Charles Todd - A False Mirror

Murder followed by suicide…time was running out faster than even Rutledge had expected.

The door was suddenly pushed wider. “You wanted to speak to me, Inspector? Is it Matthew? Is he all right?” The woman standing there was quite beautiful, in a fragile and defenseless way. The kind of woman, in his experience, who brought out protectiveness in men, the need to shield and guard. Rutledge had found such women to be very capable of looking after themselves.

Jean had been fragile too, until her own needs had driven her to strength.

“You ought to be with him, Mrs. Hamilton.” Rutledge spoke directly to her. “He needs to feel your presence there beside him.”

“Then you must do something to end this silly business,” she said fiercely.

Even her voice was intriguing, low and gentle. It enhanced the helpless image. She was like a child, he thought, but by no means childish. He could see her mind working behind the pretty eyes focused on his face.

When he said nothing, she looked from Rutledge to Mallory, pulling her blue woolen sweater closer about her, almost to the point of wrapping her arms about herself. She added quickly, the anger gone and worry in its place, “Are you lying to me? Is he better and you aren’t telling me, just to frighten me? Or is he truly worse, and you’re afraid to let me hear it?” She stood there, waiting for him to commit himself to a lie or the truth.

“There’s little change,” Rutledge told her finally. He was suddenly afraid to pit her against Mallory and add to the man’s agitation. “Which may not be a very good sign. The doctor feels he ought to have come round by now. And he hasn’t.”

Something stirred in her eyes, fear coiling and uncoiling. “And if I wanted to go to him? What then? Who would take my place here? And would you let me come back again?” She glanced quickly at Mallory, then away. “I must come back, you see. For-for Nan’s sake. I can’t leave her in this predicament all alone.”

“I could stay here, in your place,” Rutledge offered for a second time. “I think Mr. Mallory would accept that.”

“No!” The word was explosive, angry. “I warned you not to bring it up, damn you. You’re no use to either of us caught in Bennett’s trap with me.” Mallory had stepped in front of Felicity Hamilton, as if half expecting her to push through the door and run out to the motorcar or down the drive, before he could stop her. “Get out of here, Rutledge, and don’t come again until you’ve got news. I’ve had enough of your meddling, do you hear me? Help me by finding the man responsible for this, or stay away from me.”

“But, Stephen,” Mrs. Hamilton said, turning to him, pleading. “It’s not meddling. I wouldn’t be long-I’d go and sit with Matthew for just a little while, and then come straight back here. I promise you.”

“Felicity. They wouldn’t let you come back. Don’t you understand? They’re using Matthew to make trouble. Frightening you so that you’ll rush down to Granville’s surgery and-” He broke off. “Don’t look at me like that,” he pleaded. “This is none of my doing.”

“You didn’t see him lying there, Stephen. You didn’t see the blood and the bandages. I did.” She whirled back to Rutledge. “You’ll give me your word I can come back, won’t you?”

“It’s not his word that matters. For God’s sake, Bennett won’t have given his, and so he’s free to do as he pleases. I don’t want to hang for something I didn’t do. Even if Matthew dies-”

“No, don’t say that!” she exclaimed. “I won’t let you even think it.”

Rutledge could see the anguish in Mallory’s face and the intensity in Mrs. Hamilton’s, each with a need the other couldn’t meet. A confrontation neither had anticipated at the start of this debacle.

Hamish said, “It’s no’ a very good thing-”

And Rutledge cut his words short, saying quickly to Mrs. Hamilton, “He’s right. Bennett won’t be bound by my promises. If you leave here, there’s no turning back.” He looked over her head to Mallory’s tight face.

“We needn’t stand here on the steps quarreling. Let me in-”

“No!” Mallory said again. “You’ve already made matters worse. Why haven’t you done as I asked, why haven’t you got to the bottom of this business? I don’t understand what’s taking so long. It’s not as if Matthew had other enemies-”

He stopped, and then tried to change his own words. “Someone hated Matthew Hamilton enough to give him that beating. Someone you haven’t found yet.”

“But not for lack of trying,” Rutledge retorted, his impatience getting the best of him. And then he added rapidly, before Mallory could move to the door to shut it, “Mrs. Hamilton, you must tell me about your husband’s work in the Mediterranean. Who it was who envied him? Who it was who resented his skill in carrying out his duties or was angry about what happened in Paris? Who it was who caught up with him on the strand and tried to kill him?”

She stared at him. “But I don’t know what Matthew did. I don’t know that part of the world, I met him after he’d come back to London. I asked him once if we could travel to Malta and let me see the places he knew there. And he wouldn’t hear of it. He said that part of his life was finished, done with, and neither of us should dwell on what had gone before.”

“Then who would know? Who might have seen him at work, who might have been to Malta and understood what he was doing there?”

Mrs. Hamilton’s face crumpled, tears heavy in her voice. “Don’t you see? I believed he was telling me that my engagement to Stephen was closed, that the bargain was, neither of us would look back, and so I never pressed him, because I didn’t want him to press me. It never seemed to matter, not really, though sometimes he would grow quiet and stand there in the drawing room, his hands on that ugly female figure, and I knew his thoughts weren’t in the room with me. And it hurt to be shut out, because I’d have liked to ask him about her, where he’d found her, and what he knew about the other figures he kept there. But I was afraid it would open Pandora’s box for both of us, and I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know what’s in his past.”

It was a difficult admission to make, that the marriage had had its secrets. But had it been a true bargain? Rutledge wondered. Had her own guilty memories made her believe that Matthew Hamilton was deliberately concealing something from her? His silences might have been no more than a deep and abiding fear of one day losing his wife. By the same token, Felicity Hamilton had no way of judging, young as she was, the breadth of Hamilton’s experiences in foreign ser vice. What secrets he was privy to, what mistakes he had made.

There was anguish in Mallory’s eyes as he watched her cry, and his hands moved once to comfort her, and then drew back.

“Surely there was someone at the wedding, someone who came to call when you were in London-a place for me to start?” Rutledge pressed her.

But she shook her head, and Mallory said protectively, “She’s told you. She can’t help.”

And then he shut the door, as if raising a shield between Felicity Hamilton and the world outside.

It was a tender gesture, in a way, an odd sort of moment between captor and captive.

As he stood there, staring at the brass knocker and the solid wood panels of the door closed in his face, Rutledge found himself thinking that this was more a wretched triangle than what it had seemed in the beginning-Mallory’s desperate effort to stay out of prison.

Over Hamish’s objections, Rutledge drove back to Dr. Granville’s surgery, let himself in quietly through the back garden, and sat down by the bedside of the wounded man.