledge’s ears. “He was wounded, but they sent him back to the Front.”

“Yes,” he answered silently.

They had been so short of men. The medical staff had cleared anyone who could still hold a rifle as fit for duty. Days later Rutledge himself had taken his own turn at the aid station, resting a few hours, then getting to his feet and stumbling out of the tent, like a man sleepwalking.

Rutledge remembered Mallory’s dazed eyes, the stiffly bandaged shoulder, the fearlessness that had bordered on recklessness. It had turned his salient against the lieutenant, and there had been whispers about him. That he was bad luck. That he got men killed. And Mallory had been hell-bent on proving he was no coward, whatever the doctors had murmured about possible shell shock.

“Missed the bone,” he’d told everyone, making light of it. “Still, it aches like the very devil. But nothing for the pain until I’ve won the war.”

And four days later, he had been found crouched in a shell hole, crying softly. This time the wound was in his calf, and he couldn’t walk. The stretcher bearers had got him back to the rear, while rumor debated whether he had shot himself or been picked off by one of the new German snipers. Or-by his own men.