Charles Todd - A False Mirror

“You should have pressed him,” Bennett told him in no uncertain terms. “While you had the chance. God knows what state those women will be in, come morning.”

Rutledge said, “Mallory is tired. He won’t be thinking very clearly. Anything that strikes him now as interference on our part will only make their situation worse. I can’t believe he’ll harm them tonight. Not after he’d got what he wanted. We’ll leave him to wonder about tomorrow and how he’s to explain himself.”

“That’s foolishness,” Bennett retorted. “You’re coddling a murderer.”

Hamish said, making clear his opinion of Bennett, “He’s no’ thinking sae verra’ clearly himsel’. He hasna’ considered that yon lieutenant would gladly see ye deid.”

“Why do you so firmly believe Mallory attacked Hamilton?” Rutledge asked the fuming inspector beside him as they drove out of the gates. He could see that a new face had replaced the watcher he’d glimpsed earlier in the shadows of a large tree. He presumed that while he was speaking to Mallory, distracting him, there had been a swift changing of the guard and the other constables had already walked back into Hampton Regis.

“Jealousy,” Bennett said baldly.

“Mallory was involved with Hamilton’s wife?” He considered the ramification of this. “Or only infatuated with her?”

Hamish, derisive in his mind, demanded, “Does it make any difference?”

“I can’t say,” Bennett added grudgingly, “how much involvement there has been. If gossip is to be believed, certainly on Mallory’s part there was the desire to step into Matthew Hamilton’s shoes. Or bed. How Mrs. Hamilton felt about it, no one seems to know.”

“What else do the gossips whisper?”

“There’s a difference in age between Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton. Twenty years, at a guess. Mallory on the other hand can’t be more than three or four years older than Mrs. Hamilton. The rest is plain as the nose on your face, isn’t it? She wouldn’t be the first woman to see a young sweetheart off to war, and then have second thoughts about waiting for him. Especially when her head’s turned by the attentions of someone of Hamilton’s standing. It explains why, when young Mallory is mustered out, he comes straight to Hampton Regis to live, not all that long after the Hamiltons take Casa Miranda. He’s got no family here, nor any connections that we know of. What else could have brought him?”

“Mallory returned to England in 1916.”

“Did he, now? Then where’s he been since then?” Bennett shook his head. “I don’t see how it matters either way. He’s in love with her, that’s clear enough, whenever it was he came to know her. Why else was he in such a hurry to see her, once he knew he was caught out?”

“Why, indeed?”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be fire.”

The road was quiet, the town dark, asleep.

“And so Hamilton was struck down, beaten, and left to drown. But no one saw the attack.”

“No one has stepped forward.”

“I’d like to look in on Matthew Hamilton,” Rutledge said.

“It’s well after midnight, man. You can’t go dragging the doctor out of his bed at this hour.”

“I doubt he’s in his bed.”

“Oh, very well.” Bennett gestured toward the first turning as they reached the Mole. “Down that street to the next corner. The house with the delicate iron fencing along the back garden.”

But the doctor’s house was dark, and although Rutledge went to tap lightly on the surgery door, no one came to answer his summons. He tested the handle, and it turned in his hand. Did no one in the country lock their doors?

He stood in the opening, listening intently. But the dark passage before him was silent, and he could feel Inspector Bennett’s eyes boring into the back of his head.

If the doctor wasn’t sitting up with his patient, it was very likely a good sign that he was not expected to die this night.

They drove back to the Mole, where the sea beyond the harbor wall was a black presence, restless and whispering as the wind picked up. There they took the second turning, and Bennett pointed out a small inn set back from the street, a black and white Elizabethan building with a slate roof where once there must have been thatch, and outbuildings in the yard behind it. A small garden had replaced the yard in front, and daffodils were already in bloom in sheltered patches. This morning would be the first day of March, Rutledge reminded himself. The winter had seemed endless, unrelenting.

“That’s the Duke of Monmouth Inn,” Bennett told Rutledge. “I’ve taken the liberty of putting you up there. But I’d be obliged if you’ll drive me as far as my house, which is down the end of the street and on the next corner. Damned foot!”

Rutledge went past the inn and on down the street. “You believe that Mallory ran from you because he’s guilty. Why didn’t he keep going, either into Devon or toward the port towns? It would have been a smarter move on his part.”

Bennett said, “I told you, it was a matter of jealousy. What’s the sense in killing the husband if you don’t succeed in getting the wife to yourself?”

“Hardly to himself, if the hangman’s knocking at the door.”

“Yes, well, I don’t suppose he’d expected to find himself the prime suspect so quickly. Nor her so hesitant about running off with him while her husband was still alive. If the sea had taken the body, it’ud been a different story.” Bennett hesitated and then added, “I’d led Mallory to believe Hamilton was dead. It seemed best at the time. He must have been shocked when he learned his victim was still with us.”

“And that’s my point,” Rutledge countered, pulling up before the small house that Bennett was indicating. “You’re looking at the connection between Mallory and Mrs. Hamilton as a strong motive. Instead, Mallory might have gone to her for fear he would be blamed. You’ve told me of no direct evidence linking him to what happened.”

“Except that he ran,” Bennett answered simply, reaching into the back of the motorcar for his crutch. “Add to that, he had no compunction about killing me as well. And now he’s holding those two women at the point of a gun. Does that cry innocence to you?”

Rutledge found he was holding his breath. The rear seat of the motorcar belonged to Hamish-

But Bennett’s fumbling was successful, and he retrieved the crutch, nearly striking Rutledge in the face with the rubber tip.

“I’d not heard it myself,” Bennett repeated, swinging the crutch out into the road and gingerly lowering his bad foot after it. “The worst of the gossip, I mean. But one of my men, Coxe by name, brought it to my attention. He’s cousin to the housemaid, Nan Weekes. Just as well he told me. That gave me a jump on Mallory, or so I’d thought. Nearly had the bastard. But I’ll have him yet.”

With that he hobbled up to his door and went in without looking back.

Rutledge waited to see Bennett safely inside, and then, easing his stiff shoulders, he turned the motorcar toward the hotel. Even Hamish was ready to call it a night, his presence heavily silent in the rear seat.

The Duke of Monmouth Inn was named for the illegitimate but favored son of Charles II, and there had been many people when Charles died who preferred him over the Catholic Prince James, the king’s younger brother. A short but bloody rebellion centered mostly in the West Country had come to grief on the scaffold at the hands of Bloody Jeffreys, the hanging judge of the Bloody Assizes, and that was the end of the duke.

And so history had taken a different turn. The intolerant James had assumed the crown, only to face his own trouble in less than three years. That had swept in his daughter Mary and her Dutch husband, William. There were not many inns named for him, Rutledge thought, making the turning.