Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Or was she? He remembered the tousled head among the bedclothes. How many women in Mrs. Hamilton’s situation could sleep so deeply and so free from anxiety?

“She knows Mallory,” Hamish offered. “She mayna’ believe he’s guilty.”

And that was a good point. “But why isn’t she by her husband’s side, even if she had to fight her way out of that house? Mallory can’t stay awake forever. He can lock doors but he can’t prevent her from trying to climb out her window. Or even stop her from standing there screaming for all the world to hear. It would go a long way, that screaming, toward making the neighbors aware that she was held against her will.”

“Would it please her husband, if she makes hersel’ a spectacle?”

“If I were married to her, and couldn’t get there to help her, I’d have liked to know she wasn’t taking the separation without some effort to defend her honor.”

“Aye, but then you havena’ a wife.”

It was a blow that Rutledge hadn’t expected. He’d spoken without thinking, considering the issue theoretically.

Jean was in Canada, married to her diplomat. What if he, Rutledge, had gone there after her, and held her against her will? What would she have done then? But she would know, of course, that he’d do no such thing. He hadn’t been able to fight for her when she released him from their engagement. He’d been too ill in his mind to find the strength to defend his love for her or explain that he was haunted by what had happened in France, by the dying and the turmoil and the horror of watching men he knew fall with appalling wounds. He hadn’t been able to tell her what it was like to know with certainty that carrying out his orders had killed so many of them. Never mind that the orders were only his to give, not his to change. He’d failed his men in a way that no amount of argument or reason or excuse could alter. He’d held their lives in his hands. And he’d let them slip through his fingers. It was as simple-and as complicated-as that.

How could he have explained Hamish? Come to that, how could he explain to any woman what war had done to him and to so many others? How could he describe watching Hamish fall, how could he tell anyone how the man had lain there, trying to speak to him, begging for release? And how could he ever condone drawing his revolver and delivering the coup de grace, the blow of grace, to put Corporal Hamish MacLeod out of his pain and torment?

Jean would have despised him, walked away in disgust long before he’d finished telling her half of it. And so he had let her go without a struggle, knowing that he was abhorrent to her in his battered state, knowing that he couldn’t ask her to love him, when Hamish MacLeod owned him, body and soul. Better to let her go, let the last hope of his salvation walk out the door of his hospital room and never come back again. Better to let her think that he was a pathetic remnant of the man she’d loved, rather than believe he was what he truly was-a man who had killed other men, including his own. A common murderer, come to that.

Rutledge straightened up from the window and turned around to look at the room, the draperies beside him, the desk to the other side, one chair and a chest with drawers, a bed. A room in a hotel, a man without roots, without a home, without any ties of love.

He and Mallory…

In an attempt to shrug off the mood that had swept him, he tried to think what to do next. Where to turn in this investigation that had been thrust upon him.

For one thing, what did he know about Matthew Hamilton, the face behind the diplomatic mask? Where had the man served besides Malta? Had his career been blameless? A civil servant doing his duty through long years of exile.

And why had Hamilton chosen exile? That was something that would require an answer too. To serve abroad took a willingness to sever ties and rely totally on one’s self. Even on precious weeks of leave, it must be difficult to reestablish intimacy with friends and family, to fit in again when he knew so little about the ordinary lives of the people he’d left behind. When he hadn’t been there to be a part of the small events, the everyday trials and hopes and dreams of people who hadn’t spoken with him for years? What had he found to take back with him to his station, to fill the empty weeks and months and even years of absence? An outcast at home-and an outcast in the field, for all intents and purposes.

Rutledge went to find a telephone, and once shut into the tiny room where it stood, he put in a call to Scotland Yard.

It took all of ten minutes to bring Sergeant Gibson to the telephone. The deep gruff voice sounded tense, unwelcoming.

Rutledge thought, And this is how it must have been when Hamilton called to say he was in London for a few weeks, and would like to meet a friend.

Aloud he said to Gibson, “I’m calling in regard to one Matthew Hamilton, Foreign Office, stationed in his last years of ser vice in Malta. There must have been earlier postings. If he was successful in his position, why did he end his career in the foreign ser vice equivalent to Coventry? Why not in a better posting?”

But the answer to that was already in his mind. The war. Half of Europe was a battlefield. There were no gracious capitals available to reward senior civil servants for long years of doing their duty. And Matthew Hamilton hadn’t distinguished himself at the Peace Conference in Paris.

“I’ll look into it, sir,” Gibson answered, that wariness still apparent.

Rutledge was on the point of asking how the search for the Green Park murderer was progressing, and thought better of it. Wariness from Gibson was a form of warning. And he didn’t take that lightly.

Chief Superintendent Bowles was no doubt in a foul mood, and everyone was walking clear of him, whenever possible.

There was a pause, lengthening, and nothing more was said. “That’s the lot,” Rutledge added, into the silence. “Call me here when you have something.”

And the connection was broken.

Whatever was happening in London, even Gibson was apprehensive. It didn’t bode well for the inquiry he’d left behind.

Rutledge forced himself to return to the Hamilton house, knocking at the door, and going on knocking until finally Mallory answered.

He said, irritation in his voice and in his face, “Go away. If you haven’t come to tell me I’m free to leave, we have nothing to say to each other.”

“I thought,” Rutledge retorted, “that you’d sent for me to help. How can I, if I’m shut out? I need information, and with luck, you can give it to me.”

Mallory, surprised, said, “What kind of information? I can’t tell you who it was struck Hamilton down. I wasn’t there. I didn’t come into town yesterday morning. If you want the truth, I’d finished a bottle of whiskey the night before and was still asleep when Bennett came pounding on my door.”

“I need to speak to Mrs. Hamilton, then. There may be something she hasn’t told either you or me. Something she may not consider important or has forgotten in the stress of events. We may not have a great deal of time. If Hamilton dies, Bennett will have his way and bring you in for trial, whatever the cost.”

“Yes, well, that was his intention from the start. I’ve only delayed him for a little while,” Mallory replied moodily. “I don’t like being in debt to you or anyone else. I should have ended this while I still could.”

Rutledge could almost feel Hamish, behind his shoulder, alert to something in Mallory’s quiet voice.

“It isna’ the same. He isna’ the same.”

It was true. Reality setting in with morning light? Or had something happened between Mallory and Mrs. Hamilton this morning? What if she no longer believed his protestations of innocence?